I’d not sweat “latest and greatest”. You will run your new laptop 5-10 years, so it’s only going to be Most Recent Issue for six months.

I’ve recently received a 2015 which is running the latest OS. It’s nicer than my 2011; way nicer, especially the keyboard. Last month I set up a Refurb (released March 2020). If I was buying today I’d get the least expensive M1 refurbished off the Apple site. Probably MacBook Pro. The keyboard is nicer still. Great feel.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by Veeper:

Also, silver is where it's at. Not space gray.

Why? I'm asking because it looks as if I will be buying one soon. Why silver vs. space gray?

It’s 100% personal preference.

HOWEVER. I find that fingerprints, scratches, and smudges show less on silver.

Additionally, I have received probably 1000 Space Gray MacBook Pros that were turned in by our users for various reasons. The models were the entire gambit: 13 & 15/16”, from 2016 models, all the way to current

The Space Gray rubs off eventually. Mostly on very well used machines. Machines where the letters on the keys have been almost rubbed off. I have a 15” on my desk in the office that has Space Gray missing where there must have been vents on a guys lap desk. I’ll send you pictures on Monday.

It’s probably not something 99% of the SigForum users would ever run into, but it happens.

quote:

Originally posted by Veeper: Machines where the letters on the keys have been almost rubbed off.

Yesterday morning I finally got out the replacement keyboard [which is nearly impossible to install], popped an offending dozen keyboard caps off of the 2011 11-inch MacBook Air, and swapped in fresh caps. Then did another six or so. It took five years of blogging to make the keyboard difficult to use.

That’s cool.

Ours usually find the home keys with the most wear and tear. Anything 2016-2018 with the butterfly keyboard are usually the worst, although I think the keyboard deck on the 13” i7 loses the space Gray coating the fastest because of something to do with the heat mitigation being subpar, but that’s pure speculation and only based on my fairly insulated sample size.

I’m totally torn on which to get now lol. I think 512 GB is enough for a hard drive, but maybe I should go for 1TB? My thought was to save pictures and movies to an external hard drive but maybe I should spring for the bigger internal hard drive? Air or Pro? 16 GB RAM or is 8GB good enough. I was all set to go with a 16GB RAM MacBook Air with a 512 GB hard drive and now I’m leaning towards a 13” Pro with the same specs. Then I think, well it’s only $200 more for a 1 TB hard drive… and then I’ve totally blown the budget.

In reality the hardest work that the computer will see is ripping DVDs and a dozen or so blue rays to an external hard drive. If I go back to finish my PhD and need to use any software more advanced than Excel then I will likely buy a dedicated PC for that purpose and it’s very very unlikely that I would need to do that anyway. The Air is probably good but what says forum?

As an aside, I’ve looked at a bunch of articles at what the improvements to the new MacBooks are likely to be, and I don’t think I will miss much if I miss out on those improvements so I feel pretty confident that I’ll buy sooner than later. Thanks again all for the input.

quote:

Originally posted by Lt CHEG:
I’m totally torn on which to get now lol. I think 512 GB is enough for a hard drive, but maybe I should go for 1TB? My thought was to save pictures and movies to an external hard drive but maybe I should spring for the bigger internal hard drive?

All of my MACs in the internal SSD era have been 512GB, and I am of the school for keeping the boot drive small. Currently my 2018 Mini has the 512GB internal, of which only 44GB is used. I use a Thunderbolt 3 dock, and connected to that (among other drives) is a dual SSD enclosure, which houses a 2TB and a 1TB drive. That is where all my data lies. The dual SSD enclosure connects to the system (the dock) using USB 3.2 gen 2, which is 10Gbps, so the full speed of the SATA SSDs is realized. The two SSDs are live all the time and appear in Finder for instant access.

I'm been running off of Mac's since about 1985 (yep, you read that right) for years they were so simple and easy to run and upgrade I would not even consider an alternative.... I actually have never played enough with a winders computer to be able to figure them out enough to use..... but I have to say the new Macs (for the last 10 years) are the most confusing things I've ever had to mess with... the only saving grace I can figure is that just about everything I do on mine is up in the cloud somewhere and that hard drive is probably safer than mine.... I don't know how it all got there or if I will ever need it.... customer database and other records as well as something like 50,000 pictures and videos...

I do remember way after the 80's someone referring to an article from back in about '85 or so reviewing the add on hard drive for the first Mac that was a whopping 20 megabytes.... and the guy writing that no one would ever need that much memory in a computer. The lesson being, be real careful what you say in public.

quote:

Originally posted by Lt CHEG:
I’m totally torn on which to get now lol. I think 512 GB is enough for a hard drive, but maybe I should go for 1TB? My thought was to save pictures and movies to an external hard drive but maybe I should spring for the bigger internal hard drive? Air or Pro? 16 GB RAM or is 8GB good enough. I was all set to go with a 16GB RAM MacBook Air with a 512 GB hard drive and now I’m leaning towards a 13” Pro with the same specs. Then I think, well it’s only $200 more for a 1 TB hard drive… and then I’ve totally blown the budget.

IMO

You should get the Air. You should consider 512GB just for the breathing room over its lifespan. You'll probably be just fine with 8GB of ram; however, you can't go back and upgrade either the RAM or the SSD later. If it's a budget decision, get 16GB and 256GB SSD.

In the M1 family I've had the Air in 8/16g and the pro in 16GB. I've NEVER had my fan kick on that I've even heard, and I've read that heat/fan is really only an issue if you run some pretty major encoding or rendering.

On my 8GB M1 MBA, I simultaneously, comfortably, ran:
- 3 Chrome full screen with multiple tabs
- Outlook
- Slack
- VPNs
- VMware Horizon view client
- Safari
- Multiple Finder windows
- Microsoft RDP
- VLC

There were a few times when it would slow down a bit, I presume, to manage swap etc, but I was keeping a pretty close eye on the system monitor and memory pressure never really went above 8GB.

I was running a pilot for work though, and ultimately I think the 16GB really just gives more breathing room overall. (Not very scientific, I know)

If you have a nice USB-C/Thunderbolt SSD already, just go lower than 1TB. It's not worth the premium IMO, unless you're REALLY into huge files or collections on your local machine.

To me the sweet spot for most users is 16G/512G. I can see 99% of even my work users getting 3 or 4 years out of that config in an M1 easily. The battery life alone on the MBA is awesome. (Except if you use Chrome, watch out. That thing is a power vampire. It does all kinds of things in the background, even when the app is closed or the Mac is "sleeping")

Just pull the trigger on one. You'll be able to resell it pretty easily and recoup most of what you spent.

Oooof I almost forgot to mention, if it matters or wasn't already covered in this thread:

The M1 can only handle one external monitor. This is a hardware limitation.

You can use more than one external monitor only if you use something like a Display-Link adapter.

Apparently the M1X or M2 will/should see this limitation lifted, but all things considered, the M1 is insanely powerful despite this one issue. (Which, frankly, is keeping us from deploying it as most of our users like two 24" screens for their desk)

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
IIRC, the kind of angled-smiley-face thing is a single Japanese (Katakana?) character.

You are correct. ツ is the katakana character, "tsu".

quote:

Originally posted by Mars_Attacks:
I like the imac over all the other options for screen size alone.

This. We have an imac and iPad. My son has a MacBook which we are free to use but we have yet to take him upon the offer- just no need. We have been very happy with the switch to the mac/iPad.

quote:

Originally posted by henryaz:
I am of the school for keeping the boot drive small.

Is that a set-up step, partitioning? Then if you require maintenance of the OS, you can limit electronic poking into the files via the partition?

quote:

Originally posted by Woodman:

quote:

Originally posted by henryaz:
I am of the school for keeping the boot drive small.

Is that a set-up step, partitioning? Then if you require maintenance of the OS, you can limit electronic poking into the files via the partition?

On *nix it is a set-up/partitioning step, for me anyway, or it can be separate drives. *nix needs very little on the boot partition, so it boots quicker and makes file system checks confined to a small partition.
 
On a Mac (save the latest two versions), the boot partition holds Users and Applications, as well as /System and /System/Library, plus other system folders. You open a can of worms trying to separate those things out onto separate partitions. So on a Mac I just dedicate the entire internal SSD drive to the install, and my internal SSD runs in the 40-50GB size range. The usual "fix" for that internal drive is simply to reinstall the OS (from a USB boot stick is the easiest way). Reinstalling replaces only the system files and leaves User files alone. That method can also be used to downgrade to a prior point version of the OS, in case Apple releases a quirky new point version, which has happened from time to time. Newer versions of macOS are separating System and Data into separate partitions, but I still keep both on the internal drive, and I can still do what's in the next paragraph.
 
I then relocate such things as libraries for Music, Movies, Photos, etc. to the data drives, which saves a good bit of space on the boot drive. Those built-in Apps allow using their libraries on separate partitions. As well, all of my other data I wish to keep. This comes in handy for an upgrade to a new macOS version, where you can just point the new version to the existing libraries and data. I also move all the caches I can to external drives (but not the ~/Library/Caches folder). Some Apps, like photo editing Apps and Google Earth, maintain large caches which can be relocated.
 
I am still on Mojave. I did not like Catalina or the buggy Big Sur. Monterey is looking promising.

Any Mac laptops the last few years until 11/2020 were the same as windows machines using Intel CPUs with MAC OS installed.

Apples new in house chip started selling last November.

It is about user interface nothing more.
Pick your poison.

For most users that don't need special programs like accounting or photo editing there is little difference.

You pay a premium for the apple logo.
My wife is into the apple universe and has a phone and laptop that work seamlessly together.

We use an HP windows laptop with an accounting program for that purpose.

It is what you like using.

quote:

Originally posted by sig2392:
You pay a premium for the apple logo.

You were doing good right up to this point. If you find a comparable PC laptop with comparable hardware, you will often find them to be equally or even more expensive than Apple. Add to this Apple's unrivaled level of support, and you will find that the amount you pay for the machine is way more than just a logo, or "Apple tax."

I have had Apple replace outright a machine I purchased used, for free. Many others on this forum have had Apple replace or repair their machines gratis, even when they weren't obligated to do so.

Right now on Amazon, the M1 Macbook Air base configuration is $949. That's with 8gb RAM and 256GB SSD. Also on Amazon is the Microsoft Surface 4, which is $999, 8gb RAM, 256 SSD. How about we bump it up a bit with a Dell XPS 13-9300 with 16gbRAM/512SSD, currently $1549 on Amazon. The similarly equipped MBA is $1,449. Oops, it looks like there's a $100 price tag for that Dell logo.

My point is there is no such thing as an "Apple tax". You are paying for what you get, whether it is a PC or an Apple. I content that the Apple is a better buy FOR THIS TYPE of machine because you get better support for the same price. Apple just doesn't sell a machine that competes on price with PCs at the Wal-Mart, so there's a misconception that they are overpriced, a perception that stubbornly persists.

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:

quote:

Originally posted by sig2392:
You pay a premium for the apple logo.

You were doing good right up to this point. If you find a comparable PC laptop with comparable hardware, you will often find them to be equally or even more expensive than Apple. Add to this Apple's unrivaled level of support, and you will find that the amount you pay for the machine is way more than just a logo, or "Apple tax."

This ^^^^^

People tend to compare "bargain" commodity PC hardware to Apple hardware. That's an apples/oranges comparison.

Add to that, for their latest-generation hardware, the reported amazing performance of the M1 chip, and I think Apple's the winner, here--unless you need MS-Windows for something and it won't work in emulation.

quote:

Originally posted by sig2392:
Any Mac laptops the last few years until 11/2020 were the same as windows machines using Intel CPUs with MAC OS installed.

Apples new in house chip started selling last November.

It is about user interface nothing more.
Pick your poison.


You pay a premium for the apple logo.

Wrong on several counts. The new M1 chipset makes the new apples Blow any comparably priced PC away in almost every benchmark. COSTCO currently sells the MacBook Airs for $899 and the Mac Mini for $599. There isn't a PC that will touch their performance for twice that price and if they do they will be noisy as hell doing it. Also Best Buy will price match COSTCO if there's one within 20 or 30 miles or so. This helps if you want one in a different color or have Best Buy points etc..

Something that people miss is that the MacBook Airs are SILENT! They run so efficiently they don't even have a fan! I've never heard the fan on either of my M1 Mac mini's yet either. You never realize how nice it is to have a silent computer until you start using one and then go back to one with a fan, you were so used to tuning it out you don't realize how loud they are.

I would recommend considering adding an external SSD drive before spending to much on hard drive space. You can barely tell the difference in speed between the external and internal SSD's. You can of course even boot from the external SSD drive. I bought a Sabrent Rocket 2TB SSD on Amazon for $279.98.

IMHO this is a far better way to go than paying a lot more for an internal 1tb drive.

8gb of Ram sure doesn't sound like a lot but I've loaded a BUNCH of windows to try and slow it down and still haven't made it skip a beat.

Another way the M1 MacBooks blow PC's away is in Battery life. Their chipset is so much more efficient you can get 16hrs of battery life in the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro is even Better! Every PC laptop I've ever had has been mostly chained to a power cord if you want to use it more than an hour or two. MacBooks can go a DAY or Two with normal usage without charging. Another thing you didn't realize how nice it is until you get to do it.

So the M1 Macs are right now absolutely the best deal in computers. In laptops the choice is between the MacBook Air and the Pro. The Pro has slightly better battery life and a 100nits brighter screen. For me it wasn't worth the extra $250 bucks or so for the Pro but it might be for others.

Finally you CAN run multiple monitors with an M1 Mac, I was running 2 before I switched to an ultra wide (which is AWESOME BTW).

Anyway best of luck with your new MAC. Buy an M1 MAC and you won't regret it, it's the best deal going right now.

Pretty good vid, he has them on the MacBook Pro also.

https://youtu.be/vtFH07hIznc

..............dj

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:

quote:

Originally posted by sig2392:
You pay a premium for the apple logo.

... Add to this Apple's unrivaled level of support, and you will find that the amount you pay for the machine is way more than just a logo, or "Apple tax."

My point is there is no such thing as an "Apple tax". You are paying for what you get, whether it is a PC or an Apple.

The Apple "genius" bar has no genius's.
They merely just replace it with something that is working.
They don't fix anything.
So you end up paying more.

A friend of mine's old Apple phone died and he bought a new one from Att.
It overheated and shut off after only two hours.
It took him 4 or 5 days of going round and round with ATT and Apple on getting it fixed.
Shitty service at both places and eventually he wen to an different ATT store to get it replaced.

Apple on top of that controls everything and while I admire the business monopoly they have created it is not good for the consumer.
They are an ardent opponent of the "right to repair" legislation that is going around from state to state and somewhat on a federal level.
The right to repair is needed because Apple (not just them) withhold data, parts and inhibit shops to actually fix the problem instead of having to buy the companies new products.
It's a good gig for Apple but they could care less about the customer.

This is from one of the BEST Apple repairman in NYC:






There are a lot more examples available.

Okay why are people taking a Windows-shaped crap in this thread? The man asked for some suggestions/advice.

There’s literally no reason to come in here and post any opinions other than the ones the guy was asking for, let alone some stupid picture of the Apple logo with a bug on it. Dude. Louis Rossman? Wtf. Of course the guy has a huge beef with Apple. He’s a genius, but why post his rants in here? Eeesh