Good day everyone
With the recent Macbook Pros being announced, many found it difficult to pick the most suitable Mac for their needs, especially with Apple's marketing that keeps you wanting to push for the next upgrade.
How far should I future-proof my Mac? Is this CPU/RAM/GPU upgrade worth the cost? M1 Pro or M1 Max? I personally had this struggle, but after some thinking and analysis, I've reached a good balance that I'm happy with and thought some of you may find it helpful as well.
The main question is: Is future-proofing your Mac worth the extra cost?
TLDR: In my humble opinion, it may be best to go with what you need right now, and save the extra cost for when you'll upgrade your Mac in a few years. This of course does not apply to pros who need top-of-the-line specs. So if you currently use top specs "64GB RAM, Xeon CPU ..etc", this probably won't apply to you.
Here're the main arguments.
Is it worth the cost?
We all know that Macs hold their values really well, which makes paying their expensive price tag a little bit less painful, as you know you can sell them for 25-50% of their original value in a few years.
For my two previous MacBooks, I got a base MacBook Air 13" in early 2010 for $999, and sold it in Late 2018 (after 9 years of use!) for around $250. 9 years of use cost me about $750, which comes about $84/year "keep in mind this is a MacBook Air, so lower price". It is just amazing how a 9-year-old laptop can still sell for this amount.
In late 2018, I got the touchbar quad-core MacBook Pro 13" for $1,500 and used it for 3 years. I just sold it for around $1,000, which is an amazing retainment of value. 3 years of use cost me about $500, which is about $167/year "again, MacBook Pro is about ~1.5-2x price of Air at sale".
Now, after these two "basic" experiences, I decided to go with the base MacBook Pro 14", for $1,999. Two things lead me to pick the base model:
1. Suits my current use: I mainly do dev tasks "full-stack dev, mobile dev, vms, docker, ..etc", and after seeing the reviews and tests, it should be powerful enough even for my most extreme use cases, and should be more than powerful for my day-to-day use, and should be enough for at least 2-3 years.
2. The base models hold their values the most: When you resell your Mac in a few years, you are basically getting the value of the base model of the screensize/year of your Mac. Any extra power won't add much to the selling price, as most people buying these used Macs don't care much about extra specs.
When to replace a Mac?
With that in mind, which is better, replacing your Mac every 3 years, or keeping one for 7+ years? Obviously, it depends on each person, but we can at least see what are the cost differences between the two cases.
This of course is open for debate, and we can check the used Mac market to get accurate estimates. In general, I found that Macs retain about half of the base-model value after 3-4 years of use, and at most a quarter of the base-model value after 6-8 years of use. It appears that Macs hold their value between 2-4 years, then between years 4-6 their value declines, and then stagnates after 6 years to its minimum value.
So, let's compare MacBook Pros. If it cost me $500 for 3 years of use, this comes at about $167 per year. Perhaps if I kept it for another year the cost may not go down by much, and the cost-per-year would be around $150 or so. So, perhaps 3-4 years is the sweet spot for price retention.
What if I had kept it for 8 years? Again, this is open for debate, but assuming it retains %25 of its base value ($1500), it should sell for around $375, which would make the cost-per-year around $140. Obviously, if you keep the Mac for more years, the cost-per-year goes down, but not by that much! Of course, if you future proof it for 8 years, the yearly cost will likely be higher, and the future base model will most likely be more powerful than an old "futureproof" one.
So, it may not cost that much more to be changing your Mac every 3-4 years, every time buying your current needs, and staying up-to-date with the latest tech, for a relatively low increase in yearly cost.
We can also look at it the other way, as to how much you pay every time. If you change your Mac every 4 years, you'll be paying $500-$700 in price difference ($125-$175 per year), and if you change it every 8 years you'll be paying $1100-$1300 ($140-$160 per year). Again, not that different.
It is up to each individual to decide whether to keep their Macs for 8+ years, or change it every 3-4 years, but I hope this helps some of you decide which Mac to get.
A few ending notes:
1. As mentioned in the beginning, if the Mac you need now is high-speccd, this will not apply to you, as the price retention would be much lower. This mainly applies to the base-model, or one with a few upgrades.
2. Only you know how much power you need right now, but be sure that you'll end up using what you pay for. Remember, paying $200 for a slightly more powerful CPU costs about a year of use, so choose wisely.
3. Many people try to future-proof their Macs by overspeccing it, and in most cases, they end up not utilizing the extra cost they paid for. The reality is, IMHO, you never know what the future holds or how much power you'll need, so at best you'd be better off replacing your Mac when you need more power, than paying a huge extra amount just in case you may need it one day.
Let me know what you think, or if I am missing something obvious that completely negates this analysis.
If you think the resale value of Macs is different, what percentage do they hold of their original values? What would this make the yearly cost for 3 vs 8 years of use?
Thank you for reading
With the recent Macbook Pros being announced, many found it difficult to pick the most suitable Mac for their needs, especially with Apple's marketing that keeps you wanting to push for the next upgrade.
How far should I future-proof my Mac? Is this CPU/RAM/GPU upgrade worth the cost? M1 Pro or M1 Max? I personally had this struggle, but after some thinking and analysis, I've reached a good balance that I'm happy with and thought some of you may find it helpful as well.
The main question is: Is future-proofing your Mac worth the extra cost?
TLDR: In my humble opinion, it may be best to go with what you need right now, and save the extra cost for when you'll upgrade your Mac in a few years. This of course does not apply to pros who need top-of-the-line specs. So if you currently use top specs "64GB RAM, Xeon CPU ..etc", this probably won't apply to you.
Here're the main arguments.
Is it worth the cost?
We all know that Macs hold their values really well, which makes paying their expensive price tag a little bit less painful, as you know you can sell them for 25-50% of their original value in a few years.
For my two previous MacBooks, I got a base MacBook Air 13" in early 2010 for $999, and sold it in Late 2018 (after 9 years of use!) for around $250. 9 years of use cost me about $750, which comes about $84/year "keep in mind this is a MacBook Air, so lower price". It is just amazing how a 9-year-old laptop can still sell for this amount.
In late 2018, I got the touchbar quad-core MacBook Pro 13" for $1,500 and used it for 3 years. I just sold it for around $1,000, which is an amazing retainment of value. 3 years of use cost me about $500, which is about $167/year "again, MacBook Pro is about ~1.5-2x price of Air at sale".
Now, after these two "basic" experiences, I decided to go with the base MacBook Pro 14", for $1,999. Two things lead me to pick the base model:
1. Suits my current use: I mainly do dev tasks "full-stack dev, mobile dev, vms, docker, ..etc", and after seeing the reviews and tests, it should be powerful enough even for my most extreme use cases, and should be more than powerful for my day-to-day use, and should be enough for at least 2-3 years.
2. The base models hold their values the most: When you resell your Mac in a few years, you are basically getting the value of the base model of the screensize/year of your Mac. Any extra power won't add much to the selling price, as most people buying these used Macs don't care much about extra specs.
When to replace a Mac?
With that in mind, which is better, replacing your Mac every 3 years, or keeping one for 7+ years? Obviously, it depends on each person, but we can at least see what are the cost differences between the two cases.
This of course is open for debate, and we can check the used Mac market to get accurate estimates. In general, I found that Macs retain about half of the base-model value after 3-4 years of use, and at most a quarter of the base-model value after 6-8 years of use. It appears that Macs hold their value between 2-4 years, then between years 4-6 their value declines, and then stagnates after 6 years to its minimum value.
So, let's compare MacBook Pros. If it cost me $500 for 3 years of use, this comes at about $167 per year. Perhaps if I kept it for another year the cost may not go down by much, and the cost-per-year would be around $150 or so. So, perhaps 3-4 years is the sweet spot for price retention.
What if I had kept it for 8 years? Again, this is open for debate, but assuming it retains %25 of its base value ($1500), it should sell for around $375, which would make the cost-per-year around $140. Obviously, if you keep the Mac for more years, the cost-per-year goes down, but not by that much! Of course, if you future proof it for 8 years, the yearly cost will likely be higher, and the future base model will most likely be more powerful than an old "futureproof" one.
So, it may not cost that much more to be changing your Mac every 3-4 years, every time buying your current needs, and staying up-to-date with the latest tech, for a relatively low increase in yearly cost.
We can also look at it the other way, as to how much you pay every time. If you change your Mac every 4 years, you'll be paying $500-$700 in price difference ($125-$175 per year), and if you change it every 8 years you'll be paying $1100-$1300 ($140-$160 per year). Again, not that different.
It is up to each individual to decide whether to keep their Macs for 8+ years, or change it every 3-4 years, but I hope this helps some of you decide which Mac to get.
A few ending notes:
1. As mentioned in the beginning, if the Mac you need now is high-speccd, this will not apply to you, as the price retention would be much lower. This mainly applies to the base-model, or one with a few upgrades.
2. Only you know how much power you need right now, but be sure that you'll end up using what you pay for. Remember, paying $200 for a slightly more powerful CPU costs about a year of use, so choose wisely.
3. Many people try to future-proof their Macs by overspeccing it, and in most cases, they end up not utilizing the extra cost they paid for. The reality is, IMHO, you never know what the future holds or how much power you'll need, so at best you'd be better off replacing your Mac when you need more power, than paying a huge extra amount just in case you may need it one day.
Let me know what you think, or if I am missing something obvious that completely negates this analysis.
If you think the resale value of Macs is different, what percentage do they hold of their original values? What would this make the yearly cost for 3 vs 8 years of use?
Thank you for reading
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