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I am considering purchasing a Mac for my godson who will be using it to run Blender 2.8. I know very little about this program. All I can find are requirements for a Mac that will run earlier versions of Blender. Would someone please recommend a list of requirements for a Mac (or a link to a list of requirements) that I could use to find a model that can run 2.8? Thank you in advance for all your help! Sincerely, M. Lap

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M. Lap
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    I am a Mac user, I like the Mac System but Mac graphic cards are not made for 3D, it takes much more time to calculate, so my advice would be to not buy a Mac... also I'm not sure Eevee will work on Mac (?) – moonboots Nov 18 '18 at 23:42
  • Thank you for this advice. Do you have a recommendation for a list of requirements for a non-Mac computer? Also, do you have a "favorite" computer that you would suggest for running 2.8? Again, I appreciate all your help! – M. Lap Nov 18 '18 at 23:50
  • I'm very bad with hardware, sorry, but I'm sure someone will answer, here or on another forum – moonboots Nov 19 '18 at 00:03
  • Thank you - I'll keep looking! I appreciate your help! – M. Lap Nov 19 '18 at 00:09
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it about hardware recommendations – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Nov 19 '18 at 00:23
  • Six core 15”. GPUs are underwhelming, but the SSD speeds and display more than counterpoint. Use Filmic main branch as it doesn’t seem like anyone on the core development team cares about pixels enough to have them display properly. – troy_s Nov 19 '18 at 00:38
  • @moonboots Eevee works on my Dell (CPU: i5, OS: Ubuntu) that hasn't even got a GPU. I'm not saying it's optimal, but it definitely works. So I'd say Eevee will work on a Mac, and probably better than on my mid-low-range computer (and I use it daily!), even if of course it might not be the best tool for the job – Nicola Sap Nov 19 '18 at 10:39
  • ok thanks for the information, I have to fix the problem, do you know what preferences I'm supposed to activate? That said if I had to buy a computer for Blender I would still choose another computer... – moonboots Nov 19 '18 at 10:43
  • I would say do not buy a Mac, and instead buy a laptop that has a dedicated NVIDIA graphics card. However, if you are planning to buy a Mac you should buy a Mac Pro that has an AMD graphics card on it. – Amir Nov 19 '18 at 12:48
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    Dont’ buy a Mac. Not only because it doesn’t have nVidia GPUs, but also OpenGL in Mac is deprecated. Until Blender natively supports Metal, don’t buy a Mac for it. – MetroWind Jan 28 '19 at 21:57

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Since hardware questions and computer recommendations are considered off topic here, and this is a frequent topic that often comes up in new questions, here is a somewhat canonical answer that hopefully covers the main points.

The most important component for Blender is a good graphics card. Unfortunately, to get an even remotely decent GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) on a new Mac you'll be looking at $3K+, certainly not worth the money.

Macs these days come equipped with AMD cards which have sup-par support for GPU rendering. Even if you could somehow get an NVIDia card to work on your Mackintosh, Apple decided to deprecate third party toolkits on their platform, thus making CUDA unavailable for GPU acceleration of Cycles renders.

Additionally, given that also Apple decided to deprecate support for third party graphics APIs like OpenCL and OpenGL in favor of their own Metal API you will always be looking at a feature crippled system when compared to competing platforms in terms of GPU rendering and real time drawing performance, which makes MacOS an even less of an advisable ecosystem to invest in if you are seriously looking at open source software.

On the new ARM based M1 Macs Blender runs natively without the need for rosetta, since Blender already supported compiling for the ARM platform on Linux, so only a few adjustments were necessary.

ARM processors are known for their lower power requirements suited for mobile devices, but not their performance. While Blender does run on M1 it is at the time of writing not yet really optimized and crash prone. Even once optimized we are likely looking at systems that will under perform for heavy tasks like rendering or animating heavy scenes with lots of particle systems or animated objects. GPU acceletarion for rendering will likely still be unavailable.

For that reason, I cannot recommend a Mac for Blender.

With a gaming PC, you could buy something with very good specs for about \$1~1.5K. A laptop with specifications like Intel Core i5 for CPU and 8GB RAM would also work just fine, and you can find a laptop with an NVIDIA GTX 970 on Ebay/Craigslist for pretty cheap these days.

For the NVIDIA 10 GPU series cards a GTX 1060 would be a good entry point. NVIDIA will soon release new GPUs for their 20 series. Laptop with a 20-series GPU might be a bit expensive though, but it might be worth-it specially if you were planning to spend ~$3k for a MacBook Pro.

If you absolutely have to buy a Mac then the 15" MacBook Pro is probably the best bet. It's the only laptop in Apple's lineup with a dedicated GPU, the MacBook Air/12"/13" all use integrated graphics which is admittedly insufficient for Blender 2.8 (it's too slow).

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Duarte Farrajota Ramos
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    Very good answer. Upvoted. A Mac is much too expensive for not great 3D performance to make it a good option. They work, but not ideal. Oh, and hey, M! Tell ya boi a fellow youngin' Blender user says hi!! - from me – Linguini Nov 19 '18 at 05:41
  • What is your experience with external GPUs, in this regard? – Lucas Aschenbach Sep 14 '19 at 11:34
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    I haven’t looked at them recently but last I checked, the external systems cost almost as much as the gpu itself. The thunderbolt cable becomes a bottleneck so you won’t get the full potential of the gpu. Furthermore, Mac only supports AMD cards. Basically I think external gpus are a waste of money. – mr-matt Sep 14 '19 at 18:24
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    wow, over a year later and Apple actually has a decent MacBook Pro that (at the top end at least) competes favorably on price with other 17" laptops from the majors, and yet it's crippled by the fact that AMD GPUs aren't supported by anything outside the Apple ecosystem? WTH?!!! – Michael Apr 13 '20 at 00:28