Hello, I'm an engineering student planning to get into CS/SE (Kali Linux, VMs, coding, etc.) and I'm stuck between two options within my budget.
Option 1: MacBook Pro 14" M4 (Base Pro model but 16 RAM)
Option 2: MacBook Air 15" M3 (Base but 24 RAM)
Which trade-off is better for my use case: Better Screen/Cooling/Chip (Pro M4) OR More RAM (Air M3)?
VMs will benefit from RAM more than the CPU, since you would be sharing the RAM between the macOS system and the VMs 16GB, will limit your VMs to 8GB at most. Also if you plan on running multiple VMs at once again RAM will be a major factor.
Coding is fairly non-demanding depending on environment.
You will need Kali for ARM, so make sure any linux apps you need to run on the VM are ARM compatible.
In this case I'd favor the RAM instead of the CPU specially for the VMs.
VMs will benefit from RAM more than the CPU, since you would be sharing the RAM between the macOS system and the VMs 16GB, will limit your VMs to 8GB at most. Also if you plan on running multiple VMs at once again RAM will be a major factor.
Coding is fairly non-demanding depending on environment.
You will need Kali for ARM, so make sure any linux apps you need to run on the VM are ARM compatible.
In this case I'd favor the RAM instead of the CPU specially for the VMs.
MacBook Pro 14" M4 (16GB/512GB) vs. MacBook Air 15" M3 (24GB/512GB) for CS/Software Engineer Student?
