2023-05-14

Hang in there, MacBook Pro

Mid-2014 MacBook Pro (Intel)｜2014年版MacBook Pro

This was my first purchase and use of any Mac. The Evernote note below indicates I started using it in December 2014, or 9 years ago when I first attempted the Windows bootcamp installation (lasted a short couple of weeks).

Screen Shot 2023-11-20 at 15.18.28.png

Hello, M3 new Mac!

Today (20231120) my new MacBook 2023 Pro Max arrived. The old horse is still perfectly fine, but shows great strain when it comes to Zoom + screenrecording + running a couple of more apps at the same time. System resource monitor can drop to 10% of CPU, at which point Zoom and audio degrades and stutters.

The old duo

I have two of these mid-2014 MacBook Pros, one being abandoned into my ownership by an ex-employer. They are great, but are long in the tooth. I am waiting with bated breath the rumored M3 15- or 16-inch MacBook Pro or Max to be available, hopefully by year end of 2023. In the meantime, I have to keep squeezing the last bit of juice out of these old faithful power horses, especially in video downsampling. Why would a one-hour iPad screen recording have a monstrous size of close to 10GB and sometimes take more than 12 hours just to downsize?

(2023-06) The downsampling issue is much alleviated thanks to rediscovering the use of Record It! app:

The built-in tool, not allowing any configuration, yields huge files in high resolution, easily 10GB per hour. But with Record It!, I sometimes use the lowest setting to produce a recording only a fraction in size, still clear enough to view and with perfect audio, when I don't need higher resolution or when I need only the audio. For example, 100MB-500MB per hour depending on how busy the screen action.