Apple M1 Max and Blender 3.2 - A terrible mistake?

[Friendly]

Hello to all you beautiful Blender Artists!

the dearest apologies if you find this topic redunant as it was previously discussed - I couldn’t find topics helping with my issues -
I’m a Blender Newbie trying to switch from Autodesk Maya 2017/Arnold to Blender/Cycles as a now freelance digital artist using Adobe CC and all sorts of musical software constantly along the way - after 6 years with Maya on my mid 2012 MBP I finally managed to upgrade to a new machine (MBP 2021, m1 max, lots of gb ram, osx monterey) expecting the finest rendering results in a matter of seconds - You probably won’t be surprised about how disappointed I was lol — the render settings are set on what is available: metal.

My first animation renders in cycles turned out kind of okay - but took a long, long time even with little to no challanging content (I think). I also experienced difficulties in the viewport with “moderate” poly count models (200-400k) and unexpected crashes when trying out low scale simulations and animations following tutorials. Stuff that def. wouldn’t happen on my 2012 MBP with maya -
Issues with the viewport and unexpected crashes are pretty existential though. That’s not what I expect an Upgrade to be like. My projects aren’t packed but still far from being simple.

Is it (hopefully) my inexperience, the Blender Version, bugs or have I simply made a terrible mistake?

Is Apple M1 Max a good fit for blender after all? Are there maybe other versions with a higher compatibility/performance than 3.2 with my system? Is there a guide for blender and cycles settings for Mac that I am probably not aware of or topics that discussed and solved these “problems”?

Peace oot!

Sincerly,
Friendly

[Okidoki]

Welcome ,

1. thanks for using a appropriate title because some people just rant before the actual post starts
2. yes this is the right place… maybe a little serach would give:
3. this one (okay maybe also new/unkown forum software…):

Mac: M1, M2 - Metal 3 <---

Apple: The Apple M1 chip takes our most versatile, do-it-all desktop into another dimension. With up to 3x faster CPU performance. Up to 6x faster graphics. And our most advanced Neural Engine for up to 15x faster machine learning. Get ready to work, play, and create on Mac mini with speed and power beyond anything you ever imagined. I am MacUser and BlenderUser. And I have a HP PC with Nvidia for Blender. But now M1 from Apple is here, what will the Blender programmers do? … …13.12.2021. DO…

4. I’m not using Apple ( ) but be assured:
5. Here are plenty of M1 users

So just wait and see…

[Color.pixel (Europictures.org)]

My last great experience with Blender on Mac OS was on the same GTX 650 NVidia GPU (that GPU is the catch). Since then I have tried other Mac newer models but always failed to deliver anything that can be better than a Chrome OS.

Also since Blender 2.76, things started to go downhill for Macs (Eevee is not made for macOS or apple hardware - true in 2022) and since then I made a cheap PC (RTX 2070 was my way to go)
I drive an M1 Pro 14-inch and yeah it is not great (just meh for low poly stuff) for Blender but a beast for laptop work (photo edits on the couch, website, emails, spreadsheets, web etc).

Did you make a mistake?
Did you buy the Max for Blender or any other 3D software? Then yeah, big mistake.
Or, did you buy the Max for your work ( I hope those apps run for you) and from time to time some hobby, low-level, Blender playtime? Nop, no mistake in your purchase, just enjoy your time and be happy for the good life you have!