Looking to purchase my first Mac of any kind and need advice. If I choose the 2020 MacBook Air, I’m definitely planning to upgrade to the i5 processor, and leaning towards going with 16GB of RAM. I’d rather not spend the extra $200, and certainly don’t want to go above $1299, but I would like to keep the MacBook for 7-8 years if possible. It will only be used for basic tasks and streaming videos and/or music. Key questions are should I upgrade to 16GB of RAM, is this the most useful upgrade for $200, or should I wait and see what the new MacBook Pro looks like? I’d love to wait and see if the rumored 14” MacBook Pro is worth considering, but who knows if it will even be out in 2020, and if I want 16GB of RAM, then I’m probably looking at $1499 when I don’t even need the extra power of the Pro right now.
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Need advice on first MacBook
- Thread starter Jonathan-Z
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the MBP would be complete overkill for your use case. I'm going from a MBP to the new MBA because I have the same use case as you and dont need the horsepower. The i5/8gb/256gb model would be more than enough for what you need it to do. I would try to squeeze in the 16gb just because you are planning on keeping it for a long time, but its not super critical, mostly a nice to have kinda thing in my opinion. In order of importance if you ask me, is the i5, then the ram and lastly the ssd because you can always use external storage.
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Any notebook computer produced by Apple in the past 5-7 years can handle your mundane usage case.
Hell, my five-year old iPad mini 4th generation and eight-year old iPod touch 5th generation can do basic tasks, stream music and video.
You don't appear to need a CPU upgrade from your planned usage. The best use of extra funds would be 16GB RAM because operating systems and applications tend to demand more memory as the years go by.
Since you are streaming media, there's no compelling argument to stack up on extra storage either.
Hell, my five-year old iPad mini 4th generation and eight-year old iPod touch 5th generation can do basic tasks, stream music and video.
You don't appear to need a CPU upgrade from your planned usage. The best use of extra funds would be 16GB RAM because operating systems and applications tend to demand more memory as the years go by.
Since you are streaming media, there's no compelling argument to stack up on extra storage either.
Like @noles1983 I'm thinking about upgrading from my 2011 MBP to the new Air. Plenty of power for my needs and a really compact form factor. My heaviest use case is the videos I edit 3 or 4 times a year.
My priorities are SSD space, then memory, and processor upgrades last.
My priorities are SSD space, then memory, and processor upgrades last.
MBA is the way to go here. My usage is broadly similar to yours, and the MBP is too much.
I’ve specc-ed up my incoming MBA with 16GB to future proof it, and gone for the i5, to keep things snappy, but I could probably have gotten away with the i3.
I’ve specc-ed up my incoming MBA with 16GB to future proof it, and gone for the i5, to keep things snappy, but I could probably have gotten away with the i3.
I have your same approximate use case, adding in writing and some light photo editing, and I'm still doing that on a 2015 MBA with a dual core processor and 4GB of RAM. It does get laggy occasionally, but I'm sure if I went with an i5/8/256 in the new model, it would handle my light workload for 5+ years. Upgraded to 16GB RAM, it would do it with ease.
Go with the basic model if you need to save some bucks (depending on where you live, the addition of I5 and/or RAM can be pretty expensive). I have been using my Air 2012 + 8GB RAM with similar usage case as you for 8 years now with no issues (have even run VirtualBox a VM on it, and used Beamer to stream to my Apple TV).
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I think the base model MacBook Air will be fine for your use case. I think the danger on this forum is a lot of people cant comprehend that others have more basic needs and that you need to pay more than necessary to "future proof". As someone else mentioned their 2015 air can do all this with half the ram and no issues.