Waiting for and/or enjoying my M1 Pro/Max MBP thread…

Cmaier

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Scientifically speaking, the speakers on this thing are very good. Actual bass. I’ve never heard better on a computer’s built-in speakers (which doesn’t mean better doesn’t exist).
 

Andropov

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To me one of the coolest things of the new MBPs is the sound it makes when you close the lid, and I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere. It's soooooo extra I love it. Makes it feel very well built. Kudos to whoever designed it to sound that way.
 

Hrafn

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To me one of the coolest things of the new MBPs is the sound it makes when you close the lid, and I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere. It's soooooo extra I love it. Makes it feel very well built. Kudos to whoever designed it to sound that way.
Is that just the 16? I tried mine a couple of times, but don't hear anything.
 

Cmaier

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To me one of the coolest things of the new MBPs is the sound it makes when you close the lid, and I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere. It's soooooo extra I love it. Makes it feel very well built. Kudos to whoever designed it to sound that way.

i Haven’t closed my lid yet :)
 

Andropov

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Is that just the 16? I tried mine a couple of times, but don't hear anything.
Ah, it's just that the mechanical sound of the lid closing is more refined now, not an actual active sound like the startup chime or anything. Kind of like closing the door of a high end car vs a cheap(er) car. It's the smallest and silliest thing ever, but I found it nice. The previous MacBook sounds more metallic.

Maybe it's just me. My flatmates didn't share my enthusiasm about this particular feature either. :ROFLMAO:
 

Cmaier

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I don’t notice the notch at all, but I do notice the overly tall menubar. I’ll get used to it, but it’s the one thing that constantly reminds me “there’s something different about this machine.” FWIW, I never used full screen mode for any apps. Maybe I will, now that I can lock the menu bar up there, but mostly the reason I don’t do it is i am always working on multiple docs at once, and moving data back and forth.

It seems like when you mouse across horizontally through the notch, depending on your speed it cuts the time behind the notch short. Feels very natural.
 

Hrafn

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I don’t notice the notch at all, but I do notice the overly tall menubar. I’ll get used to it, but it’s the one thing that constantly reminds me “there’s something different about this machine.” FWIW, I never used full screen mode for any apps. Maybe I will, now that I can lock the menu bar up there, but mostly the reason I don’t do it is i am always working on multiple docs at once, and moving data back and forth.

It seems like when you mouse across horizontally through the notch, depending on your speed it cuts the time behind the notch short. Feels very natural.
Hm. Initially, I had both the application bar at the bottom, and menu bar at the top auto hide. I've switched the menu bar to always be up, and I like seeing time, batter, notch, etc.
 

Andropov

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I wish there was an option for always-on menu bar *except* for full-screen video. It's the only reason I've it set up to auto-hide.
 

Cmaier

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For what it’s worth, no obvious halo-ing so far, though I haven’t subjected it to torture tests yet. Mostly just entering passwords, letting the indexing happen, etc. Biggest pain was creative cloud, which made me re-install it, and then immediately logged me out whenever I entered my password and 2nd factor. Launching photoshop solved it.
 

Renzatic

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Also we presumably want to let all the indexing and backups and such to finish before we start benchmarking things.

Take your time, I'm in no rush.

This will be a raw GPU test. At the moment, Blender isn't fully optimized for the M1 Macs, so don't expect the greatest performance out of it. Still, I want to see how it performs relative to my machine, the frames per second in the viewport when it rendered view, and the rendering times.

For reference, I get around 3.5 FPS in the viewport, and it takes 62 seconds to render the scene after hitting F12. You'll need the Blender 3.0 beta to run it.

 

Cmaier

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Take your time, I'm in no rush.

This will be a raw GPU test. At the moment, Blender isn't fully optimized for the M1 Macs, so don't expect the greatest performance out of it. Still, I want to see how it performs relative to my machine, the frames per second in the viewport when it rendered view, and the rendering times.

For reference, I get around 3.5 FPS in the viewport, and it takes 62 seconds to render the scene after hitting F12. You'll need the Blender 3.0 beta to run it.

36% through the first networked Time Machine backup. Everything else seems to have settled down. The old computer seems to be doing its new job. So getting there.
 

Cmaier

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Man, this is taking a long time.

1636851044965.png
 

mr_roboto

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Man, this is taking a long time.
Try: sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0

And sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=1 after the backup finishes, because this doesn't just un-throttle Time Machine, it un-throttles all low priority jobs.

This trick did wonders the last time I was waiting forever for a big initial TM backup to complete.
 

Cmaier

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Try: sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0

And sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=1 after the backup finishes, because this doesn't just un-throttle Time Machine, it un-throttles all low priority jobs.

This trick did wonders the last time I was waiting forever for a big initial TM backup to complete.

I think the problem is network bandwidth and not CPU priority. The NAS that it’s backing up to is used for a lot of other stuff during the day.
 
D

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So I wanted to share some thoughts on this computer, having used it now for over a week:

The positive:

1. It is extremely fast. It is as fast as a desktop. For my previous MBP, whenever I'd switch to using my PC, the PC would seem much faster. That is no longer the case. This computer is faster than the PC and some of it is due to those super fast SSDs.
2. It does not get hot. Every MBP I've had since 2012 has run the fans at full speed while updating macOS. That is not the case with this computer. It barely gets warm no matter what I am doing. Zoom, StreetView, and even browsing Apple Music all caused my 2019 MBP to overheat. Not an issue here.
3. The notch is literally a non-issue. I do not notice it at all. I do not notice or care about the thickness one bit.
4. Battery life is amazing.

The negative:

1. I have been running MBPs at 2x Retina since my first MBP back in 2012, which means I've running my MBPs at the same PPI for the past 9 years. This year, it changed. 2x Retina now means text on the screen is much smaller than I'm used to. And it has taken some getting used to. Certain things are just way too small still and I have been getting a bit of headache from trying to read them. For example, in Pages I usually kept the default zoom at 125% but that has proven to be too small for me now, so I set it to 150% and it's been much easier on my eyes. I am young, I have good eyesight, but the tiny text takes some getting used to if all you've known for the past 9 years is the same PPI.
2. I do not need all this power at all. I probably could've gotten a lower-specced device. I am not a professional, I do not edit video. Honestly, a 16" MBA would probably be my ideal device, but with no rumor of such a thing ever coming into existence, I can't bank on it. $3600 is a lot for a computer of which I'm only using a fraction of its capability.

Anyway, just wanted to share this. It is definitely by and far the most powerful MacBook I've ever used. But it is very expensive, so consider your needs and if you've only ever used 2x Retina on a MacBook, be prepared for an adjustment.
 

Renzatic

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I do not need all this power at all. I probably could've gotten a lower-specced device. I am not a professional, I do not edit video. Honestly, a 16" MBA would probably be my ideal device, but with no rumor of such a thing ever coming into existence, I can't bank on it. $3600 is a lot for a computer of which I'm only using a fraction of its capability.

If you don't need it, I'll buy it from you. $400. Up front.
 

Cmaier

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So I wanted to share some thoughts on this computer, having used it now for over a week:

The positive:

1. It is extremely fast. It is as fast as a desktop. For my previous MBP, whenever I'd switch to using my PC, the PC would seem much faster. That is no longer the case. This computer is faster than the PC and some of it is due to those super fast SSDs.
2. It does not get hot. Every MBP I've had since 2012 has run the fans at full speed while updating macOS. That is not the case with this computer. It barely gets warm no matter what I am doing. Zoom, StreetView, and even browsing Apple Music all caused my 2019 MBP to overheat. Not an issue here.
3. The notch is literally a non-issue. I do not notice it at all. I do not notice or care about the thickness one bit.
4. Battery life is amazing.

The negative:

1. I have been running MBPs at 2x Retina since my first MBP back in 2012, which means I've running my MBPs at the same PPI for the past 9 years. This year, it changed. 2x Retina now means text on the screen is much smaller than I'm used to. And it has taken some getting used to. Certain things are just way too small still and I have been getting a bit of headache from trying to read them. For example, in Pages I usually kept the default zoom at 125% but that has proven to be too small for me now, so I set it to 150% and it's been much easier on my eyes. I am young, I have good eyesight, but the tiny text takes some getting used to if all you've known for the past 9 years is the same PPI.
2. I do not need all this power at all. I probably could've gotten a lower-specced device. I am not a professional, I do not edit video. Honestly, a 16" MBA would probably be my ideal device, but with no rumor of such a thing ever coming into existence, I can't bank on it. $3600 is a lot for a computer of which I'm only using a fraction of its capability.

Anyway, just wanted to share this. It is definitely by and far the most powerful MacBook I've ever used. But it is very expensive, so consider your needs and if you've only ever used 2x Retina on a MacBook, be prepared for an adjustment.

Is yours a 14” or a 16”? I’m not seeing a text size difference between my new 16” and old 15” on the highest resolution setting (which is what I always use - I have bad eyes, but I can read the text easily without glasses - in fact, my glasses are progressive lenses, so I really can’t use them for my computer.)
 
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