Advice to either buy MacBook air M1 og MacBook Pro i5

[Verner123]

So as the title says, I need advice to which on is the best solution. It is for my sister. She will most of all use it to her studies, right now she uses af MacBook air 11 from 2012. The prices for both of them are pretty much the same in my country. The MacBook Pro comes with 

Intel® Core™ i5 quad core, 1.4 GHz

> 13,3" Retina skærm med True Tone

> Iris Plus Graphics 645, 256 GB SSD

 

And the MacBook air, it is the newest model, with 256 SSD and 8 GB ram 

[kelvinhall05]

Will the things she does and programs she use benefit from M1? If it's all first-party Apple stuff, I'd 100% go with the M1.

[Verner123]

she will probably play sims, but that's that, otherwise, it will only use the programs like word, excel, etc. and of course web browser. So I think the m1 chip should be fine for the most part. I will say that I don't know if the m1 chip can play sims. 

[Verner123]

2 minutes ago, Verner123 said:

she will probably play sims, but that's that, otherwise, it will only use the programs like word, excel, etc. and of course web browser. So I think the m1 chip should be fine for the most part. I will say that I don't know if the m1 chip can play sims. 

I looked it up myself and it looks like it can run sims 4 just fine. 

[LpoolTech]

M1 will give her great battery life and good first party software performance, if she needs some other specialized apps they can be hit and miss for now but that will improve with time. 

[kelvinhall05]

6 minutes ago, LpoolTech said:

but that will improve with time. 

We'd hope, but no guarantee.

[LpoolTech]

5 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

We'd hope, but no guarantee.

With Apple moving all their machines to ARM it's a questions of when not if.

[kelvinhall05]

Just now, LpoolTech said:

With Apple moving all their machines to ARM it's a questions of when not if.

And that "when" could very well be when a second generation with other significant improvements is released.

[LpoolTech]

1 minute ago, kelvinhall05 said:

And that "when" could very well be when a second generation with other significant improvements is released.

yes you are correct but these apps will work well on 1st gen as they will be reprogrammed to ARM from x86  

[kelvinhall05]

11 minutes ago, LpoolTech said:

yes you are correct but these apps will work well on 1st gen as they will be reprogrammed to ARM from x86  

My point is that they shouldn't buy the M1 on the assumption that their apps might work in the next few months, because at that point there will likely be a superior version available to run said apps.

[LpoolTech]

Just now, kelvinhall05 said:

My point is that they shouldn't buy the M1 on the assumption that their apps might work in the next few months, because at that point there will likely be a superior version available to run said apps.

I don't want to spam his thread I agree with you, I do but do you think the x86 support will drop and become worse, for example lack of new features updates etc? 

[kelvinhall05]

Just now, LpoolTech said:

I don't want to spam his thread I agree with you, I do but do you think the x86 support will drop and become worse, for example lack of new features updates etc? 

I think Apple will keep x86 support until they believe that ARM support is good enough, at which point they will either label x86 support as a legacy/unsupported feature or drop it entirely.