my 2penneth
If you want to spend loads of money then spend it but the best value Macs are always the lowest end models and for 'normal' computing processing power doesn't seem to make a noticable difference any more. I've just bought a 2019 MacBook Air (base model, 8gb) and it doesn't feel noticeably more responsive than the early 2011 13" MacBook (base model at the time, upgrade with SSD) or the late 2013 iMac (base model, fusion drive).
The screen is way better, the larger full function trackpad and Touch ID for access are great - it's a nice machine, but gone are the days when you upgraded because the old machine was frustratingly slow. When speed is an issue these days it's nearly always websites full of advertising or slow servers somewhere upstream on an online service.
If you do make a mistake, just sell and replace - second hand Macs go for really good money if looked after and that's not going to change.
Can’t get my head around apple pricing… It’s insane.
Maybe at the top end and they do take the piss for upgrades, but as whole package of hardware and software it works. IMovie, Garageband, Keynote/Pages/Sheets which will open and save as MS compatible files reliably now and are nicer to use the Micorosoft suite.
When speed is an issue these days it’s nearly always websites full of advertising or slow servers somewhere upstream on an online service.
Or bloody Adobe Creative Cloud with its endless background daemons and processes and things that no-one knows what they do, but you cannot stop them. It's no longer installed on my MBP, but when it was, it did my head in.
Adobe Creative Cloud
Apple's 'preview' and screenshot funcitons are one of the best things about the whole ecosystem. Instantly open a pdf, or image, add a few annotations. Resize an image or convert a pdf to a jpeg (or vice versa).
Even on Windows 10 those functions still seem to be some unholy mix of Adobe Acrobat (which still takes an age to open and will inevitably want to update itself), Microsoft Paint and the 'snipping tool'
[edit - just opening up my completely clean Win10 install it seems they have now pretty much copied the screenshot tool and pdfs open in internet explorer if you don't have loads of other crap installed).
Still, Mac OS has been largely consistent since OS X launched around 2000. Windows has been through at least 3 quite different UI's in that time. This is not a good thing
You better look this up to check but I believe recent versions of OSX rely heavily on what we used to call “virtual memory” meaning it's a slug On a hard disc and great on an SSD. So less reliant on RAM apparently.
I put an SSD into my old iMac and it made a massive difference to responsiveness so there’s truth in it.
I have an SSD in my 2012 i7 Mac mini server. (Bought used - It functions as my desktop, I chose the server version as it had upgradeable ram and 2 x HD ) with 16G ram it seems fine.
Mind it’s on OSX High Sierra. I am avoiding Catalina for now and tend to be a version or 2 behind.
(And I’m what they used to call an apple solutions expert)
It really depends whether you’ll be using RAM intensive applications. The best place to ask is on forums dealing with those apps specifically.
And yeah. Apple RAM is very costly.
N
Again, why? OSX / MacOS is basically Linux with a pretty front end, are you doing something intensive with it or is OSX a really bloaty GUI?
My colleague has a 13" MBP with 8Gb, and since we are all cloud based these days it just gets used with text editors, Word and the like, but he says 8Gb is nowhere near enough and it's always swapping. He says the main culprit is the Electron platform which apparently is very memory hungry. So even though 8Gb *should* be enough in theory some app developers are taking the piss again.
I believe recent versions of OSX rely heavily on what we used to call “virtual memory” meaning it’s a slug On a hard disc and great on an SSD. So less reliant on RAM apparently.
If true this is stupid and entirely the wrong way round. Windows does the opposite - it fills 75% of the ram with cached regularly used files from disk, because there is no point in having RAM sitting empty. This is why people sometimes get alarmed when they look at their 8Gb machine and see the RAM nearly full with no apps open. It's not.
16 meg will be fine, it will last for years, if you can I’d wait a little while and just monitor the Mac forums to make sure no issues are found with the new keyboard.
Also plan and cost in what you might need in terms of extra dongles for usb, Ethernet etc.
So... Ordered one... It's a custom spec so will be a few weeks wait, but that gives me time to advertise my iMac and current MBP ready anyway.
Decided just to pony up for the 32GB upgrade. I plan on keeping it for as long as feasibly possible, so armed with an ebay discount code and double cashback on quidco for the day, have managed to save myself just shy of 10% off the purchase price too... So it only ended up about £100 more than buying a stock 16GB specced machine from the Apple Store direct.
Will see what it's like when it gets here!
Good move, I’ve just received a 16” I9 with 32Gb, 8Gb GPU and 2TB SSD. Expensive but very impressed so far and I spent weeks reading about specs and problems on MacRumours. I also rationalised that if I keep it for 4-5 years, the extra costs for 32 Mb would be reasonable and provide some contingency. My BTO took 8 days from China to Canada.
