Apple’s New Beasts – M1 Pro & M1 Max – Arrive Oct 26

Just in case you’ve been asleep or under a rock for the last few days, Apple is about to change history…. again. The BEASTS arrive Tue, Oct 26.

The M1 BEASTS

The new MacBooks Pro with M1 Pro and M1 Max went on order immediately after Apple announcement event last Mon, Oct 18. And they are BEASTS !!!

The M1 crushed almost every other processor last year when they shipped in Nov 2020. Now the M1 Pro and M1 Max are set to crush the rest. Scary fast and scary faster indeed !!!

My Setup

I’ve got 2 2018 Mac minis with Intel processors that are my workhorses. One of which I use as my super-powered desktop that I upgraded to 64GB RAM with a super fast Thunderbolt 3 connected external 2TB SSD that is just as fast as Apple’s internal SSD. And the other mini I upgraded to 16GB with a monster 24TB RAID 5 HDD array that is a full time server and Virtual Machine (VM) host.

And last Nov I got a MacBook Air with an M1 and it smokes !!! But I did not get an M1 mini because my Intel mini is driving 3 4K monitors, and occasionally an iPad Pro as a 4th display via Sidecar, and some serious Thunderbolt devices. And sadly the M1 Macs do not support more than 2 displays, and only 2 Thunderbolt ports. And that’s why Apple did not discontinue the Intel minis, because the M1 mini didn’t quite match up, even though it was smokin’ fast. So I put off getting a new Mac mini, until a newer and beastier Apple Silicon Mac mini ships. Maybe a Mac mini Pro or Max in Space Gray.

I Got My Beast – Did You ?

I was all set to watch Apple’s event live, when my jobby job called and killed that plan. I didn’t think it was a big deal to just watch it later in the day, because I was waiting for a new Mac mini with upgraded Apple Silicon and the rumors and leaks weren’t looking good for that to be announced Mon. So I was expecting just new MacBooks Pro and was planning to wait for a new mini. And that’s just what happened.

But then….. when I watched… the beast began to stir.

I watched it late in the day. And I just couldn’t wait any longer. The new M1’s are insane !!! And 2 more high performance surprises were:

1. The M1 Max doubles the already blazingly fast unified memory bandwidth over the M1 Pro.
2. The already wicked fast SSD got bumped to a mind blowing 7.4 GB/sec, over double what all other previous Macs could do and they already smoked everybody else !!!

And those are just two more of the many giant leaps in performance and will have a direct impact on the kind of work that I do. On conventional Intel PC architectures, those two areas are what kill performance for my work. Intel’s pathetic processor speed and core bumps mean even less, when the PC architecture has bottlenecks with memory and SSD. Apple’s architecture with Intel processors went a long way to improve overall performance. But the Apple Silicon architecture unleashes the BEAST !!!

So I bought the top pre-configed 16″ MacBook Pro with the beastiest M1 Max with 10-Core CPU, 32-Core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine, 2x Media Engine, 32GB Unified Memory and 1TB SSD storage at $3,499. I considered bumping the RAM up to 64 GB, but that was really more than I needed, because I’ll have to continue to use my Intel based Mac mini with 64GB RAM to run most of my VMs because they require Intel. At least, for now. And any customization pushed out the delivery dates into Dec. As it was I had already missed the early order window to get it on Oct 26. So mine is estimated to arrive Nov 9 – 16.

I got some discounts by trading in my M1 MacBook Air for $620 credit – it costs $999 a year ago, so that’s a pretty great price, more than other companies. And another 3% cash back by using my Apple Card, and free financing to spread the payments out over 12 months. The net net is I get a BEAST for just $240 a month.

Apple’s BEAST Video & Music

That’s just what I call it, cause it’s totally bad ass. But it does rule, and it really is a beast of a video. I think it’s one of the best Apple videos I’ve seen in a long time. And that is saying something, since Apple is best in class in video production too.

Everything in it is great. The music, the narrator, the imagery, the animation. It’s….A….(wait for it)…..BEAST !!!

The song from this video is called Warning from Martin Wave and here’s is a link to Apple Music (of course). The song info says it was released Oct 18, 2021, the date of Apple’s event, so it must have been produced just for them.