MBP 14" M1 Pro - 5+ years usage - 8/14/2TB or 10/16/1TB?

[tomstone74]

Want to place an order for a new MBP 14" M1 Pro soon. Thought I wait for the M2 Pro, but according to most recent rumors, they won't be released this year. Also likely the M1 Pro has plenty power for me anyway, thus why waiting ...

Already had a refurbished MBA M1 8/8/16G/1TB as my first MacOS device previously, but sold it again at a very good price in favor of getting a MBP at some time, mainly as 16GB RAM got a bit tight in my mainly software dev use case, thus a MBP with 32GB RAM is set. Beside the SW dev use case (Java backend) as a main one, additionally typical Office stuff, with sporadic photo editing and rare editing of short video clips of my kids.

I want to look refurbished again from Apple Online, 14" - 32 GB RAM is set, anything else is a matter of budget (set myself a budget limit of 3000 EUR) and model availability in the Refurb shop. Apple Austria provides me with the following fitting models and price at the moment:

• 10/16/32GB/1TB => 2809 EUR
• 8/14/32/2TB => 2909 EUR

A bit of a question mark on what is more attractive / useful within the budget limit of 3000 EUR, when intending to use the laptop for 5+ years. More CPU cores might be useful for building software projects and/or Docker/VMs, but also 2TB storage sounds very tempting in the long-run. I don't really care about GPU cores. 14 or more will be plenty for me. The MBP won't be a gaming machine resp. the sporadic photo/video editing, I don't really mind. Unfortunately there are no refurbished 10/14/32GB/1(or)2TB listed at the moment, to get a price point for GPU binned version only for the CPU.

Any thoughts from software devs with usage of VMs/Docker, who went with 8 cores and e.g. started to miss the additional two high performance cores at some point?

Thanks!

 

[OasisNYK]

I am curious to see what people think. I am not sure more cores will make much of a difference to be honest (unless you run stuff now that can take advantage). In my experience, usually when software makes a jump it requires a new generation chip architecture not more cores on an outdated chip. It may keep things running ok a bit longer but the speed of the SSD and RAM will likely be more helpful than the processor.

However, if storage is important to you, and 2 TB is what you want, you can’t go wrong with that setup.

 

[tomstone74]

Thanks for the reply.

I see there is now also a Refurbished 14" 8/14/32G/1TB at 2.519 EUR available. I will go that route and use the saving perhaps for AppleCare. The 14" is for private use only and this config should give me enough power and storage for the next years until I switch to something more shiny with M3/M4/M5 or whatever . Reselling of the lower 14" spec might also be easier in a few years.

I do have a 16" M1 Max with 64GB RAM and 1TB storage in my day job, and I hardly can utilize that to its full potential, thus above 14" for private use should give me plenty.

Thanks!

 

[maflynn]

Also likely the M1 Pro has plenty power for me anyway, thus why waiting

I believe any computer from that last few years is more then powerful enough for the foreseeable future.

Any thoughts from software devs with usage of VMs/Docker, who went with 8 cores and e.g. started to miss the additional two high performance cores at some point?

I'm not a developer, but my $.02 is that you'll miss or feel the space constraint well before you miss 2 CPU cores. If it were me, I'd opt for the 2TB version.