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My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4
21–30 of 417 posts
Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4
#22One thing that wasn't mentioned is the max sustained screen brightness for SDR, which is higher on the M4 Pro (1000 nits) compared to the M4 Air or M1 Pro (500 nits).
There’s an awesome app called Vivid which just opens the HDR max brightness. I use it all the time with my M3 Pro when working outside and I believe it also works on earlier models.
There are so many base features that are inexplicably relegated to 3rd party apps. Like a better finder experience. Or keeping screen on. Or NTFS writing.
Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4
#23It's classic Apple to spend over a decade insisting that that glossy screens were the best option, and then to eventually roll out a matte screen as a "premium" feature with a bunch of marketing around it.
I wonder if they will (re)introduce premium keyboards with sculpted keys that self-center your fingers someday. magsafe coming back was nice, maybe more extra ports?
Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4
#24We used to sell conversion kits to shoehorn a pixel qi display into the thinkpad x230. Since apple has put in 1,000nit displays on the pros, we don't bother anymore. The nano texture sold me and it performs wonderfully outdoors. I hate giving apple money but here I am.
Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s an awesome app called Vivid which just opens the HDR max brightness. I use it all the time with my M3 Pro when working outside and I believe it also works on earlier models.
There are so many base features that are inexplicably relegated to 3rd party apps. Like a better finder experience. Or keeping screen on. Or NTFS writing.
> There are so many base features that are inexplicably relegated to 3rd party apps.
> Like a better finder experience.
> Or keeping screen on.
Do you mind linking or naming which tools you use for those 2 purposes?
Asking out of pure curiosity, as for keeping the screen on, I just use `caffeinate -imdsu` in the terminal. Previously used Amphetamine, but I ended up having some minor issues with it, and I didn't need any of its advanced features (which could definitely be useful to some people, I admit, just not me). I just wanted to have a simple toggle for "keep the device and/or display from sleeping" mode, so I just switched to `caffeinate -imdsu` (which is built-in).
As for Finder, I didn't really feel the need for anything different, but I would gladly try out and potentially switch to something better, if you are willing to recommend your alternative.
Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I upgraded from M4 to M5 MBP because I broke my M4's screen and so my company ordered a replacement M5 while the M4 is being repaired. I can't really notice a difference at all. It's an absolute work horse, but so was the M4. I _did_ spring for the nano texture display this time around, and that is definitely nice (but nothing to do with the M5)
Do you think you’ll have any regrets about the nano texture display? I was torn between nano and regular glass, but opted for the regular glass.
I hate to say it but it's totally worth it. Direct sunlight incredible.
Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4
#27You won't notice 8ms difference in input lag
I have 165Hz monitors. Software feels noticeably more snappy.
Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4
#28It's classic Apple to spend over a decade insisting that that glossy screens were the best option, and then to eventually roll out a matte screen as a "premium" feature with a bunch of marketing around it.
Historically, traditional matte screen finishes exhibited poor optical qualities by scattering ambient light, which tended to wash out colors. This scattering process also affected the light from individual pixels, causing it to refract into neighboring pixels.
This reduced overall image quality and caused pixel-fine details, such as small text, to appear smeary on high-density LCDs. In contrast, well-designed glossy displays provide a superior visual experience by minimizing internal refraction and reflecting ambient light at high angles, which reduces display pollution. Consequently, glossy screens often appear much brighter, blacks appear blacker without being washed out, colors show a higher dynamic range, and small details remain crisper. High-quality glass glossy displays are often easy to use even in full daylight, and reflections are manageable because they are full optical reflections with correct depth, allowing the user to focus on the screen content.
Apple's "nano texture" matte screens were engineered to solve the specific optical problems of traditional matte finishes, the washed-out colors and smeary details. But they cost more to make. The glossy option is still available, and still good.
Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4
#29Incredible hardware. Love that I can also run local llms on mine. https://github.com/Aider-AI/aider/issues/4526
If you bought a fully-featured computer that supports compute shaders and didn't run local LLMs, you should be protesting in the street.
Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4
#30It's classic Apple to spend over a decade insisting that that glossy screens were the best option, and then to eventually roll out a matte screen as a "premium" feature with a bunch of marketing around it.
It’s classic Apple commenter not know about Apple. They offered matte display upgrades to the MacBook Pro almost 20 years ago. The current glossy black display only became a product line wide choice with the retina displays in 2012, likely because they didn’t prioritize getting an appropriate matte glass finish on the retina screens due to low demand.