New apple M1 chips - who's buying?
Discussion
megaphone said:
Any recommendations for a docking stand? I'm looking at the Satechi one with the extra SSD connection, any others I should be looking at?
https://satechi.net/products/stand-hub-for-mac-min...
I bought this stand solely for the upright form factor.https://satechi.net/products/stand-hub-for-mac-min...
I get 650MB/s read and write with a 1TB M2 NVME card in the base and the SD reader is pretty decent.
https://minisopuru.com/en-gb/products/201a
Interesting late announcement by Apple yesterday with the M3 chips, surprised by how quickly they are iterating through the generations of M chips compared with a few years back with intel silicone where some Apple computers would go multiple years without any processor upgrades.
I do wonder who will actually utilise all the performance offered the the Max and Ultra variants compared with just getting the normal vanilla M3?
I do wonder who will actually utilise all the performance offered the the Max and Ultra variants compared with just getting the normal vanilla M3?
untakenname said:
I do wonder who will actually utilise all the performance offered the the Max and Ultra variants compared with just getting the normal vanilla M3?
I imagine anyone who uses Final Cut Pro will have an actual need for that kind of power, but I imagine the vast, vast majority of these are just sold to magpies like me who just love the latest and greatest.That said, I might be a magpie but I sure as hell don't have enough money to justify the 14" MacBook Pro M3 Pro (snappy name) that I want. I think I've generally just given up on laptops, I sit in front of my desktop or work computer too much.
I used to need the power compiling software, but since my firm went cloud native, not so much. Could use a chromebook nowadays.
Some of my colleagues came off science degrees, they needed power for number crunching and to process their models. Quite typical for calculations to take hours.
One of my friends did some sort of SFX degree, her final project took 3 days to render. She kept having to reduce the quality and fps because her initial settings, would have taken 2 weeks! I visited her, she looked like a zombie because she was scared to sleep incase it crashed and she lost yet more time near her deadline.
Some of my colleagues came off science degrees, they needed power for number crunching and to process their models. Quite typical for calculations to take hours.
One of my friends did some sort of SFX degree, her final project took 3 days to render. She kept having to reduce the quality and fps because her initial settings, would have taken 2 weeks! I visited her, she looked like a zombie because she was scared to sleep incase it crashed and she lost yet more time near her deadline.
Edited by wyson on Tuesday 31st October 20:35
wyson said:
I used to need the power compiling software, but since my firm went cloud native, not so much. Could use a chromebook nowadays.
Some of my colleagues came off science degrees, they needed power for number crunching and to process their models. Quite typical for calculations to take hours.
One of my friends did some sort of SFX degree, her final project took 3 days to render. She kept having to reduce the quality and fps because her initial settings, would have taken 2 weeks! I visited her, she looked like a zombie because she was scared to sleep incase it crashed and she lost yet more time near her deadline.
Not several days like your friend experienced but some of the sports video analysis software I use will have a similar reaction when I create playlists (compilation of opponent set pieces, for example), take an hour to export and upload to the online platform. I had to bundle lineouts and scrums from our next opponent's last three matches yesterday but each game had 5-6 different video angles. Creating, exporting and uploading took over an hour which nudged the total time v payment into less than worth it for me. I think I might have a look at even the M2 based Macs instead of my 2019 one as it will make a vast difference. Mind you, I am tempted by the all black M3... I had one of the early blackbooks!Some of my colleagues came off science degrees, they needed power for number crunching and to process their models. Quite typical for calculations to take hours.
One of my friends did some sort of SFX degree, her final project took 3 days to render. She kept having to reduce the quality and fps because her initial settings, would have taken 2 weeks! I visited her, she looked like a zombie because she was scared to sleep incase it crashed and she lost yet more time near her deadline.
Edited by wyson on Tuesday 31st October 20:35
Brainpox said:
Mad that a base spec M3 Max has the same amount of RAM as iPhone 15 Pro. Surely anyone needing the Max for their workload is also going to be RAM limited at that level
Probably, or at least might worry they will in the future, or to sell it later. So chances are they pay over the odds to upgrade.The CPU power graphs they were showing on this were comparing to M1 Macs, not M2, and not Intel. If you've got an M2 you're probably fine as you are. If you're an M1 early adopter this is a bigger jump, and there are the black MBPs to show you've got the new one
. They also killed off the 13" Touch Bar MBP with this. The iMac needed an update, that was from the original M1 launch 2 1/2 years ago, so those M1 to M3 comparison graphs make more sense for that.
leglessAlex said:
I think I've generally just given up on laptops, I sit in front of my desktop or work computer too much.
Strangely, I have gone the other way - I can't remember the last time I used my iMac... I'm going to guess at two years ago. I gradually transitioned to a MacBook Pro and currently have an M1 14". I use it in the office and at home - but nothing more than browsing, email, Netflix and YouTube. It is a solid machine.ajprice said:
The CPU power graphs they were showing on this were comparing to M1 Macs, not M2, and not Intel. If you've got an M2 you're probably fine as you are. If you're an M1 early adopter this is a bigger jump, and there are the black MBPs to show you've got the new one
. They also killed off the 13" Touch Bar MBP with this. The iMac needed an update, that was from the original M1 launch 2 1/2 years ago, so those M1 to M3 comparison graphs make more sense for that.
Piginapoke said:
ajprice said:
The CPU power graphs they were showing on this were comparing to M1 Macs, not M2, and not Intel. If you've got an M2 you're probably fine as you are. If you're an M1 early adopter this is a bigger jump, and there are the black MBPs to show you've got the new one
. They also killed off the 13" Touch Bar MBP with this. The iMac needed an update, that was from the original M1 launch 2 1/2 years ago, so those M1 to M3 comparison graphs make more sense for that.
Wierdos! I hated the touch bar. It was so useless. So many accidental touches sparking random s
t, could never know what I was pressing without looking and thinking about how I could bring it up. It was something to manage and use brain power on. I much prefer a full row of Function keys and memorising shortcuts. Far less brain power needed. Can just work from muscle memory.
t, could never know what I was pressing without looking and thinking about how I could bring it up. It was something to manage and use brain power on. I much prefer a full row of Function keys and memorising shortcuts. Far less brain power needed. Can just work from muscle memory.Edited by wyson on Wednesday 1st November 15:23
ch37 said:
M1 Air still going strong here, started editing video this year (in DaVinci Resolve) alongside processing thousands of RAW images a week and still absolutely flying.
Same.I'm not any kind of heavy duty user, but my M1 Air still absolutely tears through my hobby photo editing in Lightroom, even when exporting fairly large batches of large images. Occasional video making in iMovie is the same. All whilst still getting the best part of 12-14 hours battery life per charge. Screen is brilliant, speakers brilliant, camera/mic brilliant for Teams etc, keyboard and trackpad brilliant, form factor is brilliant.
Can't see myself needing to upgrade anytime soon. Best computer I have ever owned, ever.
I will probably change this for an M3 Air 13" if Apple release such a thing, more due to wanting to avoid an aging battery, plus, I just like new tech.
Mont Blanc said:
ch37 said:
M1 Air still going strong here, started editing video this year (in DaVinci Resolve) alongside processing thousands of RAW images a week and still absolutely flying.
Same.I'm not any kind of heavy duty user, but my M1 Air still absolutely tears through my hobby photo editing in Lightroom, even when exporting fairly large batches of large images. Occasional video making in iMovie is the same. All whilst still getting the best part of 12-14 hours battery life per charge. Screen is brilliant, speakers brilliant, camera/mic brilliant for Teams etc, keyboard and trackpad brilliant, form factor is brilliant.
Can't see myself needing to upgrade anytime soon. Best computer I have ever owned, ever.
I will probably change this for an M3 Air 13" if Apple release such a thing, more due to wanting to avoid an aging battery, plus, I just like new tech.
I'm processing Fuji XH2 (40mp) and XH2s (24, I think) files these days, which are inherently slower than my old Sony RAWs from a9 days, simply because LR has always struggled with Fuji, but even so my M1 8GB Air absolutely rips through them, can genuinely use it on my lap too, no heat and no noise.
The M-series chips are something else. I can compare with my 2010 Mac Pro, which is maxed out with two Xeon X5690 CPUs, 128GB of RAM and RX580 graphics card (as shipped with the 2019 cheese grater Mac Pro). both my MacBook Air M2 and Mac Mini M2 Pro blow that away, meaning that video and photo processing, software development and running unix VMs are no problem whatsoever. The Mac Pro was a multi-thousand dollar spec used by our data scientists back in the day
Geekbench 6 processing scores:
The M3 benchmarks I’ve seen place the base M3 model at about the same level as the M2 Pro, these machines are going to eat through whatever a home user can throw at them
Geekbench 6 processing scores:
| Single-core CPU | Multi-core CPU | |
|---|---|---|
| Mac Pro 5,1 | 584 | 4269 |
| Mac Mini M2 Pro | 2607 | 12128 |
| Mavbook Air M2 | 2544 | 9582 |
The M3 benchmarks I’ve seen place the base M3 model at about the same level as the M2 Pro, these machines are going to eat through whatever a home user can throw at them
ch37 said:
I'm processing Fuji XH2 (40mp) and XH2s (24, I think) files these days, which are inherently slower than my old Sony RAWs from a9 days, simply because LR has always struggled with Fuji, but even so my M1 8GB Air absolutely rips through them, can genuinely use it on my lap too, no heat and no noise.
Agreed.My experience is the same, and I also have the 8GB base model M1. It is not the slightest bit slower than the day I got it, 2 years ago.
Absolutely made a mockery of my 2019 Intel MacBook Pro. I compared the two when I bought the M1, and couldn’t get rid of the Pro fast enough.
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