My daughter wants a MacBook Pro for her birthday, I’m looking at the one with the apple m1 chip 8 core gpu , I’m not an apple guy ( I hate apple computers) this is the model MYDA2LL/A , pros and cons? She is a freshman in Highschool so she won’t be using it for gaming or anything like that , will this be good enough for her next 3 years in Highschool? Any help/answers is appreciated .

Personally I would go with the previous generation with Intel chips. Why ?
- The Intel version also can run Windows and Linux
- Its highly likely to bump into drivers or programs that haven't been ported yet

Other than that not too much to hate... Usually it takes about a month to move from Windows to MacOS and most people never look back.
The only reason not to go MacOS is extensive PC gaming. I use Linux, MacOS and Windows daily.... by choice my work machine is a MacBook Pro 2019

We just bought an Apple Mac Air for home use with MS Home Office software purchased separately.

800 bucks at Costco. MS Office for 150.

Seems to be all a HS freshman would need IMO.

It’ll be great.  Don’t worry about the intel processor, Apple ain’t going back to them any time soon to make a difference with your purchase.

I didn’t look it up specifically.  I’d go with the largest hard drive in your price range.   I’d sacrifice processor power if needed.

Apple comes pre loaded with their version of word, excel, etc.  I’d get the MS version only if required.  

15 years later, still don’t have it.  However her school may require it, and I believe MS has an educational version.  

About that, buy the computer from apple’s educational store and save some.

That Mac will be good for her next 3 years plus college and more.  We have Macs at work that are still being used in the field that are 10 years old.  I offered to upgrade them, but the guys all said "nope - these are still working great".  

Yea - I've been without MS Office for 10 years as well.  No reason to get it, and the only things that made my old mac hang were MS programs.  Pages/numbers/keynote are all fine.

Can I get an external hard drive ? I plan on buying from Costco to get the extended warranty . She wants the pro because the bar, I know she doesn’t “need” the pro but she is in the “Gifted and Talented”  program and is a straight As student so if that it’s what she wants it’s fine with me. How is the battery on this? Any difference between this and the 16”other than the size?

It looks like I'm the first one to reply that actually has one of the M1's.  

Here's my take:  I love the one I have.  I was worried that I might stretch the RAM limit, but I've literally had 25 windows open with steaming video, etc. and I have never been bogged down.  Not sad that I didn't get the Ram upgrade.

It's freaking fast.  When I go back to my (relatively new) PC, I feel like I'm being throttled.  

The size is awesome.  Keyboard is very good.  

I wish it weren't as slippery on the bottom.  I may put something with more friction on the bottom.

I'm confident that this thing will be "future proof" for 3-5 years.  I went through law school with a single laptop, and not only was that a long time ago when technology was increasing at a faster pace, but that computer wasn't at the same level (relatively speaking to the market at that time) as my MacBook Pro is.  

HERE'S THE KICKER:  I am on my SECOND MacBook Pro.  The first one I had made it only 28 days before the screen crapped out.  No trauma, no water, not nothing. I literally woke up one morning opened the PC and the screen was all jacked up.  The Mac people at the store said that they had never seen anything like it and thought it was probably the chip.

My recommendation?  Wait as long as you possibly can to let them figure out the problems and then go for it.

Yes, you can use an external hard drive - make sure you get the right connector - USB Type C/Thunderbolt III, or a suitable converter cable.

The 13" likely has lower max RAM and SSD options than the 16" version. Any processor difference will be more than adequate for a HS student.

The advantage to the M1 is native iPhone/iPad app support. Still very good Intel Mac program compatibility, since the Apple M1 silicon has built-in hardware x86 emulation at pretty good speed, too. You're more likely to run into the 32/64-bit issues trying to run older Intel Mac Apps on Big Sur than run into issues with non-game apps.

Have an M1 Mac mini and love the performance.  They are porting many apps over to native M1 like ms office, chrome, etc.  even if not native, it still runs close to as fast as the x86 mac running x86 code.  I'd say go for it.  I'd recommend 16G RAM up front as it is not upgradeable later...

I use an external drive for back ups.  

I absolutely do not recommend an external drive for anything else.  Yes, if she’s a photographer you can use it for the RAW images.  Anything else really takes away from just taking a computer along.

Why an external drive?  Personally, I think cloud backup is more secure than a drive that I can lose, get stolen, spill coffee on, etc.  DropBox is working very well for our company.

   

Just got a new M1 chip MacBook Air.  It's lightning fast compared to my 2014 vintage MacBook Pro and should be just fine for her.

You can download Rosetta app to run older apps on the new chip.

Any new Macbook that is good enough today will be good enough three years from now.  If she likes the OS and is happy with it today than she will like it three years from now as long as she doesn't accidentally drop it in a wood chipper.

Unless she has a specific need to run Windows on it I'd stick with the new CPUs.  It's the future of Macbook so it will get the lion's share of new development.  x86 is dead.

The new M1 macs are very impressive.
I'd buy the new M1 Air for her and call it good.

That new M1 ARM chip is faster than most of the x86 Intel macs even emulating x86 software.

That's amazing.