It's been a long time... A long time since I've owned a new mac. I think the last new mac I owned was a 2009/2010 Mac Pro and that was bought by work, when the company went out of business I was able to keep it. I've owned a couple used mac mini's maybe 2012 or so just to mess around with OS X but never kept them long and also an Macbook air from around the same era.
I actually use to work for Apple at one of the apple stores way back before the iphone/ipod (The OG ipod came out when I worked there).
I recently bought a used early 2015 11" Macbook air again for work for the small size, it happened to be a I7/8GB version so still has a bit of legs in it.
After using it for awhile I really liked the changes made to the OS since the last time I've seen it besides in passing.
I've been toying around with getting a new laptop to use with my astrophotography, I have a decent self built PC desktop but sometimes I like to go mobile with my work or when attending star parties. I have a cheap PC laptop, it's a Lenovo with a Ryzen 5000 series I believe, nothing special and just something to be portable.
So I pulled the trigger on a refurbished base 14" M2 MacBook Pro, space gray, I mean I do astrophotography I have to get the 'space' grey (I wish there was Starlight in the pro's)
This is by far the best laptop I've owned, if not one of the best computers I've owned. First it's just beautiful, light, and build quality matched by no other (I expected it to be good). The screen is sublime, since new Macs get three months of Apple TV free I was watching Foundation on it and the contrast and brightness was amazing, as good as any OLED.
The speakers, all I keep saying is how? How can they be that good on a laptop, Apple are bending the rules of physics here. I was laying in bed with the laptop on my stand, ahem belly, watching Foundation and the sound surrounded me, I have never experienced sound that good from any laptop ever!
The keyboard is about perfect for a laptop, no flex, nice response and resistance.
The Trackpad, I hate trackpads, they are always the wrong speed, clicks are questionable but not here. I assume there is some type of haptic feed back and the click is perfect every square centimeter of the pad. It's just the right friction and this is even compared the 11" Air which is nice but has that standard hinge type click.
On to the most important part, the performance. I tested a quick run of integration in Pixinsight, a program used to process astrophotos, the plugin only uses the CPU so it's a good direct comparison to other computers. I ran the same photos though this tool on my 14" MBP and my Desktop PC.
Specs on PC: I7-12700K with mild OC, 64GB DDR4 3600, Crucial 2TB SSD (Among others), AMD 6900XT, so It's not a slouch.
The results of this test, the MBP took 9:06 minutes and the PC took 5:58 minutes. Sure the PC is faster but it consumes so much more power, has 4 times the ram, and double the cores! That's hugely impressive for a laptop that can run for hours and hours on a battery to only by 1/3 slower.
Speaking of battery again, best I've ever seen, period. I've been at work now for almost three hours and only used 11%, sure I'm just doing some web work and spreadsheets but wow!
Also an unfair comparison but just noting. In this same software there is a plugin used to process astrophotos that can use the GPU, but only if you have a M1/2 Mac or a PC with a Nvidia card, my AMD is not used so it falls back to the CPU. The MBP absolute destroys the PC with out GPU support. I was able to run the same process 6 times to 1 time on the PC using the GPU in the M2.
I'm glad I've come back, and this machine is so impressive for the base model. I would love to get a top end one but beyond what I need to spend, I would love to see if a M2 Max could best my PC all while running on battery and doing it in style.
It's a long post but I've been gone for a long time so I had to make up for it. I thought it would be nice to see someone's view from outside the ecosystem for so long.
If you want to check out my astrophotography look up Starlancerastro on instagram or my astrobin account: astrobin.com/users/Starlancer/
I actually use to work for Apple at one of the apple stores way back before the iphone/ipod (The OG ipod came out when I worked there).
I recently bought a used early 2015 11" Macbook air again for work for the small size, it happened to be a I7/8GB version so still has a bit of legs in it.
After using it for awhile I really liked the changes made to the OS since the last time I've seen it besides in passing.
I've been toying around with getting a new laptop to use with my astrophotography, I have a decent self built PC desktop but sometimes I like to go mobile with my work or when attending star parties. I have a cheap PC laptop, it's a Lenovo with a Ryzen 5000 series I believe, nothing special and just something to be portable.
So I pulled the trigger on a refurbished base 14" M2 MacBook Pro, space gray, I mean I do astrophotography I have to get the 'space' grey (I wish there was Starlight in the pro's)
This is by far the best laptop I've owned, if not one of the best computers I've owned. First it's just beautiful, light, and build quality matched by no other (I expected it to be good). The screen is sublime, since new Macs get three months of Apple TV free I was watching Foundation on it and the contrast and brightness was amazing, as good as any OLED.
The speakers, all I keep saying is how? How can they be that good on a laptop, Apple are bending the rules of physics here. I was laying in bed with the laptop on my stand, ahem belly, watching Foundation and the sound surrounded me, I have never experienced sound that good from any laptop ever!
The keyboard is about perfect for a laptop, no flex, nice response and resistance.
The Trackpad, I hate trackpads, they are always the wrong speed, clicks are questionable but not here. I assume there is some type of haptic feed back and the click is perfect every square centimeter of the pad. It's just the right friction and this is even compared the 11" Air which is nice but has that standard hinge type click.
On to the most important part, the performance. I tested a quick run of integration in Pixinsight, a program used to process astrophotos, the plugin only uses the CPU so it's a good direct comparison to other computers. I ran the same photos though this tool on my 14" MBP and my Desktop PC.
Specs on PC: I7-12700K with mild OC, 64GB DDR4 3600, Crucial 2TB SSD (Among others), AMD 6900XT, so It's not a slouch.
The results of this test, the MBP took 9:06 minutes and the PC took 5:58 minutes. Sure the PC is faster but it consumes so much more power, has 4 times the ram, and double the cores! That's hugely impressive for a laptop that can run for hours and hours on a battery to only by 1/3 slower.
Speaking of battery again, best I've ever seen, period. I've been at work now for almost three hours and only used 11%, sure I'm just doing some web work and spreadsheets but wow!
Also an unfair comparison but just noting. In this same software there is a plugin used to process astrophotos that can use the GPU, but only if you have a M1/2 Mac or a PC with a Nvidia card, my AMD is not used so it falls back to the CPU. The MBP absolute destroys the PC with out GPU support. I was able to run the same process 6 times to 1 time on the PC using the GPU in the M2.
I'm glad I've come back, and this machine is so impressive for the base model. I would love to get a top end one but beyond what I need to spend, I would love to see if a M2 Max could best my PC all while running on battery and doing it in style.
It's a long post but I've been gone for a long time so I had to make up for it. I thought it would be nice to see someone's view from outside the ecosystem for so long.
If you want to check out my astrophotography look up Starlancerastro on instagram or my astrobin account: astrobin.com/users/Starlancer/
