Okay, okay I'll do it.
Just make sure you give her back to me.
You should buy a brand new MacBook every single year
and you should also get AppleCare for it.
Okay, Tim, is that enough?
Can I have my cat back now?
I've done everything you've asked me to do,
come on and give her back.
Hello
By the way, Apple Music sucks.
Isn't that right?
Yeah.
Okay so now that the cat and I
are free from the clutches of Tim Apple,
we can give you our unbiased opinion
on why we only buy base model Macs.
I'll also be discussing some points why you should
potentially get just a base model Mac as well.
But for those of you, without the patients,
I'll throw up a quick summary here for you to read,
but make sure you actually do watch the video in full,
because there are a lot of caveats
that I go into in more detail later on.
Okay so I'm going to be covering this video
from a consumer perspective
and not just a tech YouTuber perspective,
because that doesn't really give you the best insight
into what you should or shouldn't buy as an everyday user.
Now, for me personally,
I only ever buy base model Macs
and I have been doing so for 10 years,
but I'll get into that a little bit later on.
Now, I also do take into consideration
that a large number of people will actually buy a Mac
and then use it for five and up to 10 years.
And the advice for those people typically
is to max out upgrades
whenever they buy a Mac,
if they're going to be using it for that length of time.
And while I do agree with this,
the reality is everyone's budget is different
and that's not always possible.
The other thing is obviously
some people do just upgrade every two or three years.
So I will be covering that as well.
And I'm going to be doing four main points in this video.
Now to preface this video,
if you do actually need increased RAM or storage,
or you have the budget to simply max out upgrades,
of course you should do that.
But the prevailing theme of what I'm about to talk about
is that upgrading Apple hardware is very expensive.
So at what point are you just better off
sticking with the base model.
Starting with RAM,
I'm going to be focusing mainly on the M1 Macs in this video
because as we all know,
the Intel Macs are slowly but surely getting phased out
and will likely no longer be available
in the next 12 to 18 months
to buy from Apple directly.
Also the Apple Silicon Macs
will likely have fewer upgrade options going forward.
So that should also simplify things a little bit.
Now, guys,
the reality with RAM is
most of you are going to be totally fine with 8 Gigabytes.
I've done multiple videos on this channel,
showcasing what you can accomplish with 8 Gigabytes of RAM.
Anything from video editing, Photoshop, multitasking,
3D modeling,
all that kind of stuff is possible with 8 Gigabytes of RAM,
especially if you only do it every now and then
the M1 SoC in particular is just so tightly integrated
with both software and hardware
and the internal SSD is so fast.
So if you do max out your RAM and have to use swap memory,
you barely notice the difference.
Now you don't have to worry
about the whole SSD swap memory issue with M1 Macs.
I've debunked that on multiple videos on my channel.
Now, the important thing to stress here is
just because you can do a lot of these things
with only 8 Gigabytes of RAM
doesn't mean you should.
So if you're doing things like frequent 4K editing,
you're using virtualization software like Parallels,
or you're doing hardcore 3D modeling,
or you're an artist,
and you use a lot of Photoshop layers or Lightroom.
You should strongly consider upgrading your RAM
because it's going to give you more performance
in the long run
and this is great for people
who frequently do those demanding tasks.
In my opinion,
upgrading from the base 8 Gigabytes of RAM or 16 or above
or whatever's available for you
is a great option to future-proof your Mac,
especially if you're going to be keeping it
for five to 10 years.
For me personally,
I only use my MacBook Air for productivity things.
So emails, some web browsing, note-taking
maybe some very light Photoshop
and a little bit of editing every now and then,
but the bulk of hardcore work
I do on a proper dedicated Windows PC
with a beefy graphics card and a desktop CPU.
So for me, just 8 Gigabytes is totally perfect.
And this is a fairly common strategy
for others out there as well.
Now, moving on to storage,
this is a very similar thought process to RAM.
So upgrading storage on a Mac device
is exponentially more expensive
with each storage tier you go up.
Now I've made multiple videos on my channel,
such as creating your own custom NVMe SSD drive
for one quarter the cost of Apple's 2 Terabyte option
with speeds of nearly one gigabyte per second.
You can also go with something like the
Sabrent XTRM-Q rocket NVMe drive,
but no matter what external drive you'd go with,
you're going to save a ton of money
rather than going with the internal Apple option.
So the beauty of having an external drive
is that you can actually keep this with you,
even if you sell your Mac
or if you lose your Mac or it gets damaged.
And the other thing is that
the internal drive of the most recent Mac models
are not user replaceable.
So if that fails, you're totally screwed.
If you do get the 256 Gigabyte
internal SSD base model option on your Mac,
that's a lot of room for some important files,
quite a few programs, and maybe even a couple of games.
And don't forget, you can actually move all of your games,
a lot of your programs and the majority of those files
onto an external drive,
or you can actually store quite a lot on iCloud drive
and selectively sync them to your internal Mac SSD.
This is what I personally use.
I use iCloud for my most commonly used files,
such as word documents and invoices and bank statements
and that kind of thing.
And then I put all of my games and other large programs
and large files like movies and videos
on an external SSD or hard drive,
by the way, I've made a video
on a couple of different external storage options
so make sure you click in the top right-hand corner
to check that video out.
Now, just like with RAM,
there are some people
that will need to upgrade their storage
such as developers using Xcode,
or maybe even a DJ who doesn't like to have external things
sticking out of his laptop while he's doing his set.
That's totally fine as well if you really do need that,
or you want the advantage of having
all of that internal storage
go for it, but just understand
that you're not locked into
Apple's expensive upgrade options.
The other thing I hear commonly is naysayers claiming that
they don't want to carry around an external SSD
or hard drive
because it's a laptop.
They want to be free from cables and whatnot.
But guys the reality is
if you're doing any kind of serious work,
you're going to have a bag.
You're going to have a mouse.
You're probably going to have some kind of case
for the MacBook
and you're also going to have some kind of dongle
or USB-C hub.
So why not just add a small, slim, little external SSD
into the mix as well.
Now, moving on to resale value,
I'm going to briefly touch on this.
And this is mainly for people
who sell every two to three years,
because for those of you
that keep your Macs for five to 10 years,
by the time you actually go to sell your Mac after a decade,
for example, it doesn't have much resale value,
but that doesn't matter because you've squeezed basically
every dollar out of that Mac already.
So for you guys, it's worthwhile.
Now going back to the people
who like to upgrade every two or three years,
I compare Macs to the used car market.
So with a used car for example,
if I buy a car for $50,000
and then I spend $50,000 worth of upgrades
and suspension upgrades,
and maybe a new engine or turbocharger,
when I go to actually sell that car,
if the cost of those upgrades were $50,000 as well,
I can't sell my car for a 100 K
because no one's going to buy it.
I probably have to sell it for around 55 to maybe 60 K.
It's very similar with the used Mac market.
Most people shopping for used Macs
are only going to want the base model
and likely won't pay much extra for increased RAM or storage
by far, the most popular configuration Apple sells
is simply base model Macs.
Every additional dollar you spend on upgrades
decreases the overall resale value of your Mac when you sell
compared to if you'd just bought a base model.
This is because most buyers in the secondhand market
are simply after a base model Mac
because power users that would be after an upgraded model
will generally not always,
but generally spec their own machines
and buy them new directly from Apple.
Now, admittedly the difference between
an upgraded machine and a base model
on the secondhand market, isn't huge,
but it is a small factor when you come to sell.
Now moving on to upgrade strategy,
as much as I hate consumerism,
the reality is guys that companies like Apple
are just pushing us further and further towards this mindset
for every person that keeps their laptop for 10 years,
there's probably two or three others
that upgrade every couple of years.
And it actually might be more advantageous
for certain people to upgrade relatively frequently,
guys, don't hate the player, hate the game.
For example,
I run this YouTube channel you're watching right now
as a company.
So there's a thing in Australian tax law called
instant asset write-off,
I'll save you all the tax law jargon,
but essentially financially at the moment,
I am far better off buying a new MacBook every year,
writing it off against tax
and then selling it on the secondhand market
just before a new model is released.
For normal consumers,
you'll get a much bigger spec jump
by saving the money you would've spent on RAM
and SSD upgrades,
and instead upgrading your entire system
every two to three years.
Now just to quickly recap the points I've made.
In my opinion,
there are only two types of people
that should consider upgrading from base model.
Number one, those with a large budget,
just go crazy and max out upgrades
or number two power users or pros with specific needs.
For example, 4K video editors, developers,
or power multitaskers.
The reality is the majority of people buying MacBooks
will never need anything above a base model Mac.
Now for those people that do have a little bit of room
in their budget for upgrades
and they want to pick one or two,
here's my advice
I would recommend to upgrade in this order,
any RAM upgrades
and then any kind of CPU or GPU upgrades available.
And then lastly storage.
This can obviously fluctuate on what exactly you need.
So if you're doing video editing, for example,
I would go with RAM,
but if you're a developer, for example,
and you need a lot of internal storage,
go with storage first of all.
Anyway guys, thanks for watching this video.
Hopefully you found a few things here interesting.
Any comments or questions as always
leave a comment down below,
but apart from that, I'll catch you in the next one.