For Those Debating an Upgrade Now That the MacBook M4 Is Coming
I’m still using an M1, and it’s still going strong. Honestly, when it comes to writing code, you probably won’t notice much difference between an M1 and an M4.
Unless you’re doing video editing or running local LLMs, I don’t think there’s any real need to upgrade. If anything, going up to 32GB of memory or more makes a more noticeable difference.
4 answers
Agreed, the M1 is honestly still going strong.
Well, that's a bit... The M1 came out over 4 years ago, so if it still feels "snappy," maybe your workload is just light? I'm also coming from an M1 Pro and planning to move to an M4 this time, and the difference is pretty noticeable once you start doing Xcode builds and running Docker. Even if you don't do video editing, you feel it in a dev environment. I agree with the memory point, but dismissing the CPU/GPU generational gap as "it's the same for writing code" seems like a hasty generalization.
I couldn't agree more that 32GB of memory is the real key. I stuck it out with an M1 16GB and upgraded to 32GB last year, and ever since then it hasn't been swapping, so it's been smooth. But looking at Apple's RAM prices, I sometimes think it'd be better to just buy a new model... Anyway, for local LLMs, unified memory makes it an exception lol
Got a source? Are there at least benchmark numbers, or is it just a vibe?