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RAM and Longevity
- Thread starter Andy_2341
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Trying to future proof for 7-8 years is just going to result in spending WAY more money today than you would if you were to buy more reasonable spec today and then buy again in 3-5 years.
Also, let's say you have a major out of warranty failure in year 4 - your plan is toast.
RAM and storage is expensive today, it will be MUCH cheaper in the 3-5 years when you actually need it.
IO standards will move on, wireless standards will move on, GPU will be like 5-10x, etc. - your 5 year old machine will generally speaking be "crap" even if it was top tier when you bought it.
I find 3-5 years is the sweet spot. I plan on 3 (for tax, I can write off a machine over 3 years), and that gives me a couple of years to ride out temporary unexpected stupid product decisions from apple (e.g. butterfly keyboard), or real expensive times in the market (e.g. 2011 ram shortage due to floods in Taiwan, etc.) - if they happen to be occurring when I am "due" to upgrade.
Also hard drive (not sure on SSD) failure rate is a bathtub curve - high initial failure rate, period of low failure and then ramp up towards the end. the ramp up point for failure is year 4 for hard drives. SSDs probably engineered for the same MTBF. This is why every OEM offers up to 3 year warranty or thereabouts.
Planning on running into 2x the warranty period is running a significantly increased risk of hardware failure during your expected lifetime for the device.
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Interesting, the only way however to buy more RAM however in 3-5 years is to fork out crazy money to Apple to upgrade nearly a quarter of the value of a new 'whole' Macbook for example. Unless you go the third party route which I am not sure what the prices are.
I'm trying to decide between the M4 non Pro and M4 pro with the above/below stated specs. Any advise?
1. M4 Pro 12-Core CPU , 16-Core GPU, 24GB Unified Memory , 512GB SSD Storage
2. Non M4 pro 10-Core CPU,10-Core GPU ,24GB Unified Memory 1TB SSD Storage .
I don't work heavily with video just yet, more social media video editing for now, multiple spreadsheets and soon to be coding (No LLM) . Confused because they're both the same price?
Nah, they're non-upgradable RAM these days so the only way is a new machine.
HOWEVER... at year 3, Macs generally retain about 50% of their value, so you can sell for half the original price and get a decent chunk of cash to offset the new machine. If you combine with the tax deduction it's not so bad.
I'd go for the M4 non-pro with 1TB of SSD. Some people will say you can add external storage to compensate for the 512 GB. I say external drives constantly hanging out of the machine ruin the user experience (assuming it's another MacBook not a mini?). IMHO external drives are for backups/archiving - not for live data you're working on, especially not on a portable.
Unless you plan to game on it, the baseline m4 will handle 4k video editing, etc. - but the 1TB of storage will be far more comfortable and give you some breathing room for things like local Time Machine snapshots in between plugged in backups, some swing space for temporary storage, etc.
I think if you were to go for an M4 pro you want at least 36 GB of ram and 1TB (preferably 2TB!) otherwise you're building something that's too compromised in one area. Sure you can maybe make 512GB work but its a massive compromise on an expensive machine - if you're going pro or max, cheaping out on storage to save some small fraction of the total BOM is just a bad idea - the machine will just be crippled by the weakest part of it eventually, before the rest of the machine was out of date. Likewise I think anything less than 64 GB/2TB on a Max is perhaps comprising the machine in a way that will reduce its usable life for not much saving.
For lack of a better description, consider "annoyance over time". Will a storage shortage that constantly annoys you over the expected life of the machine be worth the saving (e.g., for sake of argument, $200 over 5 years)?
Re: CPU choice:
Really, the only serious demand for pro/max is LLMs, gaming, 3d modelling, virtual machines, etc. Or VERY high end video work.
An M1 Mac mini will happily edit 4k video; unless you're doing multiple streams of 8k or whatever, video wise an M4 is more than enough unless you're doing video professionally!
Myself? I got a Max (14" MacBook) because I needed/wanted 64 GB of RAM for VMs/docker/etc. and the only way to get there was a Max. I also want to game on the thing on the side, so it was a bit of the old apple up-sell to something you want but didn't really want to pay for (high end GPU) but got anyway due to wanting something else tied to the spec (RAM)...
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HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Lots of people buy for the future and hang on to a Mac for 10-12 years that they originally intended to use for 7-8. If they don't spec up a bit, they will have to do as you say: replace their Mac at about the pace they replace their phones. Apple and shareholders would love it. But practically and in most cases, it actually IS better to buy for the future best one can estimate and ride the purchase for longer than 3-5 years.
Of course, if a person can easily afford to turn over Mac like their phones, buying again and again in as little as "every 3 years" will get all new chip advances every 3+ years too. There is a tangible benefit to such a pace... but at a meaningful added cost.
The alt view of this scenario is that the buyer is basically committing to replacing their Mac "every 3-5 years". IMO: it seems better to gamble on the less likely case of an out of warranty failure in year 4 vs. knowing they are probably going to have to replace a perfectly good Mac in year 4 because they bought it too under-specced.
Competitive RAM? YES
Apple RAM? Good luck with that.
Apple tends to take any cost savings and incorporate it into margin... not pass along the savings to us consumers. See age old tech for sale from Apple now still at the "same great price" as when it was brand new tech. Or recall the "now that Apple will make their own Silicon instead of leaning on Intel, they can pass the Intel premium on to us in cheaper Macs". Etc.
Not in my experience. Yes, there will certainly be technical advancements but practical uses usually don't keep up with pushing those advancements. For example, if OP is going to get into video editing, he won't necessarily need added horsepower to do what he learns to do in 2025. Yes, a new Mac 3-5 years from now will have more horses for video editors but he'll still be able to edit as he will learn just as well 3-5 years from now on the one he buys now.
That works for you. Not everyone can write it off. For many- probably most- it's an out-of-pocket cost with zero tax advantages.
This is a big positive to buying & replacing frequently.
Pay up for more RAM to minimize SWAP use of SSD and OP will probably get life of device out of the internal SSD. However, under spec but then keep using the Mac while leaning heavily on SWAP and you are exactly right: OP will probably wear out the SSD before the rest of the Mac.
Been a Mac user for over 20+ years and never purchased the extended warranty, nor ever had what would have been a warranty claim during the 3-year window. Macs are built well. Extended warranty is high margin businesses because many people buy them out of fear but never actually make a claim. Do some have problems? YES they do. But Apple (and everyone else) offering extended warranties aren't doing it at cost or to lose money. How do they do that? By building the products good enough to NOT have many claims during the warranty window and beyond.
Your situation is different than many Mac buyers... in that you can write off your frequent Mac replacements and (presumably) also the extended warranty. For many, both are out of pocket, sunk costs and thus many want to ride a Mac for 7+ years to squeeze as much value out of a relatively hefty purchase as possible.
I enjoy the same write-off opportunity you have but generally try to get 10+ years out of my own Macs... as I rather use the cash for other things than be so frequently buying the same thing over and over with only modest spec improvements every few years. To get 10 good years, I do spec up, paying more now to not be having to buy again in 3-5 years and again 3-5 years after that. By about year 10, the wheels are clearly falling off but I never "feel" that way in only 3-5 years.
Which way is best? There is no one best option. What works for you works for you. What works for me, works for me. Each person should weigh opinions and decide for themselves.
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HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Mac Option 1. The compromise is internal SSD space (and I'd probably just save up to get it to 1TB if not wait for refurb price and/or buy in the Edu store to get a discount on the 1TB option). But you can get a fast EXTERNAL SSD at market competitive prices. I suggest thunderbolt enclosure and as big as you can afford per "just yet" related to video editing. Video editing will eat up a lot of storage fast. My external scratch drive is 8TB m.2 for what are usually 20-40 minute videos and it can easily get towards 75% full during the typical edit.
Added internal SSD will make it easy to utilize when disconnected from that scratch drive... such as for the many ways people use their Mac when not doing something so storage intensive like video editing. IMO: 512GB is pushing it towards "too little" against a 7+ years use life. If me, I just wouldn't compromise the M4 or RAM to get the added space inside if I HAVE to choose one vs. the other.
It's a good time to buy m.2 SSD of size. I just saw a WD 8TB gen 4 on "Black Friday" promotion for $549. Aggressively shop around and maybe you can get more fast storage than you anticipate needing for a while. Big storage OUTSIDE will both be useful as you get into video editing... AND easily transfers forward to your next computer(s) too.
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Interesting two conflicting opinions. I did think I could get an external storage to counteract the difference in internal SSD size but was unsure as to what the implications on the longevitiy/failure rate would be etc.
Will the extra Cores/CPUs make a large difference from in the M4 Pro?
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Extra cores/CPU can make a large difference or towards no difference depending on exactly what you need this Mac to do over time. Since we can't fully anticipate exactly what we will need a Mac to do years from now, you "gamble" on maybe needing extra cores/CPU, more RAM, more SSD.
Or take the other guys approach and replace the Mac more frequently than you stated... when you later realize you need more cores/CPU, more RAM, more SSD... buy it in the short-term replacement (whole) Mac. Then, adjust again after a short-term by replacing that one. That just gets expensive if all you really need is more of one thing like cores or RAM or internal SSD... because you are throwing out a whole Mac for the one thing you can't upgrade down the road.
Both ideas can be rationalized and everyone has to best guess what is right for them... often based on not knowing how they will want to be able to use it years from now. The key- and this IS key- is if you overspec, you have some flexibility to under-guess needs and be covered. But that doesn't work at all the other way.
If you are feeling a lot of pressure on the cost side, a whole other consideration is to spend less for more hardware... by opting for a PC instead of a Mac. The budget for whatever Mac you favor will buy much more "specs" in a PC. And PCs can do just about anything a Mac can do.
I needed both, bought both and find that I'm giving the PC more and more to do that would historically be done on a Mac. Since your questions revolve around core specs, great competitive forces in the PC market drive things like RAM, SSD and "cores/CPU" down to much better pricing in PCs. And if you get something like RAM or SSD wrong in a PC, you can generally upgrade either or both when needs demand more from either or both... unlike Mac where it's "buy a new Mac" when you need more of any of it.
I favor Mac but PC is not nearly as bad as Apple fans portray it. Most of the world use PC by far. My own PC works just fine... and runs many apps not available for niche Mac at all. Should it need more RAM or more SSD, I can upgrade only those parts at any time without having to toss it and replace it with another PC. Windows tends to support PCs for much longer than Apples (generally) approx. 7 years too.
Or take the other guys approach and replace the Mac more frequently than you stated... when you later realize you need more cores/CPU, more RAM, more SSD... buy it in the short-term replacement (whole) Mac. Then, adjust again after a short-term by replacing that one. That just gets expensive if all you really need is more of one thing like cores or RAM or internal SSD... because you are throwing out a whole Mac for the one thing you can't upgrade down the road.
Both ideas can be rationalized and everyone has to best guess what is right for them... often based on not knowing how they will want to be able to use it years from now. The key- and this IS key- is if you overspec, you have some flexibility to under-guess needs and be covered. But that doesn't work at all the other way.
If you are feeling a lot of pressure on the cost side, a whole other consideration is to spend less for more hardware... by opting for a PC instead of a Mac. The budget for whatever Mac you favor will buy much more "specs" in a PC. And PCs can do just about anything a Mac can do.
I needed both, bought both and find that I'm giving the PC more and more to do that would historically be done on a Mac. Since your questions revolve around core specs, great competitive forces in the PC market drive things like RAM, SSD and "cores/CPU" down to much better pricing in PCs. And if you get something like RAM or SSD wrong in a PC, you can generally upgrade either or both when needs demand more from either or both... unlike Mac where it's "buy a new Mac" when you need more of any of it.
I favor Mac but PC is not nearly as bad as Apple fans portray it. Most of the world use PC by far. My own PC works just fine... and runs many apps not available for niche Mac at all. Should it need more RAM or more SSD, I can upgrade only those parts at any time without having to toss it and replace it with another PC. Windows tends to support PCs for much longer than Apples (generally) approx. 7 years too.
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Perhaps you misunderstand my point. Whether you get the warranty or not the failure rate goes up with age and the warranty is based on the anticipated failure rate.
By the time you’re in year 5 the failure rate goes up significantly from there.
I’m not saying it WILL fail, just that if you budget for 7-8 year replacement and it fails you’re out of pocket.
Also - it’s not necessarily more expensive to buy more frequently if you sell the old machine. Because at year 3-4 it is still worth reasonable money and the initial purchase price was way less than your “future proofed” machine you tried to spec for 8 years. Like 1/2 - 2/3 the initial purchase cost, and you’ll get maybe 1/3 to 1/2 back on resale (1/4 on trade with Apple). This means that when considering initial plus subsequent replacements offset by old machine sale/trade…. It’s close. It’s not a case of having to spend significantly more.
Especially with Apple machines as their upgrade costs to try and future proof are exorbitant.
Additionally, flipping every 3-5 years gets you a faster more responsive machine on average over time. With nicer displays, better wifi, etc.
I just read through this thread, seeking a consensus on the OP's questions, but I'm left feeling like I'm a contestant on Survivor, assessing the tribes.
Not if you're an Apple customer
!512 GB -> 1 TB storage upgrade pricing (+$200) has not changed in 4 1/2 years (since the 2020 iMac was introduced in Jun. 2020).*
16 GB -> 32 GB RAM upgrade pricing (+400) has not changed in at least** 7 1/2 years (since the 2017 iMac was introduced in Jun. 2017).*
*Except for effective reductions due to inflation.
**"at least" because I wasn't able to find earlier configurators
Granted, since these RAM and storage upcharges haven't come down in a long time, maybe we're now due. And for higher storage and RAM amounts, the upcharges have come down, but those aren't what most folks buy.
Source of M1 configurator screenshot:
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Exactly. As for what I’m doing, 8gb would have been enough and 16 is comfortable. I’m used to 4gb Chromebooks, so literally anything is an upgrade and I just want the smoothness of more ram. I don’t actually do more than a Chromebook can handle in general.RAM is to do with device viability.
This is why RAM is more important to long term device viability more so than CPU.
- Over time, CPUs advance at between 5-30% performance improvement per year.
- However, if you start running out of of memory and into swap, performance doesn't degrade by 5, 10 or 30 percent, it rapidly totally falls off a cliff, like 2x, 5x, 10x slower if you're say, running 50% of your "hot data" out of swap rather than RAM.
Put another way, 5 years of CPU improvements might net you a 2x performance increase (if you're lucky these days, M series has been great, intel has not), but half the RAM you need in 5 years time (due to being stingy on initial purchase) will get you a (for example) 2-5x performance decrease when it starts running short.
Depends very much what you're doing - but RAM requirements have only trended one way since the dawn of computing, and GENERALLY speaking, RAM and disk throughput requirements expand faster than CPU over the past 50 years or so.
ALL THAT SAID
Over capitalising on RAM is also stupid. RAM gets cheaper over time and 5 years into a machine (especially if its portable) you're looking at batteries that need replacing, ports that are well behind the times in terms of IO throughput, etc.
As always my advice is: plan on keeping the machine 3-5 years, and bump maybe ONE tier up on memory vs. what you need today. Don't overcommit because RAM gets cheaper over time, and there's no point having a machine with a huge memory capacity that is crap because everything else is out of date. You just way overpaid for memory you could buy cheap in 5 years time.
My few points to add to the discussion:
* extended warranties are a gamble and usually not worth the money
* upping the ram spec at least one step on a new machine is a good idea
* using external storage is a good way to cut costs, and quality externals last
* holding on to a machine to the end of software support is less wasteful
It’s all a question of compromises, and a bit of luck with not having unexpected failures, but I try to plan to hold onto a computer for 7-10 years. I don’t expect to get much back for it at the end, and just consider it the yearly cost of having access to a decent quality machine.
I’ve never yet needed to use an extended warranty, the build quality is sufficiently good that you have to be very unlucky to get a ‘dud’.
* extended warranties are a gamble and usually not worth the money
* upping the ram spec at least one step on a new machine is a good idea
* using external storage is a good way to cut costs, and quality externals last
* holding on to a machine to the end of software support is less wasteful
It’s all a question of compromises, and a bit of luck with not having unexpected failures, but I try to plan to hold onto a computer for 7-10 years. I don’t expect to get much back for it at the end, and just consider it the yearly cost of having access to a decent quality machine.
I’ve never yet needed to use an extended warranty, the build quality is sufficiently good that you have to be very unlucky to get a ‘dud’.
Does software support go for 7-10 years? I just want my device to last until software support is over. Maybe a year longer.
If you buy the model right after it's released, you will typically get 8–10 years of software support (release date to end of security updates). For more detailed info., see:
MacBook Air gets hosed, other models hold steady in macOS 15 as Intel support fades
Sequoia is both more and less generous to Intel Macs, depending on the model.
arstechnica.com
That’s awesome. That actually makes it worth the $200 to go up in Ram (Based off of my math that the average apple device costs ~100 per year of ownership from new to security updates end.)If you buy the model right after it's released, you will typically get 8–10 years of software support (release date to end of security updates). For more detailed info., see:
MacBook Air gets hosed, other models hold steady in macOS 15 as Intel support fades
Sequoia is both more and less generous to Intel Macs, depending on the model.
In theory/on paper, yes, perhaps, but there will be unexpected temptations. I'm not the only one with a new M4 mini that wasn't supposed to be purchased until after the older Mac's memorial service.
Indeed there are, I’m just trying to curb them 😂. I already have enough Apple devices and prefer to take a
buy-one-and-use-it-to-its-fullest approach.
That's one strategy. The other, which especially makes sense if you also don't need lot of storage*, is to buy just what you need now, and trade it in after, say, four years. That will give you, on average, a better experience than buying a somewhat fancier machine and keeping it for eight years.
*If you need a lot of storage (say, 4 TB), then you'd probably get a lower percentage of your purchase price back upon resale. Though you might want to do that analysis yourself, using sold prices on eBay. My guess is that you get the best resale with a machine that is somewhat above the base model. E.g., 1 TB storage.
True. As far as storage goes, especially if I need that much, I’ll just get an external drive. Far cheaper.
I use externals now for my backups, and I've had frequent disconnection issues. This seems to be an ongoing problem with newer Macs. So I personally wouldn't want my primary storage to be on a external. Plus backup management is much simpler if you have all your primary data in one place—then you have only one drive to backup.
Thus if I needed more primary storage than I could afford, rather than buying a new Mac and adding an external, my strategy would be to buy a late-model used Mac (preferable one that had transferrable AC+).
The exception would be if I were someone with enormous storage needs, say a physicist generating enormous amounts of simulation data, or a video professional doing large jobs for multiple clients. In those cases, some form of external storage (locally or on servers) is unavoidable.
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Hmm. That’s not good. Hopefully I don’t run into needing more storage. Externals were my plan.
I have a Samsung T7 2 TB external SSD (it’s about the size of a credit card) and a 512 GB internal SSD in my M1 iMac, and it has been rock solid. Good quality cables and drives mean you’re much less likely to have issues with bad connectors, glitches and so on. The external drive gets about 1 GB/second read and write, which is plenty fast for what I use it for.
My strategy in buying drives is not to get the cheapest, but to buy a well-known mainstream brand like Samsung or Sandisk. It still works out a lot cheaper than buying internal storage, I paid about 150 euros for my 2 TB drive.
My strategy in buying drives is not to get the cheapest, but to buy a well-known mainstream brand like Samsung or Sandisk. It still works out a lot cheaper than buying internal storage, I paid about 150 euros for my 2 TB drive.
Local image generation got me more interested in boosting my RAM and SSD larger than I normally would on a new Mac. After that's when I started running local LLMs as well. However, I doubt most people will run anything more than Apple Intelligence, which is likely lighter than an already small model like Tiny Dolphin, anything more than that and they're probably going to be using AI via some external service which won't significantly increase their RAM needs. It's mostly enthusiasts and privacy seekers who would need more RAM to meet their AI needs locally. That makes me doubt we're going to see an immediate spike in RAM demand on consumer machines.