My 2010 air is about to die, in fact I can barely type this on it. I am thinking of replacing with a Macbook, and waiting to order until Monday as I'm hoping will come with new OSX already installed. I was going to order the 1.3 i5 and upgrade to 16GB RAM, is there any point in upgrading the processor? I work with mostly word and web (with multiple windows), I do video and photo but have an iMac at work, and work at a university where I have access to anything I'd need significant on campus. I was thinking of MBP but I travel a lot and my back has already been killing me this week, so even though I might slightly miss the ports (and especially Magsafe, but thats not going to happen) I shouldn't have a problem accessing speed and software whenever I need.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Macbook Advice
- Thread starter blehpunk1
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Especially since this will not be your only Mac, IMO there isn't much reason to upgrade the CPU beyond whatever the base configuration you choose. The base m3/8GB/256GB model would probably be completely sufficient for your needs IMO, if storage is not an issue. Even the base model is a photo editing champ, and it does surprisingly well with CPU-heavy tasks. (I opted for the base 2017 rMB + an iPad Pro to replace my 2016 MacBook Pro 13 and Microsoft Surface Pro. I'm very impressed by how well the rMB runs my Windows VMs considering it is the bare bones base model and it doesn't have a fan!)
It might be a plus to order now instead of next week. High Sierra is going to be a great OS, but it will have bugs, and these bugs could interfere with productivity (for example, when Sierra was released, quite a few Users had issues with major battery drain and some graphical glitches, which were resolved, but this took a little time.) If you buy now, you get a rMB with the stable and refined Sierra, and the option of delaying upgrading to High Sierra until the 10.13.2/10.13.3 revision should the GM and .1 releases have issues that could interfere with productivity. I purchased my rMB when I did to ensure I was able to get one that would support Sierra.
It might be a plus to order now instead of next week. High Sierra is going to be a great OS, but it will have bugs, and these bugs could interfere with productivity (for example, when Sierra was released, quite a few Users had issues with major battery drain and some graphical glitches, which were resolved, but this took a little time.) If you buy now, you get a rMB with the stable and refined Sierra, and the option of delaying upgrading to High Sierra until the 10.13.2/10.13.3 revision should the GM and .1 releases have issues that could interfere with productivity. I purchased my rMB when I did to ensure I was able to get one that would support Sierra.
Last edited:
Thanks so you think 8gb memory is enough for a few years? I had the first gen MBA and it was so slow I was happy when it basically just fell apart and apple gave me the updated version, I paid to max out specs and has been good for the past 6 years or so
I'm doing VMs with 8 GB and the m3 and it is working well with single Win7 or Win10 VMs. Even when running Mail, Chrome, Safari, iTunes, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OmniFocus, and VMWare Fusion on the host OS, and Excel, Visio, SPSS, and Tableau in the Win7 guest VM, I do not notice RAM-related slowdowns (the limiting factor is the CPU's passive cooling - and even with this limitation everything works very well.)
One reason I opted for the base model was because I have a 15-inch MacBook Pro that I use for my more intensive workloads. I find the MacBook compliments it well as my portable machine (especially on days when I'm having back pain as well). Additionally, as the rMB is going to be the machine I use most when mobile, I kind of liked the idea of going with the lowest tier model as the lower investment means I could update it sooner (as it will inevitably wear faster than my MBP15, which is semi-permanently moored to my Thunderbolt dock and external displays as my workstation, and rarely travels with me outside the house.) (Plus, if Apple does incorporate e-ink keys into the rMB or MBP13, I'll replace this system with the e-ink model the day it comes out...)
I‘m surprised reading this. Which problems do you face in detail? Besides some battery issues mine still acts very smoothly, mostly because of the SSD drive. A shame that it runs out of support for High Sierra. Did you ever do a clean install?
Yes 8gb will be fine for your stated use case for years to come and short of a complete change in use case should not cause you any worries.
I think you'll be surprised at how capable the MacBook is and you get 14 days to try it out before you can return for a refund or go with the pro if more performance is needed. Updating an OS is easy, there is no way to guarantee you'll get high sierra installed when you buy for a month or two yet while stocks are sold anyway, so I wouldn't worry about that.