90K+ Confused b/w a MBA or MBP

C

cskartikey

Beginner
I'm in a bit of a dilemma about which laptop to buy and when. My current device is on its last legs, and I’ll likely need a replacement soon. However, I'm also planning to move out of India next summer, so I'm debating whether it would be better to wait until then to buy a new MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. My main use will be programming, with some occasional editing, and I’m a power user, so I expect to push the device to its limits. Ideally, I'd like a laptop that can last 5-7 years.

1. What will be your primary usage for the notebook?
My primary use will be coding, with some occasional editing. It’s going to be a heavily used device, so I need something reliable and capable of handling high-performance tasks.

2. What size and weight considerations do you have?
I prefer a screen size over 13 inches.

PS: I might do 3D, ECE & Math stuff too!
 
I'm sure you will hit RAM limit before performance limit with macs, so buy whichever is cheaper with 16GB RAM. 8GB RAM is stupid for any 50k+ laptop.

FYI - I feel 16GB RAM to be limiting at times on my office MBP M1 pro. But then again, for me macOS is the bigger annoyance. I hope you know limitations of macOS vs say Windows or even Linux (PS - I feel all desktop OSes are bad at this point but Win11 is the least annoying)

I bought a 32GB RAM Lenovo with core 5 125H for my cousin who is into UI/UX design for under 75k and has a 100% sRGB panel as well.
 
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cskartikey said:
I'm in a bit of a dilemma about which laptop to buy and when. My current device is on its last legs, and I’ll likely need a replacement soon. However, I'm also planning to move out of India next summer, so I'm debating whether it would be better to wait until then to buy a new MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. My main use will be programming, with some occasional editing, and I’m a power user, so I expect to push the device to its limits. Ideally, I'd like a laptop that can last 5-7 years.

1. What will be your primary usage for the notebook?
My primary use will be coding, with some occasional editing. It’s going to be a heavily used device, so I need something reliable and capable of handling high-performance tasks.

2. What size and weight considerations do you have?
I prefer a screen size over 13 inches.

PS: I might do 3D, ECE & Math stuff too!
Click to expand...
MBP with fans. that is the Pro Series chipset not normal one.
 
cskartikey said:
Specifically MBP w/ Mx Pro CPU?
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if you have budget then Max Chips else Pro chips. the difference is of GPU cores you get which will be the factor for 3d and other stuff. With M4 max cpu cores are 16, but for GPU its 16, 20, 32, 40 cores for Pro and Max chips respectively
 
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Your requirement is too generic to decide between pro or max. M4 itself is bloody powerful. Mac air m4 will do for coding and occasional editing. Which apps are you going to use for ece and math? If your current laptop is able to run these and not hang or slowdown drastically, you won’t need a MacBook Pro.
 
If you have to ask, most likely you won't need Macbook Pro. People who really need Pro usually are aware of the exact reason why Air won't be enough, usually experience. Unless you have money to throw at this, just get the Air or a Mac Mini.
 
desiibond said:
Your requirement is too generic to decide between pro or max. M4 itself is bloody powerful. Mac air m4 will do for coding and occasional editing. Which apps are you going to use for ece and math? If your current laptop is able to run these and not hang or slowdown drastically, you won’t need a MacBook Pro.
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There is no such thing as a "Mac air m4" (yet) right?
 
Sorry, my mad. I was under impression that Apple released M4 Air as well. If it is between M3 Air and M4 Pro, I would pick the M4 Pro as M3 is known to throttle.
 
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cskartikey said:
I'm in a bit of a dilemma about which laptop to buy and when. My current device is on its last legs, and I’ll likely need a replacement soon. However, I'm also planning to move out of India next summer, so I'm debating whether it would be better to wait until then to buy a new MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. My main use will be programming, with some occasional editing, and I’m a power user, so I expect to push the device to its limits. Ideally, I'd like a laptop that can last 5-7 years.

1. What will be your primary usage for the notebook?
My primary use will be coding, with some occasional editing. It’s going to be a heavily used device, so I need something reliable and capable of handling high-performance tasks.

2. What size and weight considerations do you have?
I prefer a screen size over 13 inches.

PS: I might do 3D, ECE & Math stuff too!
Click to expand...
Make sure that the program that you wish to use can run on an ARM based mac. I know a lot of ECE programs do not, not on any Mac. Other than CSE, Mac is not a good choice for most engineering as most specialized engineering programs do not run on a Mac. Think about it, Mac has gone through 3 complete architecture changes in the last 15 years which would completely destroy people who rely on these programs. So, it is great that we have Windows which allows us to run even 30-40 year old programs.

I love my M1 Macbook pro, but I can't rely on it for running everything I want. It never heats up. It is very reliable. It is instant on. But, still apple completely abandoned the previous generation, not only in not supporting it, but making a complete architectural change so even if you want to have workarounds, you couldn't possibly run newer versions of their OS.

So, if you can afford to, you might need to buy a cheap Windows laptop later when you need it for specific programs. Or, you can buy a good Windows laptop. But, it will in no way be as quiet or as powerful or as cool as a Macbook air or pro. Definitely, you will not get the seemingly infinite battery life on Windows that you get with an M* Mac.
 
OMEGA44-XT said:
I'm sure you will hit RAM limit before performance limit with macs, so buy whichever is cheaper with 16GB RAM. 8GB RAM is stupid for any 50k+ laptop.

FYI - I feel 16GB RAM to be limiting at times on my office MBP M1 pro. But then again, for me macOS is the bigger annoyance. I hope you know limitations of macOS vs say Windows or even Linux (PS - I feel all desktop OSes are bad at this point but Win11 is the least annoying)

I bought a 32GB RAM Lenovo with core 5 125H for my cousin who is into UI/UX design for under 75k and has a 100% sRGB panel as well.
Click to expand...
> PS - I feel all desktop OSes are bad at this point but Win11 is the least annoying
Off topic, but I really like Fedora and even NixOS and NixOS can be a really really really great desktop OS. That said, I don't have a problem w/ MacOS and I'm not too sensitive about stuff being locked out. I'll probably have another Linux laptop/Asahi.
 
codwapeace said:
Make sure that the program that you wish to use can run on an ARM based mac. I know a lot of ECE programs do not, not on any Mac. Other than CSE, Mac is not a good choice for most engineering as most specialized engineering programs do not run on a Mac. Think about it, Mac has gone through 3 complete architecture changes in the last 15 years which would completely destroy people who rely on these programs. So, it is great that we have Windows which allows us to run even 30-40 year old programs.

I love my M1 Macbook pro, but I can't rely on it for running everything I want. It never heats up. It is very reliable. It is instant on. But, still apple completely abandoned the previous generation, not only in not supporting it, but making a complete architectural change so even if you want to have workarounds, you couldn't possibly run newer versions of their OS.

So, if you can afford to, you might need to buy a cheap Windows laptop later when you need it for specific programs. Or, you can buy a good Windows laptop. But, it will in no way be as quiet or as powerful or as cool as a Macbook air or pro. Definitely, you will not get the seemingly infinite battery life on Windows that you get with an M* Mac.
Click to expand...
I'm strongly considering getting a Framework over a Macbook now
 
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roadrash99 said:
If you have to ask, most likely you won't need Macbook Pro. People who really need Pro usually are aware of the exact reason why Air won't be enough, usually experience. Unless you have money to throw at this, just get the Air or a Mac Mini.
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> Mac Mini.
Honestly, I want to get a Mac Mini, but I'm not sure if I'll have a screen available w/ me all the time.
 
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
 
Not sure how big your code is. In the world of micro services, I rarely see code compile going beyond 5-10 minutes. For local deployments, you don't have to use heavy data for testing, right? You just need small set of data to test. No one replicates production environment at same scale. With this, any good laptop will do. Otherwise, 80% of devs will be running for server time (build servers) even for small change that they can compile and test in local before pushing to repo.
 
cskartikey said:
it sure can, but I need to run things in local deployment too. Plus, I need to compile a bunch of stuff and that needs to be fast.
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forward long builds to a server, if you're into nix you can rely on

Remote Builds - Nix Reference Manual

nix.dev nix.dev
I'm sure there are other options for other tools, that being said just m1 would be more than enough for 99% projects, and then there's android and chromium

you can build very decent am4 home server for 25k nowadays, way better than having a throttled and overheated laptop
 
cskartikey said:
> PS - I feel all desktop OSes are bad at this point but Win11 is the least annoying
Off topic, but I really like Fedora and even NixOS and NixOS can be a really really really great desktop OS. That said, I don't have a problem w/ MacOS and I'm not too sensitive about stuff being locked out. I'll probably have another Linux laptop/Asahi.
Click to expand...
don't get a mac if you are planning on running Linux on it, you'll have a bad experience and end up blaming Linux instead of the hw
cskartikey said:
I'm strongly considering getting a Framework over a Macbook now
Click to expand...
cool. if you are into cse, I'll recommend a Linux capable machine over mac anyday
cskartikey said:
it sure can, but I need to run things in local deployment too. Plus, I need to compile a bunch of stuff and that needs to be fast.
Click to expand...
if your local deployments include containers, they will run much faster on Linux
 
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