November 22nd, 2021 × #apple#macbook#hardware
The Macbook Pro Show - Wes and Scott Get New Laptops
Wes and Scott discuss their experiences switching to the new 16-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro for development and creative work
- New 16-inch MacBook Pros
- Sponsors
- Initial thoughts
- Apps and performance
- RAM needs for developers
- Memory usage observations
- Screen size for developers
- Productivity vs overworking
- VSCode performance
- Setting up new computer
- Video editing performance
- DaVinci Resolve performance
- Fan noise and heat
- Video encoding capabilities
- Waveform performance
- Other developer improvements
- Development experience
- Minimized barriers
- Hardware impressions
- Notch issues
- Menu bar spacing issues
- Power and charging
- Fan noise
- External monitor support
- It feels like the future
- Battery life
- Monitor color issues
- Fingerprint reader
- What to do with old laptops
- Ports
- Microphone quality
- Camera quality
- Keyboard quality
Transcript
Announcer
Monday. Monday. Monday.
Announcer
Open wide dev fans, get ready to stuff your face with JavaScript, CSS, node modules, barbecue tips, get workflows, breakdancing, soft skill, web development, the hastiest, the craziest, the tastiest web development treats coming again hot. Here is Wes, Barracuda,
Wes Bos
Boss, and Scott
Scott Tolinski
it. Welcome to Syntex.
Scott Tolinski
In this Monday, hasty treat, we're gonna be talking all about our new laptops. That's right. Wes and I both got new laptops.
New 16-inch MacBook Pros
Scott Tolinski
We got both got the same one, which is actually gonna be really great that we can directly talk about our experiences.
Scott Tolinski
So Wes and I, we're gonna be giving you a bit of a hands on, a bit of a real world review of these things. That's right. The new 16 inch MacBook Pros it. With the notch, with the m one x max, whatever you call the processor, the Mac Pro, Pro Max, Max Pro.
Scott Tolinski
We're gonna be talking all of that and more. My name is Scott Talensky. I'm a developer from Denver, Colorado. And with me as always is the web boss. Hey, everybody.
Wes Bos
Excited about this laptop. I am so stoked about it. So it's gonna be fun to share it from a developer
Scott Tolinski
standpoint and a video editor standpoint. I'm stoked about it too. I'm I'm very, very stoked. I'm stoked about the machine. I'm stoked about talking about it. I'm just I'm very into this thing. I'm also very into both of our sponsors today, which is, 2 awesome s based companies. That's Sanity and Sentry.
Scott Tolinski
Sanity is the structured content CMS for your back end, and Sentry is the error and exception handling tool. It. Now Sentry is one of those tools that if you're releasing a product out there in the world, some code that people are using, it's essential to have this in your tool belt. Because what this does is it anytime anybody goofs up or there's some code that's a problem on your site, it catalogs that as an error, an exception Depending on how your code base is handling those errors, and you can have all those things in a big old table where you can get information. You can see which users It's affecting which browsers. It's affecting how many people, how many times per second did this error is happening to your users, And all that and more you can attach to GitHub issues. It's the coolest service, and they keep adding more and more new tools like their awesome performance, Metrics tools along with a user misery score, which is just about one of my favorite namings of anything lately. I love that they call it a user misery score for performance.
Sponsors
Scott Tolinski
It's so very cool. So check out at century.i0.
Scott Tolinski
Use the coupon code tasty treat, all lowercase, all one word, and you'll get 2 months for free. Thank you so much for Century for sponsoring.
Wes Bos
I have the best ad read here for Sanity.
Wes Bos
I was, I was just looking through, what they've been releasing. Sanity is always pushing out new stuff, and they just released, Grok powered webhooks.
Wes Bos
And And I was thinking, like, yeah, we just did, like, maybe, I don't know, a month and a half ago. We did an awesome episode on what webhooks are, and now Sanity is coming out with these really cool grok power webhooks, and they linked to our intact episode about webhooks as, like, a nice little primer as to what what webhooks are. So, like, what a relationship we have here.
Wes Bos
It. So Sanity rolled out this thing called Grok powered webhooks, which means that Grok is their query language in Sanity, and you can literally use it to query anything you want. And now you can put Croc into webhook. So you could query products that are, more than $20 or products where the price has gone down. That's one of their examples.
Wes Bos
And and you can also give the old price and the new price in it. And you can literally query for anything that you want. You can use this thing called Projections which will, populate the data for them. They have a whole new UI for managing your webhooks.
Wes Bos
Like, let sanity being awesome for powering your website, but you could also use these types of things to Post to Twitter whenever, there's a sale on something that's more than 20%. You could automate the posting of these things to Twitter or whatever. You could do it all inside of Sanity studio. It's Pretty sick.
Wes Bos
Check it out at sanity.i0forward/ syntax for double the free usage here. Thank you, sanity, for sponsoring.
Wes Bos
Sync. Alright.
Wes Bos
New computers.
Initial thoughts
Wes Bos
This we did an episode probably, I think, about 2 years ago, maybe a year and a half ago, when Scott and I both upgraded from the original MacBook Pro, with the touch bar to the 2nd generation with the touch bar, and we kind of went through it. And we said, yeah. It's faster. We really like it, but there's still a lot of things here and there.
Wes Bos
Now the both Scott and I both were running the old Intel. Not old because it's probably faster than most people in the world's computer, but Scott and I were both running the, Intel based Core I9, MacBooks, and we have both upgraded to the new, Apple M1 Max.
Wes Bos
So Apple released these new processors processors. They're no longer running on Intel chips.
Wes Bos
They run Similar to the processes that are running in the iPad, and they are fast as heck, which is kinda cool. We're we're not gonna, like, This is not like a tech review show where we're gonna talk about memory and processors that they're shared and and one that you can go watch a YouTube video on how that works. What we are here to do is to tell you, is this a professional tool that us as video creators and web developers Are finding use out of it. Word.
Scott Tolinski
Yeah. Totally. And and we're coming definitely from the the perspective of people who work in code full time. They're also media producers. Right? So we we're working in audio. We're working in video. We're working in it. I mean, you do graphic design stuff too, Wes. I don't do you ever do any you do design in Figma now. Right? Or you you sketch head or I'm still on sketch. And the reason behind that is because I I tried to switch over to Figma
Wes Bos
many times, but because Figma was entirely remote, I could never switch over because I had such poor Internet up at the cottage, and it was just, like, so unstable. Like, you could save a local file, but then every time you made a change, you had to save another little file. Right there. Yeah. No. But, man, I'm I was doing some sketch the other day, and, on my old one, I have, like, millions of fonts installed on my computer. Mhmm. And the the fonts drop down Would always spin up in sketch. Like, I would get beach ball for, like, 10 seconds.
Wes Bos
Fonts drop down on the m one. Instant. Just so nice that it does that. I probably will move over to Figma now that I have good Internet up at the cottage. But, yeah. That's it's
Scott Tolinski
Graphics editing is awesome on this thing. Yeah. Cool. Okay. So let's get into some of our, initial thoughts. I mean, it. Off the bat, my my biggest statement about this thing is it rules. It totally rules. It's the best. I love it. And, I'm I'm I've been very I don't know if I've ever been dissatisfied with a tech purchase in my entire life. Not because the previous one was bad, it. But because this one is just that good, it is it is very, very good, and, it's kind of shockingly impressive at every step of the way. So, it. We both got the new m one, m one max to be specific. We both got the 16 inch. We both got 64 gigabytes of RAM, and we both got 2 terabytes of hard drive space.
Apps and performance
Scott Tolinski
So Needless to say, this thing is loaded up. It is kind of almost absurdly loaded up. But, you know, when you're working in in, web development, you gotta have 64 gigabytes of RAM for all those Chrome tabs, so we gotta be which is actually very funny because I've,
Wes Bos
this computer is is so good with that that I've kind of lost track of how many tabs I have opened at any given point, so it's almost like enabling a bad habit of mine. I I panicked when I was buying this thing because they announced it, and I was just, like, immediately, I knew that, like, the the backlog for buying this thing is is now into January, And I knew that I had to get my order in immediately.
Wes Bos
So I was I messaged Scott. I'm like, like, how how much how much RAM are you getting? Because my last us when I had 32, and Scott went for 64 on the last one.
Wes Bos
And Scott's, like, 64, baby, all day long.
Wes Bos
So I panic, And I did it, and it was an extra $400.
Wes Bos
And, now that I'm I'm well, I've been watching my memory, how much it's using, how much it's, how much is caching and also how much it's swapping. So swapping means that when you run out of memory, it will take the stuff that's in memory And put it on your hard drive. Get it down. And then when you like like like you you've got a 1,000 Pinterest tabs open like my wife does, and, they'll put that on the hard drive. And then you fire Chrome back up, us. Like 6 months later, when you still have your Pinterest tabs open, it'll take it off the hard drive and put it back into memory for you. And I so far have not seen us.
Wes Bos
Anything greater than 3.5 megs of swap used. Mhmm. And I've been exporting audio, graphics, all that. So I think, Like, if if you want the, like, should I buy this as a web developer? I think I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you don't even need more than 16 gigs as a web developer on this thing.
Wes Bos
32 would have been more than enough for what I'm doing as a media creator, but
Scott Tolinski
can't hurt. You know? 64 is It's pretty sweet. It's it's just funny. I I I'm wondering about, like, like, for me, Versus Code. I'm looking at my activity monitor right now, And I must just leave a lot of Versus Code tabs open or whatever. I have a ton of code helper processes that are are taking up a good amount of CS memory each. So I don't know if it's if you see that as well or if that's a thing, but, it definitely helps. I I You know what? I think the the RAM component will probably come into play later a little bit more as we continue to use these things. I kinda bought this Loaded up to be a forever machine, which is the funniest statement ever in computers. Yeah. You know, it doesn't happen that way, but I certainly bought it with the intention of keeping it for a very long time. So Yeah. I'm actually I'm just looking at mine right now, and it says it says I'm using 45 gigs of memory right now. I've got, it. I don't know. Three large Yeah. Code projects open I'm using on it right now. Too. Yeah. So may maybe maybe I'm wrong about that. 32 would be would be enough In 64 is the the other thing about this memory is that
RAM needs for developers
Wes Bos
it will use it. Like, when you when you have it available, people always complain about, like, it. Oh, man. Like, I I'm not 90% of of memory, and all I'm doing is running a code in in Chrome. But, like, that's your computer knows. Oh, Wow. That's a lot of space. Memory is modified, dude. Let's leave things in memory. Yeah.
Wes Bos
Exactly. And, like, if you don't have that much space, the computer is pretty smart about what you store on disk temporarily, so that when you fire it back up again. So there there's that as well.
Memory usage observations
Wes Bos
But I've been watching the little memory.
Wes Bos
It's it's called memory pressure in in the activity monitor, and that thing just stays low, low, low even while it. I'm exporting video and whatnot. Yeah. I'm also curious about, like, if, like, regular developers need the Max or if the Pro would be enough. It. Mhmm. I would probably venture out to say that the Pro is is more than enough for regular developers. But if you're doing any sort of media Exporting. We'll talk about this in just a sec. Definitely, the max is probably worth your money. Yeah.
Scott Tolinski
Yeah. I I have such a hard time with it. My my whole life I've been like a, you know, if if the computer costs a bunch of extra money to get the max configuration, Yeah. There there is a degree in which you don't need that. I think the bigger argument for, like, what what configuration you should get would be the 14 inch screen versus the 16 whether or not you need that real estate or or not. And I only get the 16 personally because I use my monitor as my a main or second screen when I'm I connected to my my setup. But if I didn't, I might get the 14 because I had a 13 inch MacBook Pro Once, and it was an awesome computer. I really loved having that little 13 inch computer to to lug around and whatever work on. Totally. Totally.
Screen size for developers
Wes Bos
Also, we should say, like like, these things are extremely, extremely expensive. Oh, yeah. And I got a lot of, like, snide comments, when I said that I bought it or when you post it and things like that. And that's frustrating to see because, like, I certainly don't want to be the guy that's like, oh, this thing is amazing. It's so worth it. It. And it's like, oh, yeah. It's worth it to spend several, like, what what how much was this? It's like almost $6 Canadian for this thing. I I think, like, the version we're talking about is 43100 US. But honestly, if you we are business owners. We're professionals. If you run this thing For 3 years, which, my last good laptop lasted longer than that. I still have my HDMI version of it. It's it works out to couple bucks a day after after you have business taxes that you don't have to pay, income tax on, it. And there's, like, a resale amount after 3 years. It's it's really just a couple bucks a day. And to someone who is a professional and this stuff matters To work as quickly as possible, especially video export party. Man. All day long. It's worth like, there was a tweet from One of the devs that works on Reddit, and he says for a team of 9, $32,000 of laptops saves a $100,000 in productivity over 21 in 1 year. The breakeven point happens at 3 months. Like, it cut their Android build times in half, they said. And And that's the sort of the standpoint that if you're in that realm of you need this thing to go as fast as possible, especially when you're paying you're paying a lot money for these devs. It's gonna be worth it at the end of the day. I heard some pushback on that too. It's like, well,
Scott Tolinski
if we're trying to optimize people's output, like, that's just kind of like The what is that? The hustle culture kind of toxicity saying that we might be but but I don't think that's I don't even think that's what the argument is. The argument is that I get to go home sooner because my video export took, 4 minutes instead of 34 minutes, And therefore, I don't have to sit around while my computer is doing some some heavy lifting. It's not like, oh, this computer is so fast that I can be, it. Overworked to death now because because I I have that potential to just endlessly work. Yeah. For for me,
Productivity vs overworking
Wes Bos
as As a code standpoint, it's more about, like, the feedback cycle of Oh, yeah. Sometimes you have things that are like, before the last Intel MacBook Pro, my Restart of my note app took, like, 6 or 7 seconds Save and wait. Which is extremely frustrating when you're trying to debug something. And now The restart is is under a second.
Wes Bos
And, like, that feedback cycle of being able to fix problems in, I don't know. Like, 8 times faster because you're editing code and and trying to restart this thing is is huge. It also can have an impact in in your brain too when, like, it. When I save a file,
Scott Tolinski
I I save it, and I wanna see, you know, instantly if the thing worked or not or whatever. I save this thing. I wanna see if this worked. I don't want to have to save, it. And then if it takes a second, I I am ADHD enough that my my mind will wander in that Which is absurd to say, but it's it's reality for me and and people like me that I do need the to minimize barrier to entry as much Possible there. So let's talk about apps. Probably the biggest one that we spend most of our time in is Versus Code.
VSCode performance
Wes Bos
It. I had just written we had a really great little, we had a really great little interaction this morning in our our notes while we were recording this. Oh, yeah. So Versus code still runs in Rosetta, which is it. If the apps are not updated to run on the new Apple Silicon, it runs in a VM called Rosetta.
Wes Bos
And you can see if something is running in a VM by opening up your, activity monitor, and you can add a new column called kind, and it will say Intel or Apple. And I was like, yeah. Versus Go still runs in Rosetta. It says Intel. And Scott's like, no. It doesn't.
Wes Bos
And I was like, what? So he linked me to this article, and I had to so I we'll talk about this in a second. So I had to redownload a Code and just drag and drop it over top of my existing code install, and then it switched over to m one max. You did like a an import Like a of all your stuff. Yeah. From your old machine. Machine restore. Yeah. And I just started fresh. You went fresh. I usually start fresh because, like, honestly, I think that's the way.
Wes Bos
But but, like It was a few days. Yeah. It was a few days. Yeah. I just couldn't do it. I have I've my schedule is so full right now. I've got courses that I'm working on, And I just couldn't couldn't take the downtime of hitting all these little issues, so I just I just moved it over overnight.
Wes Bos
Actually, at first, I tried to restore from time machine, which had 40 gigs of node modules in it. And, it.
Wes Bos
Moving over lots of small files is extremely slow when you're transferring files. And it told me Estimated 57
Scott Tolinski
hours to be stolen.
Wes Bos
So I, deleted all my node modules, And I just did the, like, put the put the computers beside each other, and it did it over Wi Fi.
Wes Bos
And it just I think it did end in 4 or 5 hours. I overnight, it did it for me. Yeah. I started fresh and,
Scott Tolinski
I think maybe halfway through that process, I was regretting it. Even, like, into recording the 1st episode of Syntax that we did on these machines, I did not have, like, Slack installed, which is, like, what Wes and I used to chat. So There was definitely, like, growing pains. There were moments where I was like, shoot, I wish I would have done this. But now seeing, the fact that you're gonna have to read down a bunch of apps anyways Makes me feel a little less overwhelmed about it. I don't think I think that's the only one because I I went and checked. Notion.
Setting up new computer
Wes Bos
Notion has an m one that you have to download special. Yeah. You're right. Notion is still running on Intel. So, yeah, you're right. There's there's a whole lot of, like, homework you have to do there, And it doesn't seem like it has now I'm wondering what are the what other apps
Scott Tolinski
are running on Intel that couldn't be like, why doesn't it why doesn't it tell you there's a m one version available. Yeah. You're just gonna have to go well, I got an email from Notion saying it was available, so that's what I knew. But for for most apps, sure. I I have I have no idea. And what's interesting is that there are some electron apps that I have that said they have released an m one version, But there's like when you go to download them, there's there's not that little dropper to let you select. So like Height app is is another app I have that I I've talking about a couple episodes ago, and this is an electron app. And Height. I got an emails from Height saying that their m one version was now available.
Scott Tolinski
Go into their site. There's nowhere to download an m one version. And looking at my activity monitor right now, it says it's running Apple Silicon, whatever. So are Are they able to automatically determine that in the installer and, like, why isn't Notion? Like, where's the you know, who's who's able to automatically determining how and why do you have to download special versions from some and
Wes Bos
who knows there? Yeah. Yeah. Probably hopefully, it will get better. I'm surprised it's not better by now. I'm just looking at my list of apps running.
Wes Bos
Spotify is still on Intel. Dropbox is still on it.
Wes Bos
Zedash is still Intel. Discord for me. What about, what about Figma? My Figma is running under Intel. Is there a new version of that?
Scott Tolinski
I think so because mine's not. Oh, a new version? Yep. Mine's mine's running on Apple.
Scott Tolinski
Figma's running for Apple. I'm on Ableton Live, which is running on Intel, ExpressVPN, Divi, Clippy.
Scott Tolinski
Yeah.
Wes Bos
That's about it for me. We should also say that Even though they are running on a virtual machine, in most cases, they are still faster
Scott Tolinski
than Yeah.
Wes Bos
Yeah. I did notice. The the one thing I opened up Versus code and the time it takes to open a file and highlight it, like, when you do a fresh launch, I remember being like, I I kinda wish that was faster. And now that you told me, yeah, there's a there's an Apple version available.
Scott Tolinski
That makes a lot of sense, and I installed it. And it's much faster to highlight the code when it's using Apple Silicon. I think you're gonna be shocked now that you have the The Apple version of Versus Code, I think you're gonna be shocked at how performant it is because it is very good. I I've been that's one of the things I've been most impressed with. Yeah. Just like switching tabs,
Wes Bos
finding like, that's one reason why people still love Sublime Text is that it's fast as heck. Totally. So I'd be curious to hear from those sublime text, holdouts if they move to m one max, it. If it's any good, totally. Totally. Totally. Let's let's talk about video editing.
Wes Bos
That was probably the biggest push for me because I was I was literally it. When I have a course, I have to set aside like, if I've got a course that's 40 or 50 hours, days. Yeah. Days, and this thing is just running 247 to export this thing. And I'm literally being here, like, I will pay any amount of money to make this go faster at the end of the day. And I hear from people, like, just get a m one whatever or get a, what's the tower? The Apple Tower or whatever or get a Windows computer or whatever. And I I move around a lot.
Video editing performance
Wes Bos
I just want everything on my computer, which is why One one machine. Last time, I only went 1 terabyte, and now I regretted it every single day. Because, if I record a course, it's often 3 or 400 gigs of screen recording, and I would run out of space all the time. And now I'm on 2 terabytes, and it's a good life. I'm running out of space on my Synology. I'm I gotta look at, like, upgrading that. Oh, man. Just pop a it. Pop another drive in there. I still have 7 terabytes left. It's awesome. Many do you have total? I think I only have, like, 8 total, which is the problem. I think I have 12 terabytes. I have four Or 5 4 terabyte drives in there, and then I'm running like raid. I forget. Go back to the Synology episode.
Wes Bos
It's a lot. It's more than I'll Hopefully, need for the next 5 or 6 years. Yeah. I
Scott Tolinski
I'm I'm I have 44 terabyte drives in, but I am doing, like, a rate config on them, so Doubling it up and then backups and stuff.
Scott Tolinski
But, yeah, video takes up so much space. It takes up so much time, and this thing has been crazy for me because So I I use a little app called Recut, which I love. This app, it it cuts out the silence programically of your recordings. So you drop your recording in there And you say, if it's below this threshold, just cut that section of the video out, which is perfect for me because you know me, I don't make any stakes. I'm perfect all the time, and the the only things that I really ever have a problem with my videos is that there's, like, space where I'm taking a break it. Compose myself, to get my thoughts together, to think about the next section, and so this just cuts all that out for me. The other day, I recorded a video and I used recut on it, And it exported a 20 minute clip in less than a minute. It was I actually had to double check to make sure that it didn't Fail. I was like, wait. This is done? Did you fail? And then I watched the video. I was like, I was shocked that it was so good, and that's not coding the video is just like removing spots of it, so that's why it was so fast. But then I I I had another one in DaVinci Resolve, which is my video editing platform.
Scott Tolinski
And I actually don't know if DaVinci is running on Intel. I think maybe a version of it is, but maybe not the version that I have. And that took it. It took about 8 minutes to export a 20 minute long clip, which again, it's just shockingly fast for me, but it was very fast. And the biggest part about this is that I could do it without having the computer plugged in, without the fans going bananas, without it turning into a new space heater for my workspace.
DaVinci Resolve performance
Scott Tolinski
So that was all pretty incredible.
Fan noise and heat
Wes Bos
Yeah. My, the first thing I did when I opened this thing up is I took a 25 minute Long video, and I exported that with ScreenFlow. I did them exactly at the same time, same video on both computers, and I both were plugged in. And then I clicked it, And the ScreenFlow on the old one took, 23 minutes, which is about what I expect. So I think for every minute of video that I export, I export 4 k, super high Yep. Kilobits a second, and it went it. Over twice as fast. So I think it went down from 23 well, it was let me pull up the pull up the actual stat. You did the work. Let's get the stats. Let's see it. Alright. 20 a 5 minute 4 k screen cast on my 2.3 gigahertz Core I9 hooked 22 minutes and 39 seconds, And the m one max was 10 minutes and 36 seconds, so about twice as fast exporting this thing. I did have somebody on Twitter say, like, are You having issues with the h two six four hardware accelerated export? And, embarrassingly enough, I didn't know that was a thing.
Wes Bos
So it. I tried it, and it was much slower. And I had a screen ScreenFlow came in and said, yeah. There's a there's an issue with them and handbrake.
Wes Bos
And so this is like a an Apple issue on the m one max is that the there's an issue with the hardware acceleration export. Because I tried, it. I had, like, a 32nd clip, that I had to export on HandBrake.
Wes Bos
And the 32nd clip took, like, 9 minutes to to convert. And so there's definitely an issue with the hardware acceleration exporting right now between ScreenFlow hand break a lot of these apps, so hopefully that will get fixed soon. I I don't know if you you've, like, looked too much in the processors,
Scott Tolinski
like, architecture, Did you know that there's, like, modules on the m one max specifically? I think not even on the just the even the m one whatever, the m one x or whatever it's called. It. The m one max explicitly has individual modules on the processor to handle specific video encoding formats. So there's like a there's a section on the processor just for h 264. There's like a section on the processor. It it's it's like it. Into the horror. It's pretty neat. Man. Yeah. That I've I've seen some stats from people who use, like, like, proper video editing expert video,
Video encoding capabilities
Wes Bos
editing applications, they say it's wicked fast. It it it makes sense. Like, the this is the stuff that professionals do. Right? They They export video, and that's one thing that they want to do. Like, I was watching the MKBHD YouTube video, and he said he literally towed it around in Imac to conferences so he could edit and export faster, and he no longer needs to do that.
Waveform performance
Wes Bos
Other things is the waveforms draw immediately.
Wes Bos
And waveforms are used for me for editing.
Wes Bos
Yeah. Because I can see them draw.
Scott Tolinski
And is it not for you? No. No. I It's one of my biggest beefs with ScreenFlow, and one of the reasons why I don't use it is the the waveform redrawing, but, like, what boggles my mind Is that, is that they they choose to fully redraw and, like, reprocess the waveforms on, like, it. Every minor change. So you make a cut and it's like, oh, hold on. Let's go ahead and read it. Yeah. Like, why are you even doing it? Spinner in there. No other plat no other platform in the world does that. They're all like, it. They just leave
Wes Bos
it. So I have no idea why they'd change it. It it drives me nuts. I I didn't get that either, and that's just part of the reason why I have, like, Like, I love ScreenFlow, and I use it, but there's there's been, like, a I have, like, a, like, a little list of things that I'm like, fix this. Will you please fix this and stop adding dumb stuff like new fonts.
Wes Bos
And, anyways, that went away entirely. It draws immediately because I'm I'm always zooming in and out of my waveforms.
Wes Bos
And when you did that, it would always have to redraw. And that would sometimes take 5 seconds, and that's that's a long time.
Wes Bos
So this is awesome. It's immediate. There's no there's no waiting for anything anymore. No matter zoom around, edit the clip, ripple ripple cut. It's all immediate.
Wes Bos
And then also another issue I've had for a long time is that when I edit my videos, I edit them at two x.
Wes Bos
So I it just goes like, I'm I'm watching it in in two x back.
Wes Bos
And then when I I see an issue, I'll I'll stop and and play it in one x and it. And fix it.
Wes Bos
And what happened is that after 60 seconds, the audio and the video would get out of sync Mhmm. Because And I I logged an issue with them, and they say, yeah. It's an issue we know about. It's it's there's, like, something bigger at play.
Wes Bos
And that was really frustrating because it's over a year I've been bugging them about this issue, and that totally went away. So both of my I I would say my 2 biggest issues with ScreenFlow are absolutely gone, which is just throwing more processing power at the issue.
Wes Bos
They're they are fixed. So I am so so happy about that.
Other developer improvements
Scott Tolinski
Let's get into some other things about this thing. Maybe, oh, no. Actually, let's talk about code stuff.
Scott Tolinski
Wes, we can just have this be a really long hasty treat. How about that? Yeah. Let's let's honestly, people that are interested love it. Yeah. Okay. So, code stuff like you said, Versus code for you, not you know, maybe not as fast as you were expecting, but for me, very, very fast because I'm running the the Apple The right version. The right version of it. It's been shockingly good. I have a 1,000,000,000 tabs open as I am on to do, and I have had no hiccups.
Scott Tolinski
My errors and all that stuff, restarting the TypeScript server, all that stuff feels great. In fact, there's a setting in Versus Code it. That I finally felt safe enough to turn on to allow you to check all of your entire project CS For issues, you know, you have the issues tab, and it's usually only checking the files you have open. But there's a setting that allows you to check issues for your entire project, which Was just simply not doable on the previous machine. It even says experimental, like, could be a performance implications here, And I had that on. I've had it on. It's been fine. I don't even notice that it's on. So that's pretty neat. My,
Wes Bos
Builds. I I I posted the difference between, a parcel build that in on my old one, My JavaScript would take 1.1 seconds to build, and now it's 745 milliseconds. So, it. It's it's funny. Like, that's not really a big deal, because it went from seconds to less than a second. But it also just shows, for larger stuff or for stuff that's more intensive, it's like, like 30, 40% faster To run these builds, we're not changing any tech. It's simply just throwing the processor at it. So it's we're in a really good spot right now where The tooling is getting extremely fast. We're seeing stuff like SWC written in Rust. That's getting really fast. These computers are getting very fast, And those meeting together makes this development process really, really quick. So I was really happy about that. All my npm starts it. Are are nice and fast.
Scott Tolinski
Development has been a dream on this thing. It's been a dream. Yeah.
Wes Bos
The linting, all of that stuff gets way, way faster. The only thing that doesn't get faster is anything that needs to hit the network, and that is, like, npm installs.
Development experience
Wes Bos
They might go a little bit faster, but they still need to download files from the Internet. And that is limited based on Your network speed and actually writing files to disk, which I guess is also faster. 10 PM, baby. 10 PM. Yeah. That'll that'll probably make it even faster. Mhmm. So, from a developer standpoint, like, it's funny because to be a developer, you really don't need much. You just need, like, a Chrome browser and an editor.
Wes Bos
But CS. As you start to get into, like, really worrying about these things running fast and not having to wait 2 or 3 seconds like, Also, like, when you're doing this type of stuff where, like, you save something and you have to wait for the linting to show up in your editor Yeah. You kinda get you kinda get used to just, like, having, like, a one second pause. And then when that goes away, go, you know? Like, that's That's the biggest benefit to me besides the video editing stuff is, like, oh, this stuff is just really, really fast, and it just
Scott Tolinski
makes that feedback cycle it. In your brain much faster. It no longer feels like the tools are getting in the way. It doesn't feel like the tools are the the bottleneck anymore, Which is a frustrating place to be when it feels like the tools are the bottleneck. Now it just feels like I'm the bottleneck, and I don't mind being the bottleneck because I could it. I like being able to control, you know, what what the bottleneck is. If I'm if I'm feeling like I wanna take more time, then I can do that. Right? But it's on my own terms.
Scott Tolinski
But, yeah, either way, development on this thing has been fantastic. Like you said, every process that you're doing feels faster, feels better working and everything saves updates Instantly pretty much.
Minimized barriers
Scott Tolinski
What about some other things, some hardware stuff? I really like the the new power adapter. The MagSafe is great. It charges the computer very, very fast, which, I knew they said that it would do that, but I'm shocked at how fast it can charge the computer sometimes.
Hardware impressions
Scott Tolinski
The speakers sound awesome, which the last ones did too, so I I wasn't too shocked about that. But the speakers just they They're they're very good. I even think these ones are a little bit better, which I'm not sure why or how. I haven't done a net side to side comparison, but Just playing music on it or whatever sounds sounds great.
Scott Tolinski
The notch, I know you have some thoughts on the Notch West. I have not had Any issues with the notch? I haven't done this on it. It the the thing that bothers me the most about the notch Is that the menu bar is not the same height as the notch for me? So there's like, is it for you? No. No. It's there's like a little, couple pixels underneath. Yeah. And that drives me nuts, and that's, like, the only thing. If if it was if everything went right up to the bottom of the notch, I would be like, this is perfect, but, that's the that's the only beef I have with the notch. Otherwise, it's just extra free free real estate. It It's been said a lot, but maybe we should say it one more time is that the
Notch issues
Wes Bos
the the monitor went from 16 10 resolution to 16 10 plus The notch height. So it's you're not losing any space to it. It's just that there's this thing that's cutting into it. And, Honestly, I don't care that much. I'm spend most of my day looking at an external monitor anyway. And the time that I have spent sitting on the couch or whatever, It it doesn't really bug me. The thing that they sort of dropped the ball on is that if you have a lot of menu items or menu bar items, When it hits the notch, they just are gone, and there's no way to get to them. And, like so If if you have like like, I had ScreenFlow running. That's funny. And I was like I was like, how do I how do I stop this thing? I have a a keyboard shortcut, but if I wanted to click on ScreenFlow or, like, I have a a color picker or I have so many of these stupid menu bar apps. I hate these things. I don't have a doc item. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And Alright. Give me a dozen item. Yeah. I know. You literally can't get to them. Apple just hides them.
Wes Bos
There's no way. There's no, like, more. And, like, I know about bartender and It seems like there should be a better solution than that.
Scott Tolinski
Yeah. I I there probably will be, but, like, It's kinda surprising that they launched it. That's what that's what I'm saying. Like that. They it's like they didn't like, why did they not think about that? Or they're just like, oh, screw it. Well, maybe this is a last minute decision.
Scott Tolinski
Another thing that's weird about the icons up there is that on I have a, on my external display, the icons have much less left to right padding, as in they're all closer together. But then on the MacBook Pro with the notch, it seems like it. When they increase the vertical padding, it also increased the horizontal padding. Yeah. Just put tons of padding on it. So they're like waist spread far apart. And if they weren't, it wouldn't be a problem. I had to use bartender, and there's a setting in bartender.
Wes Bos
You can make them dense.
Wes Bos
It. And even with having them dense, I still lose some underneath because, yeah, Apple just put
Scott Tolinski
50 p x of padding on everything. But it doesn't have the external. It's unnecessary. Yeah.
Menu bar spacing issues
Wes Bos
Oh, really? Yeah.
Wes Bos
I don't know if I noticed that or not, but, Yeah. Now that I'm looking at it, you're right. That's that's nuts. I know. A big one I got was the power.
Power and charging
Wes Bos
So Scott and I, lots of developers use this CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 dock t s three plus. It's amazing. The thing is awesome.
Wes Bos
It only charges at 87 watts, and the last MacBook Pros were 93 watts. And now these new ones will charge at a 140.
Wes Bos
So people are like, oh, it's gonna drain your battery.
Wes Bos
That is not the case. The 87 watts from the CalDigit keeps it topped up at a 100% All the time. I'm running node processes, MongoDB.
Wes Bos
I'm running a video export. I tried throwing all I could at it, And it never dipped below a 100%, which on my last one, if I ran video export for, 5 or 6 hours at a time, It would drain the battery while it was plugged into this thing, and I had to plug it in externally. And that has not been the case yet. I'm sure it It will happen, especially people that run multiple Docker VMs. That will probably get it. But it's been a just it's been just Fine. And the thing to remember is that, USB c Thunderbolt 4 will only charge at a max of A 100 watts. So the 140 watts is just for quick charging.
Wes Bos
So it hasn't hasn't been an issue, and you can charge these things On. I also have charged them on different third party chargers, and it works great.
Wes Bos
I have not done that. Interesting. Yeah. What? The fans Have never turned on for me. Never heard them. Have not heard them. Never heard them at least. Our agents.
Wes Bos
Yeah. It's it doesn't get as hot, which is nice. Like, it's still warm when you're exporting video. I'm almost surprised when it does get warm, though. I'm like, oh, it's getting warm.
Fan noise
Wes Bos
Yeah. Oh. But the last one was, like, it. Like, I think I probably could burn myself on the old on the last one if I were to leave my hands on for 30 seconds. I had a,
Scott Tolinski
The initial 1st MacBook Pro, the one that after they changed from PowerBook to MacBook Pro, and it was like One of the first ones off the line where they put too much thermal paste on it and you seriously could burn yourself. There was like a advisory about it about how you could burn yourself on it. Got that hot. So, yeah, this is a a welcome change.
Wes Bos
Touch bar's gone amazing. Freaking trying to pause your music On the last one, that drives me crazy when you can't pause your music or turn the brightness up without having to, like, touch the stupid little touch bar. Yeah. I'm so happy to have all the all the keys back. The monitors, I'm running 2 4 k displays on it, and it is it they turned on, Like, almost instantly, like, 3 seconds.
External monitor support
Wes Bos
And previously, with 2 monitors, you plug it in, and it does this, like, dance where it, like, Flashes on and off and on and off on and off, like, 6 or 7 times, and it finally lands on, okay. I think I figured it out. And the new ones, you plug it in, And it's, like, instantly. Or you open the lid, you see the monitor right away. Or you change the resolution.
Wes Bos
You know, you used to change your resolution, and the the The screen would go black and then come back. Mhmm. And then The changing the resolution is
Scott Tolinski
instant. I tried to snap there. I can't snap. It really feels like the future. I mean, using this thing, it feels it. Future. Definitely.
It feels like the future
Scott Tolinski
What about the display? I know you're you're, you love a good 120 hertz display. Yeah. You know me. I love a good 120 hertz display. It. It's fantastic. It's crazy good. It feels good. The you unfortunately get used to the 120 hertz really quickly, but there are times when you're doing like the, it. You know, making all the windows go open and close or whatever to see the desktop, and that all just feels so good. It it feels it's it feels good. It. This thing is is considerably heftier in terms of, like, build, but it feels nice. It feels solid, and it doesn't feel like us. Too too much. And I'm I for 1 am, like, all about making things slightly thicker to get more battery, more power Yeah. Whatever. I don't need The thinnest tiniest phone in the world if you can make the battery last a couple days or something. So Yeah. It's it's
Wes Bos
I don't know if it's heavy or not but it feels It is third of the year. Yes. Definitively heavier and thicker, but probably not by that much that you would notice it. Totally. Still fits in In the backpack and everything like that, not been an issue.
Battery life
Wes Bos
Battery lasts forever.
Wes Bos
I got this, like, power brick from this company that can charge 240 watts at a time. And I'm I'm testing it out right now. And I was like, oh, I I wanna throw, like, the new MacBook at it. So I plugged the, like, MagSafe connector into it, and I was like, oh, I gotta wait for this thing to drain. So I, like, worked on it without it being plugged in for, like, an hour and a half, And it got down to, like, 93%.
Wes Bos
It's very slow to drain the battery on it, which I am extremely happy about. It's awesome.
Wes Bos
Any any issues that popped up? Specifically, I had one that was, my LG, monitor 4 k monitor.
Monitor color issues
Wes Bos
The colors are just awful on it when I initially plugged it in, and I could it was like everything was blurry. The blacks were kinda washed out, and I could not figure it out. And then finally, I updated to, like, a point release on what is it? Big Sur? What's the new one? Monterey. I have no idea. 12.0.1 Monterey, and that mostly fixed it. It. There's it's still not as good. Like, I can still plug my old intel one in and the colors look better, but it doesn't hurt my eyes. I'm really hoping that Something in the next update will will a 100% fix it because they they must have known of the issue.
Wes Bos
So that that was my only complaint on on it, but everything else, man,
Scott Tolinski
so happy to have this. I like the the fingerprint reader quite a bit more on on it too
Wes Bos
because it's like a circle within a thing. You're never guessing if your finger's in the right spot. Yeah. You can you can feel it. I had to do the whole thing where you train the Train your left hand because I have my laptop to the left of me on a stand. Oh. And I use it I use it as just like an, chat monitor and whatnot.
Wes Bos
And, I had to train my other hand for the keys because I I use my left hand to unlock it, but The right one when you're just working on it, so you have to add additional fingers to it. That's fun. Yeah. What what are you doing with your old one? That's The big question I get from everybody. Oh, Courtney is getting it because her last computer is like an 8 year old 13 inch MacBook Pro or MacBook.
Fingerprint reader
Scott Tolinski
So, Courtney has she has a computer for work, but it's often, like, often feeling like it would be really nice to have a computer at home to to do her her own work it. Her homework her her stuff for home at, you know, not literal homework.
Scott Tolinski
And, so she'll be getting that one, and she's pretty psyched about it because it's Going to be an absurdly good computer for her is really what it comes down to.
Wes Bos
I when I got mine, I did a little, Instagram video where I took All my old laptops, and I just, like, well, done with that when I threw it on the pile, and people got mad, man.
What to do with old laptops
Wes Bos
It was a bit of a joke because I always keep 1 laptop ready to go. Mhmm. So if something happens to your other one, I can quickly go and and keep working and keep devbing on it. So, up until this point, I've had the, like, the the one that had HDMI on it before this one.
Wes Bos
And I think I'm gonna keep that one, just because I I like that one a little bit better, and I'll say I don't need to keep the really, really good one. The last last 1 I I sold to my sister for a pretty good deal. And it. This one, I maybe go to my wife, and she doesn't really like the she does a lot of video exporting, so she does need, like, a fast machine, but it. I I don't think she'll like the the 16 inch form factor. So I was thinking Courtney, it's like it's like
Scott Tolinski
if if you're not doing video editing on the last machines, they're incredible.
Scott Tolinski
Like, the video editing is really the one of the biggest downsides because that that throttling kicks in and then it it takes a while. But if you're not doing that stuff, It's crazy good computer already. So
Wes Bos
yeah. Yeah. It's a good one. So, yeah, I'm not sure what I'll I'll do with that one. Definitely gotta Rid of it or probably not rid of it. I'll probably sell it to recoup some of the cost of this one, but sorry. We missed a couple things here. The ports.
Ports
Wes Bos
There's finally HDMI added to it. I was kind of holding out hope that they would add a USB a. I knew that they wouldn't, but, like, it. I still have so many random cords and things that need to be plugged in via regular USB a. People are always, like, just buy a new cord, but Yeah. I don't know if it's people people don't have as much, like, random tech as I do.
Wes Bos
I still I still need that type of thing.
Microphone quality
Wes Bos
The microphone is okay.
Wes Bos
It's it's significantly better than last ones, and I'm happy about that because it. When you Zoom with people who don't have an external microphone, but it's not it's not a professional microphone
Scott Tolinski
by far. Yeah. No. I I actually did a video on YouTube about it, and people were like, it sounds pretty good.
Scott Tolinski
But I had I had put it under, quite a bit of compression And EQ, and I made it sound good. It did not sound sound good. When I recorded it, it sounded like a laptop microphone. So, it. I was surprised that it was even, like, listed as a selling feature. I know it's just Apple trying to be Apple, but it to me, it was nothing special. Us. The camera is better.
Wes Bos
It's it's, like, pretty good. You can tell that it is smoothing, like, my skin. Yeah. They do smoothing. Like, it has a filter on it, which is, like, I don't look that good. Yeah. So, that's interesting. A little unnatural, like TikTok or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, the keyboard is amazing to type on. I felt right at home on it. It feels really good. I'm just really happy with the keyboard on it as well. Likewise.
Camera quality
Wes Bos
Hopefully, there's no Crumbgate again. Remember that? Crumbgate.
Keyboard quality
Wes Bos
Yeah.
Wes Bos
Alright. Alright. I think that's it. Let's wrap it up. Thanks for listening to the tasty, hasty treat here, and we will catch you on Wednesday.
Wes Bos
Peace.
Wes Bos
Peace.
Scott Tolinski
Head on over to syntax.fm for a full archive of all of our shows.
Scott Tolinski
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