I got my daughter an iPhone X soon after I bought mine which at the time seemed like overkill but it’s lasted well until someone knocked it out of her hand accidentally at school a few weeks ago and the screen is cracked - it still works reasonably well with a small ‘dead area’ on the display. She likely needs a new or refurbished one before me but I’m loathed to get say an SE given that new phones will be out in September.
The inability to apply latest security updates to iOS will be another reason to get something newer.
Seriously considering a secondhand phone from the Cex store not too far away.
I went for a 13" M3 MBA with 16gb of this unified memory and 512gb SSD internal hard drive.
It’s a bloody mini marvel (at least it is so far). The video capabilities have been tested and apart from having to set permission for Google Meet to access the Mic the sound and video came sailing through quality control (QC being our eldest son 250 miles away who spends his working life on video calls and who was very impressed) with flying colours.
A bit of photo editing was completed without issue and the usual day to day applications run very smoothly.
With 99.9% of my photo editing being at home any issues with speed etc will be negligible, I am more likely to download a memory card onto an external SSD when away than actually edit, on this basis the MBA has more than sufficient connectivity.
There is no doubt that this is a huge jump over the old MBP and is demonstrating that I didn’t need to worry about going for the MBA over the better spec’d MBP.
So far the MBA has been excellent, my initial impressions are of a very well build laptop which will deal with just about everything I can throw at it. Will it be as usable in 10 years time, who knows.
Thanks everyone for your comments, feedback and suggestions, they were appreciated.
The MacBook Pro is more square-edged, has multiple connectivity options (three USB-C, HDMI, a card reader and MagSafe Power connectivity). Price starts at £1700. I have been using the 14" for nearly three years and it is a powerful and formidable machine for everything from writing to editing UHD video and pictures. Truly a powerhouse
The Air is excellent and has been updated with Magsafe power, but only has 2 USB-C connectors, so that may be a significant factor. Performance will be restricted v the Pro by thermal considerations, so picture editing may be leisurely. On the other hand it is slim and light.
My M1 Mini has 16gb memory, I was more than happy to pay the extra when buying and upgrade it from 8gb, I just went with matching the old MBP which had 16gb. I see that the new M2Pro Mini can go to 32gb, at a cost of course.
So far the 16gb is more than enough but i’m not a heavy user other than a few large Lightroom files.
The M1 Mini was an impulsive purchase at the Apple store and many reviews said 8GB was enough so I thought I’d give it a whirl. 16GB would have been build to order so I probably wouldn’t have bothered. I think some of the newer models come with more memory options as standard but Apple have long skimped on RAM for their entry level models which can be disappointing when you can no longer upgrade the RAM yourself.
I remember upgrading the memory on a Mac G4 Power Book (?) a good few years ago, IIRC you unscrewed a cover at the bottom of the laptop, unclipped the modules and inserted the new modules, simples .
Sadly as you say nowadays you have to have Apple do the work for you.
When I bought the Mini I waited 10 days from ordering for the customised computer to turn up at the store, I could have had it delivered to home but Mrs O wanted some retail therapy of her own.
If I upgrade the Mini at some point then I would customise it again, 32gb is the max according to the website.
Those G4’s were great in their time. I remember all the hassle of playing a dvd on a windows based PC … I put the same dvd in my iBook G4 and it instantly played without having to install extra software and codecs.
That’s one of my main reasons why I bought into Mac all those years ago, they seem to just get on and work.
And they last, it must have been around 2005 when I had my Power Book, then I moved to the MBP in 2014 before the arrival of the MBA this week, so 3 Mac laptops in around 19/20 years is pretty damn good IMHO.
Sadly as you say nowadays you have to have Apple do the work for you.
[/quote]
…and for the vast majority of current Apple machines I believe your only chance of upgrading RAM is at the time of purchase (unsure about the latest Mac Pros) - even an Apple Store can’t upgrade it for you as it’s all soldered to the logic board.
[quote="Alley_Cat, post:45, topic:35595, full:true”]
I really think the 16GB RAM is key.
My M1 Mini with 8GB is great most of the time for simple tasks, but when memory pressures hit I wish it had 16GB.
[/quote]
I still wonder if it’s a macOS memory leak issue sometimes as every few days Activity Monitor shows ‘red’ for memory pressures which turn green on quitting Safari. If I then restart Safari and use the ‘open all tabs from previous session’ or whatever it’s called it will work fine again for several days until the dreaded red memory pressure problems hit.
I still have one here and working, later machines would not run some horribly expensive printer calibration software, so I have carefully maintained it. Fast approaching 20 years old. I have a 20 year old G4 Power Mac too, also running.
I often had this page is using considerable resources messages when using Safari but the same website on Google gave no such message on the old MBP. As yet nothing like that on the MBA.
You were, and reminded me - I went upstairs and rebooted the old Laptop (a 17" model). Still able to edit a 2011 video sequence in FCP 7 and my pics in PS 4 Extended
I went through the same dilemma earlier this year when my old 2012 MBP finally gave up the ghost. Look at both Air and Pro. Although the Pro is definitely overkill for my needs my wife was the one that persuaded me to go for the Pro.
The Macs certainty last a long time, the hardware outlasting the OS updates by a big margin. I run a 27 inch 2015 iMac as my main machine - I updated to a SSD many years ago and it still runs like new, but on the older OS. Hard to justify upgrading just for the later OS. I also use a 2012 model as a second monitor - though it occasionally powers off by itself, so not sure how long that will last.
I think when I do upgrade, a Mac mini and 30” 4K monitor is probably the way to go, or the MB Air and monitor.
.