To say that I am excited about the new MacBooks Pro would be a gross understatement; the new M1 Pro / M1 Max MacBooks Pro are absolutely phenomenal! All that’s left for me is to figure out how I can afford one without having to then file for bankruptcy! =)
But first, some background into my decision-making process.
I am the owner of what I (and many others) think is the last generation of truly well-designed MacBooks Pro. Yes, I am speaking of the Retina MacBook Pro from 2015 or so, before Apple went crazy on aesthetics and neglected the real purpose of a pro-level laptop. Granted, in recent years Apple has dialled down some of those changes—goodbye butterfly keyboard, you will NOT be missed—but until today I had not been very impressed with any of the laptops they released from 2016 or so. The M1 Macs released last year were a step in the right direction, I thought, but at the back of my mind I knew they could do better than that.
And boy have they actually delivered! Here, take a look at the tech specs.
I am genuinely curious to see if the 16-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro (the one I’m currently eyeing) can do a better job than an iMac Pro at running my neuroimaging analyses. Currently, I am figuring out how to do MRI tractography analysis which involves generating millions of streamlines (connections) between different brain regions. My old MacBook Pro struggles to finish analysing a single person’s MRI scan, and even my iMac Pro at the office is finding it challenging. Below is a screenshot showing all 10 iMac Pro cores in use by tckgen, the process responsible for generating all those streamlines:
Logically, these new laptops should be able to outperform the iMac Pro from a few years ago but still, it’s mind-blowing to see so much power in a portable form factor.
Apples deserves some kudos for having the courage (finally, a fitting place to use that word) to remove the touch bar and bring back genuinely useful things like the MagSafe port and the SDXC card slot. Their choice of the word ‘Unleashed’ to describe today’s event is also perfect; I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these. So, yeah, if any of you know someone who would be willing to sponsor one for me, let’s talk! =)
Imran Idris 