Unfortunately, that is true. These machines will be made obsolete by the discontinuation of software support in the next few years. I'm keeping my M1 Max until I can afford more performance and the jump is big enough to justify it, I need it, or until software support runs out in the next few years.
True, but MacBooks won't suddenly stop working after updates run out.
Personally I consider 18 or 24 GB poor 4-6 year life cylcle planning for most here (too low). However 24 GB is 1/3 more RAM than 18, which does provide significantly "... more future proof with extra 6gb of ram."
Talk to the folks at OWC. They will probably have good less expensive external storage solutions that wrok.
www.macrumors.com
External storage via port DOES NOT WORK if such external storage needs to be permanently attached to the Mac, and Mac needs to move elsewhere, even temporarily. I tried, and it failed horribly Short of permanent data loss.
I managed to cheat a bit and added an extra 1TB of storage with a micro-SD card slotted into the SD card slot with this adapter:
My current MacBook Pro doesn’t have SD card slot. Besides, those extra storage are destined for cloud storage, music library or photo library, all of which necessitates lots of read and write. I have no faith of those flash chips to last very long.
Good comments, but my expectation is that RAM utilization by OS/apps will continue to increase - just like it has for 40 years, nonstop. Apple did not jump from 16 GB available in my 2016 MBP to the 96 GB I put in my M2 MBP and now up to 128 GB available in less than a year because they expect RAM usage to stay the same. I base my RAM needs forecast on experience, but Apple literally has all the inside info.For most? No one purchasing an 18gb machine that is fine for their purposes today will be left in the dust in 6 years unless their needs materially change. And it will continue to be rare for those purchasing 8gb machines.
RAM needs really haven't gone up for years now for the majority of use cases.
- Browsers like Chrome and esp. Safari have gotten more efficient. And it's hard to make webpages even more showy than they are. Maybe if WASM really takes off like wildfire? Doesn't seem to be the case it will.
- Things like working w/ PDF and Word processing is basically the same.
- VM/container needs have flatlined - the whole hosting a microservices architecture locally has been a trend for many years now, if you need it, you need it. If anything, the trend is to revert to monoliths or fuller fat services. Docker on MacOS is much more efficient now.
If you're doing a heavy amount of video production or photo editing, yes, more RAM than you need right now may be beneficial as megapixel and frame counts rise.
If you're a dev getting into machine learning, having more RAM allows you to run or train larger models. But even the latest Max isn't competition for an older A100 that can be rented in the cloud for a couple bucks an hour.
If AAA gaming becomes more a thing but you probably need a Max which has more than any high end video card... but it's still not going to compete with even a 4070.
This is part of the reason why we still see Apple use 8gb as the base for what 5-6 years at least now. It's definitely not ideal and it's nuts they didn't bump it to 12gb, but it's also not going to lead to a situation where the machine will suddenly be unusable in 3 years or whatnot.
If anything the situation is much better with Apple silicon w/ high bandwidth buses and fast SSDs so paging is actually reasonable:
"Unless you are configuring your MacBook Pro with the M1 Max chip, which starts with 32GB of memory, you likely do not need the $400 add-on. In real-world tests, the 32GB MacBook Pro is not significantly outperforming the 16GB model, even during intense workflows."
16GB vs. 32GB MacBook Pro: How Much RAM is Enough?
Apple's high-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro offers the M1 Pro chip with 16GB of RAM as standard, but you can upgrade to 32GB of RAM for...
I fully agree. If one needs more than fully mobile 5-6 TB (an 8 TB drive maintained less than 80% full) then it is necessary to buy up to Apple's pricey 8TB SSD. Ouch.
Same, good machine, but looking at the price after just two years, it would be a hard on the wallet upgrade.
Was in the same situation. Need more power for projects doing video editing and at the time there was no Mac Studio. Got the M1 MacBook Pro and I spit my coffee out the first time (not on the MacBook Pro) when I did not have to wait for encoding or rendering on the first project. Very, VERY happy with my M1 MacBook Pro (still).
I'm in the same boat. For those who need the power, getting a good amount on the trade and keeping up with the newer machine is worth it. The M1 was a paradigm shift from Intel, but in the era of Apple silicon, M1 to M3 is worth it. Also, I'm pretty sure the Space Black color increases memory bandwidth, extends WiFi reception and doubles the battery capacity.
