Shadowing Practice: The M5 MacBooks are nuts.. - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
B2
Oh, so I bought another Apple laptop.
286 sentences
If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.
1
Oh, so I bought another Apple laptop.
2
It's the M5 Pro model with a bunch of RAM.
3
But why?
4
Well, first, I have a desktop PC that's pretty powerful.
5
I built it like two years ago.
6
And I have an M1 Pro MacBook Pro.
7
Why not just use the desktop PC?
8
Well, because I'm not always in the same location,
9
so I need a laptop.
10
But why not a Windows laptop?
11
Or what's wrong with my M1 Pro MacBook?
12
That one's gotten pretty slow for what I need it for,
13
which is just mostly video editing.
14
The M1 MacBook was a base model,
15
which means 512 gigs of storage and 16 gigs of RAM.
16
And this has really started to show inside of Premiere Pro.
17
I don't really care about export times, none of that.
18
The only thing I care about is timeline performance.
19
When I press space and there's a two second delay between my playhead starting to move,
20
that's extremely annoying because I press space multiple times every minute.
21
So those two seconds of delay adds up to an entire minute
22
that I have to wait in between playing and pausing the video that I'm editing.
23
And why not use proxies?
24
They're essentially like super large files that make editing way faster because it's like a more compatible format.
25
Well, because they're super large files and my old MacBook only had 512 gigabytes of free space.
26
This is how big proxy file is for 26 minutes of recording.
27
90 gigabytes and my recordings are usually like five hours long.
28
I could use something like an external hard drive
29
or SSD to edit off of but then there's not enough ports, it's slower.
30
I don't want to deal with that.
31
But why not Windows?
32
Well because Windows sucks.
33
Why not Linux?
34
Because Premiere Pro, the editing software that I use, doesn't exist on Linux.
35
So there's no other option.
36
It's either macOS or Windows macOS has their fair share of annoyances,
37
for example the animation speed when switching virtual desktops.
38
This is how long it takes.
39
Boom, boom.
40
That's when it fully switched.
41
You can do it faster if you set up keyboard shortcuts,
42
but for me it's super annoying that the animation speed increases the more your displays refresh rate increases.
43
Yes, it's very smooth, but don't make me wait.
44
Linux has this animation speed slider where you just drag it and all animations across the entire operating system become much faster.
45
That's such an amazing feature that I wish Windows and macOS would have.
46
Windows also has an annoying desktop switching animation,
47
but instead of it taking long,
48
there's just a massive delay between when you click the keyboard shortcut and when the display switches.
49
Anyway, let's pause on the virtual displays and come back to why Windows sucks.
50
It's mostly just file explorer.
51
When I edit videos, there's a bunch of files involved and I have multiple explorer windows open.
52
It's nice that it now has tabs, which is cool.
53
I hate the Explorer.
54
For example, half the time when I start my computer,
55
the Explorer just completely crashes.
56
It's just black screen and I have to go into the task manager and manually click run task and start file explorer.
57
What is that about?
58
A lot of times it shows that my folder is empty,
59
but it's actually not.
60
If I refresh, boom, everything appears.
61
Sometimes this happens to my mouse.
62
I mean, it could be because I've messed around with my graphics card inside of Linux,
63
so maybe there's some bug here.
64
But still, this never happens on Mac.
65
There are a fair share of things that annoys me about Mac OS,
66
but let's focus on Windows now.
67
When using a bunch of different apps that are in full screen,
68
when you switch back to them after a while,
69
it just goes to the corner.
70
Why?
71
And then you have to like resize them back up again.
72
This happens all the time because I have like Premiere open,
73
VS Code open for creating animations.
74
And when I switch back and the window is just super tiny in the corner,
75
that just wastes a bunch of time of me like messing around and putting it all back.
76
But probably the worst thing about the Explorer is the lag.
77
It's incredibly laggy.
78
The amount of time I just have to wait while my mouse spins around until it loads something,
79
the working on it message, and Finder on macOS.
80
Whenever you search for something, it's almost instant.
81
I mean, most normal people probably rarely use the Explorer,
82
but I use it every single day because I edit videos.
83
Half the time, it's also not responding.
84
Sometimes I'm just unable to drag a file.
85
It just doesn't work.
86
When switching virtual desktops, the text at the bottom blocks me from opening up my taskbar,
87
which is stupid, but like, why?
88
It just makes for a very clunky editing experience.
89
There's some things that I dislike about the Finder as well,
90
probably this one the most.
91
When you select a bunch of files and try to drag them to a new tab,
92
sometimes it just puts you back into the previous tab.
93
I hate when that happens.
94
Sometimes the Finder crashes too,
95
but way less than File Explorer.
96
There's also an annoying Google Chrome bug where it just keeps showing this stupid message and doesn't let me click anywhere else.
97
You just have to click OK like 10 times and then you're able to interact with your computer.
98
For some reason, some apps tend to just completely break the entire operating system and everything you do,
99
like moving folders around or moving windows around,
100
becomes delayed by like two seconds.
101
And then you have to go in and close every individual app to see which one it is and then,
102
you know, maybe update the app.
103
In this example, it was the app Linear Mouse.
104
So macOS is also not perfect,
105
but I would choose it over Windows just because of stability,
106
nine times out of ten.
107
Here are some other apps that I usually install on every Mac.
108
I already mentioned Linear Mouse.
109
This one is a must,
110
especially if you're coming from Windows.
111
It essentially lets you configure your mouse,
112
like disable pointer acceleration or change how fast your mouse scrolls for different apps.
113
This also is a great feature.
114
Enable universal back and forward,
115
If you have this disabled and then inside of something like Finder,
116
if you go into like movies and then you want to go back,
117
you can't do that with your mouse buttons.
118
You have to click this.
119
Here I'm pressing the mouse buttons.
120
Not working.
121
If I enable this, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.
122
Now it's working.
123
The next one is this one, Carabiner Elements.
124
This one lets me configure my keyboard shortcuts.
125
See, I have a bunch of custom ones like opening Chrome with Shift-Option-C.
126
This app is very good for that.
127
Then there's local send, which is essentially just airdrop,
128
but not only for Apple devices.
129
So if I take a screenshot,
130
I can immediately send it to my Windows PC without transferring it over USB or sending an email to myself.
131
Well, right now there's no PC here because it's turned off.
132
And then I have Setapp,
133
who are also sponsoring this video.
134
Setapp is a unified marketplace for Mac and iPhone users to discover hand-picked and secure apps.
135
You just download and install it once and then you can browse set up for a bunch of useful apps.
136
For example, I love this app called Yoink.
137
So I'm going to Yoink it and boom,
138
it's installing onto my Mac.
139
This is a great utility there.
140
It's installed.
141
For example, if I have a screenshot that I want to import into Premiere and I don't want to go to Premiere,
142
then go to my Finder,
143
find this thing and then import it.
144
I can just do it with yoink because it adds this like extra shelf where I can just place the screenshot,
145
go into Premiere and then import it from here.
146
Pretty useful.
147
If you want to see how your Mac is performing,
148
there's the iStat menus app.
149
It immediately opens.
150
I just click next a few times.
151
And there it is.
152
Look, there's my CPU temperature,
153
SSD usage, CPU usage, and so on.
154
There's Clean My Mac, which just removes a bunch of bloat from your Mac.
155
And there are hundreds of other amazing apps.
156
So you can browse Setapp's marketplace and get single app subscriptions or just get the classic Setapp monthly subscription,
157
which is just one subscription for hundreds of apps.
158
Go to the description and click on the first link to try out Setapp with an extended 30-day free trial.
159
Okay, let's come back to why I like this laptop.
160
I think this computer looks pretty cool.
161
It's very well built.
162
Well, exactly the same like my previous laptop.
163
It's just black.
164
I like the speakers a lot.
165
They're amazing.
166
I like the screen a lot.
167
It's amazing.
168
I also got the nano texture display,
169
which I would 100% recommend.
170
I think it's so much better than the glossy screen that I had on my older MacBook.
171
It's the best matte coating on the display that I've ever seen.
172
It's just a joy to look at.
173
I'm not sure about cleaning it though
174
because Apple recommends only using their own microfiber cloth
175
which came in the box with the laptop
176
and it does clean it pretty well although you have to scrub pretty hard if what's on your screen isn't dust.
177
Like if you're biting an apple and it squirts juices all over the screen.
178
Okay then you have to scrub it pretty hard.
179
Wait how much does the cloth cost? $20.
180
I also like the keyboard.
181
It's pretty good.
182
Touch ID.
183
It's also very good.
184
The trackpad, top class.
185
The hinge, it's openable with one finger.
186
The build quality, it's all metal.
187
Now here are the things I don't like.
188
The headphone jack sucks because whenever the laptop is charging and you want to plug in headphones,
189
there's always going to be some weird electrical noise that you hear through them.
190
I know it has to do with some like grounding on the charger,
191
which by the way wasn't even included in the box.
192
What the hell, that's stupid.
193
This expensive ass laptop does not come with a charging brick.
194
That's like, God, why?
195
Luckily I have one from the previous MacBook,
196
but most people don't have a 130 watt charger just laying around.
197
Anyway, the headphone issue, I know it has to do something with charger grounding and stuff,
198
but I've had other laptops where this wasn't an issue.
199
So it's just annoying that it's an issue here
200
and I pretty much only use the built-in speakers or AirPods with this computer and not my IEMs,
201
which are amazing and I would like to use them more.
202
I don't want to hear electricity in my ears every time I plug them in.
203
Next thing that annoys me is that there's no USB-A port.
204
I know everything is moving towards USB-C,
205
but like my mouse is not USB-C.
206
My external hard drives are not USB-C.
207
All the other ports are amazing,
208
they're perfect, but at least for me this is a pretty annoying thing.
209
Why does the notch exist?
210
It doesn't bother me that much or pretty much at all,
211
but why is it there?
212
But when When it comes to video editing, it's amazing.
213
I was editing on this for like four days,
214
then I turned on my Windows PC,
215
tried editing there, and oh my god,
216
this laptop is just such a joy to edit on.
217
Timeline performance is so much better here than on my dedicated Windows PC.
218
And that's the thing that I care about most.
219
When I first turned on Premiere on this thing
220
and just scrubbed one of my timelines and then hit space a couple times,
221
I was like, wow, I will love editing on this thing.
222
And I absolutely have.
223
It has the M5 Pro chip inside.
224
I was considering getting the M5 Max and less RAM or M5 Pro with more RAM.
225
And after discussing with AI and reading a bunch of Reddit comments,
226
I decided to just get a bunch of RAM because turns out Premiere really consumes RAM.
227
And I also want to play around with AI, maybe host models locally.
228
So that's why I thought more RAM equals good.
229
It has 64 gigabytes, which were not cheap.
230
And also two terabytes of storage,
231
which means now I can freely create however many proxies I want.
232
And they're not going to fill up the entire SSD,
233
which is so amazing.
234
On my previous Mac, I kept moving video files back and forth across different hard drives,
235
and it was very annoying.
236
Now I can just keep most of it here,
237
and once a month, just move everything off to a hard drive.
238
Also, one bonus thing that I didn't even consider was that creating animations for my videos,
239
which I do with a Python library called Manim,
240
that it would render them much faster.
241
I rendered out the first one,
242
and I was like, whoa,
243
hold up a second, that's fast.
244
Oh yes, another thing, the Option key.
245
I think it's so much better than the Alt key on Windows because you can't really remap the Alt key.
246
It always does some like weird function.
247
And inside of Premiere, I use a bunch of custom keyboard shortcuts.
248
And so I can't really use the Alt key for a lot of them.
249
One other very cool thing that the Option key does on macOS is when you hold it and use the arrow keys,
250
it jumps your cursor across the entire word.
251
This is very useful because you can hold Option
252
and click Delete to delete an entire word instead of deleting it like this,
253
one letter at a time.
254
Of course, you can do the exact same thing by holding control on Windows.
255
But since Mac has an extra modifier key,
256
the command key, when you hold this one,
257
it jumps across the entire sentence,
258
which means you can also delete the entire sentence.
259
And on Windows, you have to press like some weird home key combination.
260
And surprisingly, deleting the entire sentence is very useful, at least for me.
261
So on Windows, I made the alt key do the same behavior using auto hotkey.
262
Oh, I just remembered.
263
The reason I really like this laptop is because when I close it and open it back up again,
264
I'm back where I left off.
265
And I can technically, in theory,
266
do the same with my Windows PC,
267
but half the time when it wakes up from sleep,
268
it actually restarts for no reason.
269
Sometimes I move my mouse,
270
I hear the PC fans starting to spin up,
271
but my display permanently stays black.
272
So I have to reboot the PC and then get back into it again.
273
I think the way that Windows handles sleeping and hibernation is just a lot worse than the way Apple does it.
274
Even though it didn't come with a charging brick,
275
even though the headphone jack is super annoying,
276
even though it doesn't have a USB-A port,
277
even though there's a notch,
278
and some things with macOS are very annoying,
279
like not being able to change the animation speed,
280
all of that considered, I would still give this computer a 9 out of 10.
281
So I like it a lot,
282
because it really shines in the category that I care most about, video editing.
283
You can't really play games on this thing.
284
Well, you can, but no, you can't.
285
Okay, goodbye.
286
Thank you.
Download App
AI scoring for every sentence you speak
TRENDING
Popular
About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will improve your English speaking skills through a captivating discussion about technology, specifically focusing on MacBooks and their performance. By engaging with real-life content, you will practice essential vocabulary related to computers, editing software, and personal preferences, allowing you to become more fluent in everyday conversations. This immersive learning experience aims to enhance your listening and speaking abilities, helping you utilize the shadowing technique effectively as you mimic the speaker's tone, pace, and emotions.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Video editing - The process of manipulating and arranging video shots to create a new work.
- Timeline performance - Refers to how efficiently videos are played back in editing software.
- Export times - The duration it takes to save a completed video project in a desired format.
- Proxy files - Smaller, lower-resolution files used in video editing to facilitate faster editing processes.
- External hard drive - A portable data storage device used to expand the storage capacity of a computer.
- Animation speed - The rate at which transitions and effects appear on screen in an operating system.
- File explorer - The interface that enables users to manage files and folders on their computer.
- Refreshing rate - The speed at which the display screen updates its images.
Practice Tips
To make the most out of this practice session, consider using a shadowing app that allows you to replay parts of the video, pausing as necessary. Focus on the shadow speech—try to echo the speaker immediately after hearing them. Start with slower sections of the video, gradually increasing the speed as you become more comfortable. Take note of the speaker's intonation and stress – these are crucial for sounding natural. Don't hesitate to repeat phrases multiple times until they feel fluid; this is an excellent approach to learn English with YouTube. Additionally, you might find it beneficial to jot down any phrases or vocabulary you struggle with, and review these before engaging in further shadowing practice. By integrating these techniques, you will find yourself not only improving your speaking skills but also enhancing your comprehension of spoken English.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
☕ Buy us a coffee
ShadowingEnglish remains 100% free thanks to your support. Server and AI costs are high — your coffee keeps us going! 🙏