Quote:
Originally Posted by drofgnal
You'll love it; it's blazing fast. I bought my wife one after I bought my mac mini. She had my old 2016 macbook, but uncharacteristic to apple it died and needed a new motherboard at nearly 500 bucks, so we just bought her a new one. She doesn't keep much on it, mostly using it for email and some orgainizational stuff so for her the base model with 256 GB SSD sufficed. I bought her a 512 gb USB-C thumb drive if she ever needs additional storage.
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I'm looking forward to getting it. I'll have a learning curve going from High Sierra (on 2012 mini) and Mojave (on MacBook Pro) all the way up to Monterey though.
One good thing about waiting so long after the introduction to the M1 Macs is that I get the long-term analysis from actual users. In the Fall of 2020 no one really knew how well the 8GB RAM models would work. It turns out they are okay for people like your wife who don't do much, if any, processor intensive tasks. The average casual user will likely do very well with the surprisingly affordable MacBook Air M1 with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD. Users who do a small to medium amount of processor intensive tasks will probably do well too, although they might have some throttling due to the smaller amount of RAM. At $849 they have become one of the top selling computers. However, I do a lot of processor intensive things like using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, as well as some 4K HDR video editing, so I knew from the reviews I needed the 16GB RAM model so that it wouldn't overheat are throttle a lot.
From years of experience with my 2014 MacBook Pro 15" I also knew I needed a lot more than a 256GB SSD. On my MacBook Pro, once the available disk space falls below 100GB it slows down considerably. With the OS taking up a chunk of storage as well as the files I accumulate over time, it is nearly impossible to keep the free space at over 100GB! So I went big and got the 1TB model.
With my older MacBook Pro I spend a lot of time waiting for Lightroom images to load and update in the development module. I click to load another image, then have to wait 5 to 10 seconds before it can render it. That should be instantaneous, but on a 8 year old i7 16GB computer, not so much. I saw several Youtube videos showing how fast Lightroom is on the M1 MacBook Air M1. So I'm looking forward to much more productive photo/video post processing.
I flip-flopped back and forth between getting the Mac mini or the MacBook Air, but in the end portability won out. I like the form factor of my 2012 mini, especially all the ports, but I don't like having to go sit in my study/office to use it. Plus, if the power goes out, it goes out too. I have a big UPS hooked up to it, but it will only power the monitor for a few minutes, so I don't have the monitor plugged into the UPS. With a laptop you always have a battery option. I have my modem and router on a big UPS, so I usually get at least a few hours of internet during a power outage. Plus I can use my iPhone 13 Pro Max as a 5G cellular hotspot, assuming the cellular towers nearby are still operational. When you live in "tornado alley" you need to be prepared.
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