Choosing a Mac based Machine both Laptops and Desktops
- Adam Longmire
- Jan 7, 2025
- 5 min read
Many users will often like MacOS based system I am here to decode the technical jargon present with MacOS systems. Mac systems are divided into several sub categories. The first being Macbooks, Mac Mini, Mac Studio and Mac Pro if you are so inclined into purchasing the most expensive Mac system possible. Now lets start with the different generations of Mac’s for a long time Mac systems were built using Intel based chips, which made Mac’s quite energy intense even with effective power management systems, this also meant for a while MacOS based systems shared most traits with a standard PC, however sometime in 2021 Apple released their new M-series chips these ARM based chips like in the first post I made share more traits with your smart phone than with a conventional computer they are literal a mobile type motherboard and design.
So what do you as a customer need to look for in a MacOS based system and how should you make your purchasing decisions?
Lets start with the CPU on most MacOS based systems now the first release of the M series chips was M1 a significant departure from the standard Intel chips which also had a significant difference to x86-64 architecture it used less power and generated less heat, but bare this is mind when purchasing M series chips in order to run your normal x86_64 you need something called the Rosetta translation layer 2 this converts x86_64 instructions into ARM instructions and is needed to do anything with standard software designed for a system which uses x86_64 instruction set, think of the difference between the two as two different languages the CPUs one cannot understand the other without translating the language the other uses.
M# chips were released in 2021 - 2024 and came in a number of layouts lets say. M# standard chips were designed for laptops and Mac Mini’s offering a good balance of performance. They also came in other variants of M1 Pro and M1 Max the M# Pro was designed for the professional workstation in both MacBook Pro and the Mac Studio. In general in terms of “better performance” M# to M# Pro then to M# Max is in order of performance. More cores in each version means it can handle tougher workloads. M1 Max is known the the cream of the crop also the most expensive if you are professional individual CAD, Rendering, or any other task an Max chip is the way to go or if you want to go for the most powerful Mac chip the M# Ultra
M# - M#, M# Pro, M# Max, M# Ultra
Core components found in Mac machines
UMA (Unified Memory Architecture) Memory this is a fundamental component and it is important to get enough UMA memory to suit your needs, UMA also relies on Mac’s high speed SSDs but there is cost to your entire system if you don’t get enough UMA, the SSD will be used as a type of virtual memory treating the SSD as an extension of the UMA, this can then lead to heavy read-write operations placed on the SSD and shorten it’s life. So how do you choose memory correctly? Each series chip can support up to a maximum amount of RAM but going for 16GB on a M# where # = the number corresponding to the chip series number is always a good idea 16GB of UMA is a lot of memory and allows a good balance. If you lack the amount of UMA needed to run most of your applications over time your SSD will degrade.
In terms of tasks determine what applications you run, on Mac look at what you currently run you can look at “Activity Monitor” look at CPU and Memory tabs and find the highest amount of CPU usage draw by the graph at the bottom of the screen if what you are doing is consuming more RAM than is available it might be time to consider your next Mac laptop should have more RAM most users won’t need more than 16GB to 24GB variants which can be found on the lowest tier Macs at the M2 and M3 variants, UMA will be consumed by everything not just applications your simple screen resolution will even consume a bit of UMA memory for itself just like any graphics based system for example on a 32bit per pixel * horizontal pixels by the vertical will give you the “rough” VRAM consumption for display operating in 2D mode. Ideally you want a Mac machine with 16GB of UMA by default 8GB just doesn't cut it now.
SSD Storage - MacOS based machines all come with SSDS but this SSD is designed in such a way as it's soldered to the board which makes it almost impossible to replace especially in the newest models due to SoC integrated security chip added to M-series CPUs. Because it's soldered to the board it is recommended to get an external SSD to reduce SSD degradation which will happen especially if you have 8GB of UMA, is to use an external SSD or external drive, ideally if you are wanting high performance get specifically a Thunderbolt enabled drive if not you can just as easily choose to get a NVMe based external SSD and it will do it quickly I’ve done this for other customers and setup backups to be automated for them very easy to do
P-cores and E-cores, these are designations given to specific types of processor cores present in Apple series CPUs and refer to what they are designed for and how the operating system will use them, P-cores will be mainly active for tasks which involve higher performance computing, video-editing, encoding, rendering and other processor intensive tasks. While E-cores will be used to manage background processes because they don’t require as much available compute power. E-cores save power when the P-cores are not needed and thereby extending the battery runtime of your Mac. Generally the rationale is this more P cores more performance. Simple as that
GPU - Graphics processor unit is the workhorse of anything you do in regards to visually heavy workloads, the GPU also does idle work like rendering anything that is placed on the screen. And if you are doing video rendering this is a much more important component to focus on various applications will utilise the graphics chip but some applications require it more than others.
NPU - Neural Processor Unit this is designed to accelerate tasks which are responsible for running anything which required to do “semi intelligent” tasks photo organization, Suri, and other “AI” tasks Apps can also leverage it if they are designed to use Apples API for the NPU but it depends on how useful you will find this based on whether you actually use the NPU for anything, in this case you can safely ignore it if you do not really care about it.
One other thing to mention with Apple their “Performance multiplier charts do not tell the truth these claims are made by Apple and have no scale or value to compare it to which is why you should always look at different videos or benchmarks to determine how truthful the performance actually is” some upgraded M series chips offer minimal performance gains over their predecessors and you might not even notice a huge difference but again it depends on your kind of workload but don’t believe the 1.8x the performance because what are they comparing it to? Thin air?
If you find any of this too complicated I can easily come to your home and assess whether you need more UMA or if your Macs CPU is just not cutting it and deciding where to go from there. I know my way around Mac’s pretty easily I’ve installed BSD and set it up and BSD is easily several orders of magnitude difficult to deal with than Macs.
References and Credits of websites and their resources used (Special thanks to other writers for providing this easy to access information also Mac 9 to 5 is also good source of Mac info)