MacBook Pro vs iPad Pro

[A1423]

Good morning everyone,

I have been bitten by the indecision bug on what to do.

Choice's:

Buy an iPad Pro M2 between $2 and 3k out the door (somewhat limping along to see what the M3 has in store for next year. or just downgrade my lifestyle a bit).

Buy a MacBook Pro now and then possibly sell it next year. Price tag over $4k- 5K+ out the door. (M2 Max with 64gb of ram and a 2tb or 4tb HDD).

Going with the base MBA 15 instead of the iPad, even though the iPad has a better screen.

I don't really have a portability problem with a 4.7 pound laptop, but I'd be lying to say it wouldn't be easier to bring an iPad around.

Use case is:

Web browsing
Outlook
Word
Excel
Virtual machines for fun(I know the iPad doesn't do this)
Managing 3 complex networking systems some offsite. They have an app, but it just isn't yet as feature rich as the web UI.

For those with iPads that had similar use case, or those that have tried one to achieve a similar result. What did you find?

Thank you for your time.

 

[russell_314]

From your post it sounds like you just have money burning a hole in your pocket. If that’s the case, by all means spend 5k on a MBP. Just don’t expect much of a return on your maxed out MacBook Pro when trying to sell it later. A little bit of upgrade sometimes makes it easier to sell than the base model but often people don’t want to pay so much for major upgrades.

From what you’re trying to do, I would say the ideal device is a base model MacBook Air.

My suggestion is by the right tool for the job and then if you want a toy, you’ll have plenty of money left over. You could buy a fairly decent x86 desktop computer to play around with virtual machines for not that much $$$$. You’ll get a lot better return for your money then you would with buying hardware from Apple.

 

[A1423]

From your post it sounds like you just have money burning a hole in your pocket. If that’s the case, by all means spend 5k on a MBP. Just don’t expect much of a return on your maxed out MacBook Pro when trying to sell it later. A little bit of upgrade sometimes makes it easier to sell than the base model but often people don’t want to pay so much for major upgrades.

From what you’re trying to do, I would say the ideal device is a base model MacBook Air.

My suggestion is by the right tool for the job and then if you want a toy, you’ll have plenty of money left over. You could buy a fairly decent x86 desktop computer to play around with virtual machines for not that much $$$$. You’ll get a lot better return for your money then you would with buying hardware from Apple.

I don’t really have that, but I do have the budget for the computer. I’d rather the less expensive option though.

I tried an M1 Pro with 16gb of ram and ran out of ram using a program. When that program was off, I was very close to hitting the physical ram limit just using office. Which would put me in the 32gb of ram camp. Since I keep my computer past their “vintage” time and I like buying more computer than I need as I feel my user experience is better across the life of the computer. I upgraded the storage because I’m going to have to download all my photos and videos from iCloud(over 1.5tb) at some point during the next decade, and may decide to just store them on my computer rather than an external drive.

I was thinking about doing that as well. I could get a decent dell at Costco for $1200 that would work well for this.