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

[Rilot]

OK, to those wondering whether 16GB is enough; for me, I can say that you really don't need to worry at all.

Running the following:
World of Warcraft in a busy area with most options on max
Blender with a very large (150MB) obj opened
Fusion360 with a complex model
Meshmixer with one of the demo STLs
Microsoft RDP
Chrome with 18 tabs open
Some other stuff

Absolutely no slowdown whatsoever switching between apps, moving around the system.

 

[Phemo]

Good to hear. I'm not too surprised given that even my MacBook Air with M1 and 8GB of RAM seemed to be able to cope with a lot more than you'd expect a machine with only 8GB to be capable of. I think 16GB will be fine for quite a while yet.

I've decided I'm grabbing one. Base spec 14", pickup slot from Southampton Apple store from 7pm today

 

[JGBR]

Well swap file is being used so...

 

[MrRockliffe]

Good to hear. I'm not too surprised given that even my MacBook Air with M1 and 8GB of RAM seemed to be able to cope with a lot more than you'd expect a machine with only 8GB to be capable of. I think 16GB will be fine for quite a while yet.

I've decided I'm grabbing one. Base spec 14", pickup slot from Southampton Apple store from 7pm today

Jealous! It’s next on the list when I’ve paid my phone off. I limit my tech purchases these days or I’m forever buying new stuff I don’t need


Like the new AVR I just bought

 

[Rilot]

Well swap file is being used so...

And?

 

[JGBR]

It's not coping as well as you thought.

 

[fez]

It's not coping as well as you thought.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using swap and most computers will use it as an efficiency thing and you will never notice any sort of performance issues. You still seem to be looking for issues where there are none.

There are god knows how many reasons to use swap instead of keeping something in memory, especially when the SSDs on these are so fast.

 

[Rilot]

It's not coping as well as you thought.

I don't care whether it's swapping or not. If there is no perceptible slowdown then it's doing its job.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that there is absolutely 0 impact on any of the running apps that I can see.

Put it this way, my work HP with a Ryzen 7 5700U and 32GB absolutely chugs when switching between Fusion360 and say Photoshop. That isn't swapping at all.

 

[Bassmansam]

Good to hear. I'm not too surprised given that even my MacBook Air with M1 and 8GB of RAM seemed to be able to cope with a lot more than you'd expect a machine with only 8GB to be capable of. I think 16GB will be fine for quite a while yet.

I've decided I'm grabbing one. Base spec 14", pickup slot from Southampton Apple store from 7pm today

Just curious, what do you need the new models over the m1 mba?

 

[AdamM6]

Agree with Rilot, 16Gb looks to be working fine when punished and way more then I need.

All you base model people, do not worry the machine will blow your mind!

 

[Throrik]

Well swap file is being used so...

Because MacOS proactively swaps when things are idle, it uses it well. I bet if someone checks with the same stuff open at the same time with some idle stuff on a 64GB it still swaps.

 

[AdamM6]

I picked up the base model 14" 8 core today from the Apple store for my wife.

So I had the 8 Core and 10 Core side by side, and even running some 4k video editing stuff there was very little real world difference between them.

In 98% of tasks they were identical in performance.

 

[n111ck]

My edustore 14” is coming tomorrow - was expecting a few weeks wait…

 

[GMac11]

I picked up the base model 14" 8 core today from the Apple store for my wife.

So I had the 8 Core and 10 Core side by side, and even running some 4k video editing stuff there was very little real world difference between them.

In 98% of tasks they were identical in performance.

Cheers for that. Torn now whether to stick with my back ordered 16" or go for the 14".

My edustore 14” is coming tomorrow - was expecting a few weeks wait…

Lucky duck! When did you place your order? I ordered mine last Thursday (21st) - it still says In Progress when I log in.
Edit: When did you get the dispatch/delivery notification?

 

[ChrisD.]

Chrome with 18 tabs open

That's enough to bring most computers to a halt.

 

[Feek]

That's enough to bring most computers to a halt.

Really? I normally have three times that!

 

[Qdos]

It's a bit of a beast!

Was doing a Time Machine backup, updating my Window 11 VM in Parallels, 10+ Chrome tabs, Spotify, OneNote, Tweeten, Spark Email and it wasn't even getting warm. This is the base spec 14" (8 cores) and it's smashing my old M1.

The sound quality is honestly the best I've heard out of a laptop, the notch is barely noticeable (the OS hides it when it can in full-screen). Keyboard and trackpad are as good as you'd expect.

 

[ChrisD.]

Really? I normally have three times that!

I jest, it's renowned for being a resource hog. I use Safari on everything I can now and Edge where I'm on Windows or I notice the odd issue with Safari. For example I find the audio on Edge much better when using AirPod Max's when watching Twitch.

 

[n111ck]

Lucky duck! When did you place your order? I ordered mine last Thursday (21st) - it still says In Progress when I log in.
Edit: When did you get the dispatch/delivery notification?

I ordered at around 20:00 on the day they went live on the site.

My order still shows as 'in progress' but I got a text from parcel force with the tracking - no despatch e-mail but I didn't get one from them last year when I ordered a 2020 Pro either.

 

[GMac11]

I ordered at around 20:00 on the day they went live on the site.

My order still shows as 'in progress' but I got a text from parcel force with the tracking - no despatch e-mail but I didn't get one from them last year when I ordered a 2020 Pro either.

Ah ok cheers. The 16 had a slightly longer lead time so I won’t get my hopes up too much but good to know.