tenfoot

Great Bill.  I am sure you will be very happy with it -  windows ticks along very nicely under Bootcamp:) I ran Sonar on both an imac and macbook pro for many years. 
 
FWIW,  here is a link to the UK HP all in one models.  Not sure how the Apple pricing works out over there,  but in Australia I was able to buy a HP i7 with a touch screen for much less than the i5 iMac. That said I no longer had any interest in running OSX, which you may. 
 
http://store.hp.com/UKSto...=DTP&fc_form_aio=1
 

Would off shelf models such as these be OK for music production? I have always used specialist music PC builders in the past. I don't need it to be ultra quiet, but quiet enough if you know what I mean.

WDI
 
Also, I probably would not invest in a MAC if your not excited about OS X and the Apple eco system. If you plan on running Windows I would just save the money and get something else. If you really want a MAC you may be better off taking the time and learn logic. It's really not that difficult to learn. There's some video sources you can purchase access to for a couple months and just watch the videos. Like https://www.macprovideo.com.

Ha ha, you've got me thinking. I looked at some of the sample videos and Logic doesn't look that different from Sonar Producer in many ways. I love Sonar, but perhaps it wouldn't be such a steep curve to learn Logic. Like many of us here, I suspect I only use 10% of what Sonar is capable of anyway. Decision, decisions...

Marshall

tenfoot

Great Bill.  I am sure you will be very happy with it -  windows ticks along very nicely under Bootcamp:) I ran Sonar on both an imac and macbook pro for many years. 
 
FWIW,  here is a link to the UK HP all in one models.  Not sure how the Apple pricing works out over there,  but in Australia I was able to buy a HP i7 with a touch screen for much less than the i5 iMac. That said I no longer had any interest in running OSX, which you may. 
 
http://store.hp.com/UKSto...=DTP&fc_form_aio=1
 

Would off shelf models such as these be OK for music production? I have always used specialist music PC builders in the past. I don't need it to be ultra quiet, but quiet enough if you know what I mean.

They are exactly as functional for music production as an iMac.  Actually,  that's not quite true.  You would have to disable the touch screen to make them as functional as an iMac:)  
 
FWIW,  it seems the best thing to do when you are bitten by the Mac bug is just buy one. Many of us have been there -  some even stayed:)   I made the switch about 10 years ago and bought two,  fairly convinced they would change my life!  It was an easy decision to make as the Intel based Macs had just been released so I could run both Windows and OSX and still run Sonar for live performance.  When it came time to update again a few years later I realised it was pointless as they were both bootcamped and running Windows 7 permanently! That said,  they were both very well built,  reliable PC's -  and they had a glowing apple on the lid! I had no end of fun at gigs when approached by avid Apple  fans to talk about my mac book pro:) 

I'll just chime in to say that Logic is an excellent program sold at a price that's deliberately low to undercut the market. If you're going Mac you should definitely try it out. 

I switched to a MBP three years ago and the machine hums along as fast as the day I got it. I use Windows on the machine all day. In the day job I run Revit, a Windows-only BIM cad platform that is incredibly resource intensive. I installed via boot camp and ported it into parallels. When working on small projects I can stay in the OSX environment and run the program in parallels. If I am in the zone on a large project I can switch to boot camp and, frankly, Windows runs better than it ever did on any of my 'true' PCs.
I have Sonar similarly installed. It's not a viable option to run it in parallels. Parallels utilizes driver translation for hardware. With my 18i20, the latency is too high and I lose access to many of the features of the interface. In boot camp, however, it runs like a champ.
Now, several others have mentioned and I'll concur: you must utilize a high end spec. In 2013, when the retina MBPs first came out, that meant I paid $3300 for a laptop. I spend most of my day running a $6,000 software suite so the cost of the hardware pales in comparison, but that's a lot of money that could go to a very powerful PC. I carry around an iPhone, two iPads and an Apple Watch, so the benefits and synergies of the apple ecosystem are worth the expense for me.
Dell's latest high end notebook (XPS17, if memory serves) is really the only Windows notebook that can hold a candle to the quality of the MacBook Pro. Perhaps not coincidentally, the machines are similarly priced.

I won't go back to a PC. Sadly, I may leave Sonar behind. It is undoubtedly the best DAW I've touched, but I need it to be a native Mac application. I've been learning Logic, and it is really good. Good enough that I can't be bothered to shut down and reload into boot camp just to use sonar when I feel inspired. Oh, and using an iPad as a controller for Logic is a stunning experience. It's everything you'd ever imagine it could be.

Reactor.

As Jim Roseberry pointed out, if you pay a similar amount towards a Clevo shell (and can live with the styling difference) you'll get a notebook that runs circles around any MBP and in fact many desktops. If you're buying a Mac for the purpose of running Windows you're just paying for the pretty box.

Since starting out in SONAR which I know better than Logic ..I like having both SONAR and Logic ...
Just so you know , I'm not on the cutting edge computer or hardware spec wise on PC or Mac.
 
To put it as simple as possible ,
Running what I " do have " has spoke volumes too me on where I stand
As humble as my Rigs and knowledge or lack of it may be , it is nice to have Solid Choices .
For that I am grateful 
 
all the best ,
 
Kenny

Sanderxpander
I'll just chime in to say that Logic is an excellent program sold at a price that's deliberately low to undercut the market. If you're going Mac you should definitely try it out. 

It took me years to get up to speed with my first DAW, but switching won't be so hard. So much video help out there now, and for the price of Logic it's certainly worth trying.

Sonar does some things better but Logic has the edge at least in midi editing and notation as far as I'm concerned. It also did easy take comping years before Sonar did (although the Sonar version is pretty good now) and I really like the arrangement track feature. Anyway, there's much to love there.