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Comment by thiht | Hacker News Reader

> I have a 2021 MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro. It's getting a bit old, so it would be nice to replace it

Why though? My 2021 M1 still feels more beefy than pretty much any other laptop on the market. I have a M1, and an M4 for work and I barely feel any difference between the 2, they’re pretty much top notch. Sure, the M4 pro is more future proof, I can imagine myself still using my M1 in 2030 and my M4 in 2035. But I honestly don’t see the point in replacing an M1 with an M4 today.

Just my opinion though, I’m sure you have your own reasons for wanting to upgrade (I would guess RAM), but manage your expectations: the M1 is still an amazing machine.

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Don't get me wrong, it still is an excellent machine. But the prospect of over double the multi-core performance and 1.5x the single-core performance, hopefully equating to close to half the compile times, is tempting. Wildly better GPU performance would also be useful now and then. I'd also take the opportunity to get more RAM (16GB is usually enough but not always) and more storage (1TB is sometimes a bit tight to be honest and I find myself uninstalling things to make space for other things).

Do I need it? No, of course not. But could I make use of the extra power? For sure.

And shiny new things are fun.

My 32GB RAM M1 is a fantastic machine, but it's getting old for the type of work I do. And I can't upgrade the RAM.

I installed Omarchy via Asahi Alarm [1] and have been running it for 3 weeks without issues. I spent half a day setting everything to my taste (keyboard bindings, monitors, waybar, etc.), and I'm still getting used to Hyprland, but I have a fast machine. RAM usage with everything I need open is considerably lower than on macOS (80% -> 50%), and I don't have to pay a monthly subscription for every little piece of software not built into macOS.

Asahi isn't perfect (touchpad rejection being my main issue), but I can live with the inconveniences. This is still a very good machine, and I can't afford a new one right now.

[1] https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy/pull/1897

“640K ought to be enough for anybody.” M5 is roughly twice the speed of M1 now. It's a no brainer other than money. 4 years of wear and tear and battery cycles is also not nothing.

It's a bit like Bugatti being faster than a Lamborghini... M1 is so good Apple is still making MacBook Airs with it, and that's still better than most PCs on the market heh.

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