So, I just did something totally crazy. I sold my Mac Mini M2 Pro 32 GB 1TB for 1,747 Euro (rebuy.de) and I was able to purchase a Mac Mini M4 Pro 24 GB 512 GB for 1,486 Euro.
Yes, I lost 8 GB RAM and 512 GB on the internal SSD. But I never really have been using more than 16 GB RAM of those 32 GB and only just 190 GB are in use of those 1 TB (all my data is sitting on external SSDs and on my NAS). I earned 260 Euro upgrading from a M2 Pro to a M4 Pro. I gained ports on the front, a blazing fast computer, I lost 8 GB RAM and 512 GB on the internal SSD, which is no issue for me as mentioned. “Here’s to the crazy ones…”?
I bought the M1 Air base model when it first came out. After running linux exclusively for years. I loved the Air and never had any performance issues even with the 8GB that I see people complaining about. Then again, when I switched to macOS I made a point to force myself to use Apple apps when possible, especially Safari instead of Firefox or Chrome. That said, I did run MS Edge alongside Safari, MS Teams, and a couple more apps all day everyday for work and no slowdowns, beach balls, etc. I wound up “upgrading” to an M2 Macbook Pro 16/512 and giving the Air to my wife. She loves it to this day. I love the display of the MBPro but otherwise it’s no faster, and it’s much heavier. Memory makes no difference for my usage. I will probably go with an Air 15" as the larger display size is more important to me. But won’t do that until seeing the next redesign of the MBPro.
I made the mistake of buying two summers ago a maxed out M2 Max MbPro (32GB Ram, 4TB drive) from Apple Refurb store, because he’s a compsci and business double major. I figured it would future proof him for AI. That was a bad idea. He’d rather have the ligher Air and it seems that the M4+ chips will be the ones that really do well with AI.
After the first few “holy sh*t, these are amazing!” reviews came out for the first Apple Silicon Macs, I upgraded both my own MacBook Pro (butterfly keyboard) and my wife’s even older MacBook Air.
I got a maxed out M1 MBPro; she got a maxed out M1 MBAir.
They both work great to this day, and there’s nothing my wife does with hers that remotely taxes it.
I felt limited by the two ports, and the 16 GB of RAM, and “only” two TB of storage. (Which was no larger than the old MBPro, which was getting cramped.) I told myself I couldn’t upgrade just a step (M1 → M1 Pro → M1 Max) or generation (M2, etc.). The M1 MBPro was and remains a great machine for just about everything I do.
But last year the M3 MBPro called my name. I decided that M1 → M3 Max was a meaningful upgrade, even though I didn’t feel limited. It was about the extra ports, getting rid of the Touch Bar, and that glorious display.
So I pulled the trigger, including upgrades to both RAM and storage.
I have no regrets about it, but I don’t kid myself that it was anything other than an extravagant gift to myself. (It was my birthday.) It’s a better computer, for sure, but the only “better” that I truly take advantage of is the Thunderbolt 4 port on the right side. Worth $4,500? No. Worth it as a gift to myself? That’s a decision people need to make for their own gifts to themselves. I’m happy.
And I feel no compulsion towards the M4, at any step. M5? Maybe. M6 or M7? At my age, life is too uncertain to have plans that far out. I’ll make that decision when it comes.
I just upgraded my M1 Max Mac Studio and M1 Pro MacBook Pro to a new M4 Max MacBook Pro. I see a marked improvement in the PC strategic and tactical games I play in emulation in Parallels and Crossover.
Apple says in a press release the the M4 Max is “…up to 2.2x faster than the CPU in M1 Max.” It does seem much faster to me with my PC games, but it’s hard to tell a difference with most of my work, which is with Ulysses, Mindnode, etc. Those were already plenty fast.
This sums it all. With Apple Silicon it’s hard to justify anything beyond an M1 for usual desktop workloads. Development and professional workflows of course will be eager for more CPU power, but unless Apple Intelligence becomes essential to everyone, I foresee longer refresh cycles por Macs.
I have a an upgrade from my M1 MBP Max to M4 MBP Max. The trade-in value was what helped, but in the last 6 to 9 months running data models and corresponding data visualizations (running many different options consecutively), running tests in PyTorch, and running a large Cities Skylines (version 1) in Steam I’ve been hitting maximum capacity and the fans kicking in. The processing pressure for Cities isn’t a driver, but the only reason I was looking at sticking with the MBP Max and not sanely moving back to Pro, is the data analysis, data viz, and AI/ML data sensing.
For much of my other work the M1 Max, even with 500+ Safari tabs open and 15 apps open at once doesn’t break a sweat and the M4 Pro (with a RAM bump up from 32GB to 48GB) would have improved up on my capabilities on that front.
I have a M1 Max MBP (64/4TB) and M1 Ultra (128/4TB), and I recently tried a two week trial with a maxed out M4 MBP to see how it compares.
Ended up returning it as I couldn’t see any difference in use compared to the M1 for mobile use (I don’t dock it ever). The more demanding apps I use are Adobe Suite and Anaconda and nothing in that workflow performed better.
I honestly felt that if I didn’t know which laptop I was using, I wouldn’t be able to tell.
The Ultra was still great compared to the M4, and in multi core it outperformed it by a huge margin for data science tasks. Almost all the work I do is multi core, hence why I got the Ultra. The most notable difference is the memory bandwidth (25% more on the M1 Ultra) and while using Anaconda it meant much faster results with large datasets. It also performed noticeably better for running language models and Spark.
The M4 felt nice and snappy and the 8TB and 128GB configuration would have been nice. However, I don’t believe it’s worth replacing my laptop yet, as I couldn’t notice enough difference to justify the cost (which would have been paid for by my employer anyway). I’d rather wait for something with more interesting feature upgrades like 5G and/or new design and performance that really feels better. Then, I’ll pounce on the 8/128 model.
Not a lot of info in this video, and things we all know, but still a neat video from Jeff Geerling (tech tinkering type YouTuber), on how efficient the M4 Mini is. We talk about how cheap Raspberry Pis are, but when I recently got one, after the case, SD card, power supply, etc, I spent about $180, I believe. Sure an M4 Mini is still much more expensive, but you get a let more. It really is an amazing little computer. If I didn’t already have a Synology, I would be using one for the same purpose (although you can’t replace Synology Drive with a Mac Mini).
