My new MacBook Pro with the M4 Pro chip

Week 369 was posted by Charanjit Chana on 2024-11-18.

After a long wait, I finally have myself a new MacBook Pro. Apple announced the M4 family of chips at the end of October bringing the series to the Mac lineup, after debuting in iPads, and expanded from the regular M4 to the M4 Pro and M4 Max.

While I'd have loved to have settled for a M4 or gone all out with the M4 Max, the M4 Pro sits perfectly in the middle and is the version I opted for.

Nano-texture display

I was in store around the time they announced it and saw that the Nano-texture display was coming to the MacBook for the first time. In store, it makes a huge difference to the glare and amount of reflections but it also makes the picture a little duller. I decided not to opt for the finish and having gone and seen the new display in store over the weekend, I am not regretting my decision. If anything, HDR content really pops and while the MacBook Pro means I'm not tied to a desk, I've used my previous laptop outside only a few times over the time I had it.

Upgrading from Intel

I was upgrading from an Intel MacBook Pro, so the jump feels huge in performance. Overall, it is very familiar which is a problem with devices that last for ages and get updates for years. Replacing them isn't as exciting as you think, but genuinely the jump is massive.

Having said that, I bought my last MacBook Pro in October 2013. 11 years is a long time and it's held up well but the battery was close to useless and the fans... the fans just never stop. To be honest, they were spinning from day one but it's only ever gotten worse. It was when I started 1 Thing A Week, back in 2017, when I first seriously thought about the need to upgrade but I've muddled along until now.

My 15-inch MacBook Pro was bought with a dedicated graphics card and 16GB of RAM. It was good for its time, just noisy. The screen was really good (for its time) but it was too big. I couldn't go for a 13-inch at the time because all the reviews covered its inability to scroll even websites without feeling choppy. As a web developer, that wasn't going to work for me.

So 15-inch MacBook Pro it was and it was good up until the OS updates stopped. I wasn't going to get many of the features moving forward anyway as Apple began their Apple Silicon transition.

I won't even dwell on the lack of Touch ID, miniature trackpad or legacy function key functions.

Or the useless Touch Bar that's on my 13-inch model.

Compared to Intel Macs

Having said that, my 13-inch Intel MacBook Pro from work does continue to get more features than I expect it to but the fans! The fans go on all the time. It's a 2020 model, so not old, and most of what I do is in "the cloud". I don't push the hardware for work at all and yet I'll be working on another device, or working through notes I've taken and the screen saver will start. And so do the fans. They spin like crazy for the screen saver. It makes no sense to me but the efficiency is just terrible.

My personal 15-inch is old, I get that the fans will probably come on to help it cool and get through tasks and it runs out of juice pretty quickly. My 13-inch for work is not that old but has always worked this way and the battery has been terrible from the beginning. If I'm being generous, it gets 5 hours on a full charge.

In comparison, since my last charge of my new MacBook Pro I have used it for about 3 hours and I'm down 12% of battery. I've not been pushing it but there were times that I did less on Intel MacBooks and I'd already be reaching for the charger.

Which MacBook Pro did I get?

I went for the 14-inch MacBook Pro. I'd seen them all in stores, and had even considered the MacBook Air. In fact, the 15-inch MacBook Air is thin enough and with smaller bezels now, it is probably the right device for so many people. But it's now stuck on the previous generation of Apple Silicon and I want to start of with the best I can get and to keep it for as long as I can.

The 16-inch is similarly sized to my last laptop, again thanks to the thinner bezels, but I wanted something a bit smaller and I'm happy with my choice. There's no difference in performance between the two sizes anymore. It really comes down to screen size and battery life.

My MacBook Pro specs

10 CPU cores
20 GPU cores
16-core Neural Engine
48GB RAM

I went for the beefier M4 Pro option and went up a level with RAM. With Apple Intelligence, which may tax the RAM day-to-day, I thought it was best to get the most I could now as it can't be upgraded.

Oh and I went for silver. My work laptop is Space Grey, which is just dark silver to me. An overrated finish. Space Black looks nice, but I'm happy with the silver finish which I think contrasts nicely with the black keyboard.

Why not a desktop Mac?

If I went for a desktop, then I'd be tied to my desk and while that might actually be a bit more productive, it would remove the flexibility I have at the moment to move around the house when I want.

But the Mac mini is absolutely a fantastic machine. It weighs nothing, is barely bigger than an Apple TV and can be about as powerful as a Mac Studio. It's an insane bit of tech from that lot in Cupertino.