Life in the old Mac yet…

This morning it turns out I’m writing this on my oldest ‘working’ Mac – my 2021 Apple silicon M1 Max MacBook Pro.

When I bought it, I’d never worked on a laptop before – I’d only ever worked on iMacs so that in itself was a fairly big change of direction for me, but also Apple silicon was new to us all back then.

Trying to decide on the memory took me ages I seem to remember – we were still trying to get our heads around what Apple’s new silicon was capable of and I didn’t want to get it wrong. I knew it was going to cost me a tidy sum (and it did!), so I dithered about for ages before making my shout.

Well – wind it on 4 years and it looks like I got it right! It’s working as well today as it did the day I unboxed it – and here’s the rub, it’s still fast and holds its own against my latest M4 Pro Mac mini.

M1 Max MacBook changed it all

When I bought my M1 Max MacBook Pro I had just dipped my toes into the world of content creation – and that meant video!

Before that, my work had been centred around graphic design work and audio production. Neither of those pushed the iMacs I’d been working on that hard and they got by fine. There may’ve been the odd day it would take a little longer than I’d like to export a file from Audition or Photoshop, but on the whole, I had no complaints.

It was when I started to try to export videos that I knew the time was ready to change up from my Intel iMac to an Apple silicon Mac. If all the rumours I’d been hearing were right, then I was working in the dark ages.

The rumours were spot on!

My timelines back then were way simpler than they are now. All the footage was shot on a basic iPhone 13 in 4K with very few titles, 3D effects or transitions. But as simple as they were, my Intel iMac simply wasn’t man enough for the job.

It broke my heart too – that 27-inch iMac for some reason is the Mac that I still feel closest to, but, putting emotion to one side, it was past its best. A simple 10-minute video was taking nearly 45 minutes to export. In fact, I remember as clear as day, being able to walk around to the shops to get a sandwich for lunch it took thatlong to export.

Apple silicon changed everything.

Not only were Intel Macs slow by comparison – and my iMac was pretty well spec’d out for my needs – but they were loud!

Recently I fired up the old iMac again for old time’s sake and the fans kicked in the moment I started to do pretty much anything! How the hell did we ever think that was normal?

Suddenly Apple silicon Macs were super-quick, super-powerful, pretty power-efficient and ever so quiet. They were a dream come true – and a revelation.

This was to be the benchmark of what the future was to become.

I recall writing at the time that this change was a once-in-a-generation thing. Sure we’ve since had iterations of Apple silicon, but this M1 Max MacBook was the game-changer.

For all we moan about Apple being greedy, with Apple silicon Macs they pretty much gave us the perfect package and in the process have shot themselves in the foot.

Apple is going to have their work cut out making us change our Macs – these things are almost too good and as we will see, seem to last well too.

And that brings me to the point I wanted to make – don’t change for change’s sake.

The latest & greatest

Apple Intelligence aside, one thing that Apple has mastered is the art of marketing.

Their website, keynotes, videos and announcements look insane and they make even the strongest of us want to buy the latest Mac – and I’m as weak as anyone when I see the ads.

For me, it’s the studio shots of creatives working in Final Cut or Logic. It’s when they show Final Cut on an iPad or the iPhone being used to shoot their videos. It’s the BTS videos they’ve just released about the making of Severance or the latest AirPods Pro video with Pedro Pascal – they all make the gear look so desirable!

They are all pieces of art that get my creative juices running and almost make me want to run to the Apple Store in the misguided belief that buying a new M4 Mac will somehow improve my work as a creative.

In truth, it won’t!

The blindfold test

Apple is now acutely aware of the beast they’ve created. Apple silicon is too good and if you are honest with yourself, if you own an early M1 Apple silicon Mac there is almost certainly no need for you to change.

Put it this way, unless your workflow has seriously changed in the past few years, the Apple silicon Mac sitting on your desk is still more than up to the task.

How can I be so certain? Well, I know because my daily workflow still includes that M1 Max MacBook Pro and if I were blindfolded, I’d be hard pushed to tell you if I were working on my M4 Pro Mac mini or the M1 Max MacBook Pro.

My MacBook Pro has worked hard 6-days a week for the past 4 years – yet looking at it, you’d barely know it.

At the studio, I work on my M4 Pro Mac mini. In the early days of using it, I got in the habit of taking it home with me to carry on editing but I soon realised that I was making work for myself. Yes, it is portable enough – but there was a simpler option.

It was not long after I bought and started to use the Mac mini that I all too late came across the world of SSD enclosures. God knows what I did before I started to use them – but now my workflow squarely relies on them.

Once I’ve recorded my a-roll at the studio I put it together very roughly in Final Cut on the Mac mini but I will edit from a Thunderbolt 4 SSD. That’s how far ahead of the times these M1 Macs were – they already had Thunderbolt 4 ports on them. So with a decent SSD enclosure like the Acasis ones I use, working from them is seamless.

Sure Thunderbolt 5 is even faster but you’d have to be measuring it to notice the difference. Day-to-day, they are both fast enough that they are hard to tell apart. In all the hours I’ve spent editing from them I’ve never had a beachball or dropped frame – in short, they’re brilliant.

As is the M1 Max MacBook Pro – still!

Once the timeline is assembled in its rough form, I’ll take that SSD with me and then carry on editing on the M1 Max MacBook Pro at home the next morning. I’m always cautious though – not only is that session on the SSD that’s going with me, but it’s also backed up on my NAS and on another SSD (a Thunderbolt 5 one) that lives with the Mac mini.

And quite honestly, when it comes to editing, the MacBook Pro feels every bit as quick as the latest, shiny version of Apple silicon.

Save your cash

It’s not only Apple gear that I suffer with FOMO – Canon has just released some cameras that I’d love to get my hands on. But, if I’m to practice what I preach here, I know for the time being at least, my Canon 90D is still doing a great job. Have I had a single complaint about the video quality on my channel? Nope, so why spend the cash?

I know it’s part of my job and as such I owe it to re-invest in the business, but for now, it can wait – and I’m guessing your Mac upgrade could too. I don’t mean to be a killjoy – there will be plenty of times this year that I’m imploring you to split with your cash, but if it’s a MacBook Pro you’re in the market for right now, just think very long and carefully.

Do you really need to be giving Apple Inc. your cash? What will you be gaining from it?

With taxes, I spent £4300 in 2021 on my MacBook Pro and as I said earlier, I have no regrets and it has and is serving me well. The specs I ended up choosing were 32GB of memory, a 10-core CPU, a 24-core GPU and 4TB of SSD storage.

There is no way I can ever see myself buying that much onboard storage again – I’m a changed man as I mentioned, but I’ve no regrets.

The M4 Pro Mac mini, again with taxes, cost me £2300. For that, I got a 14-core CPU, a 20-core GPU, 48GB of memory and 1TB of SSD (I told you I was a changed man!)

Now I’m only going to reference video export speeds as a yardstick as I don’t 3D render, game or code, so video export is the only decent test I give my Macs each week and give you some idea of their performance.

I just tried exporting the same file from the same session, from the same SSD on both the MacBook Pro and the Mac mini. It was a 4K 5.4GB file that was 14 minutes long and had my typical amount of 4K b-roll and effects.

On the M4 Pro Mac mini, it took 5 minutes 35 seconds and on the old M1 Max MacBook Pro it only took 4 minutes 12 seconds. See, I told you there was life in the old boy – the Mac…not me that is!

Yes, I know in part that’s down to the fact that the M1 Max Pro chip has two video encoders and two ProRes decode engines – twice as many as the Mac mini, but it goes to my point of what great Macs these M1 Macs always were and still are.

The best part?

The best part is that there are bargains to be had – and I mean genuine bargains.

I’ve written recently about Apple bargains being few and far between, but if you are willing to take a small risk, and know how to navigate the used market on eBay it seems as if you could get a MacBook Pro very similar to mine for around £1200. I’m not sure if losing £750 a year is good or bad, but as I’m not selling mine, it matters little.

But from a buyer’s point of view that is a serious amount of Mac for not much money. You’ll be getting a Liquid Retina XDR display, an SD card reader, a great keyboard that I’ve had no issues with, MagSafe charging, Thunderbolt 4 and decent amount of RAM and storage. And unless the battery has been completely abused, that should be in a pretty decent state too.

As we’ve seen. It’s still quick and as quiet as ever. If I’ve ever heard the fans spin, I honestly can’t recall it!

Yes, I know these are used machines and there is always some risk, but equally, not everyone is out to rip you off. If I were to sell mine, for instance, someone would be getting a spotless MacBook and I know there will be plenty out there just like mine.

Economically things look like they could be a little tricky shall we say over the next few months, so if ever there was a time to bag a bargain, then this is it.

M1 Apple silicon genuinely did change everything and if you did miss it the first time around and are still working on an Intel Mac you could do far worse than take a look at these M1 Mac MacBook Pros.

An Apple silicon MacBook Pro for MacBook Air money…it turns out there are real Apple bargains to be had after all.