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beace

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 13, 2024
13
3
Hi,

I’m looking to buy a MacBook for software development and have no clue what to get.

The M4 is £1790 and the M4 Pro is £2030.

I’m not sure it’s worth the £240 for my use case, can anyone weigh in on what they would pick?
 
Apple M4 chip with 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine

Apple M4 Pro chip with 12‑core CPU, 16‑core GPU and 16‑core Neural Engine

I think with software development you need CPU more than GPU, unless you train AI models.
Two extra CPU cores will not make any noticeable difference.
 
Apple M4 chip with 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine

Apple M4 Pro chip with 12‑core CPU, 16‑core GPU and 16‑core Neural Engine

I think with software development you need CPU more than GPU, unless you train AI models.
Two extra CPU cores will not make any noticeable difference.
am i likely to notice the memory bandwidth difference?

also there is only 1 fan but more efficiency cores, am i right in thinking it will run at idle compared to the M4 Pro
 
"Software development" covers a lot of ground. Are you mostly writing code? then you're in an editor or IDE and you could probably do it on a 2013 Macbook Pro perfectly well. (In fact, I did, until about a year ago.) If you're spending a lot of time doing builds, it's a lot more CPU intensive, however I don't see that a couple extra cores is going to matter much. I'd save the money and stick with the M4 non-Pro.
 
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Hi,

I’m looking to buy a MacBook for software development and have no clue what to get.

The M4 is £1790 and the M4 Pro is £2030.

I’m not sure it’s worth the £240 for my use case, can anyone weigh in on what they would pick?
A base M4 with 16GB RAM is absolutely fine to do development on, today.

If you are looking for a comfortable development experience 4-6 years from now, I would maximise your investment in RAM. 32GB if you can afford it, if not then 24GB if you can afford it.
 
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