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00:00I recently put out a video about how Apple was really late in updating their Macbook lineup.
00:04They were still running the 7th gen CPUs, it was bothering me, and then a few days later,
00:09they came out with the 8th gen CPUs on their Macbooks.
00:12And that's what we have here, an i9 and an i7. I purchased the i9, the i7 is my colleague's.
00:18This is a device that is very expensive. Not unexpectedly so, it is an Apple product,
00:22I'm used to paying their premiums, but it is an expensive product.
00:25Now a lot of people are looking at this thing with like the $10,000 price tag,
00:28it's become a meme I'm sure at this point.
00:30If you focus on the storage and you crank this thing up with 4TB,
00:34then yeah, the price tag is absolutely insane.
00:36But the regular configurations are expensive, but just, they're not unexpectedly so.
00:42Okay, I'm going to start off this video with what the big change for this year is,
00:47the CPU. The i9 in particular is a very powerful CPU.
00:51When it comes to multi-core applications, this thing's a beast.
00:54The problem though is that this chassis, the MacBook Pro, cannot cool the i9 properly.
00:59When you look at renders, and I'm using Adobe Premiere,
01:01after a few seconds, we're starting to see some very serious throttling.
01:05On a properly cooled device, that spiky line for the clock frequency
01:09would be much flatter and would be a higher clock speed.
01:11So here's a Windows laptop, the temperatures are a little bit lower
01:14and it runs at a higher frequency.
01:16This i9 and this MacBook can't even maintain the base clock speed.
01:20Forget about turbos and all that stuff,
01:22it can't even maintain the 2.9 gigahertz base clock, which is absurd.
01:26This CPU is an unlocked overclockable chip,
01:29but all of that CPU potential is wasted inside this chassis,
01:33or more the thermal solution that's inside here.
01:35If you look at the render times, it's really pronounced.
01:38The MacBook is going to inherently be slower, that's normal.
01:40Adobe Premiere isn't as well optimized for macOS as it is for Windows,
01:44but that has nothing to do with Apple.
01:46The 2018 MacBook with the i9 is way slower than it should be.
01:50And when I ran the same render with the i9 in the freezer,
01:53look at the difference in render time.
01:54It's crazy.
01:55Power throttling and thermal throttling isn't anything new.
01:58We've seen it in MacBooks for years,
01:59and we've seen it in lots of devices, including Windows devices.
02:02But, like, this degree of thermal throttling is...
02:06It's not acceptable.
02:07This isn't something that Apple shouldn't put out on the market
02:10and just blindly sell to people,
02:11because a lot of people that purchase this device
02:13will never know that their laptop is throttling to this degree.
02:16I value multi-core performance because a lot of the apps that I use for work
02:20and the apps that I use to make YouTube videos are...
02:22They benefit from high core count and from high clock speeds.
02:25And when you have throttling like this, it just doesn't make sense.
02:28See, a lot of professionals are looking at these laptops as an option.
02:32Like, they're looking at the i9 or maybe the i7.
02:34They're like, hmm, maybe I'll get this.
02:36Maybe, you know, partially because of the brand,
02:37partially because they have a track record of making professional hardware.
02:41But this type of thermal throttling really affects the end user.
02:46Like, it doesn't matter what you're using it for.
02:47Like, if you're a Final Cut user or Adobe Premiere,
02:50or if you're using it for software development or calculations like fluid dynamics,
02:54it doesn't matter what you're doing with your device.
02:57If you have any kind of, like, extended computational work that uses the CPU,
03:02and that's probably why you're looking at these devices in the first place,
03:05it's gonna throttle.
03:06And that's unacceptable to me.
03:07Because when you have options like 32 gigs of RAM
03:09and up to 4 terabytes of super fast storage,
03:12that's not consumer-grade hardware.
03:13That's some really high-level stuff that professionals are looking at.
03:16And they also need CPUs that don't throttle.
03:18Or at least don't throttle to this degree.
03:21Okay, enough about the CPUs.
03:22The GPUs they've included are a small upgrade from the previous generation.
03:26They're calling them the Radeon Pro 560X.
03:28It's still based on Polaris, like the Radeon Pro 460 and the 560,
03:32but clocked a little bit faster.
03:34In short, native gaming on the MacBook Pro still isn't great.
03:37You'll have to run boot camp or run an external GPU.
03:40The native Fortnite client runs okay on this.
03:42You can hit 60 frames per second if you lower the graphics quality a little bit.
03:45But the frame rates can get a little bit spiky.
03:48All right, so other features they have this year.
03:50The screen has been updated to a true tone display.
03:52So it uses ambient sensors to kind of see what your surrounding color temperature is like.
03:56And it'll adjust the temperature on the screen to make it easier on your eyes.
03:59It's not like a game-changing feature, but it is nice to have.
04:02Other changes.
04:03The keyboard.
04:03So this is now the third generation of the butterfly switches.
04:06It's not for everyone, but like most keyboards,
04:08I think you can get used to it if you type on it for long enough.
04:11There's now a membrane, like a silicone membrane underneath each key.
04:15And I think it's something that's going to help with the durability issues
04:17that the butterfly switches have had over the past couple of years.
04:20I don't think it changes the typing experience very much.
04:22Like people are saying that it's quieter.
04:23Like it is, but it's barely noticeable to me.
04:26So if you didn't like the keyboard from the previous generation,
04:28you probably won't like this one either.
04:30Now inside, the internals haven't changed very much.
04:33It now runs up to 32 gigs of RAM.
04:35And this is DDR4 RAM, so it's a little bit more power hungry.
04:38And to compensate for that, they're actually using bigger batteries.
04:40Slightly bigger, but it is bigger.
04:42But battery life feels unchanged.
04:43I'm getting the same eight hours from this device compared to the previous generation.
04:46So I think it's seriously just to compensate for the higher voltage memory.
04:51The drive is crazy fast.
04:53It's literally the fastest drive I've seen in a laptop to date.
04:56It's really impressive.
04:57But the overall product, like the 15-inch 2018 MacBook Pro,
05:01my overall thoughts on it are that I'm disappointed.
05:04If it weren't for the thermal issues, this would be my laptop of choice.
05:07I don't mind the performance hit when I switch over to macOS.
05:09Like I just prefer that ecosystem.
05:11I like the way that the hardware looks.
05:13I like macOS.
05:14I enjoy Apple products.
05:16But this year, the thermal throttling is just a little bit too severe.
05:20See, if they're going to use the whole like MacBook Pro thing,
05:24it shouldn't just be a product that, you know,
05:27let's charge the most amount of money we can because it's a pro product.
05:30Like it should be built around the needs of professionals.
05:34And I don't think it is.
05:35Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video.
05:36Thumbs if you liked it.
05:37Subs if you loved it.
05:38See you guys next time.
05:43Bye.