MacBook Pro with M1 Max and M1 Pro: Gives a lot more and takes away very little
Laptops
Speaker 1: Apple has got new MacBook pros and video editors, 3d modelers, and other creative types are asking, are these finally pro enough for me? And if you're someone who's not a creative pro and just want to get it because it's the hot new MacBook with the new design and the better screen you should probably ask yourself, am I pro enough for the MacBook pro
Speaker 1: Just in time for the holiday season, apple has two fairly fancy, fairly expensive new MacBook pro models. This is the [00:00:30] 14 inch MacBook pro and the 16 inch MacBook pro. So the 14 inch MacBook pro that is a new screen size. It replaces the 13 inch MacBook pro. Whereas the 16 we've had that couple of years that replaced the 15 inch MacBook pro, and now it sits between that and something apple used to have and has not had for many years, a 17 inch MacBook pro, which is frankly assistant people still talk about today. There are actually a little bit bigger, a little bit thicker and reasonable amount heavier than the previous versions. [00:01:00] Now, why did apple do that? Because instead of stripping ports and connections and features out of the MacBook, well, now it sounds like, uh, the company has gone back and listened to everyone's complaints over the last several years, uh, about what they would like to see wishlist, things like that, and put a lot of that stuff back in, and it's not something I think anybody ever thought we would see.
Speaker 1: So instead of just having two or four USBC Thunderbolt ports and anything you wanted to do power display, output accessories, you had to either get a USBC plug version [00:01:30] or you had to get a Dongo or something. Now the making a return appearance is the H DMI port, which is something that MacBook used to have. And then before that they didn't have, and everybody thought they should, then they added it. And then eventually they took, took it away. Well, now they've added it back again. The same thing goes for the SD card slot, which may not be something you and I use every day, but photographers and video shooters use that all the time. It's still, it's still a very widely used, uh, format. And even the power connection has gone back to greatest hits mode. MagSafe went away when apple moved to [00:02:00] USBC ports in all of their laptops.
Speaker 1: So we've just been using regular USBC cables for a long time, which frankly was always a pretty good idea because there's a universal acceptance of that. If I'm in a coffee shop or an office or something, and somebody shouts out, does anybody have a matchbook cable? And somebody says, yes, I know 99% of the time. They mean a USBC cable connected to a power brick of some kind. So I can use one that's let's say for an, an Nintendo switch. I, I charged up my MacBook from an Nintendo switch charger the other day, or an HP or Lenovo or [00:02:30] anything, and used my Mac charger in any of those other devices, you can really mix and match. So even though Mac safe is great. And now that I've started using it again, I can't imagine not using it. I did like the idea of everybody having this universal power connection, and we could also op cables back and forth. That's just a little bit less convenient now. And I don't mean to go on so much about the MagSafe cable. Uh, when I talk about my concerns with it, I feel like I'm the only person who feels that way. I've not run into a single other person who thinks that it's an issue or even worth bringing up. I'm just a fan of [00:03:00] non-pro proprietary connections over proprietary connections. But again, yes, the benefits probably outweighed, especially because I'm very clumsy. So I'm often tripping over the cord and that can save a few laptops for me.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that these new MacBook pros, the 14 inch and the 16 inch, they have a lot of changes both outside and inside. Usually when you get a big laptop upgrade, you know, the inside components change, but the outside is not very different or it has a new design on the outside and inside, they just take up the processor [00:03:30] one generation, well, here you have both, but this is a new screen technology. These are mini L E D screens, which is the same screen technology. That's in the larger iPad pro and looks van very old lid like look, and they've also shaved down the bezels around the screen so much so that the webcam is no longer in, you know, the top order of the screen. It's actually in a notch that cuts into the screen itself, kind of like on an iPhone. Nobody loves the idea of the notch, but I think on iPhones, we've kind of gotten used to it and accepted that it doesn't really get [00:04:00] in the way here.
Speaker 1: Apple works around that by basically making the system menu. That's usually at the top of the screen, unless you've gone full screen on, on something, making that part of the whole top menu and notch ecosystem. So the menu sits alongside the notch, notch cuts into it. So most of the time it's pretty in visible. And again, it gets you closer to the edges of the screen and looks better. Speaking of which that WEBC, this is something that I think every laptop should have had years ago, but they have not. It's only starting [00:04:30] to show up. Now it's a 10 80 camera, not rocket science, but since we spend so much time doing online meetings and zoom meetings and Google Hangouts and things like that, you can always tell who, who has a MacBook because their camera doesn't look good, cuz it's a seven 20 camera.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of laptop cameras, frankly, don't look good. The 24 inch M one iMac from the summer that is a 10 80 camera. And now these guys also have 10 80 cameras and apple has a lot of, you know, signal processing built into the OS that that makes it look even better than that. But the difference between using an [00:05:00] old Mac book webcam and a new MacBook webcam, it's gonna blow your way. You're not gonna believe it. This is me talking to you right now from the 10 80 webcam built into the 16 inch MacBook pro. And hopefully you'll think it looks a lot better than the old seven 20 MacBook air WEBC stuff that you're used to seeing in your zoom meetings. And this is the view from the seven 20 camera built into last year's MacBook air is very similar to the webcams max have had for several generations now it's okay, but it ain't great.
Speaker 1: And listen, it's not good to speak ill of [00:05:30] the dead, but I do think we have to pause and mention that the touch bar Apple's little secondary touchscreen strip that's been on MacBook froze for several years now is pretty much gone. They're losing the touch bar. They're going back to just getting regular function keys. We had function keys. We liked them. They end the touch bar. Nobody really liked it. Now we've gone back to the function keys. I'm not gonna go as far as to defend the touch bar, but there were a couple things I actually liked it for. I liked putting, putting my finger on the fader and writing it for [00:06:00] brightness and volume control. And well, I guess that's about it actually, but I like that better than just tapping, you know, brightness up and down and volume up and down. The best part about the touch bar was always the fingerprint reader and apple is broken that out of the rest of the touch bar, cuz you can already get just the standalone fingerprint reader on your, you know, MacBook air on your 24 inch IM a keyboard.
Speaker 1: And of course here on the new MacBook pros, separate standalone fingerprint reader. So you're not losing out on the best thing that we got from the touch bar in the first place. So that by itself would be, [00:06:30] you know, enough reason to call this a huge upgrade or a huge update inside there's even more going on because these are the first machine with Apple's second wave of M series chips, apples moved away from Intel, which has powered their MacBook since I started calling the MacBook. So instead of Intel, Qury five qu seven. Uh, now you have the M one originally in that MacBook air and the 13 inch pro from last year in the Mac mini and now the 24 inch iMac. But now you've got two new ones again, aimed at that a pro audience, the M one pro. Okay, [00:07:00] that makes sense. And then the M one max, and if you're keeping track of the M one, max is on paper the best, then the pros in the middle, then the regular M one is just kind of the regular consumer model.
Speaker 1: So in our hands on time with the new MacBook pros, I tested a 14 inch MacBook pro with the M one pro chip and a, an inch MacBook quote with the M one max chip. So I had both screen sizes and both new family tree branches of the M series chip. Now I'm not a video editor or 3d modeler, but I do a decent amount of video [00:07:30] shooting and editing in premier and a lot of CAD work and a lot of design stuff. Uh, so I was very excited to test these new MacBook pros and see how they felt compared to the other Mac that I've been using recently. Uh, usually an M 1 24 inch iMac or the M one MacBook air. Those basically have the same chip in premier. I took some eight K footage that one of my colleagues had shot and just lined up a couple of clips and then added a whole bunch of, uh, color correction to them and some transitions [00:08:00] and some motion graphics just kind of vomited a bunch of stuff onto the file and, and said it to output, uh, it would've taken about 20, 22 minutes to export this, you know, minute long video on an M one system or on, uh, qu seven Mac book pro, which you could get up until, you know, 2019 on the new systems with the M one pro and the M one max took 10 minutes, less than half the time.
Speaker 1: That's just the very beginning [00:08:30] of deep diving into the performance on these, cuz I've just started looking at them. Uh, and we're gonna go back and do more battery tests and we're gonna try more intensive workloads. That was just my quick out of the box. You know, a first thing I've tried with it and you know, you can see a real difference there. Uh, although at this point I don't really have a huge performance difference between the one pro and the one mats, but we haven't done enough with them yet to really codify that.
Speaker 1: [00:09:00] I know people have been waiting for a long time now for a really pro-level MacBook pro because they knew apple was getting out of the Intel game. So they didn't wanna keep investing in that platform. And the first M one systems from last year just were not powerful enough as especially in the graphics department to do what they needed them to do. And if you would rely on a machine like this as your mission, critical main machine for your job, for your career, you wanna make sure, you know, you're really getting the right thing, especially if you're investing several thousand dollars into it. So what we come down to in the end is who are these [00:09:30] for who should buy them? Who should buy something else? These are very cool looking. They're the new MacBook pros. A lot of people are gonna wanna say, oh, it's got, you know, a 14 inch screen now instead of a 13, or it's got a, a nicer looking screen with a little notch and I get more screen space back and it's got an H DM.
Speaker 1: I port, I want one just because I want the newest and best MacBook, more power to you. You probably don't need it. If you're not doing these high end creative tasks or something else that is very seat pew or GPU intensive that said, if you hate not having ports and [00:10:00] you love having lots of ports, we got something for you. These are also significantly more expensive. The 14 inch starts at 1999. The 16 inch starts at 24 99, but you can go way up from there, tweaking the exact flavor of M one chip and adding the storage and Ram a while. The humble MacBook air still 9 99 still has the first M one chip, which is basically the same chip that's in that 13 inch MacBook pro that's still available. That's still my universal choice for most people looking to get a MacBook that's where you should start.
Speaker 1: [00:10:30] And if you need something more, you can look at one of the pro models. I'd look at one of these new pro models. I think the 13 inch pro as it exists is a, is a dead end product. But if you're not a pro user 9 99, MacBook air may still be the best bet for you. I also know people who are very excited about this people in the creative industries who told me they went out and pre-order their soup versions of the 16 inch MacBook pro, as soon as pre-orders open. And this is something they have been waiting for for a very long time.
