 Hello and welcome to episode one, season three of Techpad. Today we've got a super special episode on Apple MacBook Pros and all that good stuff and hopefully it'll be a really good time. So my name is Jackson Stetz and this is my co-host, Blake Smith. All right, before we get into all that stuff, we're going to read a quick article which is on the Steam Deck. And the article is called, Steam Deck Gets an Official Release Date, the first units to ship in February. This is by Matt Kim and it's from IGN. All right, so Steam Deck will go on sale starting February 25th with the first batch of handling and held set to ship on February 20th. In the blog post, Steam says customers will begin getting invites shortly after 10 am PT on February 25th and will have three days or 72 hours from the receipt. Other order email to make their purchase. If a person doesn't make an order at this time, the person next in the queue will get the chance to place an order. Valve says it is hoping to send emails for orders out in batches weekly. All right, order emails will be sent out in the same order as the reservations. And Valve will only let you order the Steam Deck model that you originally reserved. The initial reservation deposit will also be applied to the final price of the Steam Deck and check out. So they have a pecking order. When did it open? It's been a while. It's been, I can check, but it's been like a year. It's been a long time. I've been waiting. I've pre-ordered the Steam Deck. And there's two models, there's 64 gig storage model, the 256 and the 512 gig NVMe SSD model. And each one comes with their various perks. But I ordered the highest end one, which starts at about $650, because I'm looking to replace my shadow subscription with it, assuming that shadow still sucks as much as it does now. It's got a couple of bits, but I am fully ready to pay that price because it's going to be awesome. I'm super excited. But I was late to the pre-order, though. So even though it starts shipping on the order start coming in on the 25th. But that's for the first reservation. Yeah. I was definitely not the first reservation. So I'm going to be probably waiting. Their estimate for me was quarter two, which is an infinitely long amount of time. If you guys want to hear more about the Steam Deck, maybe a special, not necessarily a special episode, but just a whole dedicated Techpad episode to the Steam Deck, make sure to let us know because I'm definitely hyped for the Steam Deck. It's going to be awesome. And we forgot to say what it was, and it's about to take on a handheld PC gaming device and should be able to run in your Steam library. Yeah. It's like a switch. Except for Steam. Except for PC games. Yeah. Games you already know, technically. Oh yeah. Because you could just connect your account to it, right? Well, that's the thing about the switch is that if I moved to the switch and had to, well, at first I couldn't play BMG Drive on it. You couldn't play all those games. And I couldn't play, well, they have Civilization 6 on the switch. I don't know. I'm not sure. Either way, I'd have to buy, if I moved to Switch, those two games. Even if they were available for Switch. I could just buy the Steam Deck and be able to play it better than I already own the games. And how much was the deposit? It was $5. Oh. So it's $650. Yeah. Yeah. They say in there that it's like, oh, your deposit will go to the final price of the console. That's not even shipping. Yeah. It probably doesn't even cover shipping. So anyways, I'm hyped. I'm ready for the Steam Deck. I've been waiting years for something like this. All right. Well, cool. Let's get started with the Apple MacBooks. The new one. Apple MacBooks. And also the MacBook Pro 13-inch, but the M1 chip. Yes. Well, so Apple, I would say, maybe not recently. We're a little bit behind schedule on covering some of these new Macs. But Apple released a, I think it was during our special. We covered that release of the new Apple MacBooks. And they had already had the 13-inch model, and they added the 14 and 16-inch model. So that's the size of this, you know, the diameter of the computer. That's how they measure it. So it's not diagonal? It is diagonal, I think. We've got to find out. Because then it wouldn't be diameter. Also. Yeah. No, it's diagonal. It's diagonal. Yeah. So, we thought we'd do a special episode on, not a special episode, a dedicated episode on the significance of these MacBooks. Because it really is a significance upgrade. And it's probably going to change the PC manufacturing space for a long time. Because, I mean, these things are pretty awesome. I mean, not just only new MacBooks and different designs, they also have two new chips. Yes, they have. They're really nice. They're not relying on other companies to make their chips anymore. They're actually building their own chips at this point. M1 Pro and M1 Mac. Yes. Following on the Apple M1 chip that they put in their Mac minis, MacBook Pros, the 13-inch and their MacBook Airs. MacBook Airs. And their iMac, too. And the iPad? Yeah, the iPad Pro as well. So, you're fortunate enough to have an M1 MacBook Air. Yes, it's not very cool. Well, it's not. It is cool. It doesn't run out of power. It's not true M1 chip either. Because it has 7-core CPU and an 8-core CPU, which is the basic M1 chip. But still, what do you think of it? I mean, is it? It's really reliable. I've noticed that some of the updates sometimes mess with things on it. But I think that's because they're trying to make the update work for older gen Intel CPUs and M1. Yeah. But other than that, it's really nice. So what about the performance? Is it adequate for a MacBook Air? Yeah, I mean, MacBook Airs aren't meant to be too good at very low, for instance, or intensively workloads. But it works really well for what I use it for, which is school work, occasionally discord, and just watching movies and such. How is the battery life? Really good. Because that was a major selling point. Yeah. Because of its power efficiency. I mean, it charges really fast. And then I can just use it for a really long time. Well, I'm sure, I mean, probably what, 15 hours? 10? Yeah. Well, it depends. Like, if I'm running a lot of applications for school and then also having title, music, it tends to wear down. Yeah. But it still lasts. It lasts the full school day easily. So what Apple has done with these new MacBooks has taken all of the greatness that Blaze has just described in his M1 Air, although it's a little bit of the less powerful M1 chip. It's still, the base is there. It's an M1 chip. Yeah. And they've stacked a bunch of different chips. Actually, they just, they've just smushed a bunch of M1 chips into one bigger chip. Well, and made two different levels. Yeah. Well, but essentially those two levels are just additional M1 chips stacked on. Yeah. If you have one, might as well add more. Yeah. I mean, there you go. And so if you notice, they've actually, on their specs page here on my laptop, I'm going to close this tab. You can see that the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air 13 inch, the 13 inch models, technically have the same minus the GPU core or two, the same M1 chip. Yeah. But if I go down the specs page, you can see that they've introduced these new Apple M1 Pro and Apple M1 Pro Max right here. So M1 Pro and M1 Max as opposed to just the M1. And these are geared towards the same like power efficiency and just general reliability and features. Yeah. But they just have more power. They're designed for somebody who probably like me who needs to do transcoding, video editing, the whole lot in their laptop. And so far, from what we've seen is that these things are pretty amazing. Yeah. It's really the heart of, it's really what makes these new MacBook Pros so great. And if I go into the configuration here, we'll choose the 16 inch. Oh, wow. They have the same settings, right? Or the same selection of RAM or memory. Yeah. You can see here the, let's see. And processor options. Yeah. This, you have the M1 Pro, you have the M1 Pro and the M1 Max. Those are the three tiers. So there's two tiers of storage. So the only difference between this first tier and the second tier is. In fact, you can either buy two 14 inch MacBook Pros that are just the base M1 Pro chips, or you can get one M1 Pro with a Terrapin SSD storage. Yes. The storage prices are expensive. These first two tiers, the only difference is double the storage in the second tier. However, in the third tiers where you start getting into the M1 Max, if we look at the specs, which are really truly impressive for a completely new chip that somebody else has designed, not an Intel chip, not an AMD chip. These are pretty impressive specs. I mean, they all have 10 core CPUs. Really, the difference is the GPU. And neural engine. And neural engine. Do you know what that is? The neural engine has something to do with machine learning. If you're using Photoshop and you apply some sort of effect that recognizes the photo you're editing and makes the changes according to what I think, it just makes it easier for the computer to recognize patterns and objects and that sort of thing, I think. Now, when you have a regular laptop or desktop, you have your CPU up here, your GPU down here, and they talk to each other through the motherboard. What Apple has done is they've taken the CPU and they've just smashed the GPU right on board. Yeah. And they share memory and they share the same CPU, which allows them to be very, very fast. So effectively. And the memory is also the RAM. Yeah, the RAM. It's just soldered right on the motherboard, not the motherboard, the chip. SSDs are so fast that they're... Can substitute for RAM as well. Yeah. Which is incredible. However, that brings an argument of reliability or serviceability to the table. Yeah. If you've put everything on one little tiny chip about this big, there's no way that you could service that whatsoever. No. It'd be very difficult to do so. The entire computer is just one chip. And on desktops, you just slot in more RAM if your RAM dies or pull the GPU out and put a new one in. So Apple doesn't really have, well, they have warranties, but it's a big hassle to replace the whole laptop rather than just one component. If something dies, it turns immediately into eWaste. It's gone. That's the problem. The whole laptop, or at least the whole motherboard, it's just gone. And this is going against their Apple self-service. Yes. For those of you who don't know, there's the Apple self-service program they're rolling out, which allows customers to service their own devices in theory. What? Well, they have access to Apple certified tools. Instructions. Instructions, genuine parts. And all that stuff. The whole thing, so in theory, they could fix their iPhone. But they do recommend it to be someone who's trained or certified to work on Apple products because I'm guessing it's going to be really easy for someone who does not know anything to just destroy their... Yeah. And I think that's just good press. Because on the surface, everybody's like, yay, Apple's letting people service their products. I want you to. There's nothing to disturb us on the laptops. Well, okay. But you have to go back to, I think it's personally worth it. Because of how compact it is and how quick and all the... I think it's worth it. What's worth it? Having it non-serviceable. I think so too. Because it's such a great chip. Yeah. It's very fast. It really has facts and all that stuff, which kind of outweighs the self-service. Yeah. But on the other hand, I mean, if I'm making these laptops so thick now, it's almost... Well, I'm not sure if that's true. Because see, one of the... I have a really old Sony laptop in my basement. It's white. It's about that thick. It's pretty big. It has a socketed CPU and socketed RAM. I think we've... We went back. The side view. The side view. Yeah. The side profile looks huge. But this is actually smaller. I think that... Is it? I would rather personally take a less-serviceable, more compact product over the huge, like, Chungus MacBook Pro. Yeah. Well, this is non-serviceable and it is thick. Yes. And I mean, we've been talking about all the internals. But let's take a moment to look at what the new laptops look like. No. You don't want to? You don't want to take a look? Or do you don't like it? I don't like it. You don't like it? No. They have that little weird cutout for the camera. Oh, the notch. It's a 1080p camera. It doesn't need that big of a notch. Yeah. So if you look at my screen, let's see if I can zoom into the photo here. Or just, like, move the camera up? Or, like, that goes down? I don't know. Well, for those of you with an iPhone, new iPhone, iPhone 13, iPhone 12, iPhone 11, iPhone X, I think, I think that's when they introduce the notch. You'll be familiar with the big, intrusive notch that comes probably down the screen. I mean, with the phone, it doesn't matter too much. Yeah. This is a laptop. Exactly. This is a laptop. And Apple has done a good job of hiding this notch in the background of their stock background. Stock wall. It almost seems like they're embarrassed to put that out there. But there's this big notch right here where the webcam... It makes it look so much worse. Yeah. Some of the other things are not as highly controversial as some of the other things on this laptop, but it's definitely there. I think the top view looks like this exact same as every other... Yeah. ...book they've released. So they haven't really changed too much cosmetics other than the notch, and it's more thicker. Yeah. Now, another thing that people are so happy with on this laptop is the addition of ports. You mean re-addition. Re-addition. Thank you. Of ports. You'll notice that, yes, it is very thin. Garbage. But there's only two type C ports right here. Yeah, that's a... For the entire computer. Me too. Yeah. And you get one audio jack, 3.5 millimeter audio jack. I have to carry around all of the dongles, all of them, to make it work. Ethernet adapter, HDMI adapters, USB adapters, the whole thing. This is just there. They've added a little bit of thickness. I mean, this is a big computer. Don't get me wrong. It's thin. It's like five pounds if you get the upgrades. Yeah. But it also has MagSafe, an SD card slot and an HDMI slot. And two thunderbolts. And three thunderbolts, actually. Three. Yeah. And that's awesome. And the MagSafe is really cool. For those of you who don't know, MagSafe is like a magnetic charging solution. Magnetically connected. Yeah. So it magnetically connects so that if you're sitting at the kitchen. If your $3,000 laptop is sitting on your kitchen table and your dog or cat hits that charging cable, it's not on the ground like if you have thunderbolts. Yeah. It just pops right off the table. Like thunderbolts? It's going down. Yeah. Thunderbolts, your laptop is just going. It's gone. There's a big fat dent in the side now. If that happens. But my personal favorite is the addition of the SD card slot. Because this is a MacBook designed for pros. I guess it is designed for video. It is super annoying when I'm working in the studio to go, let me transfer this 128 gigs worth of footage. Yeah. And I'll just shot it to my MacBook. But I have to go and spend another 10 minutes looking for an adapter, plugging it in, I have the adapter. Well, I do. Yes, exactly. See, please, I am going to have a bag of dongles and adapters to put in here. But you have a bag. Yeah, I have a bag. You got to pull out this thing. Yeah. Right here. And then you have to connect it through the thunderbolts. Yep. And then you can finally connect, you know, ports and Ethernet and HDMI SD cards. What I don't see is a microSD though. But that's fine. Is it? Well, nowadays most microSD cards come with a big SD adapter. Does it? And I mean, most cameras don't. Well, I guess that's not true. A lot of cameras do use. Well, I mean, what do these use? Well, these cameras we're using right now in the past nine or four days, use regular size SD cards. That makes sense. And the, at school, we have this rack. Yep. The recorder. Yeah. It's a pretty standard for higher ends to use microSD cards. Do you know about the max transfer? Like the transfer speed? It depends on the class of the SD card. Some are rated for more, some are rated for less. Well, it's for the laptop. Does it have a cap? Probably the highest end rating, if I would guess, in the SD cards. Because it is specifically meant for video. Yeah. And creation. So don't get this if you're just going to go to college and browse Facebook. English. Yeah. If you're browsing Facebook, you don't need a MacBook Pro. Really? Just get a MacBook Air. Unless you have the money. I mean, if you want to buy a MacBook Pro, go ahead. Go ahead. But it's not necessary. No. Put that towards you like your college. Now, this is a pretty thick laptop. Yeah. I don't have, I don't mind it. However, would you say that the increase in volume that this laptop takes up is less than the volume of carrying around all those adapters? Yeah, probably. Because the adapters are all weird shapes and sizes. You have to get a whole bag. This is just, it's just a little bit thicker. And it doesn't matter. It makes it more durable too. Form over function. It looks more durable. Function over form, I guess, is the better way of saying this. That's why so many people are happy with this laptop. It's taken a step back from Apple's previous designs where they're prioritizing form over function and angering a lot of people in the process. And making a laptop that's really powerful. Classic Apple. It's nice. It's sleek. It's very easy to use. And then just, you know, it works. There's no need to carry dongles. It's just a nice laptop to have. Okay. Okay. So you do much more video editing and all that stuff. Do you care about the design as much? Or do you care more for function? I would care about the design. Do you? So you much prefer? Well actually, I spoke wrong. I think that it depends. I like the metal. Because I like the weight. Do you like wedge? I would not, I don't care about the shape. I care about the functionality and how durable it is. Do you care how it looks? No. Like on the outside, if it looks like a block? No. Absolutely not. I'm, as long as it has good battery life, powerful hardware, and I can work on it. And they didn't. It's a good laptop. They didn't really reduce the battery. How long you can use it for? Yeah. It's still like in the, okay. So the 14 inch has like a 17 hour battery. And the 16 inch has like a 21 hour battery. And I'm pretty sure it depends on the CPU you choose, as well as the best of it. So watchers, if you, this is a challenge, a tech pad challenge. Find a Microsoft PC laptop. Just a PC laptop in general. Think you can get 20 hours battery life. With these specs. Yeah, with these. With that 10 core 32. Of the 10 core CPU. 32 core GPU. Yeah. 32 gigs of RAM. A terabyte. Terabyte storage. The whole bit. 64 gigs of RAM. Yeah. You can't do it. And I will gladly eat my words if somebody sends me an email. Jackson.status. That's a lot of my public media.org. Send it to me. And I would gladly eat my words if somebody proves it to me. But. A tech pad on it. Yeah. Cause I'll be impressive. Yeah. I would, I would be willing to dedicate a whole tech pad episode to proving, you know, to showing you that Microsoft laptop. You can. We can't forget. The 1080p. They finally afraid. Finally. It has been years. Since we've had a 1080p. The bare minimum. Style of webcam. But they've had 720. Ever. Yeah. The 720 is. Garbage. And they have decent software to make it look nicer. But why don't you separate the camera? They finally did. They finally did. Why did it take them so long? Some of the other things that I'd like to mention. Yeah. About this laptop are. The keyboard. Which is no longer a butterfly keyboard. Well, they changed that back with mine. That's true. But there's. Magic. But the, you know, it. It's a point to make that they are still using magic keyboard. And it's more reliable. Type on. Yeah. Yeah. And the display. Is now 120 Hertz. Oh, they finally made it on par with iPad. Yes. So this, this display is going to look gorgeous. And it does. I've seen it. What's the resolution? It's there. I think it's their red resolution. It's not, it's not 4k. And it's above 1080. Yes. They're liquid red XDR. That's what mine. Oh boy. Don't you love marketing? This might have that. Liquid red XDR. Yeah. Your laptop has that. Although it's not liquid red XDR. I wish they could just give me a resolution. I guess it works. Well, I can find out on my laptop. You go to system preferences. Displays. You can do. Maybe I was wrong. Does not say it. Oh, also. I've seen it. Your payment plan for 12 months. That's price. So pricey. Yeah. The third tier. That's $291 a month. That's a paycheck for me every month. Well, if I want to buy this. You work at school. That is true. But this is still, I mean, that's nothing to, that's a hefty price to pay for a laptop for 12 months. Yeah. I'd say so. These are more expensive than my car. Yeah. All of them are. Okay. Well, we are running out of time here. Fortunately. We've got about four minutes left. And in those four minutes. I just want to say that these specs right here for an arm chip. They're using the arm architecture and Apple is making these chips. Is revolutionary. The performance of these is on par with the professional PC laptop. They're on par with like Intel's greatest offerings. And they're on par with the Nvidia GPUs. It's for, and that's for desktop. Yeah. And this is a laptop. And the pricing for them is pretty similar to the desktop with those specs. And this is a workstation. I mean, some people say this is expensive and it is. But for these specs, it's not as expensive as you think. No. And they still have the options for MacBooks for people who aren't going to do that. They still have like the, what do they have? The air and they still have the base pro 13 inch. So if you don't want to spend that much, you don't have to. Yeah. So in conclusion. Worth it. They've taken all of the great specs of their one products and all of their mac, the previous MacBooks, the beautiful trackpad, great design, nice aluminum and all of that. Yeah. Packed in desktop workstation grade processing. And made just a really great product in general. I am a thing. I am also a. If I had this money, I'd buy it immediately. I would not. Why is that? You just don't need it, right? I just, the things I use stuff for, I don't need it. I would, it'd be more beneficial for me. There you go. The iPad pros and then one chip too. So I would just encourage you, if you've never considered Mac before, maybe now is the time to consider it. Or check it out. Or check it out at least. Because it's looking pretty good. Apple's doing a good job. Yeah. I still stand by my Android cell phone though. I don't like the iPhone as much. Is it the layout? It's just iOS and the notch in general. Well, okay. We'll get into that now. Next episode, next episode. We, I'd recommend this laptop. Good job, Apple. And with that. Ending. Yes. Do you have anything else to say to her? I think it'd be really good for, if you're a professional in that, create a professional. Yes. Great for professionals. Cool. Well, I'd like to thank you for watching. If you wanted to see any of your other tech pad episodes, they're all on my public media. And I'd encourage you to check them out. There's some pretty good ones in there. If you're watching on Channel 8, I'd like to thank you for watching. And if you're on YouTube, thanks for watching as well. Twitch, thanks for watching. Make sure to subscribe. Follow me on all of those platforms. And we'll see you next Tuesday at 6 o'clock for another great episode of Tech Pad. Thank you for watching.