Question for those who buy a fully specced Mac for longevity: Considering that it usually costs about twice as much, wouldn't it be more sensible to just buy a new machine more frequently? After all, technology is constantly advancing, so newer models typically offer more than just performance. Purchasing a new Mac more frequently offers the advantage of regularly accessing the latest features, performance improvements, and design innovations.
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Investing in a high-spec model with "headroom" versus buying a new machine more frequently
- Thread starter Sami13496
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I came to the same conclusion. On top of what you said, I also think the lower-tier models tend to hold their resale value better relative to the max'd out models, so when you factor in resale value it makes even more sense to spend less and upgrade more frequently.
This is something I think about often, and why I haven't bought a laptop yet.
This is true. $2k for a used $3k laptop is a tough sell, even if it's only a year old.
This is true. $2k for a used $3k laptop is a tough sell, even if it's only a year old.
Absolutely. Also, if you can time a sale to let it go just before a new model is released you can typically upgrade for very little.
Buying a higher specification than you need with longevity as the motivation makes zero sense.
On the other hand, if you do require (or would like) a better specification, and end up holding on to it longer to get your money’s worth, that’s fine too. Just be aware that the money probably is gone the second you open the box.
Buying a higher specification than you need with longevity as the motivation makes zero sense.
On the other hand, if you do require (or would like) a better specification, and end up holding on to it longer to get your money’s worth, that’s fine too. Just be aware that the money probably is gone the second you open the box.
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Sounds fair. If that's the scenario. You have no use for the extra power today but presumably will need a more powerful one once Microsoft updates Office with enough bloat.
But that's also assuming you want to re-sell it. My old laptops usually get either a new purpose for my own use-cases or are passed along through friends or family, so it's nice for them at least that my 2015 was specced with 16GB of RAM.
But that's also assuming you want to re-sell it. My old laptops usually get either a new purpose for my own use-cases or are passed along through friends or family, so it's nice for them at least that my 2015 was specced with 16GB of RAM.
Meanwhile I think it's not a good idea to "future proof" it too much because speccing up is very expensive and the next model comes soon with all it's bells and whistles.
I am no seller guy so I tend to keep my devices for a long time. I try to find the middle way 😊
I am no seller guy so I tend to keep my devices for a long time. I try to find the middle way 😊
This has been true for the past 40 years. You pay a lot more for having that marginal performance available immediately. The Max, Extreme, and Ultra stuff doesn't offer good value unless you can take advantage of it from day one. Same with memory and storage.
I bought a 2015 13" MBP with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB hard drive. IF I upgrade this year I'll probably get an 15” Air with 24GB of RAM and 1TB hard drive, then keep that for another 8-10 years. I can't be bothered to set up new personal stuff, I do tech all day for work.
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But it's not an investment, it's an expenditure.
For a business you can call it a capital expenditure.
For personal use it is just an expenditure.
So it really comes down to how much discretionary income you have, for personal use, unless you are so wealthy you don't need income and just live off of your largess, in which case the question doesn't matter.
But only if something is offered that you really need. The last improvement that I have found really useful was the Solid State secondary storage, and that was years ago.
I had a different way, I purchased a mid-spec machine (desktop) and then upgraded it with the Afterburner card and the top W3275M CPU 28 core 2.5ghz. It's much cheaper to get those from non-Apple sources. The CPU was originally AUD$9000 option, I got it for USD$1900. Afterburner card was AUD$900 with shipping. From Apple now it is still AUD$3000.
Obviously these days you cannot do that anymore, but in my case I got a machine that I knew will last me for a long time and thus far it has proved extremely robust and capable. With the W3275M it just feels like I can keep throwing more and more at it without any issue. Really impressive. It appears it will run MacOS 15 as well later down the track and I also run Windows 11 Pro for Workstations on this machine so whichever way I'll have it going for a long time.
It's still unreal using a AUD$28,000 machine (what it would have been in current form) but it repaid itself well.
For mobile use I've got a Macbook Air but I don't normally use that. I specced that one a bit higher as well, particularly in RAM and storage, for me 1TB SSD is minimum as it 16GB ram.
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If you are buying base models, it’s easier to upgrade. I upgrade every 5 years and keep the Mac for 3 more years as personal home server/backup. I don’t see the need to upgrade professionally every 2-3 years. I am currently on M1 Max with 64 GB RAM. Will upgrade to M5 or when ever Apple MBP supports 256 GB RAM.
Nowadays with Apple Silicon you really need to think carefully what you order at the start because you don't get much option to change it. If you need more storage you have to use external storage rather than internal.
Not very convenient but then in the old days of laptops only the very brave would upgrade laptop storage and or ram.
I have 8 TB m.2 thunderbolt external storage. I usually stick to 1TB on my mac.
Low end Mac is nothing like low end PC. The M1 from a little while ago still compares well to the top half of all processor sold today. primarily because AMD and Intel are forced to ship very poorly performing processors in order to pad out the bottom line. I wonder what year will be the first one that AMD and Intel doesn’t release a single chip that performs poorer than the m1?
Not just nowadays. Even with Intel Macs you had to think carefully because everything’s been soldered for years, no option to change it. The biggest difference is that low end Macs aren’t stuck with poor performing Intel processors anymore. They used to have to put i3’s or i5’s in some of their product line because Intel didn’t make anything that performed well and was good on efficiency (they can, but that would blow a hole in their business model). As far as single core performance, the lowest Mac of any generation has roughly the same single core score as the highest of that generation. That’s something PC buyers are never going to see from the lowest end PC’s.
Only the top end desktop machines were different, but the majority of people probably never used one (and don't own one).
One of them I have been fortunate to get 14 years out of it and it still runs quite fine, even got an OS update recently to the latest version of Monterey released by Apple. That's great going.
I try to avoid frequent upgrades if possible. Keep the one machine (whatever it is) going as long as possible.
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This is a great topic @Sami13496 and a great discussion filled with insights for this “buy the best and future-proof your purchase” adherent. I’ve heard enough to cause me to reconsider my perspective, but there is one dimension that I haven't seen addressed in the comments which are largely centered on “first cost” and resale/salvage value. That missing dimension is “operating cost“ — the cost of maintaining and enhancing the system over its life — which can exceed first cost with business system investments. Of course in this case we are largely talking about consumer investment/expenditure as has been pointed out.
However, I think there is still an operating cost dimension with consumer purchase: i.e., the “cost” associated with operating, enhancing and maintaining the system. In the case of Apple silicon, “enhancing” largely translates to purchasing external storage or performance-enhancing applications .. and maintenance translates to effort to troubleshoot and correct operational issues many of which are performance-related (i.e., RAM/CPU/Storage impacted) based on my experience. While we may not be paying someone to troubleshoot and correct performance-related maintenance issues, our time represents opportunity costs — which has value proportionate to what else we could have been doing instead of chasing performance-related gremlins.
In my experience with purchasing “sensibly maxed-out” iPad and Mac configurations for my use cases (i.e., 1TB storage, 16 RAM for iPad, 32GB RAM for MacBook Pro and highest available CPU/GPU options), I’ve spent almost $0 on external storage/enhancements and experienced near zero performance-related issues. In fact, I rarely experience the bulk of issues I see reported on MR and elsewhere. I can’t prove objectively that this is due to having high-end CPU, GPU, RAM, and Storage configurations, but I am of the belief that the device configuration is a big factor in my relatively problem-free iPad and Mac experience over the years. This problem-free operation translates to time and cost savings that are often either missing or discounted in “first cost” based assessments.
Please note that I’m not arguing against the proposition of this thread — just curious to see if others have had this seemingly better than average quality of service experience with higher-specced devices. I definitely have and am inclined to continue to purchase higher-specced devices for this reason.
However, I think there is still an operating cost dimension with consumer purchase: i.e., the “cost” associated with operating, enhancing and maintaining the system. In the case of Apple silicon, “enhancing” largely translates to purchasing external storage or performance-enhancing applications .. and maintenance translates to effort to troubleshoot and correct operational issues many of which are performance-related (i.e., RAM/CPU/Storage impacted) based on my experience. While we may not be paying someone to troubleshoot and correct performance-related maintenance issues, our time represents opportunity costs — which has value proportionate to what else we could have been doing instead of chasing performance-related gremlins.
In my experience with purchasing “sensibly maxed-out” iPad and Mac configurations for my use cases (i.e., 1TB storage, 16 RAM for iPad, 32GB RAM for MacBook Pro and highest available CPU/GPU options), I’ve spent almost $0 on external storage/enhancements and experienced near zero performance-related issues. In fact, I rarely experience the bulk of issues I see reported on MR and elsewhere. I can’t prove objectively that this is due to having high-end CPU, GPU, RAM, and Storage configurations, but I am of the belief that the device configuration is a big factor in my relatively problem-free iPad and Mac experience over the years. This problem-free operation translates to time and cost savings that are often either missing or discounted in “first cost” based assessments.
Please note that I’m not arguing against the proposition of this thread — just curious to see if others have had this seemingly better than average quality of service experience with higher-specced devices. I definitely have and am inclined to continue to purchase higher-specced devices for this reason.
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At this point the low tier of SSD and RAM isn't enough for the work I do on a daily basis, so that's really not an option for me
I just started buying them used
Depends what improvements you want to keep up with. If it's RAM, then buying more frequently wouldn't, at least over the past several years, have done you any good. E.g., on many Macs the base RAM has stayed at 8 GB for a while. So if you bought an 8 GB machine a couple of years ago thinking that the new base now would be higher, you'd be out of luck. The exception would be if you needed more than 64 GB RAM. Previously you would have had to buy the Ultra Studio, but now you can get >64 GB in the Max Studio.
And for performance, the core counts tend not to go up much (for the same model). So most of what you get with a newer machine is higher per-core performance. Any you can't do better now by up-speccing it, since the per-core performance is pretty much the same across the board (yeah, the top machines have slightly higher clocks, but the difference is small).
In sum: If what you think you'll need is more RAM and/or storage, buying low-end now and higher-end later is going to cost you more than buying higher-end now. If what you think you'll want to keep up with is performance, unless you run multicore apps, you can't ge that by upspeccing, and you have no choice except to buy more frequently. And that's expensive. The only way to keep up with performance without spending a lot is to buy a used model right after the new model comes out. Then when you sell it you won't lose as much to depreciation.
And for performance, the core counts tend not to go up much (for the same model). So most of what you get with a newer machine is higher per-core performance. Any you can't do better now by up-speccing it, since the per-core performance is pretty much the same across the board (yeah, the top machines have slightly higher clocks, but the difference is small).
In sum: If what you think you'll need is more RAM and/or storage, buying low-end now and higher-end later is going to cost you more than buying higher-end now. If what you think you'll want to keep up with is performance, unless you run multicore apps, you can't ge that by upspeccing, and you have no choice except to buy more frequently. And that's expensive. The only way to keep up with performance without spending a lot is to buy a used model right after the new model comes out. Then when you sell it you won't lose as much to depreciation.
This assumes the only pertinent variables are RAM, storage and core count (or performance).
What about different capabilities, neural engines, AI processors, or yet-to-be-imagined features, needs and trends. Hard to future proof for an unknown future.
I didn’t understood the OP to buy base models. But the question to buy what you need today or buy what you might need tomorrow.
Buying a new machine more frequently is almost always better.
You can offload the old one (sell to part-fund the new one) or keep as spare, and performance generally gets significantly better after 2-3 generations (i.e., 2-3 years) - such that your top spec machine from 3-5 years ago is generally well out-performed by a mid-range machine of the day.
And you can stay in warranty... if you buy top spec to try and keep it for 5+ years and it dies out of warranty... you wasted your money (and ended up with worse performance anyway on average).
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as above - there are edge cases, i.e., if the only thing that matters is RAM... but again, if you need more RAM buy more RAM now. If you think you might need more ram in 4 years, buy more when you need it, otherwise you're risking the out of warranty machine death putting you totally out of pocket.
For most people, buy what you need today with a little headroom (i.e., don't just barely scrape in with spec - maybe go ONE tier upward) and re-evaluate in 3 years - or if your needs change or some other reason than just spec creep.
Whilst I get that, these days if you sync your stuff or even back it up, cutting over to a new machine is like 1-2 hours of work, and you can use your old machine while the new one is restoring from backup or syncing to iCloud or whatever.
I also do tech all day for work...
Looks like this changes with the AI stuff coming. You can max out your mac and you get only limited features in future cause we will see a big focus on AI and NPU. This wasn't the case years ago when it was more about CPU and GPU speed.
Yeah if you care about AI (or ray-tracing) at all, right now would very much be the time to NOT over-spend on hardware. Much more so than previous times.
Those are both new to Mac features and you know that there will be significant advances in the early days as the market shakes out.
Look how well the original watch, iPhone or iPad 1 aged vs. the versions that followed it a couple of generations later.