*** The official M4 MacBook Pro thread (it has the M4 chip, 16Gb, AI and everything!) ***

As I mentioned, my personal machines are the Max units, however the ones that are normally handed out are the Pros. I've not had the chance to work on the M4 Pro as yet, but the biggest difference I've experienced between the M3 P and the M3 Pro Max wasn't one of outright performance, it was one of scale.

My Max for example I'll often have a VM or two running, with perhaps some video exporting in the background and the like. It handles that really well - when I've tried similar on the Pros it's not anything like as fluid.

The performance gains seem to be for scaling out in terms of tasks rather than scaling upward in terms of raw performance - certainly in my general perception of usage anyway. To be clear, my M3M did export video faster than the Pros, but in reality that's not that important (to me anyway). Being able to leave stuff completing while getting on with other stuff though *without really noticing it's doing it* is pretty glorious.

Suspect in reality I'd have been happy with a Pro rather than the Max but then it's not a huge price difference for me (company bought etc.).

*Edited to add, annoyingly I can't use my student discount *and* our business account discount on the same purchase now. Seems they've caught on to that.
 
Last edited:
MacRS4 said:
As I mentioned, my personal machines are the Max units, however the ones that are normally handed out are the Pros. I've not had the chance to work on the M4 Pro as yet, but the biggest difference I've experienced between the M3 P and the M3 Pro Max wasn't one of outright performance, it was one of scale.
Click to expand...

I've always thought that the main difference between the ultra/max/pro was largely their GPU capabilities. Something I wouldn't see a huge benefit to as a develop who runs memory and (often) single core performance related tasks.
 
I think that was the case with the M1 wasn't it? Although I think the Max units had higher memory bandwidth etc. I'm generally going on my experience of using them, rather than explicit specs. It was similar with my iMac Pro (loved that machine) it didn't feel particularly faster at anything than my MBP but it could do a lot more while doing other things.
 
GMac11 said:
KRCS currently have 10% off across the board for Black Friday.
Very have a 20% off deal for new customers who open a credit account with them. Often in the past, MacBooks were either excluded from this offer or it was only 10%.
One of the terms with Very is that the 20% is not valid with other offers i.e. sale items. But the Macbooks are currently full price so no issues there.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Looks like we need to have a credit with them. If I choose the 4c with no interest also works?

They only have the base models, what a shame. I was thinking about getting the m4 pro 512gb 48gb ram.
 
Well my new toy arrived today :D (it's the one on the right for anyone who didn't see my previous posts!)
Ir2OnT2l.jpeg


Have really just finished running Migration Assistant (which seems to have gone absolutely fine). Will report back later with my initial findings/thoughts.
 
Last edited:
GMac11 said:
Well my new toy arrived today :D (it's the one on the right for anyone who didn't see my previous posts!)
Ir2OnT2l.jpeg


Have really just finished running Migration Assistant (which seems to have gone absolutely fine). Will report back later with my initial findings/thoughts.
Click to expand...
Dude. it's unboxed. What the hell we talked about this. :D
 
eldergeek said:
Dude. it's unboxed. What the hell we talked about this. :D
Click to expand...
Some screen grabs for your delectation. I don't think anyone needed to see my excuse of a video!

cqCzjRel.png

1UPsIkLl.png

XqZW2f1l.jpeg

IOppz0fl.png

9b69tpBl.jpeg


Initial thoughts are thus:
  • I didn't find the drop in size from the 16" initially quite as jarring as I'd expected. That said, if I didn't have the Studio Display I would 100% buy the 16" model
  • I like the addition of the High Power mode to these Pro chips - previously it was only present on the Max models
  • During a Lightroom import last night the fans came on, and with some gusto I might add (and I wasn't in the aforementioned High Power mode at this time). In the 3 years of using the 16" M1 Pro the most I ever got was a gentle whir. It was by no means loud, certainly not compared to my work's Windows 11 brick which sounds like an aeroplane 90% of the time
  • The only performance metric (over the M1 Pro) I can provide is a Lightroom Denoise/image enhance for one of my GFX files which was 1m30s on the M1 Pro and 1m dead on the new M4 Pro. So in this regard I am happy to see a real world benefit (to me anyway) which should hold it in good stead going forward
  • While I would still prefer a larger display (who wouldn't?) I find the weight much easier to lug around the house and particularly while sofa surfing. Setting it down and picking it up is a much more pleasant experience than with the 16"
 
GMac11 said:
Some screen grabs for your delectation. I don't think anyone needed to see my excuse of a video!

cqCzjRel.png

1UPsIkLl.png

XqZW2f1l.jpeg

IOppz0fl.png

9b69tpBl.jpeg


Initial thoughts are thus:
  • I didn't find the drop in size from the 16" initially quite as jarring as I'd expected. That said, if I didn't have the Studio Display I would 100% buy the 16" model
  • I like the addition of the High Power mode to these Pro chips - previously it was only present on the Max models
  • During a Lightroom import last night the fans came on, and with some gusto I might add (and I wasn't in the aforementioned High Power mode at this time). In the 3 years of using the 16" M1 Pro the most I ever got was a gentle whir. It was by no means loud, certainly not compared to my work's Windows 11 brick which sounds like an aeroplane 90% of the time
  • The only performance metric (over the M1 Pro) I can provide is a Lightroom Denoise/image enhance for one of my GFX files which was 1m30s on the M1 Pro and 1m dead on the new M4 Pro. So in this regard I am happy to see a real world benefit (to me anyway) which should hold it in good stead going forward
  • While I would still prefer a larger display (who wouldn't?) I find the weight much easier to lug around the house and particularly while sofa surfing. Setting it down and picking it up is a much more pleasant experience than with the 16"
Click to expand...
Are you planning on doing the dbrand thing?
 
MacRS4 said:
As I mentioned, my personal machines are the Max units, however the ones that are normally handed out are the Pros. I've not had the chance to work on the M4 Pro as yet, but the biggest difference I've experienced between the M3 P and the M3 Pro Max wasn't one of outright performance, it was one of scale.

My Max for example I'll often have a VM or two running, with perhaps some video exporting in the background and the like. It handles that really well - when I've tried similar on the Pros it's not anything like as fluid.

The performance gains seem to be for scaling out in terms of tasks rather than scaling upward in terms of raw performance - certainly in my general perception of usage anyway. To be clear, my M3M did export video faster than the Pros, but in reality that's not that important (to me anyway). Being able to leave stuff completing while getting on with other stuff though *without really noticing it's doing it* is pretty glorious.

Suspect in reality I'd have been happy with a Pro rather than the Max but then it's not a huge price difference for me (company bought etc.).

*Edited to add, annoyingly I can't use my student discount *and* our business account discount on the same purchase now. Seems they've caught on to that.
Click to expand...
What VMs are you running? What VM software are you using, orbstack or vmware??

What kind of task do you do on your mac? I mean what is your user case? programing, devops, graphic design?
 
Last edited:
I use a mixture of Parallels and VMWare Fusion. They're mostly office based setups for different clients so specific to those clients. What kind of tasks varies - for work it's a lot of DevOps/Scripting type stuff, some labs/demos, and of course the usual office type work. Personal workloads are probably heavier tbh - video/photography mostly.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom