My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4

One thing that wasn't mentioned is the max sustained screen brightness for SDR, which is higher on the M4 Pro (1000 nits) compared to the M4 Air or M1 Pro (500 nits).

There’s an awesome app called Vivid which just opens the HDR max brightness. I use it all the time with my M3 Pro when working outside and I believe it also works on earlier models.

There are so many base features that are inexplicably relegated to 3rd party apps. Like a better finder experience. Or keeping screen on. Or NTFS writing.

> There are so many base features that are inexplicably relegated to 3rd party apps.

> Like a better finder experience.

> Or keeping screen on.

Do you mind linking or naming which tools you use for those 2 purposes?

Asking out of pure curiosity, as for keeping the screen on, I just use `caffeinate -imdsu` in the terminal. Previously used Amphetamine, but I ended up having some minor issues with it, and I didn't need any of its advanced features (which could definitely be useful to some people, I admit, just not me). I just wanted to have a simple toggle for "keep the device and/or display from sleeping" mode, so I just switched to `caffeinate -imdsu` (which is built-in).

As for Finder, I didn't really feel the need for anything different, but I would gladly try out and potentially switch to something better, if you are willing to recommend your alternative.

What's crazy is that Vivid app...costs money!

NTFS writing isn't that inexplicable. NTFS is a proprietary filesystem that isn't at all simple to implement and the ntfs-3g driver got there by reverse engineering. Apple doesn't want to enable something by default that could potentially corrupt the filesystem because Microsoft could be doing something unexpected and undocumented.

Meanwhile if you need widespread compatibility nearly everything supports exFAT and if you need a real filesystem then the Mac and Windows drivers for open source filesystems are less likely to corrupt your data.

People have to pay money to change screen brightness on a Mac?!

Finder is the number one reason it boggles my mind that people claim macOS as head and shoulders above other OSes "for professionals". Finder is a badly designed child's toy that does nothing at all intuitively and, in fact, actively does things in the most backwards ways possible. It's like taking the worst of Explorer (from Windows XP), and smashing it into the worst of Dolphin or Nautilus; and, to top it off, then hiding any and all remaining useful functionality behind obscure hot keys.

Welcome to the Mac ecosystem. Where basic functionality is gated behind apps that Apple fans will tell you "are lifesavers and totally needed in Windows/Linux/etc)" for $4.99-14.99/piece. And, when they get popular enough, Apple will implement that basic functionality in its OS and silently extinguish those apps.

And that's when they let you modify/use your OS the way you want.

...I'd have to say that seems like a radical reading of the text.

No; you can adjust screen brightness just fine with the built-in settings, including with the F1 and F2 keys (plus the Fn key if you've got them set that way).

This Vivid app is specifically for extra HDR levels of brightness. I've never had a problem with my M1 or M4 MBPs, either inside or outside, with the built-in brightness levels. (But, to be fair, I don't use it outside a lot.)

It has been more or less the same as long as I've used it (20 years or so). Familiarity is a plus. It is a pretty simple and straightforward tool. I'm not sure what you might find perplexing about Finder.

I don't mind that. 3rd party Mac utilities are nice: well designed, explained and do what they're supposed to because someone makes a living of it. I'm happy to pay these prices.

Not op but raycast is for sure an improvement on the stock finder.

https://www.raycast.com/

Looks like there's an OSS app that does basically the same thing: https://github.com/starkdmi/BrightXDR

I would personally be afraid of using that in case it causes damage long-term to the screen either due to temperature or power draw or something. Idk if there are significant hardware differences but in this case I would guess there’s a real hardware reason for it?

There’s multiple free versions and forcing HDR on isn’t a basic feature by any means.

I use the Finder and Raycast heavily. Raycast is not, and does not sell itself as, a Finder equivalent.

OP: I've tried all the Finder replacements. Path Finder, for example. At the end of the day, I went back to Finder. I always have a single window on screen with the tabs that I use all day. This helps enormously. I show it on YouTube here (direct timestamp link): https://youtu.be/BzJ8j0Q_Ed4?si=VVMD54EJ-XsxkYzm&t=338

You can use Raycast to directly open files. I show that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKbtoR2q_Ds&t=482s - still doesn't make it a Finder replacement.

Finder has become fine, but when I first switched to Mac, it was hard to believe Finder was so bad compared to XP-era Windows Explorer.

And yet, it's a simple toggle (sometimes multiple, for specific display flows) in GNOME, KDE, and Windows 10+.

I'll take ntfs-3g over the best implementation of exFAT in a heartbeat. Refusing to write to NTFS for reliability purposes, and thereby pushing people onto exFAT, is shooting yourself in the foot.

At which point you're asking why Apple doesn't have default support for something like ext4, which is a decent point.

That would both get you easier compatibility between Mac and Linux and solve the NTFS write issue without any more trouble than it's giving people now because then you'd just install the ext4 driver on the Windows machine instead of the NTFS driver on the Mac.

Is it that easy to use on Windows these days? I should give it a try.

I imagine what those custom brightness apps do is not magically increase the brightness, but change the various pixels' brightness in accordance to some method/algorithm such that you see what appears to be brighter whites when placed next to certain other colors.

It's not what is implied by the parent post - where the mac is limiting the brightness only to have the app unlock it.

No, I believe the issue is Apple limits the top half or so of the brightness/backlight level for HDR content only. The apps allow it to be used for normal non-HDR content.

Apple is likely to be in the position to negotiate nrfs documentation access with Microsoft for a clean-room implementation, with NDAs and everything.

My money is on apple not having the will to do thar.

> keeping screen on

`caffeinate -d` in the terminal - it’s built-in

I think it's just a matter of some "I need HDR" syscall.

Default Folder X is a huge improvement to Finder, specifically open and save windows. It's in SetApp too.

I've used vivid nearly every day since the week the first m1 MacBook Pro came out, no damage to my screen at all.

A far as I understand Windows only has a toggle for HDR on vs off, that's not what we're talking about here, this is about forcing the full brightness of HDR always, even outside videos. It's something that manufacturers don't allow for as it reduces display life, it would actually be an anti-feature for a consumer OS to expose as a setting. It'd be like exposing some sort of setting to allow your CPU to go well beyond normal heat limits.

Who said it was perplexing? If anything, it's the opposite. It's so simple and rudimentary as to be antithetical to filesystem navigation.

Back/forward operate on history, not on hierarchy; at least have an "Up" button. There's no easy way to navigate the non-prescribed folders without adding every folder to the favorites list; hell, there's not even a "Home" link by default. Simple location navigation is hidden behind Cmd+G versus being evident. Easily jumping up the tree from your current location is hidden. Etc, etc, etc. It acts like the iPhone file manager, except the filesystem isn't a sandbox on macOS and you regularly need to navigate around it.

I'm sure if it's the only FS manager you ever use then it's just fine and you've learned all the quirks. But for people that regularly use other (better) managers on other OSes, it's severely lacking in ergonomics and functionality.

Eh, I feel the opposite. Finder is much more usable to me, but of course I use the shortcuts like cmd-up to go up or down instinctively now. It is a bit ironic for such a mouse oriented OS everywhere else.

Still alt-clicking on the window title to see the whole folder hierarchy is easy to remember and doesn't clutter up the UI (err cmd-clicking? It's muscle memory so I forget). The fact that it works on most native apps with file titles as well I awesome.