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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

#902
post #516

Start at £2149 in the UK. I bought an equivalent M1 last year for £1729. Price increase of £420. About a 25% increase. Wonder if that’s closer to the true inflation figure rather than the official 11% narrative. Regardless, they look like good machines, surprised they went this low key with the announcement.

£1729? M1 Pro was £1899 yesterday and for a very long time, I don't remember ever seeing £1729.

Yeah to be fair I did buy it off Amazon and got it cheap. I bought it the same day they released the new iPhones in October because I noticed the massive jump in prices and that they'd bumped the prices of some other stuff up so I went on Amazon which still had a bunch of stock with the old prices and bought an iPad Air and the MacBook.

£1725 as of today:

https://amzn.eu/d/5QbkdNz

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#903

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…

I had an M2 Air and ended up swapping for the 14 M1 Pro. The Air was plenty powerful and I loved the weight and battery life, but:

- The 14" Pro's native resolution is 3024x1964, which means at 1512w you're getting perfect doubling of the pixels. The M2 air is natively 2560x1664 but it defaults to 1470x956, so you don't get that clean doubling and the sharpness suffers IMO. You can drop it down to 1280w to increase sharpness but the cost in screen real estate is significant. I'm not sure understand your point about the Air's resolution being more mainstream or usable

- The black levels on the MPB's mini-LED LCD screen are vastly better than the M2 Air.

- As someone who's only used MPBs over the last 10 years, the speakers on the Air sound truly awful — tinny, harsh, low volume. Not just for music, but I found listening to a podcast or watching a TV show to be fatiguing and unsatisfying.

- I upgraded my Air's SSD because the default SSD is slow, so the price was $1500+tax; Best Buy was running a sale on MBP 14" that put it at $1600+tax, so all told the significant price gap was almost entirely negated.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#904

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Based upon current trends countries like Poland and Slovakia are going to overtake the UK on many economic metrics I'll believe that when I see it >the enmourous decline of the UK relative to places like Germany, France The UK, Germany and France are declining in lockstep, actually. In different ways but all declining >the US Yes this is the killer.

> I'll believe that when I see it You're seeing it right now, if you actually look. "UK economy could be comparable to “Slovakia” in 10 years - says economist Duncan Weldon" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5g_S9BBtqw > The UK, Germany and France are declining in lockstep, Nope. https://youtu.be/R5g_S9BBtqw?t=155 "Britain is unique among the G7 countries in that GDP per head is still below that when the pandemic hit.…

>says economist Duncan Weldon

Forgive me but I disregard the predictions made by economists, a class of people who bear no consequences for their predictions.

You may be correct but this proves nothing.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#905

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Percentages are misleading in such small absolute numbers. "30%" is 160 grams (0.3 pounds) in this context.

The 14” is 360g (0.8 lbs) heavier than the Air. The 13” (which is little more than a heavier air) is the one that’s 160g heavier than the air. And percentages are not at all misleading, the 14” does feel a lot heavier.

Only if you are solely carrying a laptop, and not considering the bad.

Bag, a book, a few pens, a water bottle and cables/headphones/drives is a pretty minimal load that makes a 360g increase a small delta.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#906

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have never used the MagSafe connector for my 14" MBP. It either sits docked with my monitor which provides power over USB-C, or when I take it, I don't take the power brick. I've taken it camping over three days and never had to charge, so having a dedicated charging port doesn't really suit my use (also not a fan of them adding HDMI back to the machine)

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#907

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…

To reiterate your point about RAM for anyone wondering: don’t get the 8gb version! I’ve run 3 Apple Silicon Macs in different configs since 2020. Real-world performance on a range of different workloads is substantially worse than the 16gb version. Don’t even think about having more than one user logged in!

It really depends on how you are using it. If you are primarily a single-tasker, then the 8GB should be enough. A lot of people just use one app at a time. I imagine that most people on this forum would be more technical and more likely to be multi-taskers where the extra RAM would matter more.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#908
post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine a lot of the performance of the M1 and thereafter is a direct result of moving the memory closer to the die. The power efficiency, sure, that's all engineering, but super close and fast memory right next to the CPU is only one step away from AMD's 3D v-cache that has (had) the 5800X3D beating out newer 7000 series AMD chips.

> I imagine a lot of the performance of the M1 and thereafter is a direct result of moving the memory closer to the die I'm not sure why this Apple marketing point gets repeated so often. The M2 has the same memory support as current Intel chips: 128-bit LPDDR5 6400. Mounting the memory on the same package as the CPU might have some engineering advantages compared to socketed RAM, but it doesnt make the (industry sta…

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Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#909
post #2

Pricing has gone crazy here in the UK. Paid £1899 for my M1 Pro. Same spec M2 Pro is £2199. Edit: at this rate when my previous gen one expires I'm going to think seriously about shifting back to ThinkPads...

While the value of the £ has rebounded somewhat since a low in September, it is still much below what it was just a couple of years ago. Apple is basing it’s prices in USD and that has hit the £ and the Euro over the last six months or so.

http://www.exchangerate.com/charts.html?continent=currency%2...

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#910
post #16

New Mac mini with the M2 Pro maxes out at 32GB memory, that's quite disappointing compared to the Macbook Pro's 96GB. On the other hand, my M2 Macbook Air is one of the best purchases I've made in a long time, great fanless laptop.

If you were to go over 32GB of RAM you are probably better off switching to the very similar Mac Studio with the M1 Max which can go to 64GB. If you want an M2-based SOC, I suspect that the Mac Studio will get an upgrade later in the spring.
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