OT: advice on buying a used Mac.

[XXtwindad]

Originally Posted by chismog

That's a great machine, it will last you for years, it's plenty fast to do anything you need it to. Good stretch to get this machine over the other one.

I honestly think new/open box is the way here, as I stated before. M3 Air is a terrific laptop design, latest processor, SSD, new battery, apple ios... for less than a grand. Yes, you can spend $400 on a used laptop and it will be fine. But you'll be replacing it sooner, and not enjoying it as much while you use it. This is a great option. 8Mb RAM is probably enough for you, and you can always expand storage with an external SSD drive. You'll probably want to, for backups and such. 256 will last you a while anyway, and you may never outgrow it.

I ended up getting that computer. I have no idea what the big kerfuffle above was about. All I know was that I totally scored. Comes in a really cool color (midnight blue) and contains individual bios of the little gremlins that make it function. Makes for a much more intimate viewing experience.

[batman1425]

I just did this exercise when the display cable on my 7yr old MBP decided to give up the ghost. It's now a desktop permanently connected to an external display.

I ended up going with a new M3 MBP. It's way more machine that I need currently, but has enough head space to go another 7+ years. To be fair, a M-chip Air is all I need and could get one for a great price, but concern was that I would probably go through 2 of those in the same service life of the MBP so the cost differential wouldn't be very big and the more powerful machine would give me growth options moving forward. I do wish it was a tad lighter though... The air is great for portability.

[.RJ]

Originally Posted by Mr. Pink

I haven't read the entire thread, but, my two cents, as a Mac user since the early 90s and also a Photoshop user, buy the latest model, because sooner than you think, you won't be able to load the latest Mac OS if your chips are out of date

My last Mac was 8 years old and I could still load the latest OS.

But the hardware will be outclassed way sooner than the OS - I could use the latest version of LR, PS and Topaz but they were so slow that it was time to move on. I bought an M1 Max and it breezes through everything.

[Mr. Pink]

Originally Posted by .RJ

My last Mac was 8 years old and I could still load the latest OS.

But the hardware will be outclassed way sooner than the OS - I could use the latest version of LR, PS and Topaz but they were so slow that it was time to move on. I bought an M1 Max and it breezes through everything.

I bought an upgraded '13 Trashcan from OWC that now will not allow whatever the latest OS is (my serious computing has been on hiatus after a move). It was ok before. I'm not a speed freak. But now I just have to watch AI take over Adobe from the sidelines until I get an office set up.

[Alistair]

Originally Posted by XXtwindad

I have no idea what the big kerfuffle above was about.

m_sasso was nitpicking on the use of "hard disk" instead of "solid state drive".

Technically, HDD (hard disk drive) refers to designs with a spinning magnetic disk inside. This is what's in many desktops and many external storage solutions. They went out of favor in laptops 10-15 years ago because they're heavier and larger.

Solid-state drives (SSDs) have no spinning parts. Think of a RAM chip, but scaled up for mass storage. No mechanical parts to fail, but require more complex software and chips run. And cost more. But, pretty much all high-end laptop have had SSDs as the default/only option for 10-15 years.
Including all MacBook Airs (since about 2009) and MacBook Pros (since about 2012).

Since you didn't appear to be looking at laptops that old, making a big deal about it was silly.

[XXtwindad]

Originally Posted by Alistair

m_sasso was nitpicking on the use of "hard disk" instead of "solid state drive".

Technically, HDD (hard disk drive) refers to designs with a spinning magnetic disk inside. This is what's in many desktops and many external storage solutions. They went out of favor in laptops 10-15 years ago because they're heavier and larger.

Solid-state drives (SSDs) have no spinning parts. Think of a RAM chip, but scaled up for mass storage. No mechanical parts to fail, but require more complex software and chips run. And cost more. But, pretty much all high-end laptop have had SSDs as the default/only option for 10-15 years.
Including all MacBook Airs (since about 2009) and MacBook Pros (since about 2012).

Since you didn't appear to be looking at laptops that old, making a big deal about it was silly.

Ah, got it. Thanks for the clarification.

[benb]

Originally Posted by skiezo

The only thing I have to add in the MBA does not have an internal cooling fan and the MBP models do have an internal cooling fan.
My wife had a M2 MBA and when editing dance vids it could get warm. Her M3 MBP has stayed cool when doing editing/mixing of vids with music.
Just something to think about.

This strikes me as a software issue... I bet she was using software that was poorly optimized for the Mac. (Adobe perhaps?)

Well optimized software is not going to really heat up or show much difference between a MBP and MBA unless you are talking about some seriously hollywood levels of editing.

Heating up a little is of course fine anyway. The MBA will just throttle the processor sooner than the MBP will. The real thing is which computer is actually fast enough. If you're editing 4K or 8K video all day long and the MBA is slowing down then editing video is probably your job and you can write off the cost of the M3 Pro/Ultra/whatever to get the time savings.

This would be of course the issue with what I do. No one is building hardware accelerated software development tools & packages that use the fancy features of these new chips.. it is not cost effective to do so at all, the only case where it makes sense is for Apple itself and then if you are writing 100% Mac software you can take advantage.

In any case none of the stuff I work on is optimized for Apple Silicon and yet the fan doesn't even come on and I don't get any noticeable heat.

To keep it on topic I think we all know XXTwindad is not a professional video editor.

[fourflys]

I have a MBA and it certainly has a fan that blows when it heats up.. mine is a 2020 Retina 13"..

[kppolich]

The whole 'no fan' thing started with the M1 MacBook Air.
Anything with an Intel chip will have a fan.

[fourflys]

Originally Posted by kppolich

The whole 'no fan' thing started with the M1 MacBook Air.
Anything with an Intel chip will have a fan.

makes sense, I have an Intel chip.. still chugging away for me, so no need to upgrade yet IMHO, at least for what I do.. it could use a battery replacement at some point.. we'll see if I do it or just get a new one..

[rkhatibi]

Originally Posted by Alistair

Technically, HDD (hard disk drive) refers to designs with a spinning magnetic disk inside. This is what's in many desktops and many external storage solutions. They went out of favor in laptops 10-15 years ago because they're heavier and larger.

I'd argue with this interpretation. Both of those are true, but not limiting factors to design unless you're building an ultra thin. Particularly weight differences which are ~60g.

The three main reasons were reliability, power, and speed. HDD has spinning parts which can be damaged in a small drop or even if you left your machine running while walking around with it in your backpack. Power is tricky in that SSDs can draw more power than HDDs under load. However for most users that just means less time under load and an overall win. Higher perf SSDs also draw more power. The larger benefit may be that the space that went to a 1.8/2.5" HDD can now be used for more battery.

Lastly is speed which is the one that catches people out. Everyone knows SSDs are faster, but not that they can be 10-100x faster depending on which metrics you're measuring.
https://www.tomshardware.com/feature...arks-hierarchy
https://www.tomshardware.com/feature...arks-hierarchy

[benb]

HDD is really only holding on at all because of the cost vs performance vs storage/$ issues.

If you have enough money (corporate world) and have enough need for performance you will pay up for SSD even if you need Petabytes (1000TB) or exabytes (1M TB) of space.

If you have a workload where you need massive storage and not a huge need for low latency and huge read rates you go with HDDs.

Consumer stuff is just always at the very very far end of "minimize price" and the amount of storage space needed is very small so you end up with SSDs in that 512GB-2TB space being most common. They trade off storage space in most of these notebook & tablet applications to get high performance + low cost.

I still remember being shocked in the early 2000s when someone I knew was working at a company selling a product that fit 1TB of HDDs into a single "cabinet" space (standard full height rack) in a machine room. Now we talk about it like a medium size storage for a consumer device. :O

[Mr. Pink]

Yeah, spinning drives are still a lot cheaper. I have two external 8T drives that copy to each other constantly, third in storage off site. Pretty reliable.

[benb]

I still have 4x 4TB spinning drives in my NAS that we use for backups.

But the crazy thing is they are getting close to 10 years old and we never filled them up.

Stuff kind of plateaued in terms of what kind of storage you need for consumer stuff.

The biggest thing that would move that needle would be if I went and bought one of the newer 45MP mirrorless cameras... I would start sucking down storage space faster.

But I am not that inclined to do that, I don't really have any great need for 45MP and even many new 2024 cameras still have 22-24MP sensors just like mine from 12 years ago. It has been years since I printed anything that pushed the limits of 22-24MP. And I don't even shoot as much as I used to.

edit: Never mind, the newer cameras don't actually take up that much more disk space. They are storing the files more efficiently and they're only like 10% bigger.

I think I would rather buy another bike or guitar than a $4000 camera anyway.

[Mr. Pink]

Originally Posted by benb

I still have 4x 4TB spinning drives in my NAS that we use for backups.

But the crazy thing is they are getting close to 10 years old and we never filled them up.

Stuff kind of plateaued in terms of what kind of storage you need for consumer stuff.

The biggest thing that would move that needle would be if I went and bought one of the newer 45MP mirrorless cameras... I would start sucking down storage space faster.

But I am not that inclined to do that, I don't really have any great need for 45MP and even many new 2024 cameras still have 22-24MP sensors just like mine from 12 years ago. It has been years since I printed anything that pushed the limits of 22-24MP. And I don't even shoot as much as I used to.

edit: Never mind, the newer cameras don't actually take up that much more disk space. They are storing the files more efficiently and they're only like 10% bigger.

I think I would rather buy another bike or guitar than a $4000 camera anyway.

Try layering those 45 mp images up into 3-4 gig Photoshop files, and space goes fast.

And the new Fuji XT50 is "only" about 1350. Not bad.