MacBook Pro M1 Buying Guide: Everything to Know About Your Next Apple Upgrade

Speaker 1: Apple just released brand new MacBooks powered by new M one chips. I bought this MacBook air eight and a half years ago, and I really need an upgrade. So which one should I buy? And more importantly, which MacBook is right for you. Let's break it down. Speaker 1: The MacBook pro us got its biggest upgrade in years. There are two new sizes, a 14 inch and a 16 inch model as well as two new processes. The M one pro and [00:00:30] the M one max, these new laptops come fresh off the back of last year's M one powered MacBook air pro and mini, which were the first max to use Apple's new Silicon. Right? Other than chips made by Intel. M one is what's known as a system on a chip or an O C. That means components like the CPU, GPU and Ram are all unified together into the one chip that gives apple more control over how these machines run and in practice like we saw with last year's max, it meant faster [00:01:00] processing, better and better battery life. Now with the M one pro and M one, max apple is promising even more. Speaker 2: M one pro is up to 2.5 times faster than the prior 16 inch model with the fastest GPU and M one, max is up to four times faster. This boost is dramatic for graphics intensive tasks like rendering scenes in cinema four D. And when it comes to machine learning, you'll get up to five times faster performance. When it Speaker 1: [00:01:30] Comes to upgrading and choosing the right laptop for you, then more chips means more choices. And if I've learned anything from the cheesecake factory menu, more choices can just lead to more questions. Do you want the original M one? Do you want M one pro, do you want M one max? I was starting to feel very overwhelmed. Then I remember that I work at CNET and I should just ask my colleagues for buying advice. A clever idea. So I asked my friend Dan Ackerman. Dan is our pro on all things, [00:02:00] Mac, and I trust that he's going to help me find my way through the, so here are the main questions that I need to know the answers to do I buy this year's version of the MacBook, or am I okay with going last year's if I do buy this year's version, do I want the M one pro or the M one max and the most important question, which kind of MacBook is right for which kind of buyer and which one is right for you, you oh, and of course I need to ask him about that notch, but I'll get to that. Speaker 1: I trust that Dan is gonna be able to help me out with [00:02:30] all of this and thanks to the power of the internet. I have him right here to answer my questions. Hey Dan, Hey there. Now you've been playing around with the MacBooks. Tell me what are your first impressions? Well, here's the Speaker 3: First thing to know about it. I'm actually talking to you right now on the 10 80, the high definition webcam built into the new MacBook pro. I would normally never do that. The, the webcams and MacBooks, and frankly, most laptops are very low reds. They're not good. I would never dare to join a web meeting from a regular [00:03:00] MacBook WEBC cause it just looks terrible. This at least looks pretty decent. And for a lot of people, that's a pretty big upgrade. Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, you're looking pretty good to me from where I'm sitting. I wanna know the thing I'm most interested about is actual like processing power and grunt in these new M one max, because that's, that's the whole selling of this second generation of that M one chip, Speaker 3: Right? So here you have two new versions of the chip, the M one pro and the M one max, the max is the top. The pro is in the middle and the regular [00:03:30] M one is at the bottom and in the 14 and 16 inch new Mac, but pros, you could get either one, the pro or the max. The real difference between them is the number of ethics processing cores. Other than that, they're also very similar to each other. Speaker 1: Okay. So tell me when you've been testing around and playing with them, what are the main differences between the max and the pro? How are they kind of handling different tasks Speaker 3: Right now in my initial testing and what we do at CNN is very mainstream focused. Uh, I have not seen a [00:04:00] ton of daylight between the two, but I have seen a huge amount of difference between this M one pro and the M one max and the regular M one and even older core I seven, uh, apple systems or window systems. Uh, I put together, uh, some eight K footage in premier and through a bunch of color corrections on it, and some motion graphics and titles, and just kind of gummed it up a bit, just make it kind of difficult to, to export and that clip, which was only like 45 seconds long, uh, took about [00:04:30] 22 minutes to export, um, on a M one MacBook pro the 13 inch from last year took about 20 something minutes on an older core ice, seven, I think 27 inch iMac from 2019. Speaker 3: And it took 10 minutes on both the M one pro 14 inch I have. And the M one Mac 16 inch, I have, that's less than half the time with the new ones. They're more expensive. 19 99, 24 99. True start. And then obviously you go up from there, your CPU [00:05:00] choice, the ramp, the storage, all adds to the price. You can get, you know, up to $6,000 pretty easily by maxing them out, but they're really for that pro audience. And hopefully your employer or your company is buying that for you. Or if you're a high end freelancer, you, you know, have a business reason for getting it. If you're not one of those people and you just want the latest and greatest MacBook, cuz the screen is, is nicer. The screen bezel is now worth the camera is better. You know, all that the, the design is oh's got all the new ports on it or all the old ports back again. [00:05:30] But if you're not in the industry, just be aware, you're essentially making a, a, a vanity purchase and, and that's okay, but you know, you don't really need it. Speaker 1: Vanity purchase is a good putting it. I kind of like that. All right. Now I used to be just into word processing, used to just do basic internet stuff on my computer. Now I am editing my own videos, I'm editing audio. And so I feel like my old MacBook air just isn't cutting it anymore. [00:06:00] My first question is last year's M one or this year's M one S out of those two. What would you choose now if Speaker 3: You are mostly working in 4k video or FHD, you know, 10 80 video and you're not doing, you're just doing basic editing. I don't necessarily think you need one of the new M one pro or M one max systems. I mean, I've been doing that stuff all year on a MacBook air, but the M one and that's fine, your MacBook air that you wanna replace first, I would find out from [00:06:30] you what year it was and what the chip in that was. You know, if it's a 20, 19 or 2018, you're not gonna see a big jump going to the M one air. But if it's older than that, you certainly might. So I think you're looking at the 9 99 air, although you'd probably, you know, throw some storage and Ram upgrades in that, or the 19 99, 14 inch, which I will say is frankly, significantly thicker and heavier than the 13 inch pro it's replacing it's about a half pound heavier eight peanuts when it comes to laptops. It's only a little bit thicker. Speaker 1: [00:07:00] So say I choose this year's, um, NM one chips. Uh, obviously you said that the 14 or 16 inch, you can kind of put each processor inside. So should I be looking at M one pro or M one max? And of course on the site, you can kind of choose the number of, cause in your processes. So I guess, uh, talk me through cause and talk me through pro versus max in the Speaker 3: Pro. I think you could start off with eight, you know, they define it's different than how it used to be, where you had your CPU and in max, you had a discreet [00:07:30] AMD GPU option, just like in a PC, you can get your Intel or AMD Z view and you can get an AMD or an Invidia graphics card or, you know, various other parts. Um, they defi this up into, on the, on the M one shift. There's a certain number of cores dedicated to CPU processes, and certain number of dedicated to graphics, uh, processes. And I think you can do eight or 10 for the CPU part of it on the, on the pro. I would just do the one step up and get the 10. Then they put a, they put an oddly slightly underpowered one in that base model [00:08:00] there. Um, and you could do, I think 14 or 16 GPU cores on the pro you could do 24 or 32 on the max. Speaker 3: Uh, you know, I think for regular video editing, the kind of stuff that I know that you do, uh, if you wanted to step up, I would just get the standard M one pro with the 10 slash 16. Uh, that seems to be a good middle ground. It's not the lowest N one they have, which seems to be there just to hit a particular price point. That seems to be the mainstream choice. Um, I think you have to be pretty advanced [00:08:30] in what you're doing to really need that M one max and the 32 graphic scores. But again, it's very early days for that stuff. Speaker 1: And that's, I guess one of my next questions who should really be going for that max, what kind of group? There's Speaker 3: A lot of people who work very complex 3d models, they could be doing graphic stuff for movies or games, or they could be doing engineering projects or they could be working on, uh, video projects that are just incredibly complicated because so many of the it's all plugin, you know, driven now. And a lot of that is so CPU and, and sometimes DPU intensive. [00:09:00] Uh, so if, if you're the kind of person who has a Mac pro desktop or would get one, uh, or would get the totally maxed out 27 inch iMac with the, the highest range AMD card that they used to offer, then maybe you're in that category worry. Uh, but even at this early point, I haven't found a ton of daylight between the two, but I don't think the workloads I'm putting into them are intense enough. Speaker 1: That's a very good point. I think the people that are gonna be after that really, really high end machine probably already know who they [00:09:30] are. Speaker 3: If you have to ask Dennis probably not you, Speaker 1: That is a very good point. Do, and I am so sick of using a million dongs for my MacBook. I was very excited about seeing all the ports. What's your read on the bringing back of all these ports? Speaker 3: God, it's so interesting because you're right. They brought back the H D I port the SD card slide, even MagSafe the connection, which you know, is very handy for clumsy people like myself. But I also, that everybody was using USBC to charge their laptops and their phones and their Nintendo [00:10:00] switches. And you could just swap the cables back and forth all the time. You could still charge the new MacBook with USBC, but they come with the Mac save cable. So if somebody goes, Hey, does somebody have a MacBook cable I can borrow? And you have your Mac save cable. You know, it's not gonna be very helpful to them. I think that cuts down on the interoperability of, of cables. That's just my, nobody agrees with me, but I feel strongly about this for the other stuff. It's a little bit like, and I never thought I would see this happen. Speaker 3: Apple went back to everybody's wishlist and just took kind of a greatest hits approach to putting ports in there. You know, [00:10:30] do we need U S B a probably not, but do we need H CMMI? Yeah. People will like that SD card. Uh, I don't use SD aren't that much, but a lot of people do let's bring that back. So I feel like they kind of gave in and gave the people what they wanted and it feels a little bit retro, but also, you know, forward looking at the same time because you're right, you can't use USC for everything. I, I find people use dongles and adapters a lot less than they think they will. Almost everything you can airdrop it or email it or [00:11:00] slack it, or, you know, there's not that much stuff you're plugging in these days, unless maybe you're transferring a lot of big footage files around. Like you might be Speaker 1: One of the things I noticed when I was looking through the different Mac options was memory. Now I kind of, in my rudimentary understanding of laptop buying, I know that memory is a thing I really need to be looking for, but most of these models have just got that kind of 16 gig and only the really, really tippy top model jumps up to 32. Is this because, [00:11:30] uh, the processes themselves are better able to handle tasks, or it seems crazy to me that that's not something that you can kind of jump up on. Speaker 3: That's true. If you, I think if you wanna get the 32 gig Ram option, you have to go with the M one max, uh, you know, 16 is fine for most people. I think the HES default to eight now it used to be four. I think it's eight now. I, frankly, that's fine. I think on windows laptops, you see a lot more variation where you could get a really cheap laptop that just has four, or if you spend a thousand bucks or so then you're gonna get 16 or sometimes a little bit more [00:12:00] in a gaming laptop or something 32. I frankly, I think the 16 is fine for most people, but I wouldn't really go less than that. Speaker 1: So physical design, 14 inch or 16 inch. I know I like the portability, but to tell me what your thoughts are about losing the touch bar and talk me through that notch on the screen. Speaker 3: Oh, all that touch bar. No one will go on record defending the touch bar. I will not go on record defending the touch bar either, but I will say I liked writing kind of writing the theater on the brightness [00:12:30] and the volume. And within some apps that had, uh, touch bar support, you could really have an actual fader or Jo on there. And that was okay. I, I, I'm not, I'm not mourning the loss of the touch bar and frankly, the best part of it has already been broken out. That's the fingerprint reader. I think the not on the screen, obviously it's very much like the iPhone notch. They've moved the menu bar for whatever app you're in up to the top of screen where the notch kind of sits in the middle of that menu bar. So it's mostly hidden from site. If you're going full screen on something, it [00:13:00] usually does like kind of like a little half letter box full bar across the top. Some people won't like it. Some people complain about it. Some people still complain about the notch on the iPhone or other phones, frankly, you get used to it pretty Speaker 1: Quickly. So as much as I love just asking my colleagues for personal buying advice, I am thinking about the people who are gonna be watching this video. What's your kind of general lay of the land. When you look at the Mac landscape now with the new M one chips for someone who's upgrading their MacBook or potentially coming over for the first time, what's your kind of, [00:13:30] uh, TLDR, basic buying advice. Speaker 3: I, I always say, and I think this continues to be true that that 9 99 MacBook air is probably the most universally useful laptop you can buy. They last for a long time, they're built like tanks. Uh, it's a really good user experience and frankly, they're, they're a really good price. You can usually get a hundred bucks off during the holiday season or the student discount. So really nice. I think for most people, that's frankly, the first place you should look and I've done plenty of video editing on a regular [00:14:00] M one MacBook air, even 4k stuff. Uh, and, and it's, and it's fine. I use Photoshop and illustrator on there all the time and, you know, play games on there, whatever, you know, the handful of games that you can play on a Mac. If you're in that professional audience, then you probably know what you're looking for. Speaker 3: And you've been waiting for these easier here. Now the 16 people feel like it's a replacement for that magical 17 inch MacBook pro that people still talk about, even though it was actually discontinued back in 2012. Um, and that's, you know, it's a desktop replacement, it's a big heavy system. [00:14:30] The 14 inch, uh, is more compact, but it's still not small. Like the air even the old pro was. So just be a aware, it's gonna be a little heavier than you think it is. And at $2,000 to start with, it's certainly not cheap like the air is, but again, if you're in that business and you know, that is what you need and better, somebody else is paying for it. Well then Speaker 1: Obviously that's the direction you want to go in. Thank you so much for giving me all this advice. I feel like you've helped me a lot. You've definitely helped a lot of people watching this. So thanks, [00:15:00] Dan. And I look forward to reading more as you play around more with these computers. Awesome. Good talking to you. All right. Well, they have it, all of the info you hopefully need to help you choose which Mac is right for you. As for me, I think I probably need to check my bank account. I love the idea of a thousand dollars giving me a machine that basically does everything I need, but I kind of wanna future proof it. So maybe I want to go with $2,500 for the new M one pro I think that's just gonna be a budgetary decision that [00:15:30] I'm gonna have to make over the next couple of days, but let me know what you think, which one are you gonna upgrade to? Let me know when the comments down below and while you're there, make sure you like and subscribe. I'll also share details on where you can find Dan's MacBook review. And of course, if you're interested in picking up one of these devices, I can give you some info on where to find them. Cheers, guys,