The guy above me is thinking very much inside of the box. First, computers are not investments, so who cares if it will lose value? (unless your whole point of buying stuff is to flip it, and if that is the case, please leave, scalper...) The flip side to that, is to wait until the prices come down more before you buy.
There are many other things to take into consideration than just RAM or internal storage (come on man):
See
THIS post, and check out that whole thread.
We don't know if the 8,1 will come out any time soon (though we hope!)
Until there is any announcement, there has been an abundance of speculation on whether the 8,1 will support third party dGPUs, if it will have expandable RAM, expandable Storage. If it will be on AS, or the last x86/Intel machine.
Then there is the price, and based on what the 7,1 and Mac Studio are priced at, there has been no indication that the 8,1 will have an entry level price.
IMO a 7,1 is for sure still worth it in 2023, and while the current pricing might seem high, you have to remember to take inflation into consideration -- case in point, in 2012, a "mid-range" cMP was selling for
~$2,999.99 from apple (according to everymac), which in 2023 dollars is now equal to ~$3,909.10. I know it's still a wash compared to the $5,999.99 from apple right now for a base spec 8-core, but I guess one other thing to keep in mind is that the 7,1
was all constructed
in the USA, so it's a really solid piece of kit (and a damn sexy one at that)
.
The question you need to ask yourself, OP -- is this... is the 7,1 worth it
for you and your workflow (this I do applaud Mr. rm5 for asking).
