If you have the bones, you cannot beat Apple build and display quality. Zero bloatware at purchase. Highly intuitive OS. My MBP just failed after ten years of flawless use and I’m sad I cannot afford to replace it.

That really depends on you. The vast majority of your work can be achieved on a much cheaper machine, yes even data science, the lecturers know not everyone has powerful hardware and tend to factor that into their assignments and for the event that you can’t the lab at uni or online services like Google Collab are available to you. If you want a Mac but don’t want to spend that much maybe go for air.

Macs are very capable and hold value because of name brand, so if you have the money and that’s what you want, go for it. But like another commenter said you could get a better machine for less; I just switched to a gaming laptop from my 2021 MacBook Pro. Also in my experience, some professors are stiff about Mac vs windows. My girlfriend has to go to the computer lab because her professors selected program doesn’t work on her MacBook, and my stats professor does his examples in windows, but for Mac you have to use some code workarounds. But again, if that is what you’re set on and you have the money, then it wouldn’t be awful.

MacBooks are some of the best laptops. Last a long time, excellent build quality, amazing displays and battery life, they really are worth it. I would say that if you don’t do anything intensive, a MacBook Air would get the job done for cheaper.

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You could check first does apps you want to use later already optimized for M1.

https://isapplesiliconready.com