The M4 MacBook Pro doesn’t tempt me because Macs are pretty good right now

The new M4 MacBook Pro is a beast, offering an incredible combination of performance and battery life, with the bonus of a Center Stage camera and nano-texture display option.

But I have to say that I’m not trying far because, honestly, my 2021 M1 Max MacBook Pro still feels like a new machine – and that phenomenon could be a problem for Apple going forward…

A quick history of my Mac purchases

Historically, I’ve tended to look for maxed out models, then hold onto them for at least five years. For example, my 2011 17-inch MacBook Pro was replaced in 2016 with a 15-inch Touch Bar model.

Of course, it was easy back in the days when MacBook Pro models were user-upgradable. That 17-inch version went through three points from purchase to sale:

• Purchased from Apple as 8GB RAM, 750GB hard drive and optical drive
• Immediately upgraded to 16GB RAM and 2x 1TB hard drive
• It was later upgraded to 2x 1TB SSDs

Since then, several things have changed, one of which was Apple’s shift to non-optimized designs (or certainly not easy to upgrade). My 2019 upgrade was mostly for the wrong reasons – frustrated by the 2016’s unreliability.

Normally I would have kept it longer, but the switch to Apple Silicon was impossible to resist, so it saw me upgrade again two years later.

But that’s not the race I’m going to continue.

The M4 MacBook Pro is a beast

Don’t get me wrong, it looks like a really cool machine, very M4 Max type. If your wallet is too big, you can scale it up to:

• 16-core CPU
• 40-core GPU
• 16-core Neural Engine
• 128GB integrated memory
• 8TB SSD
• Nano-texture display

Granted, you’ll be leaving the store with a paltry $7,349, and even the best deals won’t go that far, but you can if you want to.

Up to 24 hours of battery life, and it’s an amazing combination of performance and energy efficiency.

But my M1 Pro Max still feels brand new

However, I am not tempted one bit. There hasn’t been a single day that I’ve felt that my M1 Max MacBook Pro needed more power or longer battery life.

I really like that I can use it connected to my 49-inch speaker and use it for video editing in Final Cut Pro, but I can also carry it without much risk of injury and spend the whole day at the coffee shop or further afield. flight without having to worry about power.

Oh, and I also really like the fact that it stays cool on my lap, and I rarely hear the fans vibrate.

My other concern would be the fear of possible repair costs if it turns out not to be as reliable as the 2016 model. At one point, I wondered whether I will have to stop selling every time AppleCare coverage ends.

Fortunately, though, I haven’t had any problems with this, and the company has resolved the AppleCare issue back in 2021, allowing annual updates for more than three years. I just updated my cover yesterday.

Therefore, I plan to go back to the 5-year update process – but it may take longer.

Apple Silicon Macs may be very good

And this could cause a problem for Apple. Apple’s latest and greatest Silicon Mac might be pretty impressive, but…

Intel MacBooks were ripping off their fans like 747s; burn our thighs if we’ve ever been foolish enough to do hard work on them while they’re in our laps; and eat up batteries when you do anything other than email and the web.

The M1 MacBooks were just a night and day difference, and the size of that upgrade means that even the M4 MacBook Pro looks like something I’d buy if money were no object, but there’s nothing I can sell the real world. .

Of course, if I were shopping again today, I’d be tempted to choose the MacBook Air, as I know of people who enjoy using it for complex Final Cut Pro projects. Probably not, since I like a a lot of storage on board and the Air maxes out at 2TB, but it can be a viable option for many people who have always bought Intel MacBook Pro models.

Future planning changes may help

Of course, the spec is only part of the picture, and maybe future design changes will help. The design of Apple Silicon Macs is basically unchanged from the first generation, but you have to wonder how much the company can come up with good improvements to the design.

There are OLED screens coming, of course, and I’m guessing Face ID at the same time (it still strikes me as odd that this didn’t come to the MacBook as part of the notch ). The bezels will be smaller, perhaps enough to squeeze a 17-inch display into a 16-inch-ish chassis or – more likely – a 16-inch by 15-inch-ish size. Apple will probably find a way to make them a small lightness. Maybe we will find a cellular model. Going forward, OLED will be replaced by microLED.

So Apple will come up with other reasons for improvement – but I think they will have to work harder than they did in what now feels like the old days of Intel.

Image: 9to5Mac collage of images from Apple and Maxim Berg on Unsplash