Apple MacBook Pro M1 MacBook Pro

The increasing longevity of computers has been impressing me for about 10 years. My current machine is 4 years old. It's absolutely fine for what I do. I only ever catch it "working" when I futz with 4k 360 degree video (about which: fine). It's a M1 Macbook Pro. I traded its predecessor in to buy it, so I don't have that one anymore; it was a 2019 model. But the one before that, a 2015 13" Intel Macbook Pro, is still in use in the house as my wife's computer. Keyboard is mushy now, but it's fine. It'd probably run faster if my wife didn't keep fifty billion tabs open in Chrome, but that's none of my business. ;) The one behind that one, purchased in 2012, is also still in use as a "media server" / ersatz SAN. It's a little creaky and is I'm sure technically a security risk given its age and lack of updates, but it RUNS just fine.

Reading into it, we see a few things: * Apple doesn't want to break the $999 barrier on their own site, so the M1 Air is just gone * Apple still has them (or can easily make them) where $699 is a fine price, and so is selling them to Walmart - will they appear elsewhere? * This will be quite competitive when next to the standard laptops Walmart stocks in-store (usually a few Chromebooks in the $150-300 range, Windows for a bit more but sometimes even a $1400 one). * The M1 has a lot of life in it, it's now 3+ years old - and works great for me still. They can probably juice it as long as they want just by adding some RAM. I wonder if this is a "one off" or if Apple will start doing this permanently - the Apple Store is for this generation and last, and everything else, even if still made, is for partners. I don't know when Apple actually stops making various phones.

I am on an M1 macbook pro. My company will upgrade me anytime I want. I haven’t asked because my current laptop is more than ok.

My last laptop was a used 2012 T530. My current is a used M1 MBP Pro with 16GB of ram. I thought this was all I was ever going to need, but wanting to run really nice models locally has me thinking about upgrading. Although, part of me wants to see how far I could get with my trusty laptop.

Perhaps because it's enough for a lot of things. I only came up against the 8GB limit when I ran a LLM locally using Ollama. It worked but wasn't workable. 8GB isn't ideal though and 16GB would've expanded its capacity to do more things. But soon as I want to do more things I shuffle over to my PC with it's dedicated GPU and 32GB o ram I'm guessing Apple cuts capability to the lower end so as not to hurt sales of the higher end. Usage profile is often dependent on context. There are enough non-power users (when mobile) like me that 8GB isn't ideal but it's enough. And if it wasn't enough we could've paid more for the 16GB, but I personally decided it wasn't worth the ridiculous Apple ram price premium. So these are my reasons for saying 8GB is enough. I'm also using an M1 MacBook Air, so the puniest of the lineup. Next laptop I'm considering is possibly a think pad with linux so I'm no macOS fanboi.

My m1 macbook pro works fine with +10 claude code sessions open at the same time (iTerm2). Are you using a terminal with a memory leak perhaps?

I play absolutely everything on my M1 Macbook Pro. Through Crossover, basically every Windows game runs fine. I used to check ahead of time before buying a game, but it's so good I now kind of just assume games work.

The first M1 MacBook Pros had both the touchbar and a decent keyboard. I love mine so long as the driver running the touchbar doesn't crash, which it does sometimes necessitating a reboot. My main problem is how few programs actually ever made good use (not just some use) of the touchbar. As for the dongle issue, that went away when I upgraded to a USB-C monitor at home and USB-C equipment at work. I can dock to a monitor or plug into a projector to give a presentation and charge with the same cable. At this point I don't want an HDMI port, and I'm kind of sad that the next laptop will probably have a dedicated charging cable.

"Basically the same keyboard" but the Mac one has light comming only trough letters on keycaps, while my HP zbook is leaking more light around them, even worse when viewed from an angle. Speedy failures of several tousand units when they are selling millions. + having it repaired is not a dreadful experience as with other PC makers (have horrendous experiences with HP, Asus and LG). Multiscore? Sure, the laptop that sounds overshadows my robot vacuum can do slightly more work in a short timespan, id rather not have to deal with uncomnfortable temperatures when its just sitting on a desktop, doing who knows what (probably not indexing my files, as the search function just have no idea the file I opened 20x in the last 2 weeks exists). Which bring us to software: is it more closed and do I hate it for it? Sure. Is it worse overall? Not a chance. Repairability is "bring it to an applestore and possibly come out with a new device right away, or wait a week. Miles ahead than any other brand. Sure, you can change the battery yourself, but you either get shafted for oem battery, or wonder why that cheap battery from shady shop runs just as bad as your old one. What good is repairing 5 year old HP thats breaking apart, overheating at idle, with screen burning out, hinges having a play, with speakers of a joke quality, with so many bad memories, when you can have non-repaired 10 year old macbook and it still feel like new. For work I have windows machine because I need to use windows…

This is actually how I've used my M1 Macbook Pro since I got it. I never fully turn it in. It's either sleeping when plugging into my Thunderbolt 3 dock, or its sleeping on my dining room table on battery power. The efficiency is so good it never dies even if I don't use it for a day.

fwiw, it runs great on a M1 macbook air

You can still get an M1 Macbook Air at retail for $599 ($300 for refurbs), which is a Chromebook price for a laptop that is better in pretty much every respect than any Chromebook.

Additionally, can it match or best the MBA without a fan? What about when unplugged? The appeal of the M1 MBA even today isn't that it's fast, it's that it's fast enough while also delivering great battery life, not throttling when unplugged, and being dead silent and cool to the touch. It's everything that an everyday laptop should be.