Using a 2014 Mac Mini booting to an external ssd, with only 4gb of ram, and an early 2015 13’ MacBook Pro with 8 gb of ram, going to upgrade the storage to 1tb and install a new battery.

Both given to me via my neighborhoods Buy Nothing Group on Facebook.

Not the latest and greatest, but they serve a purpose for me.

currently writing this from my 16" M1 Pro, great laptop, it is a bit big and heavy tho

i got it as a starting uni gift so its been mainly used for homework and other internet dumbshittery and a bit of lightroom

I’m currently on an M2 MacBook Air, which I got almost the minute they went on sale last summer. It is, hands down, my favorite Mac ever, and I loved my clanky old SE/30 like almost nothing else, so this is saying something (hehe).

I’m using it for client work (graphic design), extremely casual gaming (mostly stuff from Apple Arcade, so Arcade is perfect for me, really), and the usuals: socials, web stuff, etc. etc.

Favorite Mac apps? Hmm. I’m currently playing with MacWhisper, and it just amazes me how good it is, even using the smaller, free-to-use language models. I’m transcribing audio for the husband’s online classes, when he posts feedback videos for his students, some of whom would also like a text transcript to accompany his video responses to their in-class posts, and it’s just shockingly good.

I live in the Affinity suite (Designer, Publisher, and Photo) most of the day for client work.

What would I change? Hrm. I had a two-port 13" MacBook Pro before this, so I’m used to just the two available thunderbolt ports, but it would be handy to have one more over on the right side of the case, sometimes. Not a major gripe, at all, just a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have.

Otherwise, this little guy just runs and runs and runs all day (I get about 15-16 hours on battery, depending on what I’m doing), and it runs everything I can throw at it without blinking. If it ever throttles I literally never notice it.

It really is the best Mac I’ve ever owned. 🙂

M2 Air.

Use cases: planning to crush it with music/audio, video editing & voice-over, software development, and art (tablet, etc).

Peripherals: will be getting said tablet, good microphone, video camera/DSLR live feed link, and some sort of audio controller and/or looper.

Fave Mac apps: I feel like a complete n00b to say that the only app I’ve used long enough and was an actual joy to use, was iMovie. I’ll be grabbing a strong IDE for dev work. But I’ve only just begun.

Gripes: alleged limited support for just one external display. I’ve read there’s ways to add more, but it gives me a twitch after Windows laptops that always seemed to do it by default.

Also I’m unsure whether to use my cheap, Amazon USB hub I already have - for connecting monitor(s?), peripherals and power - because some sources say it could hurt the M2. Not sure if that’s warranted or FUD.

Long story:

I was raised on PCs, from Tandy 1000 to MS-DOS 6.22 to Windows 8, because of school/cost/marketing/parents’ limited knowledge.

Finally in my late 30’s I got to use a 'Pro for work (startup, software job), and even though I had to quickly learn ‘the Mac way’;

It took everything I threw at it.

I had to let go of the Pro after that job, but randomly later I was editing a video on a Windows laptop w/ Movie “Maker”, which took 4 days of slow-downs, glitches, restarts.

I then grabbed my girl’s older 'Air and recut the whole thing (in iMovie) in 1/8th of the time.

So CUT-TO last week; a friend said he wanted to sell his M2 'Air 15.x", 2 months old, because it was bigger than he thought and doesn’t have desk-space in his small condo. He bought it new for $1700, but only asked for $1k for it (!?) (Yes; there’s a receipt).

I couldn’t-not.

I’m not religious about Mac vs PC. They both have their pros & cons. I just haven’t given enough time to the other side. So the clock starts now.

…

[Downloads CallOfDuty_Installer.exe]

Mac Studio M1 Max, 32 GB, 1 TB SSD (but a bunch of external hard drives) + Apple Studio Display.

I use it mainly for video editing and graphics stuff. Well, sometimes for little gaming.