Probably buying base MacBook Pro 14"

UnknownSouljer, what do you use for audio on your 14"? The built-in speakers or some headphones and/or external speakers? Do you use any USB DAC?
 
Quiz said:
UnknownSouljer, what do you use for audio on your 14"? The built-in speakers or some headphones and/or external speakers? Do you use any USB DAC?
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Already talked about this too. Convenience has trumped audio-file listening for me. I also mentioned travel is a big part of this.

I use AirPod Pros (first gen) while on the go, and Sony WH-1000XM2's while at home. Would get XM5's if I was buying today, but there still isn't enough reason to upgrade after 5 years, or whatever its been.

At some point I do plan on getting some Yamaha HS8's to do more audio monitoring at home, but that may be delayed further and further as my living situation may just not allow for loud playing of external audio (trying to make Japan my home base, and living in apartments generally means headphones will likely be my future for a while).
 
Quiz said:
UnknownSouljer, what do you use for audio on your 14"? The built-in speakers or some headphones and/or external speakers? Do you use any USB DAC?
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I use a pair of iLoud Micro Monitors with my M2 Air. They sound great and are small enough to take on the road. I connect them via the headphone jack. They'll go to my new MBP as soon as it's delivered today.

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Quiz said:
Any comments on the Chord Qutest DAC?
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Very well-reviewed dac -- very expensive, too! After years of trying dacs ranging from $100 - $2000, I concluded the difference in audio quality (to MY ears) wasn't nearly worth the higher prices. I now use a $400 Topping E70V and am perfectly satisfied. Mac's built-in dac is pretty good. Give it a try before dropping a lot of $$ on an external dac.
 
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Setting up my M3 MBP. Here are some pics of it next to my M2 Air. I'm surprised at the weight difference. The MBP is noticeably heavier, though by no means is it a "heavy" laptop.

PXL_20231107_225603557.jpgPXL_20231107_225648269.jpg
 
Petapixel's Review of M3 Max: https://petapixel.com/2023/11/06/ap...3-max-its-crazy-how-weve-come-so-far-so-fast/

Beats every PC laptop and even some PC desktop's if your workload is photo/video tasks. Will be really interesting to see what M3 Ultra brings to the table. Mostly specifically in terms of the GPU performance. I'm fairly certain a 4090 will still trounce it, but by what margin will be the question.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
Petapixel's Review of M3 Max: https://petapixel.com/2023/11/06/ap...3-max-its-crazy-how-weve-come-so-far-so-fast/

Beats every PC laptop and even some PC desktop's if your workload is photo/video tasks. Will be really interesting to see what M3 Ultra brings to the table. Mostly specifically in terms of the GPU performance. I'm fairly certain a 4090 will still trounce it, but by what margin will be the question.
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I've seen benchmarks for BG3 that show a properly built Metal game the M3 Max actually performs on par with a desktop 4070 which is pretty impressive.
 
Mchart said:
I've seen benchmarks for BG3 that show a properly built Metal game the M3 Max actually performs on par with a desktop 4070 which is pretty impressive.
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We're going to have a few launching on Mac over the next 5 months or so.
We have RE4, RE: Village, Death Stranding, Layers of Fear, Assassins Creed: Mirage (and others) - all of which we'll be able to test head to head with PC stuff.

The big issue being there will always be a debate between how much of this is actual performance and how much is optimization.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
We're going to have a few launching on Mac over the next 5 months or so.
We have RE4, RE: Village, Death Stranding, Layers of Fear, Assassins Creed: Mirage (and others) - all of which we'll be able to test head to head with PC stuff.

The big issue being there will always be a debate between how much of this is actual performance and how much is optimization.
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To me it's somewhat irrelevant if x86/PC is technically faster. That's always been the thing with ARM as an architecture - For certain tasks it's just better at doing it. The reality is that with both the M2 Max and now M3 Max in particular, Apple is putting out hardware that is competing with even higher-end desktops for gaming at this point.

The core issue though is just getting the developers to support native ARM/Metal, because when we aren't getting titles like Diablo 4 it doesn't matter how powerful Macs become. We're sort of sitting in this same weird position that Mac sat in the early/mid 90's where Mac was superior from a hardware perspective, but ultimately never got the broad developer support.

Smartest thing Apple could do right now is work with Sony to basically make it so any title developed for playstation could easily be compiled for Mac as well given that anything Microsoft owns is going to be Windows/DirectX only. Imagine how fast Mac adoption would pick up if a God of War, etc came out for Mac before Windows.
 
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UnknownSouljer said:
The big issue being there will always be a debate between how much of this is actual performance and how much is optimization.
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Yeah. Comparing performance sounds easier than it is. There could be a lot more optimization in the PC paths of the code due to either longer development time or due to being considered more important.

And then there is the whole mess of picture quality. It would be very hard to map out which specific graphics feature is implemented or not, or even how things compare between DirectX and Metal.

At least most gaming builds of a Mac will have enough video RAM, unlike most medium build PCs.
 
If I completely switch over to macOS from Windows by selling my desktop PC and getting a MacBook Pro, what could I miss in macOS that Windows has or offers (other than gaming)?
 
Quiz said:
If I completely switch over to macOS from Windows by selling my desktop PC and getting a MacBook Pro, what could I miss in macOS that Windows has or offers (other than gaming)?
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Don't know. What apps do you intend to run? It's obvious that if you want to spend your time doing heavy rendering, machine learning, etc type workloads you're going to be want to be using a machine with CUDA. Most of heavy graphics rendering is still all PC.

There is also certain hobbies that probably make more sense on PC rather than on Mac. One of the things I gave up in the move to macOS was my FLAC collection. Though it's possible to have lossless rips through iTunes (at the time, now Music) and M4a's, it was a collection I had spent years developing. I severely missed foobar2000 at the time.
While you can find apps for all of those things on Mac side, you'll always feel like you're fighting up stream from the way "Apple wants you to do things". That seems to be the chief complaint of PC users that obsessively tweak everything and want everything the way they're used to it. This is mostly still the biggest complaint of Android users vs iOS users. Being able to arrange icons on a home screen is somehow incredibly important vs simply having a faster phone when most of the time you're in apps anyway. If you want a phone that just works seamlessly if you let it, then it does its job without having to spend time messing with it. macOS in this regard is similarly designed.
If you're more accepting of going with the way things are designed then it will feel like a very curated experience. If not, then workflow wise it will bother you.

We can't know what you want to do with a machine. You keep asking this question without the context of what you intend to do now or in the future in terms of computing.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
Don't know. What apps do you intend to run? It's obvious that if you want to spend your time doing heavy rendering, machine learning, etc type workloads you're going to be want to be using a machine with CUDA. Most of heavy graphics rendering is still all PC.

There is also certain hobbies that probably make more sense on PC rather than on Mac. One of the things I gave up in the move to macOS was my FLAC collection. Though it's possible to have lossless rips through iTunes (at the time, now Music) and M4a's, it was a collection I had spent years developing. I severely missed foobar2000 at the time.
While you can find apps for all of those things on Mac side, you'll always feel like you're fighting up stream from the way "Apple wants you to do things". That seems to be the chief complaint of PC users that obsessively tweak everything and want everything the way they're used to it. This is mostly still the biggest complaint of Android users vs iOS users. Being able to arrange icons on a home screen is somehow incredibly important vs simply having a faster phone when most of the time you're in apps anyway. If you want a phone that just works seamlessly if you let it, then it does its job without having to spend time messing with it. macOS in this regard is similarly designed.
If you're more accepting of going with the way things are designed then it will feel like a very curated experience. If not, then workflow wise it will bother you.

We can't know what you want to do with a machine. You keep asking this question without the context of what you intend to do now or in the future in terms of computing.
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Thanks.

I did state very early in the thread when I was buying the 14" M2 Pro that my usage is basically light daily tasks like Internet browsing, movie/music streaming and watching MKV files, communication apps like WhatsApp and Discord, and productivity apps like Microsoft Office.
 
Quiz said:
Thanks.

I did state very early in the thread when I was buying the 14" M2 Pro that my usage is basically light daily tasks like Internet browsing, movie/music streaming and watching MKV files, communication apps like WhatsApp and Discord, and productivity apps like Microsoft Office.
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I would suggest that it probably doesn't really matter what machine you're on then. Could do most of that seamlessly on a Chromebook at this point.
 
Quiz said:
Thanks.

I did state very early in the thread when I was buying the 14" M2 Pro that my usage is basically light daily tasks like Internet browsing, movie/music streaming and watching MKV files, communication apps like WhatsApp and Discord, and productivity apps like Microsoft Office.
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It's better to do most of that in the browser anyway.

As for missing stuff, sometimes you come across situations where a piece of hardware needs software and they have a Mac version, but the Mac versions sucks. Let's say 3D printers. But you can use a Windows virtual machine for that since you don't need high video performance.

Some audio software only has windows versions, for example Fruityloops.

Some Windows-only development environment and Windows-only languages. But it is a bad idea to learn such single-platform programming tools anyway.
 
Does gaming or doing any other intensive task that causes the fans to run at high rpms for extended periods of time cause wear and tear on the cooling system/fans? I am asking because I am not sure if the cooling system is as robust as, say, a desktop PC's cooler.
 
Quiz said:
Does gaming or doing any other intensive task that causes the fans to run at high rpms for extended periods of time cause wear and tear on the cooling system/fans? I am asking because I am not sure if the cooling system is as robust as, say, a desktop PC's cooler.
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Hard to say since you can't really take them apart and check.
 
Is the screen on the current MacBook Pro a true 10-bit panel? I'm not sure based on my searching.
 
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Quiz said:
Mad Maxx, did you get 512 GB SSD storage with your new MacBook Pro?
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Yes... however, I'm leaning towards returning it. So far, there's been nothing I can do on the M3 MBP that I can't do on my M2 Air. Sure, the XDR screen is immaculate, but not so much to justify the expense. I think the M3 Air probably is the right one for me. In truth, I don't need to upgrade at all... but getting new toys is so much fun. :D
 
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Quiz said:
I watched this entire video. Almost looks as if the default window management in macOS is pretty much useless until you start installing third-party apps to increase functionality.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCdcuJZux_g
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That is a complaint you hear regularly. In my case because compared to fvwm2 the customization opportunities are near NIL.

However, I don't like to screw up my Mac with random closed-source third-party software. And I had a quick look at the offerings and they usually only do things I am not interested in.
 
Quiz, I’m going to be very blunt here. I honestly think you should stick to Windows. It’s what you know and you will be able to do everything that you need to do without having to wonder if you made a bad choice. You can get an x86 laptop for about a grand (US Dollars) like the one I bought that will do everything you’ve indicated you want to do.

If all you want to do is get your toes wet in the Mac ecosystem, rent an AWS EC2 instance, buy a Mac Mini, or wait until the M3-based Air drops and you’ll know by that point whether or not you want to get a Mac in laptop format.

I love Macs and macOS, I really do, but I’m a gamer and I know that a PC will play the games I want so I bought a PC laptop. My job pays for my work laptop and I have no problem asking for the best tool for my job which, as a video producer, is a Mac for my Adobe workflow. The M1 MacBook Pro 16” I use for work (10-Core CPU, 16-Core GPU/Neural Engine,16 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD) is entirely adequate for my 1080p source 720p export video workflow.
 
Algrim said:
Quiz, I’m going to be very blunt here. I honestly think you should stick to Windows. It’s what you know and you will be able to do everything that you need to do without having to wonder if you made a bad choice. You can get an x86 laptop for about a grand (US Dollars) like the one I bought that will do everything you’ve indicated you want to do.

If all you want to do is get your toes wet in the Mac ecosystem, rent an AWS EC2 instance, buy a Mac Mini, or wait until the M3-based Air drops and you’ll know by that point whether or not you want to get a Mac in laptop format.

I love Macs and macOS, I really do, but I’m a gamer and I know that a PC will play the games I want so I bought a PC laptop. My job pays for my work laptop and I have no problem asking for the best tool for my job which, as a video producer, is a Mac for my Adobe workflow. The M1 MacBook Pro 16” I use for work (10-Core CPU, 16-Core GPU/Neural Engine,16 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD) is entirely adequate for my 1080p source 720p export video workflow.
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I know that it may seem that is the best way for me however I think I am going to order a base model 14" M3 Pro in the next few days and sell my very old desktop PC before it loses any more value. I, honestly, don't really game anymore and don't have any interest in the majority of games these days. In the worst case scenario, if I do happen to come across a game that I just must play, I'll just get a PlayStation 5 or something. During my brief experience with macOS, there were definitely things that I really did like (especially how my iPhone and Mac worked together) so I'm itching to give it another "proper" go. This time I won't be going in blind as I have the basics down already.
 
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Quiz said:
Does gaming or doing any other intensive task that causes the fans to run at high rpms for extended periods of time cause wear and tear on the cooling system/fans? I am asking because I am not sure if the cooling system is as robust as, say, a desktop PC's cooler.
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Build wise, I would say in general Mac's are built better than any competing PC's. There have been engineering problems with Mac's in the past, I don't want to paint a "perfect Apple picture". But a Macbook vs a Dell Latitude, Lenovo Legion, or HP Envy? I don't think it even takes much convincing. And it's not hard to find recalls or major product defects on the PC side either.

Quiz said:
I watched this entire video. Almost looks as if the default window management in macOS is pretty much useless until you start installing third-party apps to increase functionality.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCdcuJZux_g
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Great video. Watched the whole thing. It would be interesting to get an update about how he feels about certain aspects of the OS, as there have been some issues that were basically workflow breaking that have been fixed in current versions of macOS.
Like stuff related to mouse/trackpad. Using various iPads in Sidecar. How double clicking on windows works (which gives pseudo full screen without entering into macOS fullscreen mode), etc.

I think other than the things that have been fixed, his complaints are completely valid. But as are his discussions about performance. It's not super clear cut and a huge chunk of this comes down to preference. Certainly if you're doing video editing as any part of your main daily routine, I would choose a Mac over virtually any PC. I think one of his bottlenecks likely was having "only" 32GB of RAM on his MBP. Moving to 64GB would've given a fairly large performance improvement. Though he wouldn't have felt the RAM improvement in anything else he does.

He also could've moved to 27" 2.5k if he wanted to for a monitor. That was a very common macOS resolution/monitor size from 2008-2013, until the 5k iMac's dropped (which were essentially doubling 2.5k resolution). I still have my 2011 27" iMac, and the text rendering on it still looks great.

I did like his discussion about window management and the dock though. Both things that I think macOS could be doing a lot better out of the box, and it's kind of odd that it doesn't. Fixable though. Some as noted through terminal. Making how sensitive and fast the dock is just through terminal commands helps that problem.

(I also didn't know that Foobar2000 finally came to macOS: that was a bit of a surprise. Wasn't available all the way back in 2010 and I never bothered keeping up with it. Just figured it would always be Windows only. However at this point it kinda doesn't matter, all my audio is coming from either YouTube Music or Apple Music, both of which I have subs to).

Mad Maxx said:
Yes... however, I'm leaning towards returning it. So far, there's been nothing I can do on the M3 MBP that I can't do on my M2 Air. Sure, the XDR screen is immaculate, but not so much to justify the expense. I think the M3 Air probably is the right one for me. In truth, I don't need to upgrade at all... but getting new toys is so much fun. :D
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I can definitely see that. For me it has been actually workflow changing as it allows me to grade HDR on the go and I've also been really enjoying watching Dolby Vision content on it. If you're not super into that it probably doesn't matter. (And having 120Hz also in macOS is very nice).

Certainly performance wise there wasn't a huge improvement from M1 to M2. And again not from M2 to M3. To a certain degree that is a good thing in the sense that most people don't want to be changing out their processors in their computers every year. Even if you were on PC AMD/Intel side you'd likely not do that either unless you were buying a top end machine and a 15% improvement had meaningful work implications and burning $6000 didn't matter.

For you it probably doesn't make sense to use the new M3 if you're not willing to upgrade to at least the base level Pro.
 
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UnknownSouljer, what color is your MacBook Pro? I am trying to decide between Space Black and Silver. I was set on Space Black but after reading comments and watching videos, it's not a "true black" and more of a dark gray. If I am honest, Space Black seems to make the MacBook Pro look at bit generic. Silver looks classy and has a nice contrast between the keyboard and laptop body.

Edit: Isn't Silver Apple's classic color? The Mac Pro, Mac Studio, Mac mini, and their displays are all Silver.
 
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So Apple extended the return period to 2 months for the holiday season. Seems like the perfect time to buy.
 
Just placed my order for the base model 14" M3 Pro in Space Black.
 
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Quiz said:
Just placed my order for the base model 14" M3 Pro in Space Black.
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Seems good. I'm wary of 18GB of RAM being enough even within the next several years, but other than that I think it's a fantastic machine.
It's tough to swallow that 36GB RAM upgrade though. So I get it.
Even for video editing, moving to 64GB+ makes the biggest performance difference after differences to the CPU. It's all CPU/RAM. It's because the media engine is so good, the GPU doesn't even help editing, other than when doing final renders and stuff in Fusion/AE.
Quiz said:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUst8pLnROs
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I couldn't watch all of that. This guy drones on and on about stuff he doesn't need to, and over-explains everything without even getting into the tests. Maybe it's useful if you know absolutely nothing about anything, but it's hard to believe that people don't know what any of these applications are and how they're relevant to them if they're watching the video in the first place.

I skipped around to tests and the conclusion, and yeah, seems about right. Though I think the other video was more useful to show comparisons between the M3 Pro and other laptops as well as M3 Max.
 
Thanks. Ideally I would also want 36 GB RAM but let's see how this goes.

Any recommendations for a torrent client for macOS?

By the way, I temporarily transferred all my files off of my external HDDs and formatted them all to exFAT so I can use them on both Windows and macOS.
 
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Quiz said:
Thanks. Ideally I would also want 36 GB RAM but let's see how this goes.
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The tough part is I think that 18GB is okay for today, but I don't think it will be in even 1-2 years. I think it's very much like having 8GB graphics cards from nVidia right now. Where 16GB really is the minimum and we're pushing against that limit right now. On regular M2/M3, the 24GB option is compelling because I think it will "age better". But that doesn't exist on Pro, it's right to 36.
Quiz said:
Any recommendations for a torrent client for macOS?
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I use Transmission. Over the course of over 10 years I've moved around to a bunch. The big issue there being privacy, as without that, what's the point?
It's hard to know what is spying and what isn't but Transmission seems to not be doing that. Whereas other applications like uTorrent have had scandals regarding privacy.
Quiz said:
By the way, I temporarily transferred all my files off of my external HDDs and formatted them all to exFAT so I can use them on both Windows and macOS.
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Definitely an option. Though I would say if you're going to be mostly working in macOS from now on, APFS is much more efficient in terms of seeking, compression, security, etc. it probably won't matter for your movie backups, but if you're trying to use any of them as work drives, I would move to APFS.
 
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