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>If you already have an Apple silicon Mac and are wondering whether to upgrade to an M3 model I see comments like this in various reviews. Are there really peo
by stevage 3y ago
>If you already have an Apple silicon Mac and are wondering whether to upgrade to an M3 model
I see comments like this in various reviews. Are there really people out there who would replace a Macbook Pro M1 or M2 with a M3 just to get something a bit faster? What are they doing that is so performance critical?
My last Macbook Pro is a 2014. I still find it usable for development work, and I'm only replacing it because of other hardware failures.
- perfopt 3y agoI am still rocking a 2012 MBP. I even have a PPC MacMini but it now runs Linux. I have no idea who is upgrading from a M1/M2 to M3 or why they would
- shawnc 3y agoI work with a lot of 4K elements and video in Apple Motion, After Effects, and other applications. The better the chip the faster things go, especially previews and encoding. Every second ends up counting. I can see why others like me may upgrade. But I’m not going to bother just yet.
- youcantcook 3y agoFunny how "genius" people on a "genius" forum can't fathom how people do other things than write text in a text editor.
- inferiorhuman 3y agoYou'd be surprised at just how slow running zellij in iTerm was on an Intel MBP. Somehow in 2023 we've managed to create resource hungry text interfaces.
- jrockway 3y agoI write text in a text editor all day but would still upgrade my machine on a regular basis. I have a Threadripper and use all 32 cores everyday. I'm still debating on whether or not to upgrade to the new generation released yesterday. 4 year old CPUs are not speedy.
- JCharante 3y agothe battery life is really good
- inferiorhuman 3y agoOver the years I've gone through a Core2 MacBook, a 2011 MBP, a 2015 MBP, and now a 14" 2023 M2 Pro as each wore out physically over the years. Generally the charging systems and keyboards degraded severely by the 5 year mark. The 2015 had all those problems as well as janky graphics issues, but I used it until its SSD died recently. Aside from performance it's hard to overstate just how quiet the current MacBook Pro is. The 2015 got noisy pretty easily especially if I had to switch to the discrete GPU, and anything heavier than 1080p30 in Firefox would cause the fans to go bonkers. By most accounts the last of the Intel models were worse. This one? After a few hours of transcoding video the fans still only spin up to a quiet whisper. What I don't hear anyone talk about is the rigidity. You could hear the 2015 creak and flex if you picked it up with one hand. The 2023 just feels like a solid chunk of metal. For all of its warts, this is probably my favorite hardware of the bunch. The software (macos 14) is utter garbage though. That's the culmination of lots of poor design choices over the years and nearly non-existent quality control.
- zaphod420 3y agoI upgraded from an M1 pro to an M3 max. it's a nice upgrade.
- muro 3y agoI'd like to do the same. I want to upgrade to 4TB SSD, as I'm at the limit all the time and I spend a lot of time moving data from the laptop to NAS and back. With the upgrade, I'll get a M3 max for the peace of mind - it will be ridiculously expensive anyway.
- LeSaucy 3y agoI just switched from 16" 2019 i9 -> 16" M3 pro and 2 weeks later still stunned at how amazing of a machine it is. I do a lot of c++ dev for $dayjob and my current project which took 1m45s to full rebuild on i9 is down to ~25s on m3. Without a fan turning on or barely getting warm. Its _magical_. I still get caught off guard by the chassis being cold when first placed on my lap.
- littlecranky67 3y agoThe issue is that the 2019 MBP16 were crap. Especially the higer i7/i9 models had thermal throttling issues when connected to an external monitor. My 3000€ i7 mbp16 2019 recently died and I replaced it with an "interim" base model, 650€ MacMini M2. The jump is huge, that freakin Mini beats my 3yo (I bought it in 2020) decked out MBP that constantly spun fans. While intended as Interim until M3 MBPs where announced, I see no reason to upgrade right now.
- minimaul 3y agoI remember getting this jump accidentally - I bought a M1 Mac Mini for porting stuff too and for testing, and building on it was twice as fast as my 2018 15" i7. And it was silent doing it. Pity it was only the 8GB base spec, because it would have made an amazing main machine!
- icedchai 3y agoI used to have a 16" i9 for a previous job. It was absolutely terrible. Any sort of build process would cause the fans to spin up. It sounded like a jet engine taking off. The corporate malware scanner didn't help it much, either, as it slowed processing even more.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- esskay 3y agoPro no, Air however yep, I'm one of them. Big performance boost from the base M1 to the M3 Pro.
- thelittleone 3y agoMe too. I get every second generation. Air is so cheap, why not. The business apps I run used to require a Macbook Pro to run. Now the 13" air does it beautifully, and with amazing portability. I often have to carry 2 laptops when traveling. So before with an MBP 16" and 2nd laptop, it was damn heavy.
- walteweiss 3y agoI’m very curious why do you have to carry two laptops? If that’s not the case that you carry the second laptop for the other person. If you use the two, then I’m very curious of your use-case.
- evilduck 3y agoNot who you asked but you might find it interesting regardless. I've had a development role with an AV company where I'd periodically go on site a couple times a year to assist with shows to test real world scenarios or lend a hand just to see things in action ("production deployments" in both senses of the phrase, as well as to see actual users and behaviors in the moment. Time management, stress, and risk in a live event is something you can't really grok without having experienced it). Assuming the role of a show producer for those trips I would have two redundant company laptops to run the show that I carried but weren't mine specifically, while I had my personally-assigned work laptop with me to work remotely with. And if it was a long enough trip to warrant it, my personal laptop also to keep those activities separated. If new OS updates were being tested and deployed, add in a tertiary show laptop for that. There are carry-on sized Pelican cases that handle it fine. You might be surprised at the sheer amount of stuff AV professionals tote around the world, on top of the ridiculous amount of cargo that gets shipped via freight directly to venues. Going through airport security with two to five laptops was an average Thursday for many of the people I interacted with at that job.
- smcleod 3y agoM1 to M2 Pro for the 96GB which is nice for LLMs/AI.
- baq 3y agoOr you could buy a car...? Apple RAM premium is outrageous.
- infecto 3y agoWhile the premium is indeed high, the total cost of the tool even at the premium is quite low. I think you can get the 14 M3 Max fairly decked out at around $5-7k. Not even close to a new car these days. Maybe I am in the minority but I see it as a tool. My workflows work well in MacOS, I like the build quality of the tool. My replacement timeline is generally pretty long. The value this tool generates is massive compared to the cost of it. I remember how often coworkers would joke about the cost of a Kinesis keyboard. They would die if they were a mechanic.
- J_Shelby_J 3y agoAmazing that windows systems are so bad that people are justified in buying a $7k laptop instead of a 4x 4090 + threadripper super computer.
- n8cpdx 3y agoWhat are you talking about? Just the four cards is $10k, and then you still need to buy the rest of the computer. And you probably can’t take it with you and use it from the coffee shop or the couch. And yes, Windows systems are bad. They shipped broken TouchID for years, and they don’t trust you to turn off OneDrive (and will re-enable at every turn). Edge just gave me a toolbar yesterday that looked like browser chrome, but was actually a GamePass ad. I’m just pulling the easiest examples, listen to Windows Weekly for a full enumeration.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
- Amorymeltzer 3y agoDepends on your workload and what you're doing. This is an extreme example, but Marco Arment over on ATP discussed going from a top-o-the-line M1 to top-o-the-line M3, and saw his Xcode build time for his app (Overcast) get nearly cut in half (I believe he said 19 seconds to 11 seconds). For something that happens several times a day and is a critical and interruptive step in his workflow, yeah, he found it meaningful.
- pg5 3y agoI make music mostly for fun and my m1 is barely keeping up with Logic Pro and the plugins I'm running, which are amp sims, various typical mixing plugins, and virtual drums. I'm not even using a crazy number of tracks at any given moment.
- mnw21cam 3y agoGiven that a 7MHz Amiga 500 could mix eight tracks in CPU in real time, this is a very sad state of affairs. Your M1 is how many thousand times faster?
- troupe 3y agoAre you sure that what the Amiga was doing with 8 tracks is equivalent to what Logic is doing? I'd guess there is more to compare than just the number of tracks involved.
- uticus 3y agoYes but I think there's a point: hardware horsepower is undoubtedly capable of handling such workloads. I'm not knocking on Logic, but for 'fun' projects especially I find it impossible to believe that the hardware listed is the problem.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- redwall_hp 3y agoVSTs didn't even exist when Amgias were relevant. Each of those tracks was not running a virtual synthesizer, convolutional reverb, parametric EQ, compressor, amp sim, etc.. A modern DAW is simulating an entire studio worth of hardware, not just an eight channel mixer. One of these laptops can mix hundreds of tracks without issue; it's the plugins that require more power.
- pg5 3y agoThere's a chance it's a logic bug or one plugin having some issues, I suppose
- righthand 3y agoThey’re not doing anything critical, the people who upgrade for that minor bump are the fanatics who upgrade their cellphone every year for a minor megapixel bump. It’s fashion tech to the benefit of non-work related needs.
- scarface_74 3y agoYes because people couldn’t possible have workloads that benefit from a 30% speed up or have bill rates that justify it.
- firecall 3y agoXcode and SwiftUI is one answer. I’m tempted to upgrade my M1 Pro to an M3 Max. Reports suggest id halve my build times and then some.
- culi 3y ago... how long are your build times? If your build times are high enough to really affect your productivity, I feel like there are much cheaper (and environmentally friendly) ways to halve them
- bitzun 3y ago(Not an ios developer, have worked with ios teams) Swift build times are notoriously awful. I don't know if most developers have much influence over that.
- machinekob 3y agoThey are okish a lot slower than c but still reasonable if you dont use tons of generics/macros and other heavy stuff. Still it could be a lot better.
- willsmith72 3y agolike what? genuinely curious. building native apps is notoriously painful
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- saagarjha 3y agoMost places are unable to beat silicon advances to improve their build times.
- smabie 3y agoWhat's the point of posting this and providing zero examples of how?
- treprinum 3y agoThe option to have 128GB RAM for stable diffusion and local LLMs.
- moondev 3y agoSince 8GB unified memory is "equivalent to a 16GB non Mac" Is 128GB unified memory MacBook basically a 256GB Nvidia GPU(s)?
- lucasyvas 3y agoThey are not equivalent - it's pure marketing BS.
- nottorp 3y ago> Since 8GB unified memory is "equivalent to a 16GB non Mac" Yeah, right.
- treprinum 3y agoNot in the machine learning world ;-) You'd need to switch to marketing workloads to make 8GB = 16GB.
- jug 3y agoI think that one is mostly marketing but there's a grain of truth in terms of the combined effect of unified memory (which is fast as hell) and macOS memory compression. But I wouldn't put 8 GB past similar to 10-12 GB on another system without these features.
- moondev 3y agoSay I want to launch a vm with 8GB reserved memory. On a 10-12 GB machine I would have 2 to 4GB of memory left to actually allocate to the system. I don't see how unified memory magically fixes this. It's actually worse because even more memory has to be shared with the GPU. This is like saying a 8GB disk is actually like a 10-12GB disk elsewhere.
- csydas 3y agoit’s not my thing but there are certainly tech enthusiasts and even brand specific enthusiasts that like details like this as they do try to get “the best” from their tech. so probably it’s not for everyone but i guess there is value in knowing how big of a bump the newest model gives.
- nordsieck 3y ago> Are there really people out there who would replace a Macbook Pro M1 or M2 with a M3 just to get something a bit faster? Are there really people who buy a new car every 2 years? Yes. Yes there are. Some people like to have the newest stuff and don't mind living paycheck to paycheck to do so. Or maybe they're rich.
- troupe 3y agoThere are some people who just waste their money, but there are also a wide difference in the value people get from their cars and computers. Someone billing $500 per hour is going to be a lot more willing to upgrade their computer for even a small improvement. They may even keep a spare computer just to make sure they have minimum downtime if something goes wrong. Someone who just uses their computer to watch youtube videos may be fine keeping their computer until it stops working.
- nordsieck 3y agoThat's totally fair as well. However. I expect that the majority of people who upgrade their computer regularly can't justify it as a business expense. But I could be wrong.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- scarface_74 3y agoWhen I got Amazoned a couple of months ago and didn’t have a personal computer at all, a side contract fell into my lap where I billed $150/hour. (Don’t cry for me. I found a full time job 3 weeks later). I recouped the cost of the M2 MacBook Air 24GB RAM/1TB in less than 15 hours worth of work - taking my after tax rate into account. My work was not compute intensive so the Air was fine. But I would definitely pay for a 30% improvement at that bill rate.
- jodrellblank 3y ago
- rsynnott 3y agoM2, no, virtually none. The earliest M1s are three years old now, so may be up for replacement under some corporate refresh policies. A lot of corporates still _kind_ of live in the past, hearkening back to a time when a three year old laptop was largely unusable (and might well be _physically_ falling apart; general manufacture quality of this sort of thing has improved a lot in the last 20 years). In the late noughties I worked for a smallish company where engineers got MBPs and everyone else got mid-range PC business laptops (I think Dell or someone?) The failure rate on the PC laptops was just astonishing; they were practically disposable. The failure rate of the MBPs was higher than you'd see today, though not as bad. Replacing machines in under 3 years was the norm because many of them didn't _work_ after 3 years.
- Detrytus 3y agoThree years is also when AppleCare expires. That’s enough for some people/corporations to upgrade
- nagisa 3y agoTwo to three years is also when laptops become a 0 value asset in the books in at least some jurisdictions (not sure about the US tho.) At which point it makes a ton of sense to get rid of it (e.g. sell or give it away to the employee.)
- astrange 3y agoIt may also be tax depreciation related. 2016-era MBPs failed in about three years though because the keys would fall off the keyboard or stop responding.
- abakker 3y agomy 3 year old corporate HP feels like its been at end of life since the windows 11 upgrade. The 2 year old M1Max MBP feels indestructible and still has hilariously long battery life and crushes basically everything I ask of it.
- OnlyMortal 3y ago
- wil421 3y agoMy wife “stole” my M1 Air. At the time, it was good to see a comparison between the M1/M2. I order custom spec ones but for someone who doesn’t they may want to buy a generation old to save me. However, I agree on the phrasing. The amount of people who are upgrading yearly is much smaller than people who would buy a generation older Mac to save money.
- Retr0id 3y agoThe M1/M2/M3 base models all have only 8GB of RAM. Someone who cheaped out on a first-gen model to test the waters (even if they didn't necessarily go for 8GB) might now be looking to upgrade, and if they're buying used then all three CPU generations are worth considering.
- JanSt 3y agoThis is me
- jghn 3y agoI have an 8GB M1 Air for the sole reason that I was so excited I decided to go with the model I could get on release day instead of waiting a month. Not the wisest decision. I figured I'd replace it at M2, and then at M3. But to be honest even with the 8GB it's fine enough still. I don't use it for much heavy lifting but it works ok-ish for that in a pinch. And for day to day personal use it's fine. So every year I go through the cycle where I *want* to replace it and then convince myself I don't really need it. I already have a monster machine for my work stuff, having extra horsepower for my personal machine would be nice but .... I'm sure M4 is the generation I'll upgrade. Just wait :)
- adestefan 3y agoI recently bought my wife a new Air and the only reason why I went with the M2 version was the nicer screen. Otherwise the M1/8GB would be more than fine for what she needs.
- goosedragons 3y agoApple also still sells everything but the M1 Pro/Max/Ultra brand new in various devices too.
- kzrdude 3y agoUsed market is full of those 8 GB models
- paulmd 3y ago
- cglace 3y agoI replaced my M1 macbook pro because with 16 GB of ram I was constantly swapping.
- nottorp 3y agoMost average HNers should get 32 or 64 Gb. You can use a 16 Gb machine but you'll be limited. I bought a M2 Mac Mini with 16 Gb to test the platform. There's a Studio with 64 Gb in my future ;)
- scarface_74 3y agoYou assume that “most HNers” use their computers outside of work and a work provided laptop for anything processor or memory intensive. I use mine exclusively for a side contract and that’s the only reason I bought it. I’m either using VSCode with Python or Node and occasionally to build Lambdas in a Docker Amazon Linux 2 container. If I need more compute than that on my side project, I spin up a Cloud 9 instance on my client’s account.
- nottorp 3y agoIf you only do Facebook you don't need a computer at all? "Most HNers" mess with things I think.
- scarface_74 3y agoSo you think most “HNers” spend most of their waking time outside of work on computers outside of gaming? The last thing I want to do is look at a computer for free and do anything “productive” after spending all day at work.
- pjmlp 3y agoYes, people with too much money to spare like a couple of Mac podcasters.
- antigirl 3y agoNot everyones a developer. M1 vs M3 performance boost for video editing seems like a decent upgrade. I'm still on M1 and I spent £4k+ on specced up MBP 14 inch. Its not struggling but it doesn't perform well when editing 4k with one layer of effects in DaVinci.
- mikece 3y agoI was wondering about the improvement for photo and video editing, but that would be more of a function of the GPU than the CPU, wouldn't it? I certainly need more than 8GB of RAM for photo editing... memory pressure slows down Photoshop and Lightroom.
- baz00 3y agoI was going to change my M1 for an M3 because I like the black one :)
- have_faith 3y agoChaotic Neutral
- JCharante 3y agomkbhd's review is that the m3 isn't black enough to be considered black.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- browningstreet 3y agoIt’s contextualizatipn positioning. And a few. Marques Brownlee has been rocking an M1 Pro laptop and ordered an M3. Which he cancelled after he got his review unit. He’s got enough money to not think hard about it but he cancelled anyway. Which stands as an interesting data point.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bhouston 3y agoI upgraded from a MacMini M1 (Geekbench multicore pref: 8425) to an MacMini M2 Pro with 12 cores (Geekbench multicore pref: 14431.) That was definitely worth it. The only upgrade for the M3 line I would make would be to an M3 Max 16 core (Geekbench multicore pref: 21387) or an upcoming M3 Ultra 32 core (probably a Geekbench multicore pref: ~30000), but it is very expensive and probably not available in the MacMini form factor, so I will hold off for now. All stats from here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1i5dBe_rsiNaQATH-D-Pj3u1h7bSu4M8GMR9vC-mdgpo/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1i5dBe_rsiNaQATH-D-Pj...
- smcl 3y agoI know the whole "carbon footprint" thing was designed to allow big companies and governments to pretend that 7 billion people need to individually decide to change their lifestyles, to fully understand the environmental implications of the various consumer choices they make and assumes that environmentally-friendly options are already available in all cases ... But the carbon footprint of some people I see here must be astronomical.
- eric__cartman 3y agoI at least hope they sell/give away those machines to keep them in circulation. I'd be a real shame to have modern and environmentally expensive hardware like that be torn apart for scrap metal in a recycling facility. Many tech companies love the "eco-friendly" trade in programs that essentially serve to take working, used devices out of circulation.
- 2143 3y agoFor my personal machine I have a relatively new ThinkPad running linux that works perfectly well for everything that I do. Ever since it came out I want to buy a MacBook with these new chips as my personal machine. But I haven't yet bought one because I don't need one. Or I'll buy it when my ThinkPad dies. (Weird laughter). And then over here I read about people replacing laptops every other year or so, and I wonder why I am the way I am.
- vt85 3y ago[dead]
- astrange 3y agoIt's mostly governments that need to change because they control land use policy. This is up to individual decisions of those 7 billion people though, because that's how voting works.
- renewiltord 3y agoAn environmentalist friend told me that my use of Terrapass is pointless and that there's no point attempting to reduce my footprint because big companies are the cause of it. So I stopped worrying about both things. This is fortunate because I've increased the amount of flying I do these days. Usually, environmentalists get in the way of things, so I was quite pleased that here was this positive development.
- nocoiner 3y agoI did something fairly out of character for myself and replaced a six-month-old M2 MBP with a brand new MBP with an M3 Max. I attribute it to three factors: 1. I went with 16 GB of RAM on the M2 and sort of regretted it from day one. I have 36 GB on the M3 and feel much more comfortable about that in a machine I plan to use for the next 5-7 years. 2. Apple gave me what I thought was a very generous trade-in offer on the M2 - something like 90% of what I paid for it, even after half a year’s use. At that value, it basically felt like a wash going from the old computer to a new one, and I was just paying for the substantial upgrade on the old machine (Max-level processor, bigger SSD, quite a bit more memory). 3. I thought the darker color looked neat. That said, it’s much subtler than I imagined, and I wouldn’t have considered this as a factor. Of course, the truly hilarious thing is that I don’t do anything at all intensive on my computer so I’d be just fine with just about anything. But what can I say, I like to know I could if I wanted to.
- binkHN 3y ago> 1. I went with 16 GB of RAM on the M2 and sort of regretted it from day one. I have 36 GB on the M3 and feel much more comfortable about that in a machine I plan to use for the next 5-7 years. Very fair; part of the reason I went with 64GB on my ThinkPad, and Apple makes this configuration almost cost prohibitive.
- jmnicolas 3y agoIt's not *almost* cost prohibitive, here (in France) a max spec Apple laptop cost about 8500€. Ridiculous.
- robotresearcher 3y agoThat's a lot of money for a laptop. But its roughly the same as single intercontinental business class flight. Computers are very, very cheap.
- mahkeiro 3y ago
- james33 3y agoGame engines can be pretty hefty (especially the big 3D ones like Unity or Unreal), you can always find benefit from faster CPU/GPU/RAM with this type of dev work. This is the only reason I'm tempted to upgrade my M1 Max.
- rickette 3y agoYeah, most M-series are plenty fast I think. Just upgraded from a 2018 Intel Macbook to the M3 Max and the change is very noticeable. Hope and plan to keep using this machine again for 5+ years or so.
- petercooper 3y agoDifferent strokes for different folks, but I have a higher bar than "usable" for tools that my income relies upon. A moderate improvement in experience (whether performance, screen, storage speed, or merely that a key on the keyboard no longer "feels weird") warrants frequent upgrades of my main machine, yes.
- anovikov 3y agoCompilation speed difference between 2015 15" mbp and M1 Pro 14" was truly profound. I could compile in a time it takes to make and drink a coffee what previously took half night.
- swalsh 3y agoI have a MacBook pro m1. I'm considering an upgrade, but not for CPU. What I really need is more memory. This computer is not capable of doing any real load of development work without running out of memory. It's insanely frustrating.
- VoodooJuJu 3y agoConsooming <NEW PRODUCT> is critical, the performance capabilities are just a nice bonus.
- Eric_WVGG 3y agoI picked up a 16gb M1 Pro about as soon as they came out. It was unbelievable for the first year, basic React web stack work. Now I'm working on a project that requires about six Docker images, and we made a questionable choice about Typescript packages for typing our API responses. The Docker consumes most of my RAM, and even when it's turned off, there's a visible different in the IDE between mine and my M2 equipped coworkers whenever a document that uses this dumb lib is opened. So anyway I'm picking up an M3 Max next week.
- grecy 3y agoSelling the M1? My email is in my bio. Thanks
- steve1977 3y agoWhen you need a high end laptop for web development, what a sad state of affairs...
- smolder 3y agoAn alternative to leaning on your laptop that way is to use a 2nd headless system to do builds, run tests, host containers, etc. It can be more economical over time and better DX to use this [semi-] dumb terminal approach, depending on specifics of your workflow.
- wkat4242 3y agoIf you need docker, just get a Linux laptop, it really works way better.
- 3y ago
- n8cpdx 3y agoPeople here are jumping through hoops to justify these purchases. I don’t get it. It is completely OK to want to have nice things in your life. It is OK to invest in yourself. It is OK to place a high value (2021 vs 2023 Mac) or any value (2014 Mac vs 2023 Mac) on your time. Maybe the shocked reactions are a result of currency conversions, but when you factor in trade in value, the M1 to M3 upgrade isn’t much more expensive than an iPhone. Over the course of two years, the Mac is no more expensive than a gym membership (actually quite a lot less depending on the gym) and probably gets a lot more use. But there I go justifying again. If personal computing is your hobby or your passion, you should spend your hard-earned money on what you want.
- smolder 3y agoIt's not about about having "nice things" or affordability for me. I try to minimize upgrades mainly out of concern for e-waste and other externalities of manufacture, and because setting up the environment on new hardware is a time sink. Picking appropriate hardware for a use case is also part of that. I won't buy a threadripper workstation to game & watch YouTube on, for instance. It's okay to be passionate about responsible spending, too.
- toast0 3y ago> and because setting up the environment on new hardware is a time sink If you replace your laptop, don't you just restore a backup and you're ready to go? Wipe the old machine and sell it and you're net the same amount of ewaste.
- smolder 3y agoEssentially, yes, I'd transfer the account or restore from backup, but depending on the hardware change there may be other yak shaving to do. I don't believe putting a used laptop on the market is necessarily cutting down e-waste in the same way as not purchasing one, though you make a good point.
- johnthescott 3y ago
- ajross 3y ago> My last Macbook Pro is a 2014 For those curious: this is running a 3.7GHz 4-core Haswell. That's very roughly the performance that you'd get from a contemporary Alder Lake-N (the E-cores only variant). c.f. this very reasonable mid-range $450 Chromebook: https://store.acer.com/en-us/acer-chromebook-314-cb314-4ht-32x6 https://store.acer.com/en-us/acer-chromebook-314-cb314-4ht-3...
- flohofwoe 3y agoUnfortunately some very useful Metal profiling/debugging tools [1] are only available on the latest hardware. Funny enough this was always the main reason for me to update, not performance (e.g. not being able to debug Metal shaders on my old Intel Mac was one important reason to finally upgrade to an M1 Mac). Otherwise I'm still entirely happy with my 2021 minspec M1 MBP. [1] https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/tech-talks/111374 https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/tech-talks/111374
- semireg 3y agoIf spinning up a dev build on my M1 took 18 seconds, M2 takes 13 seconds, and an M3 takes 8 seconds... and I do this 50-100x per day, then the time saving can certainly be worth it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- crazygringo 3y ago> What are they doing that is so performance critical? Anything related to multimedia processing. Whether it's video encoding or live audio processing or rendering or whatever. M1 might be more than fast enough for emails and web development, but multimedia is a whole different beast. People forget that the "Pro" refers to media professionals, not development professionals. Remember the Touch Bar? It was designed for artists and editors for things like color selection and scrubbing and sound control, not for programmers.
- tjoff 3y agoAnd why on earth would you do that on a laptop to start with? I'm sure apple not having decent desktops for a decade leaves a mark. I guess I'm surprised people put up with it.
- Retr0id 3y agoWhy wouldn't you want do to that on a laptop? Especially one with a bunch of hardware accelerated codec support and very decent HDR display.
- crazygringo 3y agoFor the same reason literally everybody else uses laptops -- so you can take your work on the go. You don't think sound producers visit different studios each week? You don't think video editors have to get work done while they travel? You don't think multimedia professionals work both at the office and home like the rest of us? Why wouldn't you do it on a laptop if you can?
- tjoff 3y agoWork on a laptop if you must. But don't encode/render etc. on a laptop.
- crazygringo 3y agoI use my laptop for encoding video all the time. What's your justification for saying I shouldn't, precisely? What's next -- I shouldn't use it to compile software either?
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago> What are they doing that is so performance critical? There are close to 100M MacBook users. People will give you reasons here - because this is a non-representative group - but this is a tiny fraction of their user base. The main reasons are Apple's marketing and signaling.
- avidphantasm 3y agoI went from an M1 Pro with 32GB of RAM to an M3 Max with 64GB. I had been regretting not getting 64GB of RAM. I plan to keep this machine at least five years, so I traded in while the trade-in value was still relatively high. I find the M3 Max to be dramatically faster. I do a lot of Python development (mostly numerical code, some micro services) and increasingly complex k8s setups. Some of my containers are still AMD64, and while these ran acceptably fast on the M1 Pro, they are MUCH faster on the M3 Max. For example, solving conda environments on a fairly complex container takes about 1/2 the time it seems (about as fast as my work 12th gen i9 Linux laptop). I am very impressed with the jump between the M3 Max and the M1 Pro, and I haven’t even touched the GPU yet.
- totallywrong 3y agoI have a 2015 MBP with Linux that I miss every single day while using the work M1 Pro with its crappy keyboard and short key travel. The M1 is faster but doesn't impact my work much, and I find macOS really frustrating to use.
- hinkley 3y agoI usually skip generations. I bought an M2 a couple months ago. Waiting for sure and largely ignoring the M3 hype. I don’t need to care, so I spend roughly half as much time consuming tech hype as I used to, and spend that extra time reading or touching grass.
- lm411 3y agoI used to upgrade my MacBook every year. I'm not sure if this is still true, but I found the resale value great enough that it was almost the same cost over time to upgrade annually vs every 3-4 years. Of course if you're only upgrading every 9-10 years, the math changes significantly. That said, due to changing priorities and needs, my current MBP is from 2018. I am planning to upgrade to an M3 MBP this week. While my current MBP does what I need, some development processes & platforms I use nowadays are taking more time than I'd like. If it saves me 15 minutes a day, it's a great deal.
- tracer4201 3y ago[dead]
- jermaustin1 3y agoI just upgraded my top-spec Intel MBA from 2020 to an M3 Pro MBP. Adjusted for inflation, the M3 was about 20% more expensive for close to infinitely more performance. I could see holding on to this M3 Pro as my daily driver for 5-10 years assuming I don't drop it too many times. I'll probably replace my wife's MBA from 2018 next month for whatever the bottom spec MBA is now.
- KolenCh 3y agoReading your comment, my first reaction is “are there really people or there who upgrade not because they want their computer faster?” Joke aside, for people who read reviews, I don’t think they read it because their computer is dying. So I think it is fitting from the selection bias there to focus on performance improvement. (Like when I buy a car I won’t read a review because I don’t care its performance.)
- matwood 3y agoCreative workflows can often use the extra power, particularly with video. For me, doing development and office work, I'll be hard pressed to ever replace my M1 Max w/ 64GB. I don't feel like I ever wait for anything.
- devwastaken 3y agoUsually the upgrade is for better webcam, screen, a fresh keyboard, maybe want more storage, etc. MacBooks hold value, so you can resell them at good prices towards the next gen.
- kbf 3y agoYou can configure the M3 models with twice as much RAM (128GB) as the M1 models, that’s quite an upgrade if your workflow is memory intensive. It’s especially compelling for graphics work as that memory is also used as VRAM. A desktop RTX 6000 gets you 48GB of VRAM for $6800.
- pier25 3y agoDepends. Someone might want to go from base M1 to M3 Pro for example. That said I have an M2 Pro MBP and this thing is a monster.
- GaryNumanVevo 3y agoI have an M1 MBP that from work an a M2 MBA for my home, I don't think I'll need to upgrade for the next decade