Apple | Reddit calculates why the MacBook Pro with M1 Max pays for itself after just three months | news | macbook

Thanks to Apple’s in-house processors, the MacBook Pro 14″ and MacBook Pro 16″ are known for their extraordinary performance paired with extreme efficiency. Of course, the Californian company also charges corresponding prices for these qualities, so the new notebooks from Cupertino are not bargains at first glance. If you take a closer look and also take the follow-up costs into account in your bill, you will find in many cases that a lot of money can be saved with the devices after a short time, despite the high acquisition costs.

MacBook Pro saves $100,000 annually
This realization has already prompted some well-known companies such as Twitter, Shopify and Uber to equip their development teams with the MacBook Pro (see ). Reddit also announced the purchase of new notebooks with M1 Pro and M1 Max on Twitter. The tweet revealed, among other things, that nine devices can save developers around $100,000 a year. Jameson Williams, the social news aggregator’s staff software engineer, has now published a detailed Calculation of all financial benefits that the purchase of the devices entails.

M1 Max is twice as fast as an Intel Core i9
Williams’ calculations are based on the knowledge previously posted on Twitter that developer hours are more expensive than the acquisition costs for new devices. In his calculations, he first compared the times that a MacBook Pro (2021) with M1 Max and a MacBook Pro (2019) with Intel Core i9 needed to create the Reddit apps for iOS and Android. In both cases, the device with Apple’s own processor was more than twice as fast as the x64 notebook from Cupertino. Assuming this cuts the wait time for builds to complete by 22 minutes per day, at a total cost of $150 per developer hour, that’s a significant savings. Williams not only included the salary in this calculation, but also other expenses such as room and ancillary costs.

MacBook Pro (2021) earns the purchase price after three months
Reddit wants to equip nine developers with a MacBook Pro (2021) each at a price of around $3,500, i.e. spend around $31,500. According to Williams’ calculations, this investment will pay for itself in just three months. Although the existing Intel MacBooks are included in the calculation with no acquisition costs and are therefore initially cheaper, their use is already significantly more expensive after this short time due to the costs for the developers’ working hours. In the course of time, the scissors widen more and more, after about a year the company can save around 100,000 US dollars with the new notebooks from Cupertino. However, Williams points out in his blog post that his calculation is not universally valid. Every company must therefore make its own calculations and take its individual requirements into account.