What would make you upgrade to the M4 Macs?

[Mity]

I have a feeling Apple's sales of the M3 family, base to Max, are not doing well, or not as well as the M1 and M2 lines. I've never seen Apple discount machines as quickly as they have with the M3 line.

The last powerful Mac that I bought was the 2019 Intel MBP and boy do I regret that decision. I was planning on upgrading to the M3 Max MBP but the rumors on M4 Macs started coming out.

One of the main reasons for me is WiFi 7. I bought a WiFi 7 TP-Link router a few months back and it has already increased performance on my older machines. Here's the speed on my 2020 M1 Macbook Air:

I'm waiting to see what the speed will be on a Mac that actually has WiFi 7. Performance wise, I think the M3 Max is more than enough for me.

What would make you want to upgrade to the M4 line, especially if you're already on M1 or M2?

 

[Boil]

M4 Extreme Mac Pro Cube w/Thunderbolt 5 & WiFi 7

 

[haralds]

You will not likely see much of a performance difference with WiFi and general use from an M1 or M2.
The difference in performance upgrading your Intel will be significant with any Apple Silicon.

M1 was a huge hit due to the changes. M2 and M3 are more iterative.

I have a Studio M1 Ultra 64GB/4TB and bought that configuration not intending to upgrade for four or five years.

 

[Chuckeee]

I strongly doubt it would happen, so I’m unlikely to upgrade but these features would change my mind:
- user replaceable/upgradable RAM
- 1 or more accessible NVMe SSD Slots
- NVIDIA External GPU support

 

[jz0309]

Nothing, both my M1 MBA and M1Max Studio are doing great.
But I’d take one for free…

 

[cheese1234]

I think apple has a goal of where to take the improvements of the m series chips. M1 was the foundation. while m2 and 3 built on it. M4 Will most likely bring ai features and then its up in the air. But that also means that there is not really a noticeable difference between series for the average user and that's the trap they put themselves in. The average user Will be fine till at least m5.

 

[Mity]

I think apple has a goal of where to take the improvements of the m series chips. M1 was the foundation. while m2 and 3 built on it. M4 Will most likely bring ai features and then its up in the air. But that also means that there is not really a noticeable difference between series for the average user and that's the trap they put themselves in. The average user Will be fine till at least m5.

I cringe whenever I hear "AI" because it's such a buzzword. But if you're not doing AI, then your stock isn't doing well.

 

[Mity]

You will not likely see much of a performance difference with WiFi and general use from an M1 or M2.
The difference in performance upgrading your Intel will be significant with any Apple Silicon.

M1 was a huge hit due to the changes. M2 and M3 are more iterative.

I have a Studio M1 Ultra 64GB/4TB and bought that configuration not intending to upgrade for four or five years.

If you're on a Studio, I doubt WiFi even matters. You must be connected via ethernet? I thought WiFi 7 offers 4x the throughput of WiFi 6/6e?
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/wi-fi-...to-know-about-tomorrows-fastest-wireless-spec
Are you saying that it will not translate into tangible benefits?

I agree - you're good for a very long time with an Ultra, 64GB, 4TB.

 

[JensenKA]

They just need to be released. I'm starting to feel the age of my dual-core 2016 MacBook Pro.

 

[tothemoonsands]

Wifi 7 isn't finalized until the end of this year (2024) - does Apple have a track-record of being early on things like that or not? I am not sure. I wouldn't be surprised if any M4 released this year had Wifi 6E still.

I've got a nicely spec'd M3 Max 14" MacBook Pro that replaced both an intel iMac 27" and an intel MacBook Pro 13".
Originally I thought I'd have to get a Mac Studio eventually, but as it turns out the MBP is so powerful that it is paradigm-shifting and a desktop is no longer needed. Instead I was able to get 2 x Studio Displays and a MBP dock and call it a day.

These new M-Series are so solid!!

 

[ThunderSkunk]

Putting it in a tablet w/ Mac OS. ...yes, still.

 

[MayaUser]

At least 20% increase, otherwise the M4 will be for the M1 users and some M2.

 

[boss.king]

It would take my M2 Air breaking or getting stolen for me to upgrade. Even if the M4 version was twice as good in every way for half the price, my current machine already does everything I’ve ever thrown at it with ease.

 

[jwolf6589]

I have a feeling Apple's sales of the M3 family, base to Max, are not doing well, or not as well as the M1 and M2 lines. I've never seen Apple discount machines as quickly as they have with the M3 line.

The last powerful Mac that I bought was the 2019 Intel MBP and boy do I regret that decision. I was planning on upgrading to the M3 Max MBP but the rumors on M4 Macs started coming out.

One of the main reasons for me is WiFi 7. I bought a WiFi 7 TP-Link router a few months back and it has already increased performance on my older machines. Here's the speed on my 2020 M1 Macbook Air:
View attachment 2370637

I'm waiting to see what the speed will be on a Mac that actually has WiFi 7. Performance wise, I think the M3 Max is more than enough for me.

What would make you want to upgrade to the M4 line, especially if you're already on M1 or M2?

I would not. My M2 MacBook Air I bought in December is perfect.

 

[Red_Bran_Porridge]

If I had enough money, I would probably upgrade every year. Otherwise, it would probably take the next iterations being able to support very wide-spread features e.g., feature parity with Windows, e.g., modding games. Or having Siri become a general artifical intelligence when using an M4 Mac. I know it's not realistic, but it's nice to think about it.

 

[leifp]

Thunderbolt 5

 

[hovscorpion12]

It depends. I know "AI" is a buzzword. I do know that there are users who are currently using Llama 3 70B on their M3 Max MBPs, so the M1-M3 family are capable of running AI codes & development to an extent.

It's a matter or what does the M4 Max, M4 Ultra, M4 Extreme have specific to Ai that the prior chips can't do.

 

[Video.drome]

Pretty content with the M1 Ultra.
When bitcoin reaches >$250k I'll consider an upgrade.

 

[theluggage]

I have a feeling Apple's sales of the M3 family, base to Max, are not doing well, or not as well as the M1 and M2 lines. I've never seen Apple discount machines as quickly as they have with the M3 line.

They're selling a premium-priced product into a mature market at a time when there has been a string of unusual crises and many people are squeezed financially. There are cheaper ways of meeting your computing needs quite adequately, including used/refurb/surplus Macs if you can't countenance moving to PC.

The M1 gave the Mac a once-in-a-decade step forward in performance/power ratio that raised the bar as to how much a battery-powered "ultrabook" could do. Suddenly, you could edit 4k video on a MacBook Air.... The pandemic encouraged a lot of people to buy new computers to work-from-home. I also get the impression that Apple handled the ensuing chip shortage better than other PC makers (everybody seems to agree that Tim Cook is the supply chain king) and kept Macs "on the shelves" during the pandemic.

It was pretty inevitable that the M2 and M3 would be less exciting, more "incremental" upgrades than M1. They were decent improvements but nothing like the excitement of the Intel to M1 switch. I suspect that the flow of Intel Mac users upgrading to Apple Silicon peaked last year (guesstimating 3 years as the average time between upgrades). Plus, Intel and AMD are playing catchup on power/performance (or have overtaken Apple if you believe their publicity).

So if it is true that Mac sales are falling off after a couple of good years (or, at least, years where other factors offset falling consumer confidence) that's hardly surprising. The stock market may not like that, but it is reality and there's no obvious quick fix apart from discounting or maybe making a genuinely affordable Mac).

There's also the current AI stupidity (NB: Machine Learning, neural networks etc. are not "stupid" - the current hype surrounding LLMs and generative art is) which is a box that Apple are probably obliged to fix so that everybody can have a glorified version of Eliza second guessing everything they do.

Then of course there's the recently announced key theft vulnerability - I don't know if it is true that M4 will fix that but it would certainly go a long way to explaining any accelerated roll-out of M4.

 

[ignatius345]

What would make you want to upgrade to the M4 line, especially if you're already on M1 or M2?

I'm using two M1 Macs (iMac, MacBook Air) and they're doing great. "Faster" isn't going to move the needle for me on either machine because my current ones are still feeling zippy and not holding me up in any way.

The things that would push me toward upgrading would be:

1. Form factor changes. Specifically, I'd like a larger iMac and I'd like an ultralight MacBook. If either of those came out, I'd probably budget for upgrades.

2. Compelling capabilities to do things I can't do very well on my current Macs. Pure speculation here, but if on-device AI was really really useful, and wasn't well supported on my M1 Macs, then I'd be tempted to upgrade sooner.

3. And finally, if the next MacOS started slowing my machines down a lot and they started feeling sluggish, I'd consider moving on to M4 (or maybe saving a few bucks and getting refurbished M3 Macs). This has historically happened over time to every Apple device I've owned, as OS demands inevitably become more demanding of older hardware resources. So far, the M1s are holding up very nicely under Sonoma, but I would not be surprised to see them slow down over the next few OS versions.

4. If my work demands changed and I needed more "horsepower" (say, lots of heavy video editing) then of course I'd have to level up my hardware to match.

 

[za9ra22]

I have a feeling Apple's sales of the M3 family, base to Max, are not doing well, or not as well as the M1 and M2 lines. I've never seen Apple discount machines as quickly as they have with the M3 line.

It isn't Apple who is discounting the prices. Retailers are, and they're not doing this to generate sales if they can get and sell more popular M1 and M2 models, because they'd just keep stock levels up for those.

In the US at least, Best Buy are using discounts on premium products from a number of manufacturers to push their subscription membership scheme, so financially it's win-win for them. As far as I know, Apple's pricing to them hasn't changed. In any event, in retail, the faster a product turns over the more profit it makes, so for dealers like Expercom, marginal discounts actually help make money.

What we're seeing is the big upheaval in the market caused by the introduction of the M1 Apple Silicon systems maturing out and returning to a flatter sales curve.

My guess is that there are no new leaps to be expected in the M4 itself, because as has been said, AS was a once-a-decade or even generational jump, but I do think it will provide a watershed which allows Apple to correct one or two things they got enough wrong that reaching a mature point in the market gives them a good chance to fix. Overabundant models is one, and culling one or two options would allow slightly better pricing tiers for RAM and SSD for example. The complaints we see about these being made here won't bother them, but if they are hearing 'gouging' feedback via their retail and dealer channels, and from actual customers, that will matter.

What Apple can't really do is continue to upsell consumers on the basis of performance. We're already so far beyond the performant demands of the vast majority of users that at best they can leverage existing Intel and M1 owners on performance, but likely not M2 and M3. And the 'pro' and 'max' options makes that an even harder argument.

Apple are masters at teasing out customers with tangential benefits though - meaning design changes or minor hardware bumps like potentially a plug-in SSD - but my guess is than somewhere on Tim Cook's desk is a spreadsheet showing that the 8GB/256 M3 MacBook Air is selling well and customers are happy with it - meaning M4 will have to have something more than mere performance.

What Apple really could use the M4 to do is remove some product clutter from the market, but since there is nothing inherently troubling in the M3 products at present, they're not likely to rotate into production of M4 systems to replace newly released M3s out of sequence.

In other words, for me, Apple are too boring to get any more of my money for a long time yet.

 

[MrGunny94]

From the M2 Pro? Hmmm OLED display, way better efficiency via E-Cores and 24GB base RAM.

 

[Heindijs]

From my M2 Pro mac mini, absolutely nothing, I fully expect that thing to last me many more years to come. From my intel MBP? Even upgrading to an M1 would be huge for me! macOS feels incredibly bloated on my MBP and even my 11 year old macbook running Linux is way more responsive.

 

[tonyisit]

I have a feeling Apple's sales of the M3 family, base to Max, are not doing well, or not as well as the M1 and M2 lines. I've never seen Apple discount machines as quickly as they have with the M3 line.

The last powerful Mac that I bought was the 2019 Intel MBP and boy do I regret that decision. I was planning on upgrading to the M3 Max MBP but the rumors on M4 Macs started coming out.

One of the main reasons for me is WiFi 7. I bought a WiFi 7 TP-Link router a few months back and it has already increased performance on my older machines. Here's the speed on my 2020 M1 Macbook Air:
View attachment 2370637

I'm waiting to see what the speed will be on a Mac that actually has WiFi 7. Performance wise, I think the M3 Max is more than enough for me.

What would make you want to upgrade to the M4 line, especially if you're already on M1 or M2?

I would say your not going to get faster speeds with wifi 7

 

[schneeland]

Pill-shaped camera hole/dynamic island (on the Macbook Pro) and Thunderbolt 5 for high fps connections to external displays.

A matte display and a bump in base memory (or reduced prices for memory upgrades) would be nice, too. But both seem unlikely to me.

On the other hand, Wifi 6/6E is fine for me - judging from first tests I read, Wifi 7 still seems to need a bit of time to mature. So I'd rather stick with the old standard instead of being part of the early adopter phase.