MacBook Pro 16” - where to buy

GDB2222

The 15” screen on the MacBook Air would be no good? 16GB direct from Apple for £1700. It may be cheaper elsewhere. 

codo

Thanks GDB2222, unfortunately the MacBook Air wouldn’t be powerful enough for what she would be using it for. 

GDB2222

codo said:

Thanks GDB2222, unfortunately the MacBook Air wouldn’t be powerful enough for what she would be using it for. 

That rather blows all my prejudices out of the water, as I assumed the Air with an M3 chip would outperform the Pro with an M1 chip by quite a significant margin. 

But, looking at it more closely, the M3 chip in the Air has 8 cores, whereas the older M1 chip in the Pro has 10. The Pro chip also has more GPU cores, and so on. 

MattMattMattUK

GDB2222 said:

codo said:

Thanks GDB2222, unfortunately the MacBook Air wouldn’t be powerful enough for what she would be using it for. 

That rather blows all my prejudices out of the water, as I assumed the Air with an M3 chip would outperform the Pro with an M1 chip by quite a significant margin. 

But, looking at it more closely, the M3 chip in the Air has 8 cores, whereas the older M1 chip in the Pro has 10. The Pro chip also has more GPU cores, and so on. 

It also has a higher TDP, wider memory bus and various other differences that make a huge difference during encode. 

That being said I would think that the desire for a Mac is still a want rather than a need and one would get far better performance out of a desktop Windows PC and nearly all professional level software is available on both. Alternatively a Mac Studio would outperform the Macbook Pro. For the same money the Mac Studio will wipe the floor with the Macbook Pro on 4k video encode, a similarly priced PC will match the Mac Studio and also leave the Macbook for dust. 

Cinebench Scores (Good for video encode, targeting the same £2k price)
Mac Studio M2 Ultra: 28,570, will happily run at full power all day.
Macbook Pro M1 Max: 12,693, will thermally throttle after 30-60 minutes depending on ambient temperature.
Ryzen 9 7900 based PC: 28,905, will happily run at full power all day and could be built for around £1,000, more than enough for an amazing monitor for editing on. 
Ryzen 9 9900X / Intel 13900KS: 40,000+, three and a half times the performance for the same money. 

codo

Thanks MattMattMattUK, the software she will be using is Hudl Sportscode which unfortunately only works on a Mac. She has been using a university MacBook with the M1 for the last couple of years so she knows it copes well with what she will be doing. She is just finished university now so had to give it back and get her own for the self employed contracts she has lined up. 

DullGreyGuy

GDB2222 said:

codo said:

Thanks GDB2222, unfortunately the MacBook Air wouldn’t be powerful enough for what she would be using it for. 

That rather blows all my prejudices out of the water, as I assumed the Air with an M3 chip would outperform the Pro with an M1 chip by quite a significant margin. 

But, looking at it more closely, the M3 chip in the Air has 8 cores, whereas the older M1 chip in the Pro has 10. The Pro chip also has more GPU cores, and so on. 

Like Intel has the i3, i5, i7 and i9 version of each generation of chip so Apple as the Mx, Mx pro, Mx max and Mx Ultra and subvarients inside those - the "pro" and "max" vary by GPUs and the "ultra" is two "max" chips fused together.

The MBP 16" comes only with the Mx Pro or Mx Max, there is no option for a straight Mx chip  so you are comparing an M3 to an M1 Pro or M1 Max. 

What is faster for any given task will depend on if its CPU only or GPU only or a blend. An M3 can out perform a M1 Pro in a single CPU task by a fair way but anything with multi-core the M1 Pro/Max will win (with the same score as its the GPU thats different) and anything thats multi-core and multi-GPU then the M1 Max will win easily. 

GDB2222

In case it helps.

https://support.hudl.com/s/article/computer-recommendations-sportscode#:~:text=Review%20Only%20Machines,including%20the%20M1%20MacBook%20Pro).

400ixl

The key with buying a non new Mac is to make sure there is no Mobile Device Management (MDM) software on it that will stop you being able to fully use it.

GDB2222

400ixl said:

The key with buying a non new Mac is to make sure there is no Mobile Device Management (MDM) software on it that will stop you being able to fully use it.

Can you not just reformat the hard disk and install a fresh copy of the os?

400ixl

No, thats the issue, you would need to have the corporation that controls the MDM re-authorise the device or remove the control. It is build into the hardware.

This is why you need to ensure there is no MDM on the device.

Its not always easy to tell either. https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/10v8btl/how_to_know_if_your_mac_has_mdm_profile_installed/