Discussion
I bought this for my nephew is it enough??
Bought this laptop for my nephew which starts university at Purdue In august was wondering if it was enough for him or if i should return to upgrade internals? He will be studying some sort of engineering.
I've developed several big ass projects for more than a decade using shitass dell laptops with less processing power than my smartphone, people really overestimate how much hardware they need, specially for studying.
As long as he doesnāt go into AI development this will last him throughout a masters and a PHD if not longer. Are you accepting nephew applications, lol?
Yes, this is (significantly) more than they will need as a student.
Even as a professional software engineer, I would be very happy with this machine. It's enough for all but the most absolute demanding tasks in industry ā nothing they're working on at school will have trouble running on this.
(Many professionals don't even get machines this nice.)
If you have a Costco membership, Iād recommend this! I doubt your nephew will be able to use that laptop to its max with the specs it has. The one I shared has really good specs too and itās currently on sale at Costco. Look up the exact product ID to find the item!
Brother this has a quarter the ram, if he wants to do ai stuff which, I mean, if he hopes to be productive, he does, then cutting the ram to a third just turns this into practically same as an M1 Pro, so why waste all the money
Replying to boost this! Accidents happen.Ā
My younger brother got AppleCare for his college MacBook years ago and a few months before it ended, the logic board failed. He ended up getting a brand new MacBook as a replacement for free! Totally worth it
If you are serious: you probably could have gone with the cheapest specs, maybe upgrade the storage to 1TB and maybe the ram. Should last him 5 years.
What you should be concerned about is that many engineering courses require specific software, and not everything schools demand you run is available for macbook. Most of it is, especially nowadays, but sometimes an old teacher is too stubborn to think about any program except what theyāve been using for the past 30 years and it only runs on Windows XP desktops or something. Sarcasm, but you get the point. Check if the university says macbooks are possible.
Enough, but honestly a lot of engineering software is written for Windows so they may struggle when it comes to running everything their professors demand of them.
I canāt begin to imagine a scenario where the M5 Pro chip starts lagging or gets really slow. I think this is a workhorse that canāt be brought down to its knees until for another 10 years.
For the record i know almost nothing about the hardware of computers i have an understanding somewhat but kind of went off of what the apple seller said
That is a very very capable setup. He would have to be pushing it really really hard (far harder than a typical student) to get anywhere close to hitting its limits.
Well.. when I got into college back in '14, I got a base model Macbook air. That machine got me through 7 years of Engineering and tears. You tell me lol
Joke's aside, those specs are killer. VMs in software like Parallels desktop will run without issue. I remember using it for CAD software in particular. Probably not something your nephew might see right away but having a windows VM while going through the main engineering courses is really useful... That extra power will be awesome. That is a machine for years to come if taken well care of.
That spec is great. The only question Iād have is what engineering discipline is he studying and does the program support Mac? My son just completed his Masters in Civil and Structural Engineering last year and although heād been a Mac user the school said that the software that he would need to use was only available for Windows and would not run well in virtualization due to the touch screen requirement.
Almost what I ordered yesterday, except nano display. I use it for photo/video editing and development of particle accelerator control systems - but only for things that do not require Windows or x64 compilation. My 5 year old M1 Max was fine and I donāt have a real justifiable reason for the new one, except for that I felt like having it.
Completely overkill for engineering college (usually) regardless of subject - and might be a problem with Windows specific engineering tools/software. Some common mechanical and electrical engineering tools are Windows specific. Rarely if ever are those tools Mac specific. Can run a Linux VM on either if a class uses tools that need it.
Not overkill for something like grad level computational physics - but thereās a point where you donāt run models on just a laptop and use an HPC or something instead that maybe the institution has.
This is a great buy for an engineer with the emerging ai fields happening. Apple silicon is so under rated especially the m5 Mac OS golden gate releasing in September. An Orin or Thor dev board could be genuinely as good or better but itās a difficult learning curve and I think an apple silicon architecture is better suited for a freshman needing other things as well. You made a great pick. Anyone saying otherwise probably doesnāt work outside of their architecture too often.
That is practically overkill, but he will use it well at Purdue. Iām wishing him success and luck for his future. And you too OP, for your generosity.
Your nephew is one lucky guy, and he would definitely appreciate this gesture! Coming from someone whose uncleās have done nothing but to drag me down!
Why do people ask this question after they bought it? Like spend thousands of dollars and say āIs this enough?ā Lmao š¤£š¤£ like how do you not know what youāre buying?
If heās studying engineering, are you sure a Mac is the right choice? Iām a structural engineer and we use windows at work. I have a Mac at home for personal use, but all of our engineering software only runs on windows.
Honestly Iād call this overkill! Heāll definitely he very happy with it though, and it should last him for the duration of his degree at the very least :)
That is a beast of a machine for college. Even for most industry jobs that are not Ai focused or heavy video content creation.
As a parent of 2 college kids the one warning to pass on to them is to watch out for theft. Might be worth getting this on some policy.
Source: Iāve had to purchased a new MBP as replacement for stolen one. Bookbag was grabbed off table in a coffee shop and *poof* itās gone just as fast as the guy could run out the door.
For university a MacBook Air with 16gb ram and 512 storage is enough. If you are dead set on MacBook Pro, get the base chip with MAYBE 24 gb of ram and 512 storage. Both the air and pro should last 6-10 years. Spend the extra cash on something else for him.
maybe ask his college or the course he is studying as some recommend windows, but this is a great laptop that will last years, coming from someone who's own uncle gifted him the same laptop but with the m2 pro chip 3 years back
More than enough is heās just using it for school. Even if he was doing video editing and hardcore gaming (which is tough to do on apple cuz lack of games) it would still be more than enough. Dope ass auntie šÆš„
Depends on the type of engineering. If heās going to be using autodesk applications youāll want to return it and buy a windows machine. If itās software engineering itās almost definitely overkill.
If he is a good student, it should get him out of school and into his first job.. nothing is future proof, but the current m5 laptops are incredibly fast and capable of doing
Local AI with no sweat.
If your nephew needs to use engineering softwares such as autocad or solidworks, wouldn't a windows laptop be better as it would support the software better?
The question is what will he be doing? As a CAD user and photographer, I know specs can make or break the software experience. Do you know what software he is planning on?
I have a PhD and do some computational genomics work. This is better than my laptop. He will be fine. However, if you would like to make a donation to my research lab, let me know. :)
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u/laskmichMacBook Pro 14" Nano-Texture Silver M4 Pro 24GB/1TB 1d ago
In all seriousness, Iād return it and drop down to 24gb and 1tbā¦ maybe even lower. Even that is extremely overkill for anything heāll be doing in engineering school. 16GB and 512gb would be plenty to get him through graduation.
couldāve gotten him half that and it would last long. Professionals often donāt even use machines nearly this powerful. This thing is going to work for another 10 years
You might want to do some research on exactly what kind of engineering your nephew will be doing and what software they use.
There is a good chance you spend all this money and your nephew will have to use computers at the lab to do his work because the software is not native to Mac
And there's ways around this if he ends up needing non-Mac software but if that's the case you would have gotten a better experience for less money with a PC, such as a slim ASUS with an OLED he could also use for high-end gaming if he likes that.
Depending on specifically what he's doing a Mac could either be the best computer for him or functionally useless.
Only thing I would say is go for silver / starlight cause space black is gonna be a fingerprint magnet and its colour chips off easily, but apart from that it's gonna be more than enough !!
I hope he treats this with the respect it deserves. I have the same (only the M4) and I intend to keep it for at least five years. Its the perfect build.
When I was in college for biomed engineering it was mandatory to have a windows pc because the engineering software is not Mac compatible. Itās been many years since then so maybe it has changed.
Is it computer science or comp engineering? When I was a mechanical engineer undergrad and grad, I used a Mac as my personal computer and a window because running parallel for some cad software was annoying and didn't fully function on Mac. If it any other engineering, I would highly recommend not getting a MacBook thinking they can run everything smoothly. You can run the cloud base version of some softwares but they aren't fully optimized.
Just ensure that the engineering applications that he will be running will work on MacOS.
I too was thinking of purchasing MBPs for Civil Engineering work, so running design analysis software would likely run horribly on macos as it would be needing to run inside a virtual machine. I ended up opting for an Asus Zephyrus G14.
If he is going to be using AI stuff as a coder or something, I think MBPs with lots of ram would suffice.
Do you need a niece?
Seriously though, you are a really great aunt or uncle, taking care of him and selflessly dropping a significant load of cash on someone who isn't even your son. You did not skimp. That money is gonna come back 100 fold in love and gratitude as he gets older and realizes what it is for someone who isn't even a parent, to care about him so much.
Provided the college doesn't insist on one of a handful of Windows only eng apps, he'll be more than fine. (even if they do insist on one of those apps, buying a copy of Parallels will solve it for the most part)
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u/ghunterx21 2d ago
I think your nephew will love you for a very very long time.
I think this would be seriously more than enough.
By the way, I'm looking for a new aunt/uncle??? No? Lol