Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

Is my MBA now obsolete and fit only for the bin?

There's a new MBA coming out next year so nearly...

100%

Time for a maxed out MBP.

My current one has zero problems doing what I need it to do tbh, can't see the need to change.

Just lust for the new shiny.

See previous post ^^

Not yet. The M1 Pro/Max have the same CPU cores as the old-fashioned M1, just more of them and more GPUs and memory bandwidth.

You can use a smaller than expected amount to fly ... we just flew business class with BA from Valencia, Spain to Heathrow and back for 1€ and 25,000 miles each. It was only 15,000 for economy I think.

Had a quick look at the pricing for a build of an m1 pro 16in mbp and it came out at £4K, may have to wait a bit before I pull that trigger..

I think it's best buying Apple hardware close to the release dates because prices don't go down over time it just gets older.

Jesus Christ!!

Presumably that's the 64GB RAM, 2TB version?
What do you do that needs that sort of spec - or is it just trying to future proof?

If the latter then would make more sense to buy the entry level one and then sell it in 2yrs and upgrade to the next iteration of the entry level one, then do the same again a couple of years later. You'd spend the same (/less) overall.

that's the spec, future proofing would be the reasoning.
I don't tend to resell my old equipment, as I tend to use it for a long time, my last macbook pro, before my current (freelance life) one, I brought in 2010, so the return on it isn't worth it, as it's pretty much obsolete by the time I get frustrated with how slow my machine is getting.
Back when you could upgrade ram/hdd yourself it was easier/cheaper to justify getting a base model and upgrading, now future proofing means being further out of pocket than I would rationally like.

In your position I'd consider starting to resell old equipment.
Buy entry level now at 2k, sell it in 2yrs for 1k, buy new again for 2k etc.

It'll take you a similar amount of time to get through the same amount of money but you'll not start out with an overpriced and overpowered machine and end up with an underpowered one worth nothing, you'll just keep something that's good for the whole time.

i’ll be buying the maxout 64gb 2 tb version. my current MBP15 sometimes struggles sometimes whit large photoshop files(20gb multi layered 10kx15k pixels PSD’s) when you have that many adjustment layers/masks etc any brushing cloning you do then asks the graphics card to do all the adjustments on the pixels you have just pushed around and you start to get brush lag. had a few ‘cannot do that dave your scratch disks are full’ and a few times had to go make a cup of tea while it does something.

i still think 3-4k is cheap, you sell the outgoing laptop for 600-900 plus i get the vat off which means over 3 years of ownership it costs me a day and a half of work to pay for it.

from a business point of view it would still make sense if it was double the price, a hot rodded mac mini would make even more sense as i mostly am sat in front of an Eizo but they will not be out for a while yet.

there must be loads of users like me where any speed you gain actually makes you more money and more productive.

there must be loads of users like me where any speed you gain actually makes you more money and more productive.

This. Anyone complaining about the price is someone who just uses it to watch Netflix and browse FB etc.

As a business tool for creative professionals, where render time is paid time, it's a no brainer.

few weeks ago i shot some 250 frame time lapse animations and it took 50min to process out the frames as tiffs in capture one and about hour of spotting/adjusting in C1 with micro pauses in updating the 100% view as i moved round each frame. Shot/processed/layered into 250 layers timeline animation as a PSD which was about the limit the machine could handle.
i would imagine a brand new MBP would enable me to shoot/process/edit 3 not 2 in a day.

and before you ask, yes it probably should have been done in premiere or after effects but i don’t use them and this works for me.

Yeah, I'm not saying nobody has any use for a high spec machine.

But I asked Corny
'What do you do that needs that sort of spec - or is it just trying to future proof?'
And he said it was mainly future proofing. So I inferred he didn't need the spec today.

For those that need a high spec now then sure.

to clarify, I work in film and tv, so the power of the machine would be used from day one, in terms of me having to view/edit/export, I could do that with a base model, but I'm currently shooting 4k footage, even though I'm producing 1080 final videos, so the extra horsepower (futureproofing) would mean I'd actually be able to view/edit/render/export any 4k work that comes my way.

It depends whether there's a real world performance difference between the various models for your particular task. I've seen people want to throw cores and RAM at tasks that are mostly likely disk constrained or single-thread constrained, for example.

It's maybe not so true this year, but in the past Apple have been guilty of offering models at widely different price points with tiny differences in performance, because they know some people will just buy the most expensive one whatever.

Let’s be honest, if you’d looked at the price and said fuck that you wouldn’t be on here looking for someone to tell you it’s worth the outlay to ensure you can continue to work effectively as an editor for 4K verified amateur content.
Just pull the trigger.
Do it, do it, do it.

if work picks up next year, then I probably will pull the trigger, and hand my current one over to the missus. But I'm not on here looking for anyone to tell me it's worth the outlay, just sharing my response to a build price, rather than the base price.
But I'm glad @duncs responded as it's opened a door in my head to a different way of upgrading laptops/electrical equipment, though it does run counter to me wanting to reuse, repair, recycle, and leaning towards buying second hand rather than brand new.

I'm sure you know, but that is the M1 Max - You can select the M1 Pro option but as you upgrade the chip it ends up the same as if you started with the Max as a base.

hey all. Anyone got a used macbook air for sale? Needs to be good condition pls. Ta!

yeah, saw that, not sure whether it would be cheaper to just get the base model M1 Max and only slightly upgrade it, than the upgraded M1 Pro one I put together..

edit: works out to be about £500 cheaper which is mostly due to getting a smaller ssd.
hmmm

I'd go all in and max out as much as you can money wise. Adding a few £100 now might buy you another year or two of use later down the line. I bought a mid range MBP in 2015 and it lasted me 3 years, if I'd gone all in it would've prob lasted me another year or two. That model capped out at 16gb of ram though which is the bottle neck for that generation.