The Future of the MacBook Pro (2020 & Beyond)

The MacBooks are changing. Apple is on the verge of completely revolutionising the computing industry, not just in terms of the Macs, but also in terms of CPU Design.

We made a video back in June in which I talked about the switch to ARM in detail, so definitely give that video a watch if you want to learn more about the CPU itself. But here, I’ll be focusing on the future of the MacBook & MacBook Pro. We’ve had a ton of recent leaks that give us a glimpse at what Apple is aiming for with these devices, so without any further ado, here is The Future of the MacBook Pro (2020 and Beyond).

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As most of you probably know already, Apple is ditching Intel in favour of their own Processors. Apple are already using their own Chips in the iPhones and the iPads so it makes a ton of sense to also use their Processors in the Macs, as that way they will have an entirely unified system.

So, what benefits will we get from this transition and how will these affect future Macs?

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Performance

The most recent iPad Pro has shown us what Apple’s Chips are capable of.

The biggest improvement that we’ll see is when it comes to the Performance. Apple’s A12X Processor, the one that’s inside the 2018 iPad Pro, is already more powerful than the 2020 MacBook Air and the baseline MacBook Pro. In fact, we even did a full video comparing the 2018 iPad Pro with the 2020 (high-end) 13” MacBook Pro in real-world tests such as Video Editing. The MacBook Pro exported a five minute, 4K60 timeline in 7 minutes and 27 seconds, while the iPad Pro only took 2 minutes and 52 seconds. Now, keep in mind that this was on a Tablet that was using a two year old Processor and didn’t even have a Fan. It was passively cooled and yet it was significantly thinner than the MacBook Pro, which had a Fan and was using Intel’s latest 10th Generation Processor. 

By Apple using a modern and more powerful A-series Chip, specifically designed for the Mac, they could significantly improve their Performance over even the iPad Pro. 

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GPU and Memory

The use of SoC’s in Apple’s smaller devices greatly reduces latency between the separate components.

The second change would be when it comes to the GPU and of course, the Memory. 

On regular computers, such as a Desktop PC or a Laptop, the CPU, GPU and RAM (or the Memory) are all separate Components which are slotted into the Motherboard. The GPU, for example, uses a PCIe Interface to communicate with the CPU. The only problem here is that there is quite a bit of Latency when it comes to the CPU accessing the data from the GPU, which is determined by the speed of the PCIe Slot. Smartphone Processors, since there’s not that much room inside, actually combine all of these Components onto one single Chip, which is called a ‘System On a Chip’ (SoC). 

This is what Apple is using in their iPhones and iPads. Since the CPU now has direct access to the Memory and the GPU, the Latency is greatly reduced and therefore the overall Performance is greatly increased. I’ve had a look through Apple’s developer presentations for their upcoming transition to Apple Silicon and there was no mention of the GPU. In fact, Apple was even talking about how much they can improve the Performance by building an SoC inside their Macs. What this means is that we would not be getting any separate GPU options inside future MacBooks. This makes me wonder…what about the different SKU’s?

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SKU’s 

Well, if we take a look at the Macs, there are many different CPU models that you can choose from. The MacBook Air has three CPU options: an i3,  i5 and an i7. But, the MacBook Pro has four options with the first two being Intel’s 8th Generation Chips, while the last two are Intel’s 10th Generation Chips. So, how many SKU’s will Apple have, when it comes to the next-gen Macs? If we take a look at the iPhone, Apple only releases one CPU model every year and all iPhones have that exact CPU model.

On the iPad side, we do have the X variant, which does pack more GPU power than the non-X variant that we get inside the iPhones. The last X variant that we got was back in 2018, so these do take a while to make and we only get those on the iPad Pro’s as the regular iPads still use the exact same Chips as the iPhones do. I think it’s pretty safe to assume that for the MacBooks at least, Apple will either have one SKU or two, at most.

The use of SoC’s will limit the amount of SKU’s and likely follow a pattern similar to the current iPad Pro’s.

My prediction is that the MacBook Air would be using the exact same Chip that the iPhones use, the Apple A14, and whatever comes next. While the MacBook Pros will be using a more powerful version of that to give them the “Pro’ name. Not only that, but I predict that the 13” and the 16” MacBook Pro would be identical in terms of the performance and the only advantage that the 16” model will have, would be when it comes to its Display Size, just like we have on the iPad Pro’s right now. We have two models, the 11” and 12.9”, both with the same Performance and the only difference being the Display size.

So, what about the RAM? Well, since the CPU would now be an SoC, it would be very difficult for Apple to give us multiple RAM options when we configure our MacBooks, like we get now. I believe that the MacBook Air would come with, like I said, an A14 Processor but more RAM than the iPhones do. Possibly 16GB of RAM, while the MacBook Pro’s would come with more than that. Maybe the 16” would come with 64GB of RAM by default and the 13’ would come with 32GB, that would be the one and only RAM option. As we know from the iPhone and the iPads, Apple’s Processors are extremely efficient in terms of Memory, and so is iOS, so you won’t need as much RAM as we have on the Intel Macs now. 

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Design Changes

The next big change that this transition would bring, is when it comes to the Design. As Apple’s Processors are an entire SoC, you’re saving up a ton of space inside as there’s no need for a separate GPU and Memory. Not only that, but Apple’s Processors are also Fan-less. While Apple might add a Fan to some of their Macs to increase the Performance even further, by overclocking the Processors, the idea here is that they don’t necessarily require a Fan. Instead, they can use that extra internal space for a bigger Battery or a slimmer Chassis.

We sat down and brainstormed how Apple could design such a MacBook from scratch. This is our vision as to how we think Apple could realistically design a future MacBook now that they’ve made the transition to their own Processors.

We’ve modelled our own Concept of what we think these new MacBook Pro’s will look like.

We’ve designed the Display so that it matches the aesthetic of the iPad Pro. This means a uniform Bezel that also features curved corners which actually match the Design style of the upcoming macOS Big Sur. We’ve also made the Bezels a bit thinner than on the iPad Pro as we do think that those are indeed a bit too thick. This new MacBook Pro Design is finally in line with the modern 2020 Laptop Designs. The Aspect Ratio is still 16:10 and we’ve also added FaceID into the top Bezel as this has been recently leaked to be coming in all next-gen Macs moving forward. FaceID on a Mac makes so much more sense than having a TouchID Sensor. 

Now onto the Body. You can probably tell that this looks incredibly thin and that’s because we’ve actually used the same Body size as the iPad Pro. That means a thickness of only 5.9mm and a chassis that’s symmetrical and flat, so no more wedge shape MacBook Air style Design. We’ve added a USB Type C Port on each side and in case you’re wondering, these are indeed Thunderbolt 3 Ports, which are supported by the new USB 4 standard. So, Apple would not be losing Thunderbolt 3 by switching to their own Chips. We’ve also added two Speaker Grills on each side, with the same Design style as on the iPad Pro. 

The Trackpad is shorter now, as the Body is shorter as well, thanks to the Bezels being so thin now. This is how we designed it, but of course Apple could easily make the Display taller, maybe change the Aspect Ratio to a taller 3:2 Panel, just like on the Microsoft Surface Laptops, and have more room for the Trackpad in that case.

Colour-wise, we’ve kept Apple’s classic Space Grey and Silver colours but we’ve also added a brand new Matte Black colour, which I think looks amazing. I really hope that Apple gives us a darker colour option for this new generation as that’s definitely something that I would personally be going for.

For more Concepts and behind the scenes, be sure to check out our secondary ‘ZONEofCONCEPTS’ accounts on Instagram & Twitter.

When it comes to the Keyboard, obviously we have a Scissor Mechanism here but we have made the keys a bit thinner than on the current MacBooks, just to make it look better. Apple can easily keep the same thickness or just have the Keys deeper so that they travel more while also keeping this fairly thin Design, from the outside. The Touchbar is pretty much the same as before, so no changes here. The separate Escape Key is there, as well as an individual Backlight for each of the Keys. Apple, if you like what we’ve done, just get in touch.

Do let me know what do you guys think of our Design and if you want to see more of our concepts, it would be amazing if you could subscribe and also give us a follow on our ‘ZONEofCONCEPTS’ Instagram & Twitter pages. 

But, which MacBook is this? Is it the 12”, the Air or the Pro? Well, here’s what I’m thinking. Since Apple will have their own SoC now, and they’ll likely only have one or two SKU’s at most for these, they could unify the entire lineup, Design-wise. What I mean by this is that they could easily just call this the new MacBook, then have this in a 12” 14” and 16’ size, with the 14” and the 16” sizes being the MacBook Pro variant. These would also come with that more powerful A Series Processor that I mentioned, while the 12” would come with the same Chip that we have in the iPhones.

Personally, if I were Tim Cook, this is what I would do. I would create this beautiful singular Design, that would be instantly recognisable as a MacBook Design, and as use that for the entire lineup. Let me know in the comments what your thoughts are on this are. 

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Battery Life

Another big improvement that the new MacBooks would feature thanks to the switch to Apple Silicon, is the Battery Life.

Battery Life is likely to get a huge bump in upcoming releases.

Most MacBooks from 2010 have claimed to offer a 10 hour Battery Life, which is exactly what the iPads have claimed since the original iPad came out in 2010 too. Personally, my iPad lasts me for about seven hours, while my MacBook Pro lasts me for around five hours. 

Apple leaker ‘KomiyaLeaks’ tweeted a few details about an upcoming 12” MacBook. I’ll get into these in just a bit, but probably the most surprising thing here is the Battery Life, which is now expected to be up to 20 hours. So, in real world usage, if we go by the iPad’s Battery Life, this should now translate into around 15 or so hours of actual usage, which is a pretty gigantic jump from the current five or so hours that I was personally getting. We’ve also had a leak on a supposed MacBook Air Battery, likely the new MacBook Air. This Battery is very similar to the one that we have on the current model, just with a brand new model number on it. 

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Unified OS

Could a unified OS bring Touch Screen Support to future Macs?

The next big advantage of this transition, is a unified OS. Apple has already announced that iOS apps will now be able to be run natively, on the Mac. Meaning that you can run all of your favourite Apps, including ones that have zero optimisation, such as Instagram for example, directly on the Mac with no tweaking needed.

Apple has even demoed Final Cut Pro X and even Maya, running on a Mac Mini with an Apple A12Z Processor, the same Chip as in the 2020 iPad Pro, which is almost identical to the 2018 iPad Pro’s A12X Processor. This also means that iOS devices, such as the iPhone and the iPad, could easily run Mac software. Final Cut Pro X on the iPad is likely to be a possibility. In fact, Jon Prosser even stated a few months ago that XCode is actually coming to the iPad. This also makes me think that Apple could potentially add Touch-Screen support to the Mac, which would make a ton of sense as the iPad did get Mouse & Keyboard support. Also, macOS Big Sur does bring the Control Centre amongst other features, which are all Touch friendly. 

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More Frequent Updates

I also expect to see more frequent updates to the Mac as Apple would not have to wait for Intel to release new Chips anymore. Instead, they can move the Macs to a yearly update cycle, just like they already do with the iPhones. 

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Lower Prices 

Since Apple will be designing their own Chips, the prices of future Macs could in fact go down. ‘KomiyaLeaks’ reported that the new 12” MacBook would cost $800, making this the most affordable new MacBook that Apple has ever released. But at the same time, all the savings could go into Apple making these devices even better, so it’s not 100% guaranteed that the prices will indeed go down. 

In terms of what to expect in the near future, we’ve seen quite a few reports that we would see either a 12” MacBook or a new MacBook Air by the end of the year. Some reports even mention Apple releasing a 13” MacBook Pro with the same exact Design that we have now, just with an Apple Processor. Komiya reports that the Butterfly Keyboard will be coming back, which I personally don’t buy. He also reported that there is no Apple Event planned for October, which is where Apple would unveil these new Macs, so they could indeed be delayed until next year. What we do know for sure is that Apple is indeed planning some major redesigns with pretty much all of these upcoming Macs, including the iMac. 

macOS Big Sur Review - A New Era for the Mac!

Just like with iOS, watchOS and iPadOS, Apple also releases a new version of macOS every year at WWDC, in June. Last year we had macOS Catalina, which was filled with bugs and stability issues, some of which still haven’t been fixed. I was honestly expecting the next macOS version to just be a stability improvement, over Catalina.

Since we didn’t had any leaks on the next version of macOS at all, pretty much the entire tech community was assuming that this would be a very small update. But instead, macOS Big Sur is actually the biggest macOS update that we’ve had in years snd probably the biggest update that macOS has had since the introduction of macOS X, in 2001.

So, without any further ado, here is my experience with macOS Big Sur!

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Ok, so by far the biggest change that we got with macOS Big Sur is the new design. Unlike iOS, which usually gets a decent set of improvements every single year, macOS is a bit more conservative. For example, all versions of macOS, from macOS 10.0, to macOS 10.9, have looked almost identical. 

Spot the difference

But in 2014, Apple released macOS 10.10 (Yosemite). This was the biggest design change that the Mac ever got, at least up until that point. Gone was the skeuomorphism that Steve Jobs was a big fan of, as now we got the same design language as on the iPhones and the iPads with iOS 7, back in 2013. A design that featured a heavy emphasis on transparency, 2D effects and simplicity. I was actually a big fan of this design, I literally had zero issues with it, but I always felt like it could be improved. And it was!  

With macOS Mojave, in 2018, we got Dark Mode. This was one of my favourite macOS features ever and now with macOS Big Sur in 2020, Apple has redesigned macOS pretty much entirely again. 

Essentially, we get an even more iOS like look with things such as Control Centre, the Notifications and Widgets panel from iOS 14 as well as System Toggles that look exactly like they do on iOS. I’m actually a massive fan of this Design. I think it looks absolutely gorgeous, however I do have some concerns that I want to raise, which hopefully Apple will address by the time macOS Big Sur releases to the public.

My first concern is the Contrast. On the current macOS Catalina, all the top bar Elements are perfectly visible. Everything looks pretty great, I’ve never had any issues identifying UI Elements. However, on macOS Big Sur, UI Elements are all over the place. The Contrast is almost entirely gone on the top bar, making everything barely even readable. Not only that, but Apple has also added more space between the Icons in the top bar. This means that for people like me, who have a ton of Icons there, many of those Icons would not be visible anymore due to the extra spacing required.

My second concern is the Control Centre. So, I do like how it looks and how it works a lot, you can even control the Screen Brightness from there and even things such as the Keyboard Backlight, which I think is absolutely brilliant as it just looks and behaves so much like iOS. I wouldn’t normally have a problem with this, if the device had a Touchscreen but…it doesn’t.

Whether this means that Apple will release TouchScreen Macs in the not too distant future, we do not know. But what we do know is that Big Sur behaves a lot like iOS and while using Big Sur with a mouse, it just doesn’t feel right.

Having a UI designed for Touch Input can have its’ upsides and downsides.

Now, speaking of the Control Centre, there are a lot of things that I like about it. For example, having the Control Centre means that you no longer need individual Icons in the top bar for things such as WiFi or Bluetooth. You can now keep all of those in the Control Centre, which does mean that you can indeed clear up a lot of space out there. But, probably my favourite thing about the Control Centre is that you can even drag elements outside of it and onto the top bar. So, if you ever wanted to have, let’s say, ‘Do Not Disturb’ Mode or even AirDrop in the top bar, that is now possible. On iOS, you can have third party apps in the Control Centre, I am predicting that this will also be possible later on, in macOS.

Next-up, Widgets are absolutely brilliant. They look and work exactly like they do on iOS 14, meaning that you can just add different sizes. These can be Small, Medium or Large and they’re fully interactive. My only complaint here is that I wish you could place them on the Desktop as well, rather than having them constrained in this separate Widget Panel. Essentially, just like you can on iOS 14, I think that being able to just drag them out of the Widgets Panel and onto the Home-Screen would be ideal, especially on a Mac, since you have a much larger Display, compared to an iPhone. 

Notifications have also been tweaked. Rather than getting a massive list of all of your Notifications, they are now grouped into a stack which you can then expand to access all of them. Again, I just wish that they worked like they do on iOS or iPadOS. On iPadOS for example, you just bring the Mouse to the top portion of the screen and the Notifications Panel drops down. Apple is aiming for consistency between macOS, iOS and iPadOS, so I think it would be great to have Notifications work in the same way as they do on Apple’s other platforms.

My third concern is when it comes to UI Design. If you take a look at Finder, you can probably tell that it’s been completely redesigned. The Buttons are all in the window to the right, while the Side Panel alone is on the left and we have no control in that one at all. I really do like the way this looks, but the spacing is completely off.

So what about Calendar? The Spacing is completely different from Finder and System Preferences. Speaking of which, why is it still called ‘System Preferences’ and not ‘Settings’, like it is on iOS? I could keep adding to that list. For example with Siri, while it has indeed been redesigned on iOS and iPadOS, on macOS it still uses the same exact look as it did in macOS Catalina. There are many things left that Apple needs to polish, by the time macOS Big Sur releases.

Concern number four, are the Icons. In Big Sur, Apple decided to completely redesign the System Icons to essentially bring them more in line to iOS and I couldn’t agree more. I don’t know why we didn’t have identical Icons until now. But the problem is that they look atrocious. For example, while some Icons look identical as to how they look on iOS, like Calendar, Notes & Reminders, some Icons have this 3D look to them. Some examples include Messages, Mail, Face-Time and App Store, they also have an inner shadow.

The Icons are inconsistent in design, something I hope is addressed before release.

I’m honestly not a fan of this Design, I think it looks pretty bad, especially if you take a look at the System Preferences Icon or that horrid Battery Icon. These icons look like when you add Drop Shadow and Bevel & Emboss in Photoshop, if you know what I’m talking about. I wouldn’t necessarily be that critical of them, if they were all consistent, but they’re not. It looks as if each of these Icons was designed by a completely different person and none of these people were ever in touch.

Finally, my last concern is the Launchpad. First of all, why is it still called the Launchpad instead of the App Library like we now have on iOS? It’s essentially the exact same thing. Anyway, my problem here is that it’s still as painful and as slow, when it comes to organising your Apps. On iOS, you can indeed drag multiple Apps at the same time and place them in Folders. On macOS, you have to do it one by one, which is just a pain to do with a Mouse and even more so when you have loads of Apps installed, like I do.

Now, there are a few smaller features which I did find to be really cool so, here are a bunch of those features. I really do like how every UI Element has curved corners now, this also means that everything just looks off, when you look at the straight corners of the actual Display on your Mac. Because of this and the fact that the iPhone and the iPad both have curved corners, I do believe that the next Macs, starting with the new 14” ARM MacBook Pro, will indeed come with curved corners as well.

Also, remember that Battery Life indicator which also told you exactly how many hours of Battery Life you had left? Well, Apple removed that a while ago but now this seems to be back in Big Sur, which is great. The scheduling feature, which has been buried deep down into the Settings, is much more visible in the Battery section. You can even see your Battery Usage for the past day or week, just like you could for a number of years on iOS.

Everything about Big Sur just looks cleaner, but it’s not perfect.

Safari now lets you see how much websites track you. I’m pleased to say that we only use Google Analytics for tracking, so ‘ZONEofTECH.com’ is pretty tracker free, unlike many other websites out there. Speaking of websites, Safari now lets you watch Netflix in Full 4K Dolby Vision. Up until now, it was limited to 1080p. 

Also iOS 14 does indeed support 4K Video playing on YouTube, albeit you have to be watching a 4K HDR Video, as you don’t really get the 4K option on non-HDR content. But, I am assuming that this will be fixed and it seems likely that we would also be getting 4K support in YouTube on the Mac as well with Big Sur, when it releases. 

Speaking of Safari, you can now customise the Safari Home-Screen quite significantly. So now, not only can you customise the content that it displays by selecting and deselecting categories of items, but you can also have a custom Wallpaper in Safari, just like you can in Chrome. Apple will now be including the Safari Extensions in the AppStore and we also have a brand new API, which should make it much easier for Developers to develop and port their extensions from Chrome, into Safari. Safari is finally becoming more useful and I’m extremely happy with that.

I should also point out that I’m absolutely in love with the new Mail App. The UI has been cleaned up substantially and all the controls are now on the top right, with the left being reserved for the Side Panel, just like in Finder. This design actually reminds me a lot of Outlook, which actually had one of the very best designs for a Mail App.

The Calendar App has been redesigned as well, but I am still not a big fan of the Pastel Colours. I’ve always preferred the look of Google Calendar, maybe that’s just me. The Messages app also got a new Design, which brings in more in line with the iOS version, not just in terms of looks, but also in terms of its functionality.

Hopefully further support for more Apps comes in time.

So overall, I am a massive fan of how macOS Big Sur looks but like I’ve mentioned before, there are quite a few things that just need to be more polished and I’m really hoping that they will be by the time macOS Big Sur releases.

But in the end, macOS Big Sur isn’t just a massive visual upgrade, it is also a gigantic upgrade under the hood. It is the first version of macOS to fully support ARM Processors, which is the reason why Apple has also called it macOS 11. This lays the foundation of all future Macs that will feature Apple Processors. Speaking of that, Windows will not be supported.

Just as a final note, some of you are probably wondering what is the performance is like? Well, unlike iOS 14, which I actually ended up installing on my own personal iPhone just because of how stable it was, I just could not do the same with macOS Big Sur. This was not necessarily because of stability issues, but mostly because of a number of my Apps that just don’t work on Big Sur, without receiving an update.

Google Drive File Stream, which we use a lot for our work here, does not work at all. Mailbutler, a great tool that I use with the native Apple email App does not work either as well as a few more.

These apps will only get updated closer to macOS Big Sur’s release, so I still have to wait a few months until I actually get to use it. Apple hasn’t really told us an exact date for when macOS Big Sur will be released. I would predict the end of October, as COVID has delayed pretty much everything. But I don’t think it would be any later than that though.

The Future of the Mac - Explained!

Every once in a while, usually once per decade or so, there is one big change that happens in tech that affects everything. Not just that, but it also affects our everyday lives.

A good example would be the introduction of the first iPhone back in 2007, which literally changed how future Phones looked and functioned to this very day. Samsung’s Flexible Display Technology from 2011 allowed us to have the Foldable Smartphones that we have today, with many more to come in the future. Tesla’s Autopilot has redefined, and will continue to redefine, the car industry. Now…there is another big change just around the corner and this time, it’s all about the Processor.

So, get ready for a bit more of a technical video and have those snacks ready and enjoy!

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Up until 2006, Apple Macs were using PowerPC Processors. PowerPC were a type of Reduced Instruction Set Architecture Processors, which were created in 1991 by, ironically, Apple, IBM and Motorola. This was also known as the AIM Alliance. 

The whole idea behind PowerPC Processors was for them to be affordable to the average consumer, rather than for high-end business computers. Additionally, they were intended to not just be very powerful for the average user, but also allow Programmers to very quickly and easily write Code for them. This was all good. From 1994 up until 2006, Apple had only been using PowerPC Processors. But at WWDC 2005, Steve Jobs went on stage to make a big announcement. He announced that Apple will be moving from PowerPC Processors, to Intel Processors.

The main reason for this was ‘Performance per Watt. He said that PowerPC Processors gave Macs around 15 Units of Performance per Watt, whereas Intel was giving them 70 Units, almost five times as much. This is why Apple switched from PowerPC, to Intel Processors. Intel’s Chips were more powerful and also consumed less energy, meaning that their machines could be thinner and more portable, which was very important back then. Devices back then were not as thin and portable as they are now.

Apple’s Processors haven’t always come from Intel

Now, switching to a new Processor, especially when it has a different Architecture, is extremely difficult and PowerPC and Intel were both based on a completely different Architectures. PowerPC CPU’s were based on the POWER Instruction Set Architecture, whereas Intel CPU’s were based on the x86-64 Architecture. What this means was that they were speaking completely different languages. 

This also meant that every single new program had to be re-written from scratch, but macOS in itself was not capable of running on Intel Processors unless of course, they had a Translator. That Translator was called Rosetta, named after the stone that helped us translate Ancient Egyptian, as the top half of it was written in ancient Egyptian, whilst the bottom half was written in ancient Greek. Anyway, Rosetta translated PowerPC instructions into x86-64 instructions, which meant that most, but not all programs that were developed for the PowerPC era, could actually run on Intel based Macs without the need for a full re-write.

It wasn’t perfect, just like when you’re translating between two different languages, some expressions just won’t translate that well. So, while PowerPC Apps could run on Intel Macs, Native Apps that were designed for Intel Macs first would always run better. That transition actually went very smoothly and fast forward 14 years and up until this point, Apple has kept on using Intel Processors in all of their Macs.

However, Apple is now switching from Intel, to their own Apple Series of Processors and this change will be even bigger than the last one. 

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Why?

Why switch? Isn’t Intel the market leader when it comes to CPU’s? They are in terms of sales, but they’ve been having some serious issues in the last few years.

You see, the way a CPU works is that they have these tiny Transistors that can pass electrical current through them, which the CPU then reads as one’s and zero’s. Modern CPU’s have billions of Transistors and the smaller and thinner these are, the faster they can pass the current through and therefore, the faster the CPU. It’s like driving a car from NY to LA to deliver a package, compared to driving from your house to your neighbour’s house, to deliver the same package. Obviously, the package will get to your neighbour’s house much faster as the distance is smaller, CPU’s work in the same way.

Apple will soon be making Processors with Transistors that are only twice as thick as Human DNA.

The size at which the Transistors inside a Processor are measured at is just in a few Nano-Metres. Intel has been using a 14nm manufacturing process and just to give you an idea of how thin those Transistors are, a human hair is around 90,000nm in thickness. A single strand of human DNA is 2.5nm. Intel’s has been manufacturing transistors at 14nm, which is pretty incredible. But, Intel has been releasing 14nm CPU’s since 2014 and they’ve been trying to switch to 10nm, the next step in the manufacturing process, since. They’ve only been able to do it in 2019. 

Apple, on the other hand, switched to 10nm in 2017, two years ahead of Intel. Not only that, but Apple has since switched to 7nm in 2018 and will switch to 5nm in 2020, with the upcoming Apple A14 Processors. Apple is already three generations ahead of Intel when it comes to the manufacturing process. To be more accurate, TSMC is, they are the actual manufacturers for Apple’s CPU’s. Additionally, AMD is also manufacturing on a 7nm process now, being two generations ahead of Intel. 

Intel launched 10nm in 2019, but even now in 2020, only ‘Y’ & ‘U’ Series Mobile CPU’s come with it. Desktop and high-end Laptop Processors, such as the H-Series that you would find on a 16” MacBook Pro for example, those are still based on a 14nm process.

Even if you take a look at the 10nm ‘Y’ & ‘U’ Series Processors, not even all of the models are based on the 10nm process, some are still 14nm CPU’s. It’s so horribly confusing. The whole point of Intel’s 10th Generation Processors was to finally switch to 10nm, but they’ve only done that on around 20% of their 10th Generation CPU’s, the rest are still 14nm. AMD Processors now out-perform Intel quite substantially and they even do it at a lower price. 

Not only that, but Apple has improved their own Processors so much, that even the 2018 iPad Pro now out-performs most Laptop Processors from Intel. The iPad Pro has significantly better performance than a 2020 baseline 13” MacBook Pro, it’s even better than the higher-end model. The iPad Pro is also significantly thinner than a Laptop and it does not even have a Fan in it, it is all passively cooled, whereas Laptops need to have gigantic Cooling Systems.

The new iPad Pro is a great example of what Apple can achieve with their own technology.

These are the two main reasons why Apple wants to move away from Intel. They want better Performance and they want that Performance at a lower power consumption than at what Intel offers, which means that they can make way more portable devices with a significantly better Battery Life. Imagine having an iMac that’s as thin as an iPad Pro, or a MacBook Pro that lasts for 20 hours, or more, on a single charge.

But, there is one more reason why Apple wants to switch now. Unlike 2005, when they were just looking for better performance at a lower power consumption, Apple now has the iPhone and the iPad, none of which they had back in 2005. Those devices also run on Apple’s own Processors, which means that Apple can now unify their entire line of devices and have any APPS run on the iPhone, the iPad and on the Mac natively, with no changes in the code required. This means that you’ll be able to run any iPhone App directly on your Mac including Instagram, Facebook Messenger or basically anything. 

Moreover, Mac Apps such as Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X will also able to run on iPhone and iPad. In fact, Apple even showed FCP X running on a Mac Mini with an Apple A12Z Processor, the same Processor as in the iPad Pro 2020. While it did have 16GB of RAM, compared to the 6GB on the iPad, and the CPU was likely cooled too, it could actually play three streams of 4K ProRes with effects at the same time, without dropping any frames at all. A 16” MacBook Pro can run around 11 streams of 4K ProRes, which is quite a bit more, this would also be ProRes RAW. But, keep in mind that the A12Z is just a Tablet Processor. Apple already mentioned that they’re working on multiple variants of their own CPU’s to be used in Macs, which Apple hasn’t really showed yet.

Credit: Apple

However, they did show us this graph that compared their Processors to the current devices that Apple is offering. Whilst Apple’s range is quite big, we can indeed tell that they are developing Laptop Processors that are just on par with Intel’s lowest-end Desktop Processors, while also having less power consumption than Intel’s current Laptop Processors .That equates to a 12” MacBook or a MacBook Air with a 20 hour Battery Life, having more performance than the regular iMac. Now, if we take a look at the upper part of this graph, we can see that Apple’s even aiming to make Processors better than any Desktop Processors that Intel has now, with just a bit more power consumption than a current Laptop.

These are very bold claims but I do believe that they can pull this off, especially if we take a look at what they’ve already achieved with the iPad alone.

Ok, so now that we’ve covered the ‘Why’, what about the ‘How’?

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How?

To help this transition, Apple is bringing back Rosetta. Credit: Apple

MacOS Big Sur, which is coming out later this year, will be the first macOS that has been developed for both x86-64 Intel Processors and ARM Processors (ARM being the Architecture that Apple’s using for their own Chips). Apple will be using the same Rosetta tool that they used back in 2006 to switch from PowerPC to Intel, which is now called Rosetta 2 and will translate x86-x64 Code, into ARM code. This means that you’ll still be able to run all of your Intel software on future ARM Macs.

Native apps will still run much better, FCP X was a good example and Apple has also shown Photoshop as well as Lightroom, which were both running extremely smooth. Lightroom was able to open up a massive library of RAW photos without any lag or slowdown whatsoever. On the Mac, I always get the beachball and some lag here and there whenever I do that, so that’s crazy.

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When?

You’re probably wondering, when is this transition going to happen and how would you be impacted?

We could soon be looking at one unified system for the Mac line-up.

Well, Apple has said that this transition would take two years. Meaning that by the end of 2022, we should have an Apple Processor in every single Mac that Apple sells, from the MacBook Air, all the way up to the Mac Pro, which is nuts. ARM CPU’s have never been designed for sustained workloads but it seems that this concept has been proven wrong, ‘The Verge’ reports that Japan has developed a supercomputer using ARM Processors and it turns out that this is now the fastest computer in the entire world, with it also being 2.8 times faster than the previous most powerful supercomputer in the world. So, ARM is definitely looking very promising. 

Now, Intel based Macs will still be supported for a number of years, but if you do plan on getting a Mac now, I would highly highly advise you to wait until the end of the year when Apple would be releasing their first Mac with an Apple Processor. Ming-Chi Kuo says that it will be a new 13” MacBook Pro. I’m fine with that, so I can’t wait! 

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MacOS big Sur

I just want to touch a bit on macOS Big Sur. This is really the biggest software update since macOS Yosemite, which changed up the design significantly from the previous design language that macOS Mavricks used. ‘Big Sur’ is an even bigger change as it adds a ton of elements from the iPhone and the iPad, to macOS. We even get things such as Control Centre and the same iOS-style Toggles.

While I do really like this design a lot, it kind of looks like it was made for Touch Input first because, well, it was. The iOS UI was made for Touch Input rather than Mouse Input. So, the fact that Apple’s adding the exact same design language and the same UI style makes me think that maybe we will see a TouchScreen Mac in the not too distant future. That would be pretty amazing.

I wouldn’t exactly call this a ‘Unified Design’. Credit: Apple

The start-up sound is back, which is quite interesting to see, alongside a ton of design elements from iOS. These include the Notification Panel and the indicator that shows amount of battery you have left in hours, is now back. They’ve also just cleaned up the entire UI a lot.

I do have two main concerns regarding Big Sur’s design. Firstly, the UI elements and how they just don’t feel right, they were designed for Touch Input. My second concern is the Icons. Apple is calling this a unified design, but they don’t look the same. They all have this weird shadow that is on the inside, very strange. We don’t have this on iOS and it just looks as if different Icons were designed by different people. The ‘Reminders’ Icon has no shadow at all, whereas the ‘Messages’ Icon does. Hopefully Apple fixes this by October, when macOS Big Sur is said to be released to the public. 

Anyway, I’m definitely looking forward to the future of the Mac and this transition will shape the entire tech industry. It will end up forcing more companies to innovate into the Mobile CPU space and of course, forcing Intel to do something about their CPU offering because at this point, AMD is ahead and it seems like Apple is now ahead as well.

iPad Pro vs MacBook Pro 13 (2020) - Which One's the Real Laptop?

Over the past few months, there have been two devices that I’ve been using a ton. The iPad Pro with the brand new Magic Keyboard, which has actually now become my home computer and a full Laptop replacement for when I’m on the go. Also, I’ve also been using the new 13” 2020 MacBook Pro, which has now replaced my 15” MacBook Pro from 2019.

The Full In-Depth Review of the 13” 2020 MacBook Pro is coming out the week following this video but until then, here’s the answer to the question that a lot of you have been asking. Should you buy an iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard, which is finally a true Laptop replacement now, or should you get the MacBook Pro 13”?

Well, get all those snacks ready and buckle up because this is going to be a very detailed comparison. We’ll be covering everything from the Design, Display, Keyboard, Trackpad, Camera, Microphones, Speakers, Performance, Battery Life and the Value! 

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Design

Starting off with the Design, these two devices couldn’t be any more different. The MacBook Pro was born to be a Laptop, while the iPad Pro was born to be a Tablet, which then became a Laptop.

In terms of which one looks better, this is very subjective because if you’re looking for a more traditional Laptop, the MacBook Pro is the winner here. You get a full Aluminium and Glass Unibody build, which is extremely sturdy and premium. But, if you’re looking for something that’s a bit more versatile, the iPad Pro is indeed the winner here. With that floating design, the iPad Pro definitely looks more futuristic. But with the Magic Keyboard itself, it doesn’t feel as premium as the MacBook Pro does. I’m not referring to the actual Keys, but the material that surrounds them. 

On the iPad Pro we have this Silicone/Rubber material, while it does indeed protect the iPad, you don’t get that ultra-premium feel that the MacBook Pro gives you. Also, this material gets smudged extremely easy, after even just a few hours of use. So, the iPad Pro will look very used, in a matter of hours, while the MacBook Pro will keep on looking brand new for years as it has a full metal body. So overall, the MacBook Pro does look and feel like a more premium device.

The iPad Pro 12.9” weighs roughly the same, and is slightly thicker than the MacBook Pro 13”. But it is much more versatile.

But which one is more usable? Well, the iPad Pro has a significant advantage here. You see, not only does the iPad Pro support Touch Input, but you can easily remove it from the Keyboard Case and use it just like a Tablet in Landscape or even Portrait mode, whenever you wish. You can use the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil as well, you can use it as an External Monitor for your MacBook Pro, none of which you can do with a Mac. You also have FaceID, compared to the TouchID unlock on the MacBook Pro and I have to say, FaceID is significantly superior. The moment you tap the screen or even a Key on the Keyboard, the iPad instantly unlocks.

Same goes for when you’re filling in passwords or using Apple Pay, the iPad Pro is a massive improvement over a MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro is just a traditional Laptop, whereas the iPad Pro is this brand new modular device that you can use in any shape or form you want, it’s a magical device.

When it comes to the Portability, the iPad Pro comes in two sizes, the 11” and 12.9”. The MacBook Pro comes in 13” and 16”. So, if we compare both 13” sizes of both devices, the iPad Pro on its own weighs 641g, while the MacBook Pro 13” weighs 1.4kg. However, if we add in the Magic Keyboard to the 12.9” iPad Pro, it ends up being 1.35kg, almost as heavy as the MacBook Pro is. The 11” iPad Pro, with the Magic Keyboard, weighs 1.07kg, so that’s much lighter. However, both iPad Pro’s are actually slightly thicker than the 13” MacBook Pro. So, just because of how much more versatile and flexible the iPad is to use, I have to give the design award to the iPad Pro. 

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Display

So now, what about the Display? Well, both the iPad Pro and the MacBook Pro have an outstanding Display Panel. 

They’re both LCD displays, but they’re IPS Panels, meaning that they have an almost 180 Degree viewing angle. They both have a DCI P3 Panel, which can display around 25% more colours, when compared to a standard sRGB Display. They’re very good Displays, the best LCD Displays that you can find on a Laptop or a Tablet. But, the iPad Pro’s Display is actually superior in three ways.

The iPad Pro’s biggest advantage, with the Display, is definitely that Dynamic Refresh Rate.

Firstly, the Bezels are much thinner on the iPad Pro. This means that the iPad Pro’s Display not only looks better and more futuristic, but if you get the 12.9” iPad Pro, it would be noticeably smaller than the Display on the MacBook Pro 13”, even-though they’re almost the same physical size.

Secondly, the iPad Pro’s Display is actually brighter, with a peak brightness of 600 Nits, compared to around 500 Nits on the MacBook Pro. This means that if you plan on using either of these outdoors, the iPad Pro is a much better option.

Lastly, the iPad Pro also has a ProMotion Display, which can adjust its Refresh Rate from 24Hz, 30Hz, 60Hz and all the way up to 120Hz, depending on the content that you’re watching. The MacBook Pro has a fixed 60Hz Refresh Rate Display. I have to say, this is by far the biggest advantage of the iPad Pro. Everything that you do on the iPad Pro feels so smooth. The thing is, my MacBook Pro does drop a lot of frames when scrolling and navigating through the UI. The animations don’t always run at 60FPS, so when they drop to 50FPS or even 40FPS and then you compare that to the iPad Pro, which always runs at 120FPS in the UI, the difference is just gigantic. Because of this, I have to give the Display win to the iPad Pro.

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Keyboard & Trackpad

Next up, we have the Keyboard and the Trackpad.

When it comes to the Keyboard, both of these devices now feature Apple’s brand new Magic Keyboard. Long gone is the disastrous Magic Keyboard that had almost no Key Travel and Apple refused to replace over a period of five years, even-though it constantly broke. This Magic Keyboard is very similar to the one that we get on the iMac Keyboards, which is also called…the Magic Keyboard.  They’re also very similar to the amazing Keyboards that we used to get on all the MacBooks up until 2015.

The difference is some areas is not quite as black & white as it might seem.

The difference here is that we do get larger Key-Caps and a more stable Keyboard. Both of these Keyboards are actually much better than on the 2015 MacBook Pro and even better than the current Magic Keyboards on the iMacs. But which one of these is better?

Well, the MacBook Pro definitely has a better Keyboard, which you probably expected, as this is..you know…an actual Laptop. But the thing is, it’s not actually that much better. If the MacBook Pro has a 10/10  Keyboard, the iPad Pro probably has around an 8.8/10. At least when it comes to the 11” iPad Pro, which does indeed have a much smaller Keyboard overall. I do find it to be a bit too crammed and some of the Keys also have a much smaller size in order to fit in this footprint.

The 12.9” iPad Pro has a full-size Keyboard, just like the MacBook Pro and that one’s much more comfortable to type on. But, aside from the size difference, the typing experience is almost identical between the two sizes of the iPad Pro and the MacBook Pro. You get the same 1mm of Key Travel, I actually ended up scripting almost all of my videos off of the iPad Pro, until I got this 13” MacBook Pro. The moment I started scripting on the iPad Pro, I couldn’t go back to my 2019 15” MacBook Pro, which still comes with that Butterfly Keyboard. So, the typing experience is excellent! 

One advantage that the MacBook Pro has over the iPad Pro’s Keyboard is that we do get a function row of keys. We have the Escape Key as well as the TouchBar, which gives you virtual controls based on the App that you’re using. The iPad Pro however, has none of that. If you want to adjust the volume or the brightness, you have to go into the Control Centre, which takes noticeably longer, compared to the MacBook Pro.

Both Keyboards are Backlit but the iPad Pro does not have a Key, or even a software toggle in the Control Centre, to adjust its brightness. In order to do that, you have to go all the way into the Settings and adjust it from there, which is very inconvenient. On the MacBook Pro, you just have a toggle for the Backlight built into the TouchBar, it’s very quick and convenient to adjust it.

Interestingly enough, I do find typing on the iPad Pro do be somewhat more comfortable. This is mostly because, since it is a much thinner device when open, the Chassis doesn’t hurt on your Wrists as much as they hurt on the MacBook Pro. We also have a soft rubber Chassis, compared to a full metal Chassis on the MacBook Pro, so the iPad’s Magic Keyboard is much easier on the Wrists. 

The MacBook Pro does win in both departments, but that doesn’t make the Keyboard & Trackpad on the iPad Pro bad by any means.

The tilt is greater on the MacBook Pro, so you can lean the Display further down, compared to the iPad Pro. The MacBook Pro is also more stable, compared to the iPad Pro, which when tilted all the way backwards, does have a tendency to tip over. Overall, the MacBook Pro does have a better Keyboard. So, what about the Trackpad?

Well, the MacBook Pro takes this one as well. Not only is the Trackpad on the MacBook Pro much bigger, but it also doesn’t physically click. Instead, there’s a Vibration Motor inside it that gives you the impression that you’ve clicked the Trackpad. This way, you have two levels of pressure, with the second one being used for the Force Click, which gives you more options when pressing on an item.

The iPad Pro uses a much smaller Trackpad, which does indeed physically click. However, unlike the Trackpad on most Windows Laptops, you can press the iPad’s Trackpad anywhere, even on the top. So, this is not a diving board mechanism but instead, the entire Trackpad can click. The Gestures are very similar on both of these, however, the iPad does have a few that are different, such as taking you Home or displaying the Notification Centre. 

Overall, the MacBook Pro has a better Keyboard, as well as a better Trackpad. But, the iPad Pro still has a better Keyboard and Trackpad than most other Laptops on the market, so they’re still very, very good. 

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Camera, Microphones & Speakers

In terms of Cameras, the iPad is the clear choice.

Moving on to the Camera, Microphones & Speakers. Firstly, the Camera is a massive win for the iPad. Not only do we have a 1080p, 60FPS Front Camera, compared to the 720p, 60FPS Camera on the MacBook Pro, but the iPad Pro also comes with an actual Camera on the back. This Camera is capable of taking some breath-taking photos, 4K60 video and overall, images and videos that are pretty much just as good as on the iPhone.  Not only that, but we also have an Ultra-Wide Angle Module as well as a LiDAR Scanner for AR Apps, on the 2020 iPad Pro. 

In case you’re wondering what the Microphones sound like, be sure to check out the test in the video. In terms of the Speakers, they’re both very good. The MacBook Pro is better as it is a larger device, but we also tested both in the full video linked at the top.

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Performance

Moving on to the Performance, this is probably going to be shocking for most of you. On paper, the MacBook Pro smokes the iPad Pro. My model has an Intel 10th Generation, Quad-Core Processor, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of Storage. The iPad Pro, on the other hand, has Apple’s A12Z Processor, 6GB of RAM and 128GB of Storage. Also, the MacBook Pro has two Cooling Fans and some pretty big Air Intake and Outtake Vents, whereas the iPad Pro has no Fans, or Vents, at all. 

In a lot of ways, the iPad can go toe-to-toe with the MacBook Pro.

So, you would expect the MacBook Pro to just murder the iPad Pro when it comes to performance. But, to my surprise, it was actually the other way around! In GeekBench 5, the iPad Pro scored 1114SC and 4654MC, while the MacBook Pro 13”, with the i5 10th Generation Intel Processor, scored 1128SC and 4370MC, quite a bit lower on the Multi-Core side. Interesting, so what about the GPU?

Well, the iPad Pro 2020 scores 9547 points, while the MacBook Pro scores around 8374 points, sometimes as high as 9960 points. Long story short, it seems like they’re both pretty much identical when it comes to raw performance. In fact, the iPad Pro even appears to be slightly more powerful. If you compare it to the baseline 13” MacBook Pro, the iPad Pro is clearly more powerful when it comes to both the CPU and GPU. 

How does this translate to some real world usage? Well, in our video we had the same 4K video timeline, with the same exact 4K60 shots taken from our Panasonic GH5, and they’re pretty demanding on both of these machines, I also added some transitions and titles. This five minute timeline took 2:53 to export on the iPad and 7:27 to export on the MacBook Pro, which is a significant difference. The iPad Pro was more than 2.5x times faster than the MacBook Pro. Obviously, if you have longer and more complex projects, the iPad Pro would have an even bigger advantage. 

Now, if you’re into Gaming, and you’re wondering which of these machines is better, the iPad Pro, strangely enough, is a significantly better option. Most of the games on the App Store are Mobile Games, but you do get millions of those and they’re extremely well optimised to run on the iPad. On the MacBook Pro, there are barely any games available. This is because Apple now prefers games to use Metal instead of openGL, macOS Catalina and 32-bit games have been dropped as well. Meaning that those very few games that we had on Steam are now barely even supported, as most games were dropped.

Let’s take a look at Fortnite for example. A game that runs on both platforms. Which machine can run it better? The iPad Pro can run Fortnite in Native Resolution at 2388x1668, on EPIC settings and we’re getting just about 30FPS. That’s extremely impressive because this is literally fully maxed out. If we drop the graphics to Medium, we’re now getting around 76FPS, if we drop them all the way to Low, we’re getting 120FPS. Since the iPad has a 120Hz Display, it means that we can actually see all those individual Frames. The experience running this game on the iPad is just unbelievable, everything is crazy fluid and smooth. Even on Low Settings, I still have the 3D Resolution scaling set to 100%, so this is still running in Native Resolution.

Now, taking a look at the MacBook Pro, I’m running the game in Native Resolution again, so 2560x1600 in this case, which is slightly higher than on the iPad Pro, but not by a lot. It seems like even on Medium Settings, we’re only getting around 17FPS. The game is fully unplayable and even if we drop to Low, we’re only getting 25FPS compared to the 120FPS that the iPad Pro was getting. That’s extremely impressive for the iPad Pro, a Tablet that’s miles thinner than the MacBook Pro and also has no Cooling Fans at all. All the Cooling is done passively and we get significantly better performance for both Video-Editing and Gaming, on the iPad Pro. 

But, probably the biggest advantage to the iPad Pro is that it can run both Mobile as well as some Desktop Apps too. These include iMovie, GarageBand, Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Lightroom and more, while the MacBook Pro can only run Desktop Apps. There are a few iOS Apps that have been ported to macOS, thanks to Apple’s Catalyst Tool. So, we do have Apps such as the Home App, News, Apple TV, and more, but the UI still sucks, they’re not that easy to control as they were designed for Touch Input first. The iPad does a much better job at running Desktop Apps such as Photoshop, especially now that we have full Keyboard and Trackpad support.

The iPad Pro is not capable of properly running External Displays.

In this case, the iPad Pro is a much better Computer, and it has replaced my MacBook Pro, right? Well...not really.

You see, there are things that the iPad Pro still cannot do. For example, if you plan on connecting multiple Monitors, the iPad Pro is just a mess, the video output doesn’t scale properly and you can only connect one Monitor. With my MacBook Pro, I have a 5K Monitor, a 4K monitor and I’m also running its internal 2K Display, all through a single Thunderbolt 3 Cable, which the iPad does not support at all. Not only that, but I can directly connect to our Thunderbolt NAS and get some insane 1-2GB/s transfer speeds, wheres the iPad is limited to using a wireless connection, via SMB, with significantly lower speeds of just around 10MB/s. 

If you want to do any App Development, there is no XCode on the iPad. Same goes for Video-Editing. Whilst LumaFusion is very good, FCP X on the Mac is still better. Plus, you can run a lot more Pro tools on the Mac, such as LogicProX, Ableton, DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects, all alongside a ton of their plugins. So, if you need any of those, the MacBook Pro is the way to go.

Now, remember when I said that I felt that my MacBook Pro 13” dropped Frames when scrolling through the UI? Well, I can use a tool called Quatrz Debug, which allows me to measure the drops. The iPad Pro on the other hand, has no way to actually measure that unless you open up the Xcode Viewer, but I couldn’t notice any lag or any slow-down whatsoever.

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Battery Life

Next up, when it comes to the Battery Life, they both claim up to 10 hours of usage, which neither of these machines can achieve, unfortunately. With my usage, my MacBook Pro gets around 5-6 hours, while my iPad Pro gets around 6 hours. So, pretty much the same.You can detach the Magic Keyboard from the iPad Pro and actually get a better Battery Life that way.

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Value 

Finally, having said all of this, which one is worth it the most?

The MacBook Pro starts at $1300 and for that you get a 1.4GHz Intel Core i5 Processor (8th Generation). You also get 8GB of RAM and 256GB of Storage. My MacBook Pro model is the higher-end $ 1800 model, which gets you the more powerful 2.0GHz Intel Core i5 Processor (10th Generation). With this, you get 16GB of RAM and 512GB of Storage.

The iPad Pro could end up costing you more than a baseline MacBook Pro 13”, but it could be just as good, for a lot of people.

The iPad Pro 11” starts from $800 for the 11” model or $1000 for the 12.9” model. If you add the Keyboard, which I’m assuming most of you will, that would bring the price of the 11” to $1100 and the 12.9” to $1350. So, the 12.9” iPad Pro, with the Keyboard, is actually more expensive than the baseline 13” MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, you only get 128GB of Storage. If you need 256GB, that would make the 13” $1200 and the 12.9” $1450.

Is the iPad Pro really worth it over a MacBook Pro? Especially considering that it is even more expensive? Well, for 90% of people, it actually is. If you don’t need to do any App Development or any high-end Video-Editing, the iPad Pro is actually a much better device than a MacBook Pro. You get a much more versatile device that supports Touch Input and Vertical or Landscape Orientation. It’s great for reading books, it’s great for browsing the web and it’s perfect for Photo-Editing and Graphic Design, thanks to the Apple Pencil.

On top of all this, it will feel way more fluid than the MacBook Pro does. I strongly believe that the iPad Pro is indeed the future. It seems like Microsoft was right from the very start! 

MacBook Pro 13 (2020) - 25 Things You Didn't Know!

I’ve just got my hands on the brand new 2020 13” MacBook Pro, the one that I’ve been waiting for, for a while now. But, I’m not going to open it and give you guys my first impressions just yet, that would be in a different video. In this one, I want to tell you 25 interesting things that you need to know about the new 2020 MacBook Pro!

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1) Two Models

First things first, if you plan on buying a new 2020 MacBook Pro, Apple actually sells two very different models of it. If you go onto Apple’s website, you won’t be able to tell which is which, as they both look identical. But, as a matter of fact, these two models couldn’t be any more different.

The base-model starts at $1300/£1300 and then the high-end model starts at $1800/£1800. Think of these two as the iPhone 11 and the iPhone 11 Pro. While the ’11’ has most of the features that the ‘Pro’ has, the ‘Pro’ still has quite a few advantages over the ’11’ that give it its ‘Pro’ name.

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2) Four vs Two Thunderbolts 

Now, since you can indeed select a low-end model and spec it out so that it ends up being more expensive than the high-end model, the easiest way to tell them apart is by looking at the number of Thunderbolt 3 Ports that they have. The low-end model will always come with two, while the high-end model will always come with four. 

I would say for most people, two is enough. But if you’re more of a power user and you need to connect a 5K Monitor, eGPU and a few HDD’s, then getting the four Port model is something that I would definitely recommend.  Also, if you have the four Port model, you would be able to charge it from either side of the Laptop. The two Port model has both Ports on the left-hand side. 

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3) Baseline 8th Gen

Something else that you should know is that Apple advertises the new Intel 10th Generation Processors on these MacBooks, but the baseline model still has the 8th Generation, from last year.

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4) Almost the Same 

In fact, the baseline model is pretty much identical to the 2019 model, with the exception of the Keyboard, which has now been replaced by the new scissor-style mechanism, just like we got in the 16” MacBook Pro and the 2020 MacBook Air. Finally, goodbye Butterfly!

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5) Thickness

The 2020 MacBook Air is actually thicker, at its thickest point, that the latest 13” MacBook Pro.

Interestingly enough, both models of the MacBook Pro are now thicker at 1.56cm, compared to the 1.5cm of the previous models. Fun fact, while the MacBook Air is much thinner at its thinnest point, measuring just 0.41cm, at its thickest point the Air is actually thicker than the Pro, measuring 1.61cm, compared to 1.56cm. Still, while the 13” Pro did get thicker this year, it is still noticeably thinner than the 16”, which measures 1.62cm. 

Fun fact number two, the new 2020 13” Pro is now thicker than the old 15” from 2019, which was 1.5cm thick. This thickness increase was made in order to accommodate the new Keyboard, which does have quite a bit more key travel. 

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6) Weight

On top of this, the new Pro is also heavier at 1.4kg, compared to the 1.29kg of the MacBook Air or the 2kg of the 16” MacBook Pro. However, the footprint is identical to what we had on the 2019 model. 

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7) Keyboard 

Speaking of the Keyboard, even though this now uses the old style Scissor-Switch mechanism, just like on the 2015 13” MacBook Pro, the Keyboard is quite a bit different.

We don’t get as much key travel, but the keys are way more stable than before. In a way, it’s sort of like the child of the Butterfly Keyboard and the old 2015 style Keyboards. I personally like it a lot and I can type so much faster from it, with way less typing errors than before. Speaking of that, if you do a lot of typing, the MacBook Air might be a much better choice.

Because of its wedge shape design, it is much more comfortable to type on as the Keyboard itself is at an angle, compared to the straight Keyboard of the MacBook Pro. 

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8) Escape & TouchID

We also get a dedicated Escape Key, which is really nice to have and the TouchID Sensor is now a bit raised, just like on the MacBook Air, to bring it in line with the taller Keyboard. 

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9) Smaller Trackpad

Another change that we get is in terms of the Trackpad, which is a tiny bit narrower than on the 2019 models. This is probably to prevent any accidental touches when typing. 

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10) Double the Storage

You can now get double the Storage, at a price of course.

Aside from this, we did get double the Storage on the baseline model, from 128GB, to 256GB, which is nice. Aside from that and the Keyboard, the baseline is identical to last year’s model. 

The high-end model also got double the Storage, by giving you 512GB, compared to 256GB and it also now gives you the option to bump that to 4TB of Storage, up from 2TB. The model with two Thunderbolt 3 Ports can only be configured up to 2TB. 

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11) RAM Amount 

Another difference that you should be aware of is that, while the two Port model can be configured to up to 16GB of RAM, the four Port model can now be configured to up to 32GB of RAM. This is thanks to the new Intel 10th Generation Processors, which support LPDDR4X Memory.

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12) RAM Speed

On top of that, while the two Thunderbolt Port model supports 2133MHz LPDDR3 Memory, the four Thunderbolt Port model supports much faster 3733MHz LPDDR4X Memory. So, if you’re into photo-editing, that faster RAM would come in handy. 

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13) CPU Differences

Ok, but what about the actual CPU? Is it really worth getting the Intel 10th Generation models or is the 8th Generation enough?

On Single-Core Performance, the 2020 13” out-does the 16”.

Well, we actually do get around a 35% faster Single Core performance on the 10th Generation model, which is not gigantic but it is a fair gain indeed. In fact, the 13” Pro with four thunderbolt 3 Ports, even the i5 model, now scores the highest in ‘Geekbench 5’. It’s higher than even the 16” MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro, so that’s very impressive.

If you’re mostly into simple tasks that only require one Single CPU Core, you’ll definitely notice an improvement. Multi-Core performance is up by close to 20%, so overall, we are indeed getting some pretty good gains by upgrading to the four Thunderbolt 3 Port model. 

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14) i5 vs i7

So, the real question here is, should you get the i5 version of the four Thunderbolt 3 Port model, or the i7?

Well, the difference between the two is pretty much negligible. While the i7 can boost up to 4.1GHz, compared to the 3.8GHz of the i5, it also has 8MB of L3 Cache, compared to 6MB. They’re both Quad-Core Processors and they’re both thermally restricted so they will never be able to sustain that turbo boost clock. This means that they are actually way more similar than you would think. 

If you plan on getting the four Thunderbolt 3 Port model, just stick with the i5. If you plan on getting the two Thunderbolt 3 Port model, it’s same story here, just stick with the base CPU. 

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15) Graphics

Something that is a pretty big difference, are the Graphics. First of all, none of these have Dedicated Graphics. If you need a high-end GPU for intensive video editing, 3D modelling or even gaming, just go with the 16” Pro instead. 

Now, while the baseline model still gets the Intel Iris Plus Graphics 645, the four Thunderbolt 3 Port model gets the new Intel Iris Plus G7 Graphics, which is the highest-end Integrated Graphics that Intel make. This new Integrated GPU features improved Video Encoding and 64 Execution Units, compared to 48.  This means a pretty big boost in graphical performance in gaming and video editing. So, if you care about any of those, the four Thunderbolt 3 Port model is much better. 

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16) 6K Support

Also, thanks to these new Graphics, the new 10th Generation Intel Processor and a tweaked Thunderbolt 3 interface, the four Port model can now drive a 6K Display, such as the Apple Pro Display XDR. The two Thunderbolt 3 Port model can only drive up to 5K Resolution. 

Not only that, but even the new 2020 MacBook Air, which also comes with 10th Generation Intel Processors, can drive a 6K Display, whereas the baseline 2020 MacBook Pro cannot. 

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17) VS MacBook Air 

The TouchBar isn’t for everyone, but I actually quite like it.

In that case, you might be wondering, isn’t a 2020 MacBook Air just better than the 2020 MacBook Pro? Well, not really. You see, while you do technically get a faster Processor and even G7 Graphics, the Fan on the MacBook Air isn’t connected to the CPU’s Heatsink. In English, the MacBook Air is like a high-speed car that slows down considerably after 2-3 seconds, just to cool itself down. However, the MacBook Pro, even the baseline, doesn’t have this issue at all. 

So, for very simple tasks such as web-browsing or emailing, the MacBook Air would indeed be better than the baseline MacBook Pro, once you do anything more intensive than that, the Pro will be able to sustain those higher clock-speeds for much longer. Also, the Pro does have a DCI-P3 Display, which makes it much better for photo or video editing. We also have the TouchBar, which some people like and some don’t. I do like it, so I’d rather have it included than not have it at all. 

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18) Cooling 

Speaking of that Cooling, there is actually a pretty big difference between the baseline MacBook Pro and the high-end model. The two Thunderbolt 3 Port model only comes with a single Cooling Fan, while the four Port model comes with two Fans. This not only means that the four Port model will run cooler, but it will also be quicker as those two Fans don’t have to spin as fast as that single Fan. So again, if you plan on doing anything more intensive, go for the four Port model. 

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19) Old WiFi

Something that I was very surprised to see, is that none of the models come with WiFi 6. In fact, not even the MacBook Air comes with it, meaning that no Macs to this day come with WiFi 6. Instead, they all come with the previous Generation WiFi 5 (or WiFi 802.11ac), which was introduced back in 2013.

This means that you will get slower WiFi speeds than on other 2020 or even 2019 Windows Laptops. What is very strange here is that the new iPhone 11’s, as well as the new iPad Pro 2020, both feature WiFi 6. It’s just Macs that Apple decided to leave it out of. Here’s a fun fact, Intel actually embedded WiFi 6 support onto their 10th Generation Processors. Now, the Chips that Intel made for Apple are exclusive to Apple, meaning that Apple had to intentionally tell Intel to remove the WiFi 6 functionality from their Chips.

My guess is that they’ve done this in order to keep the cost low as we do know that Intel does charge significantly more for their 10th Generation Processors, when compared to the 8th Generation. That could be the reason why Apple managed to double the Storage that they offered, which at the end of the day, for the end-user, is way more important than faster WiFi. 

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20) Webcam

Something else that Apple hasn’t changed, is the Camera. We still get a 720p Webcam, which is pretty much a joke when compared to the 4K 60FPS Front Camera that we get with the new iPhones.

I know that the Display of a MacBook is much thinner than a Smartphone, but Apple could’ve at least added a 1080p Camera, like many other Windows Laptop manufactures have done. 

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21) Microphones & Speakers 

On paper, you shouldn’t notice any difference between either model…

The Microphones and the Speakers of these two models of the MacBook Pro are identical, at least from what Apple states on their website.

However, some Reviewers, such as Max-Tech, did tests and found out that the four Thunderbolt 3 Port model actually does indeed have noticeably better Speakers. In fact, the MacBook Air 2020 now has more Bass than the baseline 13” MacBook Pro. 

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22) Base 13 vs Base Air

If you’re debating between the base Air and the base 13” Pro, for most people I would say that the base Air is more than enough. But for $300 more, the base Pro does give you a better Display that’s brighter and more colourful, you also get a TouchBar and better performance under load. But, the Air is a tiny bit lighter and thinner and also has a one hour longer Battery.  So it’s really up to what you need the most. 

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23) High-End 13” vs 16”

Now, if you plan on going for the four Thunderbolt 3 Port model, this is where it gets tricky. It does cost $1800, but the moment you upgrade anything on that, you’re already better off with the baseline $2400 16” MacBook Pro. This offers you a much more powerful Six-Core Processor, a larger Display, better Battery Life and a Dedicated GPU for a massive boost in GPU performance.

So, if you plan on doing any serious work, in terms of video editing, 3D modelling or programming, just get the 16” MacBook Pro. It is significantly larger and heavier, but you do get an even bigger difference in performance. 

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24) 14 Inch is Coming

For me, this MacBook Pro is almost perfect. If only it had a larger 14” Display and thinner Bezels just like Apple did with the 16” MacBook Pro. Even though we’ve seen loads of leaks & rumors on this upcoming MacBook Pro 14” this is still pretty much the exact same design.

However, recent rumors are saying that the new 14” has been pushed into 2021, so if you were on the fence about buying a new 13” Pro, it is unlikely that we’ll see another update this year.

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25) I might switch

Finally, I might actually be switching to it. You see, I don’t edit videos anymore and the most intensive task that I do is Photoshop and Lightroom, which I don’t even do on a daily basis. The 13” Pro is perfect for me, especially on the go. The only question is, can it run my 5K Monitor and my 4K setup?

Find that out and much more, in the Full Review, which is coming out very soon!

MacBook Air (2020) - Full In-Depth Review! (After 3+ Weeks of Use)

Every few years, every few decades, there is this one product that completely changes everything. A product that’s so new, so innovative that it breaks the boundaries of what we believed was even possible, one of those products was…the MacBook Air.

Originally introduced back in 2008, the MacBook Air was the thinnest Laptop in the world. It was so thin, that Steve Jobs even took it out of an envelope and the audience was amazed! Not only that, but the MacBook Air ended up giving birth to the UltraBook category of Laptops that we have now. Those very thin, light and portable Laptops that tens of millions of people own. 

Aside from being extremely thin, the original MacBook Air was extremely innovative in many other ways. It had a multi-touch Trackpad that supported the same gestures as the iPhone that was introduced a year prior. Gestures such as pinch to zoom, rotating a photo with two fingers, swiping with three fingers from one Home-Screen to another and much more. It removed the Disc Drive and featured the smallest HDD ever, in a Laptop, alongside the ability to upgrade that to a Solid-State-Drive, making the MacBook Air the world’s first Laptop to come with Flash Storage. 

An iconic reveal for an iconic device.

However, the First Generation MacBook Air was flawed. The low power Intel Core 2 Duo Processor and that painfully slow 4200rpm, 80GB HDD alongside the lack of any Ports aside from a single USB 2.0 Port, a micro-DVI Port and a 3.5mm Headphone Jack made it quite unpopular at first. All that and the insanely high $1800 starting price point, which back in 2008, that was a lot. Then, just two years later in 2010, Apple released the Second Generation MacBook Air. 

This one featured a new tampered design without a pop-out slot for the Ports. It added a second USB Port on the other side, it dramatically improved the performance, thanks to Intel’s new Core 2 Duo Processors. Also, Apple now included Solid State Storage as standard on all models of this MacBook Air and dropped the price by $500, bringing it down to $1300. Not only that, but Apple also released a smaller 11-inch model, which I actually happened to have, a few years ago. This generation, the Second Generation design, was what Apple sold for the next eight years, up until 2018. I mean sure, we did get improvements in terms of performance and higher capacity Storage options, but the design has remained unchanged.

But then in 2018, we got the big new Third Generation, which finally updated the design to bring it in line with the MacBook Pro’s, which got a big update in 2016. The 12” MacBook, which was re-introduced in 2015, with that space grey thin design, sparked this new generation of MacBooks. This was the biggest update that the MacBook Air line has ever received as we finally got a Retina Display, that Butterfly Keyboard from the MacBook Pro’s, which ended up being very controversial, and we also got multiple colour options such as Space Grey & Gold, aside from just Silver. In 2019, we got a very small update to the 2018 model, with a slightly improved Butterfly Keyboard mechanism and a True Tone Display, but that was mostly it.

Now, we have the 2020 model, which I’ve been using for quite a few weeks now and I’m very comfortable giving you my full In-Depth Review on it. This was a pretty long intro, so without any further ado, here is my In-Depth MacBook Air 2020 Review, covering the Design, Display, Keyboard & Trackpad, Camera, Microphone & Speakers, Performance, Battery Life and finally, Value!

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Design

Starting off with the design, I have to say, Apple Laptops are definitely my favourite and the MacBook Air is no exception. Just like the 2018 model, it is made out of a single piece of Aluminium and it comes in three colours, which are Space Grey (the one that we have) as well as Silver and Gold. If you’re planning on keeping your MacBook Air for many years, you should be aware that the Space Grey and the Gold colours have coatings on top of the Silver Aluminium. This means that if they scuff, they will reveal the Silver underneath it. Therefore, the Silver model is the most durable over-time. I’ve always taken really good care of my MacBooks and I only have a few minor scuffs on my 2015 12” MacBook and my 2017 MacBook Pro but, if you do want to get the Space Grey model, and you take very good care of it, you should be fine.

The MacBook Air still features the same teardrop shape design, where the Body gets thinner towards the front and thicker towards the back, with pretty much no body flex at all. This is really one of the sturdiest Laptops that I have ever seen. It’s pretty much a tank in terms of Build Quality,  nothing to complain about here.

For a Device with ‘Air’ in the name, this is pretty bulky.

But, something that definitely shocked me when I took it out of the box, was just how heavy it was. I’m coming from a 15” 2019 MacBook Pro, and I’ve used a 12” MacBook for years before that as a secondary MacBook, and the MacBook Air is very heavy compared to the 12”. It’s 1.29kg, compared to the 0.92kg of the 12” MacBook. So, if you’re coming from a 12” MacBook, the MacBook Air will feel extremely heavy. If you’re coming from a MacBook Pro 13”, you probably won’t even be able to tell the weight difference as the MacBook Pro 13” weighs 1.37kg, so they’re both extremely similar. So, while the MacBook Air is currently the lightest Laptop that Apple sells, as the 12” MacBook got discontinued, it is not as light as you would expect it to be, considering its’ ‘Air’ branding. Also, fun fact, the 2020 MacBook Air is now 40 grams heavier than the 2018 and 2019 models. 

Fun fact number two, the 2020 MacBook Air is also thicker this year, coming in at 1.61cm at its thickest point, compared to 1.55cm like the 2018 and 2019 models were.  I’ll explain why the 2020 MacBook Air is thicker and heavier, later on.

But overall, design wise, I am extremely impressed. My only two complaints here is that I wish the MacBook Air was lighter and the Bezels were thinner. When comparing the MacBook Air against something like a Dell XPS 13,  there’s a gigantic difference in terms of the Bezel sizes. The MacBook Air looks more like a 2016 Laptop, than a 2020 one. I really do hope that Apple updates the Bezels with the next model, because it’s already starting to look quite outdated. 

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Display

Speaking of the Bezels, let’s talk about the Display. We have a 13.3” Display, which is very comparable to a lot of Windows Laptops. But, we do have a 16:10 Aspect Ratio, meaning that the MacBook Air, just like all the other MacBooks, has a taller Display compared to most Windows Laptops. I absolutely love this. Having more vertical screen-real estate is great for reading articles or for when you’re writing text. Some Windows Laptops, like Microsoft’s Surface Laptops or the new Dell XPS 13”, have started adding a 16:10 Aspect Ratio, but most manufacturers unfortunately didn’t.

The MacBook Air hits that sweet spot, in terms of the Display.

In terms of Resolution, we have a 2560x1600 Resolution Display, which at 227 PPI, I cannot see any Pixels on this from the regular viewing distance. It’s an incredibly sharp Display, text looks like printed paper, it’s just a joy to look at. On the Windows side, we don’t really have Laptops with a 2K Display, it’s usually either 1080p or 4K. I find that 4K is overkill for Laptops. They’re very sharp, but 4K consumes a lot of power and the Sharpness from the regular viewing distance is almost the same as 2K. With 1080p, it does offer the most Battery Life, but I can easily tell that the Display isn’t as sharp and text is a bit too blurry for me, on a 1080p 13” Display. So, 2K is definitely the sweet-spot here and I really do hope that more manufacturers start adding such Displays, even on the Windows side as well.

Colour wise, we have 93.3% sRGB coverage, and 70.8% DCIP3 % coverage. While this is actually very good for a Laptop and one of the very best Displays on any Laptop out right now, if you’re into video editing or photo editing and you need the most colour accurate Display, just get a MacBook Pro instead. MacBook Pro’s have 100% sRGB coverage and 98.9% DCI P3 coverage, meaning that they can display about 30% more colours than the MacBook Air.

Now, I’m not saying that you cannot edit video or photos on the MacBook Air at all, you can definitely do that without any issues. But, if photo or video editing is what you do on a daily basis, then I would look at something like a MacBook Pro, just because of that even wider Colour Gamut.

The MacBook Air has just over 400 Nits of Brightness, compared to 500 Nits on the MacBook Pro or 600 Nits on the 2018 and 2020 iPad Pro’s. Now, while that is still a very high number and one of the highest on any Laptop out there (most Laptops have around 350 Nits of Brightness), again, if you’re into photo editing and you need a brighter Display or you just like working outdoors a lot, then a MacBook Pro is a better choice. But, when indoors and in most cases, 400 Nits is more than enough for me. I almost never even max out the Brightness.

Finally, the MacBook Air also features a True Tone Display. Essentially, if you enable this in the Settings, the White Point of the Display will automatically match the light around you. Just like a piece of paper, if the lights in your room are yellow, the Display will turn yellow to match that light, making it very easy on the eyes for when you’re reading or writing. I do have to manually disable this setting every single time I want to edit a photo or a video, as I do want to preserve the colour accuracy. It does get a bit annoying having to constantly remember to do that every time you want to do any colour work. I wish Apple had True Tone automatic so that it turns off when you open up Final Cut or Photoshop. 

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Keyboard & Trackpad

Now, the third very important part of any Laptop, for me, is the Keyboard & Trackpad. I am very glad to say that the Keyboard has finally been improved, or should I say, completely replaced.

The troubled Butterfly Keyboard is gone, which Apple introduced with the 12” MacBook in 2015, then the MacBook Pro’s in 2016 and the MacBook Air in 2018. That Keyboard was flawed from the very start. It had almost no key travel, so it was very difficult typing on it and it broke extremely easily. Apple ended up being sued multiple times, you probably know that whole story already.

The really good news here is that we get the same Keyboard as on the new 16” MacBook Pro. This is a more standard Scissor Switch Keyboard, very similar to what we had on the Second Generation MacBook Air from 2010. The only difference being that the keys are now even more stable and they feel even better to type on, compared to the Second Generation MacBook Air.  In fact, the entire 12 page Review video was fully scripted on my MacBook Air. I even scripted a few other videos on it, including the OnePlus 8 Pro Experience and about three or four more recent videos. I have to say, the typing experience on this MacBook Air is the best I have ever had on any Laptop, even better than on the 16” MacBook Pro.

A very notable improvement, with a slightly less notable Fingerprint Reader

The fact that the entire MacBook is much smaller than the 16” Pro, you don’t have this massive board of Aluminium which you’re resting your palms on. Instead, you’re typing on the entire Laptop, if you know what I mean, rather than typing on a Keyboard that’s inside a gigantic Laptop. It just feels much more comfortable. Also, the fact that you have this teardrop/tapered design makes it so much more comfortable to type on as not only is the Keyboard angled when you type on it, but it doesn’t feel as sharp and raised on your wrists as a MacBook Pro does.

Also, the arrow keys are now back to being that inverted ’T’ shape. Funnily enough, the only thing that I miss about the Keyboard from my 15” 2019 MacBook Pro, is the Touchbar. Yes, I do miss having it. I mostly used it in Word for changing some text presets or for quickly adjusting the Volume or the Brightness. I wasn’t using it a lot, but now that I don’t have it anymore, I do kind of miss it. Luckily, we do have a Fingerprint Reader built into the Power Button, which is a bit recessed compared to the rest of the keys, but other than that, I really have no complaints.

The Trackpad is outstanding as well. Trackpads on Macs have always been the best ones in the industry and this is no exception. It is a bit smaller than on the 13” MacBook Pro and way smaller than on the 15” or 16” models, but it’s still larger than on most Windows Laptops. It uses a Haptic Motor underneath it, so the Trackpad doesn’t click but that Haptic Engine gives you the impression that you pressed it, even though the glass itself doesn’t move.

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Camera, Microphones & Speakers 

The 2020 Air has the same Camera as the 2018 model. It’s a 720p Camera, which is far inferior to the iPad or the iPhone Camera.  I know the screen is pretty thin but Apple could’ve still added a 1080p Camera there. The quality just isn’t great.

The Microphones have been improved as we now get a Three-Mic Array with Beam-Forming. The Speakers have a deeper bass as well as support for Dolby Atmos Playback.

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Performance 

Now, we get to move to the Performance section. This is where I have the most to say as, aside from the Keyboard upgrade, this is where the other big changes are.

First off, the 2020 MacBook Air is Apple’s first Mac to move onto Intel’s new 10th Generation Processors. They actually got released in September of last year, so not that new. Anyway,  we get a 10th Generation i3, i5 and i7 mode but, don’t be fooled, this is not comparable in any way to a Desktop Class i3, i5 or i7, or even a MacBook Pro’s i3, i5 and i7.  These are all Intel’s Low Powered Y Series Processors and in fact, these Chips are basically the successor to Intel’s Core M Processors, found in the 12” MacBook from back in 2015. These are all some very low power 10w Processors that don’t even require a Fan.

The big change this year is that we do get Four Cores in a MacBook Air, something that only the 15” models used to have back in the day and something that the 13” Pro added in 2018. But, if you do want the Quad-Core CPU models, those are the i5 and the i7 but not the i3. The i3 is still Dual-Core, this is the one that I have.

So which one is right for you, and should you pay extra for the i5 and the i7 models? Well, I’ll tell you straight away, don’t buy the i7 model. The performance difference between the i5 and the i7 is almost nothing, you basically get the exact same experience, for $150 less. The real question is, should you get the Dual Core i3 model or upgrade to the Quad-Core i5 model instead? 

The 2020 model looks to perform very well (on paper).

Well, performance has indeed been improved from the 2019 and 2018 models, even on the base i3 model, and the Single Core performance between the two is almost identical. In fact, the MacBook Air actually scores the highest, in Single Core performance, compared to all the other Macs out there, including the 16” MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro. If you do a lot of Single Core tasks, such as word processing, browsing the web or even watching YouTube videos, you’re better off with the Dual Core i3 model as the Battery Life would actually last you longer on that one.

But if you do want to future proof it and maybe use it for a few more years, or you’re just someone that’s a bit more demanding in terms of what you do on your Laptop, I highly recommend getting the i5 model. You not only get two extra Cores for much higher Multi-Core performance, but you also get a much more powerful GPU. This is the G7 variant of the Iris Plus Graphics, which is noticeably more powerful than the G4 that you get with the i3 model. The i7 also has the G7 GPU, in case you’re wondering. 

Now, something that does directly affect GPU performance, is the amount of RAM. As Intel’s Integrated GPU uses part of your RAM as Shared Video Memory. The more RAM you have, the more memory the GPU will also have, and the better overall performance you’ll get. I highly recommend upgrading to 16GB of RAM. Mine only had 8GB of RAM and my usage was pretty much maxing that out all of the time. This meant that the system felt a bit sluggish most of the time, even when I was just scripting and had a few pages open in Safari. So, 16GB of RAM is a must. Upgrading to the i5 over the i3 isn’t a must but I would suggest that as well, if you plan on using this for more than three years. 

The RAM has had a massive boost.

The MacBook Air now has the fastest RAM that Apple has ever put in a MacBook, this is now 3733MHz RAM, compared to the 2133MHz RAM that the 2019 MacBook Air had, or the 2666MHz that the MacBook Pro has.

By now you’re all probably wondering, how does the new MacBook Air compare to the 13” MacBook Pro? We do get what looks to be faster Processors than the Pro, we also get a much better GPU and we also get much faster RAM.

Well, I’m sorry to break it to you, but the MacBook Pro 13” is still far more powerful than the MacBook Air. Ironically, this is not because of the components, which are indeed more powerful on the MacBook Air, but because of Cooling. The MacBook Air only has one single Fan for Cooling, whereas the MacBook Pro 13” can have two Fans, if you go for the higher end model with four Thunderbolt 3 Ports. That one Fan on the MacBook Air isn’t even connected to the CPU’s Heatsink. Instead, it just randomly sits there inside the Case, as if it got disconnected and fell, because of this, thermals on this Laptop are bad. 

Whenever you’re doing something more intensive, such as video editing, the CPU gets as hot as 100 degrees on the MacBook Air, that Fan doesn’t seem to help at all and the performance takes a big hit. 

It doesn’t actually throttle, as the Clocks still remain above the base 1.1 GHz Clock on both the i3 and the i5, but it gets very close to that number when you’re doing some very intensive tasks, rather than staying at the Turbo Boost of 3.2 or 3.5GHz. This is the only reason why the MacBook Pro 13” can outperform it. 

So, why has Apple done such a thing? Why is Apple intentionally limiting the thermal performance of the MacBook Air? Is it so that you upgrade to the 13” Pro? Not necessarily.

A view from the inside.

You see, the Y series Processor that is inside the MacBook Air is actually a Fan-less design, whereas the U series Processor that is inside the 13” MacBook Pro, is not. As per Intel’s own recommendations, the MacBook Air doesn’t actually need a Fan at all, whereas the Pro does. When Apple updated the MacBook Air in 2018 with the Third Generation design, they didn’t even have to include a Fan at all, because this is the same CPU design as the Intel Core M inside the 12” MacBook, which didn’t even have a Fan at all. But Apple decided to include a Fan in the MacBook Air, just for the sake of longevity. When Intel added two more Cores and therefore more heat, Apple decided to just stick with the same Cooling as they had the year prior.

So if you plan on doing any video or photo editing, the MacBook Air can easily handle that, even 4K video editing for that matter. It’s just that the export times would be much longer compared to a 13” MacBook Pro or not even to mention a 15” or a 16” model. If this is something you do on a daily basis, just don’t buy the MacBook Air, get a MacBook Pro instead. If it’s just occasional photo and video editing that you do, the MacBook Air can still handle that quite well.

So, what about gaming? First off, don’t buy a Mac for gaming and secondly, if you do buy a Mac for gaming, don’t buy the MacBook Air. It’s literally the worst option, for gaming, out of all the Macs that Apple sell. Again, even if the GPU is far more powerful than on the 13” Pro, because of that Fan not being connected to the Heatsink, gaming performance is pretty bad on the Air. You can play some very lightweight games such as Hearthstone, but when it comes to even Fortnite or most of the SteamGames, which are actually 32-bit games and are no longer supported, you’re out of luck.

Something that I do like a lot about the MacBook Air is that it comes with two Thunderbolt 3 Ports. Thunderbolt 3 is the fastest Port on any consumer device out there right now, with speeds of up to 40Gb/s or 5GB/s.

Gaming on a Mac? We don’t recommend it.

You can not only use this to connect to Thunderbolt 3 Docks, which gives you a ton of extra Ports by just using a single Thunderbolt 3 Cable, but you can also use it to connect to a 5K Monitor, two 4K Monitors or even one 6K Monitor.  The MacBook Air does support Apple’s Pro Display XDR at full Resolution, something that ironically, not even the iMac Pro supports. This is because the iMac Pro is using an older Thunderbolt 3 Controller. 

You can also use Thunderbolt to connect an External GPU for some incredible GPU performance, which won’t be throttled. In this case you might be wondering, what’s the gaming and video editing performance?

Well, in Fortnite for example, on Native Resolution & Medium Settings, the MacBook Air was averaging around 10fps. With an eGPU attached, a Vega 64 in this case, we were getting around 60fps on average. So a pretty big difference. In FCP X for example, exporting our Blind Camera Comparison, took 1h:15min without an eGPU and just 22 minutes, with the Vega 64 eGPU attached. This was with the eGPU connected directly to the MacBook Air. If you connect it to a Monitor first and then to the Air, you would get even higher performance. 

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Battery Life

What about the Battery Life? Well, Apple actually dropped the Battery Life from 12 hours, which is what we had in 2019 and 2018, to 11 hours.

The Battery is actually the exact same size as last year, 49.9 Watt-Hour. The increase in the thickness is only due to the Keyboard, which needed more space to travel and then, because the body got thicker, it also increased the weight. In terms of how much of those 11 hours I got, I personally only got about five to seven hours, seven hours at most.

My use case scenario on the MacBook Air was pretty light. I used it mostly for scripting & researching, so I had about 20 Tabs open all the time. I did a tiny bit of Photoshop work and I also had Slack open, which consumes a lot of Battery. With this use case scenario, I got about 6 hours on average. 

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Value 

In the end, is the MacBook Air 2020 worth it? Well, let’s see. 

Compared to the 2019 model, we get a Quad-Core Processor option, we get a better GPU and a much better Keyboard. We also get 256GB of Storage on the baseline model, compared to 128GB like we got before. You get all of this for $100 less. The new MacBook Air starts from $1000, or £1000 in the UK. This is indeed for the Dual-Core model, the Quad-Core is $100 more, but there you go, the MacBook Air was never a better deal that it is now. 

So, for any casual user, I would highly recommend it. For people that want something more powerful and much better for regular photo and video editing, definitely consider the 13” Pro but don’t get one right now, because there will be a newer model, with that updated keyboard, coming out very very soon. So hold off for that model instead.

That 14” MacBook Pro that we’ve seen rumoured is likely to get released by June. If that is indeed the case, I might be upgrading, or downgrading, depending on how you put it, from my Eight-Core 2019 15”. 

iPad Pro (2020) & MacBook Air (2020) – 25 Things You NEED to KNOW!

Apple has unveiled two new products. A brand new iPad Pro and a new MacBook Air. It would technically be three if you included the storage bump on the Mac Mini, but we’re not counting that. In this article we want to cover some interesting facts that you should know about both of these new Apple releases.

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1) We Had It!

We actually made this video back in September 2019, showing you a mockup of the 2020 iPad Pro. We showed you the Triple Lens Camera Module on the back. It was smaller than what it ended up being on the 2020 Model, but the main idea was indeed there. That iPad was supposed to be released in October or November 2019 but for reasons that we’re not aware of, it did end up getting delayed. But we do have it now, so here’s a few more interesting facts! 

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2) 16” MacBook Pro Keyboard 

The Smart Keyboard on the previous model left a lot to be desired

The biggest update that we got, by far, is this brand new Magic Keyboard. From the looks of it, this now replaces the existing Smart Keyboard for the iPad Pro and is pretty much what will bring the iPad Pro closer to an actual laptop. Also, it has actual keys. These are 16” MacBook Pro style keys, with a good key travel, unlike the current Smart Keyboard which have those mushy micro-fibre textured keys. So typing on this should be a significantly better experience. We’re really looking forward to that! 

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3) Trackpad Support

This new Magic Keyboard also now has a trackpad which fully works in iPadOS! It supports gestures, just like in macOS, but more importantly, it is also a dynamic cursor. So, unlike on Mac or Windows where you have this arrow all the time, on iPadOS, the cursor will automatically adapt to what’s being displayed on the screen. So, if you have menu buttons, the cursor will turn into a selection box for those buttons. Pretty cool!

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4) Floating iPad

We think that the coolest thing here is that the iPad attaches magnetically to this top portion of the keyboard. So it essentially floats.

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5) Adjustable Angle

Something that we didn’t have with the previous Smart Keyboards were adjustable angles. The 1st gen had none, the 2nd gen had two but now with the new Magic Keyboard, it seems like we can adjust the iPad at almost any angle up to 130 degrees, which makes it way more similar to an actual MacBook.

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6) Backlit Keys

Apple has released a TV ad for the iPad and the keyboard and it seems that the keyboard is even backlit. Again, just like on the Macs, you can see the keys at night!

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7) USB-C 

Finally, the last thing that I want to mention regarding this keyboard, is that it also has a USB C Port for charging. Since this is on the side, it makes charging the iPad Pro much easier than attaching a cable to the floating iPad’s body. This USB C Port connects to the iPad, via the Smart Connector, which means that you still have the second USB C port on the actual iPad, free to use. Just as a bonus one, the keyboard case even has an horizontal Apple logo on it, that once again, makes it even more similar to the Macs. 

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8) LiDAR

Now, aside from the Magic Keyboard, which will be sold separately and will only be available starting May. The second biggest upgrade that we got is the new LiDAR scanner. Long story short, this is indeed that 3D ToF camera that we’ve seen reported before. This heavily improves the AR experience.

Apple claims that AR objects will now appear instantly and that realistic object occlusion, where AR objects can pass in front of, or behind real objects is now further improved and that motion capture and people occlusion is now more accurate than ever.  We’ve made a recent video on the upcoming Apple Glasses so definitely do give that a watch, because this 3D Mapping technology will be used in the 2020 iPhones as well as Apple’s upcoming AR Glasses. 

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9) Different Cameras

You’ve probably noticed that on the back of this new iPad, we now have a triple lens camera module (Right). So one of those lenses is that LiDAR sensor that I mentioned. The second one is a 12MP f/1.8 module, which still has no Optical Image Stabilisation, while the third module is now an Ultra-Wide Module. However, unlike the Ultra-Wide Module on the iPhone 11 and the 11 Pro’s, this one is only a 10MP module, compared to 12MP and it has a 125 degree Field of View compared to 120, so it’s actually wider.

Interesting enough, Apple does claim that it does have 2x Optical Zoom and 5x Digital Zoom, however this would actually just be all digital, as there is no Telephoto Module.

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10) A12Z

Something that I was very surprised to see is that instead of this iPad featuring Apple’s A13X processor, like it should’ve, it features a new A12Z chip. The A12X was introduced back in late 2018, a year and a half ago. So, from the looks of it, it seems that Apple didn’t get the chance to get the Apple A13X ready in time, for whatever reason, and decided to stick with pretty much the same chip as in 2018, just with some very small performance improvements. One of this improvements being that we now get 8 GPU cores, up from 7 that we had with the A12X. That chip however (the A12X), was still way more than most people needed, and it is still Apple’s most powerful mobile chip. So, no need to be worried that this will be slow.

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11) RAM

Speaking of specs, we now have 6GB of RAM, up from the 4GB that we got with the previous model. With the 2018 iPad Pro, if you bought the highest capacity 1TB model, you would actually get 6GB of RAM, but the rest of the models only had 4GB. Now it’s 6GB all across the board. 

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12) U1

On top of this, we also get the new U1 Chip, the Ultra-Wide Band Position Chip, that the new iPhones also got. This will be very useful for those new Apple tile-like trackers, which should launch at some point this year as well. Essentially, this Chip allows the iPad to very accurately locate other devices that also have that U1 hip. The tile-like trackers are also said to come with the U1. 

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13) Studio Microphones

Apple has also improved the microphones in the new iPad. We now have five studio quality microphones, which should sound close to what we get with the new 16” MacBook Pro, when it comes to microphone quality. 

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14) Expensive Keyboard

Now, if you want to buy that really cool keyboard that I was talking about before, it turns out that it will also be quite expensive. It will cost you $300 for the 11” iPad Pro or $350 for the 12.9” iPad Pro. Unfortunately, Apple is again applying a 1:1 conversion to the UK, so here it’s still £300 or £350. Apple is out ripping people off outside of the US again.

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15) WiFi 6 

But hey, at least we do get WiFi 6, the next generation of WiFi standard. This is something that we don’t even get with the 16” MacBook Pro. The iPhone 11’s do at least have it. 

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16) Wait until November!

Source: MacRumours

If you need a new iPad Pro but you’re not fully sure about this one, I would suggest waiting until November because that’s when we would be getting…another iPad Pro! We’ve had many reports that Apple will be launching two iPad Pro’s this year, one in March and one in November.

The November one would actually be the bigger upgrade, as that will be adding 5G, the new Apple A14X processor with some very big performance gains as well as (possibly) that brand new miniLED display that Ming-Chi Kuo talked about. This would be a massive upgrade in terms of the display quality, thanks to local dimming, it will be similar to OLED when it comes to black levels. Not as good but much better than what we have now.

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17) MacBook Air Keyboard

Aside from this iPad Pro, we also got a new MacBook Air which is actually a pretty nice upgrade over the previous 2018 model. The biggest upgrade being the keyboard, which is now the same scissor switch keyboard mechanism that we got with the 16” MacBook Pro, which had the same keyboard mechanism as the old pre 2016 MacBook Pro’s. 

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18) Quad Core 

The second biggest upgrade is the performance. We now get Intel’s 10th Generation Processors, up from the 8th Gen and the biggest news here is that you can configure the Air with up to an i7 Quad-Core Processor. But, don’t get fooled! These are Intel’s Y series Processors, their most power efficient chips. So even though this is a 1.2GHz quad core CPU that can turbo boost to 3.8GHz, it still doesn’t compare to the U Series that we get in the MacBook Pro 13” or anything else. It’s quite a bit less powerful.  But at least we do get two extra cores, for double the performance compared to the previous model. 

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19) Gen11 Graphics

The new MacBook Air also features Intel’s brand new Gen11 Graphics. Not only that, but we also get Intel Iris Plus Graphics as standard, up from the Intel UHD 617, which means that we get 80% faster graphical performance, a pretty massive jump in the GPU too.

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20) Much faster RAM

RAM speed is also improved. We still get up to 16GB of RAM but, thanks to the 10th generation Intel processor, we now get LPDDR4X memory, up from LPDDR3. This means that we also get significantly faster speeds of 3733MHz, up from 2133MHz. This is a gigantic upgrade. 

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21) 6K Support

If you randomly have Apple’s Pro Display XDR lying around, well the MacBook Air now supports it in Full Resolution, thanks to the new Thunderbolt Controller and the more powerful GPU. Ironically, if you have an iMac Pro 2017, that one does not support Apple’s 6K display.

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22) Improved Speakers

The new MacBook Air also comes with improved speakers. Not only do they have Wider Stereo sound now, but they also support Dolby Atmos, so they should sound much closer to what we get in the 13” MacBook Pro.

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23) Microphones

While we don’t get studio quality microphones, we do get a 3-microphone array now, with Directional Beamforming. 

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24) No WiFi 6

Something that we don’t get unfortunately, is WiFi 6. We still have the old WiFi 5 standard, which is very odd because Intel’s 10th generation processors actually do support WiFI 6 natively. This means that Apple has intentionally told Intel to leave it out of their custom designed chips, those chips are specifically made for just Apple at this point as Apple likely wanted to promote WiFi 6 as just a feature that’s coming in the new MacBook Pro’s. 

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25) Price Drop! 

A welcome bump in storage, an even more welcome drop in price.

However, something that I was very happy to see, what that in-spite of all of the upgrades that we got, Apple actually dropped the price for this MacBook Air. Previously, it used to start at $1100, but now it dropped to $1000. Not only that, but the baseline storage is now 256GB, up from 128GB, so you’re also getting double the storage for a lower price. 

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26) Display vs Pro

Unfortunately, even though the MacBook Air seems like the perfect laptop, for me at least, it is not.  The main reason being the display. While this is indeed a Retina display, it is only a 300-400 nit display, compared to the 500 nit display of a MacBook Pro. It also lacks a DCI-P3 color gamut, which means that if you plan on doing any video or photo work, the MacBook Pro is still a much better choice!

MacBook Pro 16" - My Thoughts

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So you’re probably wondering why this is only coming out now, well that’s because this was completely out of stock in the UK, even from day one all the configurations were out of stock. However, we finally have it and this is my live unboxing and reaction to the 16” MacBook Pro!

There is a bit more to this in the video so I would recommend watching that for further insights, the article below is just some overview thoughts.

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The first thing that I want to cover here is just how close this MacBook Pro looks and feels like, to the 2012 Retina generation of MacBook Pros.

In terms of the dimensions it’s 1.62cm thick compared to the 1.8cm that the 2012 Retina MacBook Pro’s were or 1.55cm that the 15” 2016 generation was. It’s 35.79cm wide compared to 35.89 on the 2012 model, and 34.93 on the 2016 generation. And it’s  also 24.59cm tall compared to 24.71cm on the 2012 model and 24.07 on the 15” 2016 model. Finally, it’s quite heavy, at 2kg compared to 2.02kg of the 2012 model and 1.83kg on the 15” 2016 model. So if you weren’t that bothered by the size and the weight of the Retina Generation of MacBooks from 2012-2015 then this would be perfect for you. But in my case, I do need something that’s more portable and easy to carry around, so for my use case scenario, this 16” is actually a downgrade. 

The new keys on the 16” have more travel but less stability

Now, when it comes to the keyboard, it feels great! Finally feels like a regular keyboard that you would get in a laptop todays, and It’s got a very similar typing experience to the 2012-2015 generation of MacBook Pros. This is because it uses the same scissor mechanism switches, rather than the butterfly switches. This does mean that the keys themselves are not as stable as the butterfly switches, so they do have more wobble to them, but they feel so much better than the butterfly switches, when it comes to key travel and overall typing experience. I’m happy to say that the keyboard is finally fixed! It’s just that, Apple should’ve done in 2017, with the 2017 MacBook Pro, after the huge backlash that the 2016 models got, rather than wait until the end of 2019.

Now, when it comes to the display it’s slightly larger now, 16” from 15.4” but the size difference isn’t as noticeable as I expected, so the 15” is still fine in terms of display size. However, what I have noticed is that going back to my 15”, the bezels looked gigantic, even though the 16” only had slightly thinner bezels on the sides and top, it did make the 15” look ancient. I do like the fact that you can adjust the refresh rate, which is useful for professional video workflows. In addition, we also get a slightly higher resolution display now of 3072x1920 up from 2880x1800, this means we also get a slight PPI bump to 226 from 220, but that difference is so small that you won’t even notice it.

Where you will notice a difference is in terms of Retina scaling. We now have a default scaling of 1792x1120 up from the 1680x1050 that we had on the 15” model, and you can bump this to 2048x1280 up from 1920x1200. So you do get quite a bit more virtual space to play with, when it comes to organising windows, apps, tabs and so on.

And something that I’ve been wanting for years has finally been implemented! Yes, we finally have less space between the touchbar and the display, meaning that the whole MacBook Pro looks a bit more well thought of. This also means that we now get a larger palm rest for when you’re typing. 

The dedicated escape key is nice, love having that, and I also love having a dedicated button for TouchID. Also Apple has coated the TouchID button so that it matches the other keys, even though this is made out of glass, whereas the regular keys are made of out of soft plastic. Love this attention to detail!

However, as much as I like the little things, the whole Macbook Pro looks to me like an afterthought design wise. It looks like Apple took what was great from the old 2012 Retina MacBook Pros and slammed those onto the 15” design, without really re-designing the whole thing from scratch. 

But spec wise and cooling wise, this is where we get the big improvements. The cooling system has been improved, as we now have larger vents. The heatsink is also 35% larger, so we now get 28% more airflow which is always great to see in a laptop. CPU wise we do have the exact same Intel 9th generation H series processors, that we got with the 2019 15” model back in May. So the Intel 9980HK CPU is the highest option that we have. This is an 8-core processor with a base clock of 2.4GHz, that can (in theory) turbo boost to 5GHz, but you’ll never see those speeds in a laptop, but rather around 3GHz or so for both the 2019 15” and the new 16”. The 16” will actually achieve slightly better performance, thanks to the improved cooling.

A tear-down showing the improved cooling system

But really, the big difference here is in terms of the GPU. The Vega 20 GPU that we got with the November 2018 MacBook Pro’s was a gigantic upgrade over the Polaris graphics, so the 460, 560 and 560X that we had before, and now we get AMD”s brand new RDNA/Navi architecture which is an even bigger bump, over the Vega 20. So if you’re into motion graphics, video editing, game development or pretty much everything that requires a high end GPU, then this is a pretty massive upgrade. 

So overall, I’m quite happy with what Apple has done with this MacBook Pro. It fixed all the major issues and complaints that users had, such as the keyboard, the cooling and the GPU performance, while also adding things such as a larger display, thinner bezels, improved microphones, improved speakers and even an improved battery life with up to 11 hours now, up from the standard 10 hours that MacBooks used to get.

However, I’m not sure if this is a new generation. I say this because it doesn’t feel like one, but rather a “fixed” 15” MacBook Pro. And while it is heavier and thicker and more difficult to carry around, I do honestly think that for creators, that trade-off is well well worth it.

So there are my first impressions of this device. This was not my full review by any means, that’s coming in around a month or so, once I get to spend more time with this, so that’s going to be crazy detailed with video editing tests, thermals and everything you need to know.

What Is Happening with the 16" MacBook Pro?

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We’ve seen so many leaks, rumors and even actual proof found in Beta versions of macOS, that clearly showed that Apple is working on a brand new generation of MacBook Pro’s. 

We were expecting to see a new MacBook Pro by the end of October, but that hasn’t happened so here’s an update on everything we know so far and what is really the status of the this 16” MacBook Pro!

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It is now November which means that Apple has not had any event in October this year like most of us were expecting, or at least were hoping. 

Apple has two big events every single year. We have WWDC in June, which is Apple’s software event where they announce the new versions of iOS, macOS & tvOS, then in September we have the big hardware focused event, where Apple introduces the brand new iPhones, the new Apple Watch and sometimes a few more things as well.

However, the Macs and the iPads never really had a place in any event. WWDC was always too full with software and the September event was always too full with the iPhones. So because of that, Apple sometimes has two more events in the year. A March event where they release new entry level iPads, and an October event where they release new Macs and iPad Pros.

However, when it comes to Mac events it’s a bit more complicated, as Apple need to wait for Intel to release new processors before they can update their machines. 

Now the MacBook Pro and Air are by far the most popular Macs that Apple has ever made and because, unlike the iPhones which get updated every 2-3 years, Macs don’t really get updated that often there is always a lot of hype around a new generation.

The current generation of MacBook Pros came out in 2016, the previous gen came out in 2012 and the one before that came out in 2008. So it seems like every 4 years, Apple releases a brand new design. So a new design to this generation isn’t expected until 2020.

But as you may know, Ming-Chi-Kuo, Bloomberg, DigiTimes Taiwan, and pretty much every well known source has said that Apple will be releasing a new 16” MacBook Pro in 2019, which was supposed to be launching by the end of October. But all this was quite weird. Why would Apple release the new generation of MacBook Pro’s a year earlier than usual, and why didn’t they have any event to announce it?

Especially considering the amount of issues that this generation has had, ranging from severe keyboard issues, thermal throttling issues, creaking noise issues, faulty speaker issues and much more, if a you were going to bring out a new generation that solved those problems you’d make a big deal out of it wouldn’t you?

I’ve made multiple videos with my own issues with this generation of MacBook Pros, and how Apple’s customer support is just straight up garbage when it comes to dealing with expensive devices such as this. Full video on how Apple still hasn’t fixed my broken $5000 MacBook Pro here. 

Overtime Apple has attempted to fix the keyboard issues with small upgrades to the keys (Source: iFixit)

In short, this generation needs to be replaced as soon as. Apple tried “fixing” the keyboard with every new model that they’ve launched since 2016, with small improvements in the key-cap mechanism but they just couldn’t, just because the butterfly key-switch mechanism was faulty from the very start. Apparently this new generation is said to come with a brand new mechanism, the scissor mechanism, which funnily enough was the one that previous generations of MacBook Pros had. This will give us more key travel than before, since at the moment you can barely even feel the keys moving. So a fixed keyboard is the first change.

We’ll also be getting a larger display, a 16-16.4” panel from the 15.4” one that we have on the current model, whilst also getting slimmer bezels. 

The body will also be getting thicker in order to improve cooling but that’s mostly it, in terms of the main changes.

So that doesn’t seem like a lot. We’ve actually made our own concept, in which we increased the size of the touchbar to make it even more usable and extend it to the very top of the frame, as before, this area was unused and it just didn’t look good at all. However, it seems like the changes would be even smaller than we expected.

French Website, MacGeneration found an icon of the 16” MacBook Pro in the latest macOS Catalina 10.15.1 Beta that even has a file name that says 16” in silver & space grey. However, it looks pretty much identical to the current model. But this is as official as it gets until the unveil. 

The MacBook Pro 15” (Left) compared to the leaked 16” icon (Right) (Source: MacGeneration)

Unfortunately, unless you put them side by side you cannot really tell the difference. By putting them side by side you can see that the entire machine is indeed larger and the bezels are slightly thinner, but the differences are so small that I just cannot call this a new generation of MacBook Pros.

Even though the bezels are thinner, they’re still thicker than on something like a Dell XPS 13” 2-in-1 or many of the more modern laptops released in 2019. We still have the big chin with the MacBook Pro branding on the bottom which I don’t really like, it’s way too fat and it takes up way too much unnecessary space. I always preferred the previous look of the 2012 Retina MacBook Pro’s that had no branding at all on the display.

Now, there are a few other changes that we get, aside from the slightly thinner bezels and the larger display. For example, if you look at the top left section of the touchbar on the 16” MacBook Pro icon, you can see that there seems to be a space in between the touchbar and a button on the left. Now, we’ve even had a second image that was discovered by developer Guilherme Rambo in macOS 10.15.1 beta again, that shows the full official image of the right hand side of the new 16” MacBook Pro. And there’s probably one thing that you’ve noticed right away, and that is how the touchID sensor is separated from the touchbar now. 

The 16” (Bottom) appears to leave some space between the touchbar and a button on the left (Source: MacGeneration)

This means that the button on the left is most likely the escape key which will also now be separated from the touchbar as well. That was one of the main complaints that developers had, I had it as well, since escape is a key that I do hit very often in certain apps and not having a physical key for that, can be extremely frustrating. 

Also in this image we can also see the keyboard, but to me at least, it looks identical to the current gen, with no more key travel than what we have now. So that’s pretty disappointing to see.

Keep in mind that if this is a new generation then this is what we’ll get for the next 3-4 years. Which means a total of 6-8 years with what’s mostly the exact same design and what looks to be the same keyboard.

The touchbar is looking to be the same size as before, maybe even a bit shorter because of the introduction of the escape key. When you take into account that you have laptops such as the Asus ZenBook Duo that have two fully usable displays, or laptops that are 2-in-1 with pen support as well, and a 22 hour battery life and crazy specs and features like that, the MacBook Pro feel extremely old and already outdated, even before it’s out!

Unless of course, this is not a new generation of MacBook Pro’s!

Every new generation has seen some massive changes, in pretty much every single way. The 2012 Retina MacBook Pro was by far the biggest change ever, in a MacBook Pro. It had a high resolution Retina Display, something never before seen in a laptop, a full flash storage from the HDD of the previous generation, it had a design that was pretty much half the thickness of the previous model, and it was lighter, so it was years ahead of the previous generation.

The 2016 generation that we have now, was a much smaller upgrade. Aside from the DCI-P3 displays, slightly thinner bezels, space grey colour, the downgraded keyboard and touchID and touchbar, we didn’t really get much else. 

This is mostly because we’ve reached to a point where laptops have become as good as they can be and the only things that we can improve are the specs. Unless of course we have dual displays or innovative concepts such as that, which Apple doesn’t usually do first.

MacRumors posted a gif of the current 15” MacBook Pro and the 16” MacBook Pro leaked image and like I said, they’re pretty much identical, I will leave a link to it here so you can see what I am talking about. The touchbar appears to maybe be a bit taller, barely even noticeable and luckily the top portion of the case is now a bit slimmer. The keys do seem to have more space in between, than on the current 15” model, which is always a welcome change.

So judging by all these official images that were actually found in macOS 10.15.1 beta, the release of the 16” MacBook Pro seems to be imminent. 

Now, Ming-Chi-Kuo actually released a report this week, updating his research note on the 16” MacBook Pro. In it he said that Apple would only switch to a scissor switch keyboard, in Q2 or Q3 2020. Which means either June or September of next year. And he was also the one that initially talked about Apple working on a scissor keyboard switch for the new MacBook Pro 16” for this year. So if that gets delayed, there’s a very high chance that this MacBook Pro 16” will also get delayed, rather than shipping with the old style keyboard which would be another disaster. 

The headline from the article on MacRumors where Ming-Chi Kuo said it was likely that the new keyboard would be mid 2020 (Source: MacRumors)

DigiTimes reported that Apple will begin receiving shipments of the 16” MacBook Pro. That’s another reason why I do see this being delayed is because of Intel and AMD.

Intel’s 10th generation processors have indeed launched, but these are only the Y and the U series. So the 7W and 15W ones that are aimed at the MacBook Air and the 13” MacBook Pro are here, but not the H series, which represents the 45W processors aimed at the 15” MacBook Pro’s. 

Those are only coming out next year, around May-June, just in time for a truly next generation of MacBooks Otherwise, if this 16” MacBook Pro gets released before then we would still be getting the exact same processor, the Intel 9980HK, that we already have in the May 2019 release. The same goes for the GPU. Aside from the Vega 20 that we got back in November 2018, which is already an outdated architecture, we haven’t had anything new from AMD since. Now, maybe Apple is working alongside AMD on a custom RDNA GPU, similar to what Sony and Microsoft are doing for the PS5 and Xbox 2, but don’t get your hopes too high. The chances of that happening are extremely slim. 

There are a few more leaks that I want to mention. We did a very detailed video on the 16” MacBook Pro back in July and that was when we had barely any leaks on it, and it that video I talked about a few interesting things that I’ve noticed.

A leaked power adapter from the suspected 16” MacBook Pro showing the 96W Charging (Source: Chongdiantou)

For example, how the upcoming Apple Pro Display XDR supports up to 96W of power output, but the current gen 15” MacBook Pro’s, only support up to 87W. So my theory here was that the new 16” MacBook Pro would require either a 94W or a 96W power adapter. 94W was also an option since the new LG UltraFine 5K display supports up to 94W of power output via thunderbolt 3, rather than 96W. And it seems like there’s been a leaked power adapter, presumably for this 16” MacBook Pro that actually shows a 96W USB-C Power adapter. So it seems like my theory might have been correct here and we should be seeing a 16” MacBook Pro with a power requirement of 96W.

In case you’re wondering what we might need those extra 9W of power for, well it’s very likely for the display, which is not just going to be larger but there’s a very high change that Apple will also brand this display a Pro XDR display to match it up with their actual Mac Pro Pro XDR display and also the new Super Retina XDR naming that they’re now using in iPhones. So this display will very likely be brighter than the 500 nit panel that we currently have in the current generation of MacBook Pro’s. 

I’m just very disappointed that this new 16” MacBook Pro which is supposed to be a new generation of MacBook Pro’s, only seems to be a very slight week to the current gen, which we might have to stick with, for the next 4 years. There’s no FaceID, no larger TouchBar, no touchscreen, no flappable display, no OLED display and nothing really that would make this truly next gen.

2019 13" MacBook Pro (Baseline) Review

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This is a 13” MacBook Pro that Apple has just released last week. But wait Daniel, you’ve already reviewed the 8-core 15” MacBook Pro as well as the 13” 2019 MacBook Pro, so what is this?

Well this is the $1,300 baseline model that doesn’t have a touch bar, or quad-core processors and hasn’t been updated since 2017, or at least it was until this year where it has received a massive upgrade whilst retaining the same $1,300 price point! 

So lets discuss what changes we have received this year on Apple’s baseline model.

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BUILD

So first of all, it now has the same 5th generation butterfly keyboard that we got on the other 13” and 15” MacBook’s from earlier this year, with the new sturdier build which should resolve the issues that consumers were having with the previous iterations where they keys were sticking or breaking entirely.

In terms of the typing experience. It’s very similar to the 2018 MacBook Pros, with the 4th butterfly keyboard iteration, so they feel more springy and mushy than the 2017 and 2016 models but they’re also not as loud as those. So if you don’t like Apple’s butterfly keyboard because of the low key travel and lack of feedback, you won’t like this one either. If you do, then this one’s better than the last generation. 

Apple did add all 2019 MacBook’s to the keyboard replacement programme so if it breaks, Apple will replace it for free for the next 4 years, so that’s good! 

The keyboard is a very important part of any laptop so I’m glad to see that Apple improved it this year, again. 

Speaking of the keyboard, we finally have a touch bar on this! Yes the non-touch bar MacBook Pro now has a touch bar which means that Apple is no longer selling any MacBook Pros that do not come with one, which is something that they should’ve done from 2016 in my opinion.

The 13” Baseline model now features a touch bar, as well as TouchID

This means that you get extra controls in a lot of your apps, most of which are useless since you can do them so much faster with keyboard shortcuts, but for those of you who are not familiar with keyboard shortcuts, the touch bar can indeed be very useful. If you take Photoshop for example, the touch bar gives you access to great tools such as the ability to resize a brush or swipe through the blending modes which is just amazing! 

Alongside the touch bar we also get a TouchID or fingerprint sensor! This is in my opinion even better than the touch bar since you can unlock you Mac very easily and you can also scan you finger to fill in passwords and make Apple Pay payments, so it’s an incredibly useful thing to have. 

The display also got a very welcome improvement with True Tone support. This means that the color temperature of the display is automatically adjusted so that it matches the light around you, which is amazing! This makes reading so much easier on the eyes, just make sure that you disable it before you do any photo or video editing!

Another big improvement is the addition of the T2 processor. Now this is something that now comes standard in every new Mac aside from the iMac, and it’s this tiny chip that handles a lot of the basic processes that the Intel CPU would normally handle. 

The main advantages of having the T2 are:

• Better quality photos and video with the built-in camera.

• Real-Time disk encryption and decryption,

• Improved audio quality from the microphones,

• Faster h.265 video encoding so h.265 video exports will be much faster

• The ability to locate you Mac if its gets stolen, even when it is not connected to a WiFi network.

Unfortunately your Mac will crash more often, especially if you use Thunderbolt, but the majority of people buying this MacBook Pro wouldn’t be doing that much intense work anyways, so for most people the T2 will be a positive thing.

So, so far the new baseline $1,300 13” MacBook Pro seems to have all the features that the more expensive $1,800 model has, however there are a few features that it is missing. 

The speakers for example are identical to the 2017 model. They’re not bad my any means, in fact they’re still better than on most laptops out there but they are just not as powerful and as clear as on the 2018 and more expensive 2019 models of the 13” MacBook Pro. However, they are located right underneath the speaker grills rather than towards the bottom and then the sound being redirected – like it is on the more expensive models. 

The speakers on the baseline model are now under the speaker grills

Another lacking feature is when it comes to the Thunderbolt 3 ports. On the $1,800 model we have four whereas on this entry level model we have two. Now for most people this is more than enough, but I just miss the convenience of being able to plug accessories and charge my MacBook from either side, rather than having to do it from the left hand side all the time. 

But probably the biggest downgrade in my opinion, is in terms of the Flash Storage. It is considerably slower than the $1,800 model, with speeds averaging 505 MB/s Write vs 2750MB/s Write and 1333MB/s Read vs 2650MB/s Read. 

PERFORMANCE

Performance wise, this new entry level MacBook Pro is a significant step up from the 2017 model. 

First off we get a Quad Core processor from dual core, so we have the Intel i5 8257U 1.4GHz – 3.9GHz. Now you could upgrade this to the i7 8557U, which has a 1.7GHz base clock from 1.4GHz and can turbo boost to 4.5GHz from 3.9, but I honestly don’t recommend it since the performance is already extremely good on the stock processor.

In Geekbench 4 the 2019 model was 1.11 times faster Single Core (SC) wise and 1.87 times faster in Multi Core (SC)! That's, almost twice as fast as the previous 2017 model and only 1.13 times slower SC wise than the 2019 $1800 model and 1.1 times slower MC wise. So it is very close to the much more expensive 4 thunderbolt 3 model. 

In Cinebench R15 it got 651 points vs 705 on the $1800 maxed out model and this was actually very very close to the 2017 15” MacBook Pro which got 672 points. In Cinebench R20 it got 1628 compared to 1763 on the $1800 model and 1672 on the 15” 2017 MacBook Pro. So again very impressive results, as the baseline MacBook Pro was just 1.08 times slower than the maxed out 13” model with the quad core 2.8GHz processor.

An example of the render we use for our tests

But how does it handle 3D Rendering? Well it only took this MacBook Pro 14 minute and 16 seconds to finish the example render versus 13 minutes and 43seconds on the 2017 15” MacBook Pro. 

I was quite impressed with the temperatures that this was running at as well. The baseline 13” MacBook Pro was running at 90 degrees as the average temperature, and a clock of 2.9GHz from the base 1.4GHz clock. Comparatively, the 13” maxed out 2019 model was running at 94 degrees and a clock of 3.2GHz, whilst the 2017 15” model was running at 97 degrees and a clock of 3GHz. Now the really interesting thing here is that the 13” baseline model only has a single fan, whereas the $18,00 4 thunderbolt 3 port model has two fans, just like the 15” and the temperature and clock speeds were still very good, for a Mac at least. 

So the CPU performance is indeed very impressive on this base MacBook Pro. There’s absolutely no need to upgrade to the 1.7GHz model if the maxed out 2.7GHz 13” model is barely any faster. 

But what about the GPU performance?

As you all know the 15” MacBook Pro’s comes with a dedicated GPU, so if you’re into Video Editing, 3D Modelling, Graphic Design, Gaming or anything that requires a high end GPU you’re going to get significantly better performance from a 15” MacBook Pro.

The 13” models have an integrated GPU. The Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655 on the $1,800 4 thunderbolt 3 port model and the Intel Iris Plus Graphics 645 on this baseline. Now the integrated GPU is even more powerful the more RAM you have in your computer, since it can indeed take use of the system RAM. I am using the baseline 8GB of RAM model for this and I wanted to see how much the GPU is impacted when compared to the maxed out 13” model with 16GB of RAM. 

Firstly, the Cinebench OpenCL test where the baseline MBP was only 1.05 times slower than the maxed out 13” model, a negligible difference. In Cinebench R15, we got 54.69fps compared to 56.56fps on the maxed out 13” model, so again a negligible difference.

Now if you care about gaming, in the Unigine Heaven Benchmark we got 10.3fps versus 11.1fps, so almost the same. In actual games like Fortnite, with all the settings set to EPIC in 1680x1050 resolution, we got about 13fps in the bus drop scene compared to around 15fps.

But if both the CPU and GPU benchmarks are almost identical to the maxed out 13” model, how does it compare in Final Cut Pro X for example, when editing and exporting 4K video?

A snippet of the Final Cut Pro X Project we use for our tests

For this I used our OnePlus 7 Pro Blind Camera test, which is a very demanding 15 minute 4K project, with multiple 4K picture in picture clips and it took the baseline 13” MacBook Pro 51 minutes and 28 seconds to export this versus 50 minutes and 2 seconds on the maxed out 13” MacBook Pro. So the baseline was just 1.02 times slower. Just as a comparison, the maxed out 15” MacBook Pro exported this in just 17 minutes and 44 seconds, so that one was 2.9 times faster than the baseline 13”.

But personally I find the video editing performance in the timeline to be much more important than the actual rendering time. So looking at that in the same project we’re getting about 15-20fps playback in quality and just over 30fps in performance mode. Now, considering that the video itself is 29.97fps, the baseline 13” MBP can actually play this full project back in real time in performance, which is incredible!

But you see one of my favourite things about this new MacBook Pro are those two Thunderbolt 3 ports. Aside from just charging and connecting external HDD’s, Thunderbolt is so powerful that it allows you to connect a full 5K monitor. But if you have a Thunderbolt 3 dock such as the one from CalDigit I have in the video, you can get access to a ton of ports, with HDMI, multiple USB type A ports, while also charging your MacBook Pro, all from that single Thunderbolt 3 port.

By adding an eGPU to your set up you will get a significant improvement in the performance of your MacBook

On top of that, you can even connect an eGPU or external graphics card with an enclosure and have some insane GPU performance coming out of this tiny MacBook Pro. Using an eGPU I was able to get over 60fps in Fornite in 1080p, so an even higher resolution than before, with everything on EPIC! So actual gaming is now possible thanks to an eGPU and Thunderbolt 3. Even in Final Cut Pro X, the rendering time was reduced from 51 minutes and 28 seconds to just 34 minutes! Now that is not as fast as a 15” MacBook Pro, but it is a significant improvement of 1.5 times! So an eGPU makes a huge difference and I highly recommend getting one, especially if you have a 13” MacBook Pro that does not have a dedicated GPU.

CONCLUSION

Ok, so in the end if you’re thinking about getting a brand new Mac don’t get a MacBook Air, because it only has a dual core processor and no touch bar, get this MacBook Pro Instead. It costs $200 more, but it gives you so many more features and performance wise it’s extremely close to the maxed out $3,100 13” MacBook Pro.

2019 15" MacBook Pro (Maxed Out) Review

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This is the brand new 2019 15” MacBook Pro, and out of all the devices that I own this is my true daily driver. I have used this thing solidly for at least 12 hours a day every week day and 5 or more hours at the weekend, so in total I have used this for at least 70 hours every week, and continue to do so.

In this review I want to cover the 3 biggest change!

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SPECS

Seeing as the 2019 models has the exact same design as the 2016, 17, and 18 models, there is not much to cover in that regard. But when I say this is the maxed out specs, I mean maxed out, apart from the 4TB of storage. Check out the specs of the model I am reviewing below:

• 2.3GHz 8-Core 9th Generation Intel Core i9 Processor with Turbo Boost up to 4.8GHz

• 32GB 2400MHz DDR4 Memory

• Radeon Pro Vega 20 with 4GB of HBM2 Memory

• 1TB SSD Storage

The 2019 Model hasn’t changed in design since 2016

KEYBOARD

Ok, so in terms of the keyboard, this is Apple’s 5th butterfly design as they have been making small changes every single year since 2015.

Now Apple claimed that they changed some materials to make the keyboard significantly more reliable than before. However Apple did include the 2019 Models to their Keyboard Replacement programme on launch day, which raises doubt into how reliable these keyboards truly are. 

A teardown of the keys on the 5th Generation Keyboard (Source: iFixit)

iFixit did do a full keyboard teardown and they found that Apple replaced the silicone key switch cap with one made out of nylon, so it’s a bit sturdier and most of the components had slight changes to them, which I mentioned back in my 13” Review so feel free to check that out too.

But it terms of how the keyboard feels, it is very similar to the 2018 one, but feels a tiny bit sturdier. So overall I do like typing on the 2019 15” MacBook’s the most, but it’s still a butterfly keyboard so it’s still bad in terms of key travel and tactile feedback. 

PERFORMANCE

Considering that this is the maxed out version, you’d expect the performance to be maxed out too right? Well lets have a look.

Now the difference the 2019 model has over the 2018 model is that we now get an Intel i9 9th generation 8-core processor, which is actually Intel’s fastest laptop processor to date. We also get 8-cores up from 6, 16MP L3 cache up from 12MP on the 2018 6-core models, and a base clock of 2.4GHz down from 2.9GHz but we do get a turbo boost of up to 5GHz from 4.8GHz. Now just to clarify the Turbo Clock speed is just for a single core and only when the temperature is under 60 degrees, this is what Intel’s now calling ‘Thermal Velocity Boost’. 

Unfortunately due to the still weak cooling system this model never reached 5GHz at all in my case. In fact, it even struggled to hit 4.8GHz. The highest that I’ve seen it hit was about 4.7GHz and that was only for a second or so. 

But does it throttle you might ask? Well not as much as the 2018 one did.

Now since I also have the Vega 20 Model, the cooling is indeed better, with the fans being able to reach 6000 RPM’s from 5930 and 5490 on the 2018 non-Vega MBP’s. Add that to the fact that the GPU doesn’t heat up as much as, the CPU can run cooler meaning it can actually run at a higher clock speed than the 6-core 2018 model could, even though this is an 8-core CPU.

So the temperatures were lower when using it, 87-90 degrees was the top celling compared to 98 degrees on the 2018 model, and because of this the 2019 model was also much quieter as the fans didn’t start to spin up this early. 

So how do those 2 extra cores and Vega 20 GPU translate to actual usage?

Well, let’s start out with some benchmarks first. Starting off with the CPU. 

In the Geekbench 4 Single Core CPU test, the 2019 MBP scores 2.9% higher than the 6-core 2018 MacBook Pro, 18.6% higher than 4-core 2017 MBP and 25% higher than the 4-core 2016 MBP. Then in the Multicore test, the 2019 MacBook Pro scores 24.4% higher than the 2018 model, 47.3% higher than the 2017 and 51.2% higher than the 2016. 

In Cinebench R15, the 2019 MBP scores 29.3% higher than the 2018, 48.6% higher than the 2017 and 45.4% higher than the 2016. Yes the 2017 started throttling more than the 2016 it seems. In Cinebench R20, the 2019 MBP scores 26% higher than the 2018, 46% higher than the 2017 and 42.5% higher than the 2016. 

And next up, I ran our ZONEofTECH Keyshot 8 3D Rendering benchmark, which is a very CPU intensive task, and the 2019 model was 38.2% faster than the 2018, so a very big difference there, 53.3% faster than the 2017 and 42.1% faster than the 2016. 

The temperatures were also significantly better. 75 degrees on the 2019 compared to 87 on the 2018, 97 on the 2017, and 98 on the 2016 and the clock speed was at about 2.7GHz versus 2.5GHz on the 2018 model, so very impressive so far.

Now when it comes to the GPU, in Geekbench 4 Compute, openCL test the Vega 20 2019 MacBook Pro was 24.8% faster than the 2018 with the 560X, 43.2% faster with the 2017 with the 560 and 34.6% faster than the 2016 with the 460.  However, the 2016 MacBook Pro was recently replaced by Apple with a brand new case and cleaned fans, which is why I think it’s getting higher scores than our 2017, as there might be some dust in the fans.

In CineBench R15, the 2019 MBP was 18.7% faster than the 560X 2018, 35.3% faster than the 560 from 2017 and 33.4% faster than the 460 from 2016. 

Next up we have the Unigine Heaven benchmark and here the 2019 was 38.9% faster than the 2018, 45.7% faster than the 2017 and 49.2% faster than the 2016. 

So overall CPU wise, the 2019 is about 20-40% faster than the 2018 and GPU wise we get about a 40% difference. So quite some substantial gains so far. 

Taking a look at some more real-world usage, in Final Cut Pro X I had our OnePlus 7 Pro blind camera test project and this was a massive one with a ton of 4K picture-in-picture clips, effects, titles and it was a full 15 minute 4K project. The 2019 MacBook Pro only took 16 minutes and 48 seconds to export this versus the 2018 which was 24.3% slower, the 2017 was 34.3% slower, and the 2016 was 33.8% slower. Now while 5 minutes or so doesn’t seem like much, on a bigger and more complex project, that would be substantially more and if you do this on a daily basis it will have a significant impact on your workflow.

Finally let’s have a look at the Disk performance. The 2019 and 2018 models were pretty much identical in terms of Write Speeds, 2017 and 2016 were 35.7% slower when using disk encryption. And in terms of the Read Speeds, the 2019 was identical to the 2018 and 16% faster than 2017 and 2016.

If you don’t use disk encryption for FireVault the results would be much more similar but if you do, since we have the T2 Chip on both the 2018 and 2019 models, the disk decryption is done in real time on the T2 chip itself and we get much higher IO performance. 

Now there are a few more things that I want to address. 

The 2019 model feature brand new thermal paste on its internals (Source: Snazzy Labs)

The reason why the 2019 is getting much better thermals isn’t just because of the faster fan speeds but also because of a brand new thermal paste. This is what I suspected in our initial video with the ‘20 Things You Didn’t Know’ but Quinn Nelson from Snazzy Labs has now confirmed this in his teardown. 

Also if you’re thinking of using an eGPU on a 15” just don’t! You’re getting far better performance from a built-in dedicated GPU such as a Vega 20, especially in apps such as Final Cut Pro X which does not yet take full advantage of a GPU. A big update will be coming in November, in order to fix that.

Additionally if you’re upgrading from the 13” MacBook Pro you can actually have up to four 4K Monitors at 60Hz, two 5K monitors at 60Hz, or one 6K Apple Pro XDR display, potentially two but that’s not confirmed as of yet. 

T2 Crashes

Aside from the keyboard and the performance I had one more thing that I wanted to address, and that was the T2 processor. 

So, to my surprise I haven’t had any T2 crashes on my 2019 for the past 2 weeks. Unfortunately I had two T2 crashes on the same day on the 2019 MacBook Pro a few days ago. Shortly after I created a return for this model as it clearly has the same T2 issues as previous ones. Yes, after almost 3 weeks of using this daily, I am now sending it back.

The article on MacRumors showing the new model names for the 7 unreleased models (Source: MacRumors)

But it wasn’t just because of the T2 crashes, on the exact same day, we’ve had a leak of an ECC (Eurasian Economic Commision) filing that showed Apple registering 7 brand new models of MacBook’s. Two of which are very likely to be that brand new redesign of the MacBook Pro, that Ming-Chi-Kuo talked about with a 16” display, a redesigned cooling system, and new keyboard that seems likely to actually come out this year. So I’m really looking forward to that, and until then this baby is going back!

2019 13" MacBook Pro (Maxed Out) Review

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So ever since I was young, I was really interested in Apple Laptops, MacBooks. In fact I started ZONEofTECH from a 2011 13” MacBook Pro and it was such an amazing device overall, especially after my SSD and RAM upgrade. I then upgraded to a 2013 15” MacBook Pro and I now haven’t used a 13” MacBook as my daily driver for 6 years, as I had never found them to be sufficient for what I wanted to use them for which was content creation.

So what has changed since then, and who is the MacBook actually for?

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DESIGN

A design comparison between the 15” MacBook Pro (Left) and the 13” MacBook Pro (Right)

Now, as the 2019 model is still part of Apple’s 3rd generation of MacBook Pros, which launched in 2016, they also have the exact same design as the 2016 models. This means that we have this single block of aluminium, from which the entire MacBook was machined from and it just looks stunning! In my opinion, it is the best looking laptop on the market, especially in space grey. The 15” has those massive palm-rests, speakers and touch bar gap which I don’t like. However, the 13” looks to be what the entire design generation was based on. Yes, the bezels could be made thinner but, aside from that, this is just a stunning piece of metal to look at. 

This is also a highly portable MacBook, since it weighs just 1.37kg and has an incredibly compact form factor. So if you’re traveling around a lot or you commute to work with your laptop and you need power and portability this MacBook Pro would be the best to get. Also, if you’re coming from a MacBook Air, the 13” Pro feels exactly the same in the hand as the 2018 Air. Additionally, because of that small form factor the 13” Pro would fit perfectly on airplane table seats, or on your lap when you’re traveling by train or bus. So it’s really good for that!

DISPLAY

When it comes to the display the 13” is great! In my opinion, both the 13” and the 15” have the best display on any laptop on the market, for creating content at least.

Now, when you compare this to other laptop displays on the market spec wise it looks weak. Razer for example have OLED displays now, up to 4K, whilst Apple’s still using a QHD LCD panel. Now although that it is true, Apple’s panel is actually extremely good. It’s a 500 nit LCD panel that’s also IPS, so you get very good viewing angles. You also have 100% sRGB coverage a DCI-P3 color gamut as well. The resolution of panel is 2560x1600 but at 227PPI, and from the regular viewing distance you cannot see any pixels on this thing at all. This means that text is razor sharp and everything just looks like printing paper.

The reflectivity seems to be identical to the one on the iPad Pro’s which is just 1.8%, so reflections won’t be an issue here. 

Due to the screens 16:10 aspect ratio we get more vertical screen real-estate than traditional laptops

Now, something that not a lot of reviewers talk about is that this is also a 16:10 aspect ratio display, rather than the traditional 16:9. So compared to more traditional laptops, you do get more vertical screen real-estate, which with a 13.3 inch panel which I really do like, especially for reading.

Speaking of reading, just like the 2018 MacBook Pro, the 2019 models also have a True Tone display. This means your display automatically adjusts the colour temperature so that it matches the ambient light conditions. So if you’re in a room with a lot of yellow light, the display would match that color, same as a piece of paper does. I do like True Tone a lot for reading and writing scripts such as this but when I’m doing any photo or video-work I need to disable it, otherwise my colors would be all messed up. Which brings me to my first issue with this MacBook and that’s that there is no way to quickly disable True Tone. Realistically it should automatically disable in photo and video apps but it doesn’t, so I have to manually go into the settings and disable it from there. Its not a major issue but it can become laborious over time.

Now, having one display is great but what if you want to use some external monitors?

Well I’m happy to say that the 13” MacBook Pro supports two 4K displays at 60Hz at the same time or one 5K display at 60Hz. There are ways to connect more monitors than just that, which I’ll cover in the Performance section but I would say that two 4K displays is what most people would use on a 13” MacBook Pro anyways. In regard to the internal display, the best scaling for retina resolution would be 1280x800 since that way, every two horizontal and every two vertical pixels make one larger “Retina” pixel. This is how retina scaling works. But 1280x800 makes everything just too big on this display, so I was using it in 1680x1050 which is the highest scaled resolution that you can natively use and I find that one to be the best overall. 

The 13” MacBook Pro can be connected to external monitors via Thunderbolt 3

Well I’m happy to say that the 13” MacBook Pro supports two 4K displays at 60Hz at the same time or one 5K display at 60Hz. There are ways to connect more monitors than just that, which I’ll cover in the Performance section but I would say that two 4K displays is what most people would use on a 13” MacBook Pro anyways. In regard to the internal display, the best scaling for retina resolution would be 1280x800 since that way, every two horizontal and every two vertical pixels make one larger “Retina” pixel. This is how retina scaling works. But 1280x800 makes everything just too big on this display, so I was using it in 1680x1050 which is the highest scaled resolution that you can natively use and I find that one to be the best overall. 

Overall I do think that the display on this is brilliant. For photo editing, and video editing this is pretty much the best panel on the market for a laptop. However, I do wish that there was a way to turn off True Tone like I mentioned, and additionally I wish that the bezels were smaller, so that we could have say a 14” display in the same form factor.

KEYBOARD

So what about the keyboard? Well, it’s still using Apple’s extremely controversial Butterfly Keyboard switch with a few small improvements. Now, I do not like the Butterfly Keyboard switch, the one on the 2016 15” MacBook Pro was the worst keyboard that I have ever used. I ended up with two broken keyboards, where the keys would stop typing or they typed twice. I do not know who’s idea it was to bring the keyboard over to the Pro’s since no one was asking for them.

Apple did make a small change to the design in 2017 but it wasn’t until 2018 that we got our first big change when Apple added a silicone membrane that would keep debris out of the key switch and prevent them from breaking. This made the keyboard quieter and also added a bit more travel to it.

The new material design of the keys in should resolve the reliability issues (Source: iFixit)

The keys on this 2019 model seem to still have that membrane but it appears to be made out of sturdier nylon which means that in theory the reliability issues should be resolved.

But in terms of how the keyboard feels, I do find it a bit sturdier than the 2018 one, which I do like but that as big of an improvement from the previous gen, as the 2018 one was, from the 2017 MacBooks.

The touch bar is still there which I do like having, I prefer having controls rather than not having them at all but realistically I almost never use it. Most of the things are just keyboard shortcuts that I can do from my keyboard much quicker but there are some useful shortcuts in Photoshop which I do like. Things such as brush size, blending modes and more, so some apps are taking good use of the touch bar, but I can count those on one finger. 

SPEAKERS

The speakers are also very good on this. They are pretty much the same as on the 2018 models, so they are much better when compared to the 2017 MacBook Pros. Now, Apple did say that they will be adding Dolby Atmos support to the 2018 MacBook Pros and later so that will be coming in macOS Catalina.

PERFORMANCE

As I mentioned earlier, the reason I switched from the 13” MacBooks was because they were not sufficient for my needs, but overall I was very impressed by the performance of the 2019 model.

It still uses Intel’s 8th gen processors compared to the 9th gen that the 15” model got. This is because Intel has yet to release an Iris Plus Graphics 9th gen CPU, which Apple needs in this machine. The model I have in the video is the maxed out 13” model with; the i7 8569U with 4 cores, base clock speed of 2.8GHz, turbo boost to up to 4.7GHz, Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655, 1.5GB of DDR4 memory, as well as 16GB of 2133MHz LPDDR3 memory. 

Small tip, the more RAM you have on this device, the more memory the integrated GPU will have and the faster it will run. So if you get this upgrade to 16GB of RAM because it will make a huge difference. 

CPU performance was really good! In Geekbench 4 we got 5,481 Single-Core (SC) and 18,904 Multi-Core (MC). The SC is actually higher than the 6-core 2018 MacBook Pro 15” so that’s very impressive and the MC performance is not that far off.  In Cinebench we got 705 points in R15 and 1763 points in R20, which is pretty much identical to the 2017 15” MBP. 

GPU wise we got 52,165 Geekbench 4 openCL which is even higher than on the 2019 15” MBP because the 13” has a better integrated GPU than the 15”, but then the 15” does have the dedicated GPU as well, which just crushes the iGPU inside the 13”. Taking a look at Cinebench we got a surprising score of 56.56FPS, just 20 FPS lower than the 2017 15” MBP with the Radeon Pro 560 dedicated GPU, which got 77.5 FPS.

So the 2019 maxed out 13” MacBook Pro is very comparable to the 2017 maxed out 15”!

The SSD performance is really good on the 13” 2019 as well. I was getting 2750 MB/s Write & 2650 MB/s Read, not as fast as the 15” 2019 with the same drive size, but very close and enough to handle all 4K workflows.

A snippet from the Final Cut Pro Project we ran on the 13” MacBook Pro with multiple 4K clips

Speaking of, the 13” surprisingly handled 4K workflows really well. We used our Final Cut Pro project on the OnePlus 7 Pro Blind camera test which was one of our most demanding projects yet. It had lots of overlays, lots of 4K side by side clips and surprisingly the MacBook Pro 13” could play it back pretty smoothly. It’s not real time but it’s close to. But if we switched to Performance mode from Quality, the playback became even smoother. It wasn’t as fluid as a 15” MacBook Pro, but pretty good considering that this doesn’t even have a dedicated GPU at all. 

But its a different story when it comes to exporting this 15min 4K project. The 13” MacBook Pro 50 minutes to export the project, compared to just 17 minutes and 52 seconds on the 2019 15” MacBook Pro or 26 minutes on a 2017 15” MacBook Pro. So while you can edit 4K video with this, more complex projects are going to take about 3 times more to export than on a 15” model. So if you are doing that, or plan on doing that, on a daily basis this isn’t the MacBook for you. 

Same issue applies to 3D Rendering, this is CPU based by the way. The example render we used took 16 minutes 50 seconds to render on the 13” compare to 8 minutes and 57 seconds on the 15”.

Long story short, if you occasionally do intensive work than the 13” can handle all that, it’s just that it’s going to take it longer than it would take other laptops that have more powerful CPU’s and dedicated GPU’s.

But how does it handle games you may ask. Well in Fornite I has everything set to Epic in 1680x1050 resolution, and I was getting about 15FPS in the bus drop scene. Now you can drop these settings to Medium and drop the resolution and get over 30FPS. but realistically I wouldn’t say that this was a gaming laptop on its own. 

However, something very unique about the 13” model that no other laptops have aside from the 15” model, is four thunderbolt 3 ports. I know a lot of people complained about the lack of legacy ports but thunderbolt is the future and I’m really happy to see Apple fully implementing this across all of their computers.

With thunderbolt, you can not only connecting things such as a 5K monitor to this or 10Gb ethernet adaptor and a ton of very fast external SSD’s . Not only these but you can also connect external graphic cards via an eGPU enclosure and get an NVidia RTX 2080Ti or a Radeon Vega 64 GPU working on this!

This changes the performance entirely! From the 15FPS we were getting in Fortnite, we now pretty much get a solid 60, with an even higher resolution than before. 

Exporting times in FCP X have been reduced to just 32 minutes from 50 minute, which although still not as fast as a 15” MBP with a dedicated GPU, its still a noticeable improvement.

It does depend on the app and how well it takes full advantage of the eGPU. Final Cut Pro does not, at least not at the moment, a big update will be coming this fall. Until then DaVinci Resolve is the best option for eGPU use in video editing, and in that case you’ll see some massive performance gains, and the same applies to games that do take full advantage of the eGPU. Also by using an eGPU you can connect way more monitors to the 13”, since you’ll be connecting those directly to the GPU itself. 

So if you want to go the eGPU route, it’s probably the best laptop for it but it will be more expensive than just buying a 15” MBP which will give you better rendering times out the box. 

BATTERY

So what about the battery life on this?

Well Apple’s claiming up to 10 hours of web-browsing. I didn’t really get 10 hours, I got around 8, which is far better than 5 or so that I got with my 15”.

The reason for this is because since the 13” does not have a dedicated GPU it will last you longer. The 15” does switch to the dGPU quite a lot which kills a lot of your battery.

Now the MacBook Air will last you longer, up to 12 hours, but I would say that the 13” MacBook Pro is more than enough for most people, when it comes to the battery life.

PRICE

Now, when it comes to the price, there are a few things that I want to point out.

Only the touch bar model has an update so get that one if you’re considering this (Source: Apple)

The first is only the touch bar model has been updated in 2019, the non-touch bar MacBook Pro is still the same 2017 MacBook Pro with no updates, and the same old broken keyboard so please avoid buying that! Unless you’re looking for a better MacBook Air for the same price and you don’t care about the keyboard. 

Additionally the configuration from the video costs $2900 which is $500 more than the baseline 15” model that gives you a much more powerful 6 core i7 CPU, a faster 2400MHz ram, as well as a dedicated Radeon Pro 555X GPU.

So the 13” config that I would go for would be the $2000 one which has everything on the base except for the RAM, which I’ve bumped to 16GB. 

If you do any photo or video work, you can of course bump the storage but keep in mind that if you do that, the MBP 15” would be very close in price, just with less storage.

CONCLUSION

Ok, so in the end, who is this 13” MacBook Pro for?

Well I would say that this is perfect for students. Students who study computer science who need a bit more power than the average student. Since you get a very powerful QC MacBook Pro, more powerful than what the 15’ QC MacBook Pros used to be this is the MacBook for you. It’s just that the GPU isn’t that great.

However, even if you don’t need a dedicated GPU, this could be perfect for you. Same goes for people that need a very portable laptop that can handle everything they throw at it. The 13” MacBook Pro is actually the most powerful 13” laptop that you can buy CPU wise, and with that thunderbolt expandability you can indeed connect a very powerful Desktop Graphics card which will turn it into a beast of a machine, it’s just that you’ll have to pay for that, even more than a 15” MacBook Pro which will give you better performance per cost.

MacBook Pro Vega 20 Review

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Back in July 2018 Apple silently released the new 2018 MacBook Pros, without any event or anything, it randomly appeared on their website and it turned out to be a significant upgrade over the 2017 and 2016 models. It came with an i9 6-core processor, from the i7 quad core one that we got before, it came with 32GB of RAM, the Radeon 560X GPU over the 560, a True Tone Display, an improved keyboard as well as up to 4TB of 3.2GB/s flash storage. This thing was a huge upgrade over the 2017 model.

I’ve been using it every day for 12 hours, sometimes more, for about 6 months now, so what are my overall thoughts?

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BUILD

The new wrap that Apple has installed around the keys on the keyboard. Source: iFixit

Like I said in the introduction, the keyboard itself has had quite a big improvement. I type a lot on my MacBook Pro and with the 2017 model I was forced to use an external keyboard but on this one I can comfortably type fast enough without making a considerable amount of spelling errors.

Apple also added a tiny wrap around the keys to protect them from any dust and debris that could get inside the switches. This makes the keys a bit quieter than before but definitely more tactile as there’s a more key travel thanks to the wraps. 

The speakers are also way better than they were before. I mean, they’re were already great on the 15” 2017 model, but now they have even more bass and they’re also louder than before. 

The new True Tone Display means that the MacBook Pro will automatically adjust the color temperature in order to match the lighting in your room and I honestly love it! It makes reading and writing so much easier on the eyes, and what’s pretty cool about it is that it also works on the TouchBar as well as with LG’s UltraFine 5K and 4K Monitors, as long as you keep the MacBook Pro’s lid open. 

The only issue that I have with True Tone (and it’s quite a big one really) is that if you do any Video or Photo Editing, it will not automatically turn itself off. Even in 1st party apps such as iMovie or Final Cut Pro X it wouldn’t automatically turn off. This means that you would need to constantly remind yourself to dig through the settings app and disable it every single time you need to edit and image or video, otherwise your whole color temperature would be messed up.

So here’s hoping Apple at least add a shortcut on the touch bar to do this!

PERFORMANCE

Ok, let’s talk about the performance. 

So aside from the 2 extra cores and 4 extra threads that we get with the 2018 models, we also get 32GB of 2400MHz DDR4 memory, which is even faster than the LPDDR3 2133MHz memory that we had in the 2017 models. The 560X is about 10-15% faster than the 560 was in 2017. So the main improvement here is in terms of the CPU and the RAM.

Now just 3 months after Apple released the 2018 MacBook Pros, they decided to release one more update. That was an additional GPU option which was the Vega 16 and Vega 20 Options, for the 15” MacBook Pros. Honestly, this broke my heart. Not just mine but everyone else’s who bought a maxed out 2018 model just month or so before. That’s because the Vega 20 models especially, are finally a massive improvement over even the 560X that we got a few weeks before. Apple could’ve at least said that they were going to release a major GPU option a few month later, or release the 2018 models in November, but nope they kept silent and screwed over everyone who bought a 2018 15” MacBook Pro.

But I digress. Anyway here’s how the 2017 compares to the 2018 560X and 2018 Vega 20: 

Geekbench 4 Single Core:

• 2017 i7 16GB 560 - 4742

• 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 5608

• 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 - 5698

Geekbench 4 Multi Core:

• 2017 i7 16GB 560 - 15829

• 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 23795

• 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 - 25086

Cinebench CPU:

• 2017 i7 16GB 560 - 689 

• 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 1013

• 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 - 1073

Disk Read Test:

• 2017 i7 16GB 560 - 2504R MB/s 

• 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 3106R MB/s  

• 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 - 3081R MB/s 

Disk Write Test:

• 2017 i7 16GB 560 - 1587W MB/s 

• 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 3004W MB/s 

• 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 2987W MB/s 

Keyshot 8:

• 2017 i7 16GB 560 - 8:39 

• 2018 i9 32GB 560X -  5:50

• 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 -5:36

The difference in internals between the VEGA and the 560X

Looking at this, even though both the models have the exact same CPU, it seems like the Vega 20 MBP does perform better even in CPU demanding tasks. This is because Apple has slightly redesigned the internals. I took the back covers off and you can see how much bigger the GPU is on the Vega 20 model. This is because the GPU memory is now inside the GPU itself. This is why AMD memory is called HBM2, it’s their second generation of high bandwidth memory and the only way it can be faster than the standard GDDR5 is by being placed inside the GPU rather than outside, like we have on the 560X model.  

The Vega 20 can also achieve more performance per watt than the 560X, meaning that the wattage can be lowered and therefore the GPU temperatures are lowered as well which means that in return the CPU has more room to breathe since Apple’s using a unified cooling system for both the CPU and the GPU. 

But how do they compare in GPU tests?

Cinebench GPU:

• 2017 i7 16GB 560 -  86fps

• 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 106fps

• 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 - 111fps

Heaven Benchmark:

• 2017 i7 16GB 560 -19fps

• 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 21fps

• 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 -  38fps

FCP X:

• 2017 i7 16GB 560 - 13min 51s 

• 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 11min 48s

• 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 - 10min 51s

Starcraft 2

• 2017 i7 16GB 560 -35fps

• 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 39fps

• 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 - 78fps

Fortnite

• 2017 i7 16GB 560 - 16fps

• 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 19fps

• 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 - 28fps

So CPU wise you do get a small improvement but GPU wise you get almost a two times increase in performance. So if you’re into gaming this is going to be huge improvement compared to even the 560X model. If you’re into video editing, the improvement is just about 10% on the Vega 20 compared to the 560X. 

Finally the last thing that I want to cover in this section is the T2 processor. So this is something that Apple initially added to the 2017 iMac Pro and then to all new Macs released afterwards.

Graph showing the difference in the Write speeds between the 2018 VEGA, the 2018 560X and the 2017 560

The 2018 MacBook Pros, the 2018 MacBook Air, and the new Mac Mini all come with the T2 chip. What it is essentially is an ARM based processor, very similar to Apple’s A10 chip that’s inside the iPhone 7 and it handles all the background system processes such as; the boot sequence, the microphones, the camera processing, even the disk encryption. This is the reason why we got double the write speeds on the 2018 MacBook Pro vs the 2017 model when using FireVault.

So the T2 lifts a lot of the lighter workloads from the main Intel processor, allowing it to perform faster, and what Apple did is remarkable! They have devices that run on both the x86-64 platform as well as the ARM platform. This is something that’s even more difficult to do than a MacBook running just on an ARM processor such as Apple’s A12 or so processors.

But the downside to this is that every Mac with the T2 processor will crash a lot! I’ve had my 2018 MacBook Pro for 6 months at the time of writing this, and this thing has crashed close to 40 times already. And yes, I did lose some work in the process. It’s a nightmare to be honest. I’ve had T2 crashes with the Vega 20 MBP as well, the Mac Mini, 2 Mac Minis actually and the MacBook Air.

So unfortunately, even though Apple’s T2 processor is supposed to make your MacBook more secure, which it does, it also has a negative impact on the usability, just because of how often it crashes your system.

CONCLUSION

So overall, I do love my 2018 15” i9 560X MacBook Pro. It’s by far the best mac that I’ve used and even though it’s far from perfect, what with all the T2 crashes, but it’s still an amazing device overall. I’m using Thunderbolt 3 to its full potential, connecting directly to my server, the Mac Mini, my 5K monitor as well as sometimes my Vega 64 eGPU as well. If you’re into gaming than yes the Vega it is worth it, otherwise the 560X is still a great GPU for content creation.