Spinning off the topic that started in:
The question is: If one is starting fresh, moving from a Windows PC system to full on Apple system, what systems are ‘not good enough’, ‘good enough’, “really good’, ‘massive overkill’.
So beyond Fusion 360, this would include other 3D programs like Blender, Photo Editing, 3D carving, 3D Printing/Slicing…
I currently use a mac mini for Fusion, Prusa slicer, gsender, I use Gimp and Inkscape when I need to (But have been using ChatGPT lately for photo editing and svg files, $20/mth… and it works a treat!)
I have a table top 4x4 ultimate bee 1500x1500 and I use a windows 10 machine, because it was free…ugh, to run gsender for that table only and it works great! But gsender works great on a mac too. I have a Phantom 4x8 cnc router that is offline and self-contained… usb to the pendant and I can put it down and walk away. I have an XR Plasma 4x8 and it runs on a tiny little windows box (the one it came with)… again, free, and it works good enough and hasnt failed any jobs or given me issues.
I have never used blender but it cant be any more of a resource hog than fusion.
With all this being said, I think it comes down to the complexity of your work and the rendering of. I dont buy the cheapest and I dont buy the most expensive. Im somewhere in the middle and hopefully dont get caught with my pants down on a job I cant complete because im frugal… lol.
I think overkill is any PRO from mac, i just dont think we do that complex of work, at least I dont. I know some guys need it for really complex CAD work though. And on the bottom end of Mac, like a basic Macbook air is just barely not enough… a lot of spinning balls of death because it cant process 1s and 0s fast enough. I have a Macbook air (bumped up a couple notches) and it draws and runs fusion fine and i have used all the other software you mentioned on it some, not a lot. I always give more value to more memory rather than just core processing bc when you have things open, RAM is what is used the most. The only down side, but not really imo, is you cant upgrade macs, what you buy is what you get… so buy a little more or a lot more than you need, just in case.
I wont say I love virtual machines running under Parallels but they can work, they work super well in the server world but not sure so much about efficiency in running anything that requires too much rendering or graphics manipulation. I have heard good things from it but I find it to be a pain to switch back and forth.
Sorry, ive rambled. Please take everything here with a grain of salt and a little patience, just giving my thoughts… and they are probably wrong…lol.
MacMini stats: (All my fusion is done on this)
Model Name: Mac mini 2023
Model Identifier: Mac14,3
Chip: Apple M2
Total Number of Cores: 8 (4 performance and 4 efficiency)
Memory: 8 GB
MacBook Air stats:
Model Name: Mac Book Air 2024
Model Identifier: Mac15,12
Chip: Apple M3
Total Number of Cores: 8 (4 performance and 4 efficiency)
Memory: 16 GB
I should also say, Im not an apple fanboy. I HATE iphones… as a tech guy i think they are overpriced and not that useful.