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MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

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Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#701

Post by dbg31415 »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #662
djtriptych wrote: post #395

My new setup as of November is an M2 Air (16GB /1 TB) and an base model M1 Studio. I really couldn't be happier. I run a small WFH / Music Production / Photography studio in my basement and I really wanted an always-on always connected computer, for which the Studio has been perfect. The M2 Air is pretty close to a perfect laptop. My complaints (low audio volume, slighty cramped screen) are absolutely dwarfed by the…

I got an MBP for the extra USB ports, magsafe power adapter, and HDMI port alone. On processing power, I have no doubt the Air would have sufficed. I was willing to take the weight/size penalty for the ports!

The M2 Air has MagSafe. (=

Killing MagSafe has to be the singled DUMBEST product decision anyone ever made.

I'm so glad they finally brought it back.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#702

Post by technofiend »

mpeg wrote: post #41
s_dev wrote: post #30

I've been waiting over a year for this. My M1 8GB is simply not up to spec for iOS Dev work. Apple Store literally had nothing with 16GB when I had to buy it. I asked about when they could get one in -- Apple store assistant told me it would be at least 3 months. This was in Ireland during Covid. For reference my 2016 MacBook Pro had 16GB RAM so it was surprising to me that 6 years later I would be unable to buy one…

I would strongly recommend the M2 air at 24GB, I too bought one of the first M1 airs with 8GB ram and that laptop is just gathering dust right now, but the latest ones are great, the increase in RAM really lets the processor shine.

Would you recommend it over the 32GB 14" M2 MBP? The price difference is $500 but for the same amount of storage and cores, you get another 8GB of memory, multi-monitor support, faster wifi, another tb4 port, etc. Honestly despite their newness I was hoping the airs would see a small price drop.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#704

Post by masklinn »

orliesaurus wrote: post #691

I want to see how the M2 Pro compares to the M2 Air (not on paper) before pulling the trigger TBH

Same as before. Possibly a small touch better.

Cores are still identical, M2P just has 2 more E cores compared to M1P so in some edge cases it should behave a touch better.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#705

Post by skinnymuch »

nfriedly wrote: post #428
camgunz wrote: post #368

I bought a MBP 14 (max 32, 32GB, 2TB) Dec 2021 and I mostly don't regret it (probably should've only gotten 24 GPU cores and gone silver). Here are some pros and cons I don't think get enough play: - Turning on "Low Power Mode" when on Battery gives me roughly 10h of battery life. Functionally this is more than good enough for me. - Backlight leakage around the keys feels janky - It's pretty hard to pick it up unless…

Another reason the Air is a good choice for most people is that it doesn't have a fan. I've cleaned quite a bit of dust/lint/etc. out of various laptops. Without a fan, that's much less likely to be an issue. In one recent case, a family member was about to buy an entire new laptop because their old one was feeling very sluggish. I checked it out and realized that the fan had completely died and the system was consta…

How do you know this stuff? My old 2014 MacBook Pro has the battery swelling up. I can’t afford more than a few hundred to fix everything. It’s a 2nd comp I use for a remote coworking Zoom session all day.

I could have the same problems. I’ve never cleaned the laptop either..heh. I am a programmer so I am not afraid of hardware.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#706

Post by wiremine »

IntelMiner wrote: post #415
wiremine wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The software experience is getting worse imo EVERY OS release will have some issues, and the people who are most impacted are the ones who chime in. If it "just works" for someone, they aren't going to chime in. This is true of Mac, Windows, Linux, etc. I'd be curious to see a quantitative pre-release breakdown by OS and version. That might be more useful than individual anecdotes, as interesting as those are.

Okay, sure. Fine. Humans write software and humans make mistakes * However* Apple specifically only targets a very small subset of devices. The amount of obvious bugs that slip through in every release upgrade against such a small handful of devices from a company as big as Apple is pretty disappointing Windows has to run on the overwhelming majority of "weird" x86 devices on the planet. The amount of work they have…

Microsoft has done a great job, don't get me wrong.

My question is still legit: is there an (relatively) unbiased third-party that tracks bugs across major OS releases? Is that a bad question to ask?

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#707

Post by thewebcount »

grecy wrote: post #683
djtriptych wrote: post #395

My new setup as of November is an M2 Air (16GB /1 TB) and an base model M1 Studio. I really couldn't be happier. I run a small WFH / Music Production / Photography studio in my basement and I really wanted an always-on always connected computer, for which the Studio has been perfect. The M2 Air is pretty close to a perfect laptop. My complaints (low audio volume, slighty cramped screen) are absolutely dwarfed by the…

Are you able to edit 4k video in FCP on the M2 Air with 16GB? I'm looking to upgrade, and I want to go for the lowest config M mac that I can get away with for smooth 4k edits.

You can, but honestly, if you can afford 24GB, go for it. Remember that unlike in the Intel days, the GPU uses main memory for its RAM. (Well, I guess integrated Intel GPUs did some of that, too.) That can be painful when you've got a few clips in the timeline and some plug-in wants to have multiple copies of each frame for doing its processing. (Like it applies a blur, then mixes that with the original, or whatever.) I have a 16GB MacMini I sometimes edit video on, and it works, but there are times when things get choppy/slow. I also have a Studio with 64GB, and it's smooth as butter. (I mean it's possible to load it up so it slows down, but it takes a lot more to do so.)

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#708

Post by cpsns »

JimBlackwood wrote: post #601
cpsns wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll never be overly critical of anyone’s computing choices, but this just seems like the worst of both worlds to me unless you specifically want to tinker with Apple-ARM Linux. Why not Linux on much better supported hardware from Lenovo or Dell? It just doesn’t make sense to me to buy such an expensive computer only to remove a core part of the package, Mac OS.

I think you’d be surprised! I have a Dell Workstation from work (Specifically a Linux supported one, whatever that means) using linux and my personal Macbook Air M1 is running Asahi Linux. I really ran into no issues, the experience was almost scarily smooth. Everything just works. Sleep is definitely worse than on MacOS but it’s better than my Dell. I can’t name a single thing that is not equally bad or worse on the…

Fair enough, I wasn’t aware they’d made so much progress. I was under the impression it was still a proof of concept and people were glossing over a lot of issues.

I guess that’s the benefit of only having to target a very small amount of hardware, it saves time for improving other things.

I remember preferring Linux on PPC to Linux on intel laptops years ago. Apple PPC laptops tended to “just work” with Linux in my experience.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#709

Post by trynewideas »

reticulated wrote: post #500
trynewideas wrote: post #460

> With up to 96GB of unified memory in the M2 Max model, creators can work on scenes so large that PC laptops can’t even run them.4 ... > 4. Testing was conducted by Apple in November and December 2022 using preproduction 16-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M2 Max, 12-core CPU, 38-core GPU, 96GB of RAM, and 8TB SSD, as well as a production Intel Core i9-based PC system with NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 graphics with 24G…

Apple have caveated the comparison by specifying "PC laptops" and according to NVidia's own site [1], and clicking through to see the actual specs [2], there aren't any currently available that out-spec a 16GB 3080 Ti. I'll admit I haven't gone spelunking down the specialist laptop manuafacturer sites, but on the surface it seems to be not an unrealistic claim. [1] https://store.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/store/laptop/…

Sure, but the claim is:

> creators can work on scenes so large that PC laptops can’t even run them

You can't open a 40GB scene entirely in GPU RAM on any single-GPU system, laptop or otherwise, because there aren't any 40GB+ GPUs.

But you can open a 40GB Octane demo scene with out-of-core loading enabled on a Windows laptop with 64GB of RAM. Hell, Otoy has a demo from 2018 of a Windows system loading and editing that "worst-case" 40GB scene entirely out-of-core at 60fps.[1]

So the suggestion is that the M2 is doing it without enabling out-of-core loading because all system RAM is in-core. Which is cool, and something Otoy's CEO was boasting on the M1 MBP's release day two years ago.[2]

So why bother going through the motions of benchmarking anything like this against 2+-year-old systems, just to make a claim the M1 also made, just less precisely?

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xE3J56pabk

2: https://twitter.com/JulesUrbach/status/1326922973790367750

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#710

Post by bubblethink »

Lio wrote: post #544
Yujf wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on how you spec it. Apple charges an arm and a leg for ram/storage upgrades

I was about to say the same thing but I've just had a look at Dell for a product comparison. It seems crazy to me that in 2023 Apple offer a £2,699.00 laptop with just 512Gb of non-upgradable storage. Looking at Dell's Precision line bundled with Ubuntu, they might be user upgradable but they're still roughly a similar ball park to Apple price wise. Personally I'm going to need to see some full package benchmarks bef…

>they're still roughly a similar ball park

The PC industry uses wildly inflated prices, especially MSRP. A more realistic price for laptops can be found on various deal sites. A comparable Dell, Lenovo, or HP laptop will cost about .5-.6 of the equivalent macbook pro price. The vast majority of laptops, even after accounting for 1-2 TB of storage and 32 GB RAM cost less than $1.5k. MBPs start around $2k.

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