Computers & Electronics

In the market for a 2020 MacBook Pro 13"

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In the market for a 2020 MacBook Pro 13"

My 2011 MacBook Pro 13" i7 2.8 ghz 16gb ram that was purchased new from Best Buy was sold recently and now am looking for a replacement. I was looking at the i7 10th gen with 1 tb ssd, the ram I wanted to get 32gb since I keep my laptop for so long but wondering if 16gb will suffice. I mainly watch NetFlix, youtube, some LightRoom and Final Cut.

What do you guys suggest?
Telus: $50/100GB CAN/US 5G+
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ninety5teg wrote: My 2011 MacBook Pro 13" i7 2.8 ghz 16gb ram that was purchased new from Best Buy was sold recently and now am looking for a replacement. I was looking at the i7 10th gen with 1 tb ssd, the ram I wanted to get 32gb since I keep my laptop for so long but wondering if 16gb will suffice. I mainly watch NetFlix, youtube, some LightRoom and Final Cut.

What do you guys suggest?
How soon do you need it? Those applications will be supported on Arm in macOS 11 Big Sur. Not sure when the Arm MBP will be released, but I suspect late 2020 or early 2021. Non-beta Lightroom support may be somewhat later though. Lightroom and Final Cut are already running on macOS Arm natively in the lab, but I’m not convinced Adobe will release Lightroom Arm until 2021.

Also, I suspect when the MBP goes Arm, it could get a new form factor.

its-official-macs-moving-arm-new-mac-mi ... m-2384623/
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If you need it now then just buy it now, yeah? Personally I’m waiting for the ARM versions but the current Intel ones will be supported for years.

The high end configuration is overkill for YouTube and Netflix, obviously, and I’m no expert on photo/video editing but will probably be great for that. 16 gb will also probably be fine as well for the foreseeable future.
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EugW wrote: How soon do you need it? Those applications will be supported on Arm in macOS 11 Big Sur. Not sure when the Arm MBP will be released, but I suspect late 2020 or early 2021. Non-beta Lightroom support may be somewhat later though. Lightroom and Final Cut are already running on macOS Arm natively in the lab, but I’m not convinced Adobe will release Lightroom Arm until 2021.

Also, I suspect when the MBP goes Arm, it could get a new form factor.

its-official-macs-moving-arm-new-mac-mi ... m-2384623/
Yes I was looking at but I will stick with Intel.
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For your usage, do you really need the i7? The 2020 i5 seems fine to me.

The 32 GB is also debatable, but is more important than the i7.
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knowing how well lightroom and finalcut works on my 2020 ipad pro, I wouldnt worry about the performance of the ARM mac.
lightroom macos and ipados version are almost the same these days.
For final cut, I suspect Apple will have T2/T3 chip in the ARM Macs for the already fast enough encoding.
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ericw wrote: For final cut, I suspect Apple will have T2/T3 chip in the ARM Macs for the already fast enough encoding.
AFAIK, encoding has nothing to do with T2. It's associated with the GPU. And it's already real time for 8-bit h.265 HEVC, even for 2017 iPad Pros.
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EugW wrote: AFAIK, encoding has nothing to do with T2. It's associated with the GPU. And it's already real time for 8-bit h.265 HEVC, even for 2017 iPad Pros.
Actually apple can use T2 for encoding on intel mac right now since last macos
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EugW wrote: For your usage, do you really need the i7? The 2020 i5 seems fine to me.

The 32 GB is also debatable, but is more important than the i7.
I tend to keep the MacBook for at least 9 years if I can. Thats why I am trying to see if I should go the i7 and 32gb route.
Telus: $50/100GB CAN/US 5G+
Rogers $34/40GB 5G+
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ninety5teg wrote: I tend to keep the MacBook for at least 9 years if I can. Thats why I am trying to see if I should go the i7 and 32gb route.
While the i7 would be faster than the i5, I would check the various forums what the fan noise is like.

I bought an iMac in 2017 which had a Core i7 and after a week with it I returned it and bought an i5, and I am much happier. Why? Cuz the i7 would ramp up the fan very quickly, even just encoding short birthday videos. So in regular usage, I'd hear the fan ramp up from time to time, and it drove me up the wall. In contrast, the i5 takes much, much longer to ramp up the fan, and for general usage, the fan is never audible. For a MacBook Pro, the fan will ramp up more often, but you should check to see if there is a big difference between the i5 and i7 in real world usage.

But yes, get 32 GB RAM if you're keeping it that long.

ericw wrote: Actually apple can use T2 for encoding on intel mac right now since last macos
Thanks for the info.

However, as mentioned, I already get real-time 8-bit h.265 encoding speeds on Arm A10X (iPad Pro 10.5").

EDIT:

I just read that Apple Insider article regarding T2. Unfortunately, it's not very clear, as it's not an Apples to Apples test. The i3-8100B in the Mac mini and the i3-8100 are not the exact same chip and setup, with the Mac mini 8100B utilizing faster memory. Also, they haven't separated out T2 performance. They are measuring T2 + QuickSync performance in the Mac mini, vs. no T2 and no QuickSync performance in the Mac mini.

In addition, Apple doesn't actually say T2 is used for video encoding in their documentation. I'm not saying it doesn't though, as Apple doesn't always document these things well for the general public. I'm just saying that Apple Insider article claiming huge differences due to T2 might be somewhat misleading.
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EugW wrote: While the i7 would be faster than the i5, I would check the various forums what the fan noise is like.

I bought an iMac in 2017 which had a Core i7 and after a week with it I returned it and bought an i5, and I am much happier. Why? Cuz the i7 would ramp up the fan very quickly, even just encoding short birthday videos. So in regular usage, I'd hear the fan ramp up from time to time, and it drove me up the wall. In contrast, the i5 takes much, much longer to ramp up the fan, and for general usage, the fan is never audible. For a MacBook Pro, the fan will ramp up more often, but you should check to see if there is a big difference between the i5 and i7 in real world usage.

But yes, get 32 GB RAM if you're keeping it that long.



Thanks for the info.

However, as mentioned, I already get real-time 8-bit h.265 encoding speeds on Arm A10X (iPad Pro 10.5").

EDIT:

I just read that Apple Insider article regarding T2. Unfortunately, it's not very clear, as it's not an Apples to Apples test. The i3-8100B in the Mac mini and the i3-8100 are not the exact same chip and setup, with the Mac mini 8100B utilizing faster memory. Also, they haven't separated out T2 performance. They are measuring T2 + QuickSync performance in the Mac mini, vs. no T2 and no QuickSync performance in the Mac mini.

In addition, Apple doesn't actually say T2 is used for video encoding in their documentation. I'm not saying it doesn't though, as Apple doesn't always document these things well for the general public. I'm just saying that Apple Insider article claiming huge differences due to T2 might be somewhat misleading.
i use T2 for handbrakes occasionally on my macbook pro 13, when i am too lazy to plug in my egpu. it was actually demoed by apple during a keynote last year.
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ericw wrote: i use T2 for handbrakes occasionally on my macbook pro 13, when i am too lazy to plug in my egpu. it was actually demoed by apple during a keynote last year.
Can you isolate T2 from QuickSync in Handbrake? Cuz the AppleInsider test does not.

In any case, strictly speaking, Apple doesn't need to implement T2 to get good h.265 encoding performance in an Arm Mac, since their Arm SoCs already have good h.265 encoding performance. They may use T2/T3 for this but the bigger reason is it does so many other things.

Note, that is for 8-bit h.265. What about 10-bit h.265?
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EugW wrote: Can you isolate T2 from QuickSync in Handbrake? Cuz the AppleInsider test does not.

In any case, strictly speaking, Apple doesn't need to implement T2 to get good h.265 encoding performance in an Arm Mac, since their Arm SoCs already have good h.265 encoding performance. They may use T2/T3 for this but the bigger reason is it does so many other things.

Note, that is for 8-bit h.265. What about 10-bit h.265?
I recall Apple VideoToolbox and Intel QuickSync are separate options. I only used 8 bit.
I guess the bottomline is - for people who are concerned about video editing on ARM, they shouldn't.
I am sure Apple will do something, including using a separate chip if necessary, to achieve comparable performance vs. an AMD/NVidia GPU.
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ericw wrote: I guess the bottomline is - for people who are concerned about video editing on ARM, they shouldn't.
I am sure Apple will do something, including using a separate chip if necessary, to achieve comparable performance vs. an AMD/NVidia GPU.
Uh what? This is the 2018 iPad Pro vs. Intel with iGPU:

Image

And even more importantly, a lot of people state that scrubbing in LumaFusion on the 2018 iPad Pro is smoother with multiple layered 4K video clips than Final Cut is on the 2018 MacBook Pro 15" with AMD graphics.
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EugW wrote: Uh what? This is the 2018 iPad Pro vs. Intel with iGPU:
And even more importantly, a lot of people state that scrubbing in LumaFusion on the 2018 iPad Pro is smoother with multiple layered 4K video clips than Final Cut is on the 2018 MacBook Pro 15".
My experience is that Nvidia and AMD GPUs are still a lot faster, but Apple ARM CPU by itself is plenty powerful.
For photos, I use lightroom on iPad Pro almost always.
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ericw wrote: My experience is that Nvidia and AMD GPUs are still a lot faster, but Apple ARM CPU by itself is plenty powerful.
For photos, I use lightroom on iPad Pro almost always.
Faster for encoding, sure in many instances. However, the more important metric here for a lot of people is smoothness for actual editing and scrubbing. The latest 2020 MacBook Pros are supposed to be a lot better than the 2018 models, but the point is that the 2018 iPad Pros were already better than most 2018 MacBook Pros, and this year's Arm chips will be 2 generations later.

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple has bumped up the video encoding performance yet again in A14 / A14X / A14?. This should make a significant difference at the low to mid end, and might even be good enough for some of the higher end machines. At the top end Apple will go with discrete GPUs, but it's not going to be as necessary as it may have been in the past for video editing.
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Just a reminder that Apple has their Back To School promo and you can get free Airpods.

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