About the new M1 MacBook Pro :-
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Apple MacBook Pro |
about a week straight daily, and I've only plugged it in once it's pretty incredible. So this was a really fascinating review period we've seen a lot in 2020 and these new M1 Mac are some of the most interesting stuff.
So this is why Apple never really talks about numbers on paper. They don't tell you the gigahertz when they don't have to they don't give you the battery size in milliamp hours and they don't even really like to tell you how much RAM is on the new iPhone but instead what they would rather do is communicate. Kate the experiences and enabled by these pieces so hours of battery life and you know, how much web browsing you can get out of something the video playback time that sort of thing. Now, of course, I still have issues with the way Apple presents their numbers. There's kind of no perfect way to do it not every use case is the same and there isn't really any one just sitting around watching 10 hours of perfectly decoded video in a row, but it's the way that's the way they do it. So now all of this translates to the new Apple,Can Max that all just gained this super tight level of integration thanks to the M1 chip. They were just announced and now they've been in reviewers hands for about a week. So how to translate in real life. Well, I've been testing like I said the M1 MacBook Pro and so that's the one I'm going to refer to most in this Blog and there are really three main bullet points that I was looking forward to actually getting my hands on it for which are the huge performance claims.
The major battery life gains and the whole app compatibility situation
now to be honest the battery life claim. That was the most expected part.
That's the one I expected them to deliver on and they did like I said at the
beginning of this Blog this MacBook Pro has been amazing. So apple is claiming.
They basically doubled the useful battery life in this laptop without changing
the battery size, which is pretty unreal. Like you never really see battery
jumps that big but the truth is yeah, this is An absolute battery Champion, it
might not double in every use case may be just the most efficient most well
optimized use case, but I took this laptop out the box and set it up while
charging to a hundred percent and then I didn't plug it in for four days
totaling a little over 10 hours of mixed use and still had 20 percent left.
So yeah, this battery is tremendous. No doubt about that. Thank you
efficiency. And this by itself would be an incredible Improvement that for some
people would warrant an upgrade to the laptop that they're looking. Look
forward to but then there's also huge claimed performance benefits to we kept
seeing numbers like 3.5 x better CPU performance five times better graphics
performance. Those are also some pretty steep claims. So for measuring real
world performance a lot of people start with benchmarks, so I did too. I
actually tried geekbench before it was updated for Apple silicon and got this
score which already puts it above every laptop. They've ever made and single
core performance and right around the 8 core trash can match Pro for multi-core
performance then it was updated for Apple silicon. And so I ran it again where
it You annihilate the other test posting 1744 on single core, which is faster
than every Intel Mac ever made and the multi-core score 7600 put it up with the
eight core. I'm a Mac Pro. So above all of the other highest and Laptops but
just beyond geekbench like using this thing daily and Mac OS Big Sur, all of
apples native apps, especially Safari are really fast animations are buttery
smooth as you'd expect and even opening and closing some of those bigger apps
like Chrome and Lightroom are just as fast if not faster than on my desktop,
which is sick. It's just an overall really responsive feel now, obviously Apple
highlighted a couple workflows on stage. And usually they're pretty good about
actually delivering what they claim.
They're also very good at picking specific workflows that they know will
deliver based on what they've built but even in my own tests, I'm finding all
sorts of really good performance file transfers of the big files were slightly
faster when compared to my fully loaded 16 inch MacBook Pro thanks to both
faster read and write speeds of the drives. We're talking over three thousand
megabytes per second, right and over twenty five hundred megabytes per second
on the read side that translates to a lot of things like opening up app speed
faster image editing. Unless hiccups while editing video files and I even did a
Final Cut Pro export test. I wouldn't use Final Cut Pro on a 13-inch MacBook
Pro for my own workflow. But I figured I'd give it a shot with a 15-minute
project transcoding and exporting some gameplay footage my 16 inch MacBook Pro
was running Catalina and the Catalina version of Final Cut Pro and the M1
running Big Sur and the new Apple silicon optimized version of Final Cut Pro
and the results May shock you
Or not basically, I saw 10 minutes 50 seconds on the 16 inch MacBook Pro 12
minutes 50 seconds on the M1 and just for fun. I did it on the Mac Pro and got
seven and a half minutes. One thing I did notice though is during this exact
same render situation the 16 inch MacBook Pro spun up the fans to the point
where I could hear them and the M1 MacBook Pro for some reason never decided to
I wonder if they're a little more picky about when they kick up fans on the
smaller MacBook Pro and I wonder if it would have gone faster had they kicked
up the fans. I think it might have throttled. but that's the results. I'm sure
there will be much more exhaustive performance analysis and benchmarking in the
next few weeks and months as the thing gets in more hands. But from what I've
seen so far, it's pretty good. So what's the downside? What's the catch? Well,
the last bullet point is the transition this this app compatibility hiccup that
we might see as this switch happens. So the healthy skeptical take on these is
these are kind of like first Then devices again and because of that if you buy
these you're going to basically be beta testing this whole Apple silicon
experience every Apple silicon-based Mac from here on out will be better than
these they'll all learn from what's wrong with these and so that app
compatibility situation will also only get better my take is after using a
smack the app compatibility situation from my experience is good enough that
I'd be comfortable using this today as my daily laptop.
So there's three types of apps for these Apple silicon. Mac optimized apps
non-optimized apps and iOS and iPad apps. So optimized apps as you may have
figured out are amazing. They perform incredibly well and they sip battery
life. They have like the ideal experience Apple. Love everyone to have but
outside of mainly the Apple apps that are optimized so far building these
optimized apps takes time and that length of time varies. So for smaller Indie
developers, some of them are already working on it for others. It'll take more
time. And even for some of the biggest apps with some of the biggest teams.
They will take a while we heard on stage that the optimized version of
Photoshop Photoshop isn't coming until next year. So that leaves the second
type of app which is the now Optimized app so the app that's basically running
in emulation through Rosetta to so Apple's done this before running
non-optimized apps through Rosetta to just keep them intact and keep them
working even if the developer never lifts a finger so they're not going to be
optimized. They're not going to be perfect. They may even have some hiccups.
But at least they'll just keep everything working while the transition to
optimized apps is happening in the background. Hopefully, I found this to be
mostly true the only app that I regularly use that. It doesn't seem to work for
me is pixelmator pro. So I guess this is what an Compatible app looks like
because it works and downloads fine on every other Mac, but not this one.
Hopefully this can get fixed and updated soon. But yeah Photoshop like we
mentioned will be running the Intel x86 version on these M1 Mac translated
through Rosetta until that optimized version is ready it even says when I go to
Adobe Creative Cloud and download Photoshop. Hey, you're downloading the Intel
version. It might not work perfectly. But at least you can use it in the
meantime all the Apple silicon version is coming and the truth is these apps
seem I run fine. Don't think it'll be perfect across the board. I expect some
apps will have their quirks and bugs, but generally there was nothing fatal or
problematic on my M1 Mac experience aside from whatever is happening with
pixelmator Pro. But if that first geekbench result from the beginning pre
optimization, is any indicator a lot of these non-optimized apps running
through emulation will still see equivalent. If not slightly improved
performance despite not being the perfect optimized version yet, which is
sweet. So then the last type of app IPhone or iPad apps? So now any Mac any Mac
running Big Sur can run iPad or iPhone apps which is kind of cool. I guess I
think apples hoping they can potentially fill in some gaps and entice some more
people to use both platforms. Now if they can claim there's actually more
available apps on Mac OS and ever before fine, but they're still apps that are
mostly designed for touch input instead of a mouse so I don't see myself using
these much look the bottom line is this new M1 MacBook Pro is really
impressive both in Especially and performance and it seems to be even with or
better than the Intel version in just about every way except for the odd
dropped external GPU support and the question mark for most people is how fast
this transition will be for most if not, all of their apps to be great to be
optimized but by the end of that transition this thing could be scary good. So
for the should you buy a question, I would say for the everyday user and for
like the passionate like Inning Creator just getting started. I would say go
for it. There's going to be some amazing work flows available to you that are
just getting optimized to the Perfection of what Apple's imagining and those
are going to be great to jump into now if you're already a professional or if
you're already a Creator you have an established workflow with some critical
apps hear me out. I think let's be patient on this one like it is I think it's
really tempting and obviously this little 13 inch MacBook Pro benchmarking just
above
The bleeding edge 16 inch MacBook Pro is really tempting to just pick this
one up and start using it. But again for the same reason, I don't upgrade my
work computer to the newest OS II it's available. I'm not putting Big Sur on my
work Mac for at least a month. I would also recommend not getting an M1 MacBook
Pro specifically for work. The second is available. You don't want to feel like
your beta testing and then you find out that this one little niche app that you
need for your workflow.
Doesn't work on the Apple silicon Mac and the don't have a timeline for
when they're going to update it. And on top of that. These aren't even really
the high-end Pro machines. This is the Baseline Apple silicon MacBook Pro and there's
a MacBook Air and a Mac Mini. They're still going to be making that big Pro
MacBook and the slow going to make and I Mac Pro and a Mac Pro down the road.
Those are going to be the ones we want to wait for those are going to be the
ones where once that beta testing by people who buy these has done and those
apps start to get upgraded and then we get At those Pro machines that's going
to be where we want to jump in. So as prose as creators, I'm telling you the
patient but if like mom or dad is trying to get a MacBook Air right now. I feel
like it's kind of a no-brainer.That's where we're at. It's a hell of a start
but it is just the start for the M1. Either way. That's been it.
Thanks for Reading.
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