So, my little brother recently got into a computer science graduate program and I am thinking about buying him a laptop as a congratz-gift. He can’t decide between a 13" macbook pro or a 13" macbook air - or perhaps mac isn’t really for CS students and I should just get him a windows laptop instead?
He has a decent windows desktop at his apartment so he will use the laptop only while he is in class/library/traveling. He is also a pretty heavy computer gamer so he will be playing all kind of games on the laptop - hopefully doing some computer programming as well.
So, my little brother recently got into a computer science graduate program and I am thinking about buying him a laptop as a congratz-gift. He can’t decide between a 13" macbook pro or a 13" macbook air - or perhaps mac isn’t really for CS students and I should just get him a windows laptop instead?
He has a decent windows desktop at his apartment so he will use the laptop mostly while he is in class/library/starbucks/traveling. He is also a pretty heavy computer gamer so he will be playing all kind of games on that laptop - hopefully doing some computer programming as well.
Max out the amount of RAM you can put in the box you choose. I forgot if its the Air or the Pro (or both) but whatever RAM comes with the laptop will be soldered in place so you cannot expand. - Someone help me here.
If high end graphics are important then you’ll choose the pricier model.
Peripherals will probably be needed such as an external display, storage, keyboard (definitely keyboard). These do not have to be Apple brand peripherals. Apple laptops come with all the ports you’ll need.
You can run OS X, Windows and Linux on a Mac. You can’t do that with a PC.
Lots of developers use Macs.
The MacBook Air is a powerful, light machine, but it gives up the Optical drive and some storage.
The MacBook Pro is somewhat bigger, but faster and more flexible.
Looks like my post got wiped out in the other thread. Here is the repost:
Max out the amount of RAM you can put in the box you choose. I forgot if its the Air or the Pro (or both) but whatever RAM comes with the laptop will be soldered in place so you cannot expand. - Someone help me here.
If high end graphics are important then you’ll choose the pricier model.
Peripherals will probably be needed such as an external display, storage, keyboard (definitely keyboard). These do not have to be Apple brand peripherals. Apple laptops come with all the ports you’ll need.
I went to MIT for graduate and undergraduate computer science (graduated in 2009). Macs were everywhere. Because Mac OS is a full-fledged UNIX variant, they are enormously better than Windows for doing academic research, programming, development, etc. Essentially no one in the department used Windows - everything was either a Mac, or a PC laptop running Linux. And you’d definitely want to go with a Mac if you have the cash.
I would go with the 13" MacBook Pro (retina display). It is small and portable enough to easily take to class, and the high-resolution display is great for writing code on the go. He can always hook it to his monitor at his desk if he wants a big screen. I would’t bother with the Air, unless he weighs like 100 pounds and can’t stand any additional weight. I carried a 15" MacBook Pro all through college without a problem, and it was quite a bit larger than today’s model.
I think the 11-inch MacBook Air is the way to go, unless he plans to watch DVDs on it. It’s only a kilogram, so can go almost unnoticed into a backpack. It truly feels like an object from the future. When I go to meetups of coders or to tech incubator spaces, nearly everyone in the room is using one.
At home, mine drops into a pocket attached to the back of my 22-inch monitor and there’s a full-size keyboard and mouse on the desk. But—and this is the relevant point—there’s no need to think twice about unplugging the four connectors and putting it in my daypack just in case I want to use it for something.
I don’t know anything about gaming, but I understand that’s not the Mac’s strong suit.
I am trying to answer the question I asked in Post #4 above regarding memory upgrades. I found the following posted May 10, 2013 on the Macworld site. If you have a more current link, please add. The Comment section at the bottom of the article is interesting.
“Apple adopts a locked-down approach toward many of its Macs, including the MacBook Air and the Retina MacBook Pro. On these Macs, RAM is factory-installed directly on the motherboard as onboard memory. As a result, you can’t upgrade the system’s RAM later; on the other hand, this approach allows Apple to make laptops slimmer and more portable. In Apple’s current computer lineup, the Mac Pro, the 27-inch iMac, the Mac mini, and the non-Retina MacBook Pro have user-upgradable RAM.”.
I’m a MBP user and I’d recommend the 15" retina. I know this doesn’t help you because it counters what everybody else has said. I’m an software engineer and I like the larger size of the 15". I have a 14" at work and it feels too small.
He can put multiple OSs on the Mac - get one with a big hard drive so you can do it. The Mac OS is Unix based - far better for CS than the Windows OS. The Windows OS partition will be for games. And if he needs a Linux partition for classwork and the Apple flavor of Unix doesn’t cut it, he can build out a third partition. But yeah, lots of RAM, lots of drive since basically you’d be building two or three - maybe more - computers on one piece of hardware.
I’d put the Linux in a Virtual Machine, VirtualBox is free.
I’ve done plenty of work in Linux VMs, both on Windows and OSX laptops, and it was no bother at all. Hell, I pretty much worked for five years as a sysadmin in a VM as they insisted on me running Windows for email.
Not really. In fact, I suspect that lagalots’ brother will soon find that most of his professors will be using Macs.
Linux is great for the various dev tools that a CS researcher might need, but there are occasional uses for productivity software like Word and Excel, support for which sucks on Linux (if I see one more CS presentation using Beamer instead of real presentation software, I’ll shake someone). The opposite is true on Windows: the productivity software side of things is fine, but installing dev tools, or even getting a useful LaTeX environment up and running, is more of a pain than it needs to be. Macs get you the best of both worlds.
lagalots: If your brother wants to play games, it’s fairly easy to install BootCamp to boot into Windows when necessary.
Edit: realized I forgot to make a recommendation between the MBP and the MBA. The MBA is much more portable, but the MBP will be more powerful. If you get one with a retina display, it can also be cranked up to a much higher resolution (though, oddly, the default resolution will appear lower than the MBA’s), which can be useful when doing a lot of coding where it’s nice to see more code on the screen at once. If the choice, however, is between the Air and a Pro without a retina display, I’d get the Air.
This right here would make me a bit leery of the Mac idea. I’m a professional software engineer and part-time CS grad student myself—for getting work done, I’d take OS X over Windows by a mile, because OS X is Unix-like and well-suited to programming work. But I’m also a PC gamer, and there are quite a lot of games that are Windows-only.
What does his Steam library look like? Would he be able to play most of his favorite games in OS X, or does he have a lot of Windows-only titles?
(Yes, I know there’s Boot Camp and all that, but this is a laptop and one might start running short of hard drive space. The 256 GB SSD in the Macbook Air may or may not be enough for games once it’s split into two partitions with two OSs, depending on how many games he plays.)
The problem is that this will be used for school, so he’s probably going to need to bring it to campus now and again. Unfortunately desktops are bad for that, but also laptops are not known for their gaming abilities.
My husband is a pretty heavy computer gamer, and his computers are all Macs. I’m a PC person myself. But BootCamp and a Windows partition and he’s had fewer issues with games than I have.
Now, his gaming machine is a big desktop Mac, not a MacBook. But if you skip the Air and max out a Pro with a 1 TB drive, you should have enough space. The issue will really be the cost. I’m a PC girl because I can do what I need for really cheap with PC hardware - run Office, surf the net and play games.
(Note that he has a desktop gaming machine AND - being shipped right now - a for work Macbook. He isn’t trying to play games on a laptop. I don’t know anyone who seriously games who has been happy with a laptop for gaming - be it Apple or Windows)
Speaking as someone that has a Master’s in CS… the choice of OS doesn’t really matter that much. I used Linux, many of my classmates used Windows or Macs, but we were all able to work together pretty easily. I don’t think which OS you get will matter so far as productivity goes.
I would ask your brother first, because he’s the one using it, but if you insist on surprising him and you insist on choosing between the MBP and the MBA, I’d go for the Air, simply because it’s lighter, and if he’s taking it between classes dropping the weight would be a big advantage.
I’m an software engineer and I like the larger size of the 15". I have a 14" at work and it feels too small.