Apple MacBook for school/photography

Joined
Apr 13, 2019
Messages
76
Location
Alaska
Wanting to hear from some guys within the hunting community with similar demands from their computer about what my best option would be.

Background: My 2012 MacBook Air has finally given up on me and become a paper weight. Looking at getting a new computer and wanting to stay within the Apple system as everything I have is Apple and the cloud system/operating systems have become very intuitive.

Requirements: Will be used for grad school, which requires very little of a computer (Word, Excel, Zoom, etc). This is where I need your guys help. I’m a hobby photographer and I really feel my major lim factor has been post processing up to this point. The 2012 MacBook Air just didn’t have the power necessary to move around raw files and work within the adobe creative cloud (Lightroom, photoshop). It took forever to do anything and it’s pushing me towards the MacBook series. I can get school discounts on the 2020 models so from what I’ve read up on it seems like I might as well just stay with the new line. For guys that shoot a couple thousand pictures a year (no desire for videography), can I get away with the base model 13” MacBook and a 1 TB external hard drive to hold the bulk of storage, or should I upgrade to the next level of the 13” model for the increased memory and processing speeds while still running the external storage?

I’ve looked on YouTube and read what I could, but I’m not literate when it comes to Computer specs and wasn’t able to find any reviews coming from someone who had the same demands of something similar to a hunter/amateur landscape photographer. Any help would be appreciated, but preferably guys with experience on MacBooks would be able to chip in. Thanks!
 

Stalker69

WKR
Joined
Apr 12, 2019
Messages
1,801
I have no clue what you just asked, but will bump it to the top for you, so you may get a response.
 
OP
jacob_ski4
Joined
Apr 13, 2019
Messages
76
Location
Alaska
Thanks for the bump Stalker, ended up going with the upgraded version of the MacBook Pro and am glad I did.
 

Marbles

WKR
Classified Approved
Joined
May 16, 2020
Messages
4,392
Location
AK
You can. The 16gb ram upgrade is worth paying for. A USB C external SSD is faster than most computer hard drives, so I would not pay Apple for more than 500gb internal storage. I do thing the macbook pro is worth the price increase from the air. I would also get one with the M1 chip and skip the Intell macs.

Edit: on further review, just get the M1 512gb air with 16gb ram. It appears the M1 chips don't get hot enough to gain much from the fans of the pro. The brighter screan of the pro would be nice, but the stupid touch bar is annoying.
 
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