Hacker News Reader

Comment by capl | Hacker News Reader

Hmm, I was thinking of buying an M3 Pro 16” this summer, but maybe I should wait then

Since the move to Apple Silicon you are realistically never more than 12-18 months away from a new chip generation in a MacBook. An M1 is still plenty good for the vast majority of workloads, especially if it's an M1 Pro/Max/Ultra.

Actually probably the best thing to do is wait until the M4 machines launch then bag a good deal on a clearance M3.

The next ones to get M4 will probably be the Mini, the Studio, and the Pro. iMac and MacBooks got an M3 refresh, but the other desktops have M2s now.

That’s actually a nice side effect of all the *rumors pages. The rumors of future products keep me of buying the current products. I keep on using my previous products while saving money and planet and being excited about what future holds.

> The rumors of future products keep me of buying the current products.

Spot on!

Back in the nineties, Intel managed to push competing RISC architectures (UltraSparc, MIPS, DEC Alpha, PowerPC) out of the market using nothing but promises that Itanium was going to blow them all out of the water.

And apparently Apple is okay with procrastinating and cannibalizing current sales of M1, 2, 3 if it helps prevent some Snapdragon (or Ampere) sales.

There may be a world in which Apple is procrastinating in chip design, but it's not this one.

> And apparently Apple is okay with procrastinating and cannibalizing current sales of M1, 2, 3 if it helps prevent some Snapdragon (or Ampere) sales.

Not sure where “procrastinating” fits in (a typo?), but as Scott McNealy once said, “If someone shows up and eats our lunch, it might so well be us.”

>And apparently Apple is okay with procrastinating and cannibalizing current sales of M1, 2, 3 if it helps prevent some Snapdragon (or Ampere) sales.

sales of what

i actually can't think of a single competing product. admittedly i don't keep up with laptop news but still, i haven't heard of anything yet that can meaningfully compete with the m1 from four years ago

Microsoft just announced some lackluster arm laptops that they claim can compete with M-series chips. The question is what windows programs are gonna run on them...

Some folks have looked into it, and it doesn't sound too bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY-tMBk9Vx4

For me at least, the best possible outcome of this is that Windows handheld gaming devices become more power-efficient. That might be an advantage over Linux-based handhelds for a while, unless Valve decide that Proton needs to also be an architecture emulator. The chip efficiency wins must surely be tempting in this form factor.

Some people have been running Windows 11 for Arm on a VM in Apple Silicon. It has an automatic transcoder that translates most x86 code at start. It seems to run many apps well. Microsoft claims these new machines have a better transcoder. This might work.

Your question answers itself. "What Windows programs" is the key part.

I don't have any need for any Windows-only program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect

On the contrary, I think that the reliable update cadence in modern electronics means that people should generally all but ignore future product roadmaps.

When you actually need to get a new device, just get whatever the up-to-date thing is.

OK, ok, I suppose that it's reasonable to check the rumor sites to see if you should delay by a month or two. But not any longer than that.

It's much harder with PCs, where you can get, for instance, new Thinkpad's with anything from 11th gen Core i all the way to new Core Ultras. And, now, ARMs as well...

I was inline to buy a 128GB M3 MAX, know that I know the M4 exists and already shipped in the iPad, it lets me know that the whole M4 pipeline has already started and what the perf numbers are, absolutely means I will be waiting. I survived yesterday without it, I can survive tomorrow. And now I can budget in the AMD Epyc bridge that covers that span.

I think Apple has been pretty good about hitting the right cadence with processor perf increases. They are making up for lost Intel time. The M6 is going to make us loose our minds. Apple is going to bring back "this is a munition" ads.

Both the M3 and the EPYC will be useful for far longer than the time it takes Apple to have the M4 on their next-gen laptops. Computers last a lot longer than they used to. I have a 10 year old Mac Mini that’s still comfortable to use, and, while an M3 Mac is a beast, it’s not that much faster than an M2 (or an i7) to create a qualitative change in my workflows. What is possible now was already possible last year. It’s just faster now. I get a higher return on investment with better keyboards and screens.

> The rumors of future products keep me of buying the current products.

For myself, I like to think of it as applied procrastination. I could buy that new thing I want today.. but something better will come along in time, so I can afford to put it off a while longer yet..

> The rumors of future products keep me of buying the current products.

You may have heard of the 5-minute rule - "Will doing this take me less than 5 minutes? If the answer is yes, do it now." An adaption of that to reduce impulse purchases is - "Do I really need this product right now? If the answer is no, don't buy it."

And on the flip side I am generally hesitant to buy first-release Apple hardware. Over the 20 years I've been buying Apple kit I've generally found it to be exceptionally robust but newly released hardware has had enough bugs (either hardware or OS) that I just sit back and let other users find the issues first. But I do simultaneously have the same issue: if WWDC is coming up within a month or two I'm not going to be buying any hardware because there's a good chance that something new will be released or the hardware I was going to buy is going to get a refresh or a price drop.

I wait until the new release, and then look at the refurbished store to get a discount on the last generation model. I do this every four years or so.

I do this technique too, and it's a great time for it. The OLED screen on the new iPad signals that Apple devices are moving to a better panel. If you've been waiting for the right time to move off an Intel Mac and onto a SoC Mac, it's now. Pick up a refurbished M2 MacBook. They're in the sweet spot for support, power, and cost.

The next one will probably have an OLED screen; so if you wait til then, your refurb M1/2/3 will be on Apple's short list of devices they don't want to support. (And you might have panel FOMO.) Or you'll have to pay the premium price for the latest model.

I'm still on a i7 MBP because everytime I think I'm ready to update the next one is announced.

These machines are great. I still use my 2015 rMBP as a secondary. It's a little slow now but a couple years ago I was still running Solidworks (in Bootcamp) on it with minimal issues.

My wife is still using her 2012 MBP. We maxed out RAM and gave it an SSD in 2016. She uses it for video editing and music production. The thing look like new. Completely ridiculous. Only downside: no OSX updates since I don’t know when.

You might find OpenCore Legacy Patcher[1] worth a look. In many cases, it allows later-that-supported Mac OS versions to be installed on older Macs.

As a data point, I still use a 2013 Mac Pro as my primary desktop, and I've been using Sonoma on it for several months, have been able to install all Sonoma patches over-the-air on release without incident, and have only experienced a single, trivial problem: the right side of the menu bar occasionally appears shaded red, in a way that doesn't affect usability; switching applications immediately resolves the problem (the problem appears to be correlated with video playback).

[1] https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/

video encoder/decoder support and performance has order of magnitude improvement in M series, I am surprised that didnt sway you.

Not just that, for high res stuff or modern codecs like AV1 or h265 is probably not supported at all in a 2012 device without updates for so long?

Even if support was possible it would be software encoding and even short clip it can take hours to render ?

I would happily use an older device for development a lot of dev work especially if not frontend or UI usually i can use any laptop just as a terminal, but UI or video editing I wouldn’t be able to.

OCLP is your friend.

https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/

I can't help but reply every time this thread comes up. I'd still probably be using my 2010 if it wasn't for a series mechanical failures. Paid to replace the keyboard once (85 screws, didn't need to do that to myself), but third battery crapping out, trackpad not clicking (probably due to swollen battery) and the MagSafe connector getting loose and glitchy was the end of it. Though I did just boot it up because my phone is somehow still supposed to sync music from it.

If the battery is swollen, get rid of it as soon as possible. Swollen battery == ticking time bomb, and I'm not joking about the bomb part. These things can, do and will explode randomly.

Besides maybe battery life (which is a huge win), anything you'd benefit from the M's? I only had a 2008 macbook so I'm curious.

I can run uncensored models locally - slow but useable.

Noise level, M series are completely silent in my experience.

llama.cpp somehow causes the fans to spin up pretty hard even if you just leave it at the prompt, but I assume that's performance bugs on their part.

Overall, my 2020 M1 MBP is infinitely better than the 2015 MBP I had before, it's not even close. Battery life, thermal output, speed, noise, neural engine (for ML workloads). It's an utter workhorse that just marches on, no matter what I throw at it. I haven't even considered upgrading to another more current Mx version because this one just.. works. Best laptop I ever owned.

I just want to echo this experience and sentiment. I absolutely adore my 2020 13” M1 mbp, for all the reasons you list. I do ML workloads and Linux builds and I’m starting to think they forgot to put fans in mine because I’ve never heard them! Despite the annoying limitation of 1 external screen, it’s up there with my 2007 13” mb (rest in peace) as being the best laptop I’ve ever owned.

I recently upgraded from a 2019 Intel Mac to a similarly-specced M3 Mac, and it really is night and day. My battery life is more than doubled - I can run IntelliJ and multiple Docker containers on battery for more than my whole work day, when before it would barely last a couple hours with that load and be slow while doing so. The fan hardly ever runs while on my Intel Mac it would run constantly.

I upgraded from a 2011 MacBook Pro to a M1 MacBook Air and never looked back.

Battery life, portability, COOL. Like, my actual lap is no longer burning.

I mean, it won't do your laundry, but it'll be much better in every way a laptop plausibly could be.

Battery life is insanely better. If you have not used one of the M series laptops it cannot be overstated how much better the battery life is. It is worth it for battery alone.

But beyond that they are also incredibly fast and run cool. In the MacBook Air there is no fan and on the Pros they barely ever spin up in an audible way.

The fans literally never come on for my personal M2 MBP 14" or on my work 16" M1 (it helps that the heavy lifting of running stuff and compiling happens on a dev server)

During work from home during Covid I was still using an Intel MBP and video conferences invariably caused the fans to kick up to the point where using noise cancelling headphones and not the built in speakers was necessary for sanity.

I NEVER heard the fans on my 16" M2. Not even when building Docker images for six different platforms at the same time.

I went from the last Intel i9 16" MBP to an M3 Pro in the last month at work.

I think it's saving me an hour a day and the fan has never come on, the the laptop has never felt warm, and the battery life is just mind blowing.

I run docker & compilers all day. The i9 would run the fan 75% of the time and had to throttle down any time it was on battery power and it was lucky to last 3 hours on battery.

I can definitely say there's a downside. I sometimes take the bus home, but it can get chilly at night. Previously, I would fire up a little python script that saturate all the cores, to warm my lap. My old Intel was plenty warm to keep me from getting too uncomfortable. I can't even feel my M2 through my pants, and sticking it into my shirt makes me look like an idiot.

They make battery powered hand warmers for that, but it could make you infertile, or I guess set your pants on fire.

If you care about Asahi support, an M1 or M2 would probably be better short-term anyway.

I've got a top spec i9 MBP and my same-price M1 Max blows it out of the water, while being vastly cooler and lasting forever on battery.

I just upgraded from a mid 2014 MBP to a used M1 air.

It is much, much faster, silent, and I use it for days without power. Editing 4K video is not just possible, it is a non event.

Apple’s tempo is so regular that this has been a problem my entire adult life.

I’ll buy a little later. I’ll buy a little later!

Hehe yeah, same when I think about it… I guess best thing to do is buy on launch and update every 2-5 years.

If staying on the latest model isn’t important to you, there’s significant cost savings to be made from just buying the previous version.

so wait for M5 to buy M4

It entirely depends how long you keep your devices. I try to keep my iPhones until release year + 6, so I would need the price of a previous version to be reduced by more than 1/6th on a new version release, which is usually not the case.

Similar to cars, most depreciation happens in the first year.

So owning a device for 6 years between age 1 and 7 will generally have a lower cost than owning a device between age 0 and 6.

For Apple products it’s generally feasible to effectively buy first hand devices aged 1+ because they’re still available for sale (at least in some retailers) after a new edition is released.

That’s a good strategy with most things that aren’t prone to mfg variability . For cars having a launch version there are a lot of initial manufacturing defects that need to be worked out.

Yeah, feels like if you don't buy in the first few months you might as well hang on for the next one.

The way to exit that loop is to convince yourself that the next one will bring a truly lasting difference. Which is why I'm still waiting for GDDR7 GPUs with my 4GB RX 480.

Get the math co-processor! It'll rip.

That's why my desktop CPU is 11 years old.

I've had several devices fail right before the new model was released.

So frustrating.

I just only buy every fourth or fifth whatever it is. Usually the previous model, too, when I do, sometimes used or official-refurb. Works great.

For those with MacBook Pro FOMO, do not read about the rumored foldable 18.8-inch screen MacBook Pro running on the M5 coming in 2026 [1].

[1]: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/05/23/18-8-inch-foldable-macb...

Without anything but a skim, surely there is no way a MB Pro ships with a virtual keyboard, that is pure torture.

Maybe it uses the camera for gesture recognition so you can air-write each letter one at a time? Air-quotes will be fun... air-tabs, not so much. "Space, but <widens arms> BIGGER!"

Obviously Apple's upcoming LLM will be used to infer based on observation of your past behaviour what you would have typed, and type it for you.

So basically the next generation of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8gF0KTfMrQ

If anything, they'll probably use the "studio" branding (or more likely just have it under the iPad line, since they have desktop chips in them now anyways)

Kill me with a blunt spoon before I take on a foldable touch screen.

The rumored price is enough to make me not worry about those.

Inflation still has a chance to make $3500 in 2026 dollars equivalent to the starting price of the 2016 16" MBP

macOS does not support touch input.

It would require the biggest UI redesign in the history of the company to ensure every input control is at least a centimetre away from anything else.

And would require every Mac developer to absorb the cost for major updates to their apps as well.

This would almost certainly be an iPad.

Obviously Apple knows how to do touch input.

And it would be possible to update macOS to enable basic touch input for unmodified apps if they wanted to.

I just bought a second hand M2 Air in perfect condition and it feels faster than my M1 Max in a really beautiful body for travel. I’m not certain it matters that much anymore to be honest. What are you using it for?

> this summer

In recent years the MBP line has been updated towards the end of the year (Oct/Nov) or early (Jan):

* https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#MacBook_Pro_16

So if you can 'limp' along towards the autumn/winter/Christmas, then it's probably worth the wait to get the M4 (or pickup an M3 when the price presumably drops to clear inventory).

I just bought a refurbished 16in M3 pro, no regrets at all. There's always a new one around the corner, it's really just about whether your setup achieves what you need it to.

Look at real world differences between M2 and M3, it's not a massive jump at all.

I do cross platform app development and the machine is excellent for that. Glad to have it now rather than waiting months for a slightly better system

Osborne effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect

This is so real. I have this exact problem... but I think I'm just buying a? refurbished MacBook Air M2 13"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com