John Ternus said, the new MacBook Pro’s can be for anyone who just wants the best notebook in the world. At the same time, if you are doing photo editing, music production, video editing, STEM, it’s also great workflow. Just as long as you can afford it.
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How many people really need M1 Pro or M1 Max
- Thread starter SpartaMAC
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I have to save my pennies to be responsible about it, then justify my purchase by taking on more projects. I think I’d be able to “profit” from it.
But it’s almost entirely an ego driven purchase.
That was my point exactly - in my experience a LOT of people seem to think that "it's a tax write-off" means it's free.
Okay, it reduces the effective price - which then people bring up the other completely illogical point, "you have to buy it anyway." But unless your alternative is to buy a computer that does NOT benefit from the tax write-off (really just a reduction in profit tax), the point is silly - they're comparing different things. If one computer costs $1000 and the other $1500 and your tax rate is x%, the pricing differential is basically still the same.
(And for anyone who doesn't get that - try this argument the next time you want a raise, just tell your boss they should give you an extra million dollars because "it's just a tax write-off anyway.")
And there are also a LOT of businesses out there that don't actually pay that much tax (profit tax) or taxes that are much changed at all by having some more business expenses - notably the fairly large number of businesses that don't show a profit or have "stored" tax losses from previous years, etc.
Anyway: "it's just a tax write-off" for something that's an expense is a phrase that generally communicates the speaker has no idea what they're talking about (or deceiving themselves) rather than some deep insight into how business works.
I really don't believe their pricing is unusually high, especially if you don't configure them with the 4TB or 8TB drives.
I’v had a 15.4 inch screen since the Pismo back in the 1990’s. My wife has a 13 inch 2019 MBP, and for me the screen is just too small. And so I bought the base model M1Pro, 16 gb, 512 gb. I’m upgrading from a late 2013 MBP because my wife called me a Luddite and told me I needed to upgrade. It will be the first NEW one for me since my LASER APPLE 2 CLONE back in 1987.
One should not be thinking in terms of whether they're a pro or not but rather which configuration meets their needs. I am an IT professional and the most taxing thing I do with my laptop is import large data sets into Excel. An MBA, a non pro branded system, easily meets my professional needs.
On the other hand there are non pro users who could benefit from these new systems. Not because they're "pro" systems but rather the hardware specs meet their needs.
It's my opinion Apple uses pro to differentiate more capable systems from less capable systems. At least they used to. They've been muddling it for years now.
Coming from a MBP Air M1 I likely don't need a 14" MBP, but .... I like the idea of:
- a high rez bigger screen
- support for multiple monitors
- additional disk space (256 GB is tight)
- a web camera not from 1995.
- Massive SSD or memory options
- Pro SOCs
- Noisy fans!
By all reports, most times the fans don’t come on, and when they do they are not very loud.
I don't care if the computer is totally over kill for what I want to do, I bought a maxed out MBPr in 2012 and used it for 9 years. So I want something that I can use for another 7-9 years, and will still be able to handle the work I do 8 years from now.
I would have to see that to believe it. ML training can run the CPU and/or GPU at 100% utilization for a long time such as hours or days.
Need, maybe not, but the argument could be made you don't need a car, you could do horse and buggy Amish style.
With tech, we are talking speed limit, and that is there isn't one, so speed costs money, how fast do you want to go?
I run a lot of virtual machines that require emulation, so I want all the speed I can afford, and all the RAM.
Things that have kept a LOT of corporate purchasers (who buy them for people doing simple web stuff, excel, powerpoint, word, etc) from buying: no HDMI.
As ridiculous as that might sound, a LOT of them do not care about the extra $500-$1000 - or hardly at all. They do care about HDMI, because they standardized on it internally.
Might sound silly to you, but no-one wants a lot of highly-paid Excel-erators and PowerPoint Rangers wasting time looking for a blasted dongle. Or not being able to do a presentation to a client because of one.
Extra cores? Sure, whatever. Thanks. Tell me that laptops break 18% less frequently because of Magsafe, we'll take the extra cores as a bonus.
I don’t either, and the premium over a MBA with 16gb ram and 512 gb storage is a lot just for MagSafe and HDMI. Looks like I will be sticking with my MBA for a couple more years. It’s really good enough to take on whatever I can throw at it.
Right now that new MBP with M1 Max is very tempting for me, I need a new compute that can handle 4K to 4K rendering that calls for heavy GPU computations like Noise Reduction. I don’t want to buy an Intel Mac Pro or for that matter a 2020 27” iMac… but for the same money as a maxed out iMac I could buy a maxed out MBP M1 Max… I really need to see some real world tests before I go there though and then maybe I’m better of waiting for a 27” iMac M1 Max… or M1 Mac Pro… One thing is for sure that M1 Max MBP will blow my 2015 iMac out of the water… I however have a fundamental issue with using a laptop as a desktop…
These machines are obviously meant for video/ film post production, photo and 3D graphics professionals. Apple made that very clear on the Monday.
I get that people would want a machine with promotion. I’d imagine it’s probably worth waiting for the heavily rumoured MBA redesign though.
Even so, most people could stop at the base config and have way too much power that that could ever meaningfully use (I doubt that many AAA games are coming to the Mac any time soon).
But if money is no object, why not? No doubt there will be some people on these forums who will buy the M class MP to load 500 tabs up or something!
I get that people would want a machine with promotion. I’d imagine it’s probably worth waiting for the heavily rumoured MBA redesign though.
Even so, most people could stop at the base config and have way too much power that that could ever meaningfully use (I doubt that many AAA games are coming to the Mac any time soon).
But if money is no object, why not? No doubt there will be some people on these forums who will buy the M class MP to load 500 tabs up or something!
If there was a 16 inch miniLED Air with an M1 and a good sound system, I would consider that as well. Base model MBP with M1 Pro will probably have a longer life span though and the difference is not that big.
I'm gonna be trading in my M1 iPad Pro and M1 MBP to get a baseline M1 Pro 14 inch, and the extra power is very low on my list of reasons why I want it. Mainly:
1) Insanely better quality screen
2) Bigger screen, better resolution for 'more space' rendering option on macOS
3) Much better speakers
4) More Future proof
5) Extra ports
6) I rarely use my M1 iPad pro lately
7) Extra power, there if I need it as my career progresses
1) Insanely better quality screen
2) Bigger screen, better resolution for 'more space' rendering option on macOS
3) Much better speakers
4) More Future proof
5) Extra ports
6) I rarely use my M1 iPad pro lately
7) Extra power, there if I need it as my career progresses
Maybe so, but I feel like my 13 Pro does 90% of what I'd use the mini for, minus apple pencil support. Maybe the iPad just isn't for me anymore
I relate to what you're saying. Ever since SSDs became cheap, just about any computer released in the past 15 years feels powerful enough for average uses. I could probably go back to my 2012 MBP and still handle most of my back-end development work just fine.
I got an M1 Max anyway and I was so eager to do so I upended my usual habit of going at least 4 years in between upgrades. I did it to get the blend of power and battery life because battery life is a huge thorn in my side with my usage patterns.
I don't like being shackled to my desk so having a laptop that I can roam more freely with is a quality of life upgrade that I'm willing to pay for.
my work mostly on old 2017 imac intel while m1 just for certain test and i'm really frequent use the ipad mini .Maybe so, but I feel like my 13 Pro does 90% of what I'd use the mini for, minus apple pencil support. Maybe the iPad just isn't for me anymore
The best reason is when i got some idea , i just surf on imac since the safari page appear as icon at the imac.
I also bought the pencil but kinda rarely use , before thinking to write note so on but in the end typing much easier and faster.
It cool to have the latest mac pro /max chip which may improved your workflow. For mine , not yet .
Sounds like the ipad mini is working out well for you then
My M1 iPad has been lasting like 4 days on a single charge lately, because of how little I use it or because whenever I use it at my desk to do 'work' (mostly a companion device to my macbook) its plugged in anyway. And whenever I'm using it standalone I find myself asking why I'm not just using my macbook to do the same task.
Different things work for different people!