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14-inch MacBook Pro review: A Mac Pro in your backpack

sixcolors.com

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Re: 14-inch MacBook Pro review: A Mac Pro in your backpack

#21

Post by chrisseaton »

fayten wrote: post #12
moneywoes wrote: post #2

Do ARM compatibility issues still exist?

Yes, but it's very rare now a days. I live in JVM land and there are quite a few native JNA libraries that I have run into issues with. One example is vlcj [1] I just ran into yesterday. I have yet to dig deeply into the issue just yet, but it's giving me the fun "no compatible architecture found error". SWT and JavaFX both fully works with arm now though, so I am pretty happy on that front. GraalVM native-image also…

They really need to get on and support macOS ARM for GraalVM. It's clearly not going away - it just needs doing.

Re: 14-inch MacBook Pro review: A Mac Pro in your backpack

#23

Post by buildbot »

arvinsim wrote: post #20
ptudan wrote: post #8

I can fit a 16" MBP in my backpack. Your mileage may vary.

I would have gone with the 16" MBP if it wasn't the weight. I am interested how much different the performance is between the 14"

Considering the wattage and thickness of both designs, I bet they are almost identical when specced the same. I don’t think the 16 has significant extra cooling/that the M1 max throttles much.

Re: 14-inch MacBook Pro review: A Mac Pro in your backpack

#24

Post by jeffbee »

moneywoes wrote: post #2

Do ARM compatibility issues still exist?

In my experience the main issue with the M1+macOS experience is not the ISA, it's the big-little thread scheduling. I'm not sure what they were thinking but there's some heuristic that schedules background or batch work on the little cores. This includes manually-triggered software updates which unfortunately can take forever on those little cores. I waited almost 4 hours for an Xcode update to complete. All four little cores were maxed out the whole time, and these new chips only have two of them.

Re: 14-inch MacBook Pro review: A Mac Pro in your backpack

#25

Post by cassianoleal »

zlsa wrote: post #19
sebazzz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been some font rendering issues in Ultimaker Cura (which is written in Python) that ran as x86 on M1. These have been resolved in the Python library.

In fairness, I've seen font rendering in Cura on Linux as well.

I've seen font rendering issues in Cura on Intel Macs as well. Cura's GUI and UX are pretty bad in general IMO though, so I don't use it.

Re: 14-inch MacBook Pro review: A Mac Pro in your backpack

#27

Post by ubermonkey »

arvinsim wrote: post #20
ptudan wrote: post #8

I can fit a 16" MBP in my backpack. Your mileage may vary.

I would have gone with the 16" MBP if it wasn't the weight. I am interested how much different the performance is between the 14"

All the info I've found suggested no real delta, so i went 14". I run external monitors at home, and having the smaller size for travel was appealing.

Re: 14-inch MacBook Pro review: A Mac Pro in your backpack

#28

Post by jrochkind1 »

> It will probably take a little while for Mac apps to be updated to support the ProMotion display. I found that some apps scrolled text in the same buttery-smooth way that apps do on my iPhone and iPad, but others didn’t. I was able to find a few Catalyst-based apps that have already been written to support 120Hz displays on iPad and iPhone, and they looked spectacular.

It surprised me that an app would have to be updated to support a better display. Anyone know the details, and nature of the update that has to be done?

Re: 14-inch MacBook Pro review: A Mac Pro in your backpack

#30

Post by slg »

Have any of the reviews yet compared a similarly specced 14" vs 16"? Since the primary difference in performance between the MB and MBA was thermals, I wonder if the extra size allows for better thermal performance and better overall performance in the bigger version.
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