Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Why did you upgrade from an M1 / Pro / Max / Ultra?
- Thread starter Basic75
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Apple has observed that Mac replacement cycle is every 4 years. This aligns with Apple encouraging M1 users to upgrade to M5 when the M5 Macs were unveiled.
While Intel's every 5-6 years.
These are applicable to use cases that are performance critical.
Others replace based final OS Security Update. So that's 9 years?
I was waiting for a replacement of iMac 27" 1440p that was hopefully a iMac 32" 6K.
When a 32" 6K was released for under $1.2k I went for it and hooked ip up to a 2019 MBP 16" Core i7.
Because of the increase of RAM, SSD & HDD pricing I may scuttle my plan for the 2026 Mac mini M5 or M5 Pro and instead go with the 2025 Mac Studio M4 Max or 2024 Mac mini M4 Pro
While Intel's every 5-6 years.
These are applicable to use cases that are performance critical.
Others replace based final OS Security Update. So that's 9 years?
I was waiting for a replacement of iMac 27" 1440p that was hopefully a iMac 32" 6K.
When a 32" 6K was released for under $1.2k I went for it and hooked ip up to a 2019 MBP 16" Core i7.
Because of the increase of RAM, SSD & HDD pricing I may scuttle my plan for the 2026 Mac mini M5 or M5 Pro and instead go with the 2025 Mac Studio M4 Max or 2024 Mac mini M4 Pro
Last edited:
i bought my m1 pro (16GB/1TB) macbook pro as a laptop only, whilst having a fairly high end desktop. however, the ownership experience of that was “almost but not quite desktop replacement”.
i upgraded to an m4 max with 64 GB to get more RAM and better GPU to basically be a do everything machine for me, expecting to decommission my desktop.
which it mostly has. i still play some games on the desktop, but for the most part my m4 max macbook can do it all, well enough. so the primary reasons for me were GPU (not quick enough, no RT on the m1 pro) and RAM (16 GB was enough for what i was using it for, pre LLMs, but now i want a lot more).
basically m1 pro was a taste that made me want more. if i had bought an m1 max originally, i’d probably still be on it for another year, waiting for m5 max.
i upgraded to an m4 max with 64 GB to get more RAM and better GPU to basically be a do everything machine for me, expecting to decommission my desktop.
which it mostly has. i still play some games on the desktop, but for the most part my m4 max macbook can do it all, well enough. so the primary reasons for me were GPU (not quick enough, no RT on the m1 pro) and RAM (16 GB was enough for what i was using it for, pre LLMs, but now i want a lot more).
basically m1 pro was a taste that made me want more. if i had bought an m1 max originally, i’d probably still be on it for another year, waiting for m5 max.
I'm still on my MacBook Air M1 8GB of RAM and the base model and I'm happy with that. It works very well and it's fantastic.
Yesterday I was at work and my work computer with Ryzen 5 and 32GB of RAM got suddenly a blue screen and Windows restarted itself and poof, all the work was gone. That's when I was thinking: "Even my Mac is way better" and on my work computer ChatGPT lags a lot and crashes. On my M1 Mac there are no issues.
Yesterday I was at work and my work computer with Ryzen 5 and 32GB of RAM got suddenly a blue screen and Windows restarted itself and poof, all the work was gone. That's when I was thinking: "Even my Mac is way better" and on my work computer ChatGPT lags a lot and crashes. On my M1 Mac there are no issues.
I upgraded from an M1 (16GB/1TB) Mini to an M4 Pro (64GB/1TB) Mini for more memory, 10G Ethernet and faster CPU.
I haven't upgraded yet, but the primary reason I will be upgrading from the M1 Pro sometime this year is to go from 16GB of RAM to 32 or 64 GB. There's pretty much no other compelling reason for me. I'm sure other people have their own good reasons.