Hi all, I need some help deciding which device to buy: MBA or a 14" Pro? Is a new MBP overkill for my situation? I want 16GB RAM and 2TB storage. That's a fully spec'd MBA (7 or 8 GPU, the $50 won't make a diff), or a low-level MBP.
This is a personal project I've wanted to do for a while, and I've got a good tailwind of finally starting to do it. I'm starting work on cleaning up our personal media (photos and videos) situation going to back to 2011. We have everything pre-2021 in Onedrive. Currently at 550GB, but I'll cut into that as I go. I've been cleaning up photos and videos by day (thanks to the nifty OneDrive "On this day" feature), deleting dupe photos and unnecessary videos, converting some videos from 4k down to HD (via iMovie) when I deem it unworthy of needing to be 4k, etc. My next step will be to (gently) sort through my wife's and my Photos (Apple app) that start in 2019. She has 300GB or so, and I have 200GB or so. You may notice the years overlap, and that is something I'll have to work on as well.
Here's where the question comes in: needless to say, this project will probably take me a year or more to do, probably 2 if I'm honest with myself (it's just a hobby, still have a day job and family to take care of), but one thing I don't like is that I don't have a device capable of keeping ALL this media on hard drive. Even with a great internet connection, I'm still stuck waiting to stream videos that have been offloaded from the device (OneDrive or Photos, both are set to "optimize storage" or equivalent) before I can watch/edit/delete them. I'd like to keep both my wife and I signed into the same device so I can hop between Photos accounts as necessary, which means 16GB of RAM is a necessity. (We tried two users on the MBA, but the 8GB RAM is really limiting as we've gone along with using it.) I'd also like to sync all media TO the device (no optimization) so the 2TB (future-proofing here) storage is also a necessity.
With educator discounts, the MBA is $1799 and the MBP is $2389.
All that being said, I love ProMotion on my 13 Pro and iPad Pro. I'd be lying if I said a part of me doesn't want it on a laptop. I do LOVE the MBA keyboard (compared to my work-issued XPS 13 for instance) and speakers (again compared to downward facing XPS's), and it's just an awesome laptop. I know this doesn't count as "Pro" work, but does any of this use case scream MBP over MBA? Is there a solution I'm missing here that could save me "having" (
) to buy a new Macbook?
Thanks in advance!
This is a personal project I've wanted to do for a while, and I've got a good tailwind of finally starting to do it. I'm starting work on cleaning up our personal media (photos and videos) situation going to back to 2011. We have everything pre-2021 in Onedrive. Currently at 550GB, but I'll cut into that as I go. I've been cleaning up photos and videos by day (thanks to the nifty OneDrive "On this day" feature), deleting dupe photos and unnecessary videos, converting some videos from 4k down to HD (via iMovie) when I deem it unworthy of needing to be 4k, etc. My next step will be to (gently) sort through my wife's and my Photos (Apple app) that start in 2019. She has 300GB or so, and I have 200GB or so. You may notice the years overlap, and that is something I'll have to work on as well.
Here's where the question comes in: needless to say, this project will probably take me a year or more to do, probably 2 if I'm honest with myself (it's just a hobby, still have a day job and family to take care of), but one thing I don't like is that I don't have a device capable of keeping ALL this media on hard drive. Even with a great internet connection, I'm still stuck waiting to stream videos that have been offloaded from the device (OneDrive or Photos, both are set to "optimize storage" or equivalent) before I can watch/edit/delete them. I'd like to keep both my wife and I signed into the same device so I can hop between Photos accounts as necessary, which means 16GB of RAM is a necessity. (We tried two users on the MBA, but the 8GB RAM is really limiting as we've gone along with using it.) I'd also like to sync all media TO the device (no optimization) so the 2TB (future-proofing here) storage is also a necessity.
With educator discounts, the MBA is $1799 and the MBP is $2389.
All that being said, I love ProMotion on my 13 Pro and iPad Pro. I'd be lying if I said a part of me doesn't want it on a laptop. I do LOVE the MBA keyboard (compared to my work-issued XPS 13 for instance) and speakers (again compared to downward facing XPS's), and it's just an awesome laptop. I know this doesn't count as "Pro" work, but does any of this use case scream MBP over MBA? Is there a solution I'm missing here that could save me "having" (
) to buy a new Macbook?Thanks in advance!