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Who here Be honest is doing Professional level work Paid salary and working on a MacBook Pro

T

TheRealAlex

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Sep 2, 2015
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I want to ask MAcBook Pro owners among you all who here is doing Professional level industry work on their MacBook Pro ?
Like you either have a career in Video Editing, Production, Printing, Publishing, Music, Photography and make a Living income based off work done on a MacBook Pro And Why ?


Why use a laptop and not a Mac Pro desktop why is a portable necessary ?
 
TheRealAlex said:
I want to ask MAcBook Pro owners among you all who here is doing Professional level industry work on their MacBook Pro ?
Like you either have a career in Video Editing, Production, Printing, Publishing, Music, Photography and make a Living income based off work done on a MacBook Pro And Why ?


Why use a laptop and not a Mac Pro desktop why is a portable necessary ?
Click to expand...
Why didn't you mention programmers?
 
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jerryk said:
Not sure if this is qualifies, but a lot of us developers get paid a lot for the work we do on our MacBook Pros.
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Developers count too if that’s your routine source of income. I just don’t mean the FauxVelopers who buy a few Software packages a MacBook Pro attend a few conferences but never really produce anything. I can be A “Developer” tomorrow in name only I’d be a FauxVeloper.
 
I am a web developer and the portability is nice. I like doing all my work from one machine so I don't have to create a mirror of my setup when I'm on the go. Saves me time, and performance wise, laptops are good enough now that there's not a huge difference from a desktop for my use case.

I still have a desktop but I only really use it for non-work stuff (ie. gaming). Also, buying a Mac Pro would still cost me more than the MBP + a regular desktop with a top of the line graphics card.
 
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jrichards1408 said:
Why didn't you mention programmers?
Click to expand...

I missed it, and also unless a persons regular source of income is from being a Programmer or Developer then there’s a lot of FauxVelopers or FauxGramers out there.

But of a person really needs a MacBook Pro specifically and their routine source of income is from Programming/Coding then yes that’s Professional level work.
 
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TheRealAlex said:
Developers count too if that’s your routine source of income. I just don’t mean the FauxVelopers who buy a few Software packages a MacBook Pro attend a few conferences but never really produce anything. I can be A “Developer” tomorrow in name only I’d be a FauxVeloper.
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Then real developers make a lot of money with MacBook Pros. In the Valley they are sort of the standard issue computer. At many companies they issue you one on day one. And throughout your time they replace them with upgrades every year or two.

I am a contractor and in my tiny company we replace laptops (MacBook Pros or Lenovo) ever year or two.

But in my case I use my desktop with Windows 10 or Linux, or cloud instances for most of my heavy work. More resources (multiple GPUs, unlimited storage, etc), better peripherals (multiple 24 or 27 inch monitors, full size keyboard with MX switches, big mouse), nice sound system with good speakers providing a great sound stage, etc.

I most often use a laptop in a mobile scenario, or to code and watch TV at the same time.
 
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If being a researcher and developer in the industry counts, then yes, I have always been doing all my work on a MBP. Portability is a necessity: you might want to check on your stuff remotely, bring the computer to a meeting to show something to a colleague or client, go on a business trip, and so on... or, well, just crash on the sofa and read up some stuff.

I work on ML/AI and for anything more computationally demanding than prototyping and debugging I need to offload my experiments to a server anyway, so no need for a beefy desktop workstation (and Mac Pro would be especially useless since it doesn't support Nvidia GPUs, which is a must in this field).
 
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TheRealAlex said:
I missed it, and also unless a persons regular source of income is from being a Programmer or Developer then there’s a lot of FauxVelopers or FauxGramers out there.

But of a person really needs a MacBook Pro specifically and their routine source of income is from Programming/Coding then yes that’s Professional level work.
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There's a army of bloody developers doing it for a living!

More so then photographers bro!
 
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Sterkenburg said:
If being a researcher and developer in the industry counts, then yes, I have always been doing all my work on a MBP. Portability is a necessity: you might want to check on your stuff remotely, bring the computer to a meeting to show something to a colleague or client, go on a business trip, and so on... or, well, just crash on the sofa and read up some stuff.

I work on ML/AI and for anything more computationally demanding than prototyping and debugging I need to offload my experiments to a server anyway, so no need for a beefy desktop workstation (and Mac Pro would be especially useless since it doesn't support Nvidia GPUs, which is a must in this field).
Click to expand...


Agreed if you are doing ML/AI you need Nvidia GPUs and cudaDNN or proprietary accelerators like a TPU. I work the same way.
 
Passingby said:
Pointless question. People have been using laptops for 30 years for their jobs. 20+ years for media creation.
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Agreed.

The majority of professionals are using computers still and whether or not they choose a Laptop, Desktop, Workstation, or anything else will largely be governed by what they are optimizing for and the benefits offered by the form factor for the work product they are producing. After all, their computer choice is just another tool in their arsenal.

All vehicles will take you from one place to another, but that doesn't mean all vehicles should be a Toyota Prius.
 
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✋

Love the OS reliability and the ability to truly multi task without worrying about slowness / viruses etc..

Well its a company paid MacBook Pro retina. But I still had the option to use Windows.

Programmer/ Server side developer ..
 
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One weakness in Apple’s product lineup is that if you want a portable with a large screen you have to buy a MacBook Pro. I am a translator, so I don’t really need a super powerful computer for what I do on my job (it’s essentially just word processing) but I do need to be able to see more than one document at a time, plus reference materials like dictionaries at times.

And I do edit video and photos as a hobby so it’s nice to be able to do that without any problem as well. But if I could get a thinner, cooler and cheaper version of the MacBook Pro that still had the same size screen, I would definitely do it.
 
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I travel the North America for work and with VMs and data analysis I am often using a significant portion of the power of my 2019 15". It's an incredible machine to have with you at all times on the road.
 
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TheRealAlex said:
I want to ask MAcBook Pro owners among you all who here is doing Professional level industry work on their MacBook Pro ?
Like you either have a career in Video Editing, Production, Printing, Publishing, Music, Photography and make a Living income based off work done on a MacBook Pro And Why ?


Why use a laptop and not a Mac Pro desktop why is a portable necessary ?
Click to expand...

Why do you assume that pros only have and use one device?
Assuming they only use a MBP, there are potentially a million reasons for it. I don’t think you need our input to understand why someone might want a powerful, portable computer.
 
Software developer here who uses a work issued macbook pro. Before that I used work issued thinkpads. Portability is convenient even if it is only going down the hall to a meeting. 20 years ago it may have been a trade off of power for portability, but not anymore for most use cases when it comes to laptops.

The last desktop I spent my own money on was just to play games and that was 10+ years ago.
 
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I'm not sure this is even a valid question. I know many software developers — including my partner — who currently use MacBook Pros due to their portability since they can pretty much work anywhere (coffee shops etc). Software companies normally give allowances for laptop purchases for their employees every couple of years.

My partner prefers to work outside than at home for (unlimited supply of) food and drinks which he doesn't have to prepare himself — hence the MacBook Pro. When we used to move countries every few years, our daily drivers were MacBook Pros. We didn't own a desktop then because it was very hard to move with it. Now we have an iMac which my partner uses mainly for gaming. We're considering switching to eGPU setup which is more convenient to move around and more upgradeable since we're expecting to move around again after I graduate.

Many professors in my school use MacBook Pros for lectures — slide presentations. They obviously cannot lug a heavy (i)Mac (Pro) (with no monitor) to go from one lecture to another. They also use MacBook Pros to present their research in conferences.
 
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TiggrToo said:
[Ponders as to if this thread should be Wasteland chow]

Is it me, or is this a rather pointless thread? I mean, we use the computer we do because, well, we do. End of.
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yes, asking why a portable is necessary is a bit of a stupid question !

I have a desktop and am replacing it with the 16" MBP. I wonder why.........

Also used in professional fee earning design work. Some of us work in more than one location, funnily enough.
I also think this 16" is good enough to replace my desktop now. I am impressed with the speed so far, but not the fans.
 
i'm an engineering phd student where i work mostly in medical image acquisition and reconstruction, image processing and signal processing in general, and training DL models.

for any type of extreme data processing we offload work to servers mostly on RHEL, but i do a lot of prototype/algorithm testing on my 16" MBP. i also do some programming/software development for medical imaging toolboxes. for those uses the 16" is really nice.

i plan on getting a mac pro, installing an nvidia gpu and putting linux on it to do some local DL testing, but for getting publishable data, most will be done on a server.
 
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