Apple M4 Mac
Ranked 9 of 10 personal computers by recommenders
People recommend M4 Macs for running local AI models quickly and for everyday computing. Critics say the speed gain over earlier chips is small.
People recommend M4 Macs for running local AI models quickly and for everyday computing. Critics say the speed gain over earlier chips is small.
11 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 73%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Runs local AI models well
“The unified architecture on Macs makes it very hard to justify spending money on a Linux machine for inference workloads.”
Comment from 11 May 2026 in “Running local models on an M4 with 24GB memory” “I’ve been happy training and running inference for small language models on my M4 Mac.”
Comment from 31 Aug 2026 in “Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio” “Then why does my M4 run models at TOK/s that similar priced GPUs cannot?”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “Apple AI servers unused in warehouses due to low Apple Intelligence usage” Works well for everyday computing
“my everyday computer experience got much better after switching to an M4 Mac”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?” “Because it works, and it works well.”
Comment from 3 Oct 2026 in “The Forgetful CPU (Linux on M4)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Speed gain over earlier chips is small
“Besides the memory increase I barely notice the improved cpu/gpu speed.”
Comment from 21 Aug 2026 in “We Rebuilt the Linux MicroVM Stack on Apple Silicon”
Other personal computers people recommend
The four most recommended other personal computers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple Mac | 453 | 292 | 61% | 12 | 15 yrs59 owners | — |
| Apple Mac Studio | 319 | 160 | 66% | 12 | 2 yrs23 owners | — |
| Apple M1 Mac | 48 | 10 | 83% | 12 | 6 yrs8 owners | Approved |
| Apple II | 46 | 12 | 79% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Apple M4 MacThis page | 8 | 3 | 73% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
10 of the 11 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Because it works, and it works well.”
“company actively hostile to anything open to run open stuff”
“I’ve been happy training and running inference for small language models on my M4 Mac.”
“Besides the memory increase I barely notice the improved cpu/gpu speed.”
“The unified architecture on Macs makes it very hard to justify spending money on a Linux machine for inference workloads.”
“without worrying about privacy leak”
“my everyday computer experience got much better after switching to an M4 Mac”
“My M4 complaint is that I can no longer update my OS with a USB Installer offline”
“my new m4 seemed "fuzzier" on my external 4ks”
“Then why does my M4 run models at TOK/s that similar priced GPUs cannot?”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.