Apple is finally restoring balance to its portable lineup with the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros. If you wanted a big-screen Mac notebook for video editing over the past year, you were stuck paying a premium for outdated Intel and AMD hardware. So, we've been eagerly awaiting an M1 upgrade for the 16-inch MacBook Pro, a machine I called Apple's best laptop ever when it debuted two years ago.

But it's worth remembering that, for all the hype around Apple's M1 chip last year, it was a let down for creative professionals. It just couldn’t handle the kinds of heavy duty video editing and 3D rendering that they demanded, in part due to being capped at 16GB of RAM. That made the 13-inch MacBook Pro a bit of an odd duck, since the Air was nearly as fast.

Apple's redesigned MacBook Pros, powered by its new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, are exactly what media professionals have been waiting for. The processors are far faster than last year's M1, they support up to 64GB of RAM, and both laptops feature XDR display technology borrowed from the iPad Pro. But Apple also looked backwards as it stepped forward, restoring ports and adopting a design that resembles many of its older machines. Just call them PowerBooks, reborn.

What's new

Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

Apple isn’t currently planning to replace the 13-inch model with the MacBook Pro 14. It’s more an expansion of the highest-end model. It can do almost everything the 16-inch model can, it’s just smaller. (The only exception is "High Power Mode," which gives the 16-inch M1 Max version a temporary speed boost.) That's one way I've come to terms with the high $1,999 starting price. The bigger model now starts at $2,499, $100 more than the Intel version.

Both notebooks still look like MacBook Pros, with sleek unibody aluminum cases. But lean in a bit closer and you'll notice some retro flourishes. They're slightly thicker, with more bulbous edges that hearken back to Apple's notebooks from the 2000's. They're also heavier than you'd expect: the 14-inch model comes in at 3.5 pounds, while the 16-inch varies between 4.7 and 4.8 pounds, depending on the chip you choose. That's about half a pound heavier than the last 16-inch MacBook Pro. 

All of that heft isn’t for naught, though. In part it allowed Apple to cram in a lot more ports. Joining three Thunderbolt 4 USB-C connections are a full-sized HDMI port, a MagSafe power connection, a high-impedance headphone jack and an SD card reader (cue triumphant horns). Sure, you’ll still need adapters to connect older USB Type-A devices, but at least you can offload photos and video without extra gear. You can still charge the notebooks over USB-C — always useful in a pinch — but the MagSafe connection is less likely to cause accidental falls and you won't have to use a precious USB-C port just to stay powered up.

Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

Looking at the MacBook Pro's screens makes it clear they're anything but retro, though. They feature 14.2-inch and 16.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR displays, respectively. Mini-LED backlighting lets them reach up to 1,600 nits of peak brightness, which is great for HDR content. The screens are a sharp 254 pixels per inch, with a 3,024 by 1,964 resolution on the 14-inch and 3,456 by 2,234 on the 16-inch. Neither are true 4K (the 16-inch comes close), but you'll still be able to work on 4K and 8K video, just at a reduced scale.

Best of all is that the MacBook Pros support ProMotion, Apple's technology that enables refresh rates up to 120Hz. With that flipped on, scrolling through web pages and documents just felt silky smooth. And after spending hours writing up this review, I definitely noticed that my eyes were less fatigued thanks to the speedy refresh rate. This is becoming more common in the laptop world. Microsoft already beat Apple to the punch by putting a 120Hz screen in the Surface Laptop Studio. ProMotion is also intelligent enough to lower the refresh rate when it makes sense, which goes a long way towards saving battery life.

Really though, you don't have to think about all of the technology going into Apple's Liquid Retina XDR displays. Just know that they look incredible, with eye-watering brightness in sunny HDR scenes and inky black darkness in night shots. These aren't OLED screens, but mini-LEDs get Apple pretty close to that level of contrast. 

Embracing the notch life

Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

Now let's talk about the elephant in the room: that notch in the middle of the screen. Much like the last batch of iPhones, Apple carved out a portion of the display to fit in a camera. In this case a 1080p webcam. Upon first glance, it's almost laughable that Apple is leaning even more into a design element that everyone hates. But, honestly, the notch isn't a big deal.

Apple wisely pushed the MacOS menu bar around the camera, so it's really just taking up space that would go unused anyway. The menu bar also gets blacked out entirely whenever you put an app or video in fullscreen. You could also use a black wallpaper which effectively hides the notch.

I'll happily give up a bit of screen real estate, though, if it means Apple can finally squeeze in a decent camera. And judging from the dozens of video calls I've been on over the past week, it's a huge upgrade. There's a clear leap forward in resolution, sharpness and detail compared to my 2017 MacBook Pro. And it definitely looks better than the M1 MacBook Air, which had a few tweaks, but was still stuck at 720p. It would have been nice to see FaceID on the MacBook Pro though, which would have brought it on-par with Windows Hello-equipped PCs. For now, you'll still have to rely on the TouchID sensor on the power button.

In use

Our 14-inch review model was equipped with an M1 Pro sporting 16 GPU cores, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. The 16-inch had the 32 GPU core M1 Max, a 2TB SSD and a whopping 64GB of RAM. (This, by the way, marks the first time I've reviewed a laptop with that much RAM.) Both of Apple's new chips also feature 10 CPU cores — for comparison, the M1 had eight CPU cores and eight GPU cores.

Just based on specs, I expected to see some wild performance improvements. And the benchmarks didn't disappoint: According to GeekBench 5, both MacBook Pros blew away every Windows PC we reviewed this year by a significant margin. That includes the NUC 11 Extreme powered by Intel's Core i9-11900KB, a high-end desktop CPU! The single-core performance on the M1 Pro and Max was similar to the M1, which is unsurprising. But the multi-core figures were far higher. Another nice plus: Both of these computers are equipped with very fast NVMe SSDs, which will be a huge help when working with large projects. 

The GPU-heavy Geekbench 5 Compute score made it clear that Apple hasn't completely surpassed the likes of NVIDIA and AMD, though. The 14-inch MacBook Pro was more than twice as fast as the Surface Pro 8 (running Intel's Xe graphics) and the M1-equipped 13-inch MacBook Pro, while the bigger notebook was on-par with the Surface Laptop Studio equipped with an NVIDIA 3050 Ti. These aren't bad scores, but it makes it clear that users who need serious power for 3D rendering or data crunching may be better off with PCs equipped with dedicated GPUs.

Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

I don't think those are the people Apple is trying to court, though. Instead, the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros seem like an attempt to get back in the good graces of audio and video producers. Apple's new chips will certainly be more than enough for dealing with media. Both computers managed to convert a 4K video clip to 1080p in 34 seconds with Apple's VideoToolbox hardware encoder, which is four seconds slower than the NUC 11 Extreme, but four seconds faster than the XPS 15. They were also among the fastest Cinebench R23 performers we saw this year — only the ASUS ROG Strix G15 gaming laptop bested them.

And before you ask, no, the M1 Pro and M1 Max don't magically turn these computers into gaming rigs. Sure, everything on Apple Arcade runs smoothly, but that was true of the MacBook Air. When I tried to load Borderlands 3, one of the few semi-recent games that actually works on Macs, I just got an unplayable mess running below 30fps. Maybe the the guarantee of decent GPUs will encourage more game developers to build for Macs, but more likely they'll just end up making sure their iPhone and iPad games run smoothly.

Surprisingly, I didn’t notice a huge difference in performance when I was running the MacBook Pros on battery. PCs often slow down dramatically whenever they’re disconnected from a socket, but not so with these notebooks. That’s useful if you need to encode something remotely and you’re willing to sacrifice battery life to get it done.

Don’t worry though, the efficiency of the M1 chip’s ARM design leads to great battery performance. The 14-inch MacBook Pro lasted 12 hours and 35 minutes in our benchmark, while the 16-inch went for 16 hours and 34 minutes. That’s over five hours longer than the last Intel model.

Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

It’s clear that Apple listened to many of the complaints from Mac fans (and perhaps even lowly reviewers). But really, that’s something the company has been doing more over the years, like when it finally moved away from those awful butterfly keyboards to more tactile Magic Keyboards. By the way, typing on the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro remains excellent, and the trackpad is a dream to use, as always.

Apple didn't skimp on the audio front either. Both MacBook Pros sport a six-speaker array, made up of two tweeters and four force-cancelling woofers. Simply put, they sound miraculous. I normally just play a few songs on notebook speakers to confirm how disappointing they are. But these laptops sounded like I was listening to two small bookshelf speakers, with transparent vocals and punchy bass. Yes, I'm as shocked as you are.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro sounds a bit better, since it has room for slightly bigger drivers, but both notebooks are enough for a private jam session. The MacBook Pro's microphones also do a solid job of capturing speech during video calls. I wouldn't use them to record professional music, as Apple suggested you could, but they’re probably fine for a quick podcast session on the road.

Wrap-up

Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

So if you’re in the market for one of these new computers, which should you get? If you’re mostly using it for general productivity tasks, then I’d lean towards the 14-inch model, which was just easier to travel with. It’s a good option for coders and people who may not need a ton of screen real estate. But all of the video and audio producers I’ve talked to were unequivocal: they wanted to go big with the 16-inch model.

The biggest downside of the new MacBook Pros are their high prices — but really, what else do you expect from Apple? The 14-inch model, in particular, will probably give you the vapors if you're comparing it to the 13-inch MacBook Pro. But in the world of gaming and high-end productivity notebooks, Apple's pricing isn't that far off. The Razer Blade 14, for example, is just two hundred dollars less than the MacBook Pro 14-inch. Dell's XPS 15 OLED is around $500 cheaper than the cheapest 16-inch MBP, but that's with a CPU that's much slower than Apple's. Once you start speccing that machine up, though, you’ll likely pay close to $2,500.

On the whole, these computers have practically everything we’d want in a powerful notebook. If you're a creative professional with a large budget for a new computer, and you want something that'll genuinely speed up your workflow, the new MacBook Pros are exactly what you need.

When Apple rolled out the new AirPods at its October 18th event, it didn't change the AirPods Pro but did introduce a MagSafe charging case. That's not a bad thing, as they already offered clear sound, good active noise cancellation and always-on Siri access. Now, we're already seeing the new Magsafe model on sale for the first time at Amazon for $220, or $29 off the regular $249 price. 

The AirPods Pro earned an 87 Engadget score for their improved sound quality, better fitting design, IPX4 water resistance, Siri access and easy switching between Apple devices. They also do a good job blocking out surrounding noise, and the latest feature can boost other people's voices during conversations — useful for folks with mild hearing difficulties. 

As part of its new AirPods and MacBook Pro launch, Apple also gave the AirPods Pro a MagSafe charging case for the same $249 price tag. As before, they have a built-in battery that allows you to go up to 24 hours without needing access to a wall plug. The addition of MagSafe makes charging a bit safer, as the cable will just pull out rather than tripping you or breaking if you accidentally catch it when walking by. 

If that feature doesn't matter much to you, the older AirPods Pro model is also on sale for $197, for a 21 percent discount. They have dropped to lower prices before, so you could also wait for a better sale — like on Black Friday coming up next month.

It’s hard to remember, but 20 years ago, Apple was not a very cool company. Sure, OS X was intriguing, and the titanium PowerBook was definitely a cool computer, But when most people thought of Apple, it was probably the bulbous, colorful iMac G3 that popped into people’s heads. The company was starting to build its reputation for truly desirable products, but it wasn’t solidified just yet.

That all changed on October 23, 2001, when Steve Jobs pulled the first iPod out of his pocket. For a generation of music fans, it became the quintessentially cool item that was more than just a fad. It’s not a stretch to say it reinvented the music industry while simultaneously paving a path for Apple to become the world’s biggest company. It was the ultimate gateway drug to getting people who had never bought an Apple product before to see what all the fuss was about.

At this point, the somewhat skeptical reception to the iPod is part of tech industry lore – particularly Slashdot’s dismissal of the product as “lame” compared to a Nomad MP3 player. (Raise your hand if you ever used a Nomad. That’s what I thought.) And it’s not like the product was an instant hit – the first iPod cost $400 and only worked with the Mac, two factors that limited its appeal.

Those limitations helped it achieve some serious cachet, though. Seeing an iPod in the wild was a rarity, and my Mac-owning friends who were early adopters had to deal with my incessant questions and requests to hold it and spin its distinctive wheel. It didn’t help that my college suite-mate (who had a titanium PowerBook and iPod) and graphic designer friend (with a PowerMac G4 and iPod) were constantly going off about how great their hardware was. I was primed to become one of those switchers Apple liked to talk about in the early 2000s.

The iPod may have started out as a Mac-only product, but less than a year later, Apple opened it up to the other 98 percent of computer users by introducing a Windows-compatible model in the summer of 2002. Less than a year after that, Apple completely redesigned the iPod and released a new version of iTunes for Windows. At the same time, Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, making it a lot easier to get legal music onto an iPod. With that, the iPod moved fully into the mainstream.

There’s no good way to quantify how many people bought an iPod for Windows and then eventually switched to a Mac. But, Mac sales increased from about 3 million in 2003 to more than 7 million by 2007. Apple’s move to more powerful Intel processors in 2005 likely helped adoption, but the iPod “halo effect” was often cited in the mid-2000s as a driver of the Mac’s increasing popularity.

Growing Mac sales and the most popular consumer electronics device of the decade truly paved the way for the iPhone to be the monumental success that it was almost. Sure, the iPhone eventually killed the iPod, but as Steve Jobs said, he’d rather cannibalize Apple's sales with another Apple product than let some other company do it — this was how he justified the existence of the iPod touch, which was basically an iPhone without a phone.

I might be overselling the iPod to Mac to iPhone evolution, because I lived it. After getting a second-generation iPod in 2002 (embarrassing admission time: I also bought four more full-size iPods between then and 2009), I got my first Mac in 2003 and the first iPhone in late 2007. I remember being more excited about my first iPhone than my first iPod, mostly because it was light years better than the Moto RAZR I was using at the time. But my first iPod was similarly a huge step forward from the MP3 players I owned before. And in my early 20s, there was nothing more important to me than music.

That may not make me unique, but it’s still true. Before the iPod was everywhere, someone else who had one was someone you could trust. They took music as seriously as you did; they knew how liberating it was to have your 100 favorite albums with you, on demand, any time you needed them. In a world where Apple Music offers access to 90 million songs anywhere you are for 10 bucks a month, that might seem quaint. But 20 years ago, it was a revelation.

I still have the last iPod I ever purchased, a 2008 iPod classic with 120GB of storage – about the same space as I have in my iPhone 12 Pro. It’s still stuffed to the gills with music, some 11,000-plus songs, most of which come from albums I carefully selected over time. Most of them are still in my Apple Music library, which has now ballooned to more than double that size, with over 25,000 songs.

I’m still a firm believer in the art of making a good album, but I’ve also collected thousands of singles, or a handful of songs from artists who catch my ear on one of the many curated playlists out there. The music industry has changed, and so have I. Whether or not that’s a good thing is a debate for another time, but there’s no doubt that both the music and technology industries changed completely because of the iPod – something its humble introduction 20 years ago only barely hinted at.

Techtober continues with a deep dive into Apple’s latest MacBook Pros, powered by the new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips. Cherlynn and Devindra also chat about what’s new with the Pixel 6, and Mr. Mobile himself (Michael Fisher) joins to break down the Surface Duo 2. It turns out Microsoft needed more than a year to fix all of the problems with its dual-screen phone.

Listen below, or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!

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Topics

• Apple’s new MacBooks with M1 Pro and M1 Pro Max – 1:37

• Google finally details Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro’s specs – 23:22

• Microsoft’s Surface Duo 2 is inconsistent and buggy – 38:41

• Facebook may be changing its name – 1:04:05

• Facebook Portal Go Review – 1:05:05

• Finally, you can post to Instagram from desktop – 1:06:02

• Samsung had yet another Unpacked event – 1:06:23

• Also in events: Razer, DJI – 1:07:35

• We have a trailer for the Uncharted movie – 1:07:56

• Mel Brooks is doing History of the World: Part II for Hulu – 1:09:19

• Fisher Price made a version of its toy phone that actually makes calls – 1:10:14

• Working on – 1:11:25

• Pop culture picks – 1:12:26

Video livestream

Credits
Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar
Guests: Michael Fisher
Producer: Ben Ellman
Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos,Luke Brooks
Graphics artists: Luke Brooks, Kyle Maack
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien

iFixit has taken apart the Apple Watch Series 7 and showed that despite having minimal changes on the outside, it does feature some big upgrades underneath. As we mentioned in our review, the main difference between this device and the Series 6 is its slightly bigger display, Now, iFixit's teardown shows that its display uses touch-integrated OLED panel or "on-cell touch," which debuted with the iPhone 13. 

The website says the move is unusual for Apple, since it typically introduces new display tech — such as OLED, always-on and variable refresh rate — on the lower-volume Apple Watch first instead of the other way around. According to the former Apple engineers iFixit worked with for this teardown, this new display may have caused production delays and made the company release the device later than it would've liked.

When the tech giant first announced the Series 7 in September, it didn't have a concrete release date. The former Apple engineers said that usually signals delays, and the most likely culprit was the manufacturing hiccups caused by the Watch's display. "[S]creens have some of the most complex supply chains and assembly processes in the industry," the website explained. In addition to using new technology, Apple also made the display bigger and gave it a refractive edge to make the sides look like they're slightly curved. 

iFixit also found that the model's battery is larger than its predecessors. That doesn't translate to longer battery life, though, since the device's larger screen likely uses more power. There are a few other more minor changes compared to previous versions of the Watch. You can see the whole teardown on iFixit's website, along with more photos of what's inside the Series 7.

Back at the start of the year, Google gave Meet hosts the ability to mute everyone in a call all at once. Now, the company has a solution for situations that require more nuance and control. It’s introducing an audio and video lock feature that allows hosts to turn off the microphones and cameras of select participants, in which case they can’t turn them back on until they’re allowed to do so again. 

Anyone using a version of Meet on Android or iOS that does not support audio and video locks will be removed from the call if the host enables the feature. If they try to join one such call, they’ll also be prompted to update their app. Google has begun rolling out the tool to rapid release domains today. Scheduled release domains will start getting access to it beginning on November 1st. The locks should be particularly useful for corraling rowdy participants, but some hosts may also find it helpful for encouraging specific individuals to participate more often. 

Snap is finally seeing the effects of Apple’s iOS 14 privacy changes on its ad business and the changes have had a bigger impact than it expected.

The company reported revenue of just over $1 billion for the third-quarter of 2021. But despite that being a new milestone for Snap, it was $3 million shy of what the company had previously estimated. Snap executives said Apple’s iOS changes that make it more difficult for advertisers to track users were largely to blame for the shortfall.

“Our advertising business was disrupted by changes to iOS ad tracking that were broadly rolled out by Apple in June and July,” CEO Evan Spiegel said during a call with analysts. “While we anticipated some degree of business disruption, the new Apple provided measurement solution did not scale as we had expected, making it more difficult for our advertising partners to measure and manage their ad campaigns for iOS.”

It wasn’t all bad news for Snap, though. The company once again beat expectations on user growth, adding 13 million new daily active users for the second quarter in a row. Snap now has 306 million DAUs, a new high for the company.

Still, Spiegel called it a “frustrating setback” for the company, but added that increased privacy protections are “really important for the long term health of the ecosystem and something we fully support.”

The iOS 14.5 update forced developers to ask users to explicitly agree to sharing their device identifier (known as IDFA), which is used by advertisers to track users across apps and services. Though Apple previewed the changes more than a year ago, the update wasn’t released until April. Since then, third-party analytics have estimated that a vanishingly small percentage of iOS users agreed to allow apps to track them.

Snap isn’t the only company that has warned about Apple’s iOS changes on its ad business. Facebook, which has been publicly slamming the changes for more than a year, saying the changes will have an outsize impact on developers and small businesses. But Facebook has also warned investors that the changes are likely to hurt its own ad revenue in 2021. The social network is reporting its third-quarter earnings Monday, when it will share just how significantly it's been affected. 

Shortly after Microsoft released Windows 11 earlier this month, AMD warned that the OS could slow down apps on systems with Ryzen processors. The chipmaker promised to fix the bugs, and now AMD and Microsoft have issued patches that should do just that.

The latest chipset driver (version 3.10.08.506) should take care of the UEFI CPPC2 issue, which in some cases didn't "preferentially schedule threads on a processor’s fastest core," AMD said. That could have slowed down apps that are sensitive to CPU thread performance. AMD noted that the problem was likely more noticeable in more powerful processors with more than eight cores and 65W or higher Thermal Design Power (TDP).

Meanwhile, Microsoft is rolling out a software update tackling a bug that increased L3 cache latency. The issue impacted apps that need quick memory access, which in turn caused CPUs to slow down by up to 15 percent. The patch, Windows 11 update KB5006746, will be available starting today, but at the time of writing, a page containing instructions for installing it isn't yet live. You should be able to install it via Windows Update too.

When Google shut down its internal Stadia game development studios earlier this year, Stadia general manager Phil Harrison said the company planned to "work with partners seeking a gaming solution all built on Stadia’s advanced technical infrastructure and platform tools." We're starting to see that strategy in action, as Google is now licensing Stadia tech to other companies.

As first reported by 9to5 Google and confirmed by IGN, AT&T is using the tech to offer wireless subscribers the chance to stream Batman: Arkham Knight (which isn't available on Stadia proper) for free. Customers can play the game for a limited time at up to 1080p through Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge.

"This is being powered by the Stadia technology," an AT&T spokesperson told IGN. "For this demo AT&T created a front end experience to enable gamers to play Batman: Arkham Knight directly from their own website and the game is playable on virtually any computer or laptop."

Oddly enough, subscribers can't take advantage of this offer on a smartphone, despite it seeming like a solid opportunity for AT&T to show off its network capabilities. AT&T even offered six months of Stadia Pro access to 5G and fiber internet customers this year.

Harrison said in February that offering game streaming tech to other companies (without Stadia branding in this case) was "the best path to building Stadia into a long-term, sustainable business that helps grow the industry." Although Google isn't making its own games for Stadia anymore, it has continued to add third-party games to the store.

Beyond a special-edition Xbox Series X and controller, there's more Halo Infinite-themed hardware on the way, this time for PC players. Not only have Microsoft and AMD teamed up to add ray-tracing to the game sometime after launch, they created a limited-edition Radeon RX 6900 XTHalo Infinite graphics card.

The GPU’s design is based on Master Chief's Mjolnir armor, and it features a reflective, iridium gold border around a fan, a blue light that mimics the Cortana AI module on the character's helmet and the 117 Spartan call sign. Microsoft notes that the graphics card uses the same RDNA 2 architecture as the Xbox Series X/S consoles.

Here's the rub: you won't be able to buy the GPU. Microsoft, AMD, developer 343 Industries and some of their partners will be giving away the graphics card in the coming weeks. If you're interested, it's worth keeping an eye on the Halo and AMD Radeon Twitter accounts for more details.

AMD is 343 Industries' exclusive PC partner for Halo Infinite. They’ve been working together for the last couple of years to optimize the game for AMD’s GPUs and Ryzen processors. For one thing, there’s support for AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, which reduces screen tearing and boosts HDR visuals on compatible monitors. 

Elsewhere, Microsoft released a video showcasing what the Halo Infinite experience will look like on PC. It’s the first time the company is bringing a Halo game to consoles and PC on the same day. From the outset, there will be support for ultrawide displays and old-school LAN setups, as well as framerate customization and triple keybinds. Microsoft is also promising “deep integration” with Discord and in-game events that sync with lighting on Razer Chroma RGB devices. There are some Halo InfiniteRazer peripherals too.

Halo Infinite will hit Xbox consoles and PC on December 8th. As with ray-tracing, the campaign co-op and Forge modes won't be available at launch. 343 Industries will add those features later.