It can do both that’s the beauty. You can use it as a portable desktop sometimes and as an all day laptop other times all in the same device.
I love my M2 Max on long haul flights when I can plug it in. Crossing the Atlantic I can just load up a game from steam and play for 5 hours and then I’m back home in the US.
You can even run Crossover and play Windows games on it! I've been RDR2'ing on my M1 Pro and can't wait to crank up the graphics on the incoming M5 Max!!
The notch has aged poorly. Seeing the MacBook Neo launch without a notch has been interesting.
A notch with facial recognition would have been maybe worth that use of space, but it’s just an average webcam and nothing special ever arrived.
I also think that the MacBook Pro models are a little heavy and maybe even a little thick for what they are. There’s probably innovation to be had in some kind of update to the thermal management system.
I see systems like the ASUS Zephyrus G14/G16 doing some amazing work on fitting crazy high power draw hardware into a compact and light form factor, and while I know Apple would never optimize that far in the direction of additional noise, it’s still something I think about.
The MacBook Pro having no innovation in thermal management in 5 years has been fine because they make some of the most efficient chips on the market, but it also means that Apple has been under-optimizing for the golden silicon they have on their hands.
Yeah, the Intel Macs, despite using CPUs with worse power usage and thermal profiles than the AS chips, were thinner and lighter. The current machines are at least as heavy and bulky as 2010-era Macs.
Even the Air, whose whole selling point was supposed to be “thin and light”, now weighs over 3lbs. Far cry from the <1.5lb 11” Air — anyone remember that one? Amazing portable computer.
Over time, I have come to appreciate the apps that actually take advantage of it (like dictation indicator). It would be better if the menu bar was aware of it and handled hiding icons correctly, thought. I guess it might evolve into a Dynamic Island someday.
I don’t necessarily want the laptops to go back to the overly thin form factors they used to have.
It would be cool if some manufacturers would come up with a self cleaning screen, though. Like ultra sonic micro vibrations while you lift the lid open or something (this might be part of the realm of magic right now, I know).
The MacBook Pro is essentially a really conservative packaging choice for people who buy the plain M5 chip. They are buying the size/weight/thickness that's required to support the M5 Max, and Apple could probably even get an M5 Max into a thinner/lighter system.
The lineup is a little bit odd because of this, and I bring up the Zephyrus as something of a demonstration of the idea. When you by a MacBook Pro 14" M5, you buy an integrated graphics-class system and essentially you're getting a laptop that's the exact same size as a laptop you can get packed with a 100 watt RTX 5070Ti. Your CPU doesn't even really need a cooling fan and yet the computer it's inside of is the same size as a gaming machine with a dedicated GPU.
Obviously I don't mean to say that Apple should make a laptop that sacrifices fan noise to that degree, but the same idea is happening in their lineup:
You buy a M5 MacBook Pro, you're getting a laptop thick and heavy enough to thermally support a much higher tier system that isn't even on the same planet in terms of performance (an M5 Pro or Max system).
Here's how I would change the lineup:
MacBook Neo is your entry level, stays the same.
MacBook Air 13" and 15" handle your everyday computing very well, they stay the same.
MacBook Pro 14" and 16" with the M5 chip gets a thinner and lighter chassis, closer in size/weight to the MacBook Air. These systems are there to give you the extra I/O and better quality screen/other additional "pro" features that you get with the Pro lineup but for someone who is only doing medium-intensity tasks.
MacBook Pro 14" and 16" with Pro/Max chips remain roughly the same.
Bonus points: Apple could also more enthusiastically enter the PC gaming market (>900 million customers) if they put out something like the MacBook Neo but instead of targeting Chromebooks they would target low to mid range gaming laptops like Lenovo LOQ. Do a lot of the same cost-cutting as the MacBook Neo: no haptic trackpad (gamers don't need it), worse speakers, lower resolution screen (good for games), take the Steam Deck route of using an SD card for expandable storage and keep profit margins by continuing to solder the internal storage in and limit the size to ensure pros only buy the more expensive MacBook Pro lineup. Launch that along with a Steam Deck competitor handheld.
You are basically arguing that Apple should make the laptops thinner at the expense of more fan noise, as the size of the aluminum chassis is directly proportional to the effectiveness of the passive heat dissipation but I suspect that for most people not hearing fan noise is much, much, much more important than a smaller chassis.
What Apple is doing instead is not putting fans on the air and using a small chassis. For the pros there are fans but unless you put the laptop under heavy load they stay off.
If anything I would go the reverse option and choose an even larger chassis for the Max models, but the manufacturing complexity of this may not be worth it given that a small proportion of the models sold will use the max chips.
If you run the GPU full-throttle, you get, what, 1.5 hours of battery life? That takes you from 'laptop' to 'portable desktop' territory.
For CPU-only workloads, it's back to the ideal 'don't pack a charger'.
It can do both that’s the beauty. You can use it as a portable desktop sometimes and as an all day laptop other times all in the same device.
I love my M2 Max on long haul flights when I can plug it in. Crossing the Atlantic I can just load up a game from steam and play for 5 hours and then I’m back home in the US.
You can even run Crossover and play Windows games on it! I've been RDR2'ing on my M1 Pro and can't wait to crank up the graphics on the incoming M5 Max!!
At this point, the same old shell is a problem.
The notch has aged poorly. Seeing the MacBook Neo launch without a notch has been interesting.
A notch with facial recognition would have been maybe worth that use of space, but it’s just an average webcam and nothing special ever arrived.
I also think that the MacBook Pro models are a little heavy and maybe even a little thick for what they are. There’s probably innovation to be had in some kind of update to the thermal management system.
I see systems like the ASUS Zephyrus G14/G16 doing some amazing work on fitting crazy high power draw hardware into a compact and light form factor, and while I know Apple would never optimize that far in the direction of additional noise, it’s still something I think about.
The MacBook Pro having no innovation in thermal management in 5 years has been fine because they make some of the most efficient chips on the market, but it also means that Apple has been under-optimizing for the golden silicon they have on their hands.
Yeah, the Intel Macs, despite using CPUs with worse power usage and thermal profiles than the AS chips, were thinner and lighter. The current machines are at least as heavy and bulky as 2010-era Macs.
Even the Air, whose whole selling point was supposed to be “thin and light”, now weighs over 3lbs. Far cry from the <1.5lb 11” Air — anyone remember that one? Amazing portable computer.
> the notch has aged poorly
Over time, I have come to appreciate the apps that actually take advantage of it (like dictation indicator). It would be better if the menu bar was aware of it and handled hiding icons correctly, thought. I guess it might evolve into a Dynamic Island someday.
I don’t necessarily want the laptops to go back to the overly thin form factors they used to have.
It would be cool if some manufacturers would come up with a self cleaning screen, though. Like ultra sonic micro vibrations while you lift the lid open or something (this might be part of the realm of magic right now, I know).
Yeah, it’s like they wanted to follow the same Dynamic Island evolution and totally dropped the ball and forgot to do it.
The way your menu bar icons can just disappear with no way to rectify it is horrendous.
What do you think Apple should do to improve the shell? I thought the Asus Zephyrus 14 was pretty noisy.
The MacBook Pro is essentially a really conservative packaging choice for people who buy the plain M5 chip. They are buying the size/weight/thickness that's required to support the M5 Max, and Apple could probably even get an M5 Max into a thinner/lighter system.
The lineup is a little bit odd because of this, and I bring up the Zephyrus as something of a demonstration of the idea. When you by a MacBook Pro 14" M5, you buy an integrated graphics-class system and essentially you're getting a laptop that's the exact same size as a laptop you can get packed with a 100 watt RTX 5070Ti. Your CPU doesn't even really need a cooling fan and yet the computer it's inside of is the same size as a gaming machine with a dedicated GPU.
Obviously I don't mean to say that Apple should make a laptop that sacrifices fan noise to that degree, but the same idea is happening in their lineup:
You buy a M5 MacBook Pro, you're getting a laptop thick and heavy enough to thermally support a much higher tier system that isn't even on the same planet in terms of performance (an M5 Pro or Max system).
Here's how I would change the lineup:
MacBook Neo is your entry level, stays the same.
MacBook Air 13" and 15" handle your everyday computing very well, they stay the same.
MacBook Pro 14" and 16" with the M5 chip gets a thinner and lighter chassis, closer in size/weight to the MacBook Air. These systems are there to give you the extra I/O and better quality screen/other additional "pro" features that you get with the Pro lineup but for someone who is only doing medium-intensity tasks.
MacBook Pro 14" and 16" with Pro/Max chips remain roughly the same.
Bonus points: Apple could also more enthusiastically enter the PC gaming market (>900 million customers) if they put out something like the MacBook Neo but instead of targeting Chromebooks they would target low to mid range gaming laptops like Lenovo LOQ. Do a lot of the same cost-cutting as the MacBook Neo: no haptic trackpad (gamers don't need it), worse speakers, lower resolution screen (good for games), take the Steam Deck route of using an SD card for expandable storage and keep profit margins by continuing to solder the internal storage in and limit the size to ensure pros only buy the more expensive MacBook Pro lineup. Launch that along with a Steam Deck competitor handheld.
You are basically arguing that Apple should make the laptops thinner at the expense of more fan noise, as the size of the aluminum chassis is directly proportional to the effectiveness of the passive heat dissipation but I suspect that for most people not hearing fan noise is much, much, much more important than a smaller chassis.
What Apple is doing instead is not putting fans on the air and using a small chassis. For the pros there are fans but unless you put the laptop under heavy load they stay off.
If anything I would go the reverse option and choose an even larger chassis for the Max models, but the manufacturing complexity of this may not be worth it given that a small proportion of the models sold will use the max chips.