Need help buying a Mac! Calling all Mac advocates!

[Platinum 8180]

Ok, so I have been looking into preparing to buy a laptop for the future (ie. Uni or College). I am looking at either base MacBook Airs or a low-end base MacBook Pro in 2019. I have a Windows PC now for real workloads but I want to get a Mac laptop because 1) Macs are the only way girls will talk to you, 2) For quick, painless(-ish) use, like Microsoft Office, I feel that Macs are better based on past windows laptop experiences, 3) Good to broaden my OS knowledge for potential jobs and interoperability, 4) Lightweight and easy to carry around and make a good, well-known impression. My only concerns lately that I need help with are, 1) Compatibility with a potential NAS that I plan to set up (ie. what file formats are compatible to use and what to look out for when setting up remote drives in finder or disk utility) and 2) that I am probably missing a whackton of things to take into consideration. All I need is for a few Mac experts to help this poor PC guy make the right choices please! Thanks ahead of time!

[PlayStation 2]

@DrMacintosh

[DrMacintosh]

Air

[Lord Vile]

I would go for a higher storage air over the base Pro. I have a 256 air and it’s been great to me, I have a PC for gaming and after using a MacBook windows is rather frustrating so be warned for that. 
 

Personally don’t use office on it I use Pages, Keynote and Numbers. However they all can be exported to office formats for use on windows machines but I’m not sure if they can do it the other way around. 

[Platinum 8180]

2 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

I would go for a higher storage air over the base Pro. I have a 256 air and it’s been great to me, I have a PC for gaming and after using a MacBook windows is rather frustrating so be warned for that. 
 

Personally don’t use office on it I use Pages, Keynote and Numbers. However they all can be exported to office formats for use on windows machines but I’m not sure if they can do it the other way around. 

Perfect, thanks a lot for the office and OS advice, this is greatly appreciated!  

[PiPi636]

Personally own a MacBook Air 2017 that I use for pretty much everything. Agree with Lord Vile that a higher storage air is a better purchase than a base model pro. Both the office apps from Apple and the office suite from Microsoft work perfectly fine. I do prefer to open documents in the app they are created in; exporting and importing don't always play nicely with everything (SmartArt in Microsoft Office is a great example).

 

I don't really understand what you mean by 'missing a whackton of things'... I never had the idea that I couldn't do something. You might sometimes need a minute to figure out the 'Mac way' to do something, but there was never anything I completely couldn't do.