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This is me today. I'm typing this on an 8 year old macbook pro. First gen retina. 4-cores and 16GB of ram. I want to upgrade, I really really do. I have a 16" w

This is me today. I'm typing this on an 8 year old macbook pro. First gen retina. 4-cores and 16GB of ram. I want to upgrade, I really really do. I have a 16" with 8-cores and 64GB of ram at work, but I can't bring myself to purchase one for myself since I've been telling myself I would wait for 10nm. The first 14nm processors started shipping in the 15" in 2015 - 5 years ago. My current 8 year old macbook has a 22nm processor. I would never have thought 8 years ago that Intel would only have managed a single node shrink since then.

jseliger 6y ago
The big subjective improvements appear to have been in screen resolutions/sharpness and in SSDs. An 8-year-old LCD will likely have dimmed substantially. On the other hand if you like it, you like it, and cheap is beautiful.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
  Why would it dim? Never hears about it.
  - mpol 6y ago
    It won't :) It has a LED backlight. Older LCD screens often had fluorescent backlight, which will and did degrade after hours of use. According to Wikipedia, LEDs are the most popular backlight in LCD screens since 2012.
    - rgbrenner 6y ago
      The idea that LEDs last forever is a myth. LEDs degrade over time. They actually list it on the spec sheet. For example an L70 rated led with a 25k hour life will produce 70% of the light it produced when new after 25k hours. Recently I replaced 4 Asus monitors with led backlights that were produced in 2014 and 2015. Asus says 300 nits. Tested them when I was calibrating their replacements and they were 110-120 at full brightness. Monitors color shift and dim as they age... that’s why hardware calibrators exist.
ChuckNorris89 6y ago
>I have a 16" with 8-cores and 64GB of ram at work I'm jealous and genuinely curious where do you guys work that your employers can afford to get everyone such expensive machines. I've been a dev in the EU for 8 years now and at most places I've worked or interviewed(not FAANG) the machines you get are some cheapo HP/Lenovo/Dell with only the executives having Apple hardware. I never understood why companies in the west cheap out on hardware so much since compared to the cost of office rent and employee salaries that's a drop in the ocean, they could buy everyone MacBooks or Ryzen towers and it wouldn't even dent their bottom line.
- garmaine 6y ago
  Every tech company I've worked at in Silicon Valley let the engineer pick their own computer and just submit a receipt for reimbursement. Up to $3000. Frankly with the cost of hiring you, spending $3k to make you even a few percent more productive if money well spent.
  - NightlyDev 6y ago
    USD 3000 might be quite limiting if you need a fast workstation. 3000 USD is like one 1 TB high performance SSD.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      What? Even optane is less than half that much. A high performance SSD, capable of over 3GB/s, is less than $200 for 1TB.
      - NightlyDev 6y ago
        P4800X is around 5K. And you probably want them in raid, so at least 10K.
        Dylan16807 6y ago
        And a 905P costs a quarter of that. But seriously, a 970 Evo Plus is a high performance SSD suitable for a workstation and that's $400 for two.

jseliger 6y ago

The big subjective improvements appear to have been in screen resolutions/sharpness and in SSDs. An 8-year-old LCD will likely have dimmed substantially. On the other hand if you like it, you like it, and cheap is beautiful.

SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
Why would it dim? Never hears about it.
- mpol 6y ago
  It won't :) It has a LED backlight. Older LCD screens often had fluorescent backlight, which will and did degrade after hours of use. According to Wikipedia, LEDs are the most popular backlight in LCD screens since 2012.
  - rgbrenner 6y ago
    The idea that LEDs last forever is a myth. LEDs degrade over time. They actually list it on the spec sheet. For example an L70 rated led with a 25k hour life will produce 70% of the light it produced when new after 25k hours. Recently I replaced 4 Asus monitors with led backlights that were produced in 2014 and 2015. Asus says 300 nits. Tested them when I was calibrating their replacements and they were 110-120 at full brightness. Monitors color shift and dim as they age... that’s why hardware calibrators exist.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

>I have a 16" with 8-cores and 64GB of ram at work I'm jealous and genuinely curious where do you guys work that your employers can afford to get everyone such expensive machines. I've been a dev in the EU for 8 years now and at most places I've worked or interviewed(not FAANG) the machines you get are some cheapo HP/Lenovo/Dell with only the executives having Apple hardware. I never understood why companies in the west cheap out on hardware so much since compared to the cost of office rent and employee salaries that's a drop in the ocean, they could buy everyone MacBooks or Ryzen towers and it wouldn't even dent their bottom line.

garmaine 6y ago
Every tech company I've worked at in Silicon Valley let the engineer pick their own computer and just submit a receipt for reimbursement. Up to $3000. Frankly with the cost of hiring you, spending $3k to make you even a few percent more productive if money well spent.
- NightlyDev 6y ago
  USD 3000 might be quite limiting if you need a fast workstation. 3000 USD is like one 1 TB high performance SSD.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    What? Even optane is less than half that much. A high performance SSD, capable of over 3GB/s, is less than $200 for 1TB.
    - NightlyDev 6y ago
      P4800X is around 5K. And you probably want them in raid, so at least 10K.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        And a 905P costs a quarter of that. But seriously, a 970 Evo Plus is a high performance SSD suitable for a workstation and that's $400 for two.