Should I Buy a MacBook Pro?

Miscellaneous Blather
#1

Hi everyone,
I’m considering to buy a MacBook Pro for many reasons. Two things I’m not sure about:

  1. Would I be able run my games on it: Civ, Stellaris, Unity of Command? Can I use my Steam library on my MacBook, if the game runs on Mac?

  2. How convenient is it to do occasional work (Word, PowerPoint, etc.) on a MacBook? Can it replace my desktop PC for that? I’m not a programmer or graphic designer or so, I would just need it for occasional presentations, online banking, managing the household cloud etc.

Has anyone bought a MacBook and regretted it afterwards. Any experiences would be helpful, thanks.

#2

I have 2 MacBook Pros. My personal and my work computer. I work for a fortune 1000 tech company also.

  1. Civ 6 plays just fine on my 13-inch 2.3 GHz i5 with 16GB RAM. (this is my work laptop, my personal is a 3.1 i5, and it is even a little better) Not sure on the others there though. City Skylines can bog down a little on an older map I have been building for some time, but not with a new map. I own almost all of my content on Steam.

  2. On my work laptop, I currently have like 50 google doc tabs open, about 5 power point presentations and probably a dozen excel spreadsheets, along with Outlook, and Webex Teams running…all right this very second. Works great.

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#3

Nope! And I specifically installed Windows 10 on the Boot Camp partition so I could play my PC-only Steam games on it. Works flawlessly!

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#4

Thanks so much for the answers so far.

Some more questions that are on my mind:

  • How is the internal keyboard if you type a lot? Did you guys need to get an external one?

  • For the games mentioned above, do you prefer a mouse or do you go with the touchpad?

  • Also the price range between 13- and 16 -inch seems huge, so that I would go for the smaller one because of that. Do you find that sufficient for your uses?

  • I’ve heard this about loading Windows on to a MacBook before, but I was not sure… So can you choose while booting which operating system you’d like to use? Is it complicated to install?

  • how much internal storage would you go for in terms of best price/value.

Thanks again for your answers

#5

I only use the keyboard built in, typing at you on it right now.

For any turn based game I use the track pad. For anything action, I would use a mouse on it, but I have a desktop also, so it is rare. But like if I get on a Diablo 3 kick and am traveling, I bring my Razer mouse with me.

This was the first time I have gone with the 13in. I was concerned it would be too small, but I went with it for the weight. I carry it to work every day and travel a lot. So it was fully about weight. Unless I am traveling though, I have an 2nd monitor and am used to working on two monitors at one time, which this handles very well, and mitigates any concern about the smaller screen for work. The 13" is just find for just playing like Civ though.

I don’t bootcamp any more, so can’t help you with this.

For storage, I think 256 is your limit, and I would go for that, with the games you are mentioning, you would be hard pressed with less.

Also, I have the touchbar on my personal, not on my work laptop. Touchbar is lame.

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#6

Ditto.

When playing games, I always use the Logitech Anywhere MX mouse (more recent version is the Logitech MX Anywhere 2S Wireless Mouse), because it’s compact (saves space when traveling), wireless, and doesn’t require a mousepad. Otherwise, the trackpad is fine.

I have the 15" version, which is more than sufficient. Had the 16" been available then, though, I would have purchased it, given my age (degrading near-sight vision) and native screen resolution. I have no cumbersome issues traveling with the 15" model. If your near-sight vision isn’t degrading, 13" should be fine.

Under macOS, you set the default boot OS, but you also have the option of holding down the Option key during boot that offers the option to boot in either Windows (Boot Camp) or macOS.

It’s a piece of cake to Install Windows 10 on your Mac with Boot Camp Assistant.

As much as you can comfortably afford, especially if you plan on running a Windows partition and splitting your time equally between it and macOS. But the additional cost-to-GB storage curve tends not to be linear, so give it a lot of thought. Also, per the link above regarding Boot Camp, bear in mind:

Your Mac can have as little as 64GB of free storage space, but at least 128GB of free storage space provides the best experience. Automatic Windows updates require that much space or more.

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