Apple MacBook Pro 14 and 16 Review: Return to Form

https://www.theverge.com/22751921/apple-macbook-pro-14-16-inch-2021-m1-pro-max-review

by marricks • 5 years ago

72 103 5 years ago

theverge.com

Tomte• 5 years ago

At this point, “plug in and hope for the best” is the unofficial USB-C slogan.

It's a real shame.

jayd162• 5 years ago

In the punnet square of "works/doesn't work" and "fits/doesn't fit" we have.

    1) works, fits
    2) doesn't work but fits
    3) could work but doesn't fit
    4) doesn't work and doesn't fit

I still think avoiding (3) is worth (2).

handrous4• 5 years ago

I'd disagree. At least with 3 you know, simply by looking and without even having to try it, that the cable (well, the connector) is the problem, and not something else. You can rule out (or in) an entire bin of cables by eye.

codeflo• 5 years ago

I don’t see how those problems are related.

Finally replacing those dozen terrible USB port variants with a single good design is great, and solves problem (3). You’d finally only need one type of cable.

Routing all kinds of other protocols through that same port creates problem (2), and introduces a completely new kind of cable fragmentation. I think that’s orthogonal.

Someone1234• 5 years ago

At this point, “plug in and hope for the best” is the unofficial USB-C slogan.

If only. Certain USB-C devices can be damaged simply by plugging it into an incompatible charger/cable. The original Nintendo Switch being the most popular example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmgpcG_1cuI

bgorman• 5 years ago

I don’t understand all the praise around ditching USB-C. After all these years there is finally a port that works well for all use cases - charging, data transfer, video transfer… And now we have a company reverting back to a proprietary charging port and a legacy video port created to satisfy the entertainment industry.

Monitors have been shipping with usb-c in for years, and passive usb-c to displayport/hdmi cables exist.

idontwantthis• 5 years ago

It still has 3 USB-C ports and you can still charge through it.

kzrdude• 5 years ago

That sounds like less need for apple brand chargers, which is good for lifetime ownership

brianwawok• 5 years ago

Every laptop I have with USB-C charging had a broken cable. It’s far too thin of a connector for laptop charging.

barnabee• 5 years ago

Yeah. The USB C ports on my 15" MacBook Pro feel loose and are starting to become flaky. I hope the new ones fare better and also take less abuse with charging going through MagSafe on the new machine.

wffurr2• 5 years ago

The "proprietary charging port" is a) optional (you can also charge on the USB-C ports up to 100W), b) extremely handy for those of us used to the old magsafe ports, and b) actually a USB 3.1 port with extended power range in disguise.

The power brick that ships with the Macbook Pro is a USB-C wall adapter. The magsafe cable is USB-C on one end and magsafe on the other. The extended power range spec allows going up to 240W instead of only 100W per the original USB power delivery spec. The 16" Macbook Pro can draw up to 140W.

There aren't currently available any standard USB-C cables that support extended power delivery. The higher current requirements entail more robust cables that will have a compatibility marking on them.

kitsunesoba• 5 years ago

Having dual charging methods is pretty great if you’ve got a Thunderbolt/USB-C hub/monitor that is capable of USB-PD. It means you can leave your brick and MagSafe cable in your bag and let your hub/monitor charge while you’re at your desk.

neogodless3• 5 years ago

These new laptops from Apple come with "Three Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports"

So they are clearly not "ditching USB-C." They are just re-adding convenient ports; plug in HDMI in a pinch, throw your DSLR memory card right in the card reader.

Those things work very well without needing to remember an extra cable or adapter.

cush• 5 years ago

Compared to USB-C, Magsafe is safer against tripping, easier to plug in, charges faster, and their customers explicitly asked for it. If you want to use USB-C instead though, you can... knock yourself out.

handrous4• 5 years ago

That "legacy video port" supports cable runs of lengths far greater than USB-C, making it way the hell more useful for lots of use-cases. Plus most of the rest of the computing world still ships HDMI, so "I can't plug in to this" is mostly a Mac problem, and only solved well at places that are Mac-only or Mac-mostly—everywhere else, you better tote your stupid, expensive dongles around with you.

Basically, Apple's been pushing USBC-only for over half a decade now, and you can still plug directly in to 99% of video devices in the wild with HDMI, and only 10% (even that much? Probably more like 1-2%, because so many video displays are TVs) with USB-C, without resorting to an adapter or special cable that (again) users of most other brands don't need. It's not "legacy", it's "not that weird crap that only Mac users need".

TomVDB• 5 years ago

Contrary to my MacBook, I don’t tend to leave my monitor laying around the house with the charger plugged in.

I’m clumsy, I tend to accidentally stumble of cables that are plugged in. (It doesn’t happen that often, of course, but once every few months is sufficient to kill my laptop.)

MagSafe is wonderful. The fact that it’s a proprietary connector is far less important than the fact that it protects me from my clumsiness.

I blame the designers of USB-C for not coming up with something that can offer the benefits of MagSafe.

(Of course, the battery life of the new laptops makes it less necessary to plug in while you’re sitting on the sofa…)

monopoledance• 5 years ago

There were somewhat prominent USB-C power delivery issues with (various types) of PD USB-C hubs bricking M1 macbooks. At least in the beginning. Not sure, if fixed in firmware now, but in any case: The M1 chips may be particularly prone to failure from power irregularities - and apple bad at implementing standards and safeguards for interfacing with third party hardware (which I think is somewhat known). Maybe apple just doesn’t want to deal with buzz-killing details of USB-C PD.

tpmx5• 5 years ago

They should have had 2 USB-A sockets. Or at the very least 1.

Many new external devices people use with MBPs still tend to come with USB-A. E.g. quality keyboards and mice. And then there's all of those very random and sometimes very useful devices from the past ~20 years that we all have around.

handrous4• 5 years ago

Strongly agreed, of all the stuff I miss from my 2014 MBP USB-A is still #1 (HDMI is a very close #2, though). The only shit I have that plugs into USB-C are Apple devices and a monitor purchased specifically to work with Apple devices. Everything else is still USB-A, and I'm not exactly rushing to replace it considering all other computing devices[0] in my house use USB-A data ports (the single Pi4 I have does charge over USB-C, but its data ports are, sanely, USB-A)

[0 EDIT] Actually I just remembered the pro controllers for my Switch are USB-C, and of course the unit itself charges over USB-C—but what's the data port on the Switch? USB-A! Because of course it is, because that's what's actually useful.

philwelch2• 5 years ago

I've found it fairly easy to find monitors that also work as USB-A hubs.

tpmx5• 5 years ago

I often use my MBP with different monitors. Sometimes even hotel room TVs, after moving some desk around to place it in front of the TV.

denimnerd42• 5 years ago

eh usb-c to usb-A adapters are easy to get and permanently keep on the usb-a device.

i wouldn't want to trade usb-a ports for usb-c ports any day on a laptop since the usb-c tb4 ports are so powerful.

tpmx5• 5 years ago

"Eh", there are other things than the USB-C sockets you can trade with to get volume for USB-A sockets. Also, your "just use a dongle" argument is a nonstarter.

lucian1900• 5 years ago

Exactly. Much more useful that the extremely niche SD card slot.

dilap2• 5 years ago

Yeah, I got taken in by the 1000 vs 500 nits thing. I was expecting this display to be brighter (which would be great for use in bright environments), but, no, it's the same as my old mb pro. Way faster tho!

zith• 5 years ago

Me too!

Now I wonder, can the NITS unlocked by HDR content be controlled in some way? Can I write an HDR terminal emulator? I want to be able to use neovim outside without issues.

I think it would be a fun hack to try.

dilap2• 5 years ago

seems like probably right? i wonder why it's even limited; i'm guessing somehow it can't faithfully represent just "normal" colors at that level of brightness, but can do hightlights per HDR information. which which case something like a terminal emulator seems like that should be fine. (presumably some battery life impact too of course, but hopefully not too bad!)

otoh maybe it's something like only a small portion at once of the screen can be mega-bright, in which case the terminal emulator idea isn't going to work out. (though maybe you could super-bright an area around the current line, which would be better than nothing...)

(all of the above pure speculation, obviously)

marricks4• 5 years ago

Besides obvious gripes like price these seems pretty perfect in the Verge's eyes, speed, battery life, good screen and keyboard.One interesting sore spot is gaming.

These have good GPUs but poor gaming performance. They perform as good as the best for work related tasks but closer to midrange AMD/Nvidia products.

I wonder if this is a "if they build it they will come" and more games will be optimized for these chips? Obviously Apple also made some design decisions in focusing on "pro" work rather than gaming too.

germinalphrase• 5 years ago

Gaming on Macs has always been second class.

smoldesu2• 5 years ago

Third-class, now that Proton isn't supported...

marricks4• 5 years ago

Exactly! So Macs now have some capable GPUs, will the games come? Will easy ports of iPhone games make gaming a thing?

Future still unclear but there's some GPU horsepower in every mac now.

slg• 5 years ago

Sure in OS X/macOs, but Macbook Pros have generally been decent gaming machines if you went the Boot Camp route which is no longer an option on Apple silicon.

tziki• 5 years ago

Or maybe Apple is just waiting for game streaming to become the norm.

rsynnott2• 5 years ago

The gaming should get at least somewhat better. Most games available on Mac today are x86 ports. New ports will start targeting arm instead, and that’ll be a help.

But ultimately the Mac will never be a first-class platform for most game devs.

neillyons• 5 years ago

Got my 16in M1 Max today. One thing I didn't expect was how good the speakers are. Compared to my mid 2015 MacBookPro these sound amazing.

machiaweliczny• 5 years ago

I am often surprised how different(better) many songs are on my 2020 Air. Would like to know if there's difference between Air and Pro in this regard.

yumraj2• 5 years ago

My biggest takeaway from this is regarding the M1 Pro vs Max battery life impact.

If you’re spending $400 for RAM, then $200 from Pro to Max becomes obvious, but the battery life puts a damper on that since I’m not a creative.

Now, if Tensorflow could be properly supported then it might be definitely worth it. Though I’m surprised in their CPU benchmark the increase in memory bandwidth didn’t yield much better results.

alphabettsy3• 5 years ago

I’m wondering if the 24c GPU splits the difference in battery life. Might go with that to get the 64gb of RAM and still get 13-14 hours?

Battery life, fan noise, and performance are my main reasons for upgrading.

yumraj2• 5 years ago

Ah yes, that is the one I am looking to upgrade to, and hence the $200 difference from the M1 Pro. I don't need 64GB, and $800 to go from 16GB (w/M1 Pro) to 64GB is highway robbery, despite the usual Apple inflated RAM pricing. So, if 24 Core GPU can give 13-14 hours of battery, that'd be ideal.

blondin2• 5 years ago

do you guys know if there is a model that came after the 2013 MacBook Air which has a similar keyboard feel?

Tagbert2• 5 years ago

In 2019 Apple switched the MacBook Pro keyboards back to scissor switches from the problematic butterfly switch. That change increased the travel slightly though not quite to the same as the pre-2016 levels. Typing feel of the 2019 models was closer to the pre-2016 models, too.

I would expect these to be generally similar as they seem to use the same switch style. The important thing is that they don’t have the butterfly garbage.

https://macsx.com/which-macbooks-have-the-butterfly-keyboard...

blondin2• 5 years ago

thanks :)

simonebrunozzi• 5 years ago

Will Apple’s GPU ideas get fully supported by app developers? We’ve been asking that question for a while, and we still don’t know the answer.

Yep, that's going to be a big question mark for the next several months.

OldHand20182• 5 years ago

When Alder Lake drops next month, the question goes away. Then answer is yes.

This was underlined sharply by an After Effects update that arrived in the middle of our testing, which enabled better multi-core acceleration. After Effects is still an Intel app, which runs in the Rosetta emulation mode on these machines, but the update allowed the app to light up all 10 CPU cores and all 32 GPU cores, cutting export times on our test from 4:29 to… 41 seconds. (It also substantially sped up performance on our Intel-based Mac Pro, which is nice.)

From this point forward, all consumer processors have a GPGPU - either discrete or embedded on CPU package (AMD Zen has been this way since the beginning). Adapt or get supplanted by a new piece of software that takes advantage.

neogodless3• 5 years ago

You may be better informed than I, but my understanding is that GPGPU would be like the integrated graphics found on AMD's Ryzen APUs based on the Zen architecture. But Zen is used in CPUs that do not have have integrated graphics.

You specify "either discrete or embedded" but how is that different from before, i.e. "from this point forward"?

Alder Lake CPUs also offer chips with our without integrated graphics, just as past Intel chips did. And, just as before, they are either paired with discrete graphics, or they have integrated graphics.

None of that seems to answer the OP question, though.

Will Apple’s GPU ideas get fully supported by app developers?

Since you're talking about Alder Lake, I'm guessing the change you're really trying to speak on is the pairing of performance and efficiency cores, which has been common in mobile devices for quite a long time, but was brought to laptops with Apple Silicon, and finally reaches desktops with Alder Lake.

lvl1002• 5 years ago

This thread is a bunch of front end devs talking about laptop performance.

alphabettsy3• 5 years ago

What’s the point of this comment and if it were true what difference does it make?

lvl1002• 5 years ago

You’re right. It was a useless comment. My bad.

throwawaysea• 5 years ago

My charitable interpretation is that it means that only a narrow set of use cases are being used to judge this laptop. Perhaps the performance profile of this laptop is not so amazing for other types of users, who may still be better off with either an Intel Mac or a windows laptop. For example those that use virtual machines or boot camp to run windows alongside macOS are worse off with the move to Apple silicon. Those who play games are worse off. Those who write machine learning code for nvidia GPUs are worse off. And so on.

rbanffy• 5 years ago

Well... Macs are very popular with front-end developers. They are powerful, portable, easy to use Unix machines. And front-end development, with all its crazy JS requirements, really demands a lot of compute power.

For backend developers it's a little different - it is handy to have an x86, considering a lot of your workloads will run on x86 servers (at least for the foreseeable future), and a Linux machine will match the server runtime more closely. You can emulate one, and the M1 is so powerful it can emulate an x86 faster than most x86's can be themselves, but it's more expensive. A better approach I've been using (works with Python) is to treat macOS as a Unix and don't look too closely to the OS running the program. There aren't many surprised down this road.

I've been working as a back-end developer primarily from Macs since 2016 and they are sweet machines - even the Intel ones. I also use a Linux laptop a lot and, quite frankly, if you match specs, your Dell will cost more than your Mac and be a lot uglier.

kayodelycaon• 5 years ago

Docker. :)

collinvandyck76• 5 years ago

I was hoping for the review to have some more information about fan noise. The review mentioned:

Even when running long benchmarks, like this 30-minute Cinebench test, the MacBook Pro’s fans rarely spun up.

But left out how noisy the fans were when they did spin up. Can anyone here that has one of these models comment on the fan noise compared with any of the latest intel models?

kurbin• 5 years ago

It's the same

marricks4• 5 years ago

In the video version of the review it's touched on more. Their editor/lead video woman stated that after almost half an hour of exporting work the fan never turned off, and when it did she couldn't hear it, only felt the vibration.

It sounded promising, like it rarely turns on.

pivo• 5 years ago

the fan never turned off

I think you meant never turned on

1123581321• 5 years ago

At full speed the fan is similar in volume, or perhaps a bit quieter. However, they don’t seem to ever reach full speed during intense workloads, unlike the Intels which do it quickly and stay there. I had to use a utility to force them to max out.

sersi• 5 years ago

The main reason I'm interested is that my previous 16 inch macbook pro would regularly go up to 90 degrees celsius. So, my hope is that it won't go above 50 degrees celsius... I don't want to burn my legs...

thatswrong0• 5 years ago

I have both. Whether it be dev work or music production, my old 16" from 2018 immediately gets hot and loud. On the flip side, I haven't heard the fans turn on on the new 16", and it barely gets warm. And its battery life lasts sooo much longer for similar workloads (despite me just having gotten a fresh battery replacement for the old laptop).

markus_zhang2• 5 years ago

I can't wait for some Windows machines to follow suit and gain similar performance if possible. Still have to use Windows to play my 500+ games on Steam and GOG :( Actually the only reason to own a windows laptop.

runevault• 5 years ago

assuming you mean switching to ARM/SoC style none of your games would be any faster because they would have to be emulated unless someone recompiled them.

vladvasiliu• 5 years ago

They would probably like the performance boost for tasks other than gaming. I presume they would prefer only having one system for everything.

neogodless3• 5 years ago

This is mildly confusing to me.

Performance of what metric, or for what software, is lacking with the hardware you run Windows on?

Or are you talking more about efficiency and portability/battery life?

markus_zhang2• 5 years ago

You are probably right. I'm just drooling for general stuffs such as battery life and low temp.

in3d• 5 years ago

Seems like nobody else cares about the inability to run Boot Camp on M1 Macs? There’s enough Windows-only software out there that I wouldn’t want to upgrade my older x86 MacBook Pro.

alphabettsy3• 5 years ago

I haven’t read up much, but virtualization options like Parallels exist. Can’t say how well it works. Personally haven’t needed to use a Windows-only app in years.

dfabulich• 5 years ago

You can run Windows 11 for ARM via Parallels, but it's bleeding edge; you have to install a Windows Insider (beta test) preview.

I think it's likely that Apple will offer Boot Camp for M1 Macs whenever Microsoft gets around to shipping Windows 11 for ARM in a non-beta form.

CharlesW• 5 years ago

You can run Windows 11 for ARM via Parallels, but it's bleeding edge; you have to install a Windows Insider (beta test) preview.

That was before Windows 11 was released. According to Parallels*, now you can just install normal Windows 11 releases.

* https://www.parallels.com/blogs/windows-11-tpm/

StevePerkins• 5 years ago

I can think of few things other than (1) games, or (2) very old "enterprise" business software, that are 100% Windows-only today.

For the TINY amount of PC gaming that I do, I have an older Lenovo laptop laying around that suits my occasional needs. If I didn't have that, I'd probably buy an Intel NUC to use as my reverse-Mac-mini.

For business software, I assume that if I had a need for that, then my employer would issue me a PC instead of a MBP. I dunno, I've been at Mac shops for a decade now.

So, yeah. I'm sure that Boot Camp is still a thing for some people. But I think it's like an optical drive or a headphone jack. The vast majority today will never notice that it's gone.

marvin2• 5 years ago

Maybe you have some sort of weird proprietary lab software or such. There's a piece of portable sensor hardware I'm currently looking at, which needs to be attached to a computer and AFAIK only talks to Windows software. There's thousands of use cases like this.

It's not that your life stops if you're suddenly unable to run Windows on your daily driver, and "most" people only use the web browser anyway (why do they need a >$1000 machine for that, by the way?), but these things do cause problems or become a dealbreaker for some people.

Sure. Most won't notice or care. But that's sort of true by definition; Apple wouldn't make a product decision where most would notice and care. Most HN users are nerds, we see these things much more often than the majority.

blacksmith_tb• 5 years ago

I expect lots of people care, though if it's an option for you VMWare does have a public beta of Fusion for the M1s[1] and I have seen people running Windows (11 even) under it.

1: https://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2021/09/fusion-for-m1-pu...

nimish• 5 years ago

1 step forward and two steps back. Now it has 2 soon-to-be obsolete ports — HDMI 2.1 and SD Express aren’t supported. All to save a dongle? If you’re carrying around a magsafe cable you can carry a dongle.

The slimmer design of the 2016 generation was really nice and had just as much battery life. A shame they threw out the touch bar entirely, with the hardware ESC it was absolutely fine. And they certainly didn’t take back the price increase it came with.

sbuk2• 5 years ago

I suspect the intent for the HDMI port is really for hooking up to projectors. If you want HDMI > 2.0 there is usb-c to HDMI.

trebor2• 5 years ago

So I've observed something from many of the tests/reviews posted so far, as well as Apple's specs: Apple claims 200GBps memory bandwidth for the M1 Pro, and 400GBps for the M1 Max. Some tests show the M1 Max saturating the memory bandwidth between 200 - 240 GBps rates.

Maybe someone who understands better than me can explain these observations:

1. DDR5 RAM is supposedly 36-38GBps bandwidth, DDR4 3200 is about 25.6GBps bandwidth. (Supposedly Alder Lake is the first chipset to support DDR5.) 2. Maybe the 200-400 GBps rate advertised is the entire bus bandwidth for the SoC? If this is actual memory bandwidth, then Apple increased that bus speed 5-15x! 3. Maybe Apple divided the RAM into additional banks with more lanes to increase the bandwidth?

I've been very irritated by the pricing, but if Apple figured out how to optimize the memory bandwidth this much then maybe it's worth the extra cost per GB.

Did I catch on to something majorly different here?

jackpeterfletch• 5 years ago

Anandtechs article covers this in a lot of detail. But yeah it is supposed that 400GBps is peak bandwidth for the entire SoC. That’s CPU incl pow power cores, GPU, NPU and whatever else firing on all cylinders, in an ideal access pattern.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc...

Tagbert2• 5 years ago

In the tests I had seen about the bandwidth question, the findings suggest that the CPU can only push the memory at a little over 200GBps but if you also have the GPU active it will use the additional bandwidth.

This is constant with the advantage of the M1 Max being the added GPU cores.

ksec3• 5 years ago

M1 Pro and Max uses LPDDR5, not DDR5.

If this is actual memory bandwidth, then Apple increased that bus speed 5-15x!

Yes because GPU requires lots of bandwidth. Top of the line Nvidia GPU has ~ 1TB/s memory bandwidth.

I've been very irritated by the pricing, but if Apple figured out how to optimize the memory bandwidth this much then maybe it's worth the extra cost per GB.

You are not only paying for memory aka LPDDR5 chip, you are also paying for the additional memory controller. Which has an implication on yield and die size cost. Whether you think it is worth or still irritated by that pricing is of course subjective.

trebor2• 5 years ago

So then this is part of why it seems so fast, because the CPU is now approaching GPU memory bandwidths? Hmm, I really wonder what it'll look like in a year or so with the M2/M2Pro/M2MAX then.

Thanks for clarifying the extra memory controller, that's helpful too.

isliguezze• 5 years ago

I actually like the thinness and the portability. I've never had a problem with butterfly keyboard. Maybe people should just stop eating chips while touching their laptops? Also quite against the proprietary charging and HDMI port. Never ever have I used a memory card slot in my macbooks in 10+ years either to be honest.

ksec3• 5 years ago

Maybe people should just stop eating chips while touching their laptops?

The Keyboard reliability problem has nothing to do with that.

otachack• 5 years ago

Card slot is immensely useful for flashing bootable drives for Raspberry Pis or the like.

Magsafe has always been great IMO, but I believe you can also charge the laptop via USB C. May just need the right specs on whatever brick you're using.

lordnacho2• 5 years ago

My new maxed out 16 inch just arrived. I'm going to compile my rust project on it and see how different it is once this transfer finishes. I don't think I've been this excited about new hardware since I was a teenager. Back then the difference between a new and old computer didn't require measuring.

Meekro• 5 years ago

Let us know how the results compare to your previous laptop! =)

lordnacho2• 5 years ago

Results are in. I did a cargo clean and cargo build with the internet connected, and then I disconnected it and did it again, since there's probably some re-downloading of dependencies if you're connected.

Old MBP16 from 2019: 1m13s

New MBP, M1Max: 46.71s

295 dependencies, including some common ones like hyper, serde and tokio.

KayL• 5 years ago

I saw "Adobe Premiere Pro" benchmark everywhere for cross-platform. But I wonder if their output video quality is the same (when GPU/hardware encode enabled, they using diff codec)? And in the above benchmark, is it comparing GPU accelerated M1 Max to non-GPU enabled PC (even they have a RTX)? Look at the chart, 3070 is slower than 3060. It's non-sense.

I watched a youtube video before, their M1 Max is twice faster than RTX 3090 machine on their Premiere test. What makes the diff :s

Apple MacBook Pro 14 and 16 Review: Return to Form

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