Did future-proofing pay off for you?

[danpass]

I usually spec pretty moderately. My previous MacBook was the M2 Pro 16GB/1TB.

When they dropped the “hey so we’re going to be raising prices soon just a heads-up” I waffled for a few days and then ordered an M5 Pro 48GB/2TB. It’s overkill (I would have liked a 32GB option and could probably have gotten by with 1TB storage) but I wanted to not have any regrets for a few years because it looks like the rampocalypse will be with us a while.

It arrived on my doorstep the day they announced the price increases. I will be treating this thing with the utmost of care. 🙂

MBP14M5Pro 48/2 checking in and yeah, babied, lol

One initial charge to 100% and 80% from then on (unless traveling)

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[mozartsghost]

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.

 

[jchap]

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 sort of see what you’re saying, but my main beef is that I bought what was nearly the top of the line, a machine with 64GB of RAM and a Core i9 processor back then… and it still had thermal issues that made it unpleasant to use for more than a few years.

Perhaps I could have held onto it for longer and it still would have basically met my needs, but the fan noise thing was really a sore spot for me. Compared to Apple silicon machines, the thing was just a power-hungry, loud hunk of aluminum. It did have a nice display, though.

 

[mozartsghost]

I bought a 14" M3 Pro MBP with the upgraded CPU/GPU and 1TB. I believe I made a mistake thinking 18gb of UM was enough, but am happy to report that my M3 Pro MPB outperforms a basic M5 MBP handily.

Before that, my daily driver was an M1 MBA. I upgraded the UM to 16gb. Smartest move I could have made. That lasted until I accidentally hurt the MBA. What a great little machine though!

I'm by no means a power user, but I have a M4 Max Studio that can do my heavy lifting. I just like the MBP for tooling around and better than a MBA for a backup desktop (ports ports ports).

 

[conmee]

I sort of see what you’re saying, but my main beef is that I bought what was nearly the top of the line, a machine with 64GB of RAM and a Core i9 processor back then… and it still had thermal issues that made it unpleasant to use for more than a few years.

Perhaps I could have held onto it for longer and it still would have basically met my needs, but the fan noise thing was really a sore spot for me. Compared to Apple silicon machines, the thing was just a power-hungry, loud hunk of aluminum. It did have a nice display, though.

100% agree on the fans. I think I have tinnitus in my right ear because the 2019 MBP sat in a vertical Brydge dock on the right side of my desk all these years and now I might also hear "ghost fan noise" lol because my M5 Max fan never runs unless I'm doing local LLM work and yet sometimes I think I hear fans (and it's not my Studio display either).

By 2022 Intel had introduced the Alder Lake chips with performance and efficiency cores and were much better than the Coffee Lake Refresh chips we had in our 2019 MBPs. But the big culprit was the GPU. There are videos on YouTube that show how to add thermal pads to various components so that heat is drawn away from the motherboard/GPU and to the bottom panel. This made the bottom panel even hotter, but according to some folks, it greatly reduced fan noise and throttling. But I hear you, the 2019 MBP was not cheap and even in 2022, you'd like to think you could get at least 4-5 problem-free years out of it (maybe more) given the price point.

 

[alexonline]

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?

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I bought an M2 Mac in 2022 with 24GB ram (the most you could get) and a 1TB SSD. I wish I'd gotten at 2TB SSD.

But for all my future proofing, and despite the 24GB of RAM, you need at least an M3 if you want to get access to the custom voices of Siri AI and, from memory, a couple of others things the new Siri AI only does on Mac hardware with whatever the minimum spec is.

I plan on waiting until the M7 processor arrives, with its AI-enhanced capabilities before I upgrade again, and this time it will be to at least a 14-inch MacBook Pro.

Where I live, summer can get really hot, and there have been times that I was screen recording something and there would be dropped frames because the CPU was throttling itself.

That theoretically wouldn't have been happening if I had a CPU fan in the Air, although an Air does guarantee no fan noise ever due to there not being a fan.

Still, next time around I want the backup and protection of a CPU fan, even though "everyone says" you need to push your M-series processor hard to have it spin up at all.

 

[platinumaqua]

Given how expensive storage and RAM is nowadays, I'm glad I bought 32GB/1TB on my current MacBook.

Doubly true because neither of them are upgradeable.

 

[jchap]

100% agree on the fans. I think I have tinnitus in my right ear because the 2019 MBP sat in a vertical Brydge dock on the right side of my desk all these years and now I might also hear "ghost fan noise" lol because my M5 Max fan never runs unless I'm doing local LLM work and yet sometimes I think I hear fans (and it's not my Studio display either).

But I hear you, the 2019 MBP was not cheap and even in 2022, you'd like to think you could get at least 4-5 problem-free years out of it (maybe more) given the price point.

Yes, and it kind of goes to show how you can save a lot of money if you’re willing to wait a bit for a refurbished model or even a very lightly used unit, maybe just a few years after the model was released. Technology has improved so much even over the past five years that it’s possible for people with less demanding workflows to get by with much less. Some people here are running local LLMs and find that they need to get the latest chipset, but for most users, the barriers are coming down, despite Apple’s price hikes. I used to think that I needed a MacBook Pro for my work, but aside from the port selection, MacBook Airs nowadays more than suffice.

 

[conmee]

Yes, and it kind of goes to show how you can save a lot of money if you’re willing to wait a bit for a refurbished model or even a very lightly used unit, maybe just a few years after the model was released. Technology has improved so much even over the past five years that it’s possible for people with less demanding workflows to get by with much less. Some people here are running local LLMs and find that they need to get the latest chipset, but for most users, the barriers are coming down, despite Apple’s price hikes. I used to think that I needed a MacBook Pro for my work, but aside from the port selection, MacBook Airs nowadays more than suffice.

I tested out a base M5 with 32GB and it outperformed my 2019 16" anywhere from +10% to +200%. At first I thought, I'll just save a ton of money now that an entry MBP can handle my current needs. Here are the results from my 2019 16" / 2019 15" / Base M5. It smoked both 2019s across every metric. Even running side-by-side, quicker boot, quicker virtual machine launch, even an x86 3DMark DirectX benchmark from 2011 ran faster in emulation in Win11ARM in Parallels on the M5 than on my 2019s in Parallels and in Bootcamp. And while I'm doing all the tests and launching all the apps, the 2019s sound like hair dryers, and the base M5 was silent.

So I was all ready to keep the base M5, but then I thought to myself, yes the M5 is great compared to the 2019 MBP, but I have the budget and I'm interested in local LLM stuff, and so I ended up with M5 Max. To be honest, if I could get a base M5 with 64GB/128GB it would have made the decision much more difficult. My normal workload on a base M5 with 32GB: Email, Safari, Excel, Teams, Music, 3 Virtual Machines (55% Pressure, 6GB Compressed, 77% Used, 0 Swap, 1GB-2GB Cache). But I didn't feel comfortable being at 55% pressure just loading stuff. This isn't even getting any work done. So I went Pro briefly, then Max with 64GB: Email, Safari, Excel, Teams, Music, 4 Virtual Machines (2% Pressure, 0 Compressed, 50% Used, 0 Swap, 16GB-32GB Cache). With 64GB I can run an additional virtual machine and I'm at 2% pressure and macOS loads up unused memory with sometimes 16GB or more of cached files, and that also helps make everything feel super fast. I think a lot of Pro folks would go for a base M5 if they could get it with 64GB and 16" chassis.

At any rate, I decided to future proof for my current and near-term future workload. The Apple price hikes make my decision feel even better. I bought my M5 Max on sales from B&H right after WWDC and a week before the price hikes. B&H had $300 off at the time. Now my M5 Max configuration is $1,000 more than when I bought it. Now I just hope that the M7 Max doesn't smoke my M5 Max with some crazy fast AI tech (say, quadruple memory bandwidth etc).