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Have I made an error

T

TWHH

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 12, 2008
156
19
So, my 2017 MBP needs updating. Saw the new Mini announcement and ordered the M4 top (standard) spec.

Then saw the MBP announcements and the M4 Max chip. Now worried that my machine with an ‘entry level’ chip my not be enough.

I use my Mac for productivity apps and web browsing, occasional photo stuff, but not PhotoShop. Certainly not the likes of Resolve or FCP (but who knows I may do in the future).

Budget comes in to play (obvs) but does one think my 24GB, 512GB M4 will be suffice or a buy I regret?
 
Give the Mac mini M4 a chance…
I use my Mac mini M1 for Browsing, Pages, Numbers, Docker, VMWare, a tiny bit of VSCode, ollama and stuff…
Just ordered a Mac mini M4 24GB 1 TB SSD, not because of actual need, but more of want (and 24GB Ram gives more headroom with the VMWare/Docker stuff.)
 
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TWHH said:
I use my Mac for productivity apps and web browsing, occasional photo stuff, but not PhotoShop. Certainly not the likes of Resolve or FCP (but who knows I may do in the future).
Click to expand...

Your 2017 MBP can do these things easily :) So an M4 mac mini is going to be quite an upgrade - more than enough for years to come.

Plus the mac mini is infinitely more "repairable"/customizable since the screen, keyboard, touchpad, etc.. are not built in. If you don't need the portability of a laptop, I think the mac mini is great. It also means you don't have to replace those items at the same cadence as the computer, should you decide later on to become a full time videographer.

I do a lot of the same stuff - word, excel, browsing, VS code, VMware, light photo editing - on a 2018 Intel Mac Mini and I have no plans to upgrade until maybe the M6 mac mini. It still does all the things I want to do just fine. I generally upgrade when the supported OS is so old it stops getting security updates. My previous mac mini was a 2011 model.
 
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The differences between the m4pro and the m4max are on the gpu side, if cpu power is important you can consider the mini with m4pro. Unfortunately the m4 to m4pro upgrade is much more expensive for the mini than for the macbook pro. Nobody seems to knows why, not even the apple support.
 
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djc6 said:
mac mini is infinitely more "repairable"/customizable since the screen, keyboard, touchpad, etc.. are not built in. If you don't need the portability of a laptop, I think the mac mini is great. It also means you don't have to replace those items at the same cadence as the computer, should you decide later on to become a full time videographer.
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I hear you on that. I’m on my 3rd battery! And I’m sure that if I didn’t have the MBP in clamshell mode as often as I do then the crappy keyboard it came with would’ve gone by now (and we don’t have the replacement scheme in the UK)
 
Guenter said:
the m4 to m4pro upgrade is much more expensive for the mini than for the macbook pro. Nobody seems to knows why, not even the apple support.
Click to expand...

Similar to the price of additional RAM and storage!
 
I can't tell if you are serious. Your use case would be fine with the absolute base spec from about 3 years ago. The M4 will be absolute overkill for you. The M series chips vs the old intel is frankly a different world. When I got the first M1 chip in a macbook it was magnitudes faster than my much higher (relative) spec intel mac from a year earlier.

It will be absolutely fine.
 
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You can do everything you describe and much, much more with an M1 Mac mini and 8GB ram.
The specs you are purchasing will be much more than sufficient for what you are doing now, and likely more than sufficient even if you start using Resolve or FCP, unless your profession becomes editing 8k videos all day long.

The only caveat is the SSD storage.
512TB might be enough for you, or it might not. Only you can know that.
 
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When you go car shopping do you buy a box truck because you might want to move sometime in the next 3-7 years, probably not. So why would you do that when you go computer shopping?

For your uses pretty much any Mac from the past 10 or 12 years can handle the work. As mentioned, the base 8/256 M1 machines would blow you away. I've watched my wife abuse her 8/256 M1 Air (bought for other uses) with her portrait photography workflow. It handles the work just fine.

Personally, I think you are wasting too much money on specs you don't need. If you don't want to connect an external drive, then by all means bump the storage, but bumping the ram buys you nothing for your use case. When you go car shopping, I'm sure you don't buy a box truck because you might want to move sometime in the next 3-7 years, so why do that when you go computer shopping? If you buy and replace the base model every 3-4 years, you'll save money over trying to "future proof" at Apple's upgrade prices.

Additionally, we are in a new phase of computing where the NPU is going to be the differentiator and Apple seems to be making significant headway in its development and use of their NPUs. We may be back to a cycle similar to the MHz wars of the late '90s and early 00's where machine learning tasks become noticeably slower over 2-3 years forcing quicker upgrade cycles. It won't matter if you have enough cpu/gpu/ram if Apple chooses to lock new features to the NPU generation. For the next couple upgrade cycles, I'll likely be hedging my bets on a configuration that will get me what I need near term rather than long term. That said, I don't see needing to replace my 16/256 M1 mini for at least another 2-3 years at least unless a killer feature comes along that makes a compelling case for an upgrade (My use case is pretty similar to yours.).
 
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TWHH said:
So, my 2017 MBP needs updating. Saw the new Mini announcement and ordered the M4 top (standard) spec.

Then saw the MBP announcements and the M4 Max chip. Now worried that my machine with an ‘entry level’ chip my not be enough.

I use my Mac for productivity apps and web browsing, occasional photo stuff, but not PhotoShop. Certainly not the likes of Resolve or FCP (but who knows I may do in the future).

Budget comes in to play (obvs) but does one think my 24GB, 512GB M4 will be suffice or a buy I regret?
Click to expand...
I'm using an M1 iMac with 16 GB RAM for a whole lot more than what you describe and it handles it all very very well. The M4, by all accounts, should be about 2x as fast as my M1. The M4 Max would be massive overkill, IMO, for what you're describing.
 
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TWHH said:
I use my Mac for productivity apps and web browsing, occasional photo stuff, but not PhotoShop. Certainly not the likes of Resolve or FCP (but who knows I may do in the future).
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I've never used Resolve, but I'm pretty sure FCP will run just fine on a base-level Mac Mini. Definitely all the other things you've listed would run great without any issues at all. :cool:
 
Cancel the order you placed.
(one more example of jumping the gun with over-enthusiasm -- didn't you realize new MBP's were coming?)

Get the new m4pro 14".
The base model ought to do fine for years to come.

If you wait til Black Friday or thereabouts, there should even be sales popping up...
 
TWHH said:
So, my 2017 MBP needs updating. Saw the new Mini announcement and ordered the M4 top (standard) spec.

Then saw the MBP announcements and the M4 Max chip. Now worried that my machine with an ‘entry level’ chip my not be enough.

I use my Mac for productivity apps and web browsing, occasional photo stuff, but not PhotoShop. Certainly not the likes of Resolve or FCP (but who knows I may do in the future).

Budget comes in to play (obvs) but does one think my 24GB, 512GB M4 will be suffice or a buy I regret?
Click to expand...
The M4 and M4 Pro with 24GB RAM are both absolutely more than capable of performing productivity app execution, web browsing, occasional photo stuff, etc. with zero hiccups. It will be lightning fast for you. You don't need an M4 Max for those things at all. If you got an M4 Pro that's already overkill tbh. Will last you many years.

Now if you want a MBP for portability, that's a whole different question. But based on your usage you definitely don't need it for performance.
 
TWHH said:
Then saw the MBP announcements and the M4 Max chip. Now worried that my machine with an ‘entry level’ chip my not be enough.
Click to expand...
I’m using an M1 Mini for graphic (Affinity Suite)/web design, coding, general business stuff, and in my spare time making music via Ableton Live and Logic.

None of the above makes the M1 break into a sweat (aside from the occasional Live grunt), only thing to bear in mind is I have 16gb RAM and a 512 drive, so enough headroom for heavy tasks.

I’m looking into getting the entry level M4 for music use only, to give Live a bit more power, but for everything else the M1 is absolutely fine.
 
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An M4 is extremely powerful. Even an M1 is more than enough for the work you're doing today.

If you in the future would like to do some video editing, the M4 won't let you down for one second. Just look at some reviews from when the M1 was new, and then imagine that your M4 is vastly superior to the four year old M1.

You have not made a mistake. Your machine is a tiny powerhouse.
 
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TWHH said:
I rarely take my laptop out of the house these days. I use my iPad Pro for that.
Click to expand...
Then I'd say jump on the mac mini. I do the same. Never move my mini, but use my ipad pro as a portable device to then bring back home and do major lifting on my M2 Pro mini.
 
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For everything you described an M4 is perfectly fine. If you are really concerned about "Future" proofing and what you "may" do in the future. Consider the M4 pro model. You certainly don't need the Max though. I do very light editing on FCP and I don't even push the processor (M1 Max).
 
If you needed more power you would already know it. Almost everyone who posts here asking if they need a more powerful machine, the answer is unequivocally "no."

As someone who uses his Macs almost exclusively for high-end design work (and am still using an M1 Pro), I'm sort of amused at the honkin', over-spec'ed machines people around here throw money at all to... what, surf to MacRumors 700 times a day? It's entirely FOMO which is not rooted in any quantitative need.

The machine you're getting will serve your needs well for many years. Don't stress it and don't spend money you don't have to. Enjoy!

If it's truly stressing you out, you've got two weeks to consider the machine once it arrives. Spend your time now putting together a test suite of your own making, programs that are essential to you. Test them and their performance in a structured way. I think that base M4 will handle it all with aplomb.
 
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TWHH said:
So, my 2017 MBP needs updating. Saw the new Mini announcement and ordered the M4 top (standard) spec.

Then saw the MBP announcements and the M4 Max chip. Now worried that my machine with an ‘entry level’ chip my not be enough.

I use my Mac for productivity apps and web browsing, occasional photo stuff, but not PhotoShop. Certainly not the likes of Resolve or FCP (but who knows I may do in the future).

Budget comes in to play (obvs) but does one think my 24GB, 512GB M4 will be suffice or a buy I regret?
Click to expand...
I wouldn't order for the future.

You should order for what you know that you're doing today, and maybe what you've been doing in the last few years.

I see far too many get swept away by all the ads and hype when Apple introduces something new.

But, besides maybe your needs for more than 256GB internal storage, I actually don't see why you'd even need anything more than a M1 or M2 8/512 basic Mac mini.

If the "photo stuff" you do is more basic than Photo Shop.

There's obviously the argument that maybe you're getting a better deal by getting the basic M4 16/512 than opting for a mini that won't support MacOS or Apple Intelligence in a few years.

It comes down to what you're paying in total. And I sense that you're going for an M4 no matter how cheap older minis are.

But I would not go for the 24GB RAM, considering what you do. 16GB is more than enough for your use case.
 
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given your past, I would say the original M1 base would be future proof enough for you (that's not meant to sound snarky). Point being the M4 base is overkill, spending more would be overkilling the overkill, and I agree with the folks that say it's too early in the AI game to really predict the future (we need AI for that) so buy the base now and see how the future unfolds. Might be a moot point when Skynet arrives.
 
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