I went with the Max 24c as I feel even for programming there is more and more load shifting away from the CPU. GPU was an exclusive for gaming and video processing, but now with ML, it's used more and more. I'm not there yet in my own usage, but I feel it's moving that way and pretty fast (I'm also curious about ML).
True story, ML is getting big and bigger, but since it's not my work of field, and neither I'm that interested into "testing" now so I passed, but if I was, certainly the extra GPU cores are gonna help for that kind of data crunching. Regarding how important is gonna be ML for the user point-of-view IMHO, I think this path still needs some years to be "standardized" and not needing that amount extra GPU power, at least now, within 5-10 years, we'll see though.
Temp wise people report ~50C (I have the 16 pro 16GB right now and it idle around that as well).
My 14" M1 Pro 10CPU/16GPU idles/performs light tasks at around ~38ºC/44ºC (as seen on Mac Fans Control with an ambient of 21-22ºC) - I'd perform more tests during the weekend, since the unit is practically new and all my other references came from the MBP I had to return, so I'll compare and maybe obtain better data, but is definitely lower than those 50's.
While the M1 Pro 32GB would be the perfect fonctional machine, that Max 24c is a bit like a little luxury, not needed, but I'm sure I will enjoy it for the years to come.
But I will admit that if I was going with the 14 inches, I would just go the 8c/14c and upgrade it to 32GB and call it a day. If it was available on the 16 that's what I would have been with. I have been compiling code and stuff and it rarely hit all 10 cores.
In my case and for my needs, yes, it was also a little "why not 200$ more on a 3000$ purchase?" and "future-proofing" my poor gaming needs for the laptop, so after all, I measured the pros and cons for the 14" form factor, and decided to stick with M1 Pro. The important thing is to be happy with the item purchased and not to feel buyer's remorse. Buy nice or buy twice as they say.
I knew I'd been happy with 24GPU and the extra perks, but knowing I won't be using them on a daily-basis and maybe, just maybe, just barely/close to nothing within some point in the future, that makes me think, when that time arrives, we'll had more advanced chips and my future-proofing was merely an illusion that didn't need to be fulfilled (as opposite with the 32GB RAM that I knew I had to put on)
TBH as I said, I'm dreaming with powerful "MAX" chips in Mac Minis or iMac Pro, or even a "minor" version of Mac Pro ... and the rumours indicate that is likely to happen. Desktop gaming for me is important, and with my current Mac Desktop setup, i'm really happy, hope they accomplish it with their own chips
