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Ask HN: How would you, a software engineer, spec out a new MacBook Pro?

by Eugeleo on 10/19/21, 6:45 PM with 18 comments

I've read through the MacBook threads and seen one question repeated again and again: which specs to go for in the new MacBooks. I figured it might be worth it to make a dedicated post to discuss this.

To start this off, consider the following scenario:

- 50% of my work is web or mobile app development

- another 50% is training ML and deep learning models (currently on a cluster, but I'd prefer do it on my notebook of course)

- I also do raw photo editing work, as a hobby

In this case, what specs would you choose for your Mac? Specifically:

- M1 Pro with [14, 16] GPU cores, [8, 10] CPU cores, and [16, 32] GB of unified memory

- M1 Max with [24, 32] GPU cores, 10 CPU cores, and [32, 64] GB of unified memory

  • by dougbarrett on 10/19/21, 8:06 PM

    I've got the M1 Macbook Pro, 16 GB RAM and 2 TB hard drive, and do 95% software development and 5% photoshop, related to web development, so I'm not dealing with massive files with a ton of layers.

    I'd say that this is more than enough power to hold me off from upgrading for the next few years, so fortunately for you I'd say if you can, the RAM upgrade may be more important than the actual CPU upgrade.

  • by tmaly on 10/19/21, 8:08 PM

    Go with 64 GB of memory. All of these IDEs are memory hogs, it is better to have the extra memory. Also you might want to load a larger dataset into memory at some point.

  • by stocknoob on 10/20/21, 10:19 PM

    Figure out your income/hour, how many hours/day you plan to use the device, and realize saving pennies per hour on a machine that is your lifeblood isn't necessary.

    You don't need to spring for extra storage, stick a 1TB SD card in the slot.

  • by kevinherron on 10/20/21, 12:12 AM

    I'd probably get the M1 Max with 64GB but I'd like to know if there's any discernible difference when driving two 5K monitors between the various GPU options.

    I know it's not a great experience on my current 16-inch MBP with AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8GB.

  • by wmf on 10/19/21, 6:51 PM

    Max CPU, max RAM, min GPU.

    The full GPU would help for ML training only if that actually works.

  • by avl999 on 10/19/21, 7:15 PM

    The answer is do not buy a MacBook pro with their ridiculous premiums on memory and disk. Buy a Dell or Thinkpad, install Linux on it, will support all your usecases and you won't be trapped by Apple, will also save some $$$s in the process.

  • by vaughan on 10/20/21, 11:31 PM

    M1 Max 32 + 64GB.