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rhysgittoes

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 22, 2020
5
0
Hi there,

I’ve posted something similar before but have a bit more info now. Just about to splash the cash on a new macbook.

I'm really torn between a 2020 13 inch pro M1 - base model or a 256 15 inch 2018 pro bought from Ebay.

I save £200 getting the 15 inch

My main uses would be Logic pro, Matlab and browsing. A thing to consider is I have a PC as a main workstation and the M1 doesnt support native windows which is annoying. Also I’m migrating from a 15 inch Alienware which didn’t have an insane keyboard anyway.

Other things to consider:

The New keyboard is "much" better.
Matlab and solidworks aren't optimized for the m1 at all.

The older model is still twice as powerful as my last laptop and has 16gb of Ram.

Is the old keyboard really that bad? Considering I get a dedicated GPU and more screen real estate. And more ports!

Thanks for reading, any help will be appreciated.
 
Last edited:
I can’t comment on your usage as mine is very different, but the thing I do have experience with is the keyboard, and yes, mine definitely is that bad!
 
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Hi there,

I’ve posted something similar before but have a bit more info now. Just about to splash the cash on a new macbook.

I'm really torn between a 2020 13 inch pro M1 - base model or a 256 15 inch 2018 pro bought from Ebay.

I save £200 getting the 15 inch

My main uses would be Logic pro, Matlab and browsing. A thing to consider is I have a PC as a main workstation and the M1 doesnt support native windows which is annoying. Also I’m migrating from a 15 inch Alienware which didn’t have an insane keyboard anyway.

Other things to consider:

The New keyboard is "much" better.
Matlab and solidworks aren't optimized for the m1 at all.

The older model is still twice as powerful as my last laptop and has 16gb of Ram.

Is the old keyboard really that bad? Considering I get a dedicated GPU and more screen real estate. And more ports!

Thanks for reading, any help will be appreciated.

Don't get the 2018 15". The keyboard on the 2019 16", and the 2020 versions of Air and the 2020 versions of 13" Pro (2-port Intel, 2-port M1, and 4-port Intel) is SUBSTANTIALLY better, which is also to say that the keyboard on 2016-2019 13" and 15" MacBook Pros are terrible.

Logic is Apple Silicon native as is Google Chrome and Safari (unsure about Firefox, but if it's not, I can't imagine it won't be shortly). I'd check into how long it will be before Matlab and Solidworks are Apple Silicon native and/or whether either one performs adequately in Rosetta 2 (as most 64-bit Intel Mac applications seem to function fine in Rosetta 2, if not faster than they did on actual Intel Macs). If you need to run x86/x86-64 versions of Windows either via Boot Camp or virtualization on your Mac, you'll need an Intel Mac.

That said, if you ABSOLUTELY NEED to go the Intel Mac route and you can't scale up your budget to either the current 2020 4-port Intel 13" MacBook Pro or the 16" MacBook Pro, you can probably go on eBay and find decent deals on the M1 2-port 13" MacBook Pro's direct predecessor (namely, the now-discontinued "MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2020, Two Thunderbolt 3 Ports)"). There are a lot of people trying to sell them on eBay now that the M1 models are out there. I've seen low-end models of those (1.4GHz 8th Gen i5; 8GB RAM; 256GB SSD) go for between $850-1000. I'd imagine that the 1.7GHz 8th Gen i7 and 512GB SSD models are still below the cost of the entry level M1 MacBook Pro's price brand new.
 
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