So when these new Mac Pros were revealed, the first thing that came to mind was, “What’s up with that?
I’m wondering whether the Travel iMac can be retired “Because some of you may not know, anytime I’ve gone to a tech event where I planned to make a blog post in the previous couple of years, I’ve physically packed up a maxed out iMac Pro, placed it in a gigantic Pelican case, and hauled it with me.
You’ll see me rolling this massive box behind me through the airport on numerous occasions.
That’s because it’s the smallest machine I could bring to one of those events that could render, edit, and export a video in a reasonable amount of time.
Apple’s switch to silicon for Macs has been rather impressive.
And I believe this is the first time I can genuinely claim anything is on its way up.
These laptops were incredible.
These are the new 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook Pros for 2021.
And they’re fantastic for a variety of reasons.
At the end of the day, they’re merely tools for completing a task.
And the truth is that everyone wants to accomplish something slightly different.
It’s creating these blogs for me.
So we’ll get to it in a minute, but man, these computers have come a long way on both the inside and exterior.
So let’s begin from the outside in.
As a result, these laptops have a brand new top of the
line design.
Although it still looks like a MacBook Pro,
I enjoy almost all of the upgrades.
So the whole thing is a little squared off, and it looks a little like one of those old metal PowerBooks, except more updated.
And, simply aesthetically, you can see that they’ve made these computers thicker, substantially thicker, which I appreciate.
It offers a lot of advantages, and it also stands a little higher on those taller feet, allowing you more room for the back and side vents for enhanced ventilation.
Although I’ve never heard the fans on these laptops start up.
On the rear, a somewhat larger Apple logo.
Also, where they are etched in the MacBook Pro text, there is now a small etching at the bottom.
As you may have observed, there are now ports that can be used.
There are real ports, and this shouldn’t be a big concern, but it’s one of the few things Apple has reversed from the previous few years of MacBook Pros that didn’t have them.
So, while celebrating them seems a little foolish, I’m glad they’re back.
Welcome back, there’s a full
–
sized HDMI
port on the right side.
There’s also a Thunderbolt 4 port as well as a full
size, half
depth SD card slot.
This is stunning.
Every time I write a blog, I record audio on an SD card.
I use them frequently, and it’s been a long time since I simply plugged an SD card into a computer.
So far, this has been entertaining.
T
hen there are two more Thunderbolt 4 ports, a headphone jack, and the magnetic MagSafe charging port has made a comeback on the left side.
So, here are a few views on this port choice.
First and foremost, MagSafe is back, but this time it’s different.
I’ve never used a MagSafe machine on a regular basis before, but this one is newer, slimmer, and substantially stronger.
It has a lot more lateral strength than the machine requires to pull it out.
So it snaps out more easier the second there’s any angle on it, but it still feels MagSafe to me, far safer than if USB-C was plugged straight in.
Then there’s this massive charging brick.
So, this is the 96-
watt power adapte
r that comes with the 14
inch MacBook Pro,
an improvement over the 67-
watt standard model.
Then there’s the 16
–
inch MacBook Pro’s
massive rectangular 140
–
watt charging brick.
But it’s good that the brick is separate from the braided USB
–
C cable with MagSafe on the other end,
though I’m not sure why the space gray laptop doesn’t come with a space gray MagSafe connector as well.
It would have been a great touch if you had done it.
Even though 140 watts is a lot of power, you can use MagSafe to quickly charge these computers.
It charges in around half an hour, which is nice, but you can unplug it and just put it in via USB-C if you don’t want to.
It’ll still be around 96 Watts if you’re a one
–
charger for everyone like me.
So it’s not as quick as before, but it’s still quite excellent.
Now it’s time to talk about the headphone jack.
During Apple’s presentation, you may have noticed that they indicated that the headphone jack would now accommodate high impedance headphones.
What exactly does that imply?
Well, if you have to ask, it probably doesn’t apply to you, but there’s an entire ecosystem of headphones out there that require considerably higher levels of power to achieve true volume.
High impedance headphones are what they’re called.
At the studio, I have a few of pairs.
As a result, the impedance of a common connected pair of headphones, such as your Beats or ATH-M50s, may be 20
–
50 Ohm.
The high
impedance headphones
have a resistance of more than 100 Ohms.
As a result, they won’t sound like much.
If you put these into practically anything with a headphone jack, the volume will be quite low.
As a result, users of these headphones will need to carry an external Thunderbolt deck, which is merely a little plug – in device.
So, assuming these headphone jacks are powerful enough, that’s one less dongle you’ll have to lug around, right?
So, for my audiophile friends out there, the pre
–
amps here are excellent,
and they obviously pump out more power, but this isn’t some wonderful, ultra
–
clean deck
or anything.
The MacBook Pro M1 sounded comfortable at maximum volume when using these Beyer
dynamic
DT 770 PROs, which are 250 ohm headphones.
At roughly 65 percent volume, the new MacBook Pros reached the same level.
As a result, there was a positive change.
They don’t sound as good as the specialist amp you’d need to pack, but if you’re in a hurry and only have one set of headphones, you can plug them in directly.
And that’s kind of cool since it saves you a dongle.
To be honest, that’s kind of the theme of all of these ports; for example, the HDMI port is only HDMI 2.0, not 2.1, for whatever reason.
And it’s a little bothersome that such a high
–
end computer d
oesn’t have the most up
to
date components,
but HDMI 2.0 still supports 4K 60.
As a result, it works well with any projector or television.
It’ll do in a pinch, and it’ll save you a dongle.
SDXC cards can be used in the SD card slot.
Only UHS
–
2 speeds
are available.
As a result, it does not support the newer, faster UHS
–
3,
however it still supports UHS
–
2
at 300 megabytes per second.
In a pinch, one less dongle is a good thing.
As a result, it’s a high-priced computer.
I could have obtained the higher
–
end ports with ease.
It’s obviously a slam on them, but as I previously stated, it’s more of a convenient thing in a pinch.
What’s more, you know what?
Since we’re on the subject of ports, what would’ve been cool?
On the power brick, Ethernet is installed.
Remember the M1 iMac, which had something like gigabit ethernet embedded into the brick?
I believe MacBook Pro consumers would prefer ethernet without the need for a dongle on the laptop, but they did not.
But, in any case, it’s kind of amusing that they’re going backwards on the last four years of MacBook Pros and actually adding ports to them.
It’s not something they do on a regular basis.
So that gets a thumbs up from me.
However, when it comes to going backwards, there is no touch bar.
So these MacBook Pros have a new keyboard that’s all buttons and actual physical keys.
As a result, the touch bar has been replaced with a full row of full
height physical function keys
at the top.
It’s a bad the touch bar never lived up to its full potential, and I’ll miss the two times I used it for audio fitting shortcuts in Final Cut Pro or fast
forwarding
scrubbing through Instagram videos on the desktop, but these buttons are far superior.
In addition, the entire keyboard is an improvement over the previous year’s.
It’s lighted, the keys feel fantastic and travel reasonably well, the touch ID button in the corner works very swiftly and dependably, and it’s subtle, but the entire keyboard is embedded in this black, anodized rectangle, which I love.
It’s a thoughtful touch.
The black keys will undoubtedly show fingerprints and a little more skin oil than the lighter keys on other machines, but that’s something I’m ready to accept.
The speakers are excellent, especially on the 16
inch model,
which has the biggest, richest, and greatest speakers I’ve ever heard in a laptop.
Also upgraded are the studio microphones, but that gets us to the front of this laptop.
Let’s take a look at the front.
So these new exhibits are both impressive on paper and in person.
It’s a 10
–
bit panel.
They’re small LED displays with HDR, 16 x 10, and practically 4K high refresh rates.
I mean, all the boxes are ticked, and then there’s the notch at the top.
So, the screens are incredible.
It’s essentially a mini
–
pro display
with a better pixel density and refresh rate than the XDR.
It doesn’t look all that different from prior MacBook Pros, after all.
While you’re not utilizing it most of the time, it does attain that 1600
–
nits maximum brightness
when watching HDR content, which is fantastic.
And the narrower bezels all the way around were long overdue, and I’m glad it’s still the taller 16 x 10 aspect ratio underneath the menu bar.
Then there’s Promotion, which is intriguing.
This is referred to as the adaptive refresh rate.
Even while flying about the UI, Max, it’s not always maxing out at 120 Hertz. We’re already really fluid at 60, but I can tell this isn’t always going to 120 Hertz.
As an example, consider scrolling in Safari.
Safari, it appears, still requires an update in order to enable the highest adaptive frame rate.
However, there are a number of places where a faster refresh rate is noticeable.
I mean, sliding between places and other large flowy stuff like the genie animation for shrinking that stuff, and moving your mouse around a lot.
I mean, it’s incredible.
Changing the order of events in a Final Cut timeline.
That’s also really smooth.
The greater frame rate is obvious at this point, and the extra smoothness is appreciated.
So this isn’t the first time you’ve seen a little LED display.
This isn’t the first laptop to feature HDR technology.
It’s not the first laptop with a high – refresh – rate screen, but when you combine all of these features, such as the 10
–
bit display and lower bezels,
it’s a fantastic display.
So, how about we chat about the top
–
notch design?
I
n the
notch, there are only a few objects.
It’s Apple’s new 1080P webcam, which suddenly looks completely acceptable.
There’s also a small ambient light sensor and a little LED light, but that’s about it.
For that hardware, the notch couldn’t possibly be that large.
I mean, I’ll wait for the fixit takedown, but you didn’t need this much room, right?
As a result, it’s an odd option.
And it’s easy to gripe about this when you’re not using the laptop, but there are two issues.
One, I believe Apple is now using this as part of their design language.
Because of the notch, this is a recognizable laptop silhouette.
However, we feel that it is what it is, but it also turns out that putting a notch right here in the portion of the screen that you don’t notice too much when using a laptop is fine.
For those who are curious, the mouse goes underneath it, and the software appears to handle the screen as if it doesn’t have a notch.
When you snap a screenshot or record a screencast, the display is still drawn with all of its pixels.
And whenever you go full screen with anything, the entire menu bar turns black.
And it appears like the top bezel thickens somewhat, and the small LED is surrounded by a very dark black bezel.
The notch never cuts into any of the text.
Consider it as a way to get rid of the extra display that you didn’t have before.
They’ve simply crammed the menu bar onto that extra display.
When you have a lot of menu bar items in an app, you get some strange peculiarities.
It runs those things just beneath the notch, and it’s evident that something needs to be fixed with a software update, such as making them scrollable or adding an expansion button or something.
So it’s like, okay, people are building custom apps to completely black out the top half of the display to hide the notch, which, if you really despise it, you should make sure you have that choice.
But, as I promised, it never cuts anything off when you’re actually using the laptop and you’re in apps and things are full screen.
As though you’re concentrating on what’s on the screen.
It vanishes considerably more than it did on the phones’ smaller screens.
But, if the next edition of this laptop keeps the same notch and doesn’t add a facial ID, I’m going to dress like Linus and wear socks and sandals for the day.
I mean, they’ve had to be thinking about placing it there at some point, right?
It’s almost pointless to describe how good it feels to spin about Mac OS Monterrey because, of course, it’s great.
It has the rounded corners up top, much like I got the enhanced notification management.
It has a simple mouse
–
over to Quick
Notes in the bottom corner.
We understand all of that, and we appreciate the wonderful features, but we’re here for the performance.
At the Apple event, Apple stated, “We want to see if it’s genuinely as fantastic as those graphs.”
Warning: this article contains spoilers.
They’re both exceptional performers.
So I’ve got a few different specifications here.
This is the 14inch version of the M1 Pro.
I’ve also been putting a 16
–
inch monitor
to the test.
So I’ll get to the distinctions between the M1 Max and M1 Pro and all that in a second, but know that they’re both fantastic.
When it comes to performance benchmarks, I believe that everyone is seeking for the “ideal” benchmark that will ensure that it will function best for their individual workflow.
As I previously stated, these are tools, and based on what I’ve seen, it appears that a benchmark result exists for almost every use case for these so far.
In terms of synthetic benchmarks, it has the highest single Geekbench CPU score of any Mac I’ve ever seen.
And multi-core positioned it perfectly around the 18 – core iMac.
I also tested it through Cinebench, and it scored extremely well on single core, and here’s how it compares on multi-core.
But when I say these computers are next level, I mean it since their real-world performance and capabilities far above anything they could possibly do.
Obviously, we are aware of the increased memory bandwidth.
The increased number of GPU cores is known.
And I adore the 10, 15, and 25% improvements that come with all of that.
The vertical integration was successful.
However, there are components of this microprocessor that Apple designed specifically for this reason.
And it’s next level for those purposes.
So these laptop CPUs contain a media engine, which includes a ProRes accelerator.
There are two of these on the M1 Max.
You can see where we’re going with this, video professionals.
Working with ProRes at all on these machines is a huge improvement.
Encoding a video using a compressor, for example, is 10 times faster than it was with Intel MacBook Pros.
That’ll take you to the next level.
As I previously stated, these computers are, and that is why I am enthusiastic about them.
I also work with video.
So, let’s see how Final Cut Pro handles it.
As I previously stated, I edited the latest film, the complete AirPods 3 review, on the 16
–
inch
M1
Max Mac Book Pro in various settings around the studio and at home, both plugged in and on batteries.
And it handled it astonishment, astonishment, astonishment, astonishment, Aston
Keep in mind that this is unprocessed 8K REDCODE footage.
It’s a blend of V
–
RAPTOR shots
with low and medium compression.
And, just like on the desktop, on the Mac Pro, I can bend the color and raw data, navigate all across the timeline, and chop things up very quickly and seamlessly without glitches.
As a result, the playback was of high quality rather than high performance.
So, exactly with the Mac Pro, I’m receiving a lot of resolution and only loosing a handful of frames here and there.
One of my methods for determining whether a computer is choking or straining is to time how long it takes to push the play button or the space bar on ungendered footage.
And, as you can see, when it starts to play back, the latency is less than a quarter of a second.
That’s the best version of Final Cut I’ve ever seen.
So the only thing that concerned me was that the audio waveform previews took longer to load a number of times while I was pinching and zooming into different portions of the timeline.
And I believe it has something to do with RAM.
Of course, the M1 Max has only 64 GB of RAM, but the Mac Pro I used to edit had 768 GB.
So it’s understandable that I noticed a difference there, but after the edit was complete and it was time to export it, I, of course, transferred the file to numerous computers and exported it the same way on each one just to check how it went.
So, the 14-
inch M1 Pro
MacBook Pro exported the entire thing in 6 minutes and 40 seconds.
It’s actually rather good.
In five minutes and 42 seconds, the $50,000 28
–
core Mac Pro
completed the identical task.
The M1 Max Mac Pro, often known as the MacBook Pro, completed the task in four minutes and six seconds.
As a result, the MacBook Pro easily outperformed the Mac Pro when it came to exporting the project.
And it’s not like export timings, four minutes, five minutes, whatever, are all that important at this level.
However, the fact that it has already beaten the Mac Pro is absurd.
I also accomplished it without being plugged in, which means I didn’t lose any battery life.
While exporting, the battery’s capacity declined by 2%, from 96 to 94 percent.
You may have heard that there are many performance profiles.
This is also true for the MacBook Pro 16
–
inch
.
It was fun to experiment with these.
I just kept it on automatic most of the time because it would just do its job with no hiccups and I could edit just fine.
But, just for fun, I enabled the 16inch high power option, which should allow the chips to run at full throttle more frequently, spin up the fans a little bit more, and so on.
Despite the fact that I never heard the fans, the export time was even faster, at three minutes and 49 seconds.
Jesus,
On top of that, the plugin package I use, Motionvfx, is constantly updating their products to include Apple Silicon support, which is fantastic.
To be honest, I think it’s a no –
brainer at this point.
The Travel iMac is no longer available.
Everything can be edited safely on a laptop, but Final Cut Pro is just one example.
There’s a lot more to see.
If you watch The Verge’s review, you’ll notice that they conducted a lot of Adobe work, and you can see their amazing findings, including the fact that the latest version of After Effects is now taking advantage of multithreaded GPU rendering.
They also demonstrated that it outperformed the mobile RTX 3080 in Premiere editing.
There are also some positive reviews from music producers and sound designers who appreciate having a whisper
–
quiet PC
that
can process a lot more audio effects and is portable.
And Tyler Stallman created an excellent video reviewing the laptop for photographers, in which the M1 Max’s laptop is twice as quick as a 2018 MacBook Pro at importing and generating previews, among other things.
He also simultaneously opens all of his apps and streams a lot of ProRes videos next to one other, and you guessed it.
It doesn’t even make a blinking motion.
There’s also a fantastic tweet from a Reddit staff engineer.
The machine is halving the time it takes to construct their Android app, and some quick calculation suggests that buying a bunch of them, a bunch of these laptops, would save them a lot more money than they’d spent.
Basically, these experiences are all based on the apps you use as a professional and how well they are optimized.
Apple’s apps are among the first to receive updates right out of the box.
So, while the version of Final Cut Pro that I use is excellent, more of them will be updated in the future and benefit from the improvements.
I didn’t even mention battery life, yet it manages to accomplish all of these high
–
performance stuff
while
simultaneously being quite efficient.
So, if you want quick charging, you already have it.
However, I discovered that the 16-
inch
with the 100-
watt
hour battery
lasts slightly
longer than the 14
inch with the 70
watt
hour battery,
and that the M1 Pro lasts slightly longer than the M1 Max.
It turns out that those GPU cores operate a little hotter and consume a little more electricity.
However, the 16-
inch M1 Pro
is the best option if you want the greatest battery life.
Nonetheless, they all have about the same battery life as the M1 MacBook Pro, which is to say the best in class for all-
day use.
You can still beat it in four hours if you’re just sitting on battery and editing video in high power mode the entire time.
Fast charging, on the other hand, proves to be really handy.
So, what do you think?
Here’s what I’d suggest.
If you’re a professional who works on a laptop and you’re using an earlier version or you’re hitting the limits of one of these, you might want to have a look at one of these new MacBook Pros.
Yes, you could pick one up and be very, very happy, I am confident in stating.
The true choice, in my opinion, is between the M1 Pro and M1 Max, as well as the 14-inch and 16-inch screens.
For myself, I’m going with a 16-
inch M1 Max j
ust because I need the extra GPU cores.
And I wish I could go with the 14 inch maxed out, which can be maxed up to the same exact specs as a 16 inch with perhaps minor thermal variances; they’ll run similarly, but I want the larger screen for video editing.
So I’m going to fill my large laptop to the brim.
So, what’s the difference between the M1 Pro and the M1 Max?
The M1 Max is the most powerful, however it depletes your battery life a little.
So I’d recommend upgrading just if you require the additional GPU cores, and you’ll be able to see if your software is supported.
I’m not even going to pretend to play games on a Mac.
However, some people do.
And, theoretically, the M1 Max would be better at handling it.
But, as I stated at the outset, this is a tool, and it happens to be a fantastic tool at what it does.
It also happens to be next level at a number of things for which it was developed and optimized.
As a result, many experts, including myself, will be really pleased with these.
There will also be a large number of people who do not require this level of processing capacity but have a large sum of money to spend on a good laptop.
It’s also an excellent laptop.
So I can’t say I blame you.
That’s nice as well, but I’m just glad I can finally say that I’ll be editing videos on a laptop, which is fantastic.
And, yes, it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to claim something is truly next level, but these are.
To be honest, it’s one of my favorite products of the year.
I’m also looking forward to the arrival of the Apple Silicon Mac Pro desktop; that thing is going to be ridiculous.
In any case, that concludes our look at the laptops.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Peace.