What Mac do you all use?

I have a Mac mini from 2011. Was using it only for Indigo but now looking at moving all up to Mac.

Curious what you all use.

Do you use Indigo on your main Mac PC that you use for everything else? Or a dedicated system?

I will have a Mac laptop from work so for my personal use I plan to just have a desktop. But probably something a bit snappier than my 2011 Mac Mini. I have an existing nice 34 inch monitor i plan to keep, so the fancy Macs built into the monitor are probably out of play.

My main usage: Indigo, email (Have been a big Outlook user and will probably stay), web browsing and of course Quicken (I may have to run Windows in Parallels for this for the time being).

Just curious what folks recommend. Thanks

I keep a separate Mac Mini as a 'server'.
It runs Indigo, but also iTunes, holds all of my media, Plex server, SecuritySpy for CCTV.
The Mac Mini is fairly busy itself (it's a low-ish spec Mac Mini from around 2014).

I actually tried using this as my main machine when working from home and found it too slow to use, and too busy with all of the windows / programs running for my HA stuff.

I'd definitely suggest to run a Mac Mini headless (no monitor / keyboard / mouse) and hidden away. I have mine in a cupboard with some USB3 drives attached for Media storage, and Backups.

Apple don't really give you any option for a Desktop machine now unless you spank a lot of money on the Mac Pro's, unless you're talking about getting another Mac Mini? The only other options are the Macbook or an iMac which you mentioned wasn't an option.

I run Indigo on a headless 2010 Mac Mini with 2.4Ghz dual core, 8GB ram, and a small internal SSD, running Yosemite.
Works great. It is primarily dedicated to Indigo, but also has an eternal drive that serves iTunes and Sonos files. A separate Hackintosh handles SecuritySpy, then feeds the images into Indigo control pages.

Once Indigo 7 and the OS X Sierra have been released, and assuming there are some new laptops announced, I might repurpose a 2014 laptop to handle Indigo, which adds the benefit of an integrated backup battery.

I use a Mac Mini late 2012; 2.3 ghz i7; 16g memory for my Indigo machine. It runs "headless" and also hosts my Security Spy application and my iTunes library. Its not my main working machine though.

I'm running a Mac Mini (with monitor and keyboard attached) as the Indigo server, and it gets occasional use from my wife as a desktop, though she pretty much lives on her iPad. Since it runs 24/7, I also use it for Calibre downloads that get pushed to my Kindle nightly.

I use a MacBook Pro for both work and personal so I can be mobile, and work from anywhere at a moment's notice. Living in coastal SW Florida, this is a necessity during hurricane season, and I adopted the practice full-time many years ago. While at the home office, the MBP stays plugged into a 34" LG monitor and a 10 port powered USB dock for all the peripherals (USB ethernet adapter, printer, scanner, label printer, time machine drive, etc.). When I'm "off-duty" around the house, I just unplug the three cables (bound by cable tie) and stick it to a velcro square on the side of the desk so they're right there when I need to reconnect. I guess it's a poor man's dock I have an extra power adapter next to my home easy chair that doubles as my travel power source. I also carry a thin 15' HDMI cable for watching videos in hotels and rentals, or if I need a BIG monitor for work.

When I head to my real office for client meetings, I just unplug and go. I have a similar setup (monitor, keyboard, etc.) at that office and some extra adapters (lightning to ethernet, VGA, etc.) in my bag.

Unfortunately, I still have one foot in the Windows world on a couple of levels. I use Parallels as you mentioned pretty much only to run Quicken, and it works great for that. I use Jump Desktop on the MBP to log into my Dell Win7 desktop at my firm's main office out of state - the software used in the financial services world is pretty exclusively Windows-based. Jump also works great for accessing the Indigo Mac Mini remotely. I also keep a leftover Win7 Thinkpad laptop dedicated to my Netflix downloads for travel entertainment.

Laptops are so powerful these days, I will never go back to being anchored to a desktop.

Jim

My Indigo server is presently running on a mid-2010 iMac which is also running eyeTV and a few daemons that Indigo talks to. It's occasionally used for other things but generally just sits there running silently. I'm planning to move to something different fairly soon as I want to move my Plex server from one of my Drobos (the Drobo just isn't fast enough to transcode video, and I may dump eyeTV for Plex DVR.) I'd like to move all these things into one box located in my server rack. Probably going to go with a laptop to get the integrated battery backup.

I develop my plugins on a mid-2013 MacBook Air and run a development server to test my code against. The Air is my daily driver and I use it for just about everything else.

Both setups have 8GB of RAM, run El Capitan, and are plenty fast to run Indigo.

Dave

I've been running Indigo on a Mac mini from the beginning, typically with SecuritySpy, WeatherBug, Airfoil and a whole lot of other HA stuff. Recently I decided to change over to using a Macbook Pro as my primary computer and now Indigo runs on a 2013 Mac Pro with 64GB Memory - wow, what a difference!

I'd love a Mac Pro with 64GB RAM.

I'd just have to take out another mortgage to get one .

Waiting for tomorrow to see what announcements are made; at that point it may be time for another Mac Mini (max proc and RAM).

Or should I go another $1500 or so and just get a tricked out Mac Pro?

Indigo itself is normally not a challenge for any mac
The plugins, security spy etc put most of the load on the system.

I had everything running in on a macpro 2008 at < 10% load

Then switched to a 2014 Mac mini i7 16 gbyte 2tb fusion disk. Load went up to 50% mostly due to security spy and plugins
With 7 that went down to 35%
Due to improved plugins.
20+% of the 35% is due to security spy with 8 cameras.
Indigo alone is around 5 % max on the Mac mini with ~ 150 devices Insteon zwave ip ...

So it's not a question for indigo proper but what else you want to do on the mac.

Karl

The Mac mini 2014 has only 2 cores. That really impacts the performance for this kind of setup. Likely the older one with 4 cores would do better



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Or should I go another $1500 or so and just get a tricked out Mac Pro?

I dislike the newer MacPro's as they went away from their biggest advantage (IMHO) -- the customization and user-upgradability. Therefore, when I needed a new computer a year or so ago, I went online and purchased on older MacPro which had its processors upgraded. You still spend a small fortune compared to a PC, but much less than the new MacPro, and these are usually good for 7-8 years. My wife is still using my old MacPro 1,1 and no complaints EXCEPT for the fact that I can't upgrade the OS any more. But that is a 32-bit thing.

Anyway, if interested in that route, there are several on eBay and others where you can pseudo-custom configure a MacPro. You pick the version (ex. 2013) and can upgrade the processors within limits... each year has a small selection of processors which work "stock" (i.e. just drop the processor in, no need for drivers or custom boots). Then can pick the video card(s), RAM, etc. Of course, being Apple-based and wanting stock OS you have some limits but the choices are enough.

I did that then added DVD-R, USB3.0 and a few customizations like that which are easy to do.

Like others, HA computer is running Indigo and very little else; is a MacMini sitting away in a closet. Using MacPro and MacMini is a good combination as file / screen / Indigo sharing is much easier than with a mixed mode Windows environment.

2009 unibody MacBook. Runs Indigo, SecuritySpy, Airfoil, Time Machine server with an external HD to backup two MacBook Airs. Even tested Plex, but have more work to do. Still running Mavericks as the OS.

When I have time my plan is to use a mid 2012 MacBook Air. Want to get everything onto an SSD for day-to-day use - external HDD will be fine for redundant storage and backups.

My longterm plan is to get a Mac mini, but only if Apple get it together and upgrade the damn thing with decent specs. The last upgrade was more of a downgrade IMHO. If it times nicely with macOS Sierra and Indigo 7, then that will be dandy.

I've also a 2009 Mac mini server with a pair of dead HDs that I can't decide wether to replace with at least one SSD to run Plex - the media will be on fast external drives that will be better suited to USB 3 for future use connected to a new mini. But I may just wait on that as the the mini will mostly likely have USB C and I may get drives for that.

Trying to repurpose gear can be more trouble than it's worth, but the 2009 MB has actually been ok.

2009 Mac Mini with stock 4GB RAM. Indigo never taxes it. It's also my whole house audio via iTunes, and my NO-IP client. It rarely gets used for something else.

I run the no-longer-available EvoCam on another Mini of the same vintage, which is also my PLEX server. That's running at a consistent 80% total utilization, most of which is EvoCam.

Old 1.5 GHz (first Gen.) MacMini, still on HDD, 2GB RAM, 10.6.8 nothing else but Indigo on it.
So far, no issues, runs very stable, I had once a crash (about 6 month ago), but was able to restore it fast from an image (every night with CarbonCopy).

Well, with V7 I will have to move to another machine, have a spare MacBook 2008 (white) but this is also limited to 10.7...
Let's see what V7 brings as minimum specs...

...
With 7 that went down to 35%
Due to improved plugins.
...

Sounds good.

So I definitely plan to upgrade to something. But will probably wait until October or November (hoping new Mac Minis or Mac Pros are announced).

Then this mid2011 Mac Mini will go back to just Indigo.

Is there any reason to upgrade the 5400 RPM Toshiba drive in this to a 500GB SSD for $130?

Would that help/hurt with Indigo (i.e. a whole bunch of frequent writes to log files and fingscan passes etc)?

If nothing else it would probably make it a bit snappier for general desktop usage.