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Comment by yardie | Hacker News Reader

I'm typing this from a 2014 i7-4980HQ 15" MBP. This machine would have been replaced in 2017 but I wasn't impressed with that years model. I had planned to upgrade in 2020 but the announcement of the M1 basically quashed that. I've been on this planet long enough to know when Apple changes course like this the old architect is already obsolete. 68k -> PPC -> x86_64 -> ASi. The PPC G5 got exactly 1 OS upgrade (10.5) before it was EOL'd.

If the reports are to be believed on performance and Rosetta than this upgrade may be one of the smoothest in Apple history. The Intel CPU has had an incredibly long run, 15 years, at Apple. If they are confident they can make the leap and not leave their users in the lurch more power to them.

I'm still on the fence on buying an M1 laptop. Apple users know you pay an Apple tax and a v1 tax. My MBP is getting so long in the tooth I may have to ignore my own advice of not getting first generation Apple hardware.

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> The PPC G5 got exactly 1 OS upgrade (10.5) before it was EOL'd.

The OS X release cycle back then was much slower. It was 4 and a half years between when Apple shipped the first Intel PCs and Snow Leppard was launched. Even then, Apple continued supporting and updating Leppard for a couple years after that. Even if you bought a PPC Mac on the last possible day, you still got 5-6 years out of the machine with security updates.

Seems to me like we'll see at least comparable support for Intel Macs going forward. Particularly since they will still be shipping Intel Macs for at least another year, possibly another 2 years.

This may actually be the perfect time to get a first-version Apple notebook, because it looks like the big design refresh will be staggered one release cycle. Buying one right now gets you the powerful new architecture inside the tried-and-true industrial design.

While the risks are probably less than they were earlier in Apple's history, I'd much rather take a chance on a first-generation Apple Silicon SoC than on a first-generation MacBook Pro redesign.

I bought one and I have 0 regrets.

A laptop that satisfy my long battery life ultrabook experience AND capable to run steam games without compensating on performance.

Though the 13" air is not in the same target user group vs. the 15" pro, so you might not find the same excitement as I did.

Regrets rarely appear 1 week after buying a product :-)

I thought they often happen instantly? Or in the 5 hours after you received the product?

I don't ever recall regretting something I've purchased, say, more than 1 month ago. The act of purchase is foregone past by that point.

You've never had something fail 1 month or 6 months after purchase?

No.

Lucky person! ;-)

In the last couple years Ive been regretting only opting for 8gb ram in my 2015 13" MBP.

> Apple users know you pay an Apple tax and a v1 tax

I expect the v1 tax this time around is that the externals are exactly the same as the Intel machines. Compared to what laptops like the Dell XPS 13 are doing with larger screens in smaller bodies, the current Air and 13" Pro designs are getting a bit long in the tooth now.

I expect next year we'll see new design for the iMac with the M1X, or whatever the bigger variant will be called, as the current version is absolute dinosaur at this point, but I also think we'll see an updated design for the Air and 13" Pro (maybe 14" like how the 15" went to 16"—it would certainly help differentiate the Air and Pro a little more).

If rumors are to be believed, the next macbook generation is going to get a new body design and new screen, so will be 1st gen in a different, probably more severe sense. Makes it difficult to decide whether to just buy now.

Great point, unless the new hardware is also a touchscreen for those iOS Apps - then we'll see a lot of people wishing they'd waited

Touching your computer screen to run mobile apps on it? Is that what people really want?

100% for me at least.

My dream laptop would be an iPad Pro 12.9 with a Magic Keyboard and M1 chip which could run both full screen iOS apps and full Mac OSX. In a perfect world it would have an extra USB-C port too.

But to be honest, just a regular macbook with a touchscreen would be great now. I've had enough of people trying to use my Macbook at work, prodding the screen to try and scroll down, then trying and failing to do the two finger scroll gesture on the touchpad.

Not necessarily just for ios apps; a tablet form-factor is ideal for just reading, and a pen interface is ideal for drawing etc.

I, too, am on 2014 hardware. The real step that would move me to update would be more RAM with the Apple Silicon. The last gen Intel hardware did offer 32GB of RAM, but not much else to justify the cost over a 6 year old precursor.

Was planning on getting the pro 16 but the extra cost for 32gb is obscene. Ended up going with a dell xps 15 (still in shipping) which even has an option for 64gb at a reasonable price. Can't wait to get rid of this pro 13 which constantly overheats.

Hey man, I'm using the xps with 64 Gigs. Good luck with yours. It's a great laptop, but I can't wait for my m1 air with 16 gigs, because for mobility, I'm missing the outrageous stability that macos and Apples hardware are delivering. I'll keep the xps as a daily driver for work (wsl 2 and vscode are just unmet in apples ecosystem), but for the couch, conferences, trains etc., it's going to be the mba 100% of the time. Are you transitioning to windows?

I had a dell xps 13 before running Linux and I really liked it but the screen was too small and I couldn't read the text while it was on my desk next to my main monitor.

You can still buy Intel MacBook Pros. Apple will likely support it for a couple of more years before they won’t.

I think there are more devs invested in the macOS ecosystem with hardware during this transition than the last, so it would make sense for Apple to let those Intel hold outs still keep up with the latest macOS version.

I would say two or three cycles of macOS upgrades before they EOL Intel support.

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