We got our son a Pro when he was in high school. It lasted throughout college.
this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023
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Get a M1/M2 MacBook Air. Cheaper than the pros and as long as you don't plan on doing any serious photo/video editing it will work out amazing.
This is the way OP.
thanks!!
OP, get more RAM if you can as that’s not upgradable after purchase.
It is a $200 upgrade for ram
Not after it is delivered to you. It’s not upgradable like a Windows laptop or a PC.
get the m2 air have them buy it on the 24-27th. you can get education discount and if you buy within these days you can get a gift card as well
thank you!!
For high school level, you don't necessarily exploit all the features in a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro would use.
An ipad with a keyboard would do the trick.
I disagree about using an iPad. It’s just not as intuitive for the school work you might need it for. I just got a 2022 mb air m2 (on sale at Costco for 849) and love it
iPad is more limited in features and screen size and also, more fragile.
Can confirm this, I much prefer doing my schoolwork on my MacBook. Would protest if I had to do it on a iPad. Plus using a laptop with an actual “desktop” environment will set you up for the future!!
thanks :)
I disagree, I tried using an iPad with a keyboard for school and while it was alright using a MacBook became so much better, I had wayy less limitations and it was a lot more usable day to day. Maybe it will suit them more but I also had a number of issues with school software support on iPad vs Mac
Realistically, now is the time!! MacAirs are $300 at bestbuy, Apple is giving gift cards and other retailers are offering sales. I highly suggest getting getting AppleCare+ which is another $200+
Maybe get the 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro, it has a way better and brighter display (120Hz refresh rate and up to 1,600 nits of peak HDR brightness for watching movies) and battery (up to 22 hours) than any of the other lower end models and a bigger display than the 13 inch Air models. It also has more ports, way better speakers, way better webcam, and the new design.
Yea but lowpower mode lowers your performance. It’s essentially like starving your engine of gas. Sure it won’t use as much but your 0-60 is gonna suffer
Yeah agreed and I don’t even use low power mode on my 13 Pro or 15 Pro (or any of my iPhones actually) cuz it disables the 120Hz refresh rate on the Pro models and it noticeably throttles/slows down the performance of the phones, I’ve never used it on my iPad or MacBook Pro and especially would never wanna use it on one of the newer MacBook Pro models, like I always have my Anker 747 Power Bank (PowerCore 26K) with me and if I need to charge my MacBook or iPhone, I can just plug it in. No point in buying a $2K plus machine and then turning on low power mode to “save battery”.
? U suggested it and then said it’s stupid to throttle your machine?
Yeah I meant when watching movies, or on FaceTime and stuff.
Is there a way to change if the low power mode is on quickly. The only way I could see is through settings. Tbh as someone who came from(and still mainly uses) windows I kinda just learned the bare minimum and moved on so idk about a lot of things
You can add a Siri shortcut to the menu bar, but you can also click the battery percentage in the menu bar and tap battery settings there.
Get it if your parents have the money for it. You shouldn't feel bad if your parents have the money to get stuff for you and your brother. This is coming from someone who used a cheap Walmart Dell Inspiron for nearly 10 years, cause that's all my parents would get for me in high school. It was a complete piece of crap. The battery died after a few years so I always had to keep it plugged in, and it had so little RAM that I could barely get it to run more than a few browser tabs.
M2 Air is really good, according to your usecases you don’t need anything more than that.
M1 air be all end all budget school machine
Buy yourself a binned M3 Max 16-Inch MacBook Pro and nothing for your brother
Assert dominance
ahhaha thank you!
I would say the Base M2 Air I think it is 750$ right now on Best Buy.
That said if the Budget is Higher and you want to future proof as long as possible than I recommend you telling your Folks about the Newly Released M3 MacBook Pro since you can see some Real Performance Jump between the base Models on the M3s Favor.
I personally have the M3 Pro MacBook Pro in Space Black and I love it. They are Amazing Device.
Not to mention all the M3 MacBooks have the same screen which gives you 120Hz Pro Motion, 600 Sustained Brightness SDR, 1,000 Sustained Brightness on HDR and 1,600 Peak on HDR, not to mention it is Mini-LED.
It will definitely be a Big Difference between the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro in Performance, Screen, Speakers and Storage.
If I where you I would talk to your Parents and show them 2 options.
1 the M3 Base Model that will still be a lot better than the M1/2 Air and the other one of the latter.
Tell them that one is a lot better will last longer and has more potential for school etc. Than offer Them the other choice.
I hope than you guys can talk it out and see what is best, based on your and there thoughts.
Make sure you get student discount or black Friday and definitely get apple care for the length of your studies
If you plan to do post secondary education, it might actually be worth it to get a good one like 14-16in pro so you can still use it even after high school. If it’s just solely for high school, then I guess any air is fine. But again this all depends on your parents’ budget
Except of its in engineering, because then macos is not a good match.
Shows and FaceTime? M1 Air.
M1 MacBook Air would be perfect for that
It depends on what you use it for and whether you prefer 13, 14 or 16 inch. I’d go for at least 512GB ssd and 16 Gb memory. Whether you go for more disk space depends on whether or not carrying around an external drive and hooking it up is an inconvenience.
Regardless I’d likely go for an M2 over M1. The reason is except for the M3 Max the performance between M2 and M3 is negligible for most tasks. The M2 would also likely carry you through at least the first year of college.
Get a Macbook Air. Doesn't really matter on m1 or m2. The big thing is to get as much memory(RAM) and storage(SSD size) as you can afford since you can't upgrade later.
Macbook Air m1 must have