Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The New Apple M1 MacBook Pro Max and M1 MacBook Pro 2021”.
Apple event just ended, and we have many updates to a product to a category I mean we’ve been waiting for updates around here in the studio these products MacBook Pro specifically man, we’ve had every single generation this time around They’re bringing back things. This is probably maybe the most important component. Obviously you got the M1 Pro M1 Max. I don’t. Who cares what they call it? Their chip stuff is out of control right now they are making some uh major progress in the thin and light area uh.
They were showing all kinds of graphs about how these different models are more power efficient and can still get decent battery life and they’re still relatively thin and light uh more screen for your space, because they because they put a a notch on there. Although Will got stressed out when he saw the notch, I don’t really care too much at this point Notch no Notch. I I see what their website I see, what they’re doing we want to have a front-facing camera and apparently they improved that to up to 1080p. But what’s the key thing here: okay, so the key thing, probably uh the the power and then also the versatility, bringing ports back to these devices uh and getting rid of the touch bar. This was all rumored, but of course, it’s official. Now we have an HDMI port, we have an SD card slot. We have magsafe coming back, it’s like a MacBook Pro from 2000 and nine or ten or something it’s all the things that people that use them in a professional manner needed and utilized. And now it’s back and it’s it’s funny because we’re kind of celebrating the existence of these things, even though they were always there, but that’s how Apple does it man they? You know the drones are flying around the campus.
All of a sudden, you want something all of a sudden. You want to spend some money so as far as ports go. Yes, I mentioned SD card slot, that’s going to be a thunderbolt there as well, and then a full-size HDMI super useful dongle life can go away, at least for the most part.
Unless you need some sort of exotic input or output, magsafe is improved. It’S delivering more power now so you’re getting a faster recharge. I believe the it was uh half an hour of charging to give you 50 of your battery life battery life improvements for both models as well: a 14 and a 16, the 16 inches like 20 plus hours of video playback. Now, according to their numbers, you have two more Thunderbolts on that side and a headphone jack that they apparently improved as well yeah there. It is 21 hours battery life. Now the biggest difference between your two chip options appears to be GPU performance they’re both going to have 10 core CPUs. But then what happens in the max model? The max option, which which they’re calling scary faster you’re, going to get up to a 32 core GPU compared to the 16 core GPU on the M1 Pro you’re, also going to be able to kick it all the way up to 64 gigs of unified memory compared To the 32 gig Max, and you can see the difference that that makes for the memory bandwidth now these are everything they showed.
I mean the benchmarks aren’t out there. No one has these things in their hands yet, although you can order them now – and they are shipping next week, but by the looks of it, for people who make videos, cut videos or work on 3D stuff do photo editing use creative applications. I mean I saw some of the specs.
They were talking about with prores, playing back multiple streams of 8K Pro 7 streams or something it sounds crazy. It sounds there, it is seven streams of AK prores video playback, so I don’t know what else anybody wants. I mean they just chucked it all in there and it’s kind of hard to believe that it’s all living inside of a laptop making your expensive Mac Pro pretty much redundant for most ways in which I would use one of these systems. They also stacked it up. Against different PCS, and they they showed some comparisons during the keynote as well, but you can see it’s performance improvements across the board.
Now speaking, uh of the the actual physical laptop, the 14 inches, obviously obviously going to be the lighter of the two. Both of them have more pixels than the previous generation 16-inch bro, the uh 14 inch model is coming in at three and a half pounds and the uh a 16 inch model, I believe, is 4.7 pounds somewhere around there. So that’s more kind of your typical weight or the weight that you’re used to with the previous generation MacBook Pro it does. This does make the existing 13-inch Pro feel like it doesn’t deserve the name Pro comparatively speaking, tons of SSD options as well. All the way up to eight terabytes and 7.4 gigabytes per second of throughput.
How is it all going to stay cool, we’re going to have to wait and see on that? But apparently it’s similar as far as the thinness is concerned and the 14 inch is going to be even a little bit Slimmer than the 16. You have a promotion display up to 120 hertz. So that’s a nice little touch liquid retina, xdr and they’re, saying you know darker blacks and just better display overall and then the crazy part for me, because I do have two of those xdr displays that feature 6K resolution you’re going to be able to drive off Of these laptops up to three 6K displays, plus another 4k monitor now up until this point with anything other than a multi-gpu Mac.
Pro the only way to drive that many pixels to external displays uh. Well, you couldn’t, there was no device that was doing it. The M1 Mac Mini the other M1 laptops – it was a single 6K display is what you were stuck with here. We have some resolution numbers 3456 by 2234 and the 16.2 inch the measurements are kind of funky.
The way they did it, because, obviously you have a notch in the center but you’re getting the full diagonal. I don’t know that they’re subtracting the notch, but anyway 3456 by 2234 and the 16.2 for 254 PPI. The PPI is the same across both of them.
It’S 30 24 by 1964 on d14.2 inch. Another thing I noticed these feet on the bottom of the laptop: is it strictly designed or is it going to serve a purpose for cooling? Are these things gon na get hot with all that horse, but I don’t know, but it is it does it takes a second for me visually to adapt, because I can’t remember the last time they had feet that were that substantial. They also got rid of the touch bar.
They got rid of the things people didn’t like they added back the things people missed, they improved the front-facing camera, so it’s 1080p HD. Now that thing was way overdue to be updated. They did not speak about Face Unlock face ID, so I’m a little curious about that. I don’t seems to me that it didn’t get added.
The notch is a little bit of a stick out. I don’t know, is it going to be? Is it going to divide the audiences quite possibly, but if you enable dark mode, it might disappear a little bit more, so you might have to come into your styling. There dark mode, dark background.
You’Ll uh, hopefully notice it a little bit less. They also in the past have been some of the best performers. As far as audio is concerned, whether it’s recording through the built-in mics with the low noise floor or whether it’s the sound system itself delivering typically a lot more bass than what you’re getting on equivalent PC models. I mean I’ve tested. So many and Apple has figured out how to deliver audio in small uh devices.
I scroll up a little bit more. There will just to mention the keyboard, so the keyboard is quite a bit different, at least visually. Now it’s completely black and it’s Chiclet style still, but it’s it’s just looking at it. It’S all.
It’S all in one section one unit and you can see where that touch bar disappeared. It’S been replaced by traditional Keys, as you would want from Escape to volume and so forth. So at this point it looks like rip touch bar uh. The trackpad still looks large, that all looks similar from a form factor perspective.
Uh, spatial audio, of course, is in there as well. Look this thing: it’s it’s for pro users, it’s starting at 2, 000 bucks. So it’s a you know, not everybody’s gon na jump in there and order one and when you go by the way and configure this thing, you’re gon na probably be able to come up with some pretty crazy price tags. So the 14 inch available in two base settings before you go in and custom configure it.
You can get the eight core CPU and a 14 core GPU 16 gigs of memory and 512 gigs of storage starting at 19.99. So that’s the model that they uh referenced in the keynote as your starting price, 67 watt, USBC power adapter. I just noticed that so they give you a weaker power adapter as well.
You get 96 watt. If you step up to the next version, they have Touch, ID built in ports are all the same, and the difference is just going to be your storage and your horsepower. It’S a 500 difference now, if Will goes ahead and clicks on the 14 inch now, let’s just do a custom 14 inch and see what that’s going to be, and I should also mention available in silver and available in space gray. So two color options basically just light and dark. I don’t know probably space gray for me, but whatever maybe silver, it’s shipping October 25th.
These are U.S prices that we’re referencing by the way. So now he’s on the customizer and let’s get crazy on this 14 inch. Go ahead and give us the the M1 Max 10 core, with wait, scroll back up with the 32 core GPU, yes, and then give us the 64 gigs unified memory and give us the eight terabytes of storage right on you. That’S a 6 000 USD dollar.
I mean, let’s be specific: okay, it’s fifty nine hundred dollars, seven to ten business days, shipping, oh my God, that is an expensive 14 inch laptop all right. Now, let’s get crazy will and head over to the 16 inch model. Now, let’s look at the the options.
Okay, so out the gate here, there’s three to choose from Two Pro Models: One Max model, so you get two kind of Base models comparative to the 14 inch uh. What happens here? They all have the same power adapter. So it’s a 140 Watt.
That’S going to be a brick, that’s probably going to be the largest power adapter that Apple has ever shipped that’d, be my guess, uh. The difference here is all about once again: storage, unified memory and the GPU, because when you go to the max model, you double your GPU from 16 core to 32 core and then that’s where all those uh benchmarks for graphics performances go way up. So thirty five hundred dollars for the top pre-configuration and twenty five hundred dollars for the entry point on on the 16 inch. Now, let’s go ahead and just get crazy with it like we did previous and put the 64 gigs unified memory on there and put the eight terabytes of storage and things are going to get wow. That’S I we cracked six thousand dollars USD. That was my guess. Wasn’T it? I said 6 000, and here we are at 6100., what an expensive laptop, but I’m not trying to complain because, honestly, you probably don’t even need to get that crazy with it and what they’re doing with M1 is kind of the most non-negotiable. No argument type of stuff in the tech world – it’s not like the phones or other segments where Apple plays in the performance they’ve been able to deliver in the form factor, they’ve been able to deliver the only problem. The only people I can see upset about it are those that purchased the previous Hardware, people who spent a ton of money on recently, let’s say on MacBook Pros or let alone, Mac pros and they’re sitting. That they’re now saying wait a second. I can power more 6K monitors from my laptop than from this enormous desktop wait. A second I’m actually getting better benchmarks.
I’M dealing with prores video footage better on my laptop than on my expensive desktop, which takes two people to lift it up. So if you’re, a video editor, if you’re into a creative business whatsoever, if you’re into photo editing and such and or if you plan on getting into it at some point, 3D work and things like this uh, it’s just pretty amazing. What they’ve been able to do with M1 in general and now coming into M1 Pro and M1 Max? I guess I got to go ahead and order one of these real quick.
They also talked about air pods today, there’s a new base model air pod, but funny enough they’re going to still sell you, the second generation. So that gives you four to choose from right. You have the airpods second generation, airpods third generation airpods Pro and airpods Max.
This third generation fits between second and pro. The fit looks a little bit more like the pro it has spatial audio in there. Of course, it costs more money than the second generation and the other cool thing I saw is they added magsafe charging I’m curious about the fit.
I know some people say the second generation and every airpod before it had trouble staying in their ear now this doesn’t have a silicone tip or anything like that, but it does look to have a look to be a slightly different shape, so we’ll see how that Works for people fitting in the ear, but I mean airpods were well aware. We understand incredibly dominant product. This is not the biggest apple event right.
It’S a just a couple of extra products leading up to the holidays here, trying to juice the remainder of that money. If you bought the new phone, they talked about a homepod mini a little bit and they talked about voice. I think they want more people using Siri because uh they came up with the Apple music subscription, that’s half price, but it’s called voice. Specifically, it’s lacking certain features but uh and then and then the homepod mini in a number of different colors to choose from so you can put one all over your house starting at. I guess a hundred bucks. So, for me, the most significant development here, the new chips from Apple, a little bit disappointed that we didn’t get to see anything in a desktop style.
Well, it’s not an iMac Pro. It’S not a Mac Mini Pro and it’s certainly not a Mac Pro pro with M1 in it. But if this is any kind of indication of what’s to come, then we are moving towards some pretty intense computing power inside of small form factors and uh Apple is really setting a bar when it comes to laptop chips.
Uh all chips, chips, computer chips, go get your chips; .