Okay, so now that the M2 chip has been announced
and will shortly become available.
Let's also talk about the M1 Max,
and if they're possibly outdated
or if you should maybe even sell yours
if you are thinking about upgrading in the near future.
Okay, so yes, the M1 Max are technically outdated by M2,
but that doesn't mean that anything is actually wrong
with the M1 Max.
They work perfectly fine.
The hardware is good.
The performance is good.
And more importantly, the price is good
and is only going to get lower.
I mean, look at the M1 Mac Mini,
which is my favorite M1 Mac.
It's insanely portable, powerful, decent port selection,
same with the M1 iMac, the MacBook Pro,
and obviously the MacBook Air.
We just haven't really had any issues
or defects or major controversies
with any of the Apple silicon devices.
And if we compare this to some of the previous versions
of the MacBook specifically,
so we had the Butterfly keyboard issue,
we also had the Staingate issue
that affected some Max around 2015.
If you remember back then,
it was because the anti-reflective coding
was actually peeling off some MacBook models.
We just haven't had any of this happen to the M1 Max.
I mean, sure, we did have some people last year
freak out about the SSD swap memory usage.
Also some people claiming
that their screens were just randomly cracking
for no reason on the M1 MacBook Air.
I've debunked all of those things on the channel,
if you want to check it out.
Apart from that though, it's been smooth sailing.
So basically, what I'm trying to say is,
there's nothing wrong with the M1 Max.
They work perfectly fine.
There's no big issues.
And I'm sure they're going to last for a very long time.
Now let's also have more of an in depth chat about the M2,
and if it's any kind of significant upgrade over M1.
Now, in my opinion, I don't think so.
And I will explain why a little bit later on,
but I also think that Apple thinks the same way.
They basically admitted this during WWDC.
Firstly, they're still using a 5 nanometer SOC.
Now I don't expect Apple to jump straight
to 3 nanometers less than two years after announcing at one.
But by calling this M2 chip second-generation 5 nanometer,
it tells you all you need to know about M2.
It's just a slightly more refined version of the M1 chip.
And it isn't supposed to be some kind of
revolutionary upgrade.
Think of it like buying a powerful car,
which you then take to the mechanic for a few part upgrades
and is then tuned on a diner.
You are probably not going to notice a difference,
unless you've been really pushing that thing to its limits.
And something similar can be seen in the CPU cores of M2.
For example, the shared cache on the performance cores
has increased from 12 to 16 megabytes.
Now, is this an example of a decent improvement?
Yes.
But is it groundbreaking?
No.
Now all of these minor upgrades in M2
translate into a supposed 18% performance increase
for the CPU,
but only of course, if that's able to translate
into real life workflows, which it typically does not.
Now, even though some people might think
this is a small increase.
I mean, 18% in one generation is massive, in my opinion.
But if we compare this to Intel, for example,
who was infamous over the last 10 years
of only slightly bumping up each new iteration of CPUs
with only about 5 to 8% of extra performance,
compared to Intel, it is a massive, massive jump
in just 18 months.
The GPU though is where it gets kind of weird.
Apple shows this fancy graph on their WWDC presentation.
But if you actually go onto the Apple website
and find the graph,
there's this tiny, tiny little note down the bottom.
They're using the 10-core GPU version of M2
and comparing it with the 8-core GPU M1 version.
Now, as you might already know,
on the base model M2 MacBook Air, you only get 8 GPU cores.
The only way you can get 10 cores
is if you pay 100 bucks extra on the M2 MacBook Air,
or if you get the M2 MacBook Pro
that comes with 10 GPU cores as a base model.
Now, in my opinion,
I think this is a little bit misleading on Apple's behalf.
I mean, look, they're not lying.
They're not making it up.
Like they're technically telling the truth,
but the fact that they've completely buried this footnote
down the bottom of this graph
and the font is just so, so tiny,
I think is a little bit dodgy on their behalf.
And don't forget that if you simply just go from 8 to 10,
that's a 25% increase on its own,
without any kind of upgrades or increased performance.
So that first number they're showing in that graph
is literally just because there are two extra cores.
And that second number,
although, increased to 35% is only able to increase
because more wattage is being pumped into the GPU cores,
which often means higher temperatures.
And also admittedly, the GPU cores also have minor upgrades
like larger memory cache,
and they can access the unified memory faster than M1.
But yeah, overall, especially with the GPU,
there's really not that much difference when compared to M1.
But to be fair to Apple,
no one really knows what's going to happen at this stage.
So we'll have to wait until we actually get these MacBook in
and start benchmarking them.
Moving on.
I think you'll find that there's actually a significant
amount of people that edit videos on M1 machines,
even base model M1 MacBook Airs,
but there is a big difference
between being able to edit videos easily
versus running out of RAM or GPU power or swap memory
and having a horrible experience.
And that is a very, very fine line on M1 Max.
And often, all it takes is just adding one extra effect
or making the timeline one minute longer,
and that can completely tip you over that line.
So this is why, in my opinion,
the new media engine on M2 is a game changer,
because as long as you're using these supported footage,
like H264 or ProRes,
the editing experience is going to be much better
compared to M1.
Now I'm not saying you should go out and buy a base model
M2 MacBook Air for hardcore video editing.
For those people, go get a 14-inch M1 Pro
or M1 Ultra, or whatever.
But for those of you that just like to do
a little video edit every now and then,
or maybe just for fun on the side,
maybe this will allow you to bump up
your timeline resolution from 1080P to 4K,
or allow you to even do some light multicam editing
on a fanless device, which to me is pretty amazing.
But if you don't do video editing,
then it's an entirely useless upgrade
that you will never be able to take advantage of.
So in terms of performance differences between M2 and M1,
there's really not that much.
So I feel like M2 should technically be called like M1.5
or like M1 Plus or something like that.
I have no idea what to call it.
Apple's already taken all the Pro, the Max, the Ultras,
so there's not much left to call it.
But I just don't think it's anywhere near
as significant and upgrade over M1,
as some people are making it out to be.
All right, so let's chat about how the value proposition
of M1 Max has changed with the introduction of M2.
And as we all know,
the M2 MacBook Air is now more expensive,
and there are some reasons for this.
One of them being the M2 Air is a brand new redesign.
And Apple has a track record of introducing a new redesign
at a higher price,
letting the old model die out
and then reducing the price of the new design.
And we've seen this a couple of times,
for example, with the older MacBook Air.
When it was first launched in 2018,
it started at 1,199 before slowly decreasing
to its current 999 price point.
But I wanted to focus on something
that is typically glossed over,
and that is the fact that the M1 Air
will actually gain value against the M2 Air
as the M1 Air becomes more heavily discounted
and also more prevalent on the secondhand markets.
So what I mean by this is,
there are people out there on the bleeding
or the cutting edge or early adopters,
they're going to be selling a whole bunch of lightly used
M1 MacBook Air or M1 Mac Minis or iMacs or whatever.
And these are going to start flooding the secondhand market.
So you'll start seeing a pop-up on eBay,
on Craigslist, Gumtree, if you're in Australia,
Facebook marketplace.
People will also be selling them back to Apple to upgrade.
So the refurbished section of the Apple website
is probably going to have a lot more M1 stuff in stock.
And what we'll probably see as time goes on
is the value of the M1 Max over the M2 Max
will keep increasing.
What do I mean by this?
Well, let me explain.
If we take the M1 versus the M2 MacBook Air, for example,
at the moment there's a 200 US Dollars price difference
between the two.
Now, if we go out and look at the secondhand market,
you could probably pretty easily pick up
a lightly used M1 MacBook Air
for $900,
$800,
750.
I've seen a few going for $700.
So what was a $200 price difference
is now a $500 price difference,
which is a massive, massive increase.
And this will be the exact same for all other M1 Max
as they are refreshed with M2.
Even if they get all these new features,
ports, screens, et cetera,
the value gap will likely continue to widen.
Now, I also wanted to talk about the future
of the M1 devices
because eventually, they're all going to be updated to M2.
There's this picture going around on Twitter
from Fred the Frenchy that helps explain
where the M2 might sit in the current M1 hierarchy.
Personally, I think the M2 should sit a little lower here,
but it does give you a good idea of what will happen
with the rest of the Apple silicon devices.
The M2 Pro will be halfway between the M1 Pro and M1 Max,
and the M2 Max will be halfway between the M1 Max
and M1 Ultra, and so on and so forth.
And I think this is an incredibly smart move from Apple.
I mean, they're already so far ahead
from competitors like Intel.
Why bother rushing?
It honestly looks like Apple is just solidifying
their current position.
Mac sales are skyrocketing,
support for traditionally PC dominated things
like 3D modeling and gaming is increasing by the day.
So why not take the time to focus on other things
such as upgrading the chassis
or developing the next generation of Apple silicon,
which is the 3 nanometer SOC.
And from all the leaks and rumors I've seen out there,
it looks like it's going to be pretty impressive.
But yeah, apart from that,
to answer the question this video poses,
are M1 Max outdated?
Certainly, not.
Even though they might technically be
a generation behind now.
I think they still have a very, very long shelf life,
especially, if we're just going to keep seeing minor iterations
like M2 with not that much of a massive improvement.
So if you do have an M1 Mac,
if you've just bought one, for example,
or, maybe you attempted to upgrade to M2,
or whatever else comes out,
I wouldn't be too worried.
There's really not much of a difference.
And I think you'll be happy with what you've currently got.
But apart from that, guys, thanks for watching this video.
And I'll catch you in the next one.