New MacBook Pro Tidbits: SD Card Speeds, Peak Brightness for SDR Content, eGPUs Still Not Supported, and More

[Stevenyo]

Of course you should wait! Why in the world would anyone pay $$$$$ for a just released laptop knowing little about it. There will be loads of reviews with loads of additional information in just a couple of weeks.

Simply cancel your order. Stat!

I’m very happy with the new MacBooks I ordered. We couldn’t wait to order because some of us have been relying on increasingly obsolete and unreliable machines, holding out for this update for years. And we know that with the current supply chain, if we didn’t order within minutes of orders going live, we might be waiting well into next year for needed configurations. (Based on my iPhone 13 shipping experience,
I’m not expecting “October 26” models to arrive until November as it is)

It’s just a bummer for anyone who picked a 14 hoping the smaller MBP was finally on par with the big one. I’m sure 99% or more would have ordered the same model with this new info, but that doesn’t make disclosing it after sales go live any less ******.

If somehow they are truly terrible for our uses, we’ll just return them. I return more Macs than I keep, you get 2 weeks or more of free test driving, why not use it? The only reviews that really matter are whether it makes your workflow faster/easier enough to pay for itself, or whether you “like it” in your gut more than you liked the money it cost. No other review can tell me that.

 

[UBS28]

Yeah, really messed up this wasn’t disclosed before orders went live. It’s not like we can wait for reviews to decide what to buy, if we do that it’ll be mid 2022 before we get the machines! I wanted to go for the 14” but grabbed a 16 because of battery life and the back of my mind being concerned about potential throttling. This is worse than throttling though, and totally sucks for anyone who ordered a 14” Max.

The 14” MBP doesn’t have the thermals most likely to run the M1 Max at full speed, so they “tuned” it down.

Only the 16” MBP have the thermals to run the M1 Max at full speed like intended probably.

I could see this coming as I found very strange that the 14” had the same chip as the 16”, while the 14” is more limited.

 

[Stevenyo]

The 14” MBP doesn’t have the thermals most likely to run the M1 Max at full speed, so they “tuned” it down.

Only the 16” MBP have the thermals to run the M1 Max at full speed like intended probably.

I could see this coming as I found very strange that the 14” had the same chip as the 16”, while the 14” is more limited.

The presentation at least strongly implied if not outright said they packed the same thermal solution in both models. You and I both didn’t buy that they’d be identical, but not disclosing that the 16” has a whole high power mode that the 14 doesn’t rather than just throttling a little sooner was unexpected and not ok to wait until after orders went live to disclose

 

[MacsRgr8]

With 32 GPU cores, would you really need and eGPU?

If you want grfx performance which is on par with the Geforce 3xxx or Radeon 6xxx series, you do.

 

[MacsRgr8]

Basically, because I don't want to have to buy two machines, when one should be able to do all of it. My 2015 iMac in Boot Camp used to be able to play almost all games well. Unfortunately, I'll have to buy a separate gaming PC soon, which I absolutely don't want to do (but absolutely have to).

In the same boat.
I love Mac, macOS, FCP X, etc. I use iLife / iWork apps a lot.
But, I do game on it too, especially X-Plane. Flightsimming really becomes a hobby if you get into it

X-Plane 11 is x64 native, and performance on my 2017 iMac (Radeon 580) is fine. Not superb, but fine.
I am looking into getting a new Mac. Hoped the M1 Max - MBP would be the perfect computer.

Looking forward to X-Plane 12, I expect it will be Apple Silicon native. That would be so great!!
However.... the grfx performance of the M1 Max is definitely good, well.. great for notebooks, it seems to be on par with the GeForce 2080.
Obviously the current Radeon 6xxx series and GeForce 3xxx series outperforms this now, and by a huge margin.
That is great for a notebook, but that does mean you're "stuck" with that performance for some years.

 

[tmoerel]

The lack of eGPU support and the subpar performance for even old and well-developed macOS games are going to be a dealbreaker for a lot of people.

Unless you are a content creator there’s precious little usefulness for the M1 pro/max’s GPU performance. I suppose it’s cool marketing to say your SoC’s GPU rivals the teraflop performance of a PS5. Unfortunately, these Macs can’t even run StarCraft 2 well. SC2 is an old game developed natively for Macs by Blizzard, a company known for making polished and high performing mac compatible games. Gaming remains a glaring problem for the Mac.

Sorry to break it to you, but these machines are not meant for gamers but for creative professionals.

 

[Lukomaldini]

Should HDR kick in when viewing HDR YouTube videos or dose it have to be a certain HDR content?

Also if HDR does turn on for HDR youtube can't we just open a HDR YouTube video in the corner of the screen, that way the screen will be brighter for everything else?

On the iPad Pro, only the HDR video is in HDR and the rest of the os is in SDR, the whites look almost grey when you have one open, makes HDR really noticeable. I imagine it would be the same. Only the content that is HDR would be HDR. It does make the iPad noticeably hot and has a hit on battery too. Maybe why apple are limiting this

 

[- rob -]

I doubt they're going to support

I wonder if Apple may eventually offer their own eGPU? Surely they could easily design a graphics only chip, call it the G1

Apple already has an FPGA based “accelerator” available for the current Mac Pro called “Afterburner.”

I think Apple will extend Afterburner to be Apple Silicon based.

I wonder if eGPUs are even coming back. I actually used one for a couple years but the reality was decidedly less awesome than the theory. I can’t think of any thing that gave me more stability headaches on a Mac basically ever. It wasn’t unusable but it wasn’t what I’m used to.

Apple collaborated with Blackmagic on the BM and BM Pro eGPUs. They are rock solid.

 

[Morris]

If I recall correctly from the M1 based MacBooks, the eGPU limitation is not hardware but driver related. An attached external GPU shows up on the hardware bus but there are, at present, no drivers that support that scenario.

If that is indeed the case then this could be resolved by manufacturers releasing an updated driver.

 

[crsh1976]

With 32 GPU cores, would you really need and eGPU?

Play video games most likely, but those don't exist for Apple silicon anyway.

 

[Rashy]

Why wouldn't the 32 GPU variant not be capable for video gaming (it has 10.4 TFLOPS) but an extra eGPU with slower bandwidth connection? Even the M1 Pro with 5.2 TFLOPS has enough power to drive current games at decent details. The issue isn't the power, those games simply don't exist, because Apple killed OpenGL/CL, then 32bit and x86 support. However, thanks to the popularity and power of the new M1 Chipset family, chances increase that more studios will consider bringing more games back to the Mac. Have patience and faith.

Concerning the rest of the listed news, I am fine with everything:

• Boost mode of the 16" is legitimate considering the extra size/space
  • Mind, the older 13"s were far more limited in power & features compared to the 15" models
• Touch ID works well and fast and Face ID still may come in future
• UHS-II is much better than UHS-I, while UHS-III is very rare anyway
• 500 Nits is okayish. My current 15" has just 300. Most people will be fine
• Trackpad of the 16" remains absurdly large, but the 14" one seems perfect

Anyway, can't wait to upgrade my 2015 model. I am sure this goes for many people with 2012-2019 models.

 

[alien3dx]

With 32 GPU cores, would you really need and eGPU?

i want egpu because got one..

 

[dfelix]

The only reason I'd consider one of the new machines is because that's the only way I can buy an Apple laptop that has a large screen with a high refresh ate, both of which benefit my workflow immensely. The fancy (and expensive) CPU and GPU would do nothing for me.

There was a time when I'd probably have just gritted my teeth and forked over the cash, but every time I have to back up to remove an errant period because my 2018 MBP keyboard thinks I've hit my spacebar twice instead of once (two times so far in this post) I start wondering whether I want to give Apple any more of my money at all. I'd been planning to buy one of the new ones and send this stupid thing in for a new keyboard and be rid of it, but now I'm not so sure.

That was a byproduct of the obsession with thinness. It also affected the screen cables, which would get damaged really quickly because they were impossibly thin and couldn't handle the screen being opened and closed a way below reasonable amount of times.

It seems they are moving away from the anorexia thankfully/

 

[i9inkers]

The lack of eGPU support and the subpar performance for even old and well-developed macOS games are going to be a dealbreaker for a lot of people.

Unless you are a content creator there’s precious little usefulness for the M1 pro/max’s GPU performance. I suppose it’s cool marketing to say your SoC’s GPU rivals the teraflop performance of a PS5. Unfortunately, these Macs can’t even run StarCraft 2 well. SC2 is an old game developed natively for Macs by Blizzard, a company known for making polished and high performing mac compatible games. Gaming remains a glaring problem for the Mac.

Nobody in the history of people have ever bought a MacBook Pro for gaming. It’s bought for its beauty, big screen and it’s continuity features with iPhone. I have only ever played Apple Arcade games on the Mac, we have AMD & Intel for gaming.

It’s absurd to think anyone would buy a Mac for games, Apple are not going for that market.

 

[BreakYurAnkles]

That was a byproduct of the obsession with thinness. It also affected the screen cables, which would get damaged really quickly because they were impossibly thin and couldn't handle the screen being opened and closed a way below reasonable amount of times.

It seems they are moving away from the anorexia thankfully/

It is probably the last (strong/influential) of the Job's era at Apple (Jony Ive gone). Apple has gone mainstream and will cater to a greater mass consumer/user base.

They need more reliability from the beginning because its more profitable for Applecare if they don't have design problems (recalls and lawsuits). They will start moving towards the middle of the market instead of their own "Identity" because the Apple's identity is strongly established.

MacBooks are thicker, Iphone 13 is thicker.

 

[GuilleA]

There could be some developers needing to do some ML with NVidia cards.

Nvidia cards haven't been compatible with Macs since Catalina I believe.

 

[GuilleA]

Is the OS considered HDR, as in if I'm outside trying to read a document or a webpage, will it be full brightness?

No, it is not.

 

[BreakYurAnkles]

Nobody in the history of people have ever bought a MacBook Pro for gaming. It’s bought for its beauty, big screen and it’s continuity features with iPhone. I have only ever played Apple Arcade games on the Mac, we have AMD & Intel for gaming.

It’s absurd to think anyone would buy a Mac for games, Apple are not going for that market.

At least for now....

Apple Arcade works on all their devices. More people are casual gamers on their phones. (which are with them more than a PC/Macbook).

Apple has grown market share in every device category, its not absurd to think they would add more products/services in the future. More market share, more money for developers.

Which for bigger picture perspective, would mean Apple has a huge advantage moving forward.

 

[alien3dx]

Nvidia cards haven't been compatible with Macs since Catalina I believe.

i wish , i had trouble finding amd card for my broken 570

 

[bradman83]

If I understand correctly, the unified memory in Apple Silicon is shared and used both as "regular" RAM and also as "VRAM." Is this correct? And if so, would people want to actually consider upgrading to higher memory levels in Apple Silicon computers compared to what they're used to?

Because, for example, if you nearly reached the limits of 16GB RAM and had a 4 GB graphics card before on an Intel machine, and now that memory is being shared for other additional uses, would that mean you'd want more like a minimum of 20+ GB RAM (obviously 32 GB is the next step up, though) to get a similar ceiling, depending on what you're working with?

If anyone could help me understand/explain why this is or isn't true, that would be very helpful.

It depends on the Intel machines that you’re coming from. Any Intel machine with integrated graphics uses shared RAM for VRAM. This includes the 16” Intel MacBook Pro, which has discrete graphics but uses the integrated GPU most of the time to save energy. The biggest difference between shared memory and unified memory is that the shared memory of Intel machines is divided into two distinct and separate pools, whereas unified memory is one big pool. On an Intel machine for the GPU to work on a specific piece of data it would have to be copied from the main RAM pool into the VRAM pool, potentially existing in two places in memory at once. Under the unified memory architecture both the CPU and the GPU can work on the same data in the same RAM location. So if you’re going from an Intel system with integrated graphics to an M1 system your RAM requirements should be about even, if not slightly less on the M1 system because data doesn’t have to exist in two places at once.

You are correct though that things get dicier with discrete-only graphics solutions such as on the iMacs and Mac Pros. The RAM used by the GPU will absolutely eat into the regular system RAM in a way that didn’t occur on Intel models.

So long story short - if you’re buying a Mac Mini, MacBook Air, 13 or 14” Pro - the RAM you order will be equivalent if not a little bit greater than the equivalent Intel Mac. If you’re ordering a 16” MBP then the RAM on the Apple silicon system will wind up working out to being a bit less usable than an Intel system, depending on GPU usage. On an iMac or Mac Pro there will be a more noticeable hit and you’ll want to increase your system RAM to compensate.

 

[svish]

Excellent laptops with very powerful chips and long battery life.

 

[citysnaps]

You can always return

True. Though I suspect enough returns will result in Apple eventually raising prices for everyone.

It's still bewildering people will make a major multi-thousand dollar purchase without first doing their due diligence to see if a particular laptop really meets their needs. Waiting a couple of weeks for additional information (look what's come out already) and a handful of reviews is mice nuts.

It's like buying a new car without doing adequate research, and later saying oops, it doesn't meet my requirements, I want my money back.

Sadly, it's where we are now. Instant gratification at society's expense.

 

[Snahbah]

With 32 GPU cores, would you really need and eGPU?

For Octane, yes. Multiple GPUs are speed multipliers.

 

[Stevenyo]

i want egpu because got one..

Sell it. It’s almost certainly slower than the full m1 max, unless you have a 6700xt or better in your enclosure, and it’s quite possibly worth more than you paid for it new right now due to the shortages. In 2021, having a redundant GPU is a huge windfall!

 

[alien3dx]

Sell it. It’s almost certainly slower than the full m1 max, unless you have a 6700xt or better in your enclosure, and it’s quite possibly worth more than you paid for it new right now due to the shortages. In 2021, having a redundant GPU is a huge windfall!

no gpu inside, since my 570 broken after a electrical surge lightning. Totally hard to get amd graphic card here while nvdia got a lot of stock and over price . Hard to sell the egpu since rarely people use mac here.