The Journey to a New MacBook
Introduction
Over the last couple of months I have realized that the Mid-2020 MacBook Pro (Intel Processor) I am using to do all my work and run my company was starting to struggle. I've known for a while that the battery life was just not cutting it for quite some time. I've also had some weird things where the mac would struggle syncing with my other Apple devices.
Combine that and some other issues with a desire to change how I work and that means I have a machine that isn't really suited for what I want it to do. So I've been trying to work through what makes the most sense for me from a workflow, budget and style of work standpoint.
It's been an interesting journey. You would think it just wouldn't be that difficult, and maybe I made it more difficult than I needed to, but when you want to be sure you are spending the right amount of money on the right machine and think through it the way I do, it's never easy. Let me try and take you through my journey.
What I Mean By Computer
For me, a computer is something that allows me to run my business. I'm not really going to get hung up on tablet vs. phone vs. laptop or desktop computer. What I want is something that allows me to get the things done that I need to. For purposes of this article, put aside the more fun aspects like watching videos, reading, etc. Let's focus on getting work (paid or volunteer) done.
What Do I Do On a Device and How
So that leads to the question of what do I do on my computer. It's actually less complicated than I thought. I do run my company but that company doesn't have a lot of complexity, at least from an administrative standpoint. I use spreadsheets, online services, email and a few other things to handle the administrative stuff.
When it comes to my consulting clients, my computer is actually the main device I use to communicate with them (vs. using my tablet or phone to communicate in my personal life). Almost everything is done via email and then using collaboration tools (think zoom, teams, etc.).
The more compute intensive things I do are around the two podcasts that I host and produce, Leaders Lift and Gadgets4Families. The podcasts have both a video and audio component as well as content creation (blog posts, graphics etc.).
Let me give an example here. Typically Tuesday is my g4f day. We record in the morning and then I edit and publish the episode for release on Monday. It's a most of the day effort. Up until this new machine, most of the time was spent at my desk because it was easier to use my set up there and I also had a concern about battery life. If I did more than an hour or two of editing on the old computer, I was going to need to plug in.
This is a good example of what I did vs. what I would like to do. What I would like is to be able to grab my computer and walk away and not have to worry about computer power or battery life and work from anywhere in the house, the back porch or maybe the local library. I haven't done nearly as much of that as I would like.
When I am at my desk, I have two additional monitors besides the built in screen. That's probably one more than I need and honestly, I can do almost everything on just the laptop screen and not get too frustrated.
When I'm recording, I have multiple additional peripherals attached. I use my previous iPhone as my recording camera and I have an external usbc microphone.
I also have to account for camping. Most of the time I have easy access to power but I'd like to not have to worry about that whether I'm in a campground but don't want to drag a power chord out to the picnic table or if I'm dry camping and only want to run the generator a couple of hours a day so my computer battery needs to be very efficient.
What I Wanted to Avoid
That should give you a good idea of what I'm looking for but here are a few things I'm not really looking for or wanting to deal with.
Opening a hole in my home network so I could remote into a desktop from anywhere I could get an internet connection.
This eliminated any of the desktops right off the bat.
Spending more time administering a machine than I do using it.
This eliminated windows for me. Not that I ever really considered it.
This also almost eliminated the Mac considering some of the challenges I have faced recently.
Spending more money than I really needed to.
While I am really enjoying producing videos and podcasts, the jury is still out on whether that will justify what most creators might spend on a new machine. We just aren't there yet.
Feel free to have this article go viral so that changes :)
Why This Was a Tough Decision
All of those things combined to make this a very difficult decision for me. Not that I needed something but to go in the direction I did. What I really would like is a set up similar to what I had when I was managing all of the mobile efforts for a large company. I worked off of a 12.9" iPad Pro (even back before stage manager, mouse and real monitor support). Then, when I had the need, I had a windows environment that I could connect into from the iPad. That was ideal.
So if right now I could get a solid iPad Pro that could handle the majority of my work and then I could remote into a virtual MacOS environment for the heavy lifting, I would be all in. The problem - that doesn't exist today. I'd love for Apple to make that happen. I'll go so far as to say that if this was a subscription and was more expensive than all the other subscriptions I currently have put together, I would most likely be the first in line.
iPad's just make so much sense for how I work. Other than some of the podcasting and video effort, everything else I do is pretty straight forward. I use Apple's built in apps and Microsoft's Office suite, all of which are amazing on the iPad. Combine that with how much easier it is for me to manage iPad OS vs. MacOS and the much tighter integration with my phone (the Mac is getting better but it's not there yet) and that's a win for me.
Besides the virtual MacOS, the other thing that would trip me up on this, is the number of hoops I would have to jump through to get everything to work, especially recording the podcast with Jason. He records on an iPad and is using voice memos of all things. But because we need to see each other and because we want to publish video, we also have a zoom meeting going (I'm looking into better solutions). Because he can't do both at the same time on his ipad, he is on the zoom on his iphone. It works fine but there are some editing and post processing hoops I have to jump through.
If I was also on an ipad, it would complicate this even more. I'd have even more post processing work to do. And that's not even considering how the iPad would handle exporting 90 minutes of hd video. Right now, that's just too many hoops.
What I Purchased
I've hinted at this and if you are reading this after listening to or watching the show, you already know what I got.
In the end, the hoops I would have to jump through plus the fact that I don't want the current version of the iPad Pro pushed me to a Mac. I would have like to wait until that new iPad came out to see if Apple eliminated the hoops, but I was just having too many problems with my current Mac to wait possibly six months or more.
I purchased the based model 14" MacBook Pro with the M3 Pro chip. By base model I mean I stuck with the base processor, base memory (18gb) and base SSD (512gb).
After the Apple event, this is not what I thought I would purchase. I had in my cart the machine that upgraded both the memory and the SSD. And even when Jason and I talked through it on the show, he agreed I should update the SSD. I deliberately did neither.
Why No Upgrades
While I knew I couldn't get by without the pro chip (driving multiple monitors), I was still debating the other upgrades. What I ended up doing was figuring out exactly how I use my machine. That's absolutely the most important take away from this whole situation.
As I went through this process I realized that while there is more information than you I would ever need to help with this (and almost any other) buying decision, it was even more important to know what I really needed.
After I made my purchase, there are many many moments where I was watching a video or listening to a podcast talking about the new machines were I had a gut check that maybe I had made the wrong decision. I had to constantly remind myself why I made the decision I did. Let me walk through the two upgrade (or non-upgrade choices I made) in the hopes that you might get a thought about your own situation.
First the memory. The general rule of thumb is to get as much memory as you can afford. That's a good rule and one I have almost always followed in the past. This time, that upgrade would have been the most expensive piece of upgrading the machine. So what I did was watch how much I used the memory over the course of working on some of my most intensive tasks (which are not the things I do most often). What I found was that I was almost never maxing out the memory. If I combined that practical and personal use info with the fact that the memory I had would be significantly less efficient and powerful than what I was getting and that I was getting more anyway without upgrading, I felt safe not pulling the trigger on that very expensive upgrade.
For the SSD size, this was a bit more of a debate and took maybe just a small leap of faith. I wasn't really running out of space on the same size of SSD in my old machine, but I knew that as I did more and more video that I probably would use more space. But like the memory, I decided to see how I was really using the space that I did have. What I found is that the vast majority of what is on my hard drive is also available in one cloud service or another. That meant that I didn't need to keep everything local.
Now you might ask what about when I'm camping and don't have internet. Well, normally I know when that's going to happen and I can pull down anything I think I might not need. But I also know that most of the files related to the podcasts, I don't need once the next episode has dropped. So if they are in the cloud or sitting on a backup harddrive somewhere, odds are I won't need to access them. For my key clients, their files are much smaller and I can keep all of them easily on my drive if I need them.
This is another example of where if I listened to others, I would probably have upgraded but when I actually went in and looked at my usage, I just couldn't justify it.
Some of you may be asking how much more those upgrades would have cost. Probably between $600 and $1,000. That may not seem like a huge deal, but think about it this way. First, I didn’t really want another Mac in the first place and I still plan on getting the new iPad Pro when it comes out (hopefully in the Spring). That addition upgrade expense will cover a lot of the iPad and if I do get it, any of the tasks I do today on my Mac that can easily or fairly easily be done on the ipad will migrate to it. In fact, it's possible this new MacBook will only be used to record and edit the shows.
Lastly, if I felt my old one would have remained stable for the next 6 months, I probably would have waited.
Wrap Up
So here is the bottom line. I believe I made the right decision considering all the factors. Is it the decision I wanted to make, no. Do I wish I could have waited, yes. The proof will only come over time. What I can tell you up after several days of using it for my work and even some tests on the most intensive tasks is that I really did make a good decision.
The new machine can handle intense video exports in 1/3 the time of the previous machine. The battery life is everything I could have hoped for. And I have not been able to stress out the machine yet. I am hopeful that will continue to be the case over the long run.
So I spent the right amount of money for the right tool to do the job. Would it have been great to get the highest end machine and to never worry about SSD space or memory and to have it handle the tasks in 1/10 the time instead of 1/3? Sure. But the trade offs just don't make sense for me.
Think about that before you make your next large purchase like this. Are you buying what you need or are you listening to others and buying for you what they might need even though your situations are not the same.
If you haven't yet, listen to episode 24 of g4f where Jason and I talk about a lot of this. Also, check out my review of the macbook on our blog at www.mtneboconsulting.com/g4fblog.