WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:15.480 For the artist and the creative professional, a good computer is an essential foundational 00:00:15.480 --> 00:00:20.520 tool. And while we're all excited to see how Apple's new Mac Studio will fit the bill, I wanted 00:00:20.520 --> 00:00:24.280 to give a last Harava look at the new MacBook Pro. 00:00:24.280 --> 00:00:27.680 Now, in the world of tech YouTube, we've done our benchmarks and tried out what's 00:00:27.680 --> 00:00:32.280 new to tell you how it is. And the new MacBook Pro has impressed just about all of us. 00:00:32.280 --> 00:00:37.760 But what about the types of people who they are made for? What is the MacBook Pro like in the real world? 00:00:37.760 --> 00:00:54.360 The results might surprise you. They surprised me. 00:00:54.360 --> 00:01:04.720 This is Andrew Muller. He's a musician friend of mine who goes by the name Viola Bloom. 00:01:04.720 --> 00:01:09.120 He's been growing in music production for a number of years now, accumulating a large 00:01:09.120 --> 00:01:15.560 array of cool synths and effect mabobs that plug into his 2015 MacBook Pro, glowing logo 00:01:15.560 --> 00:01:21.840 and all. 00:01:21.840 --> 00:01:26.320 Software-wise, music producers are spoiled for choice with their digital audio workstation 00:01:26.320 --> 00:01:49.360 software. Andrew's choice when writing and producing tunes is reason. 00:01:49.360 --> 00:02:07.880 For us, a slow computer is a bit of a nuisance, but for Andrew, it can really cramp his creative 00:02:07.880 --> 00:02:13.920 flow. Our audio buffer size is very important, so you can see we have a certain amount of samples 00:02:13.920 --> 00:02:26.960 here and it tells us what our latency is. This song, for example, will not play unless I have the set to 2,000 samples. 00:02:26.960 --> 00:02:30.880 So this is what you have to do is you have to keep jumping up your buffer size every 00:02:30.880 --> 00:02:35.800 time your project gets bigger and now you can touch the project less because you're 00:02:35.800 --> 00:02:41.240 like, oh, I want to record some instruments. It starts to create a mess, so it's like, okay, well, I'm just going to increase the 00:02:41.240 --> 00:02:47.840 buffer size. 00:02:47.840 --> 00:02:51.240 It's like a very long delay. 00:02:51.240 --> 00:02:55.160 It's literally impossible because your brain gets confused because you hear it a second 00:02:55.160 --> 00:02:58.720 later. It's just like you feel like an idiot. 00:02:58.720 --> 00:03:01.880 So can we make Andrew's life a little better? 00:03:01.880 --> 00:03:06.560 This new MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro processor is about four times faster than his fourth 00:03:06.560 --> 00:03:11.640 gen Intel Core i7 laptop, and so I want to give it to him to see if such an upgrade actually 00:03:11.640 --> 00:03:24.720 makes any difference. 00:03:24.720 --> 00:03:30.040 On the other side, what about one of our video editors, like Hoffman, whom you might recognize? 00:03:30.040 --> 00:03:35.920 He's an editor here at LMG who occasionally takes photos for merch on LTTstore.com, dressed 00:03:35.920 --> 00:03:46.840 like me with their plaid flannel. In the edit den, he uses a massive, powerful desktop PC, threadripper, 3090 and all. 00:03:46.840 --> 00:03:52.200 His workstation is very powerful and very big, so I want to see how much an M1 Max-powered 00:03:52.200 --> 00:03:55.600 MacBook Pro with 24 cores compares. 00:03:55.600 --> 00:04:00.800 What the heck are you doing? Well, we're replacing your desktop, heavy and hot, with a new MacBook Pro. 00:04:00.800 --> 00:04:04.480 I'm going to see if it's just as fast. Is it going to be faster than mine? 00:04:04.480 --> 00:04:07.480 You're going to tell me. You know this is what you want. 00:04:07.480 --> 00:04:11.240 I'm not going to say anything. 00:04:11.240 --> 00:04:15.520 The goal of this video is to get an idea of what it would be like were someone to add 00:04:15.520 --> 00:04:22.040 one of these MacBook Pros into their workflow. So we're going to need a bit of time, at least over a week, to let them get their hands dirty. 00:04:22.040 --> 00:04:30.800 So what do I do in the meantime? Well, I could find my backpack, put a touchscreen on a MacBook, go diving for iPhones, clean 00:04:30.800 --> 00:04:46.240 my airpods, fix iCloud storage, make a video with an iPhone, use a slow computer and collapse. 00:04:46.240 --> 00:04:50.880 Many of the new features introduced in the MacBook Pro are extremely handy, especially 00:04:50.880 --> 00:04:56.120 in Hoffman's case. That SD card reader almost worth the price of entry alone, except for the fact that you 00:04:56.120 --> 00:04:59.840 also get that fabulous XDR display. 00:04:59.840 --> 00:05:15.160 At his desk, Hoffman edits high-quality, high-bit rate Mac Address footage. 00:05:15.160 --> 00:05:19.640 Now we do have a server to edit footage of, however, it and Macs have a bit of a fickle 00:05:19.640 --> 00:05:24.600 relationship. So Hoffman's editing locally. So how does the MacBook compare to the Threadripper? 00:05:24.600 --> 00:05:28.040 There are times when the transcode is just a little bit slower. 00:05:28.040 --> 00:05:31.560 For example, it would be like seven minutes to transcode something on the Threadripper 00:05:31.560 --> 00:05:37.320 versus 12 minutes on the MacBook Pro, but I just look at it and try to listen to the 00:05:37.320 --> 00:05:43.800 fan and I rarely hear the fan sometimes. I mean, it is a bit of a bigger difference, 12 minutes to seven minutes. 00:05:43.800 --> 00:05:47.360 It's pretty rough, I would say, but the time difference is like a couple of minutes. 00:05:47.360 --> 00:05:51.680 It's not exactly close, but it's not exactly far. 00:05:51.680 --> 00:06:09.760 So back to Andrew. 00:06:09.760 --> 00:06:12.840 The issue for him was managing the buffer in Reason. 00:06:12.840 --> 00:06:16.960 To hear his multi-layered song, he needed a big buffer, which meant he can't play along 00:06:16.960 --> 00:06:24.480 with it. So is the new Mac any better? Like my old computer, once a song got bigger, I would have to be up to like 2,000 samples, 00:06:24.480 --> 00:06:31.360 which is like, it's very hard to record. 00:06:31.360 --> 00:06:40.160 So that's not too bad for only 512 samples. I was expecting it to like, like I was at 2,000, so I'm going to go up more samples. 00:06:40.160 --> 00:06:44.400 So it actually just got worse when I changed it to 1,000 samples for some reason. 00:06:44.400 --> 00:06:49.440 Yeah, maybe that's what I need to experiment with is lower. 00:06:49.960 --> 00:06:54.680 My DSP is at like max. That's very weird, right? 00:06:54.680 --> 00:06:58.720 It's getting worse and worse and worse. I think it'll get better now at 4,000. 00:06:58.720 --> 00:07:02.600 And like the new Mac book, I opened up a song and like immediately it wouldn't play until 00:07:02.600 --> 00:07:08.120 I had it at 4,000 samples. 00:07:08.120 --> 00:07:12.800 So how did you feel when the performance was not as good? Oh man, that was so disappointing. 00:07:12.800 --> 00:07:17.360 It felt awful. I was like, did I make a huge mistake here? 00:07:17.360 --> 00:07:22.480 It made me feel like I was an early adopter. 00:07:22.480 --> 00:07:25.520 It shows that the problem here is the software. 00:07:25.520 --> 00:07:29.920 In the digital audio workstation space, Reason is known for being a little behind. 00:07:29.920 --> 00:07:34.440 Their latest update, 12, now supports HD graphics for retina screens. 00:07:34.440 --> 00:07:42.480 Andrew, however, uses version 11. And while it should run on M1 through Rosetta, something is clearly getting lost in translation. 00:07:42.480 --> 00:07:50.160 And native M1 support looks a long way off. Despite the M1 being a part of the system requirements. 00:07:50.160 --> 00:07:56.000 So are you going to buy a Mac book? Yeah, I bought a Mac book and it just shipped last night. 00:07:56.000 --> 00:08:00.800 Oh, you just got it? And it just shipped last night and I got a UPS sticker on my door and I went and picked 00:08:00.800 --> 00:08:04.600 it up just before this interview. So you still went and got one anyway? 00:08:04.600 --> 00:08:09.080 I still got it anyways. Oh, you got a space gray one? 00:08:09.080 --> 00:08:15.440 It's space gray. What can I say? For me, I was motivated just because my computer was getting slow. 00:08:15.440 --> 00:08:20.080 And while I'm trying to work on these projects and I got 2,000 samples on my buffer size 00:08:20.080 --> 00:08:23.400 and then I upgraded, it doesn't even solve that problem. 00:08:23.400 --> 00:08:27.840 So now I'm actually in a funny position where I'm like, oh, maybe I would move to Ableton 00:08:27.840 --> 00:08:34.920 because I know it's going to perform way better. And that might be a mistake, but I'm motivated to make that mistake because I have this problem 00:08:34.920 --> 00:08:47.880 now. These powerful Apple Silicon Macs have brought loads of enthusiasm to the platform, especially 00:08:47.880 --> 00:08:52.680 from creative professionals like Hoffman and Andrew, both of whom really fell for the 00:08:52.680 --> 00:08:56.880 features, design and future of the new architecture. 00:08:56.880 --> 00:09:02.240 Enough even to put their money where their mouth is. 00:09:02.240 --> 00:09:07.360 But after the hardware transition comes the hard part, which is the software transition. 00:09:07.360 --> 00:09:12.920 There are loads of great chip features like the neural engine, the media engine and countless 00:09:12.920 --> 00:09:17.440 GPU cores for developers to take advantage of, but it's going to require lots of work 00:09:17.440 --> 00:09:22.920 to do so. Larger developers like the ones who make Ableton will get there faster. 00:09:22.920 --> 00:09:27.040 In fact, we saw them in the Apple Studio announcement. 00:09:27.040 --> 00:09:30.280 But it's harder for smaller developers like the one who makes Reason. 00:09:30.280 --> 00:09:35.200 And at a time when Apple's developer relationships are dropping towards all-time lows, this might 00:09:35.200 --> 00:09:39.080 be for users the biggest difficulty of this transition. 00:09:39.080 --> 00:09:44.480 Would I get one? Here's the deal. I'm saying that I love it because I didn't pay for it. 00:09:44.480 --> 00:09:47.560 If you don't need to upgrade, then just wait a bit. 00:09:47.560 --> 00:09:53.360 When you look at machine that's so small and you tell yourself that it's almost $4,000, 00:09:53.360 --> 00:09:58.960 you kind of start to think, is it justifiable because if I can't use it in a professional 00:09:59.040 --> 00:10:03.040 environment, then where am I going to use it? 00:10:03.040 --> 00:10:08.440 Thanks for testing out this Mac Address. I'll admit this wasn't quite the conclusion I was expecting when I set out to make this 00:10:08.440 --> 00:10:13.240 video, but if you think the Macbook Pro will make your computing faster, then give this 00:10:13.240 --> 00:10:22.120 a like. And if you're curious about the Mac Studio, then subscribe. Now in the comments, I'm curious about what apps you use that aren't quite Apple Silicon 00:10:22.120 --> 00:10:24.160 native yet, like Microsoft Teams.