I had been looking forward to Monday’s Apple event for quite some time, even before the event was actually scheduled. When the M1 was originally announced, like many others, I was impressed, but my immediate thought was, I wonder what pro machines will be capable of. Well, yesterday, I got my answer. And it was worth the wait.

For the last six months or so, I’ve been using a M1 MacBook Pro as my main computer. Up till then, I had been using a 2012 MacPro, which I had upgraded numerous times over the years. I had been in the market for a new computer, but after the Apple Silicon transition was announced, I wanted to avoid getting a new pro desktop that was still running intel, and as I also needed to replace my dying laptop, I went with the MacBook Pro. I hadn’t intended it to replace my MacPro, but rather be a companion, so I could try out the fancy new Apple Silicon.

But it was just so good.

In the end, I switched over to using it full time. I had a motion graphics project earlier this summer, and I decided to try doing it on the M1 MacBook Pro, thinking I could always switch back if I needed. But after a few days into the project, there was no way I was switching back. So, the M1 became my main workstation, despite not being really suitable for it. But it would do until the proper “pro” machines came out.

Over the summer, I had been waiting with eager anticipation, but also with a bit of trepidation. The 16” MacBook Pro was long rumoured to be next, and the numerous leaks, made it pretty inevitable. While I am mostly in the market for a new desktop, I figured that whatever was in the laptops, the future pro level desktops (High-end iMac and high-end Mac mini) would have a similar architecture. So while I was curious to see the new laptops, I’m more interested in the processors. And boy, do they not disappoint.

While most of you reading this may have come here for Photography related content, my day job is actually mostly motion graphics, both 2D and 3D. For the longest time the Mac has struggled to compete with the GPU power, especially when it comes to the newer GPU-based renders, many have which have traditionally required Nvidia cards. This has slowly begun to change with metal versions of Octane and Redshift now available, but the M1 Max in particular puts the Mac right up there with the best GPUs available on the PC. Based on scores posted to the Octane community, if the M1 Max is really 4 times faster than the M1, by my calculation it will be among the fastest GPUs available on any platform, matching even desktop cards costing several thousand dollars. In fact, it can do something hat most GPUs can’t even do on Windows, it can access up to 64gb of RAM (most cards top out at 16 or 24gb presently).

But this is only one aspect of the new systems. The new core design of the chips mean that the CPU is 70% faster than the M1, and the M1 is no slouch as it is. But because of the design, other tasks like machine learning and video encoding can be offloaded from the main CPU cores, and handled by the separate ML cores or video encoding cores. At the keynote, Apple posted staggering statistics for these new chips when it comes to video encoding and decoding, with 10 times faster ProRes transcoding, and an insane 30 streams of 4k ProRes playback, and 7 streams of 8k playback. To do this now, you’d need the top end MacPro with a multicore Xeon and the Apple after burner card, which would cost an order of magnitude more than even a well specced out MacBook Pro. To be able to get this kind of performance from a laptop is mind-blowing. The biggest limiting factor here would be fast enough storage. I would say that the new MacBook Pro could probably run rings around the current MacPro for many tasks.

The laptops themselves are really interesting. While I am holding out for a desktop personally, if I had the funds right now, I’d be reconsidering! First up, Apple seems to have undone most of the questionable design decisions of the past few generations. MagSafe is back, the SD card slot is back, and the Touch Bar is gone. On top of that, we get a very impressive high resolution HDR display that alone would be worth it. They seem like fantastic laptops, and it’s hard to find fault with them.

Except the notch.

I really don’t like the notch.

On the plus side, the area around the notch is “extended” and apps can choose to ignore the extended area and just black it out, but I really wish they had gone a different way here. Oh well, it’s a small price to pay. The only other thing I would have liked to have seen is the SD card slot being a dual SD / CFAST slot. But it’s still great to have the slot back. And the multiple display support. And the HDMI port. And mag safe.

The more philosophical thing I took from the MacBook Pro design is that Apple has finally backed off its obsession with thinness and instead given us a ProMachine that is really Pro. The importance of this can’t be understated. While I’m sure there will be PC users out there going “My PC is better at half the price”, that’s not the point. Apple now has a very, very, high-end system and if nothing else this will encourage developers and artists who may have been wavering to embrace the platform anew. From a graphics and video professional point of view, these are incredible computers, something that Mac users have been waiting for, for a very long time. I think that this will usher in a new era of Pro use for the Mac. They really are that impressive, especially for the video and design fields.

For photography, they offer a lot too, but the M1 is already faster than I can keep up with, but I guess if you are working with a lot of very high-res images, and need to do a lot of exporting or conversions then this will be a big deal for you. If you use Photoshop a lot and do a lot of compositing, then the extra performance will be important. The bigger benefits to photographers I suspect will be the very impressive screen and the SD card slot coming back. Also, the ability to add up to 8 TB internally, and the extra ram will make a difference, depending on your workload.

The new MacBook Pros are expensive, for sure, but I don’t think they’re overpriced. In fact, I was surprised how reasonable they are when specced up. I was expecting them to cost a lot more, bearing in mind that these are Pro level portable workstations. (And actually Pro level, not in name only)

As I said earlier, though, I’m really keen to see these chipsets in a desktop enclosure. A high-end Mac mini with the M1 Max could easily take the place of a mid-range current generation Mac Pro for most tasks. A 27” or 34” iMac with an M1 Max could be an incredible computer for designers and artists. But what I’m curious about more than anything is what a potential Mac Pro would look like. If the performance difference between the M1 and the M1 Max is anything to go by, Apple’s future high-end Mac Pro could be something on a different level altogether, differentiating the Mac in ways not currently even thought about when it comes to pro level creation. If the current direction is an indicator, the future of the Apple Silicon architecture is indeed bright, and the Mac will be the platform to beat for high-end content creation.

Images courtesy of Apple PR

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