Well, I’m a few grand down the drain, and the proud owner of an M3 Max MacBook Pro.
I made the decision to jump ship pretty quickly after obtaining my iPad a few weeks ago. Once I wanted to AirDrop my drawings to my computer, and couldn’t, it was at that moment I felt like “why am I dealing with this?”
So I spent a good week or so trying to justify why I should want to purchase a MacBook. I did just get an Apple Card from Apple and I figured no matter what the cost, I could absolutely swing some interest-free financing. So I started to try and justify it. I asked pretty much every single person in my life if I should be making such a bold purchase, and across the board I pretty much got “eh, whatever you wanna do, man,” which was enough for me. So last Tuesday, while I was at work, I pulled the trigger. It came last Thursday, and I’ve been living with this computer as my daily driver for a week now. Here’s my serious review, as somebody that has jumped between platforms constantly over the years…
So, to get this out of the way, I’ve ran hackintoshes, and have ran an M1 mac for a brief period of time a couple years back. Always, without fail, my Macs have always been weaker than my Windows machines, which is why I’ve never ever stuck to the operating system. Hackintoshes are no longer supported as Apple is no longer signing NVidia drivers, and the M1 Mac Mini I had a few years ago absolutely paled in comparison to what my Windows machine could do. I’ve always fallen back on Windows as a crutch, finding that MacOS just was never capable enough to power what I wanted to do.
This Mac is a lot different. I deliberately decided I was going to actually commit to buying a really powerful Mac, just to see if it being more powerful than my Windows device would actually keep me stuck on it.
I use a few programs almost every single day: Sony Vegas Pro 13.0, and Paint.NET. Now, I know with a full chest that these programs are not exactly the most professional, and if I want to do anything serious in my life, I should just bite the bullet and replace those programs with Adobe or something, but I’m stubborn and I don’t like change, so being able to use those programs is a MUST in my book. If I’m buying a new computer, it should be able to run these basic apps without any issues. So, with Mac OS you have a few options in 2024. Wine, the Windows compatibility layer exists, and there’s a few different kinds of it. There’s CrossOver, Whisky, and simply just Wine. I’ve tried all of them. Whisky has given me a lot of trouble and has not been streamlined super well so honestly I gave up on it pretty quickly. CrossOver fails to run both programs. Wine fails to run both programs. If not being used for gaming, I actually deem all flavors of Wine pretty useless.
What I DID find that ran both Sony Vegas Pro and Paint.NET PERFECTLY without issue, is Parallels in Coherence mode. If you’re thinking what I was thinking before installing this, just hear me out. Parallels has greatly improved their application, so much that it’s very discrete in terms of the bigger picture on MacOS. I recall one of the things that irked me the most about Parallels in the past is that programs running on it through Coherence mode would show up on the dock, but would have a huge Parallels symbol over them, breaking the illusion that they were just apps on your computer. They’ve removed the branding and it’s pretty nonexistent now as of Parallels 19. The other thing is that Parallels now runs Windows 11 ARM, which contains its own system of compatibility layers for Windows apps, with the benefits of being Windows 11 ARM, so low power draw and CPU usage. So, I’ll say that I basically run a Windows 11 ARM Virtual Machine a lot of the time on my Mac while I use these apps. The only downside is that 8 of my 64 GB of RAM is constantly being used just idling, but this is partially why I bought a Mac with 64GB of RAM, so I could afford this and not have to think much about it.
Anyway, Windows 11 ARM’s compatibility layer is really good, and most importantly, the fact that I am only running 2 applications within my Windows 11 install means I don’t really have to think about running Windows at all until I need those programs. I haven’t run into any compatibility issues with Windows 11 ARM’s compatibility layer. On top of all this, Windows 11 ARM is so well optimized on its own that running it in a VM barely eats my battery or performance at all. It’s great, and the best experience I’ve had with a virtualized environment, I think.
Now, let’s talk what CrossOver IS good for, which is gaming. Most games I’ve run under it have little to no issues. I recorded a video of me playing some TF2 to show how good it is:
I’ll copypaste points of the video description here for redundancy:
This is the type of video and details (I) would have wanted to see before buying. Yes, I know I suck at TF2… I wasn’t really trying, I was at work while filming.
This video was played, filmed, edited, and rendered off battery. The battery was absolutely taxed, but went down from about 70% to 50% after all was said and done. I can attest to OBS specifically being a huge battery draw, as I forgot to close it after uploading this video and it proceeded to drain my battery to 30% pretty quick.
The game was juggling 23 bot players, as my workplace blocked Steam matchmaking. But, either way, this is impressive given it has to control 23 AIs.
In general, I get above 100 FPS. It’s not anything crazy, but considering the amount of compatibility layers here, and the circumstances, I find this to be quite good. With some further developments, I’m totally certain the M3 Max could swing way higher framerates. I am blaming this on where WINE currently stands.
During this gameplay, I was using about 32-40 GB of RAM in my system simultaneously running a bluetooth speaker, Spotify, Firefox, my E-mail client, Excel, and a whole ass Parallels virtual machine running 17 security cameras through a Windows app and a copy of Sony Vegas 13. I was also recording this with OBS.
I will add, that if I was doing none of this, performance would rank about similar. Take that as you will. The performance doesn’t get much better than this, but also you can do tons of crazy shit in the background while still performing this good… I mean, you can take it either way.
There are extreme stutters the first ~20 minutes or so you play TF2 ever on CrossOver. After these 20 minutes, the stutters are rare/never. I am assuming it is caching shaders or some other magic I don’t understand. DO NOT let those stutters fool you, they will go away.
So, CrossOver and Parallels are musts in my workflow, but I have not experienced any issues through using them. The only game I have experienced not working whatsoever is Fortnite, which has a much bigger legal battle surrounding it right now. For now, I have my PS5.
Let’s talk physical hardware. So, I dock my Mac to my desktop workstation through a CalDigit TS4 Thunderbolt 4 dock that is wired up to a monitor, keyboard, mic, and a few other peripherals. I hate that it retails for $400, which I think is absolutely a waste of money. I got mine after my Apple giftcard that came with purchasing the machine under and Educational discount, as well as the cash back from my Apple Card. I paid more like ~$40 after all was said and done, which is more what I feel this device is worth. It’s a game changer, certainly, but not worth $400. If you can help it, see if you can get a deal like me or find something cheaper.
Would I recommend the M3 Max to a Windows user? Absolutely, sure. It’s an expensive buy, though. I won’t sugar coat it. And, most people for some reason hate Apple and offer absolutely no logic or reasoning besides “expensive,” without looking at what they’re actually getting for their money, so I refuse to try and convince anyone. What I can say is that Windows is horrifying and full of spyware, and Linux is a waste of time for anybody who has a life. Hackintoshes are no longer viable, and Intel chips are shit. Therefore, I believe that the M3 Max is one of the best systems you can obtain right now, for the experience offered on the hardware. But you must buy or obtain what you feel is right for what you need to do. What’s right for me is I use my computer every single day across two different jobs (IT and Video Production) and many different work sites with many different requirements. I have a lot of purposes to have a computer like this, and I enjoy getting my full, powerful machine everywhere I go. It’s a really nice change of pace, and has made my entire daily workflows a lot smoother. I prefer MacOS over Windows for its ease of use, beautiful and functional user experience, firm stance on user privacy and overall quality of performance. I also prefer ARM64 over Intel any day, if this is the type of performance we can expect from the baseline in the future. I believe ARM64 is the future of computing, and this device perfectly encapsulates what ARM64 is really capable of. I anticipate being able to use this computer for up to ten years, and hopefully more.
