After many months/years of contemplating updating my ageing MacBook Pro I’ve accepted the reality is that I don’t use it long enough or “hard” enough to warrant a Pro, and that an Air will probably suffice.
What’s my real justification for purchasing a pro Mac rather than more consumer machine?
I’ve argued in my own head that I’d need the ports on the MacBook Pro, and would benefit from the higher spec display. But this is all hypothetical. My external drives are connected through a hub and it’s feasible to do the same after any upgrade.
Today I opened my MacBook today to a notification that had not been backed up in a week. This is the result of using my phone or my iPad rather than using the MacBook at all in the last 10 days. If that’s the case more often that not then what’s my real justification for purchasing a pro Mac rather than more consumer machine? It’s not in frequency of use and certainly not in software or use cases.
Instead I should save my money and go for the Air. I can always return and upgrade to an Air if I really need any more horsepower or need the additional ports to function. I can address the port limitations of the Air with a hub, either what I already have or something new. I don’t actually need a TB4 dock so I can forgo my aspirations for such a brick sitting on my desk, where I’d use 5-10% of it’s real potential.
What does this mean? Until Apple bless us with a new range of M4 MacBook’s Air, then I should press the order key and finally get some hardware from this decade.
But I’ve been here before. So I’ll have to wait and see is this is relevant in a few months.