Poll: *** The official 2021 14" and 16" Macbook Pro thread (it has an SD slot and everything!) ***

[Rilot]

Official thread for the new 2021 14" and 16" Macbook Pros.

New Macbook Pros for 2021 with M1 Pro and M1 Max CPUs.



The highlights:

Up to 10 CPU cores (8 x performance and 2 x efficiency)
Up to 32 GPU cores (M1 Max only)
Up to 64GB RAM
Up to 8TB SSD
It has ports; SD, thunderbolt, MagSafe

Two sizes - 14" and 16" both with mini LED 120Hz ProMotion displays.

Touchbar is GONE

14" base configuration is £1899 with the following spec:
8 core CPU
14 core GPU
16GB RAM
512GB SSD

Rising to £5799 with the following spec:
10 core CPU
32 core GPU
64GB RAM
8TB SSD

16" base configuration is £2399 with the following spec:
10 core CPU
16 core GPU
16GB RAM
512GB SSD

Rising to £5899 with the same spec as the top 14"

 

[Rilot]

Hold on. I'm going as fast as I can.

 

[Rilot]

The thing I'm most looking forward to is MagSafe. I've been using a USB-C magnetic dongle thingie on my 13" to replicate it but that takes me down to a single USB-C port available.

 

[Rilot]

I actually ordered without seeing how the MagSafe works. Hopefully you can still use USB PD as well as that’s much easier when travelling with a bunch of other stuff that also uses USB-C

Yes, you can.

 

[Rilot]

Got to wait for benchmarks, but if the Max is as good as they claim....I suspect it might be okay at medium settings for HD at 30fps? Which considering this will be running Steam, through Rosetta translating.

It will be a lot faster than that. The M1 with 8 GPU cores it already at GTX1650 levels of performance.

 

[Rilot]

Changed my order from a 14" to a 16"
Decided that the extra screen real-estate is worth the extra.

 

[Rilot]

Thinking about GPU performance:
The 16" has roughly double the resolution of the 13" M1 Pros (4Mpx vs 7.7Mpx) and has double the number of GPU cores (assuming the 16 core one). So, expecting about the same frame rates at native resolution.
The 14" has roughly 50% higher resolution than the 13" M1 Pros (4Mpx vs 6Mpx) and has 50% more GPU cores (assuming the 14 core one). Again, expecting the same frame rates at native resolution.

 

[Rilot]

You wouldn't want to run games at native res though

Indeed, 50% res is probably going to be the sweet spot.

I'm wondering how the notch is going to work with apps that are fullscreen. I'm guessing we will just have a large top bezel in those scenarios.

 

[Rilot]

Glad I wasn’t the only one who giggled at that.

Yeah yeah. You could see the wheels in my brain turning.
What swung it was I was forgetting that my M1 pro is still worth a few quid.

 

[Rilot]

so you lose space technically....

Yes, and no. The screens are 74 pixels taller than 16:10 resolution and so if it's blanked out you still have a full 16:10 screen.

 

[Rilot]

And it costs £148 for the apple 140w charger & cable
Buy Mac Accessories - Apple (UK)

It's one of those fancy new GaN chargers isn't it?

 

[Rilot]

If there was an option to invert the colours of the top bar to "blend in" the notch it'd be a lot less jarring.
For a company that prides itself on design it's a bit of an ugly implementation.

There is, you can set Mac OS to dark mode.

 

[Rilot]

aa

What software are you guys needing the power of this new M1 pro/max cpu to run ?

As it a bit to powerful & expensive just to be used for watching Youtube & internet surfing

A do a lot of CAD with Fusion 360 and Blender. A lot of editing meshes with Meshmixer after scanning. It's very taxing on both CPU and GPU. Less so on RAM. Hence going for the base 16" which has the top M1 Pro but only 16GB which is fine for me. To be fair, all things being equal I probably should have gone for a 32GB model but they come with 1TB SSD which I didn't need. To do it with the 512GB SSD would have been a custom order and thus several weeks further out.
I have 14 days to return it if I find that 16GB isn't enough though.

 

[Rilot]

Remember that you're also getting 16GB with the base 14" vs 8GB with the Air.

[edit]Just seen that you are speccing both to 16GB, sorry[/edit]

I'd say it depends on how much priority you put on portability. The 14" is a fair bit heavier than the Air or the 13".

 

[Rilot]

I think the 8/14 will still be very fast indeed. As I said earlier in the thread, the M1 13" is already extremely fast. The 8/14 has 50% more performance cores than the M1 and 75% more GPU cores. Add to that the increased memory bandwidth of the M1 Pro and I reckon it will still be a monster of a laptop.

 

[Rilot]

I still get the discount because I work in education. It’s not as good as it used to be but it’s still decent.

 

[Rilot]

Note apple used 32GB unified ram in all the Pro's for GPU benchmarks and 64GB with Max's......

That will be because memory bandwidth is doubled with the additional RAM.

 

[Rilot]

Ahhh. I don’t know that.

 

[Rilot]

Not sure why people are saying the new MacBooks are chunky. The 16” is 16.8mm thick vs the 13” which is 15.6mm. 1.2mm thicker is hardly a massive gain.

 

[Rilot]

Intel must be losing one hell of a packet these days with most people buying AMD CPU's for there desktop PC's and now apple is fitting all MacBook's with there own M1 CPU's

It will be having an effect but Intel are still king in the commercial world. Most businesses still buy Intel for laptops and desktops.