That’s the goal, yes, but it’s a damn hard problem when you start to think it through. Let me put it this way: In a world where people think they’re phoned up by Microsoft to “help them”, how do you make their system secure?
I don’t actually believe so, but I realize it can sometimes look that way, in anger.
I’m not angry, @LarsBjerregaard. I get paid a salary to sit in front of a computer every day and make software. For the last 10 year I’ve had a choice of windows or mac, and I always pick mac. I have experienced developer support from both of these companies quite often.
And, yes, you are correct that if you allow a user to program their computer bad things could happen.
well I started out with PETs then a ZX-80, 81 and BBC Model B, we kind of had to program them ourselves. 
I would not hold my breath. These days, new hardware and software (eg. Peloton, Microsoft 365, various razors for shaving) is merely a platform for selling subscription services, and Apple is increasingly turning evil. (Says a once diehard Mac fan since 1986 & Mac Plus.) This MacBook Pro has a good chance of being my last Apple purchase. Even just jumping 3 generations up with my iPod replacement forced me to replace a lot of iOS apps.
Hello guys,
first of all sorry for the dumb question.
And here it is. I have a 2019 Macbook Pro 16 and it works very well with VCV but the negative thing is that it turns hotter then sun very soon and the fans ar every noisy.
Since in two week s will be my birthday I wass thinking to buy another laptop and I was intrigued from the new M1 laptop (air or pro) from Apple sinc ethey are light weight, colder and not soisy as my pro.
I don’t understand if I will be able to run VCV rack downloading from the official sources or if I have to get some sort of recompiled thing making it hard to use it for me.
Another question. Having a budget of 1500 euros would yopu buy anothe r mac or get a windows laptop. And if I go windows what do you suggest to run stable and fast VCV?
Thanks again and sorry for the thousands questions.
The official version of VCV Rack runs fine on M1, and there is also the forked version of Dmitry from here which runs better when using VCV Rack in tandem with other application that tax the GPU.
Hopefully a future version specific for ARM will run with even more benefits for these new Macs, but as it is now it works fine!
Most laptops will have noise fan certainly also on Windows. Surprisingly these new Macs are very quiet and even when starting the fan it is considerably less noisy then what you would expect.
From what I can gather the main benefit the M1 chip has over anything else in a laptop is it doesn’t run hot. If that is your concern, it’s worth considering an M1 Mac laptop.
Hi rigo
It’s not a dumb question at all, but it can be tricky to answer since, as usual, there’s so many factors at play. I’ll try to answer some of your questions, but you will need to do some research from other sources as well, and if you read this entire topic from the top, there’s a lot of info and pointers.
To start backwards: Should you get Windows or MacOS? That’s up to your taste and preferences and experiences with the two. VCV Rack runs fine on both, and people in this forum will run both and have their opinion. My own is that MacOS is superior regarding audio and MIDI applications, and in many other respects as well.
So, regarding getting a new machine for VCV Rack. First of all, if you’re firmly set on getting a laptop and not a desktop then you get a laptop. Otherwise I would always recommend a desktop for Rack, because of better cooling and a bigger screen, and probably beefier graphics, which Rack makes use of.
An M1 laptop or desktop will certainly relieve your heat and fan problems you have now, that’s for sure. Also the M1 CPU cores are very powerful, and since Rack enjoys single-core performance it’s a good match. The integrated graphics in the M1 is also very powerful, something that cannot be said of the Intel integrated graphics, which might be part of your current heat problems.
Per my test above, Rack runs very well on the M1 machines. Would, say, an M1 Macbook Pro, run Rack faster than your current MBP, aside from running cooler? That’s a tough question to answer and I can’t make that direct comparison for you. From all the videos I have watched, where people compare the Intel Macs and the M1’s, and knowing about the requirements of Rack, I would say there’s a good chance it will run faster, but I can’t promise you and would advice you go out and look at YT videos of people comparing performance.
Personally, I would choose the M1 Mini over the M1 MBP, and the M1 MBP over the M1 Air, simply because of more cooling so a bit more headroom for pushing it to the max. But as per my test above, the M1 Air works great for Rack, but you will have to decide whether my test indicates it’s powerful enough for you.
Also, by all indications, Rack and all its plugins run just fine on the M1, via Rosetta2, and I haven’t yet heard of anyone reporting a particular plugin that won’t work, but it’s not completely inconceivable, that in some plugin, some developer would have used some x86 specific code, that will not run well on the M1. And this is obviously also a consideration, if you run VST’s inside the host module on Rack. Just covering my ass here 
Go to https://doesitarm.com/ and google for VSTname/softwareName + M1, to find info on whether things will run on M1 or not. My sense is that the vast majority of x86 software runs fine under M1+Rosetta2, without you even knowing it, but there are exceptions, and it seems most of those are in the process of being fixed.
You will just be downloading the regular VCV Rack for x86/Mac and the plugins for that. It runs great under Rosetta2 and remember that all the plugins are compiled for x86. You can of course experiment with other, native M1 builds, but remember that all the plugins need to be rebuilt for that as well, in that case.
Thanks so much for the very detailed reply. My opinion is that rack will run the exactly way it runs now on MPB 16 but the heating problems made me mad about this machine.
I also have a desktop with windows (very powerful pc) but imho rack runs laggier than on MacBook.
I wanted to try the m1 chip that is the real reason:-) but also I don’t want to waste too much money since probably I will have the same experience as I have now with my current MBP.
I’m really undecided if I will have to pick air with 512 gb of storage or the pro with 256 gb and if the 13". vs 16" will have a big impact on my workflow.
By the way, the first M1 iMac just arrived
wow. I think that I will get the air 512gb in the afternoon since in a local shop I have find it at 1100 euros instead of 1479 euros. I hope that the fanless system give me no problem withe the rack. finger crossed.
If you go for an M1 Air then 8GB of RAM is enough for just running Rack. But if you run other substantial software as well, definately get the 16GB RAM model! I would just get 16GB unless this is just an experiment for you. I don’t know what you’ll do on your harddisk. If you install huge software packages, and several of them, then get the 512GB disk or bigger. If you just run “normal” software, you can do just fine with 256GB disk, and then push any large mediafiles you or others make, out to external storage.
If you’re planning for this to be a serious Rack machine, that you’ll use for a long time, I would recommend getting the M1 PRO over the Air. You can push that a bit harder because of the cooling, and it’s got insane batterylife.
Both the M1 Air and PRO are 13" only, no 16" models yet.
The problem is that I can find a reseller with 16 gb ram since they come factory 8 gb. Would You suggest buy it from apple with 16 gb?
All the places that I know of, sell both the 8GB and the 16GB models. The prices should pretty much be the same, no matter where you buy them from. That’s usually how Apple prices work.
I don’t think you can add RAM to M1 machines.
If you like running large sample libraries in my SFZ player then VCV will use more RAM. Just loading a single 2GB piano will require 2GB of RAM right there.
Yes as it seems the big performance benefits come from the RAM integrated with the processor in the same modules. I don’t know if they have plans to later introduce a second class citizen ‘normal RAM’ for users who like to multitask big applications, but imagine for most tasks 16GB is enough provided buffers are used intelligently.
I don’t disagree with @LarsBjerregaard here, but he is hinting at, but not saying, that there a lot of Windows machines that don’t have heat issues, and the mac laptops are absolutely notorious for their really bad thermals.
Sounds like with these new machines you can have macos without having all the problems that have plagued mac laptop users. And that sounds like a very good thing.
It’s possible but inadvisable;
I’ve had loads of Windows laptops over the years and the only ones that ever had heat issues were ones with graphics accelerators for gaming etc. You could sometimes mitigate with a laptop stand that had its own heat dispersal rails and a chunky fan, but I just found laptops with secondary graphics cards to be more unreliable and prone to overheating and they just plain broke earlier in their lifetime than those without. Now that DAWs and to some extent maybe plugins themselves are employing graphics card acceleration for their UIs or to squeeze more performance using CUDA style techniques they may become more prone to those same issues.