Curious how did you decide on which processor for the new MBPs ?

[phillyman]

Hi All,

I ordered my base 14 inch because I probably don't need more and more ram and 1 TB HD were important to me. I'd have liked 64GB of Ram but really couldn't justify the price of both the max and ram cost. Plus it would have been ridiculous overkill.

But it did get me thinking. How did you choose what to get? Some out there just get and probably need the best (time is money after all) and could justify the cost but the others? There are more "incremental" upgrades then ever when it came to the processors or maybe it just felt that way to me. It used to be pretty clear. A base model; which I avoided ; the sweet spot and then the ridiculous model.

This time seemed a bit more tricky. I rushed through the ordering process or else I would have upgraded for the 200 bucks ( actually 180 since the upgraded charger would have been included) but I know I'll be happy with my system.

So what were your thoughts / price considerations when making up your minds? Or what is your thought process if still deciding?

Cheers,
Philly

EDIT: @mods : I'm not sure but this post maybe should be in the MBP forum? Sorry didn't read the subtitle until after I posted here. Please move if you feel it is in the wrong location.

 

[bill-p]

I got 16" M1 Pro 32gb with 2TB. I could have easily gone with M1 Max but I don't need the extra GPU horsepower at all. Extra RAM and storage are nice as I'm looking to run more virtual machines and store more photos/videos.

 

[zarathu]

My work now does well with the old late 2013 MPB. But its now considered obsolete.My wife told me I was a Luddite for having such an old machine and I was being like a friend of ours who used a 1995 mac and uses a phone that can only do 1g.

Since I want to be able to run the current system, and I have never had less than a 15 inch screen since they made them that big, I had only one choice: the base model Pro with 512 gb SSD(2x times the size of my current one) the 16 gb ram(same as current), and processor that is 4 times the speed of my current one.

And yes the old machine keyboard had eight keys where you can no longer see the letters, and the battery lasts about an hour.

 

[leman]

I need the most CPU performance I can get, so getting the full 8+2 config was a no-brainer for me. I would have been ok with the 16-core GPU, but I kind of wanted to splurge, plus, the Max is probably going to be better for some of things I do anyway, so I got the 32-core CPU model on top of everything else

 

[vel0city]

This time seemed a bit more tricky. I rushed through the ordering process or else I would have upgraded for the 200 bucks ( actually 180 since the upgraded charger would have been included) but I know I'll be happy with my system.

So what were your thoughts / price considerations when making up your minds? Or what is your thought process if still deciding?

Agree with what you said in that there used to be an entry level/sweet spot/high end that you could base your purchasing decision on. My first Mac was a beige G3 desktop, every single Mac I've bought since has been the "sweet spot" model and later upgraded with storage, memory and GPUs by me.

Now it's not so simple. You have to provision for what's to come in terms of client demands if you're buying for pro use - 4k today is 8k tomorrow and 16k in a few years. Without any user-upgradeable parts I definitely felt like I was pushed towards the high-end config purely for future-proofing when I ordered my new Macbook Pro. I still feel like I'm getting a good deal on the computer as the spec is so high and it's a business expense with 20% vat back, but it does feel like you're locked in to your decision from day one now and purchase anxiety from either under or over speccing is going to be a reality for a lot of us.

Feels weird maxing out the memory from Apple after 20+ years of buying the minimum and upgrading myself, ditto storage.

The Mac Pro towers are going to be a nightmare when it comes to speccing them out.

 

[matram]

If you buy for your own bussiness you would by with a 2 - 3 year time perspective, at least that is what I do.

In that case you should now what you need and buy based on that. Technology or workload would not change drastically in such a short time perspective. If you need more power just replace the old machine.

 

[phillyman]

Thank you for your replies. I had not thought of virtualization and storage needs as much. 1TB in a laptop feels insane. Then again I have a NAS to handle my main media needs. But again I don't need to edit/work with 4K files on a daily basis. As for the constant upgrade to the next higher version... ie. 8K being today's 4K . I'm sure for pros that can be true BUT I don't believe mainstream has caught up yet. Most people use their cable boxes for a large part of their viewing and that still pumps out most content in 720p maybe 1080. Yes, for techies and videophiles the hardware exists just not sure most people are using/investing in it. They will get a 4K TV but still use their old HDMI cables and their Apple TV that still works..

Options are good plus Apple is a master at upselling. I did read an interesting comment on the forums that nowadays Apple more or less supports generations/families of systems and less individual CTOs. So they try to make MBPs of 2021 compatible or the iPhone 13 line with new features and then drop support for that whole generation down the line. The more I think about it, it does seem that is how they have been handling their OS support. So all 13s are supported (since chips are the same) regardless of pro/regular (difference being camera/screen). It will be interesting on how Apple handles this for Apple silicone. It feels like we have two families. The regular M version, then the Pro/Max versions. So the Pro/Max might get longer OS support. Then again these systems are lasting longer and longer. I've got an MBA from 2014 that for email and light browsing is still fine (just don't restart it, takes about 10 minutes). The battery still even holds about 2 hours of charge.

But I look forward to seeing what Apple will do in 4-5 years when the chips will have matured. Fun time to follow Apple.

Philly

 

[MrGunny94]

I opted for the full M1 Pro die as it stirkes as a good balance for my needs.