Chip Gains
👋🏻
I need/want a new computer. I have for quite some time, but the scales have tipped more and more toward need than flat out want in recent months.
Don't get me wrong, I love new tech and am always up looking for an excuse to upgrade, but sheer desire isn't a viable reason to drop thousands in the budget.
Back in June 2021, I was rocking a 2017 15'' MacBook Pro. The Apple Silicon era was underway and your boy wanted the shiny new processor. Apple announced the new iMac redesign and I was sold. We bought a M1 iMac fully kitted out with a 2TB SSD, 16GB of unified memory, and the "all GPU cores work" M1 chip inside. The upgrade was leaps and bounds better than my MacBook Pro in terms or performance, noise, and screen quality.
I should have waited.
A few months later, Apple revealed the MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips. Those would have met my needs and have firmly kept my need/want see-saw on the "want" side. Your boy really underestimated the needs of GPU power, RAM, and storage. These days, I keep bumping into the ceiling of this iMac's performance as a machine to write and create videos on. It's a fantastic web browsing and light work machine, but I push it too hard. It will make for a very nice family computer in its next phase of life.
I'm sharing all this context to help paint a picture of a lesson that clicked with me a couple of days ago. For the past couple years when daydreaming about my next Mac, I have always imagined buying a nearly maxed out M-whatever-number Max MacBook Pro—just spend all the money to buy myself a decade's worth of use. I hope my problem is now apparent given my recent efforts to find a new job or clients. That dream machine is $6K~. That wouldn't account for the new monitor I'd have to buy for desktop work. My family can't afford to drop $7.5K~, especially with owning a home and having much higher priority fixes for that on the horizon.
Buying a new Mac seems impossible.
Then this idea of "The Gap and the The Gain" came back to me.
From Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy in their book of the same name, "The Gap and the Gain" is a way to look at where you started, what you have achieved, and the ideal you are working towards. The Gap would be looking from where you are to what you want and taking in how far away you are from said goal. That's where I am right now looking off toward this mythical monster of a MacBook Pro.
The Gain is taking where you are and looking back to where you have come from; the gain is a much more encouraging perspective to consider. Compared to the Intel days, I am still living in bliss.
Now, how does this apply to buying a new computer? Well, maybe I shorten the gap to the ideal? If I bought a refurbished M2 Max Mac, that'd be more than enough for my video needs and give me some headroom for the foreseeable future. It's not the shiniest coat of paint, but would be quite the gain from where I am now. Those prices seem to be roughly in the $2.5K camp. If I get by on my 1440p monitor and maybe even sell this iMac for a thousand bucks...that becomes a lot more affordable and reasonable for my family and my job.
I'm not buying a computer right this second, but the idea of smaller upgrades really resonated with me. I didn't need the PS5 Pro at launch. I don't really need a Switch 2 at launch (tell me that when pre-orders go live). If you told me that my gaming set-up would go from this to this in just 15 years, I would have never believed it. Gains like this take time, hard work, and patience. Make do with what you have; make smaller upgrades instead of sweeping changes. It's like chip damage on your goals. Chip, chip, win.
Until next time...
This letter is one block from the newsletter Memory Card by Max Roberts. Thoughts? Send me an email at max@maxfrequency.net.
Max is the writer and producer behind Max Frequency. cultivate and curate curiosity—both for himself and for others—by delighting in the details and growing greatness from small beginnings.
He's written a rich history and dive on the making of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Part II, celebrated the 15th anniversary of Super Smash Bros. Brawl with the voice behind its hype, and examined how Zelda "stole" Fortnite's best mechanic.
Memory Card is a real-ish time, raw, drip feed newsletter of his creative process for telling these stories. It’s how The Thing™ gets made.
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