First MacBook Pro in 7 Years
Hey there! Pretty excited to be back in this world.
I had been a Mac user since my first iMac G4 in 2003 but switched to Lenovo when I started doing a lot of productivity work in grad school in 2019. I needed a new computer, was already using a Google Pixel, and my brother lent me his new-enough Lenovo and it just worked for me.
Fast forward to now and my second Lenovo X1 Yoga, a 2021 Gen 6 with 16GB RAM and Intel i7 processor was just unusable. I was waiting for Qualcomm X2 chips to hit an updated Surface Laptop but rumors of chip shortage delays pushed me to start looking back at the Mac world. I was prioritizing a clean experience, battery efficiency, build quality, and general performance.
It's been a long time since I was doing serious video and photo editing and while it comes up from time to time, I knew I didn't need anything too crazy. Most of my use now is executive level work, lots of emails, and my business is fully in Google Workspace, so at this point, I'm effectively platform agnostic, but I'm tech savvy enough to know what I'm working with and to appreciate the differences between configurations. I do run some home lab equipment with a Ubiquiti network, NAS, M4 Mac Mini 16GB/256 base config, and GMK M3 mini PC running UNRAID (Plex, etc), but not running any local LLM's - at least yet. I'm not a real programmer so not compiling code or anything.
At first, I was looking at an M5 15" MacBook Air and even ordered one on sale from B&H with 24GB/1TB, but had pretty immediate buyer's remorse when I was looking at MacBook Pro's on sale too. After a lot of internal debate, consulting Reddit forums, and a trip to Best Buy to look at the machines in person, I started a return for the Air and picked up a 14" M5 Pro 24GB/1TB in Space Black from my local Best Buy. The improved thermals of the Pro, the screen, the slightly more compact size were my main factors. I definitely stretched my budget a little bit going for the Pro chip, but I'm glad that I didn't get sucked into any higher specs than that. I did briefly consider 48GB but for what I'm doing, I think that would have been overbuying.
It's fun to be back on a Mac after so many years. Most of the muscle memory for shortcuts and menus is there but I do need to get used to Command vs Control keyboard location again. Still running my Google Pixel 10 Pro though. One thing at a time!