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New MacBook Pros
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OreoCookie
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Oct 19, 2021, 08:50 AM
 
Alright, who here is excited about the new MacBook Pros? I wish I could justify to myself to get one at work (I have the money and I am really unhappy with my 16” battery life … but still, I got that machine last year).

- Ridiculously fast and efficient CPU cores: check
- Ridiculously fast and efficient GPU: check
- Tons of hardware accelerators: check
- Up to 21 hours battery life in the 16” model: check :wow:
- Up to 64 GB RAM: check
- Faster SSD with up to 8 TB storage: check
- MagSafe: check
- SD card reader: check
- HDMI port: check
- ProMotion aka 120 Hz display: check
- 10 bit display with micro LED technology: check
- No touchbar: check (I don’t mind the Touchbar, but I don’t love it either)

Wow, Apple just pressed Cmd + A, Cmd + R and replied “Yes!” The only small complaint is that it only comes in two non-colors and that the notch is maybe a bit weird at first. But yeah. What a launch.
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OreoCookie  (op)
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Oct 19, 2021, 09:12 AM
 
One more tidbit: the memory bandwidth of the M1 Max, 400 GB/s, is staggering: Intel’s latest desktop CPU Rocket Lake has 50 GB/s. nVidia’s RTX 3070 has 448 GB/s, albeit at a TDP of 220 W for the whole card. The latter is a higher-end card.
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BLAZE_MkIV
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Oct 19, 2021, 09:30 AM
 
My most recent Mac is a 2012 machine so I'm seriously looking at the new MacBook pro's. Waiting on the benchmarkers though.
     
Laminar
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Oct 19, 2021, 10:46 AM
 
I just bought a 2015 MacBook Air i7, I'll be good for at least 5 more years.
     
OAW
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Oct 19, 2021, 01:41 PM
 
The new MPB's look awesome. But I just bought a 2020 13" MBP in June 2020. And I absolutely need to be able to run x86 Windows 10 VM's for work. So it's a no go for me getting that new 14" despite it being one sweet machine.

OAW
     
OreoCookie  (op)
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Oct 19, 2021, 07:36 PM
 
Originally Posted by Laminar View Post
I just bought a 2015 MacBook Air i7, I'll be good for at least 5 more years.
In any case, if your machine of choice is that of a MacBook Air-type form factor, I’d wait for the next version of the Air, which I reckon will feature a new design and an M2.
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Thorzdad
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Oct 20, 2021, 08:20 AM
 
     
Laminar
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Oct 20, 2021, 08:44 AM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
In any case, if your machine of choice is that of a MacBook Air-type form factor, I’d wait for the next version of the Air, which I reckon will feature a new design and an M2.
Gotta be able to run Windows. The only reason I upgraded from my 2013 i5 Air was because it only had 4GB of RAM. That was more than enough for web browsing and general fooling around and even running Windows XP in VirtualBox (old car = old software), but once I tried to run Windows 10 it had to split that 4GB of RAM between OS X and Win10 and everything slowed to an absolute crawl. 2015 was the last year of the 11" form factor, so I found one with the top model i7 and 8GB of RAM for like $260 and this thing rips. Until there's a way to run Windows well on the M1 Macs, I'm sticking with Intel for the laptop.
     
OreoCookie  (op)
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Oct 20, 2021, 06:32 PM
 
Originally Posted by Laminar View Post
Until there's a way to run Windows well on the M1 Macs, I'm sticking with Intel for the laptop.
I think you can run x86 Windows via Parallels. Or do you need to boot into Windows?
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Brien
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Oct 21, 2021, 01:30 AM
 
Tempted by the 14”. Gotta see it in person. Have a 15” currently but it is oooold. Smaller sounds nice, I love me big screens but I hate trekkin it.
     
OreoCookie  (op)
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Oct 21, 2021, 01:59 AM
 
Originally Posted by Brien View Post
Tempted by the 14”. Gotta see it in person. Have a 15” currently but it is oooold. Smaller sounds nice, I love me big screens but I hate trekkin it.
If I had to choose now, it’d be tough. Overall, I have rocked a 13” for many years. It was a great compromise of size, screen estate and power. And now that comes at no sacrifice of power. On the other hand, I got a 16” just before the pandemic hit. And I am glad I have a larger screen when working from home. Plus, I also have a 13” iPad Pro. Tough decisions.
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MacNNFamous
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Oct 21, 2021, 11:55 AM
 
I'm going to wait for the benchmarks to drop next week.

Curious to see how it stacks up, because the specs are pretty insane. My 2010 Mac Pro might finally be reaching it's end of life.... it's full maxxed out, 32 gigs ram, 12 cores, and boot drive/scratch disk is NVMe, tons of storage....

but it does suck a ton of power and it's not portable. If I finish building out my camper trailer I could see a portable workstation being pretty handy, especially with work from home still happening. Work from Colorado would be so sick.
     
Waragainstsleep
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Oct 21, 2021, 04:05 PM
 
Originally Posted by OAW View Post
The new MPB's look awesome. But I just bought a 2020 13" MBP in June 2020. And I absolutely need to be able to run x86 Windows 10 VM's for work. So it's a no go for me getting that new 14" despite it being one sweet machine.

OAW
No chance of dumping them in the cloud and just using remote desktop to control them?
Azure is nifty for this but not cheap if you need a lot of power.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
BLAZE_MkIV
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Oct 21, 2021, 04:16 PM
 
Get a windows desktop and remote into that? The latency can be really annoying though. Work is moving to server farm for the dev vm's.
     
Waragainstsleep
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Oct 22, 2021, 05:59 AM
 
Originally Posted by BLAZE_MkIV View Post
Get a windows desktop and remote into that? The latency can be really annoying though. Work is moving to server farm for the dev vm's.
Azure VMs are pretty fast for most tasks. You just have to pay for them every minute they're running. I haven't tried Windows 365 yet. I assume its running on the same infrastructure.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
OAW
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Oct 22, 2021, 01:36 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
No chance of dumping them in the cloud and just using remote desktop to control them?
Azure is nifty for this but not cheap if you need a lot of power.
We keep talking about doing something similar with Terminal Server but the trigger never gets pulled.

OAW
     
BLAZE_MkIV
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Oct 22, 2021, 03:10 PM
 
At a previous job they had a power strip / telnet server box so you could connect through and/or power cycle the connected equipment.
     
Laminar
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Oct 26, 2021, 08:52 AM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
I think you can run x86 Windows via Parallels. Or do you need to boot into Windows?
I tried Parallels on my M1 Mini when I first got it and it was so buggy as to be completely useless.
     
OreoCookie  (op)
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Oct 26, 2021, 07:32 PM
 
Originally Posted by Laminar View Post
I tried Parallels on my M1 Mini when I first got it and it was so buggy as to be completely useless.
I see. Bummer.

You are really missing out it seems: According to Anandtech multicore performance is ridiculous in memory-intensive floating point benchmarks and is 2–5 x faster than what Intel and AMD have to offer. The advantage in some of them is so large that you need a server class x86 CPU to compete. :wow:

Also the GPU seems to scale pretty much linearly, the 2–4 x performance improvement claim over the M1 mostly checks out. Although gaming performance on the Mac is still meh. But in GPU compute tasks, you see these speed ups, too.

All of this is thanks to the massive memory bandwidth. It seems it is “almost too much”. The CPU cores were able to saturate about 240 GB/s and the highest memory transfer Anandtech has seen in GPU workloads was about 90 GB/s. So you could run all CPU cores and the GPU at full tilt and still have room to spare.
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Thorzdad
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Oct 26, 2021, 07:41 PM
 
Looks like After Effects and InDesign are now coming to Apple silicon.
     
Brien
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Oct 26, 2021, 11:42 PM
 
M1 Max and AE will probably have many considering going back to Macs.
     
Waragainstsleep
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Oct 27, 2021, 05:31 AM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
All of this is thanks to the massive memory bandwidth. It seems it is “almost too much”. The CPU cores were able to saturate about 240 GB/s and the highest memory transfer Anandtech has seen in GPU workloads was about 90 GB/s. So you could run all CPU cores and the GPU at full tilt and still have room to spare.
That implies there is room with the current tech to add a few more cores, no?
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
OreoCookie  (op)
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Oct 27, 2021, 05:59 AM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
That implies there is room with the current tech to add a few more cores, no?
Probably. Although another option is to glue several M1 Maxs together and have each one have their own memory controllers? Plus, the additional logic such as the neural engine or the hardware en/decoders could use up additional bandwidth. Still, what a great problem to have: a design where the bottle neck isn’t the RAM, but the fabric.
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ShortcutToMoncton
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Oct 27, 2021, 07:03 AM
 
It seems crazy. I got an i5 Mac Mini in 2018 because the performance bump was so considerable over the old models, but it’s basically a paperweight now haha. It will be great to get a new M computer eventually but it just seems so revolutionary that I feel we should likely expect some re-thinking of what the existing computers should actually look like for the version-2 models. For now I’m going to wait a bit and see.
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Laminar
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Oct 27, 2021, 08:44 AM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
I see. Bummer.

You are really missing out it seems: According to Anandtech multicore performance is ridiculous in memory-intensive floating point benchmarks and is 2–5 x faster than what Intel and AMD have to offer. The advantage in some of them is so large that you need a server class x86 CPU to compete. :wow:
Nothing I do with the laptop is processor- or graphics- intensive. I use it to tune my cars, so portability and battery life matter. It's a good inch shorter than the smallest new MacBook. Some cars I can do with Mac OS, others I virtualize Windows XP to run Forscan and old BMW software. Otherwise t's a general web browser, Google Docs, and Facetime/Zoom machine. I have the Mini for video editing any anything else that needs some guts.

My old Air was a 1.3 dual core i5 with 4GB of RAM and the only time I ever ever felt like it wasn't enough was when I was virtualizing Windows 10. The 2.2 i7 and 8GB of RAM should be just fine for the next several years. Bonus points as I bought the new laptop for $260 on eBay and sold the old one on Facebook for $300.
     
MacNNFamous
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Oct 28, 2021, 03:12 PM
 
Nice. Love offsetting the cost of an upgrade by selling the old stuff. I picked up this current 4.1 dual core for $500 with a ton of upgrades, sold the upgrade cards I don't use for $200, swapped my better GPU in to this machine, and sold my old single core 5.1 for $300. Total cost zero dollars to get a 12 core machine, a 1tb SSD, 6tb hard drive. Faster CPUs cost like $100 but whatever. Probably a good time to retire it and see if I can get decent $ for it and get an M1.... but... idk, I still need windows and dual boot is so nice compared to having another separate machine.
     
   
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