By “came into”, I’m going to assume that you either received it for free or got it very inexpensively because of circumstances.

In which case I’d take the opportunity to make a profit by selling it for far more than it’s value to some moron who see’s an Apple logo and automatically creams themselves. They’re not hard to find.

Then you can buy whatever you want.

The music mixing capabilities are very solid if you’re looking to use your new laptop as a creative outlet. The default software is solid for journaling and writing as well. You can set up shortcuts to run some custom automations as well. Hope this helps!

It is really powerful per watt, and has a built-in UPS. Any homelab type things you could do with that? macOS+homebrew will give you a nice *NIX feel, very familiar if you’re a Linux user.

I’m a fan of having a remote homelab computer+disk for off-site storage. This would be a good candidate in that it wouldn’t use excessive power at a friend/family’s place, but may be overkill (I use a pi3 for that).

Dev device for Asahi Linux, don’t think M3 support is quite there but if you had the time could help contribute

Something as powerful as an M3 at the very least could be used as a folding@home client. Other suggestions would be a rendering farm machine, a retro emulator for higher end consoles like PS3+, or part of a carputer since it’s got GPS and is quite efficient.

They run Linux really well. I’m reaching you on an ancient one right now.

Trash can is right here 🗑️

Combined with a minimalist Linux distro, a laptop like that should have amazing battery life. Not sure of a specific use, but maybe something where you have to run off battery for long periods of time. Portable server maybe?

The transcode performance on the apple silicon is pretty solidif you wanted to go the media server route. Or have a really expensive NAS host lol

I have a macbook for work and I like it generally, it integrates well with other *nix environments. But if you don’t use a laptop or don’t want to have the uncomfortable interruption to your hotkey muscle memory it’s a bit useless. I’d either sell it and/or find someone in my network that needs it

Switch emulation.

As someone who really needs a laptop but is broke because of cancer, I am very jealous.

You can always use it as something like a Pi-Hole if youre fine with leaving it on at all times. Probably overkill for a Pi-Hole, though. Anyway nearly any PC can be turned into some kind of network appliance.

Hope you find a good use for it!

It would be a fast host (and client) for more heavily modded Minecraft.

You could self-host an LLM, but unfortunately 18GB total system RAM (so less than 14GB usable by the GPU?) is pretty skinny.

You can do some stuff to an iPhone with one. Like sideloading, I think?

I mostly use Linux but I have a MacBook from a previous job. I mostly use it for media consumption. It’s not the problem it once was but back in the day, Linux and streaming services didn’t always get along because of DRM.

I do like how using macOS pushes me to get the design details right on my own software. I mean, say what you want about Apple but they do usually put care into the aesthetics and design details. When I feel like a project is done because it’s functional, I’m wrong. That extra 10% effort to use the right fonts or consistent margins or whatever is what makes good software great.

So, I would say use it as a learning tool. There’s plenty things that are worse on macOS but it’s different. And that’s healthy. Periodically using a different OS with a different goal is good for you. (Don’t bother with Windows 11. Nothing of honor is to be found there. Distro hop and keep Windows in a VM if you need it.)

I also found it helpful when working from home. Like, I’d spend all day on my Linux machine writing code or whatever and then I’d clock out and just use the MacBook. I could have probably used a PlayStation or done anything but sometimes, you’re busy. Switching operating systems and having zero work stuff on one computer can be good when you’ve had a long day.

Xcode for iOS development if you want to experiment with that

I’m surprised dabbling with the Mac creative suites hasn’t been suggested yet. It’s the main reason a lot of users go for the OS over Windows or Linux.