Maybe the 14" model seems a bit thick relative to its small size (but not "so thick" and "almost comical" as you said). And the 16" model seems perfect to me, not thick at all. It's a pro machine! Have you ever seen a PC laptop with a NVIDIA GPU?
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Hands-On With the New M2 Max MacBook Pro
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I am loving the M2 Max MPB. I upgraded from the M1 Max mostly Because I under bought last time to make sure it was what I wanted. I’m mostly the same device but finally got more Ram which I needed
Wow, that's so much RAM, do you mind telling me why do you need all that RAM? Max Tech on his YouTube channel says 16GB is enough for almost everybody! 😀
How much ram (or unified memory, before someone corrects me!) did you get out of interest? And are you looking to use for photo/video?
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Good video. But disappointing to see lower SSD speeds than M1 Pro models for 512GB model.
Windows Box: Test VMs (mostly older versions of Windows), Docker containers, Rhino3D w/ VRay, SOLIDWORKS; (usually all at once). Now with the 4090, some ML experiments will be in the near future. (No more rebooting into Bootcamp for this guy.)
Mac: A couple hundred Safari/Chrome tabs, Docker, SecuritySpy, Rhino3D and a lot of Visual Studio projects (Python & NodeJS), plus 7 external displays (3x TB, 1x HDMI, 3x DisplayLink).
I know you can laugh at it, and the upsides of choosing function over form are heard by Apple, etc.
I personally own a 2019 model 15” MPB with Touch Bar, and for my work I have an M1 Pro MBP 14”
The 2019 model has the flawed Touch Bar, drains battery quickly, fans spin up for no reason… and the M1 Pro is so fast, quiet and long battery life… but… but….
Simply looking at the 2019 MBP makes me drool (it still does), IMHO the “pinnacle” of a design….
The M1 Pro MBP… well, nope. The thickness makes it look old, the notch… man, the notch….
Im a graphic designer and photographer my workflow isnt intense but is ram hungry my 2020 i9 iMac has 64gb and I eat through that easily. My m1 MacBook Air 8x8 16 1tb I max that without trying.
So my daily workflow on my production machine which is right now as we speak. Ive just got to the studio and woke my iMac from yesterday. I have outlook, safari with 2 tabs, Apple Music, excel, word, messages, acrobat, Photoshop, indesign, illustrator and Lightroom open. Currently it's using 53gbs on my iMac with 1.51gb used as swap.
This to me is all day every day I use these apps on and off all day and often will have a few more. Obviously the more ram you have the more it will use but like I said I dont think the above is probably too indifferent to any working pro. Im also not currently exporting anything, if I put out 50 raw files from Lightroom then it would max it easily, video exports would crawl with this usage.
Using indesign, photoshop, Lightroom and illustrator and them just being open can use 20gbs on their own once its loaded your preferences etc.
Ideally I would like 128gbs but as ive mentioned in other threads going from 8 to 16gb is a £200 increase, 16 to 32gb is £400 and 32 to 64 means you have to go to the M2 Max which adds another £650.
64gb extra for my iMac is about £150 on amazon atm to make it 128gb so £300 in total which isnt much more than the 8gb increase from apple. Ye im making money off my machine but there is spending money for Apples benefit and with these new SOCs yes they are fantastic but buying these machines has got really expensive.
I also love my iMac it was about £4000 but its the screen, spending £1500 on the studio display to me is crazy as I have a 2017 5K iMac at home which was an old machine repurposed and those were about £1799 for the base model new with a full computer in them.
My workflow isnt power hungry so I dont really like teh fact you have to go up in CPU/GPU to get more ram. In the past you could buy a base model and max the ram yourself.
The i9 27" iMacs have gone up in value in the UK as they are comparable to the M1 Pro but you can put your own ram in them and you get a screen worth £1500. They are selling for nearly 80% value 3 years on.
So ye I think Apple are seriously squeezing the pros at the top end for ram and SSD that is relatively essential for most even average pro users imo. I dont really care that the ram is unified, yes its more efficient but you cant get around the fact data is data and if you use it then you need it.
If your at the entry Level its a revelation, but by the base M2 Mac mini at £599 and add the 512gb SSD your spending £200 more which is 33% its original value! Absolutely bonkers.
This is why max tech is making such a big deal about the SSD speed. Apple knows that 8gbs and 16gbs isnt enough but having fast SSDs of 4000-6000mbs means the swap will be unnoticeable to "almost everyone". The issue is once you have some data and normal people dont tend to worry about how much they fill the drive. This means that once you get the drive to about 75-80% the computer will really struggle to perform as it should. When you consider the base models are 256 and the OS/Apps probably consume 30-80gbs. Data is used quickly. Sync your messages (mine is 60gbs) iCloud Drive etc your machine quickly starts to bloat. It doesn't leave a lot of room for the swap and the graphic portion of the chip also shares the ram.
Then add the fact that the base models of 256 and 512 are running at half the speed of the last generation at 1500-2000mbs all of a sudden there is a lot of pressure on the system to perform as advertised. Which is why the speed of the SSDs is a big deal.
So ye you can get away 16gb and I do on my MacBook Air but the amount of swap is ridiculous and the computer will crawl when you need to export. I would suggest Max tech is speaking to a huge audience. Pros are probably 5% of the audience in reality as most know what they need and dont need the breakdown they provide in that level of detail. The rest will be enthusiasts/prosumers. When one of these people might do one project on the weekend a pro might do 2-3 a day which is where these differences become big gains over time.
Needs and wants, if you are pressuring your machine you know about it. If you're not you probably dont need to worry. Max tech is trying to save people money at the end of the day.
Its funny that in the M1 reviews they were saying most will get away with 8gbs but in this round of M2 they were saying if you can get as much as you can afford.
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The weight of the 16" is only a minor issue for me. What's more of an issue is the weight combined with the increased size. All of my gear bags were made for 15" laptops. The 16" fits into all of them, but it's a squeeze in some and will sit a little bit funny and cause the bag to bulge. The result is that the pack doesn't feel as balanced.
For me, the 16" is not that much heavier and not that much larger, but in combination it's more awkward to carry.
It is not really the thickness, but rather the squareness of the new laptops that makes them...look unappealing.
One hallmark of past Apple products was that they look so good, you want one even if you don't need one (and the product itself may actually be underwhelming, for example the G4 cube or the TAM).
The look of the M1/2 MBP may work in 2006, but after how sleek the retina and the Touchbar MBP looked, a move back to the circa 2006 design just feels like a step backwards.
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Tell me you're not a pro, without telling me you're not a pro...
CFExpress cards are absolutely NOT the standard lmao huh??? Those cards are used by videographers who shoot high performance codecs, and maybe also by some photographers who shoot sports and need very fast write speeds. But other than that, a V90 SD card or even a V60 is more than enough to shoot most codecs and resolutions nowadays. So, what about pros who don't need more than 200mb/s speeds, for example? Like sound engineers... Even sound engineers working on feature films don't use v60 SD cards, a v30 with 200mb/s speeds will suffice... Lots of media don't require CFExpress speeds...
It's still too niche for Apple or any laptop manufacturer to include it into their body design. Also, because CFExpress card readers are expensive on their own to begin with anyway, so to include it into a motherboard and body design would make the overall price quite a bit more expensive for something that very few people actually would use... Make it make sense lol
And if you're talking about productions shooting with 8K RED or ARRI cameras who do indeed use high-speed memory storage solutions, they sure as hell don't edit on a MacBook Pro laptop... Any one of your possible arguments on this statement of yours is dead in the water dude
SD was never a card for professional video workflows, it was always used by consumer products. But SD is still the only general purpose card that consumers use (Pocket 4K, 6K, Ursa Mini, 3D printers, audio recorders, etc...). Whereas for an arguably professional video workflow you will use CFast (not CF express and not SD) on cameras like the Alexa Mini and RAW recording on the Ursas and Canon Cinema line or XQD on the Sony FX6/FX9. But in that case you will have a dedicated reader that comes with the camera. So SD is the only one that makes sense to have built in, since you're kind of expected to always have access to it. Everything else is so fragmented and changing all the time that no matter which one you get in the laptop, it will only be useful 10% of the time.
I'd say if you're going to have one card reader in a laptop, make it the one that most people will use for most things most of the time: the SD card. Everything else is a very specific use-case and will remain that way long after the laptop is obsolete.
The SSD issues with the M2 base models are actually a public service by Apple. They do not want anyone who has the older M1 Macs to be tempted. They are telling you "Dude! it's only a one and a half year old model, DO NOT UPGRADE! Wait till next year!"
Thank you Apple!
That's what I love about them. They are so considerate. They only think about what's in the best interest of their customers. ❤️❤️❤️
Thank you Apple!
That's what I love about them. They are so considerate. They only think about what's in the best interest of their customers. ❤️❤️❤️
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I think you meant Moonlight?Whats Midnight? Always interested in remote connection stuff
I was checking as well so here's a quick rundown for those who don't want to google it.
Moonlight Game Streaming: Play Your PC Games Remotely
Moonlight allows you to play your PC games remotely on almost any device.
moonlight-stream.org
So it seems geared to the gaming world, but don't see why it wouldn't work in the 'business' world as well. I've had some success with VMWare, but they don't convert the ARM version of Win 11 so you have to go thru hoops to get a valid .ISO to do the install, Parallels worked right away and has been running just fine for my user.
I'm going to spend the day with Moonlight to see how that runs/works and go from there!
It depends on price really. I bought a M1 Pro 1 TB based on rumors stating we were looking at March-2H 23 for M2 Pro macs. I also got it on sale for $2k. While I somewhat wish I had waited as I could have waited till early January for it, extending my budget another 20% would have been difficult.
I suspect we will shortly see the MBP I bought refurbed for $1800 and seen as a great deal...when it isn't. I'd only start looking at the M1 Pros if its $1500 or less.
My take on these new machines is if you have an M1 Pro there's no need to upgrade at all, if you have an older machine these will be your dream computer due to how fast they are, and if you need the fastest SSD speeds get the 1TB model or higher. Not sure why Apple couldn't just stick to the dual-SSD method from 2 years ago, extra storage costs extra money even if it's "only" a couple hundred more dollars.
Either this testing is flawed, or this it the first computer ever where writing to disk is faster than reading.
I see that a lot on Mac SSD benchmarks. Some sort of "black magic" going on to have faster writes than reads!
1.62cm vs 1.68cm i think it just looks different because the edges are not beveled
Picking up the MBP M2Max today. 64GB, 2TB. Looks like Educ price is $300 less. Total was under $4k. Replacing i9 MBP from 2019 with 32GB, 2TB. Having some speed problems with video editing large files.
I don't shoot video or care about speed but I do use a Nikon Z7 and plan to buy a Z9 soon and CF Express or XQD are the only cards this level of cameras take anymore.
I don't care if my laptop looks "old." I just want it to work well.
I'll take a chunky performer over a thin but compromised industrial design showcase any day of the week.
These laptops are tools, not jewelry.