Considering switching to Mac from windows

[st@rkiller]

Hello Guys!

After using Windows for many years I'm considering switching to Mac and would appreciate some advice and suggestions from you guys. I'm a computer science student majoring in cybersecurity so I'll be using lots of different softwares, I also like to keep learning different things so occasionally I'll be exploring different domains of computer science and engineering like data science and AI, game development, software development, IoT development, robotics, etc. I would be running a couple of virtual machines as well maybe like 2-3, one linux, one windows (probably).

So far from my own research, I believe the M4 Pro chip with a 24 GB Unified memory should suffice but as I understand Macbook pros are machines built to last for maybe around 7-8 years with software updates support maybe even 9-10 years so I'm looking to future proof my machine as well. In that case, I think 48GB would be the way to go but I'm still not sure.

Also, I want to know about this nano-texture display thing, is that a real thing or just a gimmick for a quick cash grab? Is it worth the extra money? I mostly work indoors away from the sunlight, but occasionally i get the sunlight on my screen when I have to sit and work somewhere beside a window like in the university library.

Any and all advice and suggestions are appreciated, thanks in advance!

TLDR:, Considering switching to Mac from windows, I'm a computer science student and need advice.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

RAM is integrated into the SoC, which basically means - whatever you start with, is all you'll ever have. If you do plan to keep the Mac for multiple years keep that in mind - e.g. if you start working with LLMs or larger/multiple VMs more RAM is certainly handy.

Nano-texture definitely does the job but it's more of a chore to clean. I personally avoid it.

 

[Ed_m]

I would suggest M4P with 48gb of RAM and 1tb. I have the 14" and the machines is a joy to use. Well worth the money. Good luck with you purchase!

 

[russell_314]

I’m going to throw my two cents here and like everything you can take it or not.

Price a Mac based on the specifications you use now with a slight upgrade. For example, if 16 GB of RAM is working for you now consider 24 GB. Then price the Mac with all these “future proof“ upgrades. Remember your future proof MacBook is going to be considerably slower than even a completely base model MacBook five years from now. Figure out in your head if it’s worth spending that much money extra right now versus in five years just getting another MacBook.


I know some people keep old computers, running forever and I love old computers, but they are not fun as an everyday device. Sure you can still browse the web, but if you’re trying to do anything processor intensive, it gets painfully slow.

At about five years there’s going to be enough improvement in the new model that you won’t want to use the old model. Especially if you’re doing cutting edge stuff like AI. Just for AI alone there’s a big jump from M3 to M4 and that’s only one year. You’re not going to want to use a computer that’s multiple times slower so you can keep it for a decade. Think about using a MacBook Pro today from 2017 (8 years ago) with a 7th gen Intel processor. Battery life even with a new battery would not be great. Even if it was maxed out at over $3000 it’s not even in the same class as a base M1 MacBook Air that you could buy right now for maybe $700. Granted there was a processor change by Apple during that time, but who knows what’s going to happen in 5 to 10 years.

 

[raythompsontn]

For your use case I would give serious consideration to the base model M4 Air. It will have plenty of capability to run what you currently have. I ran two virtual machines in 16 Gig of RAM without any issues. I limited the amount of memory to Linux to 4 GIG and Windows was 8 GIG. There was some swap involved but the SSD is so fast it is not noticeable. Swapping is not a continuous thing and only happens when switching Apps. Trivial process.

In a few years when, or if, you need more then you can upgrade. In my opinion the M4 will be a viable machine for many years to come and obsolesce is not going to be an issue. The Air is just about the best laptop for the introduction to the Mac world.

There will be a learning curve. Especially the use of the copy, cut and paste key sequence. Thumbnails of images cannot be cut and pasted as in Windows as the images in the Mac world are just pointers to the images. A list view is necessary to cut and copy.

Drag and drop works a little differently than Windows in the Mac world so some adjustment is necessary.

In Windows each app has its own menu bar. In Mac the menu at the top changes to whatever app currently has focus.

Clicking the red X in the corner does not actually end the application in Mac whereas Windows it closes the app. The window controls are on the opposite side of the App window.

There is no backspace key in Mac. It can simulated with a keyboard combination. The delete key works the same as the backspace key in Windows so there is effectively no true delete key, which as I mentioned can be done with a key sequence.

Be careful of the Autosave some apps do automatically. When saving it is necessary to sometimes revert rather than save. The behavior is not the same among all applications.

 

[ChrisA]

Hello Guys!

After using Windows for many years I'm considering switching to Mac and would appreciate some advice and suggestions from you guys. I'm a computer science student majoring in cybersecurity so I'll be using lots of different softwares, I also like to keep learning different things so occasionally I'll be exploring different domains of computer science and engineering like data science and AI, game development, software development, IoT development, robotics, etc. I would be running a couple of virtual machines as well maybe like 2-3, one linux, one windows (probably).

So far from my own research, I believe the M4 Pro chip with a 24 GB Unified memory should suffice but as I understand Macbook pros are machines built to last for maybe around 7-8 years with software updates support maybe even 9-10 years so I'm looking to future proof my machine as well. In that case, I think 48GB would be the way to go but I'm still not sure.

Also, I want to know about this nano-texture display thing, is that a real thing or just a gimmick for a quick cash grab? Is it worth the extra money? I mostly work indoors away from the sunlight, but occasionally i get the sunlight on my screen when I have to sit and work somewhere beside a window like in the university library.

Any and all advice and suggestions are appreciated, thanks in advance!

TLDR:, Considering switching to Mac from windows, I'm a computer science student and need advice.

I was a Computer Science major years ago. I can tell you that you will not always be a student. In a few years your situation will change. You will have a real job, and buying a computer, or two or three, will not be a big deal. You should not be concerned with making a 2025 vintage mac last unitill 2034.

But today I can see why upoi might want to run a few VMs or other contriners. If there is anything that will use up RAM it is running VMs. 24 GB is a good minimum starting place if you intend to regularly run multiple virtual machines.
But will you run these VMs all the time or just now and then for a couple hours. Do the VMs really have to run on the Mac. Perhaps you can dumpster-dive and old Intel PC andsetup a Linux server to host ther VMs? Or you buy an old Intal Mac Mini for $125. That is what I did and it is running headless with a VM and Docker

Do you really want those VMs running on your primary notebook computer? And if VMs were not bad enough AI training is worse in terms of how it will kill ther computers performance on other tasks. You can offload all of that to the cloud or a cheap Intal box and leave you primary computer free for important stuff like YouTuibe cat videos or whatever.

OK, still want top run on the Macbook? Then yes 24GDB is a good start, 32 would be better.

 

[st@rkiller]

I’m going to throw my two cents here and like everything you can take it or not.

Price a Mac based on the specifications you use now with a slight upgrade. For example, if 16 GB of RAM is working for you now consider 24 GB. Then price the Mac with all these “future proof“ upgrades. Remember your future proof MacBook is going to be considerably slower than even a completely base model MacBook five years from now. Figure out in your head if it’s worth spending that much money extra right now versus in five years just getting another MacBook.


I know some people keep old computers, running forever and I love old computers, but they are not fun as an everyday device. Sure you can still browse the web, but if you’re trying to do anything processor intensive, it gets painfully slow.

At about five years there’s going to be enough improvement in the new model that you won’t want to use the old model. Especially if you’re doing cutting edge stuff like AI. Just for AI alone there’s a big jump from M3 to M4 and that’s only one year. You’re not going to want to use a computer that’s multiple times slower so you can keep it for a decade. Think about using a MacBook Pro today from 2017 (8 years ago) with a 7th gen Intel processor. Battery life even with a new battery would not be great. Even if it was maxed out at over $3000 it’s not even in the same class as a base M1 MacBook Air that you could buy right now for maybe $700. Granted there was a processor change by Apple during that time, but who knows what’s going to happen in 5 to 10 years.

I see what you're saying and this does make a lot of sense, thank you.

 

[st@rkiller]

I was a Computer Science major years ago. I can tell you that you will not always be a student. In a few years your situation will change. You will have a real job, and buying a computer, or two or three, will not be a big deal. You should not be concerned with making a 2025 vintage mac last unitill 2034.

But today I can see why upoi might want to run a few VMs or other contriners. If there is anything that will use up RAM it is running VMs. 24 GB is a good minimum starting place if you intend to regularly run multiple virtual machines.
But will you run these VMs all the time or just now and then for a couple hours. Do the VMs really have to run on the Mac. Perhaps you can dumpster-dive and old Intel PC andsetup a Linux server to host ther VMs? Or you buy an old Intal Mac Mini for $125. That is what I did and it is running headless with a VM and Docker

Do you really want those VMs running on your primary notebook computer? And if VMs were not bad enough AI training is worse in terms of how it will kill ther computers performance on other tasks. You can offload all of that to the cloud or a cheap Intal box and leave you primary computer free for important stuff like YouTuibe cat videos or whatever.

OK, still want top run on the Macbook? Then yes 24GDB is a good start, 32 would be better.

I'm not gonna be running the virtual machines all the time, and I'm not planning on having any kind of server or anything. One vm is gonna be kali which i use to learn how to use linux and also for ethical hacking and CTFs. The other vm would be a windows machine just to use it for applications that i can't run on a mac. There are some VMs which provide for a practice environment for ethical hacking so maybe i might have one of those as well. So in total maybe 2-3 VMs, that would run for a couple hours at a time and not all the time. And also I'll be holding on to my old laptop for some time, which currently has windows 10 but I'll upgrade it to windows 11 soon.

 

[st@rkiller]

RAM is integrated into the SoC, which basically means - whatever you start with, is all you'll ever have. If you do plan to keep the Mac for multiple years keep that in mind - e.g. if you start working with LLMs or larger/multiple VMs more RAM is certainly handy.

Nano-texture definitely does the job but it's more of a chore to clean. I personally avoid it.

I'm not a Big Data and AI major so i won't be using the machine mainly for anything AI related. However, I would definitely be exploring the domain just to get some basic to intermediate inside knowledge that gives me an idea on how the underlying technologies that power LLMs and AI applications work. AI does have a role to play in Cybersecurity as well but as of now I'm not sure to what extent. There's a subject which I'll be having in my final year called AI for cybersecurity, the description of which is below:

"""

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a popular solution for building smarter and safer security systems. AI assists in keeping pace with cyberattacks by predicting and detecting suspicious network activities and automating incident analysis. In this subject, students learn how AI techniques are used to prevent cyberattacks and detect threats and network anomalies, in conjunction with issues related to cybersecurity. Students will gain practical experience in developing strong cybersecurity defences using AI. Topics covered in this subject include fundamental AI techniques for cybersecurity, machine learning-based malware detection, automatic intrusion detection, and securing data with machine learning.

"""