Community member and Pro Tools user Simon Nakra alerted us to this excellent video that helps those confused by the new Silicon powered Apple Macs.
A first glance it’s easy to make some assumptions about memory, CPU and GPU and how they affect performance, especially when comparing them to the older Intel paradigm. However hard it is to shift it, when considering the specification of the new Apple Macs one needs to throw away all the thinking based around older Intel architecture.
If you are confused by the new M1 Macs, then this excellent buyers guide should help you make sense of all the differences between the M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max.
YouTuber Dave2D he explains in detail the difference between all the new Apple MacBook models and how unified memory, CPU and GPU affect performance. Some of the details are quite revealing and may save you a lot of money when choosing the a new Apple Mac for your studio.
Here’s a snippet of what he has to say;
“So as an anecdotal story for the stuff that I do for work, like any of the CAD stuff I do for work or any of the stuff I do for YouTube, like video editing, I've always wanted 32gb or more. Some of the stuff I need 64gb but 32gb at a minimum. So any system I've ever built for my personal use, including Intel Macbooks, 32gb, like for the past couple of years, 32gb or more.
M1 products are just built different. So at the base models, the 13 inch MacBook Air 13 inch MacBook pro these started off at 8gb of Ram, which in the PC world is laughable. That's an offensive amount of memory that is shipped with the system, right? You'd be like 8gb?!
What are we doing here? But 8gb on this architecture is great. The upgrade extra memory is $200. It's pretty significant. And from my tests most people will not use more than 8gb of ram.”
He also goes into detail about the impact of the difference CPU and GPU configurations with some telling results.
It’s well worth a watch for anyone struggling to decide what MacBook Pro model to buy from the new range of M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max chips.