Why did I buy the M1 Max MacBook when I do not need it?

Five years ago, I bought the i5 13inch MacBook Pro because the i7 version was not within my budget. At the time, I spent the extra cash on upgrading my RAM from 8gb to 16gb. That tradeoff has served me well, and my five-year-old MacBook is working fine, albeit a little slow and a lot more noisy.

I am not a Pro user and have never used Final Cut or Adobe suite of products apart from Acrobat Reader (which we all have used, I am sure). It may shock people, but Microsoft Teams is my most intensive app.

Five years ago, I bought a Mac because I was seeking a Windows alternative and the Mac was the obvious next step.

Today, I am a passionate Mac user working from home using Citrix Workspace to connect to my windows based work PC.

I bought the top of the line MacBook Pro 16inch simply because I wanted to, and it gives me joy having the best MacBook money can buy (I only maxed out on the chip, not the RAM or SSD). I am humbled and grateful that I am in a position where the fastest/powerful consumer chip is within my reach and I can afford to buy it outright. However, immediately after pre-ordering my desired MacBook, I felt guilty spending so much money on a device I do not need. I spent another 30 minutes considering cheaper configurations to see where I can save the money.

An hour later and after consuming my favourite ice cream:

I am done feeling guilty. I am done justifying to myself that I need it for work, or for my blog, or for my other creative pursuits. The truth is, for me and for most of us, our existing devices are sufficient for our needs. Hell, we have been doing our work before getting the new and shiny. We got this far without the M1 (insert any other new technical advancement).

I need to be honest to myself:

I bought this MacBook because I wanted to, and that is a good enough reason for me.

I bought:

16-inch MacBook Pro — Space Grey

Apple M1 Max chip with 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU and 16-core Neural Engine

32GB unified memory

1TB of SSD storage