My Impressions of the Macbook Pro M4

I definitely notice the difference between 10 ms and 26 ms. 26 ms already feel sluggish when playing drums, guitars or keyboard instruments. But there is no way anyone can feel a difference of 1 ms.

That’s audio latency, not musicians doing music. In my experience if you have two musicians that are supposed to be playing unison, 5-6 ms is enough to feel “off”

It depends on the frequency. At higher frequencies, the ear is capable of higher time precision. It's why a snare pops and a bass drum blooms.

The study wasn’t conducted with musicians making music.

Again I have to point to this Microsoft Research Video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4

Anecdotically, 7ms vs 3ms latency is felt as weirdly heavy action when playing midi keyboard. It's not felt as latency, but it's felt. And I bet the difference could be reliably established in double-blind testing (3 samples, find an outlier).

1ms seems less believable, but I wouldn't be surprised, if some people could notice that too.

> There are so many base features that are inexplicably relegated to 3rd party apps.

> Like a better finder experience.

> Or keeping screen on.

Do you mind linking or naming which tools you use for those 2 purposes?

Asking out of pure curiosity, as for keeping the screen on, I just use `caffeinate -imdsu` in the terminal. Previously used Amphetamine, but I ended up having some minor issues with it, and I didn't need any of its advanced features (which could definitely be useful to some people, I admit, just not me). I just wanted to have a simple toggle for "keep the device and/or display from sleeping" mode, so I just switched to `caffeinate -imdsu` (which is built-in).

As for Finder, I didn't really feel the need for anything different, but I would gladly try out and potentially switch to something better, if you are willing to recommend your alternative.

What's crazy is that Vivid app...costs money!

NTFS writing isn't that inexplicable. NTFS is a proprietary filesystem that isn't at all simple to implement and the ntfs-3g driver got there by reverse engineering. Apple doesn't want to enable something by default that could potentially corrupt the filesystem because Microsoft could be doing something unexpected and undocumented.

Meanwhile if you need widespread compatibility nearly everything supports exFAT and if you need a real filesystem then the Mac and Windows drivers for open source filesystems are less likely to corrupt your data.

Finder is the number one reason it boggles my mind that people claim macOS as head and shoulders above other OSes "for professionals". Finder is a badly designed child's toy that does nothing at all intuitively and, in fact, actively does things in the most backwards ways possible. It's like taking the worst of Explorer (from Windows XP), and smashing it into the worst of Dolphin or Nautilus; and, to top it off, then hiding any and all remaining useful functionality behind obscure hot keys.

> keeping screen on

`caffeinate -d` in the terminal - it’s built-in

I imagine what those custom brightness apps do is not magically increase the brightness, but change the various pixels' brightness in accordance to some method/algorithm such that you see what appears to be brighter whites when placed next to certain other colors.

It's not what is implied by the parent post - where the mac is limiting the brightness only to have the app unlock it.

...I'd have to say that seems like a radical reading of the text.

No; you can adjust screen brightness just fine with the built-in settings, including with the F1 and F2 keys (plus the Fn key if you've got them set that way).

This Vivid app is specifically for extra HDR levels of brightness. I've never had a problem with my M1 or M4 MBPs, either inside or outside, with the built-in brightness levels. (But, to be fair, I don't use it outside a lot.)

I've used vivid nearly every day since the week the first m1 MacBook Pro came out, no damage to my screen at all.

I got the nanotexture on my current work M4 MBP—it doesn't completely eliminate reflected light, but it diffuses it a lot. If I were in a dark room with a light source positioned perfectly to reflect off my screen in my face, I would probably still have trouble with it, but in general I don't need to reposition the screen to avoid glare nearly as much.

I would say it's worth the extra, what, $200 or so? on the price of the M4 MBP. If it were much more expensive, I would be less sure.

No, I love it. I had non-matte glass screens in my MacBooks since 2012 and I didn't realize how much better it is to no longer see lights reflected in there all the time.

I have the nano-texture display on my M4. At this point, I don't think I can go back to standard glass. For text work, I find there are no downsides. If you work more with color and detailed art, I think that's the only case where you need to put extra thought into it. Otherwise get it

I hate to say it but it's totally worth it. Direct sunlight incredible.

Yeah the default doesn't do a 1:1 display to pixel ratio.

Just to be pedantic it is integer scaled (from 1440x900 to 2880x1800 but then resampled down to the native resolution of the MBA 2560x1600 via something better than bilinear).

Hah, sounds like OS X! I have every possible Universal Control setting turned off, yet the process continues running and slurping up CPU cycles. It's impossible to kill or really disable unless you turn off SIP, and I'd prefer not to do that.

My car from 2023 still came with USB-A port. No-so cheap USB camera that I recently bought came with USB-A port.

non-reflective surfaces you cite have pigments on TOP. screens have depth causing parallax and light spreading. Your point would be valid if screens were paper-thin and image pixels came out the very surface

ooh, my feathers were a bit ruffled (for reasons unrelated) when I wrote the above.

I still say for comfortable all day viewing and productivity, there is no comparison. Glossy does have more pop on a phone or watching movies in the dark, but I'd go blind doing that all day every day..

Paper, books, and construction documents all use reflected and not refracted light.

Glossy vs matte has started to matter less as the peak brightness goes up.

When your screen can do 1,600 nits, daylight isn't as much of a problem

120Hz is absolutely a noticeable improvement over 60Hz. I have a 60Hz iPhone and a 120Hz iPhone and the 60Hz one is just annoying to use. Everything feels so choppy.

>I used to have a 2006 macbook pro with the matte screen. It was glorious. None of these issues were present or really noticeable.

They were absolutely noticable. Contrast was crap. I immediately went with glossy with my next MBP around that same period.

> Unless your room is pitch black it is so easy to get external reflections

This is nearly my preferred setup, only I have wall lights on the wall behind the monitors so it's not truly a dark room (which is horrible for your eyes). No over head lights allowed on while I'm at the keyboard.

The 2006 would probably have had 1080ish resolution. I think the GP's point is that at higher resolutions, matte has tended to have the issues they cited.

I am with you in preferring matte. For me, mostly because of reflections on glossy screens.

I still have my 2011 17" MacBook Pro, built to order with pretty much every available option available at the time, including the matte screen.

While it serves a useful purpose by diffusing unavoidable point light sources in uncontrolled environments, it's honestly not much of an improvement over its glossy contemporaries in sunlight and other brightly-lit environments, as diffusing already diffuse reflections has little effect.

We have different eyes and different purposes, I think.

That's what Lunar is for. Just bump up the brightness to HDR levels. Helps a lot with the glare, but will take a bite out of the battery life.

For professional graphic designers, cinematographers, photographers, and illustrators these subtleties in the screen is a big deal.

To each their own but I have a matte M4 Pro and I don't like it, and the screen is noticeably worse than my glossy M2 Pro.

There's a graininess to the screen that makes it feel a little worse at all times, meanwhile I never had a problem in daylight just cranking brightness into the XDR range using Lunar.

It's especially noticeable on light UIs, where empty space gets an RGB "sparkle" to it. I noticed the same thing when picking out my XDR years ago, so it seems like they never figured out how to solve it.

The difference between matte and glossy displays in regards to their contrast and clarity is absolutely noticeable to the naked eye.

I have the last gen 27” 5k iMac with nano texture as my primary monitor these days and you can immediately tell the difference between image quality, compared to a glossy MacBook pro. Don’t get me wrong, it’s by far the best quality matte finish I’ve ever seen and I would buy it again, because it works great in a room with south-facing windows, but it definitely affects the overall image quality noticeably.

Both 4k and 120hz were very noticeable improvements imo.

Your 2006 MacBook was pre-retina, a.k.a. High-resolution, displays though. Any kind of smearing effect probably improved the perception of the image because it masked the very visible pixels in the LCD

I also was matte in 06, and had that machine for 9 years (until it was stolen :/). Only option was glossy for my replacement, I was devastated. A few machines later now, I can’t imagine going back.