Need a replacement for my old macbook pro, should I just get another one?
I'm up for both a new phone and a new laptop, I have an Iphone 8 and a Macbook pro (2020) that was a freebie from an old job.
I wanted a new Iphone, but if I did that, only a Macbook can put music on it and that's half what I use my phone for. I don't really need a new laptop, but all of my other devices are Linux and can't put music on an Iphone. So seems like it's either all or nothing here. Either I switch to Android, or I go buy two expensive Apple products soon.
Iphones have always been great to me, the only reason I need a new phone right now is because Apple refuses to support mine any more. The Macbook though, I had that for only a year before the logic board gave out and bricked it. Is that just something that happens with Macbooks? Are all Apple products actually trash and I've just gotten lucky with both Iphone 4s and Iphone 8 being built for war?
Am I dumb for avoiding Android like the plague? Every Android phone I've ever met is loaded with tons of bloatware and insecure as hell, seems like the Windows of the phone world.
Apple's Mac hardware has been best in class ever since they switched to their own Apple Silicon chips. My advice? If you liked your 2020 Macbook experience, pick up a Macbook Air. M4 is in a good price sweet spot right now. 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and you're set for the next 5-10 years, IMO. They're probably dropping a new, cheaper Macbook in the next week or two, though... so if 599 sounds good to you, it'll probably be worth waiting to see if that looks appealing. Should be pretty similar hardware to the current Airs, but with an iPhone (A-series) chip instead. The CPUs are all so good now it hardly matters even if you do light gaming.
iPhones are also pretty great hardware. I'd look into a 16e, a 16, a 17, or even a 15 Pro if I were you. Whichever's cheapest will do. Or you can wait for the 17e to drop next week, which should make 16e prices even lower.
In both cases, if you don't know you want some specific fancy feature or hardware, you don't need it. It's all good enough. You could get by just fine with a Pixel or Samsung phone too, these days. But if you're familiar with the iPhone it's easiest to stick with that.
One small caveat: American businesses have been enshittifying their hardware and software at an exponential rate over the last few years. Apple's software quality has really taken a nosedive with the 26 OSes released last year, and they're even experimenting with freemium features in their Office suite competitor. So be aware that some Apple software stuff will be increasingly buggy and annoying over the coming years. BUT pretty much all American software is going in the same direction (or has even more baked-in surveillance state nonsense) so you can hardly avoid it. If you really hate that idea, a Framework laptop running Linux and a Fairphone might treat you well. But they have enough rough edged that I won't recommend that as the best path.
Oh, and if anyone tells you to consider Windows? Run. They're clueless or malevolent.
Another vote for the Air. I went from an Intel Pro to a M4 Air. I was initially worried about leaving the Pro models, but honestly I have been very happy with the air. I don’t need a pro for what I use these days. You’d save quite a bit of cash.
I would argue 16GB is not sufficient for the next 5-10 years. But certainly next 3-4.
Depends on the user, I think folks who mostly live in the browser would be OK for 5 on 16. But it's definitely getting tighter. 24 would be my minimal 10 year recommendation, 32 if you can swing it. Just a bit painful with Apple's pricing and with all of the AI-related price hikes lately :(
Apple's memory tax is now the market rate.
Yes exactly I was looking at a 16e and those looked great to me!
I had also looked at the Macbook Air, it was starting at around $1000 on their website, is there somewhere that has it cheaper? I've never shopped for a Macbook before, and I kinda have to just buy the phone through my carrier so I don't get to shop around there.
It just kinda seems silly to me to spend 1k on a computer with the same specs as I can get for half that, feels like I'm spending $500 on an operating system. I guess it is what it is though?
There is quite literally no laptop on the market with as good specs for the money as the base macbook air currently.
I'm just now bothering to actually benchmark it against my daily driver desktop, and I'm running on 16g ram, 8 core AMD Ryzen apu. So a Macbook air would be more powerful than this, I built this in 2019 I think for like maybe $500, but it has Linux on it, I don't know how much memory/processing power macos takes up compared to this which runs light compared to anything? but, I guess, macos would be super optimized for the hardware though, isn't that the point, so I shouldn't worry about that.
A modern macbook air with an m5 will absolutely destroy a 2019 AMD APU, yes. It will a titanic difference in performance. Assuming you have a 3400G or something like that, the M4 is
3.2x faster single core performance
4.4x faster multicore performance
I would make a car analogy but I don't think there is actually enough of a difference in cars spes these days to represent that. A golf car vs a ferrari?
There is no way to make a generalized metric for this, but generally macOS is considered to be a fairly lightweight OS.
I'm seeing the 2025 model for like $850, with the m4, and even those specs knock my daily driver out of the park. I probably won't even notice.
I'd just hate to get it and it bricks itself after five years. I've never had any electronic equipment do that to me before. I've got one of those freaking toy Pokedex's from the 90s and that thing still works. I have a Toshiba Satellite from like, 2001? And that thing still works. I wish I knew what happened with my freebie macbook pro.
I ran a 2012 MacBook Pro well into 2023.
In your position I would honestly get an iPhone 17 and a MacBook Air as others have recommended. I'm not sure what happened to your logic board, stuff can happen just like with any other piece of hardware. Someone at your job could have misconfigured it, it could have been physically damaged, there could have been some defect that affected a short run, all things that are common with components you'd buy yourself to build a PC.
The one time Apple did have a longstanding issue with motherboards they replaced a lot of them as part of the limited warranty.
When did apple have that issue with the macbook mobo?
Many many many years ago. The white and black plastic ones, I think.
Chances of the new MacBooks bricking themselves are fairly low. Anecdotally, I've had my M1 MacBook Pro (16") since November 21 and it's held up brilliantly, better than my Dell XPS 15 that I had before it.
You underestimate Apple silicon. There isn’t any computer that you can get that is better than that for anywhere close to the same price. With this line of reasoning, the Apple tax isn’t $500, it’s probably closer to -$500. Unless you are buying used or open box, Apple typically matches the best prices you will find elsewhere.
Anyway, I think Walmart still sells the original M1 Air for a bit cheaper. It’s noticeably worse than the current air, but it is still a really good laptop.
I did see a deal at Walmart, I'm not sure what chip it was, but that air had 8gb of ram and I know I use more than that gaming, but I don't use more than 16, so the m4 model would be the way to go for me
I was running an M1 MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM for the past two years and just upgraded due to the lack of RAM for my use cases. 8GB is fine for normal browsing and even some coding, but definitely falls apart when doing more intense development.
I have an M4 Pro with 24GB of RAM now and that is more than enough for what I need to do. I can even run Windows with Parallels and run games at 40-60 FPS if I make sure to quit my unnecessary applications first.
All the M-series chips are beasts, so as long as you spec it with at least 16GB of RAM, you should be happy for a long time.
Yep. The Walmart one is an M1. The M4 will run circles around the M1, but, if the ram were enough for you, that M1 will still perform better than most of the rest of the market.
Why do you need to buy the iPhone through your carrier? Unless something has changed since I last upgraded years ago, buying direct from Apple was better in every way; unlocked phone from the start, lower total cost compared to the carrier cost spread out over monthly bill add-ons, apple trade-in program if you want to offset the cost of more frequent upgrades.
I just recently found out that if you do not activate your iPhone with a carrier, Apple actually charges an additional $30 for it. I was really upset to find that out.
I looked into this a bit more, and it seems the $30 difference (framed as a carrier discount) depends on both the model and the carrier, at least when buying it without financing.
The 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max, Air, and 16e have no discount for any carriers.
The 17 has a $30 discount for all carriers.
The 16 and 16 Plus have a $30 discount for carriers except AT&T
I didn't even know I could do that? I've never tried.
Just looked it up on both websites, and 16e is $599 on both my carrier website and the Apple website, so i guess in this case it doesn't matter
I would still buy it direct from Apple to skip the carrier lock-in period at the very least, even if you don't have plans right now to switch.
Fair assessment, I had no idea that was an option, I thought that phones were all still carrier locked and it was a hassle to not buy from the carrier. What exactly do I have to do once I buy it from the Apple site? Like call up my carrier and sit on the phone or something?
Edit: and like, sure I might as well be 60 years old, I don't know why I'm like this
It should just be a matter of taking the sim card out of your old phone and popping it into the new one, just like you might do while traveling abroad and using a local sim. It shouldn't involve any calls to your carrier.
If you compare the base model of whatever Mac hardware to other machines, it’s more that you’re paying for build quality and attention to detail. You would definitely also struggle to get an exact match on specs for a lower price, but often that’s a little artificial - you probably wouldn’t be looking for a 100% exact match, you’d be looking at spec equivalent for your use case and things you care about. I’m mentioning this not because I think the specs and benchmarks are bad (they aren’t! And the battery life in particular is the real deal), but because I think you’ll be set up for disappointment if you decide to buy one on that angle alone.
The machines are just… nice. Solid. Well thought out. Precisely engineered. The kind of thing that feels as though it was built mostly with quality in mind rather than mostly with cost cutting in mind.
Does that add however many hundred in value to you? Only you can know that, but I think it’s important to be thinking in those terms if you decide to buy one. For what it worth, I’ve been using Macs alongside Linux machines for decades and it’s always felt absolutely worth the premium to me - I strongly recommend them to anyone who isn’t buying specifically on a tight budget.
It’s also worth noting that I said “base model” when talking about price vs spec at the top there. Apple will screw you on memory and storage upgrades, there’s no two ways about it, and IMO their base models are underspecced to push you into the upgraded versions, where the premium you’re paying for Apple gets wider. This frustrates the hell out of me, but it doesn’t change anything I’ve said above: I tend to buy pretty heavily upgraded machines and it’s still always been worth it to me, irritated though I am about it every single time. The quality and general good experience still justify the final price as far as I’m concerned, but you get ever further from being able to say they’re priced similarly to equivalent spec non-Apple machines - another reason I prefer not to think in those terms when looking at them!
It's hard to beat MacBooks right now because Apple's hardware is best in class. However, I need to correct something:
This isn't true. iTunes has been available on Windows for decades and can be used to sync music to Apple devices same as any Mac.
My only Windows device is a 20 year old intel pentium pc with in xp on it and thats what I was using to manage music on my iphone before I had my freebie macbook pro
Its…. Not ideal. Id very much like to not go back to that.
I might be making assumptions, but presumably a laptop you buy today wouldn't be running Windows XP on a Pentium 4 with a 15 year old version of iTunes.
Speaking of Macbooks, my last personal one lasted just over a decade of very frequent use before the battery finally gave out. I used that as an excuse to upgrade to the newer M-series chip which has been such a huge performance increase and felt very worthwhile.
It sounds like your Macbook was already used? If not, you should have easily been under warranty to get it fixed. All my work Macbooks have never had any issues either, other than eventually being replaced for more performant machines.
Right it was used, I have no idea who had it before me, how they treated it, etc. Admittedly, I kinda messed up, I had left it unplugged for a whole entire month and then only charged it for like 20 minutes before trying to use it again, and that's when it bricked itself. I could probably just treat a new laptop better and it'd be fine, right?
I have an old Asus from 2012 that I've upgraded both ram and cold memory in (something you can't do with a Macbook) and it still works perfectly well. A five year old laptop bricking itself is just so disappointing to me.
That does sound like the battery, and that's just a fundamental truth of lithium batteries: a "depleted" battery is actually something like 10% charged still, and if it ever drops to zero, the battery is toast forever. And since they self-discharge over time, being stored in that state can cause that to happen. (Or, in relatively rare cases, combust.) Plus, lithium batteries have a rough number of full charge/discharge cycles before they start losing the ability to hold charge, which you're going to be close to after five years.
Batteries are a consumable item, like brakes and tires. Mac batteries are replaceable though, by someone comfortable working on them.
🤮
Have you tried "stock" android? Like a Pixel device? Or something close? Not sure if it's still the case, but OnePlus' OxygenOS was really close to stock back in the day.
I'm considering GrapheneOS next, but it requires a Pixel.
"stock" android being a selling point really was a breath of fresh air - I still remember fighting with old motorola phones to uninstall all the bloatware that came preinstalled - messenger, linkedin, even banking apps, I seem to remember. Google's Nexus phones, and then Oneplus's offerings just slashed through all that for me, it really felt like getting a new phone was a fresh start, rather than some hand-me-down from some corporate avatar.
Ive kept up with Graphine and other Linux distros and they’re not at the point where Id consider it a practical switch for me. I want it to be fully realized, and maybe one day, but right now I really just need a phone that works.
Apple phones have been great to me, I actually don’t use a lot of the Apple features, its really just music, and another user mentioned I might be able to just use the vlc app and manage music files that way.
My s/o has an old oneplus and they’ve been really happy with that, but I actually kinda like having my personal data split across different companies and not entirely contained in Google.
What specifically makes Graphene not ready for you?
If music is the only feature you care about, what is "fully realized" to you?
I have verizon as a carrier cause its on my moms family plan for <50/mo and I need Slack for work and Discord for my gaming guild
Are you sure you can’t somehow hook up a memory card and dump music on your iPhone? I think VLC or Foobar2000 can read their own folder data sitting on the phone memory. I know you can hook up storage because you can do it for the camera SD cards to transfer photos.
If you are talking specifically about the Apple Music app, and its own library, then I would not be surprised you need a Mac. Sucks having to buy a Mac just to transfer music to the iPhone. Maybe you find a used one for cheap. I also added a separate comment about Air vs Pro. You might at least save some $ there if all you need is file transfer and don’t need any high end apps on your Mac.
Honestly, and this is dumb, my setup right now is that I've got a 20 year old PC with Windows XP on it that we use for the TV and that thing has Itunes on it, and that's what I use to put music on my phone. Its a process, and I've been doing it that way for 15 years now I guess. I hadn't even thought about installing a VLC app.
No worries, as the saying goes “if it ain’t broke…”
I had a similar setup at one point. It was an old Mac mini connected to the TV and it had all the media on it. At some point I drank the streaming koolaid and got an Apple TV. Today I’m starting to contemplate going back to my own media server because all these apps are starting to suck, to include ads, etc. I miss my old setup!
That PC literally crashed on us last night. I'm so sad. It was the first computer I ever built. I don't think it's the computer, I think it might be that the old-as-hell-windows-os I've got on it finally just corrupted itself like they do and it would probably be fine if I took the time to reformat that drive. So, I might go track down that boot disc and handle that this weekend haha
Yeah I don't pay for streaming services. I've just never had to. Yo ho ho
I was happily yo ho ho-ing too and at some point Netflix was quite cheap and my wife got it. Then slowly I got lazier and less yo ho ho and more corporate whore :-( Skip a decade or so and now I got like 6 family members leeching my family account. I still have all my old media on a NAS drive. That’s the one I hope to setup with maybe Plex and maybe at least cut down on some subscriptions even if I do keep some core ones for the sake of my aging parents (members of the leech family mentioned above lol). Good luck with your computer! Hope you can fix it!
I totally get the laziness, I've never owned a TV, the one I use now I adopted by marriage, and it's a dumb TV, so attempting to use a streaming service would still require us to hook up a computer.
The other reason I never switched is that for some reason I tend to be like 15 years behind in TV shows and there was only a brief like 2-3 years that Netflix had most of everything, and those years happened to be precisely when I was a broke college student trying to scrounge together pennies to feed myself, even if the subscription was $8
There was indeed a sweet spot when Netflix had a lot of good stuff and the subscription fee felt fair. Now it feels they remove anything that doesn’t get enough views and the focus is on new stuff. Another reason to stick to your own library if you want to make sure your favourite show or movie doesn’t vanish.
Yep, I feel the same about music too
Yikes.
You have other more modern machines though right?
Haha yes, my daily driver is a pc I built in 2019 and I just put a fresh install of mint 22.2 on it like a month ago.
That win xp build was my first ever pc that I built in 2007ish that, since it still works (until last night, rip that HDD), we use to watch tv on.
Then I also have a asus laptop from 2012, with mint... 19 or 20, I think, and then there's an hp mini hanging around somewhere that came with win xp that I had upgraded to win 7 at some point but it didn't run great, had been meaning to put xp back on it.
so you can imagine my disappointment at the freaking FIVE year old macbook pro that bricked out on me.
I highly recommend the iOS version of foobar2000. It has an FTP server mode so you can easily drop your music collection onto the iPhone from any computer.
Yes, I personally use VLC for music, and I can confirm that you can just copy music files from a network share (windows, mac, linux, whatever) into the local VLC folder and it works.
I've not used them, but I understand that foobar2000 and doppi work the same way.
It used to be that OS/app integration was better with the native music app, but that's generally been corrected (probably due to Spotify's popularity and maybe anti-competition concerns).
iOS VLC has a option "Sharing via Wi-Fi" under "Browse". That starts a little webserver on your iPhone, which you can open on your desktop, and then drag/drop stuff in there.
Partially on topic: Anybody in here using Asahi Linux with an Apple Silicon machine? I’ve been considering switching from my ancient Dell XPS running Fedora to a MacBook Air, but I’d like to stay with Linux if possible.
I'm not, but from what I last saw when it was brought up here, it only supports M1s and some M2s, which are older hardware. I went and looked up the compatible models (bottom of the page).
MacBook Airs are M1, M2
Macbook Pros are M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, M2, M2 Pro, M2 Max
Mac Minis are M1, M2, M2 Pro
Mac Studios are M1 Max, M1 Ultra, M2 Max, M2 Ultra
iMacs are M1s only.
With varying levels of hardware support and features for each. So older machines, but those are still some pretty good processors.
Good presentation by a team member on the challenges bringing up M3+: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OAiOfCcYFM
Not at the moment, but I did fiddle with it for a while on a spare M1 Mac mini. It basically just worked--nice and boring, like any other Linux install. I didn't try pushing it too hard, but all the standard packages I grabbed installed without any fuss. Granted, this was on a desktop rather than a laptop, so I can't speak to things like sleep and wake, or even how the trackpad feels.
Is there something specific you want/need Linux for, or is it personal preference? There aren't many Linux-y things that macOS can't do, though it's obviously a very different platform when it comes to deep system-level customization (if that's your jam).
Lifetime computer and electronics tech here.
There are pros and cons. For the most part, I won't argue against Apple's hardware quality, or the construction and materials quality on their iPhone line. Definite pro there.
You already described one of the major cons - consumer lock-in and lock-in abuse. Want to have your computer easily interact with your iPhone? You better have a Mac computer, want to upgrade one? Now you have to spend more money to replace the other if you want to keep using things the way you want to use them.
Apple easily could allow people to conveniently use their products with stuff outside the Apple ecosystem, and they don't in order to extract more money.
You mention you are on Linux for everything else - I'm a big proponent of Linux and use it for almost everything (I keep a laptop with a Windows partition for field work when a remote client wants to use specific Windows software).
Below has advice from the perspective of USA-based cell carriers. Not sure if you are in the US or not.
Android and Bloatware: yes, this is an issue, but not an overwhelming one, especially if you are planning ahead to avoid or be able to deal with it instead of buying something locked down and then trying to fix it. Basically you want a carrier unlocked / bootloader unlocked Android phone and then you don't have major impediments to having a clean phone. An alternative is the Dutch company Murena which makes the Fairphone line of cellphones - they are built from the ground up to be repairable, de-googled, privacy first / customer-serving (as opposed to corporate-serving or enshittification-path hardware/software) - the Fairphone 6 is able to be used in the USA, though for now they have only been able to integrate with T-Mobile and T-Mobile MNVOs.
There is also the PinePhone manufactured by Pine64. Pine is a community-based electronics hardware company that makes hardware at low cost with a main customer base being the electronics enthusiast community. The PinePhone is Open Source Hardware, Linux-based, and meant to be privacy focused (with hardware privacy switches to disconnect components that cannot be ever overridden by compromised software) and repairable. Getting it to work in the US is possible from various user accounts, but requires some work like activating a SIM on a different phone, then swapping that SIM to the PinePhone. Carrier band compatibility list here.
Yeah I wish any of the Linux phone options supported my carrier and the apps I need, that would be the obvious choice for me. Maybe one day
Do you have a particular reason for not wanting to leave your carrier? Last I checked, all of the major carriers except for T-Mobile were pretty terrible for one reason or another (usually billing related), and T-Mobile wasn't really that far ahead of the rest.
My phone bill is only like $45/mo cause Im still on my moms family plan
Since you seem knowledgeable, I was wondering if you had advice on whether there's anything worth removing or checking for someone already using stock android. I have a Pixel 7a that I bought directly from Google and it's working great, but I figured you might have specific things in mind to recommend.
I haven't used one of the Pixel line, but I've heard good things about them. Nothing specific to mention on them, but I do have a general resource for you if you want to go down the Android modding/rooting/customization rabbit hole.
While the search function isn't always the best (I more often use google for site:(site address) and then my search term of choice), the XDA Forums are one of the best resources out there for rooting / jailbreaking / android custom OS out there. I've used it before to restore locked-out android tablets that I got in bulk at auction to functionality and for rooting / modding previous phones I've had.
While I agree with everyone in this thread that the M-series chips are very impressive and cost-effective, it isn't quite a total blowout. The Intel lunar-lake chips are pretty competitive with the older M1s/M2s. If you can get a 256V/258V chip (which also have better iGPU performance) for example, depending on what kind of prices you're looking at (a used Macbook Pro M2 can go for ~1k), it's possible to get a competitive deal in windows-land.
And Apple charges a premium for storage, so if you want a 1TB or 2TB hard drive, the Macbooks get less appealing. This isn't to say that the M-series Macbooks aren't very price competitive, it's only in certain niches where the Windows laptops win out.
Yeah, but then you'd have Windows. Eew.
Well, Windows or Linux :^).
Much as I love Linux on the desktop, I've had overall much less success on laptops I must say. For example, none of the fingerprint readers I've had on laptops have ever worked under Linux. libfprint is a mess. Yeah yeah, I could fix it myself (I couldn't) so I shouldn't complain, but eh. I'm going to complain anyway as I'm an entitled whiner. I also find that suspend / hibernate / sleep / resume is much less reliable than I'd like. Had a few hot bag incidents over the years, which isn't pleasant.
The M1 came out five years ago. It's not quite fair to compare Intel's top of the line with Apple's discontinued chips. Especially when AFAIK they are still much less energy efficient.
The upcoming intel Panther Lake series looks like it will be competitive with the latest M-series chips. But I wasn't really comparing based on generation, but rather resale price.
I'm not sure I understand what you are using as a basis of comparison, then. Are you comparing budget intel systems to used M1/M2 systems? Or what they were when they sold? For the prior that still isn't exactly fair given the difference in overall build quality and the inflation we've had over the past half-decade.
I'm not trying to be arguementative, I'm just out of the CPU benchmark loop.
I'm comparing the value you can get for used devices, mainly. So, for example, I can find a Macbook Pro M2 refurbished in 'Good' condition, on Ebay (with 32GB RAM and 512GB storage) for 990$. A comparable Intel processor in the newest (2023-ish) generation, called Lunar Lake (soon to be succeeded by the new Panther Lake generation), is the 258V (https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_core_ultra_7_258v-vs-apple_m2), which generally matches or exceeds the M2, although lags a bit with single core performance. I can find a Lenovo Slim 7i with the 258V on Ebay (32GB RAM and 1TB storage), open box for 750$.
The big thing is that the Lunar Lake generation came out after the M1/M2 generation, and approximately simultaneously with the M3 generation. The new Panther Lake chips will be competing with the M4/M5 generation, although it's hard to do price comparisons since most of those laptops haven't come out yet. It's tricky to do a fair comparison here, but I think comparing based on price for used laptops with similar benchmarks makes sense. When the new Intel chips come out, you can also compare with the latest Macs as well.
Yeah, the fact that these chips are only available to purchase in complete finished system really throws a wrench in it. I don't think it's completely fair to be comparing across time like this, especially with vastly different computers, but it is one of the most important things when dealing with the real world.
I looked up the 258V and according to Intel's website it was actually released Q3 2024, which would mean that it was released at about the same time as the M4 was, so even if it does have simelar performance with the M2, that may have been a performance target that had already surpassed them. Given Apple's propensity to bin older chips, it's possible that their M2 chip systems had already been discontinued at that time, even.
If intel manages to catch up with Apple I'd be quite surprised given that, last I checked, AMD is still offering the highest performance x86 CPUs. Is that no longer the case?
For me, the biggest thing is what is the best deal I can get right now. So I don't look too much at when the various chips were released, just what the best value I can get at a certain price point is. It may not be 'fair' that Apple released their chips first, but on the other hand it's not exactly fair to compare the base price for Macbooks when they upcharge quite a bit for storage (and continue to sell base models with only 256GB).
The math is definitely different if you only compare new laptops, however my original post was regarding used laptops primarily.
I believe Intel and AMD are neck-and-neck in the laptop CPU space, with Intel gaining an edge recently.
I just bought a used M1 macbook pro a few months ago, and I think it's great. For the price ($600) it's probably better than any windows laptop.
I bought a MacBook Air m1 when it first came out in 2020, kept it for a year, but sold it because I figured that it might have some compatibility issues with some things I was planning to do. I switched to a higher-end Lenovo yoga laptop. The display is great, the touchscreen is nice to have, but the battery life sucks, the daily use performance isn't nearly as good as the m1 air, and the fans frequently spin up while I'm not doing anything taxing. I also tried another Lenovo with a really nice OLED display and ARM chip, but gave that to a family member. I also tried an asus g14, which is a mid-high end compact gaming laptop, but I had a ton of issues with it. The HP I tried was fine, but just ok. After going back to mac, it really seems like if you want a good laptop experience, a macbook is the way to go. The M1 macbook pro in particular can handle all the tasks I need it to, including a lot of multitasking, coding, and some local LLM use. This is all while having a really nice display, great battery life, and reliable sleep. I guess this kind of sounds like an advertisement at this point, but I've tried a bunch of other options, all at the top of "best laptop" lists, and the mac has been the only reliably good one.
Are you in the US? The MacBook Air 13 often goes for $850, but $750-$800 should be possible for it too at this point in its lifecycle. I'd check SlickDeals (set a deal alert to trigger). At $750, I just don't see there being a comparable Windows machine. The nice thing about the Apple Silicon series is that they're set-it-and-forget-it in a way I've never experienced before with computers. I'm running an M2 with 16gb of RAM and have not felt any desire to upgrade. I also have a gaming pc with a 5080 and 64gb of RAM and I'd rather use the Mac.
The M5 should release soon (iPad Pro already has it) and if it helps reassure you to have the extra year of improvements, it could be worth the price difference.
Oh yeah, you have to be okay with the stingy amount of storage Apple gives. While 16gb of memory works fine, 256gb of storage is kind of lame.
I'm a long time Apple hater, but I have to say that my M1 MacBook pro is a very good investment. I'm not a big believer in the iPhone, but if it's useful for you, I'd stick with it. As with others, I'll echo that it is expected for Apple to be releasing a new entry level laptop soon, in the $600 range - if so it is probably going to be a steal at twice the price. I'd say decide around mid-March on a path forward. I would also suggest that he used M1 or M2 Macbook Pro may actually be a worthwhile investigation, as some of them are listed near me for only three or four hundred dollars. The build quality is exceptional, and I would trust it. I am a power user and have had mine since late 2022, but it has no apparent battery degradation, which is exceptional as well.
I will also note that I use Win 11 arm and Debian 13 arm on VMWare on my MacBook for anything I need to run that isn't Mac friendly, and it does well.
I don't really have much else new to add here (sorry) but I do echo a lot of the sentiments shared in this thread.
M-series Macbook Airs and Pros are great! Amazing performance, battery life, screens, speakers, keyboards. While Windows laptops are closing the gap (or have even closed the gap) on performance and maybe even battery life, I find a lot of them still have meh keyboards and speakers. I think you might've gotten unlucky with your MacBook Pro as everyone else I know that has one has had that generation of MacBook Pro still use them today. If you absolutely need to get a brand new laptop, it's hard to beat the MacBook Air on value, especially with the slightly older models which often go on sale for ~750-800 USD on Amazon and other retailers. If you don't mind used, you might have some luck with used MacBook Pros. I've got a 16" M1 MacBook Pro and it still holds up amazingly well. macOS 26 is what it is, would definitely recommend trying it in a store to see if you can get over the aesthetics if you haven't experienced it yet.
I don't think you're dumb for avoiding Android phones like the plague, everyone's got their preferences :), but I do think it is worth at least exploring the Google Pixel phones if you're in the US. I have both an iPhone and a Pixel and the Pixel is the closest you'll get to an iPhone-like experience on Android in my opinion. You don't need to sign into your Google Account to use one though downloading apps will require some effort as you'd have to download apps from other third party app-stores like F-Droid or the Aurora Store (open-source Google Play Store frontend). Music can just be dragged and dropped onto the phone from your Linux PC's file browser and Mac's Android File Transfer program. If you've only used iPhones before, it will take a while to get used to things. Even though both platforms are mature nowadays, a lot of small things work very differently and so your muscle memory will be fighting you for a while. I still struggle with the "double-tap power button" gesture that both phones use. On iPhone, by default, it opens the wallet for payments. On Pixels and most Android phones, by default, it opens the camera! Pixels (and others too I assume) let you change this but I think my point still stands.
If you do end up deciding to get either an iPhone or a Pixel, I do recommend looking into buying them directly from Apple and Google respectively. Carriers, at least in the US, may offer some enticing deals but I hate that they lock you into contracts (looking at you AT&T with your 30 month contracts). Seeing as you have an iPhone. 8, you would also have to figure out getting an eSIM setup. I think most US carriers make it easy to switch from physical SIM to eSIM though when I tried it a few years ago with AT&T they were a pain in the ass to deal with. Switching eSIMs between phones with AT&T has been fine but yeah that initial switch was annoying.
I have no idea how to onboard an unlocked phone for my carrier. When I buy it from them, soon as I turn it on it onboards itself. I don’t even know if I have a sim card? Ive never needed to know.
Its crazy how little I know about how phones work just because Ive only ever used iPhones when smart phones became a thing, I don’t mess around with the settings much besides turning location off. Double tap power button doesn’t do anything on my phone though, I’ve never used apple pay before. I don’t use Apple car play either so in new cars my phone just wont connect, in my car it connects via bluetooth just fine so it doesn’t bother me.
Its really silly to own an iphone and use basically none of the features, the 4s was my first smart phone and it still works so I bought another cause I was really happy with the longevity of it. This iphone 8 still works perfect too, no slowness or anything.
Just to confuse you a little more, buying directly from Apple/Google doesn't mean the phone is unlocked haha. When buying a phone from the Apple/Google website, it lets you select your carrier and unless you select unlocked, the phone you receive from them will be locked.
Onboarding a phone you buy from Apple to your phone plan is fairly straightforward from what I remember, Apple makes the steps super straightforward for iPhone to iPhone upgrades. You just need to keep both phones near each other and follow the on-screen prompts. If nothing goes wrong during the process, it's about as complicated as installing Linux Mint with no issues. The same should be true on Android but I've unfortunately never tried it.
That being said, I completely understand just buying your phone from the carrier since it does simplify things greatly. Our systems are built to maximize profits for these corporations, not to make your life simpler.
Honestly, I respect it. It's very easy to be lured into all the features with their marketing, I am one such sucker who has been drawn in by said marketing. From what it sounds like, you use your phone as a tool like it was intended to be. There are special "distraction free" phones meant for people trying to do a "digital detox" and reduce their reliance on the features mentioned earlier. it could work for you but I have no experience with them and don't know how long they'd last. I'd probably just stay with an iPhone, you could get the iPhone 16e or the "basic" iPhone 17, they should last a while.
Just posting so I can review later. Great post and responses to it.
You can click “Bookmark” under the topic text and the post will get saved to your Tildes bookmarks. Works for individual comments too.