Late 2013 iMac to M4 Air?

[randomdude84]

Hi guys, so i have a 27" iMac intel core i7 version 10.15.7 with 8gb of RAM and can not update any further so Im stuck where I am at and have been for a while.

I am considering switching to the Air once the M4 chip is released, which I hear will be between January-March of 25.

Only plan on doing some guitar recording and videos for YouTube. i don't create many tracks at all though.

My main question to you guys is if the MacBook Air M4 chip would be sufficient for my needs? from all the research I have been doing, the M3 would be plenty sufficient. But at this point, why not just wait for the M4 chip?

Thinking about customizing it to 24GB of Ram and maybe 512gb of storage or the 1TB. Not sure if i even need to do that. going from 8 to 16 of ram im sure will be good enough and i can always use an external hd

Thoughts guys?

 

[arc of the universe]

yes. an M4 Air with 16GB RAM and 512GB storage will be a great machine for you.
probably with a useful life of 5 to 6 years for your purpose.

 

[Howard2k]

You could do all of that easily on a base 8GB M1. M4 with 16GB will be quite capable.

 

[randomdude84]

yes. an M4 Air with 16GB RAM and 512GB storage will be a great machine for you.
probably with a useful life of 5 to 6 years for your purpose.

Why do you think only 5-6yrs? I have gotten 11 out of my iMac so far

You could do all of that easily on a base 8GB M1. M4 with 16GB will be quite capable.

really? at this point, at this point though, why not wait until the M4 chip comes out though?

 

[bellflyer14]

I totally understand the want for the latest chip. It will be a bit of a spec bump, but I doubt you'd see a difference for your use case. Best Buy currently has the new base model on sale. You get the 16gb/256 for $899 or the 16gb/512 for $1099. Those are $200 off the regular price. Either of those would get my vote

 

[Howard2k]

Why do you think only 5-6yrs? I have gotten 11 out of my iMac so far



really? at this point, at this point though, why not wait until the M4 chip comes out though?

I would wait too, I’m just saying that your workload doesn’t sound taxing and these are incredibly capable machines.

 

[arc of the universe]

Why do you think only 5-6yrs? I have gotten 11 out of my iMac so far

yes. i agree that before (until recently),you may have been able to get a lot more years out of machine that has been maxed out at the time you bought it. that has worked for me for the past 4 or 5 machines i have bought.

however, its important to note that AI requirements (specifically AI becoming a part of the OS itself) represents a paradigm shift in computing, and presents users of macOS/iOS/iPadOS with an unclear picture of medium term requirements.
its likely to me that 5 to 6 years is what we can be safely predicting for a device that we dont feel is slow.

it all depends on how much apple's marketing/sales targets are for additional revenue due to making AI a key element of everything it does going forward. does apple want to increase sales USD 200 billion? USD 500 billion ? USD 1 trillion ?
its Home centred device rumoured this past week was only the latest in a stream revealing its plans.

to be useful, and not a glorified Siri, AI needs powerful devices.

apple will eventually have you pay more for more powerful AI services, and, it will charge a premium for more powerful devices that are needed for its implementation of AI.

max out on an M4 in spring 2025, and use it for a nice 6 years. 11 years of use going forward? i dont think so.