The Updated Professional's Guide to Buying an M Series Mac - Updated March 2024 11
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Ron

thanks. this is very timely for me as I am in the process of evaluating and choosing a new system

Dan

Because of Apple’s ultra premium extortion pricing on customizing storage capacities, I HIGHLY recommend sticking to 1TB of internal SSD storage. If you need fast storage beyond that, invest in external Thunderbolt SSDs and speedy nvme chip based drives. Choose correctly and they can be as fast as the internal SSD, and for caching too, for a fraction of Apple’s nutty prices.

Last edited 10 months ago by Dan
Morgan

Is going up to 128 ram worth an extra $800 over 64 ram or no? Would it be better to put that money to more storage? Thanks!

Jac

Ok, if I’m currently using a 2016 MacBook retina, (I know), I currently have the final intel 27” iMac (1 or 2 TB, maxed out otherwise I can’t remember the specs but I bought it from apple’s refurb page) I’ve got a couple iPad pros. I’m an artist (poor) and I mess around in video, I’m interested in doing more and moving off of mobile for my image editing. I have, at most, maaaaaybe 800 bucks (difficult to save up and nothing I can really throw around) and I’m buying used. Help me. My added caveat to my image/adobe/video use case is: I’m poor, so I’m used to suffering through lower end garbage. I’m easily impressed, but very frugal.

Craig

This is fantastic and was a life saver! I was trying to decide between the M3 Air 24GB and the M3 Pro 18GB and nearly bought the M3Pro thinking it was the obvious choice despite having 6Gb less memory, and it clearly wasn’t. Thank you for making sure I didn’t buy the wrong computer.

Can’t wait to see it updated for the new M4s.

Morgan

Right now I’m looking at these 4:

M4 Pro chip, 14‑core CPU, 20‑core GPU, 48GB unified memory, 1TB SSD – $3,099

M4 Max chip, 14‑core CPU, 32‑core GPU, 36GB unified memory, 1TB SSD – $3,499

Refurbished M3 Max Chip, 16‑Core CPU, 40‑Core GPU, 64GB unified memory, 2TB SSD – $3,499

Refurbished M3 Max Chip, 16‑Core CPU, 40‑Core GPU, 48GB unified memory, 2TB SSD – $3,299

In terms of the M4 chips, is the M4 Max chip and the GPU bump worth losing memory? And for the refurbished, it’s just 48 vs 64 memory and how much of a difference would that make?

Should I prioritize getting an M4 Pro chip (or M4 Max chip??) and having less Ram/GPU? Or should I go for refurbished with an M3 Max Chip and have a higher Ram/GPU at a similar price point?

I’d obviously like to spend as little as possible but the $3,500 price point is okay if it’s actually worth it. Thanks for your help!

Morgan

This is an option too: Lose GPU but gain memory? I am so stuck on what to do LOL.

Refurbished M3 Max Chip, 14‑Core CPU, 30‑Core GPU, 1TB SSD – $3,219.00

Morgan

Oh this had 96GB unified memory,

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