Is anybody upgrading M-series chips to newer versions of the same chips/form factors? Are you seeing significant performance improvement?
I’m talking about, for example, going from a base M1 laptop to a base M3 laptop. Geekbench shows a modest performance increase, but I’m wondering how it works in the real world.
I’m having an internal debate to see if I upgrade my Mac mini M1 (16/256) to a base model M4 mini.
I don’t need the extra power right now, but sooner or later I’ll need a Mac home server. The M1 would become the server in this case. It’s not urgent though, so I’m still undecided.
Similar. I have an M1 MBA laptop with M1/16 GB/1 TB, and my Mac Mini 2018 with the 6-core/32 GB/1 TB. The 2018 Mini is perfectly fine as a file/Plex server, but I’m looking at either replacing the laptop or getting a more juiced Mini and keeping the laptop for work away from home.
Haven’t found anything I do that overtaxes my M1 iMac. Just got an M4 iPad so will see how it compares.
My first M-series was my Mac Studio M1 Pro. Each new product release I fight FOMO and tell myself I don’t really need the incremental improvements.
This summer I got M3 Macbook Air to retire my Intel MacBook and it runs fast, but I don’t really notice much difference between the two systems (Mac Studio versus M3 Air).
I don’t think I’ll be tempted again until the rumored M4 Studio next summer, at that time will consider retiring my M1 Studio but possibly switching to the now new Mac Mini perhaps.
None of these choices are driven by real performance issues but the desire to stay “more current” so all the latest little features work between my iOS, macOS, iPadOS systems.
Truly a first world problem I think at this point.
I was able to donate my M1 Max to a good charitable cause and buy an M3 Max this year. It’s saving enough time/increasing engagement when I want to be engaged enough that the financial ROI will work out. The M4 lineup would make the math even easier. However, I’m the kind of user who gets value from the Max line in the first place.
Good points. Most of all of this is marketing. Unless you are a REAL power user (video, audio, CAD/CAM), the savings of a few seconds is not worth upgrading. I look at it like needing a car to drive around town for errands. Does it really matter if your car can go 125 mph or 160 mph? You’ll never need that high end speed.
As an everyday computer, my M1 MacBook Air with 16GB/1TB still rocks. Only when using Adobe photo editing software do I feel cramped. I would love to bump up to 32GB/2TB. But macOS continues to work so well, even when I exceed my 16GB of physical memory and begin using swap space on the internal SSD, that I haven’t been able to justify the cost of an upgrade.
Can I ask what you do that the Max gives you significant value?
I notice that my M4 iPad Pro is faster than my M1 Max MacBook Pro at single core tasks. Things like opening apps, sending emails, etc. Noticably faster. Not so fast that I’m itching to go get a new computer.
I would notice the speed improvements for code compiling if I were to upgrade to an M4 Max variant, but I’m still holding out for a cellular Mac before I upgrade.
I am not sure that is a fair comparison. On your iPad, wouldn’t the speed be more likely due to iPadOS and the additional memory of the M4 iPad has to work with? On my M4 Mini, I see no difference in speeds from my M1 Studio and MBP in everyday tasks. All have more than the base RAM though, which I think makes a difference for the little stuff.
My M4 iPad is much more zippy than My M1 iPad on the other hand, but not enough to really make me feel like it was a good upgrade for me.
And some of that could be a RAM difference between the two.
I’ve got 64GB of RAM on the MacBook Pro and 4TB of storage, so I don’t think it’s a memory issue whether you mean RAM or drive.
You’re right that iPadOS might just be zipper, but I could tell for the first couple days that the iPad was alarmingly fast at things that took a hair of a second longer on the Mac, like hitting Send on an email. Could it be iPadOS? Sure.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Still very confident I would see a day-to-day difference with the M4 Max laptop.
I went from an M1 Max to M4 Max, same RAM and SDD and it’s noticeably faster
I upgraded from an M1Pro MBP 512/16 to a regular M4 Mac mini 512/24. I thought it would be a better idea this time around to spend money on extra ram rather than the pro processor.
I’ve always been a typical “office worker”. I never found anything that overtaxed my 2013 MBP. But my M1 MBA does boot and open programs faster.
My M1 MBA 16g/1t is a beast. It does get a little warm when running back to back Teams meetings but that’s a MS resource hog issue.
For development, the most direct financial benefit comes from running tests and builds.
There’s an effective dollar value to losing engagement or a thought because processing exceeded a time threshold, I had to close something useful to keep the computer performing, etc. With an estimation of frequency and the net financial and time cost of the laptop replacement, I’ve got an ROI.
Before the iMac I used a 2015 MBA in clamshell mode with a Thunderbolt Display. I occasionally ran into sluggishness due to the 8gb of ram when I was running a bunch of programs at once. No memory issues with the 16gb in the iMac.
I won’t claim to be a power user, but I do a lot more video editing now that I am producing YouTube educational materials to support my business outreach.
I had a workflow where one step was some intense processing in Premiere Pro that took about 18 hours on my old 2012 Intel iMac retina 27". When I finally got my Mac Studio M1, the same task now takes about an hour.
But - I still didn’t really need to upgrade. I arranged my workflow such that this particular step is something I start running in the evening and by the next day when I am ready to continue working on it (having done many other things both work and not-work during the day), it was always done.
So, yes, I really enjoy not have to schedule and plan around this workflow, but I managed for quite a while not having a super fast M series Mac and life continued anyway :lol