My iMac is nearing the end of its life and I’ll be replacing it soon with another Apple product. I use it mostly for creating and editing large (50-400 page) Word documents and slide decks/powerpoint of 50-100 slides, web surfing, research in things like academic journals, and the SDMB. I like editing on a large screen and using a full-size keyboard and mouse, thus the previous purchase of the iMac.
But I wonder if an Apple laptop with a plug-in or Bluetooth monitor, mouse, and keyboard would work as well as an iMac would, and give me the advantage of having also having a laptop. Would there be disadvantages to this? Thoughts on models and specs?
You can probably connect that laptop to your old iMac to use it as a display too. I think choosing a laptop makes a lot of sense.
Earlier today, Apple announced the M2/M3 Macbook Air models will have 16GB (vs 8GB before) for the same price. That’s probably what I’d get since you’re not doing anything crazy like rendering.
I migrated two years ago from a MacPro (garbage can edition) desktop to a MacBook Pro M1 laptop, since the current wave of MacPros start at something like $5K, and I’ve been using it with two external monitors (plus a third monitor on the laptop–I think the regular MacBooks or MacBook Airs or whatever their base model is now only supports one external monitor), and I’ve been extremely happy with the performance. Plus I can easily take my “desktop” with me when I travel. I suspect you would be fine with such a setup.
For over a decade my main computer was a huge Hackintosh tower I made. Full of hard drives and video cards and optical drives. Then, one day, it blew up when I turned it on, and I was not able to fix it economically, so I replaced it with a MacBook M1 Pro Max. The MacBook is much faster and more compatible, and drives the same monitors, plus I can take it on the road.
If I were you, I’d get the MacBook, and pair it with two of these very reasonable montors (I have one so far):
Two monitors? What’s the reasoning for two? Besides “stream Casablanca while working on book”? I need to leave some desk space for my manual typewriter (seriously.)
I use my computer in “clamshell mode,” with external keyboard and Magic trackpad. Having two monitors let’s me segregate my applications - personal stuff (calendar, contacts, email, contacts, messages) on the left, Internet and work-related on the right. And I use both if I need to see two documents side-by-side.
You can never have too much screen real estate.
I’d recommend the Macbook Pro M4 (better internal screen, better support for more and higher-quality external screens, more futureproof, faster in general). It’s a little heavier than the Air, but it’s a very nice workhorse that won’t let you down for anything you throw at it.
didn’t they just today launch the new mac-mini (?) for rel. low money? … it got bumped up from a M2 to a M4 chip and 16mb of ram for 700ish dollars
and i also read it can handle up to 3 monitors - disclosure: i am not a mac guy and just flew over an article, but the consensus was … that is a lot of apple for the money.
I’m surprised by people’s advocacy and use of more screens and more screen space. In 30 plus years of working daily on computers, I’ve never wished I had more space, even when I had to permanently enlarge font size to compensate for aging eyes. I was seriously glad to discover I could replace my current 27" iMac only with a 24" iMac. I can barely imagine what I might do with a larger screen or more screens. This is fascinating. I will ask my colleagues how they work and their screen use.
I use my side monitor for secondary content. For example, if I am working on accounting I might have Acrobat open on the side with an invoice and Quickbooks up on the main monitor. In Teams meeting, I’ll have a PowerPoint or Word doc with source material. If I am coding, I might have the documentation on the side. It really increases productivity.
One thing to be careful of is that any non-Apple monitor is 99% likely to be the wrong DPI for macOS. The target pixel density for Apple’s 5K iMac screens, the 5K Studio Display, or the 6K Studio Display XDR is about 210 dpi. I think the laptops are a bit higher, but that’s the range you’re looking at. All these Samsung, LG, and other PC monitors and screens have lower resolutions for the same panel size, usually in the 150 dpi or lower range. So you’re not going to get the same sharpness for the same screen real estate. Some people don’t notice or care, but some do, so you should do some research first if you’re going with external displays.
It’s what you’re used to, to some extent, but I get frustrated when I only have one monitor to work on. I usually have my laptop monitor set to Mail; my main monitor will run, say, Lightroom; my secondary monitor will usually have a secondary Lightroom display on it, like the grid view/slide sheet. Or it may have Photoshop on it.
Similarly, when I’m using Logic for recording, I’ll have the main screen have the tracks on it, and I might have the piano roll on the second screen, or maybe the instrument editor or the mixing board.
With Photoshop, I use it to move crap out of my way so it doesn’t clutter up my editing space. So basically, most panels/windows get shuffled off to the secondary monitor so I can cleanly work on the image on the primary monitor.
I mean, once you go multimonitor and get the hang of it, you don’t want to go back. My wife is a data scientist, and at the last job, her work sent her not one, but two external monitors to go with the MacBook Pro they provided. (She only uses one monitor external monitor herself, in addition to the laptop monitor. But that’s still a multi-monitor setup.)
I frequently want more screen space. I basically have as much as conveniently fits on my desk.
Have a couple spreadsheets open? Look at that Google doc while typing into word? Maybe keep a window of the sdmb open on the side, for when i want a break?
In general, laptops are harder to upgrade than desktops, but maybe Macs are just hard to upgrade. On the flip side, a Mac laptop (or desktop) will last for years. I bought a MacBook pro mostly so i could plug it into everything without using a lot of annoying dongles. So it has an HDMI port, and a port that reads the card my camera and sound recorder use, and three usb-c ports, and a magsafe charging port. I often use it as a laptop, but when i want to spread out, i connect it to a big external monitor. I also connect a mouse when I play video games (i like the touchpad for most other uses) and i connect it to a time machine back up drive regularly.
If you don’t mind a nest of dongles, the new MacBook Airs are cheaper, and probably plenty powerful.