I currently have a 16" M1 Max with 32GB ram and 1TB storage. Bumping that up to 64GB and 4TB is very VERY tempting for the price BUT I only trust Apple Certified Refurbished.
I work in IT, have a lot of huge clients, and I don't think I've seen a Macbook in the wild outside of solo lawyer practices in the last 5 years.
For normal Microsoft Office usage and cloud apps, most people won't benefit from a M1 Max chip.
If you have a shop that does video work, then the M1 Max chip with 2 video encoders will finish an hour video in less than 30 minutes while the Intel i9 Macbook Pro will take overnight. God forbid, if you need to make another video edit then the Intel i9 overnight encoding becomes cost prohibitive and cause release delays while re-encoding on the M1 Max for 30 minutes is no problem.
Re: I upgraded from the 2018 i9 15" Macbook to a 16" 2020 M1 Max.
Woot refurb could be an Amazon return? I don't trust Amazon returned items who knows what someone did to the computer or how long it was used. I don't know about this one. Too much risk for me.
Quote from woot:
" This pre-owned product is not Apple certified, but has been professionally inspected, tested and cleaned by Amazon-qualified suppliers."
I have two friends that that M1 Max MacBook pros and have had all kinds of issues with WiFi. I'd stick to M2/M3..
As far as WiFi goes, I have no issues with WiFi on my M1 Max. I didn't get a Woot refurb though
Very good for that. I have an M1 MBP with 32 GB of RAM. It runs circles around my Windows/Linux workstation (AMD 5900X, 128 GB RAM, and an 8GB 3070) for LLMs using LM Studio. By "runs circles around", I mean it's generating a response in 1/3 to 1/2 the time.
My workstation is much faster for things like Stable Diffusion, however.
This is a great deal, and not far off from the used market at the moment. All of the comments talking about this being a 3-year-old computer don't realize it can still beat all but the highest-end Windows laptops when unplugged while being dead silent and having Chromebook-like battery life. I've had mine for almost a year and have been nothing but impressed with the performance.
Woot refurb could be an Amazon return? I don't trust Amazon returned items who knows what someone did to the computer or how long it was used. I don't know about this one. Too much risk for me.
Quote from woot:
" This pre-owned product is not Apple certified, but has been professionally inspected, tested and cleaned by Amazon-qualified suppliers."
I have two friends that that M1 Max MacBook pros and have had all kinds of issues with WiFi. I'd stick to M2/M3..
Didn't they just find an unpatchable vulnerability with the M1?
This is like scoffing at a used but like-new Audi, simply because it's not as cheap as a used 1999 Chevy Cavalier. You're completely ignoring what this machine is capable of, even compared to brand new Windows laptops.
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from cringeAnt
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it might be good for LLM local machine
These are excellent machines for running local LLMs. I run Mixtral 8x7b on my M1 Max w/ 64GB/2TB and it performs very well @ 25-30 tokens per second - faster output than you can read.
Not a cheap setup, but it seems like a small price to pay for some privacy & not having AI providers train on & profit from your own private data.
(Just to be clear, this isn't a Mac vs PC comment)
What type of consulting do they do? Is there a field where Macs are better suited for the software? Or is it more of a "sync to your ecosystem" type thing?
Macs used to be the big thing for video editing, but you can do that on anything these days.
For software development Macs are "better" because the underlying shell/system is Unix based and the dev tools are nicer than a straight up Linux laptop. Windows has WSL but it is a kluge but their container support is OK. Since this is the max if you have and Apple workflow this will be a very good editing platform. I personally dislike Powershell.
If you are going to use M365 a Mac is a poor choice because there are a ton of features missing in advanced Excel and things like PBi, project and other productivity apps don't run natively on a Mac. Thee are random issues in Outlook and Powerpoint. Word on some formats and font support. If you use GWP it doesn't matter.
Foe me (I had the choice) I received a Mac because simply it is not ultra locked down like the Windows machines because corporate security turns the Windows PC into chromebooks. So when I do M365 I use a Windows VM (ironically) which gets around all the lockdowns. Personally I dont want to have anything to do w/ Windows it is one big data sucking interface so that Microsoft can gather every piece of data on you even into the apps. With Win/Ent a lot of that telemetry is turned off thankfully.
Lastly I find the battery life on a Mac to be far superior to any PC, especially when it is in task mode (meaning not heavy computation).
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I work in IT, have a lot of huge clients, and I don't think I've seen a Macbook in the wild outside of solo lawyer practices in the last 5 years.
If you have a shop that does video work, then the M1 Max chip with 2 video encoders will finish an hour video in less than 30 minutes while the Intel i9 Macbook Pro will take overnight. God forbid, if you need to make another video edit then the Intel i9 overnight encoding becomes cost prohibitive and cause release delays while re-encoding on the M1 Max for 30 minutes is no problem.
Re: I upgraded from the 2018 i9 15" Macbook to a 16" 2020 M1 Max.
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Quote from woot:
" This pre-owned product is not Apple certified, but has been professionally inspected, tested and cleaned by Amazon-qualified suppliers."
I have two friends that that M1 Max MacBook pros and have had all kinds of issues with WiFi. I'd stick to M2/M3..
As far as WiFi goes, I have no issues with WiFi on my M1 Max. I didn't get a Woot refurb though
My workstation is much faster for things like Stable Diffusion, however.
Quote from woot:
" This pre-owned product is not Apple certified, but has been professionally inspected, tested and cleaned by Amazon-qualified suppliers."
I have two friends that that M1 Max MacBook pros and have had all kinds of issues with WiFi. I'd stick to M2/M3..
Didn't they just find an unpatchable vulnerability with the M1?
Not a cheap setup, but it seems like a small price to pay for some privacy & not having AI providers train on & profit from your own private data.
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
What type of consulting do they do? Is there a field where Macs are better suited for the software? Or is it more of a "sync to your ecosystem" type thing?
Macs used to be the big thing for video editing, but you can do that on anything these days.
If you are going to use M365 a Mac is a poor choice because there are a ton of features missing in advanced Excel and things like PBi, project and other productivity apps don't run natively on a Mac. Thee are random issues in Outlook and Powerpoint. Word on some formats and font support. If you use GWP it doesn't matter.
Foe me (I had the choice) I received a Mac because simply it is not ultra locked down like the Windows machines because corporate security turns the Windows PC into chromebooks. So when I do M365 I use a Windows VM (ironically) which gets around all the lockdowns. Personally I dont want to have anything to do w/ Windows it is one big data sucking interface so that Microsoft can gather every piece of data on you even into the apps. With Win/Ent a lot of that telemetry is turned off thankfully.
Lastly I find the battery life on a Mac to be far superior to any PC, especially when it is in task mode (meaning not heavy computation).