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Day 1 Impressions of Apple Silicon / M1 Macs
- Thread starter KPOM
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Excellent machine. I'm blown away with it at this pricepoint.
Will create a lot of completion in that marketpace, which is great for all of us consumers.
All of my other machines feel slow now
Will create a lot of completion in that marketpace, which is great for all of us consumers.
All of my other machines feel slow now
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On Day 2, I'm even more impressed. I installed the beta for Big Sur 11.1 and now Crossovers Codeweavers works to run a key 32-bit Windows application that I use.
Changes the idea of what a laptop is for me. Video calls used to be a must to plug in, now its not...let alone safari and a few tabs its insane how little power apple has it using and still giving what I would call the smoothest computing experience I have ever experienced. The computer is silent for me I doubt I will ever hear the fan in mine spin up with my workload. This is just insane to me coming from a 2018 MBA that essentially stroked out trying to open any webpage got hot to the touch which caused the fan to blow like an airplane.
Today is my first day with my base model M1 MBA. I am truly blown away with the power, speed, and battery life. I've owned tons of Macs over the past 15 years and have never experienced such an upgrade. Truly amazing. And at such a reasonable cost!
Especially my work PC, which chokes when I try to join a Teams meeting with Outlook, Word, and Excel running in the background.All of my other machines feel slow now
I have a MacBook Air and a Mac mini I am putting through the paces. Both machines are just astounding. Mac OS is buttery smooth...truly something I've never experienced before. Ive been on the MacBook Air right now for over 30 minutes, still at 100% battery, no heat what so ever.
I currently have the 4-port MacBook Pro, and the ports are something I am trying to really see if I can live without...because having a finless MacBook Air that performs way better is just a completely different experience.
As for the Mac mini, Final Cut Pro on it has been incredible. The app has never felt so fast and I have had far fewer situations with stuttering or anything like that. Playback is smooth and editing is blazing fast. The only thing that sucks compared to my iMac is I am using the 27 LG monitor b/c Apple refuses to make a prosumer display.
I currently have the 4-port MacBook Pro, and the ports are something I am trying to really see if I can live without...because having a finless MacBook Air that performs way better is just a completely different experience.
As for the Mac mini, Final Cut Pro on it has been incredible. The app has never felt so fast and I have had far fewer situations with stuttering or anything like that. Playback is smooth and editing is blazing fast. The only thing that sucks compared to my iMac is I am using the 27 LG monitor b/c Apple refuses to make a prosumer display.
First impressions of M1 MBA:
- The camera looks much better than on the early 2020 MBA. I was skeptical, but it really is a lot better.
- I had several Zoom and Google Meet calls back to back. No heat, totally silent, lots of battery left. On the early 2020 MBA, the fan would be quite loud and the area above the keyboard hot to the touch with that much video conferencing.
- Google Chrome buggy at first, but they released an update today and it seems better so far.
- This thing is fast and smooth!
- The camera looks much better than on the early 2020 MBA. I was skeptical, but it really is a lot better.
- I had several Zoom and Google Meet calls back to back. No heat, totally silent, lots of battery left. On the early 2020 MBA, the fan would be quite loud and the area above the keyboard hot to the touch with that much video conferencing.
- Google Chrome buggy at first, but they released an update today and it seems better so far.
- This thing is fast and smooth!
Picked up a MBP 16/1TB M1 today. It's really good. It's really fast (coming from a 16" i9). So far, I don't see any lag or stutter even with intel apps. 16GB of RAM seems to go much farther on the M1 than i9.
Rosetta 2 seems amazing. I can't tell which apps are native and which are emulated. Everything I use has been working perfectly.
Rosetta 2 seems amazing. I can't tell which apps are native and which are emulated. Everything I use has been working perfectly.
And for the record, my work PC has a 28W Core i7 Coffee Lake processor. Albeit with the awful Intel HD 630 graphics, but with a faster CPU than the Ice Lake 13" MacBook Pro that I still have.
I'm amazed. Really is the best improvement I can remember. Drastic bump in performance and battery life.
Well, it was crashing and kernel panicking like crazy until I upgraded to 11.0.1. (at least now we know why 11.0.1 exists)
Now... it's okay. Some of my GoG games don't work at all. They're simple enough (Shenzhen IO?) so... that's a bit weird. Anyways...
Capture One works with Rosetta 2, and I can't complain. Will buy C1 21 as soon as it comes out.
Fusion 360 works with Rosetta 2, and I also can't complain.
Visual Studio Code works and I can't even tell if it's native or not.
M1 drives my display pretty well. The last 13" MacBook Pro wasn't up to the task at all.
Overall, I don't even feel like I'm running a typical ARM computer. It feels like I'm running a fairly fast x86 computer that doesn't heat up too much. And battery life as been great as well. Finally a computer that doesn't make me wish it was an iPad Pro...
P.S.: couple more things: opening up Capture One takes up 3GB RAM just by itself. Safari still hits 1GB RAM when it's on Facebook.com. So RAM is still a concern despite the system being quite snappy and no VM is running. I think I'll go 32GB with the 16" MacBook.
Also I sorely miss the screen real estate of the 16", plus the speakers are a clear downgrade from the 16" even if they aren't really "bad" by any means.
Now... it's okay. Some of my GoG games don't work at all. They're simple enough (Shenzhen IO?) so... that's a bit weird. Anyways...
Capture One works with Rosetta 2, and I can't complain. Will buy C1 21 as soon as it comes out.
Fusion 360 works with Rosetta 2, and I also can't complain.
Visual Studio Code works and I can't even tell if it's native or not.
M1 drives my display pretty well. The last 13" MacBook Pro wasn't up to the task at all.
Overall, I don't even feel like I'm running a typical ARM computer. It feels like I'm running a fairly fast x86 computer that doesn't heat up too much. And battery life as been great as well. Finally a computer that doesn't make me wish it was an iPad Pro...
P.S.: couple more things: opening up Capture One takes up 3GB RAM just by itself. Safari still hits 1GB RAM when it's on Facebook.com. So RAM is still a concern despite the system being quite snappy and no VM is running. I think I'll go 32GB with the 16" MacBook.
Also I sorely miss the screen real estate of the 16", plus the speakers are a clear downgrade from the 16" even if they aren't really "bad" by any means.
I purchased a 13" i5 2.0 16/1TB last week. I was originally not going to return it for an M1 as I didn't want to be a beta tester and I assumed that these would not have much software support for the first year or so. Then I watched the numerous reviews. I exchanged my Intel machine this morning for a 13" MBP 8/512. I also got $400 back, which is insane considering how much computer I got.
This thing is great. I could immediately see how much faster everything ran, from Safari tabs to Word documents, to PyCharm and Photoshop. Even Rosetta-emulated programs, after a 10 second or so initial boot, immediately come to life once opened. I've been on it off and on for about 6 hours so far, some of which included updating to 11.0.1 on battery, Zoom and Teams meetings, and editing in Word. I'm at 92% battery currently. I'm used to feeling heat coming off of the left end of the device under normal loads. This M1 hasn't even warmed up. It's really nice to not feel the heat coming off the keyboard, something that has always bothered me when using MacBooks.
All-in-all, this is the best computer I've ever used. I also really enjoy the keyboard and improved travel. I was previously on a 2018 with butterfly keys prior to getting the i5.
This thing is great. I could immediately see how much faster everything ran, from Safari tabs to Word documents, to PyCharm and Photoshop. Even Rosetta-emulated programs, after a 10 second or so initial boot, immediately come to life once opened. I've been on it off and on for about 6 hours so far, some of which included updating to 11.0.1 on battery, Zoom and Teams meetings, and editing in Word. I'm at 92% battery currently. I'm used to feeling heat coming off of the left end of the device under normal loads. This M1 hasn't even warmed up. It's really nice to not feel the heat coming off the keyboard, something that has always bothered me when using MacBooks.
All-in-all, this is the best computer I've ever used. I also really enjoy the keyboard and improved travel. I was previously on a 2018 with butterfly keys prior to getting the i5.
I just started a return for my 2020 i5 16gb pro I got 2 weeks ago. I wasn’t going to but I hate worrying about battery life. Plus it came with Catalina and after upgrading to Big Sur it felt a bit slower already. 1 hour and I’d be down to 90% with just light browsing, email, word processing.
have a 16gb m1 pro on order. Can’t come quick enough! (Dec 14-21)
edit. 6 hours of use and you only lost 8% battery?!
If it wasn't continuous use, then yeah, the new M1 MacBook doesn't drain battery at all while sleeping.
I've lost about 16% over the last 2 hours. That should translate to about 12.5 hours of battery life for my current use case. I watched some 4K Youtube clips (with the speakers quite loud), screen at around 50% brightness (the screen is supernova in my face), while installing/setting things up. Not so shabby. In light use, I don't doubt it'll last closer to the 20-hour number.
I've lost about 16% over the last 2 hours. That should translate to about 12.5 hours of battery life for my current use case. I watched some 4K Youtube clips (with the speakers quite loud), screen at around 50% brightness (the screen is supernova in my face), while installing/setting things up. Not so shabby. In light use, I don't doubt it'll last closer to the 20-hour number.
Yeah the battery is insane so far. I'm also uploading 3,000 photos to iCloud. I also was seeing sluggish performance and massive battery drain after moving to Big Sur. So glad I traded it in.
Very impressed with my MacBook Air. Really enjoy using it. Once I start using creative apps I am sure I will enjoy it even more.
Looking forward to the more powerful M chip machines.
Looking forward to the more powerful M chip machines.
It's really an amazing machine. I got the 13" MBAir with 8GB RAM. Everything about it is a quantum leap ahead of the 2018 MBAir I'd been using (trading in for this M1), and even better than the 2020 MBAir I'd purchased earlier this year. If this is Apple's future, it's really very exciting.
According to Codeweavers, 11.1 brings a lot of improvements to Rosetta, including some that they needed to make Crossover work. So it seems 11.1 would also potentially benefit others running Intel apps on M1 Macs.