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Top skill. Web development. The HDS. The Kerezias.
The Tastiest. Web development treats. Coming in hot. Here is Wes.
Barracuda. Boss. And Scott El-Taro-Luko. Tollitsky.
Welcome to syntax in this Monday. Hasty treat. We're going to be talking about our new Lappy Tops. And that is the new MacBook Pro.
It's 16-inch 4 web development specifically. We've seen a lot of people cover this topic in the means of maybe video editing or audio editing or graphic design. How many Photoshop files can you open with the new MacBook Pro? We're going to be approaching it from an entirely different angle as two people who have largely used Mac computers to do all of their web development.
Wes Boss. Now you're going to be talking all about how we have found the new 16-inch MacBook Pro so far for our development workflows. My name is Scott Tullinsky. I'm a developer from Denver, Colorado.
And with me, as always, the U.S. boss. Sup everybody. Sup.
Sup. Sup. Sup. Sup.
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So let's get into it here. I think we should start off by maybe talking about why our previous computers sucked. And then we can talk about why we changed or what's different about them. Yeah.
So we both had the last generation of MacBook Pro. Mine was over two years old at the time. And the hardware is still a super fast computer. And I had it plugged into my dock and everything.
It drove all my monitors. And like all of that was awesome. It's just the fact that the actual laptop part of it was awful. So you probably heard the keyboards would get a crumb nature valley stuck in it.
And my battery just ballooned and they had to replace the entire bottom half of the computer. Apparently there was no escape key. The keyboard was hard to type on. We both had ours in the shop for like a week.
You had yours in the shop for what? Like three weeks, something like that. Yeah, for three weeks, my command keys stopped working. And because of that, apparently that was a three week fix, which involved one of the Apple service techs actually breaking my screen, stashing my computer somewhere and their system and then lying about it.
So then Apple came in and gave me a bunch of stuff for free. So that was pretty sweet, which is actually funny because I bought my computer at the same time that you did. There was like the 2017 or something model. And they gave me a micro computer about 2018.
So did I need this 2016? No, but it was just ruining my life so many ways that we'll get into what we'll do with our old machines and stuff. But for the most part, it was just it was a huge fiasco. It was an absolute huge fiasco all because of a darn crumb under a command key.
Oh, yeah, it's super frustrating. So the new ones have we'll go through the settings, but they have greatly improved absolutely everything. And spoiler, at least for me, it's awesome. I'm so happy to have it back.
Like this, I think the MacBook Pro is like a workhorse for a web developer. It's like the laptop. I know that there's like Windows users and Linux users and stuff like that. And we'll talk about why we don't use those.
But like we think that this, if you have the money to spend because they're expensive as heck, but if you have the money, this is the laptop I think you should buy as a web developer. So let's go to like what were the specs? What did you get Scott? Yeah, I love this thing.
Oh man, I loaded it up. So we can talk a little bit about why too, but I got the 64 gigs of RAM, which is totally overkill. The highest processor, which is a 2.48 core I9. And then the highest video card, which is a dedicated 8 gigabytes AMD Radeon Pro 5 or 5, I don't know, hey, 55000M card.
I don't know how they the pros say that card name. But man, I loaded this thing up and I got the two terabyte hard drive. And I did so for maybe a little bit different reasons. I want to play a lot of games on my old Hackintosh that used to dual boot.
And I haven't got to play any of those games a long time because I took apart my Hackintosh. So I loaded this thing up with a specific intent of not only having it be a video master for me, but also with the intent of being able to dual boot and throw windows on here and play some video games, which I'm going to do. Yeah. Awesome.
I did not load mine up nearly as much as you did, but it's still insane laptop that I have. Well, I got the 2.8, 3, 8 core I9, which I got like 1000 DMs on Instagram. Although I9's run hot, they'll crash. And so part of the Apple had this big thing where they used to throttle the CPU because so they didn't get too hot.
But in the freezer. Yeah. Yeah. So now apparently that's fixed because the new Macbook is slightly thicker.
And I have been running. I've been running it on full-blown video export for 24 hours right now. And the thing is it's hot, but not nearly as hot as my old one would get just browsing the web, which is amazing. Yeah.
32 gigs of RAM on it, which is more than enough for a couple of VS code instances in Chrome to have open. I got the one terabyte just because I wanted to be able to revert back to my old one, which is one terabyte as well. If I ever need to just time machine back up, I've done that a couple of times, certainly would like another terabyte in there. But I don't know.
It helps me have good hygiene. It's frustrating because like video takes up so much. Like one terabyte would probably be enough for the entire world. Yeah.
You're just a web developer, right? Yeah. I don't even need one terabyte. I think that is about it.
Obviously they're both 16 inch, which is one inch bigger than the old one. I can't really tell the difference on the bigger screen. Can you? Yeah, I can.
Slightly. Yeah. Especially because I was running them side by side for a minute here. Yeah.
So you know, I'm still migrating and whatever. But when I see them side by side, definitely. But another thing that I did with this one versus my old laptop is I'm running this in the scaled resolution or the, like the most zoomed out as possible resolution in the display settings, which I wasn't doing before. I have so much more room for activities now.
It is outrageous. So it's, it's, everything feels way bigger to me, but it's also probably a little bit of that as well. I do like how the screen reaches further to the edges. That looks very nice to me.
Yeah. I love that too. It's just nice, a lot of space. What I usually do is my resolution is all bump it down as slow or as low as it can go.
Maybe went up from there. And then scale it up. Yeah. And then just scale up text because that's all I really need.
Like I don't want the tabs and all that stuff to get in the way that just leads for lots and lots of room to work with. Yeah. Like the toolbar up top and whatever. Did you get apple care on yours?
Of course. After my fiasco with apple, I'm not getting anything about apple care because yeah, to be honest, I had enough issues. I believe it or not the last time. It wasn't even the first time that apple's given me an entirely new computer.
One time I bought the very first gen MacBook Pro, like the very first when they went from PowerBook to MacBook Pro. Yeah. And they like slathered an insane amount of thermal paste in those. There was a huge thermal paste issue.
And my computer had like three logic boards die and all sorts of issues. The power cord caught on fire. And so one time I went into the apple store and I was like, listen, this computer is giving me a lot of trouble over the past two years. Like I just need a new computer.
And they were like, oh, we don't do that. And then they were like, well, let's just pull up your apple sheet. And it was four pages long of repairs. And they were just like, oh, crap.
Like we got to do something here. So despite all of your, all of your issues. They voice me right? Yeah.
Yeah. You still think it's like the best laptop you can buy. I'm sure there's some people listening right there being like, whoa, oh, god, lots of troubles. Yeah.
Right. What do I do? Run Windows. No, no, I'm not honestly probably not mind running Linux if there was actually support for it.
Like I don't know. Linux people get mad about that. Yeah. What's like video editing is our kind of our job, right?
And like you need like a rock solid. I know what you can do video editing on Linux, but honestly, I just I'm not worth I'm not interested in babysitting something like that and having to like that was younger West. I just need the thing to work mostly. Yeah.
I have a backup. Just the key board on this thing, they switched back to the butterfly keys, which feels exactly like the magic keyboard, which is what I use all day long. And honestly, that was the best keyboard ever. I love it so much.
I'm so happy that it's back. I can type way faster, make way less mistakes on this thing. So far, notice the typing has been a great experience for me as well. Really liking it.
One thing that's taken a little bit of getting used to is the escape key is back, right? We have a physical key for an escape key. But I got so used to just lightly touching it, even though I hated the touch bar, but I found myself like three or four times just touching the key and not actually pushing it. And then like, oh, yeah, you have to push it now, which is kind of funny that I've been like trained to, you know, not push the escape key, but I like that it's back.
I like the touch idea a lot better on this one. You can actually like find it since it's own dedicated little module rather than just being like part of the strip. Yeah, it's tactile, especially because like I have mine docked over to the left of me and I love using touch ID. I use over typing in my password all the time.
And I have to just like throw my hand over there and touch it while I'm like looking at what's going on on on the screen and having it as a tactile button is so much better. So I'm just a big fan of that. The touch ID is just awesome in general. I kind of bummed that they didn't go for Face ID and the new ones.
The cameras are going to be getting a bump probably in the next one. If you think about it, they're so old and laggy behind. Yeah. The cameras are what?
720p. It's not very good. They're from the Darnes or age. I have no idea.
Like I run a just a 1080p webcam from Logitech and it looks good. But I really want just like a really nice 4K webcam without having to do what you're doing, which is hook up a DSLR and pipe that in. It's not a DSLR West. It's a mirror.
Okay. Oh, it's so many alpha seven three or whatever it is. Yeah. And as I am running a 4K webcam and I love it, but it's not really a webcam.
What else? Speed. The computer is very fast. Oh my God.
Very fast. And yeah, I haven't even come close to using all of the RAM and anything in my eyes, I step and use up there telling me, oh, you have used 5% of your CPU or 5% of your RAM. So that's pretty good for me. The trackpad is always is just the best.
That's sort of like a killer feature for me on the Mac is that I've never had a trackpad on a PC, a Chromebook or anything that's felt anything like the trackpad on a Mac. And I'm a trackpad fan. Like, I don't use the mouse. I'm sorry, mouse people, but even as my external mouse is the magic trackpad, just because I like, I really love the trackpad.
I don't know how to express that for some reason that I've just always been very into the feel of the trackpad. So big fan. I found that it's super fast as well. I never had any speed issues with my old one.
My old one is almost two and a half years old and it was still like flying. Yeah, mine was outrageous. Yeah. If it wasn't for the like, like these laptops, the mount you pay, you should have them for at least for maybe five years for how much you pay.
And that thing, if it wasn't bad, like keyboard and hardware, the things we talked about, that thing would have lasted forever. I still have my, the good one with the HDMI ports. And that thing is like six years old and I booted it up the other day and it's just flying and it's still super fast. Like, I think like we're at a point, especially for web developers that the pace of these things is outpacing kind of what we need, which is good because like as a web developer, you should also be able to just go and buy a $400 laptop as well and get up and running.
It's just that I think like Scott and I since we do media and podcasts and all the stuff and we do need something a little bit more beefy. Yeah, it's really nice to be able to screen capture in 4K, record a video stream in 4K and record my audio or whatever. I'll do all of those things without the computer even thinking, right? Just like, okay, sure.
So, you know, for me, this kind of beefy system is absolutely required for what I'm doing. The amount of video editing, video production, all that stuff. But at least like the render times are sliced in half between this computer and even the last model. So we're several models behind that.
So the amount of performance gains we're getting is really sort of game changing along with the keyboard, right? We're screen casting in anybody who's watched any level of tutorials in the past year. Well, note that I do apologize for my keyboard when it goofs up on me. Like you can't really help it because it's like the keyboard occasionally does double presses and this or that.
And man, I can't have that stuff in my content. I just straight up can't have it. Yeah. Other things, they didn't upgrade the ports, which is unfortunate.
So they're still just for USB-C. They're technically Thunderbolt, which is faster, but they're the same port as USB-C. And that sucks. I have like a really nice little dongle I carry around.
But the fact that I have to carry around a dongle, like how many times have I been like, oh, I don't have a USB-C converter on me right now and I need to charge this thing or I need to plug it in. And it's so annoying. And like I get that USB-C as the future, but I've had a USB-C computer for almost three years now. And I still every day run into it.
I'm just giving me one regular USB-A port and that would be enough for me for those little situations, but fortunately they're not going to give it to us. No, never. Never. Let's go into some why nots.
So why not a Windows computer Scott? I just hate Windows. I'm sorry. I actually have Windows installed on this machine.
So it's not like I haven't used it. I use Windows somewhat frequently, but man, there's just something about Windows where like half of the icons are from, Windows 98 still or like, I don't know what it is with the experience, but like, I don't know if they haven't done this or what, but they need to start from fresh. Like they need to have like a totally fresh operating system that where everything is where it is, but like there's so many weird things to get into device manager. You got to click on this and this and this and this and it all looks like you're in 1994.
You went into a time machine. That said, I do like the base thing of Windows 10. I like where the star bar is. I like the way that it functions with their little dock.
I like a lot of the features in Windows, but I cannot see myself running Windows. They're doing obviously Microsoft's doing better things than they were before, but it's still on it. It's still Windows. I can't do it.
Yeah, I have. So I've got a Surface Book that Microsoft gave me and tried to coax me over to Windows and I love it for recording Windows parts of my tutorials. That's great. I love it for testing.
I'm getting all of the Windows sub system Linux stuff because if I'm going to move to Windows, I need my terminal, I need all of that stuff. It just worked. It was amazing. But I think as part, I don't want to relearn something because I got enough on my plate right now and I'm not 17 anymore and I don't have to tinker around.
Also, anytime we have an app like Alfred, people are like, what's the Windows version in the replies and Twitter? I'm like, there's this, but I was like, it's not as good. I ran into that with Android too. I love Android as an operating system, but there'd be so many times I'd be like, oh, there's a person who just for Android and it makes me very upset.
Yeah. So I don't know. I just don't have time to move over to it. I'm sure it's great.
I'm sure there's a lot of people that love it for what they do or make do, but I'm so ingrained in having Mac and how fast it is and my workflow and all my keyboard shortcuts that I'm just not going to move over to that. Totally. Next up, why not a Hackintosh? I had a Hackintosh.
I actually still have it. I haven't booted up in a long time and it was super reliable, super fast. But then every time a new update came, you had to find the new kex and all the drivers and everything like that and upgrade the thing. It was a really fun hobby because I like doing that sort of thing, but I just need a machine that is fast and I can bring to the geniuses when it breaks and then just go back working on my other one while they fix it.
I need almost zero downtime with my job and I can't afford to fuss around with something like that. Even though it was, I think it's much more reliable than people think it is. Totally. Yeah.
Absolutely. And my Hackintosh was great. I ran one for so many years. But again, anytime an update came out, you had to spend a weekend making sure everything was fine on it.
Like you said, if something breaks, like that used to just like absolutely, totally disrupt my entire life. And when Level Up Tutorials was a side project, sure that worked, but Level Up Tutorials is my entire business and livelihood. So I can't trust a Hackintosh to do that right now. And why not an iMac, which is I've had desktop computers in the past.
And you know what? My very first computer was an iMac G4. And you know what I did? I sold it and bought a MacBook Pro because I just, I loved having the beefiness of a desktop computer.
But at the end of the day, man, nothing beats being able to take this beast with me. Take it to a coffee shop. I'm not going to be that hipster who's walking around holding on to their iMac and bringing it into a coffee shop. This is going to happen.
This thing's got 64 gigs of RAM and 8 gigs of video memory. So like, I don't know, man. It's a pre-end beast. I have a desktop computer and it's my laptop plugged into my dock.
I don't want two computers because I need to, I go and teach workshops. I go to conferences. I go to the coffee shop every now and then I just need to be able to bring my computer somewhere else. And I don't want to have to fuss around with having two instances of things and I forgot to get push and the sink didn't work or I closed the laptop before the sink updated or any of that stuff.
And I just don't want two computers. It's expensive and it's too much to fuss with. I just want one rock solid computer, which is why I think we've put so much money into these things. It just works pretty well.
Totally. Cool. Well, that's all I got. I'm going to see how many crumbs abs I can get open at once.
That's sweet. Awesome. Thanks for tuning in. We will catch you on Wednesday.
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