u/cptchnk

Yeah, that just doesn't seem right at all. My aging 16" M1 Max is still chugging along just fine. Perhaps it's gotten a hair slower with the more recent macOS releases, but nothing like you describe on your M3 Max. And I run large InDesign files, Photoshop, and Illustrator stuff on it all day. Not a whole lot of video editing on that one though. I use my Studio for that.

Completely overkill if we're being completely honest here, but hey, it's your money.

You really don't need hardware this high-end if you're just going to dabble in FCP and/or Resolve later down the line. Max chips are really targeted to folks that have heavy professional creative, engineering, and AI workloads.

ProRes 422 HQ is really not a heavy codec, BTW. Even old Intel Macs without ProRes acceleration do just fine with it. Seriously. Most of the benefit of having the ProRes encoders/decoders on M series chips will be with handling ProRes RAW, which is a lot more resource intensive than 422 HQ, especially when it's multiple streams at once.

"Future proofing" is something that gets thrown around a lot but the thing is, if you don't see yourself doing stuff that would potentially require a Max chip until years later, it's a lot of wasted money on high-end tech you could just be buying later when you actually need it. Given your stated workload, if you really need to have a 16" display, the M5 Pro is much cheaper and it would still be very fast. Or if you went a bit smaller with a 14", even an M6 with maybe 24 or 32GB of memory would be quite snappy for your current needs.

BTW, you don't really have the option to delete Apple Intelligence files. They're baked into the OS now. :P

Yup...

That's ridiculous, actually. This has been in the works at Apple (talked about in engineering leaks for quite some time) since before the 13 Pro was even announced.

Apple added touchscreen functionality to their newly announced MacBook Pros after years of Apple folks whining about the feature being absent on MacBooks. It's not like touchscreens on laptops are anything new. I've owned several ThinkPads with touchscreens.

Touch isn't actually the real, significant upgrade to those new MacBook Pro models in my eyes. The tandem OLED also covers a wider color gamut (now includes support for Adobe RGB color) than the mini LED used in the cheaper Pro models.

I feel that what a lot of people are missing is that the new tandem OLED is also more color accurate and has better contrast than the mini LED panel on the regular Pro models. It has an actual Adobe RGB mode (finally). That probably doesn't matter to a lot of folks, but it does matter to photographers and graphics designers that work a lot in that color space. But I suppose increased color accuracy isn't as "buzzy" for the marketing people.

Doing a touch layer on a laptop display isn't exactly groundbreaking or expensive to do. Surely, most of the cost of this new panel is the fact that it's an OLED with a wider color gamut.

Yeah, and the Max chips are often not very good choices in the 14" models because of the throttling under heavy load.

Really, there's only so much you can expect from a laptop form factor. The Ultra chips available on the Studio have double the encoders/decoders and more CPU cores, which definitely help with the transcoding part.

You didn't really say what NLE you're cutting in, but DaVinci Resolve, for example, will absolutely utilize all the GPU you can throw at it in the right types of workflows.

Also consider external Thunderbolt storage. As an old-school editor (20+ years of experience), the thought of doing everything in your internal storage is just such a foreign concept to me (to each their own, I guess). A portable bus powered TB4 enclosure with a PCIe 4.0 drive inside will usually get you around 3000MB/s throughput, which is plenty fast for the vast majority of video editing workflows, including ProRes RAW and Blackmagic RAW. And also much cheaper than buying a bigger internal SSD from Apple.

I'm not sure who downvoted me (Reddit is silly sometimes), but yeah, I can see that. The new OLED panel is also the first one available on an Apple laptop that actually has wide Adobe RGB coverage (that matters to some designers and photographers; P3 color space doesn't capture as many of the greens cyans Adobe RGB does). But I guess I just see a lot of people fixate on the touchscreen element of this new panel as if it's the only reason to buy one (it's really is not).

And you can still buy a mini LED MBP for $400 less if the new panel doesn't float your boat. So, at least people have the choice, at least for now.

There are also third-party options for tips that aren't rubber/silicone. A lot of companies make memory foam tips for these. I would see if something like that works for you. I always replace the stock tips with memory foam tips and I find them to be much more comfortable than stock. A lot of these be found on Amazon.

There's other reasons to buy the new model aside from the touchscreen functionality. This is the first tandem OLED panel on an Apple laptop, for example. The touchscreen part I would imagine very few people will actually care about at the end of the day. I've had several PC laptops with touchscreens and often forgot that they were even there (never use them).

But some people really do dig having a touchscreen and use it frequently. It's just a bit of shame that it's only available on the most expensive laptops in the lineup.

Well, it can be argued that a Pro laptop really shouldn't receive RADICAL redesigns because port variety and thermals are still important to actual pro users. I'm just glad that they didn't decide to make this a super thin laptop (that was originally rumored), knowing that the M5 Max chips already run pretty hot, especially in the 14" models.

You did have to suffer through the 15 or so years of Intel MBPs to truly understand what a nightmare a lot of those were with heat, noise, and thermal throttling.

So really, I'd call the weight reduction, while still maintaining a reasonably sized chassis for thermal handling a win.

Sluggish in what ways? What are you editing in and what's your workflow look like?

I've mostly given up on expecting laptops to be truly great editing rigs. I mean, they can be, but you really do get a lot more bang for the buck with a Studio performance-wise and you have access to Ultra chips if your workflow can benefit from additional CPU/GPU cores and encoders/decoders.

It's one of the reasons I haven't really desired to upgrade my M1 Max MBP. It's fine for a mobile machine and I have a Studio sitting on my desk at home for the heavy lifting.

Yes, true story. I'm still making my M1 Max MBP stretch for as long as I possibly can because it's still a great laptop for working on the go. But at home, I'll stick to my Studio with more RAM. :-)

Well, sure. Not debating that.

But both options do exist, so you don't have to buy the OLED version if you don't want to. :)

It could have been worse, too. They could have decided to axe the mini LED models and replace them completely with the new OLED models at the higher price. Also consider that we're talking $400 extra here when a lot of people are already spending $5k+ on new MBPs with Max chips and 64GB of RAM. So, if I were in the market for a new MBP today (which I'm not, honestly), I'd likely pay the extra to get a nicer screen if I was already paying 5 grand for a laptop. But that's just me.

It's all relative, man.

Yeah, it really is a thin, flimsy piece of plastic with magnets in it, but once it's snapped onto the display, you wouldn't really know it.

I initially wanted to go the DIY route (specifically for the bezel and keyboard options), but ultimately, I didn't want to mess with sourcing my own LPCAMM2 memory at the time and I didn't have a spare SSD lying around. And also, the DIY version was a good $250 cheaper (IIRC) with the same specs I would have wanted anyway. So, even swapping the bezel and keyboard later, the prebuilt was the less expensive route for me. But I preordered mine when the prebuilt version was still $2099 (it's $2699 now, I think).

I think a lot of people are getting caught up on the touchscreen and Dynamic Island elements of this display though because they're appealing marketing buzzwords.

I maintain that the TRUE benefits of this new panel are these two things:

1. True blacks and no blooming. The mini LED panel on the standard Pro models still uses a backlight, with local dimming to handle HDR. This introduces anomalies such as "blooming," where if you're looking at a mostly dark scene with high-intensity white (credits at the end of movies are a good example), you'll start to see blooming to a certain degree around those hot spots. OLEDs don't have this problem because each individual pixel emits its own light.
2. Color gamut coverage. The new OLED panel officially supports Adobe RGB (which is wider than P3), which is very good news for designers and photographers that work in that color space.

So ignoring the silly touchscreen gimmick (I agree with that part), this is still a better panel with real benefits for the folks that would appreciate them.

I never suggested that. I'm just saying that the new OLED panel is even better than the mini LED panel from a color gamut perspective. That's all.

Some folks do definitely work in Adobe RGB color space, especially in industries where print proof matching is very critical. I'm not saying this is ALL artists and photographers and I'm not even saying that the older mini LED panel is a bad panel by any stretch. It's still among the best displays you can get on a laptop.

Historically, folks that need a high percentage of Adobe RGB coverage are looking at external monitors that are designed for it. And it isn't always an Apple display.

Well, sure. But my challenge to most folks would be to try to successfully desolder and re-solder a delicate surface-mounted module. It's not as easy as the videos you see on YouTube make it look. The folks that are producing videos like this are board-level repair techs with years of experience.

I mean, you can give that a shot, but I'm not sure if they'd agree to it. A warranty replacement is fundamentally a much different process than selling a computer at retail.

The screen bezels are really the only thing that detracts from the rest of the build, IMHO. I feel that the translucent ones look cheaper than the solid-colored ones, FWIW. I bought a prebuilt X7 358H, so it came with a translucent black one with no option to choose a different color. I'm thinking about buying the solid orange one though, once Framework finally makes the gray/black keyboard available to purchase as a part.

BTW, even the 2.5G Ethernet adapter sticks out a bit versus the other expansion cards, which all sit flush.

Enjoy the new laptop! I've had mine (Batch 9) since last month and it's been great!

I highly doubt that touch operation will actually become a core component of the macOS interface. To me, features like this and Dynamic Island are just selling points slapped on top of the fact that the panel is tandem OLED with even wider color gamut coverage than the mini LED panels in the regular Pro models. The wider color gamut should be the real reason you want this upgraded panel. It would be better for folks that work with graphics and color grade video on the go.

I see this playing out just like how the touchscreens that have been available on PC laptops for quite a while now. It's mostly a gimmick that might have limited practical use with hyper-specific things, like signing a document with your finger or painting in a graphics program, just as two examples.

I've owned several PC laptops with touchscreens (mostly ThinkPads) and I often forget that there's even a touchscreen there. Companies would be shooting themselves in the foot by deviating too far from the traditional keyboard / pointing device arrangement.

And honestly, I only see Apple reserving this feature for top-end models for years to come, just like they do with 120 Hz panels on MacBooks (only on the Pro models).

It's not as simple as greed, actually.

The unified memory on M series chips is soldered to the SoC package. Higher-density memory modules typically cost significantly more than lower-density ones, especially when we're talking about these ultra-fast LPDDR5x modules that AI datacenters have been hogging.

Local LLM is not a poor man's game, sadly.

Sebo models with the ET-1/ET-2 powerheads have a quick-release brush roll for easily cleaning/cutting away the pet hair.

However, if you're all hardwood floors, you don't actually need a powerhead. You just need something with suction-only head and decent power. Sebo K1 or Miele C1 Pure Suction would be good decently priced (but quality) picks.

Yeah, that's why I mentioned that. I wonder what the real world differences will be with the higher compute on a clustered 2x256 setup versus a single 512.

It's $400 over a standard model to essentially get the nicer display. MacBook Pros were already pretty expensive after the price hikes that happened months ago.

Well, the gimmick part really depends. The touchscreen? Definitely a gimmick to me, just based on every laptop I've owned with a touchscreen (several ThinkPads and more recently, a Framework Laptop 13 Pro). I would never actually use it.

But there are other benefits to this new display. For example, the mini LED panel used in the standard Pro doesn't fully cover Adobe RGB, whereas the new OLED panel does. That could matter a lot to photographers and graphic designers working in that color space on the go. Also, no backlight on an OLED, so you'll get those inky blacks without blooming in HDR versus the mini LED panel.