A Review of Apple’s 16-inch MacBook Pro for Musicians & Audio Engineers
After restoring faith amongst musicians and audio engineers with a line-up of desktop Macs that cater to their needs, the company has also turned its attention to reinvigorating its professional portables. Is the new 16-inch MacBook Pro the laptop you’ve been waiting for?
Apple have arguably had a complicated relationship with the customers of the company’s Mac line featuring the “Pro” appendage over the last few years, with a disconnect seeming to emerge between what Apple thought professional users wanted from the company’s hardware and what they needed. Much has been written about the somewhat disastrous 2013 Mac Pro redesign, with Apple eventually conceding the product didn’t address the workflow requirements of certain “Pro”-fessionals, having alienated many loyal musicians and audio engineers who would never consider using anything but a Mac. But the company learned from the mistake.
Befitting their “space gray” finishes, the iMac Pro (introduced four years later in 2017) proved to be more than a stop gap on the road to a new Mac Pro, and a new Mac mini (launched in late 2018) had some eyebrow-raising specifications for that model. Then, last year, a new Mac Pro was finally unveiled that demonstrated beyond doubt musicians and audio engineers were indeed back on Apple’s radar.
The Portable Problem
However, with apologies to Oscar Wilde, to slip up in one domain of your Pro Mac product line may be regarded as misfortune, to slip up in both looks like carelessness — and yet it’s not unreasonable to suggest Apple did just that when it came to the MacBook Pro.
The disgruntlement began when the fourth-generation model was released back in 2016. Apple perhaps prematurely eschewed the previous configuration of ports in favour of either two (on the low-end 13-inch model) or four USB-C connectors (on the higher-end 13-inch and 15-inch models) for power, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt, and USB 3.1. Gone was the beloved MagSafe power port Apple had pioneered with the original MacBook Pro in 2006, the two USB-A ports for USB 3 connectivity, two Thunderbolt 2 ports, HDMI for external video, and an SDXC card slot. And while the company offered a range of adapters enabling your existing peripherals to interface with these new USB-C connectors, the ‘C’ in these USB-C adapters hardly stood for cheap or convenient.
But the problem wasn’t just external; it was arguably internal as well. By deciding to make the 2016 MacBook Pro slightly thinner and lighter (0.61 inches and 4.02 pounds down from 0.71 and 4.49 respectively), Apple ultimately limited the components that could be used. This meant the high-end model was still limited to 16GB memory, for example, although the maximum amount of storage was at least increased from 1TB to 2TB. And I would proffer that the majority of professionals would have opted for an increase in specifications generally rather than a marginal decrease in girth and weight. So, happily, that’s exactly the approach Apple have finally adopted with the new 16-inch MacBook Pro.
The Portable Solution
Unlike the new Mac Pro, which was introduced to great fanfare, the newest MacBook Pro — which had been widely rumoured, speculated about, and predicted — was revealed with the equivalent of indoor fireworks in a press release issued last year on November 13th. And while one might be forgiven for thinking this was appropriate for what could be considered a MacBook Pro with merely an improved set of specifications, such a conclusion doesn’t even begin to tell the story. Because although it’s true the design of the 16-inch MacBook Pro’s externals are essentially aesthetically identical to what came before, the improved internals deliver a very different experience and product indeed.
Before we delve into those internals, though, let’s take a moment to consider what you can see, hear, and expand with the 16-inch MacBook Pro, starting with what you can see. Whether it’s an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or external monitor like the new Pro Display XDR, Apple always ship extremely high-quality displays, and the new MacBook Pro is no exception. Offering a 16-inch Retina display with 500 nits of brightness, a wide (P3) colour gamut and True Tone technology, there are nearly six millions pixels to provide a native resolution of 3072 x 1920 at 226 pixels per inch. And, since this is a Retina display, these pixels are used to display five scaled resolutions.
The so-called Default “looks like” 1920 x 1200, and three other settings provide scaled resolutions that look like 1024 x 640 (“Larger Text”), 1280 x 800, and 1680 x 1050. Since I’m fortunately yet to develop mole-like eyesight I set the display to “More Space”, showing a scaled resolution of 2048 x 1280. Perfect.
In terms of hearing, while the previous generation of MacBook Pro speakers weren’t exactly shabby — with Apple claiming 58 percent more volume, 2.5 times louder bass, and twice the dynamic range — the built-in speakers on the new 16-inch MacBook Pro are nothing short of astonishing. The six-speaker system provides a decent enough stereo field with a surprising amount of amplitude, with the dual force-cancelling woofers apparently extending the lower range of the bass by half an octave in a manner that doesn’t cause the system to rattle around in an unsettling manner.
While the resulting sound of the 16-inch MacBook Pro’s audio system isn’t something you’re going to use for serious work, it’s good enough to play something to another person without having to first apologise for tinny, tiny laptop speakers. Likely as not, the other listener will probably be as impressed as you were upon first hearing the output.
Finally, when it comes to expansion, there’s no doubt that we’re finally living in the world dominated by USB-C that Apple envisioned many years ago. So although adapters are still going to be required to use what one might now legitimately call “legacy” peripherals, the number of external devices supplied with USB-C cables, such as those for storage and audio interfaces, has increased dramatically in the last three years. Yes, a USB-A connector would still have been handy, but at least the headphone jack remains.
The Butterfly Effect
One of the biggest complaints about the MacBook Pro in recent years has its roots in the exceedingly thin MacBook Apple introduced in back in March 2015 (and quietly discontinued in June 2019): namely, the keyboard. Apple replaced the traditional so-called scissor mechanism with a new “Butterfly” design, and the company’s well-known Senior Vice President [of] Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller, spent a great deal of time on stage at the introduction extolling its virtues, going so far as to show videos illustrating how the keys were less wobbly.
However, other than perhaps the need to make a thinner keyboard for such a product (the Butterfly mechanism was 40 percent thinner), it seemed as though the company was attempting to fix something that arguably wasn’t broken. The thinness translated into considerably reduced key travel, making the typing experience less pleasant, and it felt a bit like playing the harpsichord in that you could feel the click of a key as you pressed it. And, to make matters worse, it later transpired the Butterfly mechanism could exhibit flaws that required Apple to launch a Keyboard Service Program in 2018 for affected models.
The MacBook Pro inherited a Butterfly keyboard with the introduction of the fourth-generation model in October 2016, although thankfully the new, fifth-generation 16-inch MacBook Pro replaces this with a so-called Magic Keyboard. This sees the return of a scissor-based mechanism, offering a significantly better typing experience and hopefully an end to the issues that have plagued MacBook keyboards in the last few years.
Form Over Function Keys
In addition to incorporating a Butterfly keyboard in the fourth-generation MacBook Pros, Apple also introduced an even more radical keyboard-related change having decided that the trusty function keys along the top row of the keyboard had become passé. So the company replaced this top row of the keyboard — including the Escape key — with the Touch Bar, an OLED-based touchable strip that incorporates a button at the far right featuring a Touch ID sensor.
The first-generation Touch Bar (used in the fourth-generation MacBook Pros) has a resolution of 1085 x 30 (although, since it’s a Retina display of sorts, the native resolution is double that at 144 PPI) and is divided into three areas: (from left to right) the System button, App region, and Control Strip. The System button effectively replaced the Escape key, which was missed by so many users that it has returned in the 16-inch MacBook Pro. So, to accommodate presence of the Escape key at its rightful place at the top-left of the keyboard, the second-generation Touch Bar featured in the 16-inch MacBook Pro omits the System button area and is therefore narrower with a “Retina” resolution of 1004 x 30.
The Control Strip provides access to controls previously available via the function keys, such as those for adjusting brightness and volume. For example, to change the volume you tap the volume button and a slider appears that can be dragged to set the appropriate level. You can either tap the close button when finished to return to close this page or wait a few moments and this will happen automatically. Alternatively, if you press and hold the volume button, you can drag your finger in-place to adjust the volume, and the slider disappears when you release the touch.
Pressing the smaller arrow button to the left of the Control Strip extends it to fill the entire Touch Bar, and you’ll see buttons for other behaviours that were previously assigned to function keys, such as Mission Control and Keyboard Brightness. It’s possible to configure what buttons appear in both the compact and extended Control Strip by clicking the Customise Control Strip button in the Keyboard page of the Keyboard System Preferences panel. The display will darken and the available buttons will appear, allowing you to either drag these controls into and out of the Control strip as desired.
The App region is the most interesting area of the Touch Bar, and applications can utilise it to provide specific controls pertaining to that application. Apple have really gone to town in exploiting the Touch Bar’s App region in macOS, almost as if to justify its existence, although some of this functionality is genuinely helpful. For example, using it to switch tabs in Safari, or scrub through audio and video in iTunes or QuickTime Player is kind of neat. And Apple’s own apps were quick to support the Touch Bar, with GarageBand providing access to Smart Controls, and Logic Pro adding a piano keyboard, drum kits, navigation, and more.
At the end of the day, “kind of neat” is probably the best three words I can use to express my opinion of the Touch Bar. Given that third parties have been slow to adopt this new user interface paradigm — even though it’s been over three years since Apple introduced it — I wouldn’t really have lost much sleep to see physical function keys also returning alongside the Escape key. At the original unveiling, Algoriddim CEO Karim Morsy demonstrated how Djay Pro had incorporated support for the Touch Bar, which was also “kind of neat’; but other music and audio developers haven’t really seen the point in adding support for something that’s only available on MacBook Pros.
Still, if you’re interested in the Touch Bar experience without having a recent MacBook Pro, it’s possible to play around with a virtual alternative using Apple’s Xcode IDE (Integrated Development Environment), which is freely available from the Mac App Store. After running Xcode, choose Show Touch Bar from the Window menu and a virtual Touch Bar will appear in a floating window. The primary purpose of this window is obviously to help developers test and debug Touch Bar functionality in their applications, but it’s a fully functional Touch Bar that reacts to whatever is the foreground application. So if you launch GarageBand, for example, this window will display the Touch Bar functionality for GarageBand.
Visceral Virtues
So, what about the inside? The three processor configurations used in the 16-inch MacBook Pro models are not surprisingly the same as those found in the previous 2019 15-inch MacBook Pro iterations (released last May). The base 16-inch MacBook Pro model is powered by a six-core, 2.6GHz ninth-generation Intel Core i7–9050H processor with a 12MB Smart Cache, and a second model is available with an eight-core, 2.3GHz ninth-generation Intel Core i9–9880H with a 16MB Smart Cache. If you want the ultimate in mobile performance, you can opt for an eight-core, 2.4GHz Intel Core i9–9980HK.
To measure the raw performance in the base model I was testing, I fired up Primate Labs’ trusty Geekbench benchmarking tool, which reported single and multi-core scores of 1071 and 5677 respectively. The average scores for this system listed on Geekbench’s online Browser are 1031 and 5434 (at the time of writing), compared to the 1040 and 5147 scores of the previous 15-inch MacBook Pro base model. What’s interesting to note with these scores, as you might have noticed, is that the multi-core score for the new 16-inch MacBook Pro is not insignificantly higher than for the 15-inch model, and I would posit this could be due to the fact the DDR4 memory in the 16-inch MacBook Pro is of the faster 2666MHz variety than the 2400MHz memory used before.
The 16-inch MacBook Pro is supplied with the same 16GB memory capacity but can now be expanded beyond the previous 32GB maximum to 64GB — finally! I say finally because this configuration has been available to laptops not powered by macOS for years, the same that are available with 128GB these days. However, to be able to order a MacBook Pro with 64GB is a huge step forward.
For graphics, all the Core processors feature Intel’s UHD Graphics 630 that the MacBook Pro employs for use cases that aren’t graphically intensive, such as, say, running music and audio applications. However, this on-chip UHD Graphics Processing technology is quite capable and, in most cases, should be able to run three displays (one internal and two external) simultaneously at resolutions of 4096 x 2304 with refresh rates up to 60MHz for the internal display and DisplayPort, and 30MHz via HDMI.
Should you require additional graphical performance, the 16-inch Mac Pros also feature more powerful (and therefore more power-hungry) AMD Radeon Pro 5000M series GPUs that take over from the Intel graphics when required. The base model uses AMD’s Radeon Pro 5300M with 4GB GDDR6 memory, and models featuring AMD’s Radeon Pro 5500M with either 4 or 8GB GDDR memory are also available. These GPUs replace the older Radeon Pro 555X, 560X, Vega 16, and Vega 20 chips used in the 15-inch MacBook Pros that were all available with a maximum of 4GB graphics memory. For music and audio work, I think that any of the newer Radeon Pros supplied with the 16-inch MacBook Pro are going to be more than capable — and may not ever be engaged. So it’s probably not worth upgrading unless you also plan on also using your MacBook Pro for intensive photo and video processing.
Moving onto storage, the base 16-inch MacBook Pro model includes a 512GB SSD (up from 256GB in the previous 15-inch) and can be configured all the way up through 1, 2 and 4TB capacities to a ‘would I ever need that much?’ 8TB. (The answer, of course, being a resounding yes, you would, especially if you’re working with large sample libraries.)
I turned to AJA’s System Test Lite to test the performance of the performance of the internal storage, which is available as a free download from the Mac App Store. With a file size of 16GB, System Test recorded read and write speeds of 2762MB/s (megabytes per second) and 2442MB/s respectively, while a file size of 256MB (which is more probably more common in the world of audio and samples) resulted in read and write speeds of 2931MB/s and 2644MB/s. These are impressive numbers, and, to put them in perspective, are about five times faster than you could achieve by attaching a portable USB 3-based SSD like Samsung’s T5, and on par with mobile Thunderbolt 3 SSD products like G-Drive’s Mobile Pro SSD that are around double the price.
In addition to offering more power from a performance perspective, the 16-inch MacBook Pro also offers more power in terms of energy and features a 100Wh (watt‑hour) lithium‑polymer battery (over the 83.6Wh battery used in the previous model). Why only a 100-watt-hour battery, then, you might ask? Perhaps amusingly, this is the maximum allowed by the United States’ Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on planes, and although there are some exceptions to this rule based on checked versus carry-on luggage and airline approval, I think most would agree Apple probably made the right decision here.
To accompany the larger battery, the 16-inch MacBook Pro is supplied with a marginally larger and heavier 96W (watt) USB-C power adapter, compared to the 87W adapter included with the 15-inch MacBook Pro.
In order to accommodate these improved internals, Apple have done the unthinkable in making the 16-inch MacBook Pro slightly heavier and thicker than its 15-inch predecessor, weighing in at 4.3 pounds with a height of 0.64 inches. While this increase in height is negligible, the extra weight was surprisingly noticeable in a way that might have been unthinkable with previous Apple products. However, as I alluded to earlier in the review, this is such a small trade-off for the benefits it makes possible.
It’s Off to Work we Go
The raw details and performance of the 16-inch MacBook Pro’s specifications help to explain its potential, but you might be wondering how such numbers translate into day-to-day music and audio workloads. On Apple’s web page for the 16-inch MacBook Pro, the company states that you get 2.1x the performance running Logic Pro X when compared to a previous 15-inch model based on tests conducted in October 2019. And, in order to reach this conclusion, a footnote explains that Apple used a pre-production 16-inch MacBook Pro with a 2.4GHz eight-core Intel Core i9 processor and 64GB memory, versus a shipping 15-inch MacBook Pro with a 3.1GHz quad-core Intel i7 CPU and 16GB of RAM.
This is a good result, to be sure, although the last 15-inch MacBook Pro available with a 3.1GHz quad-core processor was a mid-2017 model, which would have used an i7–7920HQ CPU. Why Apple chose to use this particular model as a baseline isn’t explained, although it presumably demonstrates a more impressive performance gain than using a 2019 15-inch MacBook Pro featuring the same processor. If we return to the Geekbench Browser results, an i7–7920HQ-based 15-inch MacBook Pro has a multi-core score of 3551, while an i9–9980HK-based 16-inch MacBook Pro has a multi-core score of 7034. Now, it doesn’t take a mathematician to observe that the newer model offers around twice the raw performance of the older one, making Apple’s result of a 2.1x performance gain seem about right.
The same footnote also explains the testing methodology. Using Logic Pro X 10.4.7, of course, Apple’s engineers created a “project consisting of 253 tracks, each with an Amp Designer plug-in instance applied” and that “individual tracks were enabled during playback until [the] CPU became overloaded”. However, this explanation leaves much to be desired and isn’t made clearer by the last sentence in the footnote, which reads: “Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro” — whatever that means. For example, how many of those 253 tracks were enabled? Were the tracks on which Amp Designer was instantiated mono or stereo? And so on.
In order to better understand the test Apple described I created my own test Project with Amp Designer instances, albeit with the slower baseline shipping model. Using Logic Pro X (10.4.7) I was able to play black 183 stereo tracks, each with an Amp Designer instance (and the same audio file) using the Brit Reverb preset as befitting myself. Not bad, and it made me suspect that Apple’s test was also based on stereo tracks as it was possible to have in excess of 183 tracks playing backing in a mono configuration. Logic users can try recreating the same test to see how their current system compares in comparison — I was using the built-in Core Audio hardware at a sample rate of 44.1kHz, a 24-bit resolution, with a buffer size of 256 samples, and Logic’s High Precision (64-bit) summing engine was also enabled.
However, not every musician or audio engineer uses Logic Pro X, so I also ran some tests using Steinberg’s Cubase Pro 10.5 using the same audio configuration as with Logic. (I would have investigated with Pro Tools as well, but the current release version was incompatible with Catalina at the time — see box.) Staying with the theme of guitar amp plug-ins, I could play back 183 stereo audio tracks (using the same audio file), each running an instance of Amp Simulator with the Direct Clean preset, and the system barely broke into a sweat. Amp Simulator is obviously a pretty efficient plug-in.
So I decided to amp the test up, as it were, and created stereo tracks with VST Amp Rack instantiated instead using the Big Clean Reverb preset instead (which employs all manner of additional EQ, reverb, and compressor algorithms to the signal). This time the system gave up after 42 tracks — truly the meaning of life, the universe, and guitar simulator plug-ins.
In order to simulate a more typical situation, and one that wouldn’t scare even Pat Metheny, I finally created a Project featuring 256 stereo audio tracks, each with VST Dynamics and Studio EQ plug-ins instantiated as inserts (using the Clean Picking Guitar and Clean Funk Guitar presets respectively). I also added two FX Channels — the first with the REVelation reverb plug-in as an insert loaded with the Large Studio Warm preset, and the second with a Stereo Delay instance using a preset called The Edge — and sent each of the 256 audio tracks to these channels. The 16-inch MacBook Pro was just about peaking at around 50 percent CPU usage, and, again, I would encourage you to recreate a similar test to get a feel for just how usefully remarkable this is.
If you’re wondering why I didn’t carry out any tests using virtual instruments, I figured that the audio plug-ins used did a sufficient job in illustrating DSP performance, and given there’s so much storage bandwidth available — especially internally, or even via external Thunderbolt-based devices — streaming-based samplers are unlikely to choke in getting enough data into the system.
Conclusion
The new 16-inch MacBook Pro really is a joy to use. Having such performance in a portable system can be terrifically helpful, as you would imagine, but when coupled with a high-quality display, improved speakers, better battery life, and so on, you really begin to appreciate what’s on offer. And the fact — finances permitting — you could configure a system with 64GB memory and 8TB of storage, makes the possibility of completing a full production densely populated with plug-ins effects and virtual instruments on a MacBook Pro a reality.
As with the with new Mac Pro, the 16-inch MacBook Pro proves that Apple can still develop a product that meets and exceeds the needs of their creative professional users. In the company’s PR vernacular, this new MacBook Pro is “designed for those who defy limits and change the world”. What this basically means is that Apple understand we’re not all video editors based in swanky Soho offices, and the 16-inch MacBook Pro exists to help the workflows of photographers, artists, developers, and, yes, even musicians and audio engineers on the go or in the studio.
Pricing
Base Core i7 model, $2399
• Processor: 2.6GHz six-core ninth-generation Intel Core i7 (with Turbo Boost up to 4.5GHz); or a 2.4GHz eight‑core 9th‑generation Intel Core i9 (with Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz), $300.
• Graphics: AMD Radeon Pro 5300M with 4GB GDDR6 memory; AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 4GB of GDDR6 memory, $100; or with 8GB of GDDR6 memory, $200.
• Memory: 16GB 2666MHz DDR4; 32GB, $400; or 64GB, $800.
• Storage: 512 SSD; 1TB, $200; 2TB, $600; 4TB, $1200; or 8TB, $2400.
Base Core i9 model, $2799
• Processor: 2.3GHz eight-core 9th-generation Intel Core i9 (with Turbo Boost up to 4.8GHz); or a 2.4GHz eight‑core 9th‑generation Intel Core i9 (with Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz), $200.
• Graphics: AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 4GB of GDDR6 memory; or 8GB of GDDR6 memory, $100.
• Memory: 16GB 2666MHz DDR4; 32GB, $400; or 64GB, $800.
• Storage: 1TB SSD; 2TB, $400; 4TB, $1000; or 8TB, $2200.
Fully Loaded, $6099
2.4GHz eight‑core 9th‑generation Intel Core i9 (with Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz) processor, AMD Radeon Pro 5500M graphics with 8GB of GDDR6 memory, 64GB memory, and 8TB SSD storage.
An Obligatory Note About Catalina
As with all new Macs, the 16-inch MacBook Pro ships with the latest version of macOS, which in this case is Catalina (10.15). And, as has been widely covered, this latest release has arguably been plagued by more than the usual number of compatibility setbacks users expect when running music and audio applications, plug-ins, and associated drivers for specialised hardware on new releases of the Mac’s operating system. Even the 16-inch MacBook Pro itself clearly required some specific attention from Apple in order to run smoothly on Catalina, with the company releasing what was described as a “supplementary” update to 10.15.1 (Build 19B2106 over 19B2093) to improve “the stability and reliability of displays and peripherals with MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019)”.
While most compatibility issues have been resolved, and I didn’t run into any major issues working with applications like Apple’s own Logic Pro X and Steinberg’s Cubase Pro, Pro Tools was still incompatible when I wrote this review. However, no sooner than I’d inserted the final full stop, Avid released Pro Tools 2019.12 with support for Catalina, although some functionality remains unavailable due to the ongoing transition to a fully 64-bit architecture. Specifically, audio can’t be imported from M4A or AAC files, and audio and video can’t be imported from MOV, MP4, M4V or DV files. This is going to be problematic for some, although perhaps not so much the inability to export audio and video to MOV files in Pro Tools 2019.12 on Catalina, which obviously effects the “Bounce to QuickTime” command.
On the company’s online Knowledge Base, Avid state that “While we will not be replacing every file type and codec that was previously supported, we will be supporting those which are most common. Until all intended functionality is replaced, the previous implementation will be available when Pro Tools is used on earlier supported versions of macOS.” All of which serves as a reminder of the importance in confirming the compatibility of products upon which you rely to avoid initial disappointment when purchasing a new Mac.
