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My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

michael.stapelberg.ch

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Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#361

Post by JonathanFly »

vbezhenar wrote: post #304
jofzar wrote: post #214

> I don’t notice going back to 60 Hz displays on computers. However, on phones, where a lot more animations are a key part of the user experience, I think 120 Hz displays are more interesting. I'm always so jealous of these people, 60hz is just so bad for me now and even make me a bit motion sick. I can see it in everything, moving the window, scrolling, the cursor.

I've made a test for myself. Screen split into two parts, two small squares moving and bouncing. First square moves every frame, second square skips every second frame, but moves 2x. So basically one half of the screen is full FPS, another half of the screen is half FPS. And I implemented it as a "blind test", so I could make a guess and then check it. For screen with 60 FPS, the difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS…

For me it's the motion clarity that I notice the most. Higher FPS is just one way to get more clarity though, with other methods like black frame insertion then even 60 fps feels like 240.

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#362

Post by quitit »

ricardobeat wrote: post #111
quitit wrote: post #108

An frequently overlooked point is the display brightness. The pro models offer 1600 nits peak brightness, which makes these good units for looking at HDR content, especially if you like to take photos or edit videos. Meanwhile the Air maxes out at 500 nits, so the effect and contrast is drastically reduced for those models.

Normal content is still limited to 500 nits, and these being mini-LED displays, contrast is already infinite. Unless you’re making Instagram content, very few photographers use HDR. Everything else will look the same on both screens.

Normal content is 1000 nits, peak is 1600 nits.

Contrast is significantly poorer on the Air display, and HDR is already in your own photos if you have a modern smartphone, so the idea that it’s niche or irrelevant is a naive take.

The perceptual difference between sdr and hdr isn’t a minor bump, it is conspicuous and driver of realism.

If one cares about the refresh rate of their screen, then they’d trivially notice the improvement that high nit displays provide.

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#363

Post by marcogarces »

jhbadger wrote: post #326
asdff wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The type of person shelling out 3k for a computer is not running it until the wheels come off.

I don't think you can say that -- I paid about that for my 2021 M1 Max with 64GB and I'm still using it four years later as my main machine. There's an argument to be made to buy an expensive computer every 5 years or so rather than a cheaper one that you need to replace every 2 years because it's become unbearably slow.

same here; I bought a M2 Max with 96GB of RAM almost 3 years ago, for €4K, but a client paid half of it for a 1 year retainer. This machine is still the best thing i've worked with, and I have zero intentions of switching this machine anytime soon (i'll probably need to replace it's battery in the future). Rather keep the same machine for 5 or 6 years than to buy a crappier one every 2 years

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#364

Post by adastra22 »

weiliddat wrote: post #289
adastra22 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you watch movies or TV without throwing up?

Major difference is one you're watching something without interacting with it and the other is responding to your action; one you have your gaze relatively still, taking in the entire frame, the other your eyes are tracking an object as you interact with it via some sort of input device. In tracking motion your eyes/brain can see improved motion resolution (how clear the details are in an object moving across the scr…

Your body & nervous system processing has input lags on the order of 100ms and variance on the order of 10’s of ms though.

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#365

Post by rogerrogerr »

adastra22 wrote: post #364
weiliddat wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Major difference is one you're watching something without interacting with it and the other is responding to your action; one you have your gaze relatively still, taking in the entire frame, the other your eyes are tracking an object as you interact with it via some sort of input device. In tracking motion your eyes/brain can see improved motion resolution (how clear the details are in an object moving across the scr…

Your body & nervous system processing has input lags on the order of 100ms and variance on the order of 10’s of ms though.

But your eyes can track a moving object (like a car, or a ball, or a cursor or text on a scrolling webpage); they don’t stay 100ms behind it.

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#366

Post by fpoling »

dylan604 wrote: post #339
fpoling wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My car from 2023 still came with USB-A port. No-so cheap USB camera that I recently bought came with USB-A port.

The camera came with a USB-A port, or simply provided a cable that had a USB-A end? I've never seen a camera with an A port

It was a cable with USB-A end. The cable cannot be detached from the camera.

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#367

Post by prmoustache »

brulard wrote: post #264
IshKebab wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean if you ranked all the hobbies in terms of cost, casually spending $3k on a laptop would be near the top of the list. But there are a small number of hobbies that are vastly more expensive. The distribution is highly skewed. Like wealth. The 99th percentile are near the top in rank (by definition) but nowhere near the top in absolute terms.

I can not think of many hobbies which are less expensive if you are serious about them. Some hobbies around me, where $3000 wouldn't get you far: Motorcycles, cars, cycling, collecting anything, woodworking, machining, music making, traveling, horses,...

The cycling industry does a hard work making sure people think they need expensive bicycles but you can perfectly enjoycycling as a hobby without spending a fortune on it.

And in contradiction to computers, a bicycle from 40 years ago still does the same job as it did at the time, there is no software making it incompatible and it doesn't feel slower than the more modern stuff. All you need is a set of brake pads, cables, tires, chain and cassette every once in a while. All these consumables are fairly cheap if you aren't chasing the newest/highest end tech and stick to 2x9 / 2x10 speed transmissions.

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#368

Post by mixmastamyk »

adastra22 wrote: post #286
jofzar wrote: post #214

> I don’t notice going back to 60 Hz displays on computers. However, on phones, where a lot more animations are a key part of the user experience, I think 120 Hz displays are more interesting. I'm always so jealous of these people, 60hz is just so bad for me now and even make me a bit motion sick. I can see it in everything, moving the window, scrolling, the cursor.

How do you watch movies or TV without throwing up?

Motion blur mitigates the issue to some extent, why 24fps films are watchable.

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#369

Post by prmoustache »

_yb2s wrote: post #328
eastbound wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking it’s a hobby is an american thing. I’ve never met anyone who do it, but for Kobe Bryant, Harrisson Ford, Tom Cruise it seems normal. Most people save $400 per month tops, that they spend on holidays.

It’s a doable common hobby for middle class Americans. I grew up in a rural area with a dirt airstrip and everyone owned planes- even people that could barely afford a reliable used car. You can sometimes find something like an old Cessna for about $20k, and if you’re willing to do “experimental” planes that you fix yourself, sometimes just a few $k. Like anything, if you’re an insider in the community you can get go…

> even people that could barely afford a reliable used car. You can sometimes find something like an old Cessna for about $20k,

Not sure what you call a "reliable used car". My low mileage for its age 2006 Mercedes B200 costed me 5.5k€ for instance. A car doesn't have to cost a lot to be reliable.

Around me $20k is an expensive price for a car and most people buy second hand +20y old cars they buy for less than 5k€.

Re: My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

#370

Post by prmoustache »

hu3 wrote: post #244
jofzar wrote: post #214

> I don’t notice going back to 60 Hz displays on computers. However, on phones, where a lot more animations are a key part of the user experience, I think 120 Hz displays are more interesting. I'm always so jealous of these people, 60hz is just so bad for me now and even make me a bit motion sick. I can see it in everything, moving the window, scrolling, the cursor.

Same. I currently have a 160hz and a 240hz monitor. And I can tell the difference between them when scrolling pages with tons of text. There's less ghosting in 240hz. And scrolling on 60hz to me looks blurry. I'd like to think that those who don't notice the difference have improved brain GPUs that can compensate for ghosting.

How can you know it is not bias? For what its worth you might have never noticed any difference if you didn't knew they weren't refreshing at the same frequency.
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