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Choice between Macs

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SloumaGamer

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 12, 2023
60
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Hi everyone , I’m buying a new MacBook this month for university studies for tasks such as Ai & IoT engineering , which one between this two should I choose from 😅 ?

1) MacBook M1 Pro 14 inch (16/512gb) [used]

2) MacBook Air m3 (8/256gb) [brand new]

The only difference apart from being used or new is that the newer m3 cost 250$ more than the M1 Pro

Thanks
 
Can you put them beside one another? I don't think there's a wrong choice and ultimately it's your machine. Some people are going to say you should have 16gb of RAM as a minimum, others are going to say you wouldn't notice a difference. In my mind, if you can get away with the newer, lighter machine, that's why the MacBook Air exists. It's the new base model MacBook.
 
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JonnyMacx86 said:
Can you put them beside one another? I don't think there's a wrong choice and ultimately it's your machine. Some people are going to say you should have 16gb of RAM as a minimum, others are going to say you wouldn't notice a difference. In my mind, if you can get away with the newer, lighter machine, that's why the MacBook Air exists. It's the new base model MacBook.
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Honestly 8gb of ram is so low in today's standards, and I worry that it will not allow me to code at ease or use any AI and ML without using swap which will damage the Mac earlier
 
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SloumaGamer said:
Honestly 8gb of ram is so low in today's standards, and I worry that it will not allow me to code at ease or use any AI and ML without using swap which will damage the Mac earlier
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I think you're overthinking this. Why are you hesitating if your concerns are pointing you toward an obvious choice?
 
Look at the ram. The second one only has 8 gigs and is pretty much usable as a Chromebook and nothing else. If you do actual work, get at least 16 gigs. 16 is the modern minimum, unless you are running a Chromebook.

The M1 Pro is still a very capable chip. Don't count it out just because the M3 is newer.
 
SloumaGamer said:
Hi everyone , I’m buying a new MacBook this month for university studies for tasks such as Ai & IoT engineering , which one between this two should I choose from 😅 ?

1) MacBook M1 Pro 14 inch (16/512gb) [used]

2) MacBook Air m3 (8/256gb) [brand new]

The only difference apart from being used or new is that the newer m3 cost 250$ more than the M1 Pro

Thanks
Click to expand...

You will be carrying this computer around with you, smaller is better.

But on the other and the your use case, AI and IoT Engineering you will want to have multiple large text windows open at the same time and reference material open in a browser. This is impossible in a small notebook computer. The best option is a small easy to cary notebook (the M3 air) and then buy a larger 27" 4K monitor or even two of them to use at home. As for AI, except for simple textbook problems, mostly this is done on cloud servers using the notebook as a terminal

Storage is the same way. It is nice to have a big drive in the local computer but you do NOT want all you data on a notebook. The cloud is great because then you can use some other computer. Mst universities have many public access computers, if your data is on the cloud, then any computer on Earth is good as long as it has Internet access and a terminal app that can run ssh. Apple makes this easy.

With 8/256 the M3 is really stripped down but if it is noticeably lighter then you will actually take it with you. And seriously, any real work is done at your desk where you have a much larger screen and the AI heavy lifting has to be done on cloud servers with $20,000 GPUs.
 
Here's my advice:

1. Ask your school, and some professors, for their opinion.

2. Look at your textbooks and see what the requirements are.

3. IF YOU'RE ATTENDING A USA SCHOOL, don't forget you have core classes, and some may require Windows software to use.

If You need to run Windows, I suggest the M1 because of the RAM.

I also believe the M1 can drive two monitors, while the M3 can only drive one. The more displays the better.
 
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