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I might be changing my mind about Max Tech YT channel
- Thread starter Sami13496
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Can you name anyone who falls in the former? Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, people don't care about what's going on under the hood and just want to know if their workloads are improved?
I find Max Tech tests and benchmarks can be quite useful, and how much one or another matters depends on the user.
Back in 2014 I bought myself a new MB Air, and at the time there was a fuss going on that some had faster SSDs than others (even with the same capacity) depending on what brand of SSD was installed at the factory.
When I checked, mine had the slower SSD.
Rather than returning it I listened to the "sensible" voices, telling me that I'd never notice the difference, etc., etc...
But at the same time my father bought a matching MB Air, and guess what... his came with the faster SSD installed.
When they were new the difference in SSD speed was unnoticeable, but as time (and new versions of macOS) went by, the difference became more & more obvious.
Last year I gave up on mine as it had became an almost unusable beach balling mess doing even the lightest task, despite being clean installed a number of times. Meanwhile my father's machine is still pretty usable. If only for light web browsing & email.
Both machines came with the stock 4GB memory at the time, so clearly they need to swap. His can still handle it, whereas mine can't.
So, time for a new one...
I don't need a powerful CPU or GPU.
No individual app needs a crazy amount of memory, but I do like to run a lot at once (like multiple apps and 50+ tabs, if the machine will handle it) and leave stuff open.
I don't need much storage space on my laptop - I have a desktop for that.
So when the M2 Air was launched I watched Max Tech's tests & reviews with interest, and I'm very grateful to have the information about slower SSDs on the base model, as clearly Apple themselves aren't going to mention it!
So I was able to make an informed decision and as I don't need more than 256GB storage I saved some money and bought myself a base M1 Air, with an SSD roughly twice as fast as the base M2.
For my use the M1 chip barely gets out of first gear, so that's plenty. I have about 50GB on the SSD with the rest staying in the cloud, so clearly I didn't want to pay for more storage!
But I do use the memory - frequently in the "yellow" and using 1GB - 2Gb swap. But still it runs as smooth as butter.
Sure spending extra on 16GB memory would reduce the need for swap, but I'd much rather save my hard earned cash if getting a machine with a fast enough SSD works just as well for my use case. Especially as you can't buy BTO options discounted on Amazon, making it an expensive upgrade.
Max Tech helped me spend my money wisely!
Back in 2014 I bought myself a new MB Air, and at the time there was a fuss going on that some had faster SSDs than others (even with the same capacity) depending on what brand of SSD was installed at the factory.
When I checked, mine had the slower SSD.
Rather than returning it I listened to the "sensible" voices, telling me that I'd never notice the difference, etc., etc...
But at the same time my father bought a matching MB Air, and guess what... his came with the faster SSD installed.
When they were new the difference in SSD speed was unnoticeable, but as time (and new versions of macOS) went by, the difference became more & more obvious.
Last year I gave up on mine as it had became an almost unusable beach balling mess doing even the lightest task, despite being clean installed a number of times. Meanwhile my father's machine is still pretty usable. If only for light web browsing & email.
Both machines came with the stock 4GB memory at the time, so clearly they need to swap. His can still handle it, whereas mine can't.
So, time for a new one...
I don't need a powerful CPU or GPU.
No individual app needs a crazy amount of memory, but I do like to run a lot at once (like multiple apps and 50+ tabs, if the machine will handle it) and leave stuff open.
I don't need much storage space on my laptop - I have a desktop for that.
So when the M2 Air was launched I watched Max Tech's tests & reviews with interest, and I'm very grateful to have the information about slower SSDs on the base model, as clearly Apple themselves aren't going to mention it!
So I was able to make an informed decision and as I don't need more than 256GB storage I saved some money and bought myself a base M1 Air, with an SSD roughly twice as fast as the base M2.
For my use the M1 chip barely gets out of first gear, so that's plenty. I have about 50GB on the SSD with the rest staying in the cloud, so clearly I didn't want to pay for more storage!
But I do use the memory - frequently in the "yellow" and using 1GB - 2Gb swap. But still it runs as smooth as butter.
Sure spending extra on 16GB memory would reduce the need for swap, but I'd much rather save my hard earned cash if getting a machine with a fast enough SSD works just as well for my use case. Especially as you can't buy BTO options discounted on Amazon, making it an expensive upgrade.
Max Tech helped me spend my money wisely!
What are you talking about? I don't know any other YT channel that does such in-depth technical testing for all the models as soon as they are available. THAT'S what they do. But it obviously bursts your bubble of Apple never doing wrong. 
Argee
They did a bunch of tests and talking about the slow ssd and heat of MBA half a year ago, and I hesitated when it launched (and I missed it), I even bought a thermalright heat pad in case I needed to solve heating problems. Later I found out that opening word docs and online meetings are fast and cold with no slowdowns🤣
Max Tech, like all of them, has a lot of Click Bait videos. However, the thing people love to overlook about their coverage of the M2 SSD stuff is that they didn't make such claims about the M1 Macs nor the Intel Macs before them. Which is to say that they didn't make this problem up out of thin air. Most people suggesting that it isn't an issue are so staunch in their defense of Apple and their denial that Apple could possibly make a mistep in the Apple Silicon era of Mac computing that you ought to not give them the time of day anyway. Either that or they are M2 purchasers that want to defend their decision to go with the lowest end model. This is common psychology in action here. Is it an end-of-the-world issue? No. Just don't buy a base model M2 Mac if you care about doing more than using it as an overglorified Chromebook. It's really that simple.
But the idea that they are making this SSD issue up out of thin air for the sake of generating viewers is utter nonsense and is next level Apple apologism.
Their FCPX tests is garbage - it's more look the test iMovie performance test not FCPX. No plugins, no titles, no transisions in ther test FCPX projects. For video editor more intresting is smoot playback when edit (with titles, transisions, efekts - end render=export time. No how smoot playback is with LUT 🤦🏻♂️
Test projects with Neat Video plugins give also more information about CPU and GPU unlike h264 or h265 video with LUT's. How big is difecenc betwean Macs render/export time.
Test projects with Neat Video plugins give also more information about CPU and GPU unlike h264 or h265 video with LUT's. How big is difecenc betwean Macs render/export time.
I don’t like their benchmarking because few are actually based on real world scenarios.
The Logic Pro one in particular is pathetic. Their basis of how ‘well’ it performs is by playing as many tracks as possible before a CPU overload. In reality, a typical project consists of many plugins used in a variety of ways, with some reliance on additional hardware. If they actually used a real project file that consisted of multiple third-party VSTs (made up from many gb’s of sample libraries), you would have an accurate reflection of how the CPU handles these extra pieces of software that more often than not are very taxing. Spitfire Audio and Arturia plugins are great examples.
And don’t get me started on their Lightroom benchmarks… Yes let’s export 50 medium format images and the quickest machine is ‘better’. It’s as if they’ve realised that the other 98% of the software has reached the point of diminishing returns, so they focus on an aspect that few will rarely perform.
I also don’t like their tone of “we were the first to…” and “no other review has said…”, I mean what do they want a cookie? No one cares whether they were first to ‘discover’ or report something or not.
And the clickbait images they use for their thumbnails are often laughable.
The only reason I’d follow their channel is for the tear downs as they’re quick to do them, but that’s about it.
The Logic Pro one in particular is pathetic. Their basis of how ‘well’ it performs is by playing as many tracks as possible before a CPU overload. In reality, a typical project consists of many plugins used in a variety of ways, with some reliance on additional hardware. If they actually used a real project file that consisted of multiple third-party VSTs (made up from many gb’s of sample libraries), you would have an accurate reflection of how the CPU handles these extra pieces of software that more often than not are very taxing. Spitfire Audio and Arturia plugins are great examples.
And don’t get me started on their Lightroom benchmarks… Yes let’s export 50 medium format images and the quickest machine is ‘better’. It’s as if they’ve realised that the other 98% of the software has reached the point of diminishing returns, so they focus on an aspect that few will rarely perform.
I also don’t like their tone of “we were the first to…” and “no other review has said…”, I mean what do they want a cookie? No one cares whether they were first to ‘discover’ or report something or not.
And the clickbait images they use for their thumbnails are often laughable.
The only reason I’d follow their channel is for the tear downs as they’re quick to do them, but that’s about it.
Naw it's garbage. I purposely make sure YouTube doesn't show many any of those videos. That's the problem with being a YT creator that limits themself to certain subjects, you end up making 20 videos about one thing and it's the exact same video but you word it a little differently or something. I generally don't watch to many tech guys on YouTube. I'll tell you the best tech channel to watch is Computer Chronicles. Thank me later.
It's funny, back when Apple Silicon was announced Max Tech did a pretty good job of combing through the various wwdc presentations for information and offered fairly informed speculation.
As time has gone on they've gone full You Tube; publish a video with one opinion, then publish another with the opposite a few days later for maximum clickbait. This leads them to overemphasises everything - one day x is a disaster and the next amazing - and speculate on things they have no understanding of. At this stage I just blocked them. 90% of their stuff is hyperbole and if they find anything useful someone more trustworthy will probably cover it.
As time has gone on they've gone full You Tube; publish a video with one opinion, then publish another with the opposite a few days later for maximum clickbait. This leads them to overemphasises everything - one day x is a disaster and the next amazing - and speculate on things they have no understanding of. At this stage I just blocked them. 90% of their stuff is hyperbole and if they find anything useful someone more trustworthy will probably cover it.
Personally I do find max tech quite irritating and blowing up their personal opinions into huge issues and are also very much click bait.
My favourite YouTuber has to be Tailosive Tech, I find his opinions very honest on things, and he always calls it out when things are blown out of proportion etc… he also majorly advocates for refurbished and second hand products rather than touting why the latest and greatest is the best option which is really good.
For entertainment and Apple sheep value I also like iUpdate/AppleTrack and his Genius Bar podcast, it’s all fun etc… not too serious and sometimes a bit manic but overall it’s a fun watch, and imo you see a decent side of Prosser in the podcasts too.
My favourite YouTuber has to be Tailosive Tech, I find his opinions very honest on things, and he always calls it out when things are blown out of proportion etc… he also majorly advocates for refurbished and second hand products rather than touting why the latest and greatest is the best option which is really good.
For entertainment and Apple sheep value I also like iUpdate/AppleTrack and his Genius Bar podcast, it’s all fun etc… not too serious and sometimes a bit manic but overall it’s a fun watch, and imo you see a decent side of Prosser in the podcasts too.
The channels that subcontract to services that manage givaways may be a bit safer. I agree though, most YT givaways are a sham.
I really don't mind Max, its one of those things, that if you don't like him, then just don't watch him. I'm not susscribed to his channel, but I do watch him on occasion.
No YT is unbiased, take LTT, they're very anti-apple and some of their reasons do make sense. Even their Mac Address channel tends to have an anti-apple bias, complaining more then praising
I have picked up on this, but it rarely seeps into their videos so I'm fine with it.
What the main problem is that whilst the content is generally fine, the YouTube algorithm shapes content creators into patterns and boxes that force feeds them back into the algorithmic ouroboros. It's extremely obnoxious once you perceive it, and it can turn any decent content creator into another YouTube bot given a long enough timeline. It has happened to pretty much everyone including MaxTech, iJustine, and even a stodgy old MacWorld stalwart like Rene Ritchie (who now works for YouTube as their content creator liaison).
I have no idea if Linus or Mrwhosetheboss were ever palatable, but I'm going to assume the same for them. Marcus Brownlee (mkbhd) is probably the most savvy at skirting the line between being authentic and fuelling the algorithm, but I think he got big enough not to have to worry about it before it became necessary to survive.
Personally, I wouldn't trust Max Tech with a ten foot pole.
For context, I decided to look into buying an iPad Pro M2 because of all the fancy new features the Pro has for just $50 more than the current Air (the better refresh rate, better camera, has the better chip already, that Pencil Hover, bragging rights, other little bonus features) and searched to see what people thought of it.
Literally all I could find from Max Tech was him bashing other creators for liking it and making multiple videos explaining why it's a bad device, failing to consider that not everyone already has an iPad Pro. Sure, it's not a monumental upgrade, but it doesn't need to be. I would usually trust creators like MKBHD a lot more, because they have the quality setups and the reasonable reviews to back it up.
For context, I decided to look into buying an iPad Pro M2 because of all the fancy new features the Pro has for just $50 more than the current Air (the better refresh rate, better camera, has the better chip already, that Pencil Hover, bragging rights, other little bonus features) and searched to see what people thought of it.
Literally all I could find from Max Tech was him bashing other creators for liking it and making multiple videos explaining why it's a bad device, failing to consider that not everyone already has an iPad Pro. Sure, it's not a monumental upgrade, but it doesn't need to be. I would usually trust creators like MKBHD a lot more, because they have the quality setups and the reasonable reviews to back it up.
Everyone looking for wide fame on YouTube’s going after the same demographic, impressionable children that, if they play their cards right, will become lifelong watchers of theirs. The over-the-top bombast is what attracts children (think Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer where even recognizing the obvious is an event!) Some continue to like that carnival hucksterish barking information delivery as entertainment, some like to keep their entertainment and information more separated.
Can you please give some examples?
I always like to know of more sources that publish benchmark/test results.
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I can respect iJustine while also finding her videos completely useless.
I just don't have much interest in unboxing videos, colour comparisons, etc.
I think they land somewhere in the middle of this debate. They do useful comparisons and benchmarks, which may not answer all questions, but certainly can be used as a yardstick for people who don’t yet have experience with the products.
Their titles are click-baity, which is unfortunate. For me, it’s worth the 10-15 minutes to get a feel for the newly released product, and I can gloss over the click bait titles in much the same way I ignore ads on webpages.
Their titles are click-baity, which is unfortunate. For me, it’s worth the 10-15 minutes to get a feel for the newly released product, and I can gloss over the click bait titles in much the same way I ignore ads on webpages.
I agree, not everything is bad.
I agree that their "leaks" video are very bad, as they try to predict things one day and say exactly the inverse the next day. Those videos are useless and just here to make views.
On the contrary their reviews often pin point things interesting, they have especially an emphasis on thermal behavior, frequency management and so on.
Fo exemple on the last M2 Pro/Max review they mention the smaller heat sink, the fact that the M2 gets hotter than the M1, and have a little tool to check the power draw and frequencies.
Maybe it is not useful to everyone but I think it is not false information in any case, no ?
As others here I would be glad to have video or written reviews website worth having a look if you think it is better.
Thanks !
I agree that their "leaks" video are very bad, as they try to predict things one day and say exactly the inverse the next day. Those videos are useless and just here to make views.
On the contrary their reviews often pin point things interesting, they have especially an emphasis on thermal behavior, frequency management and so on.
Fo exemple on the last M2 Pro/Max review they mention the smaller heat sink, the fact that the M2 gets hotter than the M1, and have a little tool to check the power draw and frequencies.
Maybe it is not useful to everyone but I think it is not false information in any case, no ?
As others here I would be glad to have video or written reviews website worth having a look if you think it is better.
Thanks !
Wow, so regardless of his technical expertise, you choose to ignore someone based on their faith, ok that seems kind of sad to me, but what ever ¯\_(ツ)_/¯