(Up?)grading from 2018 MBP 15”. Air or Pro, 8 or 16GB RAM?

[connbob]

Hi folks,

I‘ve been tempted by all of the stellar reviews to list up my 2018 MBP 15 and move to the new M1 platform. Typically, I’d say there’s no chance I would stray from the 16GB variant, although it seems quite murky as to whether I’d actually need it, based on reviews and reports I’ve seen online.

For the most part, I use my MacBook for school, so typically the Office suite, as well as stuff like VSCode, with an Apache/Nginx server running, or Python etc. I’d typically have quite a few safari windows open, be it Twitter, docs, or news.

Should I go for the Air or the Pro, and in the 8GB or 16GB variant? I’d be able to get the 8GB quickly, which would be ideal, I’d love to know if the traditional concept of needing 16GB+ applies with M1?

Thanks for taking the time to read this, any replies are greatly appreciated.

- Conn

 

[nothingtoseehere]

As hard as it is to believe, reviewers agree overwhelmingly in saying that unless you have to work with giant audio-/photo-/videofiles, 8 GB is sufficient.
Air or Pro - I am not in the market today but with my use case that is partly similar to yours (except that I have no server running), I would pick the Air. I cannot judge whether your Apache server is a demanding workload (i.e. constantly ramping up the fans on your current MBP) that would make the MBP M1 cooling necessary. I should add that I do not live in a hot region. With hot climate and air condition not in all places I use the machine, I think I would buy devices with active cooling.

 

[connbob]

As hard as it is to believe, reviewers agree overwhelmingly in saying that unless you have to work with giant audio-/photo-/videofiles, 8 GB is sufficient.
Air or Pro - I am not in the market today but with my use case that is partly similar to yours (except that I have no server running), I would pick the Air. I cannot judge whether your Apache server is a demanding workload (i.e. constantly ramping up the fans on your current MBP) that would make the MBP M1 cooling necessary. I should add that I do not live in a hot region. With hot climate and air condition not in all places I use the machine, I think I would buy devices with active cooling.

Really, I'm not doing much that's too intensive in the grand scheme of things - I have a desktop for gaming and such. Apache doesn't run hot at all, I don't think the cooling would be necessary. It seems the most times the fan ramps up on my current MBP is when watching 4k videos on YouTube/Plex/Emby, and that is probably down to the inefficiency of the Shintel CPU.

£1,124 vs £1,348 for the 8GB Air vs Pro. The Touch Bar is more of a show-off piece IMO, has a few nice functions but nothing extremely justifiable. Active cooling just might not be necessary I suppose.

 

[nothingtoseehere]

Sounds as if the 8 GB Air should be great. And cheaper

 

[ADGrant]

Sounds as if the 8 GB Air should be great. And cheaper

Get the 16GB. Remember, with the unified memory architecture, your RAM is both system RAM and Video RAM.

 

[coorsleftfield]

I do development and use Docker. I give Docker 8G of ram just to run containers, so for me, 16G is essential, because half of it goes right to docker. I could probably get by with 8, but going to 16 isn't a big expense.

 

[ADGrant]

I do development and use Docker. I give Docker 8G of ram just to run containers, so for me, 16G is essential, because half of it goes right to docker. I could probably get by with 8, but going to 16 isn't a big expense.

If you need Docker I would hold off on buying an M1 Mac. Docker support may take a while and when it does work, probably won't be able to run x86 Docker containers.

 

[coorsleftfield]

If you need Docker I would hold off on buying an M1 Mac. Docker support may take a while and when it does work, probably won't be able to run x86 Docker containers.

Yeah.. I still can't resist the M1. I'll probably keep my old 2014 MPB around for a while until everything gets sorted out.. I think just running arm containers should be ok, looks like Python, Postgres, and most other ones I use have arm_64 versions already. With all of the interest in the M1, I think the dev environment stuff will quickly improve.

 

[ADGrant]

Yeah.. I still can't resist the M1. I'll probably keep my old 2014 MPB around for a while until everything gets sorted out.. I think just running arm containers should be ok, looks like Python, Postgres, and most other ones I use have arm_64 versions already. With all of the interest in the M1, I think the dev environment stuff will quickly improve.

Yes but its not just about the dev environment. The docker eco-system and the cloud are still very much x86 Linux based. AWS does have ARM Linux VMs but I think it will be a while before everyone else catches up.

 

[connbob]

I'm only really novice in web development, doing it for school work mainly, I haven't really delved into full-stack development, just writing PHP and throwing together a front-end for assessments, and then for small projects of mine.

I've gone and bought the MBA 8GB, and I've spent some time benchmarking it against my brother's MBP 16" i9, trading blows in that he came out on top on Cinebench, and I piled through Geekbench finishing 30 secs - 1 minute quicker.

I'll see how it pays off over the next few days when I'm set up properly, but right now, it seems pretty incredible when put up against my old Pro and my brother's current Pro.

EDIT: As for web development, if needs be, it can all be hosted in the cloud. I do like having the web server local to test quickly.