[Jon Lango]

Thank you very much for your thoughts on this, guys. I’m definitely not getting the 2012 MacBook Pro, since that same $470 could go toward something with major hardware benefits, plus a longer life expectancy. Not sure yet if I can switch to a desktop, but the iMac sounds promising.

I started writing back with new questions yesterday, but ended up reading a ton so I could understand the points you brought up. Also a lot of my questions became irrelevant as I started to rework how I’m thinking of this project.

Brad, thank you for mentioning your old Mac Mini specs and setup. I might look into the 2014 / 2015 Mini, not sure yet. And refurbished Macs from the Apple Store would be great, but are currently out of my price range.

Ridiculous question, but what is a test machine?

Brad, you mentioned FCPX will run on almost any Mac. Any chance I can somehow get it to run on my current 2010 white MacBook7,1? Since I’m pretty sure this is impossible, I’m going to put my specs and the rest of this question way at the end of this post.

Joe, thank you for bringing up QuickSync. I’m brand new to all of this terminology, learning a lot right now. Also thanks for the tip on the specific iMac models and years, and the warning about 2014, super useful and exactly the kind of info I’m looking for. Mark, thanks for seconding the iMac and the year details. Also glad to hear you replaced the SSD, I was reading about that last night and it’s great to know it’s not too difficult.

Regarding price, everything on ebay is currently more expensive, but some recently sold items were close to your ballpark figures, Joe. If I go with a desktop, I’ll have to keep an eye out.

Another ridiculous question—are you guys mostly using Thunderbolt / TB 2 / 3 for backups? Or running external monitors? Or what, exactly?

If it’s for backups, how big are the TB drives you’re using? I imagine you would use far larger than I expect to need, since I’m planning to make pretty basic videos overall, but need FCPX specifically / solely for multicam editing, at least for now.

=

Regarding whether it’s possible to run FCPX on a 2010 white MacBook7,1—
– definitely not Metal compatible, according to Apple. So the only way this might work is if I can purchase an older version of FCPX to avoid the Metal requirement. Do I understand this correctly, and if so, is that even possible?
– only 256 MB VRAM—but I _definitely_ don’t need 4k editing (720 or 1080 will suffice for now), 3D titles, or 360º video editing. Is this a dealbreaker?
– not on Catalina, but I recently heard about a way to patch older machines and get them onto the current macOS
Other details—
– 16GB RAM (not an official configuration, but it works—search “OWC” within this Everymac page for details)
– SSD
Probably not possible, but any ideas? Legacy / outdated versions of FCPX or otherwise

Thanks again!