Macbook vs windows laptop

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inquisitive_chap

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Hi

I am afraid I lost my enthusiasm for photography so have not been posting recently

My nephew, however, is really into it but he needs a PC. They have no space for a desktop with a permanent monitor and so are looking at a laptop. His Mum likes Macbook Airs which I know are beautiful machines but the latest ones come with 16GB of ram from what I can see which doesn't feel 'future proofed' to me?

I had a look on pc specilaist and think I could pull together an i5 with a fast drive, 32GB of Ram (or even 64GB) and using WIndows XE grpahics for about £200 cheaper.

They are thinking of using Affinity or LR as the software. He takes photos in RAW of nature and birds mainly

Any thoughts of the Macbook vs windows laptop route? (I know Graphics cards help with Lr but I have found on my own laptop they aren't essential)
 
It depresses me a little, I must admit. I think Windows laptops are very aggressively priced, and there is a strong compulsion to stick with that you know. But I find them an uninspiring lot. Whereas I would quite like to go the Apple route. And, well... you know the rest. But, it's not just price. I might be prepared to bite the bullet on that. It's the fact that they don't do the one I want in the size I want. I don't think you'll ever win at this lark. :D
 
I use both and frankly it just comes down to taste.

When you want to get away from basic stuff, though, a particular application software may only be available on one or the other (which is just one reason why I use both).

MacBook and LG17 TZ70 P1030675.jpg
 
Macs use memory differently to Microsoft machines, so you can't really compare. I would say that 16Gb on a Macbook would be fine for his requirements.
 
What Stephen said.

And the MacBook screen is likely far superior to a cheap PC laptop.
 
From my personal point of view, Microsoft's introduction of Hyper-V makes a Windows 10 or 11 system nearly as good as Apple's OS-X for me.
 
I would probably choose the MacBook at this point in time, if they don't mind the Apple operating system. The new M series chips are very fast, efficient and the package light to carry. The screens are tolerable rather than great, and AFAIK there's no touch screen option. But for sheer performance the Mac is hard to beat for the money. They should also budget for a fast external drive for storage unless spending a lot on a big internal drive.

Generally portable computers are not upgradable these days, and should be viewed as not future proof. Some laptops can have memory and hard drive upgrades performed by the user, but it's getting rarer.
 
I too have both a high end windows laptop which I use if I want to game on the go and a MacBook Pro for everything else. If he don’t need it for gaming then Mac for sure.
 
inquisitive_chap said:
Any thoughts of the Macbook vs windows laptop route? (I know Graphics cards help with Lr but I have found on my own laptop they aren't essential)
Click to expand...

M4 MacBook Airs have very good multi-core and single-core performance (IIRC Lr perks up on decent single-core stats).

With any of the AI features in LR (denoising, generative fills etc.), graphics cards make a huge difference to the performance.

As Stephen said, more than 16GB of RAM is a nice-to-have, but not essential. I have 32GB in my 2021 M1 MacBook Pro and I rarely test its limits.

Personally, though, I would be tempted to avoid the 256GB storage configuration and go to 512GB. If you are editing photos and you want to get by without attaching an external drive every time you use it, that gives you a lot more room to work with. I'm not sure about the M4, but for M3 MacBook Air, write speed of the 512GB model was also considerably faster than the 256GB.

With 16GB RAM, if you do use swap (Virtual Memory) the extra free disk space will help minimise any performance hit you might encounter. M-processor Macs handle this with aplomb because the storage is built into the System on a Chip, so storage sits very close by the CPU. That big benefit of the SoC design is why you can get away with less memory than on Wintel laptops, the flip side being that you can't upgrade that storage later.

With the MBA that also gets you an extra couple of cores on the GPU and a beefier power supply.
 
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I bought a M4 Pro 16" MacBook a couple of weeks ago for travelling and to scratch a itch. It's 24gb Ram and 512GB.

My desktop machine is 32GB DDR5 Ram, 512gb SSD and 1TB storage. I have a ASUS ProArt 27" Monitor.

Although the Macbook isn't loaded with this years photos and documents it seems a flying machine over the desktop for using LR, I'm really impressed at the moment.
 
You can't really compare a Macbook with 16G of Ram vs Windows with 32g of ram because the OS handles memory differently and with all the other things put together and my own experience....a 16G Macbook runs circles around "most" windows laptop with 32g of ram (without knowing other spec of the machine.
 
I’ve got a 2021 MacBook Pro 16 M1 Pro Max with 64gb ram.. and 2 TB hard drive. Also got a MacBook Air 2020 m1 with 16GB and that’s… terrific tbh!
 
I recently acquired Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x which uses Windows ARM and a Qualcomm processor, similar to what's in the Macbooks.
It has 1TB hard drive and 32Gb of ram. Is a similar weight to a Macbook air (40g heavier than my wife's M3 with 256GB and 16GB).

The battery lasts for ages, and it is very fast indeed.

The OLED screen is in a different league to the one on the Macbook, and I'd say the keyboard is, too. No silly cut out at the top of the screen either.

I'm a die-hard Windows user and find adjusting to the Macbook difficult (though I haven't given it much chance), so it's been a great choice for me so far.

I use C1 for photo editing and it works very wel indeed.

There is a choice of similar models from HP, Asus and others, all well priced.
 
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