Apple Macbook Pro - M1 Pro & M1 Max

[Obsidian Dragon]

Well Apple just announced the new Apple Silicon Mac Pros with M1 Pro and M1 Max processors. The best news is that it can b e configured up to 64 Unified Memory! The Processor performance, GPU performance, memory capacity, SSD speeds have all be improved. Now it is up to Avid to provide a suitable update to run natively on this beast of a notebook. Oh, and the battery life is amazing. I'm excited...c'mon Avid, let's make this a win-win.

[JFreak]

Do you want to sell your kidney or liver?

[Benoni]

The M1 Max looks amazing. It looks like this may outperform my Intel 20 core, 96GB ram Windows system.

I like that they brought back some other ports. The USB-C/Thunderbolt only ports means you gotta have dongles for everything. I have dongles out the wazoo!

I hope the keyboard is better than the awful Butterfly keyboard on my MBP. Apple needs to look to Microsoft for their keyboards. The Keyboards on the Surface Book and Surface Laptops are amazing.

Being able to run iOS/iPadOS apps on the M1 will be nice. A feature Windows 11 is also bringing, except with Android.

The M1 Max looks like it will be able to easily handle large Pro Tools sessions and 4K video editing no problem.

A 16" M1 Max configured with 64GB Ram, 2TB ssd is $4,299 which is less than I thought. It's actually not that excessive. Going up to 8TB would be awesome, but an extra $1800! That's excessive.

[EGS]

Originally Posted by Benoni

The M1 Max looks amazing. It looks like this may outperform my ...

Yes - it should be a winner! Not that benchmark comparisons are of much importance in real-world use like Pro Tools, but ... according to this only a few score better than M1 Max: https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_be...single_core-15

[Will Russell]

I don't do any video editing or much VI work so I'm inclined to go for the M1 Pro rather than the M1 Max. It seems that the M1Max is all about the GPU and honestly even though I have a 2009 core cheese grater (HDX) as my main production machine all of my sessions run just fine on a 2015 quad core 27" iMac.

I'm leaning toward a 16" M1Pro 2TB SSD, 32G RAM.

HDMI/or TB4 for an external monitor, MagSafe for power, leaving 2 TB4 ports for external drives/interfaces or just get a OWC TB hub.

The bummer is that everything related to Pro Tools will be running on Rosetta for quite a while until everyone comes on board with the appropriate code to run native. My guess is that this is a pretty big job for most folks so it might be a little bit of a wait.

[JFreak]

Bringing back the glorious MagSafe was great, dedicated HDMI is also very usable for the coming ten years (any idea which HDMI specification it has?). But I was kind of stunned to see card slot, headphone slot and only three TB4's. Need to find specifications somewhere, but to me it only makes sense if all three are dedicated busses. I just fear that there are two TB busses, one on left and one on the right side.

Looks promising, but I want to know more about this thing. And with this fully loaded M1 mac mini I will certainly wait for "M2" generation until I consider anything else, but sure, this is interesting.

[dominicperry]

Originally Posted by Obsidian Dragon

Well Apple just announced the new Apple Silicon Mac Pros with M1 Pro and M1 Max processors. The best news is that it can b e configured up to 64 Unified Memory! The Processor performance, GPU performance, memory capacity, SSD speeds have all be improved. Now it is up to Avid to provide a suitable update to run natively on this beast of a notebook. Oh, and the battery life is amazing. I'm excited...c'mon Avid, let's make this a win-win.

Do you mean Mac Pros? I don't think you do.

[JFreak]

MBP

[Obsidian Dragon]

Originally Posted by dominicperry

Do you mean Mac Pros? I don't think you do.

Oops. I was so excited when posting I made the typo. Yes. MacBook Pro, not Mac Pro. Good catch (I've since fixed the title)

[barden]

I've just ordered the following, for delivery in mid-November:

Apple M1 Max with 10-core CPU, 24-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
32GB unified memory
512GB SSD storage
Three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI port, SDXC card slot, MagSafe*3 port
16-inch Liquid Retina XDR display

Can I be so bold as to start a discussion about best uses of the given ports?

This machine is going to replace an aging (but still rock-solid!) 27" 5K iMac with an attached Thunderbolt display and HD projector (I am primarily a sound-for-picture guy). I have no shortage of ports right now so now I have to think about figuring out how utilize the ports on the new machine.

My needs:
- HD Native box on Thunderbolt
- at least one additional display will probably be my main cutting screen
- HD projector for picture
- USB hub for iLoks, keyboards, etc.
- USB "library" drive (currently stays connected to my iMac pretty much permanently
- a cutting drive (I keep projects on a series of 1TB drives that I connect as necessary, allowing me to take them to the stage, etc.)

What I'm thinking:

Thunderbolt 4 Port #1:
- USB-C to Thunderbolt 2 adaptor to make my Thunderbolt display functional
- connect HD Native box to Thunderbolt display (have tested this with an Intel MBP...hopefully it will - eventually? - work with my new MBP)
- Thunderbolt display will also provide a couple of USB A ports (albeit USB 2.0 speeds) to which I can connect a hub that I can use for iLoks, keyboards, etc.

Thunderbolt 4 Port #2:
- main cutting drive, these days typically USB C spinning or solid state drives

Thunderbolt 4 Port #3:
- current generation USB C hub to provide ethernet, couple more USB A connectors at USB 3.0 speeds, maybe another HDMI (my "library" drive would live here)

Built-in HDMI
- feeds HD projector for picture

I'd love to get some feedback from the collective hive-mind as to whether my expectations seem realistic. Yes, I know that we don't have any hands on these new machines yet and that predicting the timeline for Avid's support of them is a bit like nailing jello to the wall but I didn't think it would hurt to get an early conversation going here.

(Mods please move to a more appropriate forum / thread as necessary.)

Big thanks, all.

~sb