Since I started working, I've always wanted to buy a Mac, but I never managed to. Although I had a company-issued Mac (I've used the Macbook Pro 2015 13-inch, Macbook Pro 2017 15-inch, Macbook Pro 2017 15-inch, Macbook Pro 2018 13-inch, and Macbook Pro 2018 15-inch, 23333), I never had my own Mac. It has always been a regret, so when the new Mac came out, I instantly took advantage of the employee discount (official website 5% off) and the 12-month interest-free installment plan to buy it. Now, from a developer's perspective, I will provide a simple review.
Main Content#
Why Consider a Mac#
Before writing this article, I need to introduce the background of why I bought a Mac. Currently, my main machine is a custom-built laptop from Clevo, the P775TM, with an i7 8700 processor, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and a GTX 1070 graphics card. My work system is Manjaro (a Linux distribution). I find it very comfortable to use for development, but I have encountered a few problems:
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It's too heavy, and it's not convenient to carry around when I have something to do outside.
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There is a lack of daily software on Linux, which makes development somewhat inconvenient.
So, after November, I started to carefully consider the need for a new computer. As a backend developer focused on infrastructure, good support for Unix/Unix-like systems is necessary. Additionally, because I sometimes participate in large open-source projects, I need a computer with enough performance to support multiple virtual machines for multi-platform debugging. Therefore, I had two options at the time:
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Buy a hardware-friendly machine and install Hackintosh and Linux as dual boot.
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Buy a Macbook Pro.
Since I am a bit of a copyright purist, Hackintosh is strictly speaking against the rules. Therefore, the Macbook Pro was my best choice, especially since the new 16-inch Macbook Pro was released. I decided to buy it.
The configuration I chose in the end was i9 2.3 Ghz + 64GB RAM + 1TB SSD + 5500M 4GB. The logic behind choosing this configuration is that, according to current reviews, this Mac has good heat dissipation performance. Since I compile and debug things locally on a daily basis, I decided to go with the i9. The 1TB SSD is the default configuration. I am not a video producer, and I don't play games on Mac, so the 4GB version of the graphics card is more than enough for me. The only dilemma was the RAM. 16GB is definitely not enough, so the question was whether to go with 32GB or 64GB. After considering it, I bit the bullet and went with 64GB (later on, I will explain why this was the right decision).
After making the decision, I immediately placed the order in installments. I placed the order on the 18th and received the machine on the 23rd (I want to thank my girlfriend for her strong support. Without her, I probably wouldn't have been able to buy it).
Alright, let's start with the unboxing and review.
Unboxing#
On the morning of the 23rd, I went to the company to pick up the package and then went home to unbox it.
After sacrificing a cat, I opened the package.
Apple's packaging is as simple as ever.
The following pictures show the actual machine.
The machine comes with MacOS 10.15.1, also known as MacOS Catalina. I have to say, this generation of MacOS and iOS have a lot of bugs, making one wonder if Apple's project management has completely failed.
As for the appearance of the machine, I chose the silver version. I have to say, it looks really good, but it's also prone to getting dirty. Some friends might be curious about how big the Macbook Pro 16-inch is, so I took a picture for everyone to get a sense of it.
From top to bottom:
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My girlfriend's Macbook Air
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The company-issued Macbook Pro 2018 15-inch (I will provide more details later)
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Macbook Pro 16-inch
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Clevo P775TM
From this angle, you can see that the new Macbook Pro 16-inch is only slightly larger than the Macbook Pro 15-inch. After the new model was released, the official website also removed the Macbook Pro 15-inch, so it seems that the Macbook Pro 16-inch will be the replacement for the 15-inch in the future.
User Experience#
I haven't had the machine for a long time, so I don't have a deep experience yet. This part might be relatively short.
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The screen is up to Apple's usual standards, very comfortable. However, the default display resolution of this generation is 1792x1120, which is larger than the 1680x1050 of the 15-inch model. Some people might find the font size to be small and need to adjust it separately (I recommend using RDM for this).
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The keyboard is finally comfortable. The butterfly keyboard feels like typing on a steel plate to me (but everyone has their own preferences).
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The return of the ESC key is great news for VIM users (although I'm not one of them, 2333333).
Performance Testing#
First, let's take a look at the CPU test scores for the new Mac.
However, to be honest, I think it might be more valuable to test in some real-life scenarios. So, I chose two projects for compilation testing. One is Dubbo (compiled using Dubbo 2.7.4.1, Maven 3.6.2, JDK 8), and the other is CPython (compiled using the latest code from CPython Master). Here are the compilation commands:
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Dubbo:
mvn clean package -U -Dmaven.test.skip=true(both machines already have the dependencies set up) -
CPython:
./configure --with-pydebug --with-openssl=/usr/local/opt/openssl && make -j
The two machines are as follows:
The final test results are shown in the following graph (all times are in seconds).
It seems that there is a significant improvement in performance, although the difference is not as large as expected due to the frequent read and write operations of small files during compilation. However, as the codebase grows, the advantage of the i9 processor will become more apparent. If I have time, I will find a few scientific computing examples for additional testing.
Speaking of compilation, some people might be concerned about the heat dissipation of the new Mac. I did a quick test:
The conclusion is that throttling is unavoidable, but under full load, the temperature can be kept at around 81 degrees, with the CPU frequency stable at 3.5 Ghz. Although this result is not as eye-catching as other high-performance laptops, I think it's still pretty good for a thin and light high-performance laptop. After all, there's always a trade-off in everything, right?
Finally, let's test the hard drive speed.
Well, it's still as fast as ever...
Oh, by the way, some people might be wondering if 64GB of RAM is overkill. Well, I looked into it, and for me, it's not a waste.
This is the memory usage when I was writing this article. I had three IDEA projects, two Goland projects, one PyCharm project, several browser windows, several VSCode windows, three ElasticSearch nodes running in Docker for HA testing, and one Kibana node. If I open a few more virtual machines later on, 64GB will be very suitable for me. However, everyone's situation is different, so I won't make any recommendations for your choice of machine (otherwise, if you make the wrong choice, you might come after me).
Conclusion#
The Macbook Pro is a versatile machine with a relatively balanced overall configuration, suitable for most scenarios (except for those that require Office). This year, Apple also provides more flexible configuration options for users to choose from. So, if you have a need for a large-sized Mac, I really recommend considering getting one.
In summary:
Finally, I would like to thank my girlfriend again for her support! Mua!