Why not get a pro 14 instead?

@nullnullffd1 more expensive and smaller screen? apple makes it very easy to climb up the price ladder lol. im not sure if the screen on the 14 is better than the 15, because im pretty sure that color on the 14 is better but i care about brightness more

@ashly_webb Pretty sure the brightness on the pro is better. 24 gb m3 or 18 gb looks to be only $100 more than the 24 gb air.

@nullnullffd1 oh you’re right! do you think the screen size matters

@ashly_webb I don’t think it matters too much, but I also did most of my coding on an external monitor. I’d prefer the active cooling, multi monitor support and higher performance of the pro. Go to an Apple Store or Best Buy and see if you can tell the difference in screen size and how it might affect side by side apps.

@ashly_webb Screen matters, but screen size less so. Subjectively, I'd say that as long as you've got at least a ~14" screen, that's good enough to see plenty of code or put two things side by side; smaller than that and you're going to end up doing a lot more task switching. That said, you will spend a lot of your time staring at text editors and documents; high screen resolution and OLED will both help with that.

What do you plan to study in university?

@josh cs+phys

@ashly_webb Then, as someone who did a CS undergrad and graduate program (and took various classes in physics), I would say that it's going to vary heavily by the university program. In some programs, you're going to have a hard time using a Mac; for that matter, in some programs (though far fewer these days) you're going to have a hard time using a Linux system. In others, you can easily use a Linux system or easily use anything you want. It really depends on the curriculum.

Separately from that, I'd also say that if you do want to get the Mac, get it well before you start university so that you can get used to it. You do not want to be learning a whole new OS at the same time you're taking your classes.

Alternatively, consider going to your first few classes, seeing how it works out, and then based on those experiences, considering either a Mac at your next break, or a nice light Linux laptop that you can move over to with zero friction.

How do you have a personal income of ~100k / yr as a high school student?

@snazzlePop 🤫🧏‍♂️

@snazzlePop yeah this is very "wait holup"

I made almost the same switch (Zephyrus G14 to Macbook M1 13") and haven't looked back.

The biggest question here is are you okay with macOS?

@ProjectVictory yeah, just need unix