Larry Jordan’s Thoughts on the New M4 Macs

[ Updated Nov. 4, 2024, with a comment on the speed of Apple’s internal storage.]

Last week, Apple announced a bevy of new Macs: MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac mini; each using variations of the M4: M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max.

As I was reading Apple’s press release and the various articles written about this new gear, I realized that, as media creators, there are advantages to upgrading to these new systems. But there are also reasons where upgrading doesn’t make much sense.

There are also a lot of places where we can save money and still get our work done.

MacRumors has an excellent comparison between the M1, M2, M3 and M4 MacBook Pro systems. I’m using some of their tables further down in this article.

According to recent GeekBench tests, M4 Pro performance essentially equals that of the M2 Ultra. The M4 Max surpasses the Ultra. Granted, this is based on a limited number of M4 tests, but initial results are very positive.

As we have come to expect, each version of  an M-series chip provides better performance than the one before. (Well, with a big asterisk next to the M3.)

“The CPUs across the M4 family feature the world’s fastest CPU core, delivering the industry’s best single-threaded performance, and dramatically faster multithreaded performance.

“The GPUs build on the breakthrough graphics architecture introduced in the previous generation, with faster cores and a 2x faster ray-tracing engine. M4 Pro and M4 Max enable Thunderbolt 5 for the Mac for the first time, and unified memory bandwidth is greatly increased — up to 75 percent.

“Combined with a Neural Engine that’s up to 2x faster than the previous generation and enhanced machine learning (ML) accelerators in the CPUs, the M4 family of chips brings incredible performance for pro and AI workloads. And they deliver blazing performance for Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that transforms how users work, communicate, and express themselves, while protecting their privacy.” (Apple press release)

FASTER PERFORMANCE, LOWER PRICE

Faster performance is always good, but, truthfully, ANY M-series Mac is fast enough to edit all video formats up to 4K without breaking a sweat. Depending upon the speed of your storage, this includes 4K multicam editing as well.

While editing is not the same as rendering or exporting, if your goal is audio or video editing buying any new or used M-series Mac will be fine.

It is also important to keep in mind that ALL Macs for the last gazillion years provide the same image and audio quality on export. All of them. What you are spending money for is not quality, but on how FAST they create those images. (OK, to prevent bar fights, software tools have improved over the last dozen years and the results we create with them have also improved. But those improvements are not specifically hardware-based.)

Speed is good. I remember, back in the old days twenty-five years ago, editing an SD image (640 x 480 pixels) where it took 30 seconds to apply a Gaussian blur to a single frame of video. So, yes, things have dramatically improved in the performance department!

According to the Apple Mac Store, the current price of a Mac Studio with a top-end M2 Ultra SoC is $4,999.00. (The fully-loaded version is $8,799.00 – but there’s zero reason to spend that much money for any video-related task.)

Now, we can get an M4 Pro Mac Mini with performance that equals the M2 Ultra for less than $2,000. A 60% savings. An equivalent 16″ M4 Max MacBook Pro, with performance that beats the M2 Ultra, is less than $4,000. A 30% savings.

NOTE: Rumors suggest that Apple will upgrade the Mac Studio, but not till the middle of next year.

WHAT CATCHES MY EYE

Faster performance is good, but existing M-series Macs were already fast enough for video editing. What else do these system have that we should pay attention to?

Three things:

• Thunderbolt 5 – Only on M4 Pro and M4 Max chips.
• Support for larger computer monitors, and more of them, without limiting data transfer bandwidth
• The neural engine and Apple Intelligence

THUNDERBOLT 5

Thunderbolt 5 is the latest iteration of Thunderbolt. Larry O’Connor, CEO of OWC, told me: “Thunderbolt will enable over double the performance for data transfer devices (docks, external storage, processing cards including GPUs) and about 4 times the bandwidth for driving external displays from a single Thunderbolt 5 port.”

NOTE: Thunderbolt 5 is best used with NVMe SSDs. While spinning hard disks are supported, they aren’t fast enough to fully fill a Thunderbolt 3/4 pipe, much less Thunderbolt 5.

Thunderbolt 5 can potentially support up to 6,000 MB/second data transfer speeds! OWC has already announced the Envoy Ultra, SSD-based storage with a data transfer speed up to the limit supported by Thunderbolt 5

What this means is that if you are copying large media files, transfer speeds potentially double. Managing the massive files from a 4K (or larger frame size) shoot become faster, with less time spent waiting for files to transfer. Files duplicate faster. Backups are processed faster.

Rendering and exports potentially become faster, allowing you to deliver finished projects in less time – critical in today’s world of “instant social media.”

However, as you noticed, I used the word “potentially” a lot. That’s because actual performance depends upon a whole set of interconnected factors.

• The computer needs to support Thunderbolt 5. So far, only the M4 Pro and M4 Max chips do on the Mac.
• Storage protocols need to support Thunderbolt 5. So far, while there are announcements, very little hardware is shipping; mostly because manufacturers were waiting on Apple.
• The NVMe SSDs inside your storage need to be fast enough to support Thunderbolt 5 speeds. (No RAID 0 containing less than 30 HDDs will be fast enough to fully fill a Thunderbolt 5 pipe.)
• Thunderbolt cables need to support Thunderbolt 5 transfer speeds.
• Software needs to be fast enough to transfer, render and/or export files at full Thunderbolt 5 speeds. So far, in all my tests, neither Final Cut, Premiere, Resolve nor the Finder (in macOS 14.x) fully fill a Thunderbolt 3/4 pipe. So, while Thunderbolt 5 holds a lot of promise, as usual, software developers need to catch up to the speed of the hardware.

STORAGE PERFORMANCE UPDATE

In another tutorial, reader Ed asks:

I am sure you are aware of the speed of Apple SSDs. Have you compared it to speeds on external SSDs? That speed difference might justify the added cost for some users.

Larry replies: I haven’t tested M4 systems – yet – but for existing M-series computers, internal Apple SSDs are the same speed as Thunderbolt 5 and double that of Thunderbolt 3/4.

I should also mention that no current NLE – FCP, Premiere, or Resolve – renders or exports media fast enough to fully fill a Thunderbolt 3/4 pipe. The fastest NLE, FCP, exports at about 2 GB/second, one-third the speed of the internal Apple storage. Premiere and Resolve are slower. No current NLE will come close to saturating Thunderbolt 5.

Pending tests, my assumption is that file transfers using Finder or other third-party file transfer software will come close to filling a Thunderbolt 5 pipe – assuming the storage hardware is fast enough to support that speed. As of this writing, no external storage hardware has been released for the Mac that supports Thunderbolt 5. When it is, I’ll review it.

LARGER MONITORS – and more of them

The big benefit to Thunderbolt 5 is support for more, and larger, monitors, while still retaining high-speed data transfer on the same cable. In the past, we needed to use one Thunderbolt port for external monitors (up to two) and a second port for data transfer. Thunderbolt 5 provides the bandwidth to support both on the same cable.

“With M4, Mac mini can support up to two 6K displays and up to one 5K display, and with M4 Pro, it can support up to three 6K displays at 60Hz for a total of over 60 million pixels.” (Apple press release)

And, those monitors can be brighter – up to 1,000 nits.

NEURAL ENGINE & APPLE INTELLIGENCE

Like it or not, AI is in our future. Granted, AI means different things to different people, but what I like about Apple’s implementation is that it keeps as many of the AI calculations isolated to your local system, rather than transferring it to massive servers on the web.

To do that requires the neural engine in all M-series chips. With the M4 series, the 16-core Neural Engine supports up to 38 trillion operations per second – more than double that of the M3. (Yes, that’s a ridiculous number of calculations – but look at the growth of on-board AI processing over the four generations of M-series chips. All those operations must be needed for something!)

What this means is that AI features will be processed far faster on any M4, than on any other M-series computer.

While the future is unknowable, it seems reasonable to assume that, just as Apple is rolling AI features into its hardware, more AI enhancements will be coming to the NLEs we edit with daily. (We have already heard rumors of a new upgrade coming to Final Cut Pro later this month.) Adobe and Blackmagic, I’m sure, are working hard on this as well.

SO, SHOULD YOU BUY ONE?

Maybe.

My everyday work system is an M2 Max Mac Studio. There’s no need to upgrade it simply to get performance roughly the same as I have now. (Now, when the M4 comes to the Mac Studio next year, I’ll take a closer look.)

My laptop is an M1 Pro MacBook Pro. Here, upgrading would make sense IF this was my main system. But, it isn’t. Since it already easily handles all the audio and video editing and training I need when I take it on the road, I’m not in a hurry to upgrade.

However, I’m also running a web server on a 2018 Mac mini. Here it makes a great deal of sense to upgrade. Anyone running on an Intel system will benefit from upgrading to an M4 system. Or, if you want to save money, an M2. (The M3 is a stop-gap release, I’m not particularly enamored of it.)

CONFIGURATION  RATIONALE

None of these systems have shipped yet, so we don’t “know” anything. But, based on past experience with M-series computers, here’s the logic behind my recommendations.

M4 vs. M4 Pro vs. M4 Max

If you are a hobbyist, with a limited budget, or don’t edit that much, or principally need it for office work – web, word processing, spreadsheets, databases and the like – the M4 is TOTALLY perfect.

If you need/want Thunderbolt 5 – and the additional external monitors it supports – you must get a system with an M4 Pro or M4 Max chip.

If you are doing massive multicam edits, working with gigantic frame sizes, have zero time for anything to render, work with 3D space, create animated videos, all of these will benefit from an M4 Pro or M4 Max chip. (The M4 Max is nice to have for media, but it has power you’ll never use.)

If you have the budget, but don’t know – yet – what you want to do with it, get a system with the M4 Pro chip.

CPU Cores

More cores provides more performance. But even base-level systems have more than enough performance for media editing. Keep in mind that, in general, M4 systems are at least twice as fast as M1 systems and 4X, or more, faster than any Intel system.

Regarding efficiency vs. performance cores, no software maxes out all the cores all the time. So, there’s no reason to spend extra for all the cores. I generally recommend something in the middle.

GPU Cores

Like CPU cores, no media editing software uses all of them. You can buy more if you have the money, but you won’t see a whole lot of additional performance. Again, pick a core count in the middle.

RAM

In the past, 16 GB of RAM was the minimum for video editing. The 8 GB that Apple shipped was OK for office applications, but far too limiting for editing. I recommend 16 GB for straightforward editing regardless of frame size. I recommend more RAM for multicam editing.

Again, based on my testing, you won’t see a significant improvement in media editing or rendering performance with more than 48 GB of RAM. Remember, all NLE software was designed to run in 8 GB of RAM. What more RAM gets you is larger cache files.

Storage

Media files are gigantic. Regardless of how much internal storage you buy, you’ll need more. Rather than spend excessive dollars buying more internal storage, buy enough internal storage to give your system room to work, then supplement it with external storage.

The minimum storage I recommend for media is 1 TB. Yes, you can get away with  512 GB but your space will be crunched sooner than you expect. At the high-end, I recommend 2 TB. For media, buying more than that is wasting money.

In my office, I have a Mac Studio with 2 TB internal, an external  8 TB SSD RAID, an external 48 TB HDD RAID, and a 160 TB HDD network server. And that’s just for me – you can never have enough storage.

EtherNet

Unless you have a network optimized for 10G, which requires a 10G switch, 10G server connections, and 10G cables, a 1G Ethernet port on the computer will be fine.

Because I like playing with blinking lights, my office network is optimized for 10G.

CONFIGURATION NOTES

If you buy an M4 system, what should you get? Well, the decision of desktop or laptop is an easy one to make. But, for internal configuration, here’s what I recommend.

1. If you have the money, buy whatever you want. There’s no harm in buying any of these systems, loaded however you want. However, if you are on a budget, here’s what I recommend as the best way to spend your limited dollars.
2. My Mac Studio has 2 TB of internal storage. So far, with approximately 135 applications installed on it, I’m using 470 GB. As much as possible, I store media and projects externally. Free space on the internal drive is used for temporary work files.
3. I don’t see an advantage to buying a system with maxed out GPU. None of the software I regularly use – from Apple, Adobe, or Blackmagic – fully saturates all the cores in the GPU. Instead, buy an M4 chip with fewer GPUs and spend the savings on either more RAM or external media.
4. The MacBook Pro and iMac include keyboard and monitor. The Mac mini does not.

CONFIGURATION RECOMMENDATIONS

NOTE: I ended up buying one of these systems. Here’s what I bought and why.

To Save Money

MacBook Pro
Size: 14″
CPU: M4
RAM: 16 GB
Storage: 512 GB
Price: $1,599.00 (US)

iMac
CPU: M4 8-core
RAM: 16 GB
Storage: 512 GB
Gigabit Ethernet
Price: $1,529.00 (US)

Mac mini
CPU: M4 10-core
RAM: 16 GB
Storage: 1 TB
Price: $999.00 (US)

Better Performance

MacBook Pro
CPU: M4 Pro, 14-core CPU, 20-core GPU
Size: 16″ (easier to see the interface)
RAM: 48 GB
Storage: 1 TB
Price: $2,899.00 (US)

iMac
CPU: M4 10-core
RAM: 24 GB
Storage: 512 GB
Price: $2,099.00 (US)

Mac mini
CPU: M4 10-core
RAM: 32 GB
Storage: 1 TB
Gigabit Ethernet
Price: $1,399.00 (US)

High-End

MacBook Pro
CPU: M4 Max, 14-core CPU, 32-core GPU
Size: 16″ (easier to see the interface)
RAM: 36 GB
Storage: 2 TB
Price: $3,899.00 (US)

iMac
CPU: M4 10-core
RAM: 32 GB
Storage: 2 TB
Price: $2,699.00 (US)

Mac mini
CPU: M4 Pro 12-core
RAM: 48 GB
Storage: 2 TB
1G Ethernet (10G if your network supports it)
Thunderbolt 5
Price: $2,399.00 (US)

SUMMARY

As with every new hardware release from Apple, we need to decide if the new features are worth the money. For some – especially Intel owners – the performance differences are striking. For others – Apple Intelligence and Thunderbolt 5 – the performance benefits are mostly in the future.

It’s also important to remember that you don’t need to buy the fully-loaded version of any system to get serious work done. Apple charges a fortune for RAM and storage. It is FAR cheaper to buy external storage, while providing room on your internal drive for macOS, applications and work files. Also, for RAM, you can buy more, but your system won’t use it for video editing. Middle of the road is a good choice for both option.

Still, all that being said, and pending future tests, I think the M4 provides serious power for the folks that need it. I’m looking forward to testing my own system once it arrives.

---

Bookmark the permalink.