Did future-proofing pay off for you?

[Luftkopf]

I buy as much computer as I can afford.

My maxed out 2012 11" MacBook Air served me well for a decade, and I was glad I didn't have the i5 in it too. When I upgraded, a base 13" M3 MacBook Air would have done what I needed it to, but I would already be thinking about an upgrade if I'd got that. I ended up with a base 14" M3 Pro, because that's what I could afford. Since I no longer spend an hour on the train, and instead work from home most of the time (with a 200m walk to work when I go in), I would have got a 16" with more RAM if I could have.

I intend this M3 Pro to last until the new OS won't work on it, and then we'll see what I can afford.

 

[MallardDuck]

Inspired by this post from @Steelhead1957 I decided to put together a poll for those who had purchased a higher end configuration for the purposes of future-proofing to see if that decision paid off. I'd like to limit responses from those who primarily purchased a higher configuration for the purposes of future-proofing.

So what say you? Did buying more than your current needs pay off? You bought more than you needed and with you hadn't? Something else?

​

100%. Getting the M4 max with 128GB of RAM allows me to run real LLMs. Didn’t even consider that when I bought it - and replacing it with an M5 max is almost twice as much money.

 

[Zwhaler]

Yes, but earlier in my career. I rocked a 5,1 Max Pro 12-core and beat the hell out of it. That made a major difference in my creative career. Nowadays, I can get by with much lower firepower. I’m also not full-time video editing and producing, either.

My last Mac purchase was a $599 M4 Mac Mini with 16GB RAM and 256GB onboard storage (I’m plugged into an OWC 1U4 so I can easily expand to 80TB+ in only 4 bays and a 1U rack size).

This Mac Mini has been the best computer I’ve purchased since the Mac Pro. This thing can edit some pretty serious video, too. Rendering / exporting speeds is where the Pro and Max chips really make a difference and I’m not doing enough exporting to remotely require it.

Funny going from the highest end to the lowest end and being completely happy with both! My logic was that I’d rather just buy a new base Mac Mini in a few years for the same $600 (now $800) that I could have spent on upgrading the first one and I’ll probably end up with a better computer.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Yes. Buying 16GB of RAM on a base M1 when it was still cool to tell people that 8GB is more than enough "because Apple Silicon is different" (as though RAM wasn't still RAM) DID pay off.

Because 8GB of RAM was still a low amount of RAM despite the users of these forums largely not understanding how RAM works.

My only regret was that I couldn't buy more than that.

 

[ThomasJL]

I voted yes. I would buy the lowest spec Mac, remove the stock RAM and hard drive, and then max it out with third-party RAM and a third-party hard drive.

But now Tim Cook has removed that ability by soldering the RAM and hard drive to the motherboard so they can never be replaced. Cook has insatiable corporate greed, and wants customers to replace their entire computer if they run out of RAM and/or hard drive space. That way, Tim Crook can maximize profits.

 

[one more]

I think Macs are future-proof out of the gate. When I bought my baseline MBP 13” in early 2015 for its then excellent Retina display, it was great. It still works fine, yet cannot officially support any macOS after Monterey. So it still serves me well after 11 years despite me not doing anything special to future-proof it (no extra RAM or storage space).

 

[Juanchi007]

My senior year of college, I bought an M2 Pro Mac Mini upon its release and a refurbished Studio Display. Both were splurges, and together were double the price of an M1 iMac which realistically could’ve done everything I use a Mac for.

However, more than three years later, my Mac Mini is chugging along and never breaks a sweat. The Studio Display is gorgeous, expansive, and professional. I feel like I do better work on both, and I’m comforted knowing that my Mac Mini has many years of life left in it. I feel an M1 iMac would already be showing its age.

When my Mac Mini does finally kick the bucket, I’m glad that I’ll be able to simply swap it out without having to replace my display and peripherals. In the long run, I’m much happier than I would’ve been had I cheaped out, and I think the extra time between replacements means it all comes out in the wash.

 

[henkie]

M1pro 14. Found a refurbished 1TB + 16Gb. I wanted 16Gb and more disk space. For way less than a new m2 pro MBP would have costed me. Runs like a champ. I have a work issued m4 air, but somehow the m1pro feels “snappier”.

 

[jchap]

No, future-proofing did not really pay off for me... at least, not in 2022. I purchased a MBP 16-inch 2019 Intel Core i9 model with 64 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD. I thought, this will last for a long time. My most demanding uses of it were to edit some designs in Illustrator and to run some productivity apps in a Parallels VM.

The unit cost me a pretty penny, to say the least. What ended up happening is that I got tired of the fans screaming like hissing tigers when the VM booted up, and replaced it a few years later with a MacBook Pro 16-inch 2021 M1 Pro model... a very lightly used machine, which cost basically a third of the Intel machine I shelled out so much money for. In nearly every way, the MBP 16-inch M1 Pro model runs circles around the Intel Core i9 MBP... and it only has 16 GB RAM.

So much for future-proofing. I guess that my workflow was not too demanding, anyway.

 

[virgin71]

After my MBA M1 8/256 adventure, my future-proof purchase was MBP M3 Pro 18/512. It was a good decision to buy MBP instead of M3 16/256 MBA. And 2 days before price hikes I picked M5 Pro MBP, again - instead of MBA I need.

 

[triumvirate]

I bought the 8gb m1 mbp during Rona when people were claiming Apple RAM was more magic than other non-magic non-Apple RAM types.

It was a farce and even basic use like mine made the 8gb a laggy and bad experience with multiple gigs of constant swap. Today, AI has wiped that lie off the board completely.

Upgraded to a m5 MBA 24gb/1tb on sale this year before the price hikes. I think it will pay off well because I’m keeping it as long as I can with a significant RAM buffer to handle future updates / price hikes.

 

[Siliconguy]

Funny going from the highest end to the lowest end and being completely happy with both! My logic was that I’d rather just buy a new base Mac Mini in a few years for the same $600 (now $800) that I could have spent on upgrading the first one and I’ll probably end up with a better computer.

That rings a bell. In 2002 I bought a top of the line dual G4 Quicksilver. I got seven years of good use out of it upgrading it with a USB 2 card and a SATA card and two more HDDs. In 2009 I replaced it with a Mini, the 2.5 GHz version mostly because it came with a larger HDD.

I had the same plan, replace the Mini in 2013 or so. Unfortunately there was no 2013 mini and 2014's had no quad core option which I had determined I needed (correctly as it turned out). That and work forced me into Windows which by 7 was finally (and temporarily) decent. I did try a hackintosh using a mini-PC with the same i5-4570-R CPU that apple used in an iMac, but the USB ports kept locking up. They worked fine under Windows.

The Windows mini-PC died horribly (departure of magic smoke) but the 2009 still runs with Mavericks or with Linux, and the 2002 still chugs along quite well as long as you don't try the modern internet.

 

[Siliconguy]

But now Tim Cook has removed that ability by soldering the RAM and hard drive to the motherboard so they can never be replaced. Cook has insatiable corporate greed,

I won't necessarily dispute Cook's greed, but using socketed RAM has a cost in performance and power consumption. On the PC side more and more laptops are going to soldered down RAM as well for the same reason. The desktops are staying in sockets, but peak performance requires that you only use two of the four sockets or all of them slow down.

With storage the tradeoffs are more debatable. I will point out the top of the line NVME sticks come with heat sinks and are specified for 20 watts. That's more than a hard drive.

Engineering is the art of compromise. Physics does not negotiate, so it's up to the designers to decide what they want.

 

[mpetrides]

In 2024, I stocked up with M4 iPad pros and in January 2025 I picked up an M4 MBP, all fairly maxed out with 1 TB storage. Since then I have not spent a significant amount on Apple hardware and I still feel no need to do so.

I will probably pick up an iPhone Ultra at launch, as well as some of the rumored new Apple Home devices, but I doubt I'll be looking to either a new MBP or a new iPad in quite some time. The iPad I was using prior to 2024 was a 2018 iPad Pro, also pretty high spec, and it is still going strong as a media consumption device for use with my exercise bike.

Bottom line: When it comes to Apple, I'm a big believer in maxing out a purchase (to the extent that one can afford to do so) in the thought that I will likely keep it for years and would eventually regret not having future proofed it.

 

[Plutonius]

Define "payoff" as it relates to this subject.

 

[coachgq]

I bought a Mac mini m2 pro that I use to do lite video editing. I have not run into any speed bumps. I also have 4 thunderbolt ports instead of 2. 16 gb ram and 512 storage with a thunderbolt external ssd. I’m hoping to get another 3 years out of the machine. The size is big compared to the m4 but I hide it behind the display and have all ports accessible on the back including the power button 🙂

 

[Leobreaker]

I bumped up my M1 MacBook Pro to 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. It definitely helped, and although I have a work laptop that I can use for personal life, the M1 is still going strong and does everything still very well. The only sore spot is the battery is at this point pretty worn down.

 

[SGSfanboy]

Bought an air 24/1TB before AI was a thing. Gave it to my GF since she had an old MBP that was out of OS updates. Bought a MBP with 32/1TB to hopefully future proof for AI.

 

[conmee]

No, future-proofing did not really pay off for me... at least, not in 2022. I purchased a MBP 16-inch 2019 Intel Core i9 model with 64 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD. I thought, this will last for a long time. My most demanding uses of it were to edit some designs in Illustrator and to run some productivity apps in a Parallels VM.

The unit cost me a pretty penny, to say the least. What ended up happening is that I got tired of the fans screaming like hissing tigers when the VM booted up, and replaced it a few years later with a MacBook Pro 16-inch 2021 M1 Pro model... a very lightly used machine, which cost basically a third of the Intel machine I shelled out so much money for. In nearly every way, the MBP 16-inch M1 Pro model runs circles around the Intel Core i9 MBP... and it only has 16 GB RAM.

So much for future-proofing. I guess that my workflow was not too demanding, anyway.

I’m not sure future-proofing is a realistic expectation for an Intel MBP two years into the Apple Silicon era. And the 2019 MBP was already 3yr old tech when you acquired it so you were already on the back foot future-proofing-wise.

But Apple Silicon aside, what were your thoughts/expectations at the time of purchase? Were you just focused on your workflow at the time and if the 2019 MBP would adequately handle your needs for years to come?

I had the exact same 2019 16”MBP but with 2TB. And I ran it in clamshell mode so if you think the fans were bad in laptop mode… haha just looking at it could get the fans spinning. I stayed with an Intel MBP mainly due to work needs (x86 apps and I could run the corporate image in a Win11 VM and not have to deal with a plastic Dell Latitude). The fans would briefly spin up just booting. Then settle down. Then spin up again when launching any of the three VMs that I used daily. And of course, fans always kicked in with Microsoft Teams.

But in all that, my 2019 MBP still ran well up to this January. I thought about keeping it until Tahoe support ends, but started to get interested in local LLMs which the 2019 MBP just can’t run in any practical way. But I was also able to cover off all my work requirements with Win11ARM starting this year so decided to finally make the jump to Apple Silicon. If you bought a 2019 in 2019 like I did, I’d say it future-proofed (for my use case at least) pretty well. Got nearly 7yrs of productivity out of it and ran (poorly) the latest macOS.