90K+ Confused b/w a MBA or MBP

This is pretty similar to my use case, I have editied videos for my channel shot on the ZV1 which is a pretty high bitrate 4K camera. I've also written a lot of code, (mostly VSCode and sometimes Intellij). I've never had builds take a lot of time (Unless it's npm install, but that's an npm issue).

I needed something with a long battery and light weight. I got an M2 Macbook Pro (8 GB verison) a couple years ago.

The chip was never the limiting factor but I did have (very rare) ram issues with Adobe After Effects and Chrome when I was on 20+ tabs. But both of those softwares are famous for hogging ram. Rendering is a CPU + GPU heavy task and it did push my machine to its limits, but the process was still fast enough for me to not think about it.

I'd suggest getting any of the newest chips with a as much storage and ram as you can get in your budget. 16 GB will be a good spot right now. The storage will never be enough, I got Sandisk Extreme Portable 1TB, 1050MB/s and I was able to edit videos directly off of it.

As a M1 and M3 MBA user with "just" 16GB of RAM, I kept running into memory limitations and MacOS limitations, bugs and general annoyances rather than my CPU being a bottleneck. And aside from a few times when I knew it'd happen, I don't think I've ever used like 80% of the CPU, even for M1.

Same for my Linux laptop too (Lenovo Idepad Flex 5 2020 model), I rarely run into CPU bottlenecks. There, too, 16G RAM is the limiting factor, but hey, at least I run a better OS there (Fedora+GNOME).

And before some apple shill says so, yes MacOS is very good bla bla. Personally, the only thing I really liked from the convenience standpoint is how easy it is to store passwords, passkeys and TOTP codes and sync them. Though I kinda dislike it from a security standpoint haha


If I had a choice, I'd probably go for an AM5 build with 2x16G sticks and maybe a bigger mobo with 4 RAM slots ‍

installGentoo said:

if you're buying this for programming, performance is not a priority
what matters is keyboard, battery, and build
anything in the last 2 decades can run neovim and vscode.
maybe if you are a rust developer then the pro max ultra might be worth it, otherwise go for the air and invest the leftover in a good chair

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I have heard from devs that 16GB RAM is limiting on Macs. I am not a dev & I find it limiting at times.

KAKAN said:

As a M1 and M3 MBA user with "just" 16GB of RAM, I kept running into memory limitations and MacOS limitations, bugs and general annoyances rather than my CPU being a bottleneck. And aside from a few times when I knew it'd happen, I don't think I've ever used like 80% of the CPU, even for M1.

Same for my Linux laptop too (Lenovo Idepad Flex 5 2020 model), I rarely run into CPU bottlenecks. There, too, 16G RAM is the limiting factor, but hey, at least I run a better OS there (Fedora+GNOME).

And before some apple shill says so, yes MacOS is very good bla bla. Personally, the only thing I really liked from the convenience standpoint is how easy it is to store passwords, passkeys and TOTP codes and sync them. Though I kinda dislike it from a security standpoint haha


If I had a choice, I'd probably go for an AM5 build with 2x16G sticks and maybe a bigger mobo with 4 RAM slots ‍

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I feel your pain. I'm just putting up with Mac because I am paid to use a Mac. CPU, battery life & build + other hardware of the laptop are great on Apple, no doubt.

Okay, the thread is about laptops.

OMEGA44-XT said:

I have heard from devs that 16GB RAM is limiting on Macs. I am not a dev & I find it limiting at times.

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i learned programming on a haswell laptop with 4gb ram not that long ago (still in service as my basement server), 16 is more than enough for programming.
on linux at least, i wouldn't know about windows or macos memory fumbleness

OMEGA44-XT said:

I feel your pain. I'm just putting up with Mac because I am paid to use a Mac. CPU, battery life & build + other hardware of the laptop are great on Apple, no doubt.

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i used my "work" macbook as a jukebox, ngl the audio is pretty nice. so i ended up getting a yamaha hs4
still use it on bed sometimes for reading documentation, though maybe i should get an ebook reader . but besides that, it's pretty useless