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M4 MacBook Pro

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Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#391

Post by mrweasel »

jart wrote: post #159
carlgreene wrote: post #94

What’s amazing is that in the past I’ve felt the need to upgrade within a few years. New video format or more demanding music software is released that slows the machine down, or battery life craters. Well, I haven’t had even a tinge of feeling that I need to upgrade after getting my M1 Pro MBP. I can’t remember it ever skipping a beat running a serious Ableton project, or editing in Resolve. Can stuff be faster? Tec…

I hate to say it but that's like a boomer saying they never felt the need to buy a computer, because they've never wished their pen and paper goes faster. Or a UNIX greybeard saying they don't need a Mac since they don't think its GUI would make their terminal go any faster. If you've hit a point in your life where you're no longer keeping up with the latest technological developments like AI, then of course you don'…

> If you've hit a point in your life where you're no longer keeping up with the latest technological developments like AI, then of course you don't need to upgrade.

That's me, I don't give a shit about AI, video editing, modern gaming or Kubernetes. That newest and heaviest piece of software I care about is VSCode. So I think you're absolutely correct. Most things new since Docker and VSCode has not contributed massively to how I work and most of the things I do could be done just fine 8-10 years ago.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#392

Post by astrostl »

noman-land wrote: post #336
carlgreene wrote: post #94

What’s amazing is that in the past I’ve felt the need to upgrade within a few years. New video format or more demanding music software is released that slows the machine down, or battery life craters. Well, I haven’t had even a tinge of feeling that I need to upgrade after getting my M1 Pro MBP. I can’t remember it ever skipping a beat running a serious Ableton project, or editing in Resolve. Can stuff be faster? Tec…

I would normally never upgrade so soon after getting an M1 but running local LLMs is extremely cool and useful to the point where I'd want the extra RAM and CPU to run larger models more quickly.

I'm bumping from a still-excellent M1 MAX / 64GB to M4 MAX / 128GB, mostly for local GenAI. It gives me some other uplift and also enables me to sell this system while it's still attractive. I'm able to exhaust local 7B models fairly easily on it.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#393

Post by int_19h »

twilo wrote: post #136
opjjf wrote: post #5

It seems they also update the base memory on MacBook Air: > MacBook Air: The World’s Most Popular Laptop Now Starts at 16GB > MacBook Air is the world’s most popular laptop, and with Apple Intelligence, it’s even better. Now, models with M2 and M3 double the starting memory to 16GB, while keeping the starting price at just $999 — a terrific value for the world’s best-selling laptop.

Great news. The pro is kinda of heavy for my liking so the Air is the way to go

It's not just the weight - Air is also fanless (and still runs cold).

And yes, with enough RAM, it is a surprisingly good dev laptop.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#394

Post by joshvm »

RobinL wrote: post #154

Can anyone comment on the viability of using an external SSD rather than upgrading storage? Specifically for data analysis (e.g. storing/analysing parquet files using Python/duckdb, or video editing using divinci resolve). Also, any recommendations for suitable ssds, ideally not too expensive? Thank you!

Basically any good SSD manufacturer is fine, but I've found that the enclosure controller support is flaky with Sonoma. Drives that appear instantly in Linux sometimes take ages to enumerate in OSX, and only since upgrading to Sonoma. Stick with APFS if you're only using it for Mac stuff.

I have 2-4TB drives from Samsung, WD and Kingston. All work fine and are ridiculously fast. My favourite enclosure is from DockCase for the diagnostic screen.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#395

Post by alsetmusic »

izacus wrote: post #40
alsetmusic wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lot's of people don't upgrade on the cadence that users on this forum do. Someone was mentioning yesterday that they are trying to sell their Intel Mac {edit: on this forum] and asking advice on getting the best price. Someone else replied that they still had a 2017 model. I spoke to someone at my job (I'm IT) who told me they'd just ordered a new iMac to replace one that is 11 years old. There's no smoke and mirrors…

Right, it's obviously that, not a marketing trick to make numbers look much bigger while comparing to old CPUs and laptops :)

Given that they also compare it to an M1 in the same aside, I'd say you're wrong.

> Up to 23.8x faster basecalling for DNA sequencing in Oxford Nanopore MinKNOW when compared to the 16-inch MacBook Pro with Core i9, and up to 1.8x faster when compared to the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#396

Post by eropple »

stringsandchars wrote: post #339
extr wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've owned an M1 MBP base model since 2021 and I just got an M3 Max for work. I was curious to see if it "felt" different and was contemplating an upgrade to M4. You know what? It doesn't really feel different. I think my browser opens about 1 second faster from a cold start. But other than that, no perceptible difference day to day.

> It doesn't really feel different. My work machine was upgraded from an M1 with 16GB of RAM to an M3 Max with 36GB and the difference in Xcode compile times is beyond belief: I went from something like 1-2 minutes to 15-20 seconds. Obviously if opening a browser is the most taxing thing your machine is doing the difference will be minimal. But video or music editing, application-compiling and other intensive tasks,…

FWIW I think that's more the core count than anything. I have a M1 Max as a personal machine and an M3 Max at work and while the M3 Max is definitely faster, it isn't world-beating.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#397

Post by alexashka »

The software stack has gotten so bad that no amount of hardware can make up for it.

The compile times for Swift, the gigabytes of RAM everything seems to eat up.

I closed all my apps and I'm at 10gb of RAM being used - I have nothing open.

Does this mean the Macbook Air 8gb model I had 10 years ago would basically be unable to just run the operating system alone?

It's disconcerting. Ozempic for terrible food and car-centric infrastructure we've created, cloud super-computing and 'AI' for coping with this frankenstein software stack.

The year of the Linux desktop is just around the corner to save the day, right? Right? :)

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#398

Post by zja »

> MacBook Air is the world’s most popular laptop, and with Apple Intelligence, it’s even better. Now, models with M2 and M3 double the starting memory to 16GB, while keeping the starting price at just $999 — a terrific value for the world’s best-selling laptop.

This is nice, and long overdue.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#399

Post by zitterbewegung »

carlgreene wrote: post #94

What’s amazing is that in the past I’ve felt the need to upgrade within a few years. New video format or more demanding music software is released that slows the machine down, or battery life craters. Well, I haven’t had even a tinge of feeling that I need to upgrade after getting my M1 Pro MBP. I can’t remember it ever skipping a beat running a serious Ableton project, or editing in Resolve. Can stuff be faster? Tec…

I agree with you about not needing to upgrade but, it still stands that IMHO Apple is better off with upgrading or even having the need to upgrade with competition. (Also it's really good that Macs now have 16GB of ram by default). As I have had my M1 14.2 Max I believe that the only reason I would want to upgrade is that I can configure it with 128GB of ram which allows you to load newer AI models on device.

The MacBook Pro seems like it does have some quality of life improvements such as Thunderbolt 5, the camera is now a center stage (follows you) 14 megapixel camera now all of them have three USB-C ports and the battery life claims of 22-24 hours. Regardless if you want a MacBook Pro and you don't have one there is now an argument on not just going to buy the previous model.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#400

Post by Eric_WVGG »

jonah wrote: post #160
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love the nano-texture on the Studio Display, but my MacBooks have always suffered from finger oil rubbing the screen from the keys. Fingerprint oil on nano-texture sounds like a recipe for disaster. For my current laptop, I finally broke down and bought a tempered glass screen protector. It adds a bit of glare, but wipes clean — and for the first time I have a one-year-old MacBook that still looks as good as new.

I put a thin screen cleaner/glasses cleaner cloth on the keyboard whenever I close the lid. That keeps the oils off the screen as well as prevents any pressure or rubbing from damaging the glass.

I tried that, unfortunately didn't work for me at all.
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