FIRST 4 THINGS TO DO ON NEW M3 MACBOOK PRO ｜ MacBook Customisation & Setup

Hello, welcome back to a new video. So

today, as you can see, I'm using my brand

new M3 MacBook Pro. I've been using it for

a few days now, and I want to show you a

few tips and tricks that you can do to the

MacBook to just make it a better

experience. Because straight out of the

box, the default Apple settings are not

the most ideal settings to be using the

MacBook with, and I found a few add-ons

and a few little tweaks that do make it a

lot better. So one of the first things I

always do when I get a new Apple device is

I have to disable the trackpad natural

scrolling because it doesn't feel very

natural when you're using an external

mouse, which I do. Why would you use the

trackpad when you can plug in an external

mouse? I have no idea. I never use the

trackpad. So I go into Settings and I go

to the trackpad settings. I turn off the

natural scrolling thing. Here it is,

natural scrolling. I turn that off because

it's okay for phone scrolling. When you

scroll down, you want it to go up. When

you scroll up, you want it to go down.

But with a mouse, that feels weird. So now

when I scroll down on the mouse, yeah, it

actually goes down. When I scroll up, it

goes up. So that's a really good thing to

do first of all. Okay, next you really

need something to do screenshots with.

Now there is a built-in screenshot

function in the MacBook, but it's not very

good. You need to hold down like 4

different buttons at the same time to do a

screenshot, and then you can't really edit

the screenshot before it gets saved. Save

to the desktop. And most of the time you

don't really want it to be saved to the

desktop, you just want to like copy it to

clipboard, crop it, maybe draw on it, and

then send it to wherever you want to send

it. So I found the best screenshotting app

to be this one here. It's called

iScreenShoter screenshot app, and it's

really good. So once you've downloaded it,

you get this little icon at the top in the

menu bar, and you click it and you click

on the screenshot button here, or you can

click on text, or you can even record the

screen. And the screenshot shortcut is

really You just hold Command+Shift+A,

and then it will do like a crosshair

thing. You drag it to choose the area that

you want to screenshot like that, and then

you can draw on it or draw shapes. You can

like draw on it like this, or put some

text over it like that, or you could just

draw a circle, get rid of it all as well

like that. And then you press Save here,

and it will save to desktop. But the best

thing about it is you can press OK and And

it copies the screenshot. See, it's now

copied to clipboard. And then you can just

do Command+V and paste it into— usually I

paste it into my Discord like this. See,

I can just paste it into my Discord and

then I can press send and it doesn't

really save it to the computer. You don't

really want loads of different

screenshotted images saved to your

computer because usually it's just like a

one-time thing to send. Okay, so next I

want to show you a really good sound

system equalizer. Now, I don't really like

the way the speakers sound on the MacBook

straight out of the box. And this is

because there's too much bass. Apple

boasts about how the speakers have like

80% more bass now, and I don't think

that's a good thing really. When you have

too much bass, it's good for music, but

when you're listening to a podcast or a

video where you're trying to listen to

what the person is talking about and you

want the voice to be ultra clear and the

clarity of the voice is the most important

thing, then having all that bass is not

really a great thing. And the only way you

can really fiddle with the speaker

equalizer is if you download some kind of

app. And I got this app called Speaker Amp

Booster and Equalizer, and it's actually

really good. It puts this little thing on

the menu bar so you can now— don't know if

you can see that— you can like choose

different presets. You could do a treble

booster, treble reducer, vocal booster,

bass reducer. I'll just zoom in quickly so

you can see. You can choose different

presets and you can fiddle with the

frequency waves. So you can reduce the

boost— I mean the bass— and then have like

a much more clearer sounding vocal

playback when you're watching podcasts and

videos. I'll show you what it sounds like.

Okay, so I moved the mic so it should be

able to pick up the sound from the laptop

better. Now this is what the speakers

sound like usually on default. So I go

into here and you can see I've got MacBook

Pro speakers enabled. Have a listen.

Gigabyte model, and the only 16GB model

they had was like the M3 Max, which is way

more expensive than what I can actually

afford. So you might think that sounds

okay, but now compare it to the

bass-reduced audio. Switch over

to speaker amp speakers. So I decided to

get the base model M3 over the M2 Air

because, well, I did think the M2 Air

looks pretty cool, but the M2 chip is like

a year old now. Now I don't know about

you, but I just think that sounds way

clearer. I can hear the voice much more

clearer and there's less of that echoey

bass sound. I'll keep switching it to show

you what it sounds like. The brand new

chip, which is the M3, and I could have

waited for the M2— I mean the M3 MacBook

Air to come out this next year, but

honestly I just didn't really want to have

to wait all the way until next year to get

a MacBook Air, and I didn't want to get

the M2 MacBook Air because the M2 chip is

actually less powerful The chip in

my ROG Ally, the Z1 Extreme chip in this

ROG Ally, is actually more powerful than

the M2 chip, so I'm not going to spend all

this money to get this nice— So yeah,

that's a really good way to fiddle with

the way the speakers sound if you don't

like how it sounds, or maybe you want more

bass. It's a really great way, just click

here, you've got these presets, or you can

customize your own frequencies. I think

it's really good. It's a shame Apple

didn't decide to add it onto the computer

by default. I guess they think they know

the best for what we want to hear. What

kind of sound we like. I don't like all

the bass, it just sounds too echoey. I

like more clear vocals.

Okay, next I want to show you a really

cool little tool that can show you your

system monitors on the little menu bar at

the top. It's very useful if you want to

track your RAM usage, your CPU usage,

your disk usage. It's called Usage,

which is actually a very good name. So it

is called Usage System Activity Monitor,

and when you've downloaded it, you get a

little information at the top menu bar.

So once you've downloaded it, you get this

little thing at the top menu bar showing

you information, and if you click on it,

it will show you more information about

certain things you choose. It is free to

use, but you get more information if you

pay for the Pro version. I only have the

CPU load and the disk usage, and I

like to see my RAM as well. So you can

click on it, and it's currently showing me

that I'm using 6.6 gigabytes of RAM

and I'm using 28%, 30% of my CPU. Then if

you click on it and press Usage, it will

show you more stuff and you can add more

little widgets to the menu bar. It's

really cool to track things like how much

CPU you're using, how much RAM you're

using, important stuff. Okay, so next

I want to show you a calculator. It is

called Calculator Plus if you go into the

App Store. And then type in Calculator

Plus. This is probably the best calculator

I found so far. It's free to use. Yeah,

Calculator Plus version 2. Now the problem

with the built-in calculator is it's just

kind of rubbish. Where is it? There.

So this is Apple's solution to a built-in

calculator. As you can see, it's really

basic. So you press like 8 plus, it

doesn't show you the plus symbol or the

minus symbol next to it. Plus 8 equals 16.

It doesn't show you the history of what

you've just entered. So if you're doing

like a really complex calculation, like

you're adding up how much money you've

earned to do your taxes and you

accidentally press, I don't know, 56

instead of 53, you can't delete it. You

gotta delete everything and start again

from the beginning. So you do like 2 plus

3 plus 6 plus 15 plus 25.

Oh, I accidentally pressed 23. Now what?

I can't delete. I have to start all the

way back from the beginning, and I don't

even know what I've done. There's no

history. So in comparison, Calculator Plus

has all these equations which I don't even

understand how to use anyway, like sin,

cos, tan. I don't know what that is. But

the most important thing is you can do 7

and plus 7, and it shows you what you're

doing. And then plus 6, and it'll show

your answer, and you've got the history up

at the top here. And if you make a

mistake, like I do 820 plus 150,

but I want to do 120, I can press Delete

like that and then just edit the

calculation without having to delete

everything. It's so much better than the

built-in Apple calculator. It's really

stupid how rubbish the built-in Apple

calculator is. So basic, too basic. So

yeah, I really like this calculator if you

want to do long calculations like 25 3,

6 times 2 plus 2 plus

16, and then you get a syntax error. But

what I'm saying is you can do like really

long calculations, trying to add up your

tax maybe, like that.

You can see exactly what you've been

calculating. And wow, I didn't know

you could do that. You can even click. So

imagine I made a mistake, but I made a

mistake all the way back here. I can now

delete that and then enter a new number

there, and it should change what the

answer becomes. So yeah, you can click

around and edit the calculation. Like,

maybe I want to do this as a minus

instead, and it'll change the outcome. So

yeah, that's a really good— the problem is

when you press equal, you can't edit the

calculation anymore. So you've got to be

careful before you press equal. Yeah, so

that's a really good calculator app. And

yeah, basically I think those are the most

important things you want to add to your

new MacBook when you've got it because

these don't come default. You want the

calculator, you want the system monitor up

here so you can see what's going on, see

how much CPU cores are being used. I've

got 8 cores using about 26% right now.

I've got 6.5 gigabytes of RAM being used

out of my 8 gigabytes and got the audio

thing And I've got the screenshot thing,

so I do Ctrl+Shift+A, do a screenshot.

So yeah, these things, really useful.

Can't really go through my day without

using these things. And Apple's solution

to their way of doing it by default,

they're not very good ways of getting it

done. There's more efficient ways of

getting it done, and it's all free. So I

hope that was useful. Thanks for watching

and goodbye.