I’ve been wanting to build a threadripper workstation for a while - or at least a top-tier Ryzen. My experience jumping from my loaded 2018 MBP (Core i7, Radeon

I’ve been wanting to build a threadripper workstation for a while - or at least a top-tier Ryzen. My experience jumping from my loaded 2018 MBP (Core i7, Radeon, 32GB memory) to an M1 mini w/ 1/2 the RAM has caused a paradigm shift in the way I think about computing. I abuse my machines too. I’m a freelance polyglot so on any given hour of the day I am working on Python, JS, design work, Clojure, Elixir, Ruby, scripting indesign, etc. One of the systems I operate runs millions of domain analysis operations a day and I tend to run a scaled-down version of the real system when developing. I do that for all clients, really. The MacBook Pro must essentially be viewed as a desktop. The fans are always on full blast. The disk access is slower so Docker container file system sync tends to suffer. It’s not a terrible machine in and of itself, but once I “upgraded” the difference was night and day. My M1 Mini has 16gb of ram but is otherwise stock. Assuming native ARM execution for a container, Docker is significantly faster at most things. Everything is faster. Running an Intel build of VSCode is the only thing that has ever stressed it, but I’ve never heard the fan. Disk performance is very impressive for such a commodity-grade machine. We just deployed one in a client site to perform Adobe InDesign imposition “as a service” for an on-demand print factory. It’s handling the work like a champ! As much as I’d love a new ARM MacBook Pro, the chassis is too big for me. Sounds petty, but the OG MacBook Air chassis is the ultimate mobile computer for me. So I think I’ll hold off and wait until Apple unveils their Mac Pro replacement. If we extrapolate things out even just a little - it should be a monster.