Performance was meant to subsume anything affecting performance, including neural engines, AI processors, etc. If you re-read what I wrote, you'll see it doesn't make sense to interpret it otherwise.
Last edited:
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Investing in a high-spec model with "headroom" versus buying a new machine more frequently
- Thread starter Sami13496
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
' I
But for the rest of us mortals, today, I think the best bet is to buy the machine with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. The 1TB+ options are over-priced. I bought a very small 4TB Thunderbolt SSD drive for about $250. By comparison, Apple charges $200 for 1TB and $600 for 2TB. I never have any problem with this arrangement.
There are a limited number of users who need ultra-performance computing, and those people know who they are. They may indeed get enough productivity benefit from the very fastest CPU to justify annual upgrades to the most high-end Mac.
But for the rest of us mortals, today, I think the best bet is to buy the machine with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. The 1TB+ options are over-priced. I bought a very small 4TB Thunderbolt SSD drive for about $250. By comparison, Apple charges $200 for 1TB and $600 for 2TB. I never have any problem with this arrangement.
The advent of non-upgradeable Macs with exorbitant pricing for RAM and storage above baseline configurations has completely changed my buying behavior. I used to buy a new Mac with the best CPU I could afford, assuming that I could get five or six years of service at a minimum while upgrading RAM and storage as needed after a few years of service. Now I buy the minimum Mac laptop that will meet my current needs, assuming I will replace it in 2-4 years, and I have stopped buying Macs entirely in favor of upgradeable Windows/Linux machines for more stationary tasks, like scanning or certain server-oriented tasks.
For example, I have a few 13" mid-2012 MacBook Pros that started life with 4 GB RAM and 500 GB hard drives that have been upgraded several times through the years to their current configurations of 16 GB RAM and 4 TB SSD. One is running Windows 10 Pro, another is running Linux, and another is running Sonoma via OCLP, though I eventually will move the last to something else. All are performing well enough to use as daily drivers and have to be among the best Macs that Apple ever made.
In contrast, my most recent personal Mac purchase was a simple M1 MacBook Air, albeit with upgraded RAM and storage, even though there were significantly faster Macs available that I could have afforded.
For example, I have a few 13" mid-2012 MacBook Pros that started life with 4 GB RAM and 500 GB hard drives that have been upgraded several times through the years to their current configurations of 16 GB RAM and 4 TB SSD. One is running Windows 10 Pro, another is running Linux, and another is running Sonoma via OCLP, though I eventually will move the last to something else. All are performing well enough to use as daily drivers and have to be among the best Macs that Apple ever made.
In contrast, my most recent personal Mac purchase was a simple M1 MacBook Air, albeit with upgraded RAM and storage, even though there were significantly faster Macs available that I could have afforded.
Unfortunately not for me. My 2012 base MBP came with 500MB HD which I replaced with a 1TB SSD later. Less than 200GB free so I had to go with the 2TB SSD 😬 Don't wanna hassle with external drives. What's on an external drive is somehow gone like you put some stuff into the attic or basement.
From the 90s to ~2005 I mainly assembled my own PC systems to spec - and those were, of course, hugely expandable/upgradeable tower systems. Even so, as it turns out, I didn't actually do very much mid-life upgrading beyond the hard drives - by the time a system started getting "left behind" everything - CPU, GPU, RAM, I/O - was due for an update and probably needed a new socket/motherboard (remember ISA? PCI-without-an-e? AGP? Slot 1?) and it was usually more useful to keep the old system together as a hand-me-down/backup/file server etc.
I think the golden age of future proof-ness was with Macs from ~2010 - because the biggest, single night-and-day improvement over the following 5 years was the switch to SSDs - which could very easily be retrofitted to those Macs. My 2011 MacBook Pro lasted until 2018 (and was only really cut down because A. the GPU failed and B. an OS upgrade broke the ExpressCard that I'd added to get USB3). I don't think those circumstances are going to repeat themselves. We also have the increasing issue of relying on software updates "because security" making the end of software support more of an issue (and even Windows is getting more inclined to drop support for older hardware).
So, I partly agree - but you need to make sensible judgements about what you mean by "fully specced" and how much longevity you can reasonably expect. Going "one notch up" is probably sensible future proofing, "maxing out" almost certainly not (on most Macs that would mean paying $2000++ for an 8TB SSD) - usually that puts you into "if you don't know why you might need that you don't need it" territory.
Longevity-wise, in the current environment, I'd say plan for 3 years, hope for 5 years - and beyond that, leave it to chance. You probably can't predict how your own needs will change over 5 years, let alone what wild-cards technology will throw up. As a planning tool, I'd suggest picking an intended lifespan (say 3 years), and working out the cost per year - then guesstimating how much a particular set of upgrades would extend the lifetime and see how that changes the annual cost.
It also depends on whether you want to "trade in" or not - I typically keep my previous system as a fall-back, or for running one or two old apps that don't work (or need expensive upgrades) on the new hardware. In that case it helps if the machine is still viable after 3-5 years, even if it's no longer state of the art.
That's a sensible spec for most, I agree. I'd bump storage to 1TB but that's me - I run a bunch of VMs and a few big games and need the space. Having a couple of hundred gig of swing space without resorting to external drives for temporarily moving things around the network helps in my workflow too.
"Over priced".... it is what it is. If you need it, it's a lot more convenient than external drives and it is very fast storage. But yes, apple storage in general is expensive, so just buy what you need. If you need 2TB to be comfortable with your usage then buy 2TB - but don't buy 4 or 8!!
Unless you need more than that today - do not buy more than that today.
Last edited:
This is EXACTLY my strategy and it has worked pretty well for MacBooks so far.
My MacBook history is
- 2011 15" Pro (originally 4 GB / 500 GB HD - upgraded by me to 8 GB / Hybrid SSD/HD)
- 2015 13" Pro (i5, 8 GB, 500 GB)
- Early 2020 13" Air (intel, 16GB, 1TB - mistake, but I'd been holding out with the 5 year old 13" Pro until the keyboards weren't trash). I bought this during covid lockdown as a bit of a retail therapy thing and also hoped it would have less fan noise than the 2015 13" Pro did with Zoom/Teams due to the more modern CPU supporting more modern video codecs in hardware. it did not.
- 2021 14" pro (16 GB, 1TB)
As you say - I budget (as in, put money away into a bucket in my accounts) for 3-4 years, so that if it dies out of warranty I can afford it. If the machine is still good after 3-4 years I have some flexibility to wait (as I did with the butterfly keyboard debacle).
The 2020 air didn't go totally to waste, it went to the GF, but I was super disappointed with Ice Lake processors. Hot, loud and really not a significant step from the 13" Pro I had.
Right now, my M1 Pro is coming up 3 years old. Its still good, so I'm looking forward to M4 or maybe even M5; but depending on how good the GPUs are it may be real tempting to sell my gaming PC and go for an M4 before this one dies (and hand off to the GF to replace the filthy intel Air).
Generally the "middle spec" or "one step up" machine is a pretty sensible option for most normal end users, the entry level mostly seems to be a low-price teaser to get you interested - but often is significantly crippled by spec for not a huge saving in terms of the total BOM cost.
I mean it's a decent saving in terms of raw dollar figures, but as a percentage of the total you'd spend the baseline is (imho) normally too crippled to buy instead of the first step up. Also when you amortise the full amount over 3-5 years, the saving isn't huge in terms of $ per year of ownership.
Likewise, going above the mid-spec is (in my view) not worth it unless you really do need the performance today for actual productivity and time is money in your job. Also, buying top spec Air or whatever is a waste - just stretch to a pro, they're far better value one you compare to the high end spec on lower models.
Last edited:
ML is going to be the potential game changer in my own scenario, however excepting that I have found that computers have become sufficiently capable that I’m not annoyed by them (the first computer I ever owned that made me feel that way was the OG 5K iMac [2014], which was my daily driver until 2022 when I started to notice slowdown). While I will be replacing my MBPro with a Studio once Thunderbolt 5 is available, I still do not max out my M1Max setup with 32GB RAM (except that Handbrake uses all available cores and therefor scales exceptionally well) and thus I expect any Studio I end up purchasing to last me the bulk of a decade.
Not having to change computers regularly is a joy. I’ll pay “extra” for that, now…
Not having to change computers regularly is a joy. I’ll pay “extra” for that, now…
The restore process is only a minor part of why I haven’t upgraded my personal machine. It does what I need it to do on the rare occasions I need to use it. I’m on my work computer most of the time so my personal MacBook has no reason to be replaced currently 🤷♂️
Hard agree.
My 2010 MacBook Pro is the computer that I have used as my primary Mac for the longest time, ever. I replaced the hard drive with an SSD and the DVD drive with a much larger HD, and then replaced both with faster and larger SSDs when specs and prices improved. I also upgraded the RAM to what is still the base amount in almost all new Macs.
However, the biggest reason to hold on to it was that it was the last Mac ever that had a matte screen special order option.
I had to give it up because I wanted to run newer version of macOS and I was long overdue for Retina. Also, it had started to kernel panic a lot, probably due to GPU issues. My offspring still use it for school work and Minecraft.
And if you're using a Mac to earn money, you just need to consider what specs will let you work efficiently without over-spec'ing (which is basically throwing money away).
Depends a bit on whether you're getting a laptop or a desktop - in the first case there's a clear advantage to having all your data on the internal drive so you don't have to faff around with external drives on the go - although you can still get a transatlantic flight or two's worth of entertainment on a USB stick! With a desktop, it is no great problem to have external drives or a NAS for anything that you're not actively working on. Usually, most of the speed advantages of Apple's super-fast SSDs come from having the system, apps, temporary files, swap etc. on there. Things like backups, archive, media libraries etc. belong on external/NAS anyway (esp. on Macs where the internal drive dies with the machine) and probably on "spinning rust" - still cheapest for large backups.
I think, these days, there's a big gulf between "regular" workflows and a few specific terabyte-guzzling applications like 4k/8k/HDR/HFR video production or ML training which tend to define the "state of the art". For general use, most media consumption up to and including audio editing and a lot of photography - 1TB is more than adequate (25,000 RAW photos, 200 HD movies, 70 days of CD-quality audio - shoot me if I've got my guesstimates wrong). I do have some 2TB/4TB externals but they are for things that accumulate over time (e.g. TM backups and archives) and media libraries for streaming devices.
One thing that used to be a storage killer was Bootcamp - and the need to semi-permanently partition off a significant chunk of hard drive, inefficiently dividing your free space between MacOS and Windows. VMs are more efficient - with expandable/shrinkable virtual discs which can easily be archived and restored - containers, potentially, even more so. Plus, I'm finding much less need to run Windows, full stop.
So, yeah, 256GB is too tight if you're going to be installing "pro" apps or doing almost anything with media, 512GB is adequate and 1TB is perfect for most purposes. Sure, if you know your current 1TB drive is bursting at the seams and it would take more than $400 worth of your time to clean it out, get 2TB but that's not what I'd call "future proofing" (...and you should consider an old phrase including the words "eggs", "one" and "basket").
If you really need over 1TB of fast, internal SSD, I'm not arguing, but you should know the specific justification & may also be better off with multiple, per-project, external TB/USB3.1g2 drives.
Agree, provided you aren’t the fairly small percent of user who absolutely need max power. As long a you don’t need an M3 Ultra with max ram and SSD pushed to the Max (er, ultra? Extreme?) daily, you are correct.
Buy a base model 16” MBP today (perhaps even on sale), sell it for half that in 3 years and do that again, you will have latest screen, ports, design, chip, etc. it definitely makes sense as long as you don’t need the horsepower today.
I disagree for the following reasons:
1. There is time, and therefore costs to upgrading machines. It typically takes a full day or more to return to efficiency after moving to another machine. All the various licensing, signing in to accounts, etc. take time. Migration assistant can help with some of this, but often, there is junk in the library that you don’t want moved so it’s not always best to use MA for a primary work machine.
2. Your income level or future costs approval level is not guaranteed and it may be best to buy the machine you need to last 3-5 years or more.
3. With inflation, today's dollar is likely to be worth less than tomorrow's, meaning, it will actually be less expensive to buy now. I appreciate that money in the bank can accumulate interest, but in a business setting, budgets are often spent within the fiscal year, so this is not a factor.
4. You’re not guaranteed to have a basic machine you like in the future. I had a 2013 Trash Can MP for 7 years because there was no suitable replacement. Similarly, I am still on a 2019 MP as I’m dissatisfied with the M2 offering. I am pleased that we spec’d these to last.
5. Currently with AS, you cannot upgrade after purchase. If you’re needs change before you’re ready to upgrade, you’ll be stuck.
Therefore, buy the machine you NEED with some of the machine you want to last the lifespan you plan on. That is the key word: plan.
Last edited:
Lower-tier models are indeed lower-tier just like a lower trim level in a motor vehicle. If one wants lower grade features then one buys lower-tier, which is fine for some. But always be aware that the cost of lower-tier is the loss of all kinds of competence, things like display quality, bandwidth, ports, available RAM, etc.: a long list.
Repeatedly buying lower-tier means one always has a newer device but also means one is forever using low end displays, etc.
Last edited:
I prefer a higher spec older model, purchased for about what a mid-low tier current model would cost. There were many such deals on the M1 Max MBPs, and I scooped one up for myself. It's a beast, and it was $2600 with AppleCare included from B&H. Brand new, that would have cost me $4100 before AppleCare, and an equivalent M2 Max would have been even more.
Historically, my philosophy has been to buy a mid-high end Mac laptop, and a budget gaming PC desktop. The gaming PC usually only needs a graphics card after a few years, and a mid-range GPU that's a few years newer usually runs rings around the old one, so that keeps the PC current enough for my needs for 4-5 more years. This way, I get 8-10 years of use out of each of my computers before they really need to be replaced.
Historically, my philosophy has been to buy a mid-high end Mac laptop, and a budget gaming PC desktop. The gaming PC usually only needs a graphics card after a few years, and a mid-range GPU that's a few years newer usually runs rings around the old one, so that keeps the PC current enough for my needs for 4-5 more years. This way, I get 8-10 years of use out of each of my computers before they really need to be replaced.
Certainly shorter life cycles (of the same model level) works for some. E.g. pay for 64 GB RAM today while you need 64 GB and then buy/sell again in two years when you need 128 GB RAM. That way one always has the latest and greatest, but that generally costs more long term. Unless one buys lower end boxes, and usage of lower end boxes is another choice entirely. Plus some of us (me) seriously dislike the process of changing to a new box.
Only problem I see with that, is that you have to make do with 8GB/256GB models. And that for me is a “NOPE”. I prefer to wait as long as I can, and then buy a machine with appropriate RAM and decent storage, which would be like a 24GB/512GB machine for me.
Also, I tend to hold on the same Mac for many, many years, like 8-10 years. And hopefully with Apple Silicon, older macs will keep working as well as the old Intel machines, if not better.
I don’t like the stress of having to sell in the second hand market every now and then.
Also, I tend to hold on the same Mac for many, many years, like 8-10 years. And hopefully with Apple Silicon, older macs will keep working as well as the old Intel machines, if not better.
I don’t like the stress of having to sell in the second hand market every now and then.
One plus to buying low end more often is that one gets a new toy more often!
More seriously... I think some edition of the Macintosh Bible pointed out many years ago a problem with over buying technology because you'll need something better "someday." But, as they pointed out, when "someday" comes, that technology will probably be a lot cheaper.
One thing that helps with Apple, too: the low end is more likely to be viable for a reasonable period than the low end offerings from some other companies...
More seriously... I think some edition of the Macintosh Bible pointed out many years ago a problem with over buying technology because you'll need something better "someday." But, as they pointed out, when "someday" comes, that technology will probably be a lot cheaper.
One thing that helps with Apple, too: the low end is more likely to be viable for a reasonable period than the low end offerings from some other companies...
the only reason we keep having debates about the upgrades is because of how ridiculous apples mark ups are for things. If ram and ssd upgrades where priced more in line with the delta in parts costs, it would not be so gut wrenching. when the difference between a base spec and decent mid spec is almost 1000$, but costs apple 75, people feel the intrinsic unfairness, and have to engage in mental gymnastics to justify buying the spec they want.
16gb ram 1tb macbook air with 30-40% margin on upgrades would be a no brainer.
16gb ram 1tb macbook air with 30-40% margin on upgrades would be a no brainer.
Yes, I agree with OP, and the better resale value ratio of lower end models also helps.
The big one for me though is repair cost when a SoC machine breaks. It’s almost the cost of a new machine anyway to replace the motherboard.
It’s a shame it has come to this though, as it doesn’t help with the e-waste problem.
The big one for me though is repair cost when a SoC machine breaks. It’s almost the cost of a new machine anyway to replace the motherboard.
It’s a shame it has come to this though, as it doesn’t help with the e-waste problem.
I see what your saying and this is the year I really was waiting for the MacBook Air to support the dual screen and I said this year I’m getting M3 15 inch air but now all these rumors talking about oh M4 will support a lot more AI stuff and I’m scared about almost maxing out a M3 that won’t be able to do the AI stuff the M4 can so I’m like do I wait one last year for this M4? I gave up with the need for oled display because those road maps are always so far down but for processing neural engine stuff I don’t want to be locked out because I didn’t wait a few months and I’m not a reseller. So if I get a 15 inch M3 this year that’s it that’s my computer for the next 6 years.
That's exactly the risk to "future proof" too much -> buyers remorse if paid a lot of money which is outdated soon. I would wait if we actually see the M4 with the iPad Pro. If yes I personally would wait for the M4 MacBooks.