New Apple Laptops Air vs. Pro

[Andrew Dease]

Not seeing a ton of diffference between the new Air and Machook Pro.

One has a Touch Bar, and “hdr sound, studio quality mics.”

Literally the only difference? And it has 500nit screen vs 400nit, and a battery charger with DOUBLE the voltage.

Wouldn’t that ruin the battery faster?


Anyway how are these basically identical? Does Touch Bar matter useful?

[Andrew Dease]

Battery a hair larger on the MacBook.

[Brian Timmons]

This headline says a lot.
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/11...rst-benchmark/

and this breakdown
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226...-a14-deep-dive

This level of performance from a low-end chip with that degree of power efficiency and no fan changes everything.

The imagination soars with what the pro AS machines might offer.

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA

[paulcurtis]

These are super interesting developments. The trick for apple is to move people away from Hz and CPU to understanding that it's the system overall that matters. Adding very specific tasks to the silicon is an evolutionary step away from generic cpus. They've always sort of done this but this time it's front and centre.

As i understand the main difference is the fan and cooling. I believe the MBP would be able to sustain higher compute - also the number of active cores is slightly different too.

However strikes me the mistake is the 16GB limit on RAM which IMHO would seriously affect the MBP. I don't get that part.

I wonder whether the M2 or M1X for the higher end pros mean more core, more physical cpus or whatever...

It looks good, but i will skip this generation...

cheers
Paul

[Patrick Tresch]

As i understand the main difference is the fan and cooling.
Paul

Give mit that in a camera.

[Mike P.]

Any other benchmarks out there? Preferably not apple supplied and not apple 1st party software...

...

...basically just want to see render time comparisons out of Resolve/Premiere; same project/footage on a known-quantity machine and then again on the M1 (though it would be cool to see a 13" MBP M1 vs an Air M1 and see if there's actually a ~$700 difference.)

[Blair S. Paulsen]

The MBP is 500nits vs 400 for the Air. To me, the biggest advantage of the MBP is the cooling fan - especially if you intend to use it for RED workflows. And not just because the M1 chip should perform closer to capacity when kept cooler, but logic suggests it will extend the useful life of the device. Thermal coefficients and all that.

Unless Apple is outright lying, the base model M1 Air (16G RAM is the only add I might do) is a beast for $1,000. If you're willing to spend a bit more, you can put together a nice 16GB/1TB 13" MBP for $1,900. Theory being either 1) go budget and save up for the more advanced ASi coming next - or 2) get the one more likely to survive production abuse long enough that upgrading can be done when it makes sense, instead of unexpectedly - probably at an inconvenient time. Just sayin'

IAC -

What we should be talking about is that you can now do pretty serious work on a self contained, featherweight, internal battery, P3 gamut display, internal flash storage, etc laptop. Entry price for the Air is $999, and you can do a solid 13" MBP build out for $2K. IMO, Apple's M1 chip designers have cleverly leveraged process shrink to achieve a whole new level of performance in such a small package. Adobe and others may drag their feet, but market pressure will bring them around.

BTW, there are tiny M.2 drives you can Velcro or Gaff to a laptop, connect via TB3/USB-4 that can R/W at silly speeds - and fit in a pocket.

Cheers - #19

[Tom Gleeson]

The other issue with this transition is software. Will Redcine X Pro be ported across to run natively if not and it has to run through Rosetta 2 I would expect little advantage. The same goes for Resolve and all the other professional Apps. So far Blackmagic has been incredibly responsive and they have a large development team continually working on Resolve so I have high hopes we wont wait too long there . Has Red made any commitment re upgrading Redcine X Pro ?

[Blair S. Paulsen]

I'd hope that RED engineers have already been working on tools for RED workflows on ARM ASi Macs. Apple is committed to their new SOC architecture and working with RED to optimize code for it is a win-win. NAB 2021 might be virtual, but I can see Apple announcing the 16" MBP with a higher core count M1 variant - then using RED media metrics to pimp it.

Cheers - #19

[jake blackstone]

To me the biggest disappointment, so far, is there is no ability to run eGPU on these computers. I can understand this on Air and even on Mac Book Pro, but Mini? Also there is a big step back eliminating 10 GE and going from dual TB controller to single channel TB controller. Sure, Air is a great value and power proposition, but Mac Book Pro is the same computer in slightly different enclosure and at a higher price and Mini is even though it is lower price in comparison to the previous Intel iteration, it is much less expendable and versatile. I'll wait for the next iteration...