Advice re/New MacBook Pro

[Joan Machock]

Dear MacHACers,  I need to buy a new laptop. I'm replacing an old 14" MacBook Pro that I'll keep to run Print Shop, a 32-bit program that Apple no longer supports.

I'm open to any and all advice regarding what to buy and where.

Thanks

Joan Machock

[Allison Sheridan]

It used to be harder to answer the question, but for most people I think the answer is the 13” M4 MacBook Air. That said, you didn’t tell us what you want to do with it. Care to elaborate?

Allison

On May 6, 2025, at 11:01 PM, Joan Machock <joanma...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Steven Soloski]

About 1 1/2 years ago, I got a M2 15” MacBook Air at BestBuy when they were running one of their sales. I got the 1TB model rather than the baseline and am happy with it. I don’t know if it still applies but 2 year of AppleCare was included at no additional cost because we are BestBuy “Total” members. 

Good luck

Steve s

Sent from my iPad

On May 6, 2025, at 11:01 PM, Joan Machock <joanma...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Dennis De Mars]

I agree with Allison that the base MacBook Air is a good choice for most people. I have an M1 Pro MacBook Pro with 16GB memory and 2TB SSD. I think it cost around $2,700 (mostly because of the large SSD but even the the base model was $2,000. I think I upgraded the CPU also.)

This M4 MacBook Air is for sale at Best Buy and Amazon for $850. It has the same amount of memory as my computer and the chip is twice as fast as mine for single core and I am sure it is faster in multi-core benchmarks as well. It even handles the same number of external displays as mine. So, the value proposition has improved tremendously.

I’d say 16GB is fine for most people. I run Unity game editor (sometimes multiple instances) plus PHPStorm plus having many pages open in a web browser and I have never had any performance issues. There certainly are people who need more than 16GB but those people generally know how much and why they need it.

The storage is a little small though. The base model has 256GB SSD.  Even if you intend to use external disks a lot, there are some things that must run on the system disk or get installed there by default, so I might think about getting the next level up, 512GB. These are also on sale at Best Buy and Amazon for $1,050, so you can still get a discount over buying directly from Apple.

As Allison said, you didn’t go into any details about how you are going to use it, and that could influence other details like display size. Are you going to use this primarily as a desktop computer, or will you travel a lot with it, or is it 50/50. Are you always going to use it with the built in display or will you use an external monitor?

- Dennis D.

On May 6, 2025, at 11:01 PM, Joan Machock <joanma...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Allison Sheridan]

I second everything Dennis says below too. 

As far as disk size and RAM, remember with today’s modern MacBooks, you cannot ever upgrade them. What you buy them with is what you get. 256GB is too small for most people, especially people who keep their hardware in good use as long as you do. I would recommend 512GB at a minimum, more if you can swing it.

RAM is harder to forecast. 16GB is probably good for most people, but it does limit how many apps you can run concurrently. The other place RAM matters is in running AI tools locally. You probably can’t picture yourself doing that and maybe haven’t yet dipped a toe into the AI world, but it seems to be the future for us. Most tools run on big servers, but doing it locally for privacy reasons will chew up RAM. Doesn’t mean you can’t do it with 16GB, it just means it would be slower. 

MacBook Airs also come in 13” and 15” sizes. I went from a 16” MacBook Pro down to a 14” MacBook Pro and then to a 13” MacBook Air and I’m really happy with the 13”. That said, the 15” is pretty sweet too. When I’m at home, I plug into a big display so I have the best of both worlds.

As far as you iMac is concerned, it’s great that she’s still humming along, but Monterey is no longer a supported operating system. That means you’re no longer getting security updates. When updates come out for the newer operating systems, those updates tell hackers what’s insecure in the older, unsupported operating systems.  It’s dangerous to do anything like online banking on an insecure system.  I’m sure it’s tempting to keep using it, but I recommend you get yourself an external display to go with your new MacBook Air and let the iMac go.

Allison

On May 7, 2025, at 11:17 AM, Dennis De Mars <dem...@fractaldomains.com> wrote:

I agree with Allison that the base MacBook Air is a good choice for most people. I have an M1 Pro MacBook Pro with 16GB memory and 2TB SSD. I think it cost around $2,700 (mostly because of the large SSD but even the the base model was $2,000. I think I upgraded the CPU also.)

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/machacers/7D9D56AF-4E0C-4ED5-92A1-7878CCB2D6EA%40fractaldomains.com.

[Joan Machock]

Great advice, Allison and Dennis.  Thanks so much!

 

First, let me tell you that yesterday, I went to Best Buy and bought the MacBook Air 15” Apple M4 with 16GB memory – 512GB SSD laptop, which was on sale, as Dennis said.

 

I greatly appreciate your advice about retiring our 27” iMac which is operating on Monterey and no longer supported by Apple – citing security concerns.  I knew the day would come. 

 

Giving up the iMac constitutes a hardship for my husband who is 90 yrs old and loves to access the Internet from this computer.  I’m wondering if I can – and how to – clean everything off of the iMac and put all of my sensitive stuff, like online banking, on then new MacBook Air, freeing up the iMac for Ted to access the Internet.  I’d also leave (and use) some programs on the iMac – like Office (which I use for our wine inventory) and Filemaker Pro which has our address database and Machock Cookbook.  I use Excel just about every day.

 

Here's a plan:  We would wipe the financial accounts off the iMac and use only the MacBook Air for those.  We’d also take my Gmail account off of the iMac.  Recently, I opened a Gmail account that I use solely for my business and medical. 

 

So, I’m wondering – if I use my new MacBook Air for access to online banking and remove my Chase account as well as our mutual funds account from the iMac (and from aol) would that mitigate the security threat (while Ted continues to use the iMac to access the Internet)?

 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/machacers/2FAE7592-A934-461E-BC5C-CEC600FDD0C6%40podfeet.com.

[Allison Sheridan]

Congratulations, Joan! I hope you and your new baby will be very happy together.

I’ll let other chime in here, but this sounds like a good project to figure out how to get your husband what he wants without endangering your accounts. 

I would suggest you make him a fresh user account without admin privileges. I would make sure it’s not logged into an Apple ID that’s tied to anything you really care about. That’s because the biggest attack vector these days is really us, the users. Phishing attacks are rampant (and often successful) because of trusting humans using the computer.

I’m sure others will have even more ideas on how to keep him safe online.

Allison

On May 9, 2025, at 9:40 AM, Joan Machock <joanma...@gmail.com> wrote:



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