MacBook Pro M1 Max – stupidly fast!
I’ve been using the new MacBook Pro 2021 for a few weeks now and I’m still extremely impressed! What Apple has delivered here is simply incredible! Whether you want to cut videos, edit photos or play the latest x86 games thanks to CrossOver, everything works with the new MacBook! I can count on one hand how many times the fan has turned on. Whether you’re running Windows 11 VmWare or editing a long 4K video, the MacBook doesn’t even get warm. Since I prefer a large display, I took the MacBook in the 16 inch variant. Additionally, it has slightly better cooling, although that doesn’t make a difference in most cases. I was blown away when Applle announced the M1 in 2020, but the M1 Max is simply a different story.
The quality and the unboxing experience are, as always with Apple, just awesome! Instead of the model being written under the screen, it is now directly in the case on the bottom. Design-wise, the new MacBook Pro looks a bit thicker than the old one and is quite a bit heavier. Compared to my 15-inch 2018 MacBook Pro, the new one is a good bit heavier and seems a bit chunkier. Furthermore, the display is rounded at the top two corners and fills the space of the MacBook much better than the previous models. As mentioned earlier, you can hardly hear the fans of the MacBook thanks to Apple’s Silicon technology. When idling, the Intel Macs are always louder than an M1, even under full load. The Liquid Retina XDR display looks simply incredible and really has a stunning contrast. The old Macs never displayed “real” black, but more of a gray. Especially when watching movies, you can see a clear difference between the two technologies!
Also, the Mac finally has 120hz. I was already used to it on the iPad Pro and Iphone 13 Pro Max and finally wanted a Mac that supported such a buttery smooth refresh rate. It just makes everything so much smoother. It’s also twice as much fun to play games as before. Never again without it!
Notch..
What can I say about that? It’s good that Apple is taking the right step to make the screen as big as possible. But why is the notch so huge? Even the notch on the iPhone 13 Pro Max is smaller! The iPhone even has FaceID inside! It just doesn’t make sense that the notch is so big and is a big minus point for me. You sell laptops for 5000€ and can’t manage to make the notch a bit smaller? Are you kidding me? It looks like the iPhone X from 2017! If you had at least included FaceID, the size would still be justifiable, but this is simply a no-go! It annoys me each time I use the Mac! Bullshit!
Apple Silicon – Rosetta
Initially, very few applications were compatible with Apple’s new proprietary processor architecture, but more are coming day by day! Another advantage of the Apple Silicon processors is that developers of IOS apps can also develop a program for the Mac with little effort. Furthermore, there are numerous games from Apple that are optimized for the Mac. For Intel programs that have not yet been optimized for M1, Rosetta comes into play. Rosetta is a translation layer from Apple that allows Intel programs to run on M1 Macs. Even with more complex applications like Cura, the program doesn’t feel slow at all.
Apple’s backpedaling with ports
In 2016, Apple killed almost all ports on the Mac. At that time Apple was firmly convinced that they want to go the minimalist route. Unfortunately, it ended up that you needed a doongle for each and every thing. What made many Apple fans sad was that Apple also removed MagSafe. But in 2021 it’s finally back and it’s awesome! I will never understand why Apple removed this awesome feature in the first place. For people who work with cameras a lot, the SD card slot on the Mac is also super handy. You can really save a lot of adapters that way. On the other hand, it’s a bit of a shame that Apple only includes HDMI 2.0. But who could guess that someone with a 4000€ device would want to use more than 4k @60. Apple, really! That was a bit of a flop!
Instead of Thunderbold 3, Apple now uses Thunderbold 4. One of the many advantages is that you can now connect more monitors than before. Anker has published a great post about the advantages of Thunderbold 4. You can find the link here.
Do we need the new MacBook Pro? Especially at the prices Apple is charging, you have to think twice. But even the base model is enough for video editing and demanding applications. Since I use Parallels, I opted for a 32GB model. I never want to use a laptop that isn’t a Mac again. Power users are in the right place. Performance unfortunately comes at a price.
