Depends on the monitor resolution, scale and personal preference. For a wide/ultrawide/super-ultrawide monitor, makes sense to have the dock at the bottom.

It is. What is really pissing me off are the Apple apologists who are like “this is fine, Apple knows best”.

He’s a great guy. Met him at a book signing for his book Woz and genuinely warm and funny. Hope it’s nothing serious.

1. Do you foresee using the Macbook for more than just what you mentioned?
2. Are you going to resell the Macbook when it comes time to upgrade or hand-mac-down to family/friend?

Storage won’t be a problem to expand via external but RAM may be. In your case, if the answers to both the above questions (strictly same usage and no resell), 8GB will be enough for you. You didn’t mention anything beyond “base”. Guessing you’re talking about an M3 8GB which costs $1500. You can get an M2 16GB refurb from the Apple store for $1600.

I ordered a 48GB machine right after announcement and it was in processing for a 11/9-11/13 delivery. Cancelled it last night and ordered a 128GB one which now says 11/30-12/7.

Programming involves coding. Hard to recommend anything without knowing what you’re going to use it for. Based on your one-liner, a Macbook Air may even suffice if you’re just going to learn how to write code. Even a 2015 MacbookPro Retina 15" will work great for your needs if it’s just learning and starting out. On the other hand, if you have specific needs (need Apple Silicon or need to handle local LLMs), different story.

This is like saying “I feel like visiting a pretty place in the world. Where should I go?”

Apple is not beholden to Intel anymore and can control their release cycle better. The M2 chips were supposed to launch in Nov 2022 and got delayed. Ergo, the M3 stuff technically is on schedule. Also, you got what you paid for and finally, looks like the M3 Pro chip is a side grade at best compared to the M2.

I’m typing this on a 7+ year Mac (2015 MBP Retina) running Monterey 12.7 and while this got a new battery last year, I have enough apps open (Edge, Excel, a few SSH sessions, PDF reader, Calendar) and the battery has about 3hours/50% left. At about 50% brightness. OP’s machine has an issue.