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M1 Pro, M1 Max MBP owners are you going to M4?

In the beginning of this year I was all set up with a MacBook Pro M1 Pro, iPhone 15om and an iPad Mini 5 which I didn’t upgrade when the Mini 6 dropped because of the bad jelly scrolling and the fact that the Mini 5 still felt snappy.

Fast forward to my birth month of September and ( I being a dude with large hands and preferring bigger phones as I switched to the 15PM from a Sammy S24U ) traded in my 15PM and got a 16PM instead. Turned out to be a much bigger quality of life upgrade to me than just the raw specs on paper.

After that I’ve played with the Mini 7, it has made my Mini 5 seem archaic running certain apps, so I sent my Mini 5 to Apple for the Mini 7. The high refresh rate is not essential for a Mini IPad for me, I got it for media consumption, USB C and the ability to use one of the two Apple Pencils to scribble down notes. Another excellent upgrade that punches above raw specs was my initial thought.


This morning I woke up and saw that Apple would rebate me around $750 fir a base 14 inch M1 MacBook Pro, making an equivalent M4 Pro model cost me around $1,250 give or take around $100. I’ve pulled the trigger and have a hunch it’ll be another one if those upgrades that will feel more substantial than the specs indicate alone. Fingers crossed

Either way, besides my pretty pricey audiophile hobby expenses I feel like Apple does the best job of sucking you into the new generation of their devices even if you weren’t in the market for one. Or maybe I’m an impulsive pirate h**ker. 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
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Nah, the stuff I use it for barely taps the CPU as it is. (Aside from the occasional Plex encode, the heaviest thing I do is Logic Pro X, but I don't use plugins on plugins on plugins.)
 
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Honestly, I am doubting as Apple offers a good trade-in value. On the other hand, I am enticed to buy an iPad Pro M4 and to change the Mac mini M2 Pro to a new M4 Pro so I wouldn't need a laptop anymore...

Or I just keep enjoying the stuff I already have which is more than sufficient for my daily needs...
 
Nah, I have no intention of upgrading. I may do so a little after when the displays finally go OLED, but for what I use it for, the M1 Max is plenty. I haven't been doing heavy video production lifting lately, but that could change. I have no interest in AI or LLMs, so the M4 doesn't offer much for me.
 
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Nope. My base 14" is still screaming fast at nearly anything I throw at it, and I like to think I'm a lot more demanding than an average user. That's exactly I expected from it, I planned to get a good 5 years of use.
I don't do much video, 3D, nor gaming on it.

My previous MBP was a late 2013 15", and I used it for 9 years: at that point it was still decent for base usage but the difference was noticeable. But still, I replaced it mostly because a key was broken, one speaker died, there are spots in the display, the battery was basically useless, a bug in the nvidia driver caused the cpu to jump to 100% when using an external monitor, AND I found a deal on the M1.

What I need now is a new gaming PC (mine is still on a 3770k) and a new iPhone (I'm using a 16/2 at the moment).
 
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Im definitely considering!
My m1max is still absolutely fast enough for most tasks, though I can for sure feel the difference to my office m2ultra and would hope to close that gap.
Also, this is my math:

4800€ for the new one, resell value of about 2000€ for the old one.
-800€ Vat.
=2000€. -900€ tax deduction savings.
=1100€. For such an upgrade? It almost sounds reasonable, don’t you think?
 
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jgbr said:
I thought feelings might be mixed as I suspected many people's 3 year Apple Care was running out if they selected it at purchase...
Click to expand...
Mine’s up next year, but I’m just going to extend it.
 
I need more memory more than I need more power. My M1 Pro MacBook Pro is still a beast, and I use it all day, everyday for work (I'm a 2D designer and graphic artist). So my next machine will probably be a M4 Pro Mini instead of another MBP. Load it with 64GB of memory and I'm off to the races. I'll keep my MBP for the rare times I need to be mobile. Having only one machine felt like a compromise when I got the MBP, I like the idea of having a desktop + laptop again.

But, no rush for now. Maybe early next year. Would like to see some in-depth reviews of the new Mini first.
 
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Not until Apple finally starts doing reasonable prices for storage and RAM.

Their upgrade pricing has not changed since 2017. I fully expected them to drop prices a tier below with this event, like $200 for +16gb for 32gb total and $200 for +1TB for 2TB total. Instead, they kept everything as it was. It's their problem and their lost sales, not mine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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JonathanX64 said:
Not until Apple finally starts doing reasonable prices for storage and RAM.

Their upgrade pricing has not changed since 2017. I fully expected them to drop prices a tier below with this event, like $200 for +16gb for 32gb total and $200 for +1TB for 2TB total. Instead, they kept everything as it was. It's their problem and their lost sales, not mine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Click to expand...

You can also reason it the Apple way... "even though there was a wild inflation post COVID, we never changed our prices for upgrades since 2017" .... (and then forgetting that 1 GB then was just much more expensive...
 
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Neo11111 said:
My 16" M1Pro MBP (10 cpu core/16 gpu core/ 16 gb ram/ 512gb ssd) for my tasks still going strong. My battery is 50 cycles and 100% condition. I will consider upgrade when MBP get wifi7, face id, redesign, oled screen.
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Pretty much all the same reasons I’m waiting to upgrade my M1Pro MBP as well.
 
To the people mentioning WiFi 7 its likely an update coming later. They probably just need more certification, but I wouldn't hang my hat on that.

I love my M1 Pro and i rarely find anything that slows it down, but I'd LOVE an OLED so I'll likely wait until the M5 comes out. It's hard to do though. Even though I'd probably not notice the performance lift in most things I have a feeling I'd notice it in overall system responsiveness.
 
In M1 Pro 16gb 16”. For most of what I do is overkill, fast enough. But I wanted to get a more portable 14”.

Then I started to play around with local LLm (as shown in the apple vid LM Studio) where ram is never enough and started to play more games on it. So need more gpu and more ram.

Before doing those two things I was even considering a MacBook Air.

Just ordered the m4 max with 64gb.
 
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Nah, no reason too, I don’t gain anything from it. I will once it is OLED, since I like to watch a lot of media on my device. HOWEVER, I will be renewing AC+ since I did not do that on my 2018 and had to get rid of it (keyboard).
 
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For me the main reason to upgrade would be OLED. Wifi 7 would be nice, but more RAM, longer battery life, and a better display are more important to me. I'm not replacing my work laptop until I'm moving to a new project, so I'm keeping it through 2026 hopefully. Afterwards, it will be either a 14-inch M6 Pro MacBook Pro, or a 15-inch M6 MacBook Air.
 
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Yep, top end m1 64gb being replaced by top end m4 128. Do I really need it? Probably not, but it’s basically double the speed, and I’m starting to do more ml/ai stuff, so it’s buying for the future. I use wired mostly, so don’t care that it’s only 6e, and use external monitors most of the time so oled isn’t critical like it is for my iPad.

i used to do every one or every other. This was three. I expect next one to be an m8 or m9.
 
It's tempting but I don't think I'll pull the trigger.

Currently have a 16" M1 Max 32 Core 32GB 1TB. And looking go down to the 14" M4 Pro 14/20 Core 1TB 24GB. But can't justify the cost of doing so. Large upgrade in CPU performance. GPU should be roughly the same and I I've never even come close to stressing the GPU ever.
 
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14" M1 Max 64GB 1TB just bought the 14" M4 Max 64 GB 1TB. Doing the trade in which offered $1085.

I like to upgrade every 3 years and have thought of continuing to hold on the M1 I have since it's working great, but I also really like the black vs the space gray I have now. So color was also a factor for me, as bad as that may sound 😅

Think this M4 I will go 5 years on.
 
OLED is grossly overrated. It suffers burn-in problems almost as badly as a CRT (and from what I've heard, it is worse). Sure... may be nice to look at, but longevity is going to be junk. Just look at the problems Sansung have with it on their phones. No thanks!

The comments here have been insightful. Seems I can drop the spec slightly and still have a great system.
 
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blufrog said:
OLED is grossly overrated. It suffers burn-in problems almost as badly as a CRT (and from what I've heard, it is worse). Sure... may be nice to look at, but longevity is going to be junk. Just look at the problems Sansung have with it on their phones. No thanks!

The comments here have been insightful. Seems I can drop the spec slightly and still have a great system.
Click to expand...
I mean, people say that, but I used an XS pro for years without burn in. I have a floor model lg tv that I got for cheap, not a single stuck pixel, and it’s getting on to 3 years old now. I also have a 13 year old plasma without burn in. I think burn in was a problem for early plasma and OLED displays, but as the tech matures, less and less so.
 
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