8 ms·

I really want to buy one for coding/dev work, but it's just too expensive. Not sure if the M4 MacBook will get a price cut anytime soon.

Zylokloto 23d ago
You will not feel a difference in coding/dev work between M1 to M6 in a relevant manner.
- coredog64 23d ago
  Have been considering a used M1 but I'm concerned that I'm going to get flash storage that's been thrashed to within an inch of it's life by someone running it as a poorly configured inference host.
  - Zylokloto 23d ago
    There are sooo sooo many students and normal people using these devices or corporate laptops never seen inferencing or anything like this, its so hard to trash the storage of them, i wouldn't worry about it.
  - mandarinclips 23d ago
    Where's a reliable place to buy a used Mac? I'm afraid of ending up with a broken unit.
    - linguae 23d ago
      Last week I purchased a MacBook Pro M1 Max from www.macsales.com, which is owned by Other World Computer, a maker of Mac peripherals. My computer comes with a 1-year warranty. It was my first time purchasing from them.
  - Gigachad 22d ago
    I'm praying Framework becomes more affordable after the ram price inflation is over. Because I never want to buy another computer with non replaceable storage again.
    - bestham 22d ago
      We do not know that prices are coming back down. Perhaps they will just sit while inflation slowly makes them seem normal.
  - Danox 21d ago
    At this point, I would wait for reviews on the latest Mac’s just released.
- mandarinclips 23d ago
  Yeah, I know. The problem is that used prices right now are almost the same as what they used to cost brand new. Prices have gone up way too much.
- eknkc 23d ago
  I have an M1 and M4 Max at office. I feel the sluggishness of M1 now, after years it finally started to show its age.
  - Gigachad 22d ago
    Maybe try reinstalling macos? I have an M1 pro personally and an M4 pro for work and I don't feel any difference between them, but I reinstalled a fresh copy of macos recently. I feel like a big part of macos slowing down is installing too much crap over the years that sits in the background.
- nodesocket 23d ago
  I also can feel a speed/sluggishness difference between my M1 Max MacBook Pro and my M4 Pro (14 core).
  - jtbayly 23d ago
    Honest question: Which one feels faster?
    - nodesocket 22d ago
      Obviously the M4 Pro feels faster.
      - jtbayly 22d ago
        It’s not obvious to me. It’s somewhat surprising, even, given the specs I just looked up: M1 Max: 400 GB/s memory bandwidth, ~20.8 FP16 Tflops M4 Pro: 273 GB/s memory bandwidth ~17.2 FP16 Tflops
        nodesocket 22d ago
        True but memory bandwidth is not the entire story. Geekbench (while not a end-all benchmark) shows: Single-Core Multi-Core M1 Max, 10-core 2,204 14,004 M4 Pro, 14-core 3,311 24,711 Single-threaded CPU: M4 Pro is roughly 1.5× as fast. Multi-threaded CPU: M4 Pro is roughly 1.75× as fast. GPU: roughly equal to a full 32-core M1 Max, with the M4 Pro slightly ahead in Geekbench Metal.
        jtbayly 22d ago
        Makes sense. I am still getting a feel for the different levels of these processors.
- user43928 23d ago
  Two years ago maybe, when I wrote code by hand. Today development work is limited by compile times and test run times, particularly with UI tests in the iOS simulator. Hardware on the development machine finally maters.
  - booty 23d ago
    I work on a big web monolith on an M5 Pro 48GB. I'm usually running about ~4 instances of it locally in separate Git worktrees, which (in our setup) means I'm also running 4 copies of the whole stack: web, frontend, Redis, Postgres, etc. These are rebuilt and torn down multiple times per day. Lot of frontend assets to compile. Additionally, like many people in corporate environments, we do of course also pay a performance tax thanks to the security software we need to run. So perf does matter for us. We could, of course, alternatively... just run cheap shitboxes locally and have all our dev environments in the cloud. Certainly appealing in many ways from a cost perspective and you don't even need to give up DX really. However, in the next ~5 years, as "actually useful" local LLM inference starts to become genuinely useful (for software engineering, this seems to roughly mean "the ability to run 28B+ models at usable speeds") then having local compute horsepower might start to look more attractive again. Even if it's not an absolute winner on cost/utility alone, the data privacy and cost certainty have value to many.

Zylokloto 23d ago

You will not feel a difference in coding/dev work between M1 to M6 in a relevant manner.

coredog64 23d ago
Have been considering a used M1 but I'm concerned that I'm going to get flash storage that's been thrashed to within an inch of it's life by someone running it as a poorly configured inference host.
- Zylokloto 23d ago
  There are sooo sooo many students and normal people using these devices or corporate laptops never seen inferencing or anything like this, its so hard to trash the storage of them, i wouldn't worry about it.
- mandarinclips 23d ago
  Where's a reliable place to buy a used Mac? I'm afraid of ending up with a broken unit.
  - linguae 23d ago
    Last week I purchased a MacBook Pro M1 Max from www.macsales.com, which is owned by Other World Computer, a maker of Mac peripherals. My computer comes with a 1-year warranty. It was my first time purchasing from them.
- Gigachad 22d ago
  I'm praying Framework becomes more affordable after the ram price inflation is over. Because I never want to buy another computer with non replaceable storage again.
  - bestham 22d ago
    We do not know that prices are coming back down. Perhaps they will just sit while inflation slowly makes them seem normal.
- Danox 21d ago
  At this point, I would wait for reviews on the latest Mac’s just released.
mandarinclips 23d ago
Yeah, I know. The problem is that used prices right now are almost the same as what they used to cost brand new. Prices have gone up way too much.
eknkc 23d ago
I have an M1 and M4 Max at office. I feel the sluggishness of M1 now, after years it finally started to show its age.
- Gigachad 22d ago
  Maybe try reinstalling macos? I have an M1 pro personally and an M4 pro for work and I don't feel any difference between them, but I reinstalled a fresh copy of macos recently. I feel like a big part of macos slowing down is installing too much crap over the years that sits in the background.
nodesocket 23d ago
I also can feel a speed/sluggishness difference between my M1 Max MacBook Pro and my M4 Pro (14 core).
- jtbayly 23d ago
  Honest question: Which one feels faster?
  - nodesocket 22d ago
    Obviously the M4 Pro feels faster.
    - jtbayly 22d ago
      It’s not obvious to me. It’s somewhat surprising, even, given the specs I just looked up: M1 Max: 400 GB/s memory bandwidth, ~20.8 FP16 Tflops M4 Pro: 273 GB/s memory bandwidth ~17.2 FP16 Tflops
      - nodesocket 22d ago
        True but memory bandwidth is not the entire story. Geekbench (while not a end-all benchmark) shows: Single-Core Multi-Core M1 Max, 10-core 2,204 14,004 M4 Pro, 14-core 3,311 24,711 Single-threaded CPU: M4 Pro is roughly 1.5× as fast. Multi-threaded CPU: M4 Pro is roughly 1.75× as fast. GPU: roughly equal to a full 32-core M1 Max, with the M4 Pro slightly ahead in Geekbench Metal.
        jtbayly 22d ago
        Makes sense. I am still getting a feel for the different levels of these processors.
user43928 23d ago
Two years ago maybe, when I wrote code by hand. Today development work is limited by compile times and test run times, particularly with UI tests in the iOS simulator. Hardware on the development machine finally maters.
- booty 23d ago
  I work on a big web monolith on an M5 Pro 48GB. I'm usually running about ~4 instances of it locally in separate Git worktrees, which (in our setup) means I'm also running 4 copies of the whole stack: web, frontend, Redis, Postgres, etc. These are rebuilt and torn down multiple times per day. Lot of frontend assets to compile. Additionally, like many people in corporate environments, we do of course also pay a performance tax thanks to the security software we need to run. So perf does matter for us. We could, of course, alternatively... just run cheap shitboxes locally and have all our dev environments in the cloud. Certainly appealing in many ways from a cost perspective and you don't even need to give up DX really. However, in the next ~5 years, as "actually useful" local LLM inference starts to become genuinely useful (for software engineering, this seems to roughly mean "the ability to run 28B+ models at usable speeds") then having local compute horsepower might start to look more attractive again. Even if it's not an absolute winner on cost/utility alone, the data privacy and cost certainty have value to many.