I’m planning to purchase a Macbook Air (M2), and I’m not sure which of the ones above I should upgrade (for future-proofing) on the customization page — I can only afford 1 and IDK which is more important. It’ll be for the usual day-to-day stuff: sheets, browsing, movies, and The Sims 4 lol. No video editing, coding, or music production.
This is the 1st laptop I’ll purchase for myself and I’ve never had any experience with Macs either, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
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The SoC (system on a chip) is the equivalent of the processor in a typical computer. Upgrading that will improve speed and throughput. The memory is the ram, and upgrading that will improve how much you can do at once without running out of resources. This is especially useful for gaming, video editing, or anything else that uses a lot of memory.
For your stated use case, I would suggest upgrading the SoC. For what it’s worth.
Personally I would spend extra for the 512gb SSD because the standard 256gb is up to 30% slower with writes and 50% slower with reads. In fact I’d always recommend getting the largest internal storage you can afford, especially since that model doesn’t have SD card capability. For what you’re using it for, you don’t need the 10-core GPU (the stock M2 is a *monster*!) nor more than 8 GB RAM, although I’d also recommend getting the most memory you can afford as well.
I owned an 8GB M1 Air that I absolutely loved, but I had to return it for a 16 GB M1 Pro because I use so many graphic design apps at the same time for work, and I needed bigger HiDPI resolutions with an external display.
Good luck and have fun! Apple Silicon is a jaw-dropping game changer!
SoC means “System on a Chip”.
Normally we have everything separate. The CPU only does processing, and needs external support components to actually do something useful. Memory and storage are external, and so are things like video cards. You can remove the video card and put a better one in its place.
In an SoC a lot of stuff is built in, which may include memory, storage, cell phone/wifi functionality, 3D acceleration, video playback, and so on.
The upside of a SoC is that it’s all very compact and very tightly integrated. The downside it’s that it’s all bundled together. You can’t upgrade those parts because they’re an inseparable part of the system.
On a Mac M2, I think the memory and storage are fixed from the factory and can’t be upgraded afterwards.
In general, more memory never hurts. Performance drops extremely noticeably if you ever are in a situation where you don’t have enough, and in general is likely to be the thing that limits the longevity of the system the most. CPUs these days improve slowly, a 20% faster CPU is nice but not groundbreaking. But having too little memory to work may make things completely unusable.
If you’re on a budget apple isn’t the best value for money. The way they prevent you from upgrading their computers is total bs. Future proofing is nonsense, every computer gets old and slow eventually. Apple products hold their value better but I’d personally rather upgrade the device I have than go to the trouble of selling my computer and buying a whole new one. Their closed ecosystem is very anti-consumer, they don’t even allow people to fix their products when they break. Everything has to go through them and they can charge whatever prices they like for repairs. I think now they’re making people pay a subscription fee for repair services, that’s a huge turn off for me. Their industrial design is pretty but their business practices make my skin crawl
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