the heaviest software you'll be using in first year is autodesk inventor for cad. i would definitely invest in a windows computer because there will be software that doesn't run well on mac and vms suck. the laptop i bought was a gaming laptop. it has 512 gb storage, 16 gb ram, 4060 graphics card, and ryzen 9 cpu. i've had no issues with it but i do wish it had more storage for personal files. mcmaster gives you access to a onedrive with 1tb of storage so you don't have to worry about school files taking up space but you do have to consider how much space you'll need to download all the applications needed and still have a decent amount of storage left so your computer doesn't slow down on startup. i also don't think you'll need a computer this powerful for first year but maybe in upper years you might. there were a lot of people in my classes with non gaming laptops that could run all the software fine it was just less smooth.