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Disappointed in Apple Silicon: Apple Marketing vs. Reality / Intel
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... but all these people are obviously trolling 🤷♂️
truly valid conclusions could only be made if a new thread/poll is opened with yes or YES!!! as the answer
So you worked for 30 minutes and idled for max 30mins more. Your screenshot shows the battery decreasing about the same rate over a period of approx 2h 45mins. Investigate what was happening during that time that the computer was not used and maybe you’ll find the reason?
I can't be bothered to read this whole trainwreck of a thread, but for me the things still keeping me from buying an Apple Silicon Mac are largely related to display handling.
- None of the Macs available at the moment support HDMI 2.1 in any form. Even USB-C/TB to HDMI 2.1 adapters don't allow above HDMI 2.0 speeds due to MacOS just not working with them. With more displays coming with a combination of 1x DP + 2x HDMI 2.1 port setups it's a relevant issue if you run multiple computers with the same monitor if you want to get max resolution/refresh rate with all your systems as it involves using multiple ports.
- The weird hidden limitations on HiDPI scaling whether you have M1/M2 base or M1 Pro/Max/Ultra as described in this thread
- The limitations on the number of displays. M2 Air supporting one external display is miserable even though otherwise it would be a good option for me. In the PC realm a GPU equivalent of a potato can usually handle 2-4 displays yet somehow this is all reserved for the higher end Macs.
- The terrible pixel response times on Macbook Pros. There is no excuse for them being that bad, especially if you try to pass them as 120 Hz capable when they can't even keep up properly with 60 Hz. If "image quality first" options are needed, there should be separate modes/settings presets for this rather than gimping the display performance for everyday use.
- The arbitrary issues for HiDPI support when you are using something that is not a 4K/5K/6K 60 Hz 16:9 screen. Usually HiDPI support just nopes out unless you use something like BetterDisplay to work around it.
- HDR support seems very flaky, even on Intel Macs.
HDR support is only best on the XDR 14" and 16" Pros.
This will be sloved when Apple moves to OLED. I would wait till then if you want excellent response times
Interesting choice. Why the hotter more power hungry M1 Max in the smaller chassis and the cooler less power hungry M1 Pro in the larger chassis.
Yeah, but did you contact Apple? I mean as you can see many people seem to think that your use case (editing GoPro 4K in iMovie and using Chrome) is not a very special one and almost nobody can replicate that. And I know by now you don't care about other peoples experiences, but it really seems to me that there is a special problem. Maybe its an actual hardware fault. Maybe your OS does strange things it should not do. And yeah those things would be Apples fault, but there might be a solution if you make an appointment in an Apple Store and show them your unusual battery drain using iMovie.
I had a 14" MacBook Pro when it was coming out for ten days. (Returned it because it was too powerful for my case and got an M1 Air instead) And during my tests I did very similar things. I edited 4K GoPro footage in iMovie and exported it as H.264. It was very fast and the battery didn't drain as much as you described.
But you say your export takes around 11 minutes for a 6:47 clip. With wich codec do you export? Is it H.264 or H.265? Because then those 11 minutes would be far to long for an M1 MacBook Pro. It should be well below the actual duration of the video.
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With external displays HDR support should just work if available but that's not the case. I've seen it simply go missing out of the blue. With MacOS providing no controls for bit depth or chroma subsampling there's also no easy way to fix things.
Yes OLED would help but in the absence of that, making an LCD panel that has an average response time you'd expect on an IPS panel nowadays is not some huge feat. I'm not talking about having gaming display level response times here but even the Studio Display has poor response times even on the standards of "business" monitors.
Apple i think tunes their LCD displays for color accuracy and such. This is true as Apple LCD displays have industry leading color accuracy.
Apple's OLED iPhones are instantaneous because this is inherent to OLED. That's why I am waiting for rumoured OLED MacBook Pros. I would also love fast response times and less ghosting.
Apples requirements for HDR are much higher than the rest of the industry. I can definitely imagine that macOS doesn’t work well with displays that advertise HDR but don’t meet the minimal spec.
It is a huge feat if you also want to have high color accuracy, wide gamut, high brightness and low power consumption. Look at high end laptop displays. All of them have very slow response times.
BTW I’ve been using the 16 miniLED since the winter and I can’t notice anything weird about the response time. But extreme black levels and 120hz panel are definitely noticeable. So I am happy that Apple took the tradeoff the way they did, it’s a very useable display.
I thought the OLED was only rumored for the consumer stuff (Air etc.)? Would also make sense as it would give them some “poor folks” extended dynamic range while the pros stay with the better HDR and color accuracy provided by miniLED technology.
I have overall been very happy with my Mac M1 16" Pro coming from a Gigabyte Intel laptop. It's much quieter, battery life is much better, I can get a full days work without a power adapter, doesn't run nearly as hot, speakers are brilliant and the screen is amazing and colour accurate (for my work) and the scaling ability is amazing. Lastly the Apple Eco system is really good, for example I can copy text on my phone and paste it almost immediately on my Mac, very convienient and that's just one feature. I have and still have some software struggles but I get by. In saying that, its great for work but at home I have a Windows desktop PC with the new Alder Lake i5-12600k processor so I can do all my windows stuff I that need to and play games and use as a backup for my work. However I was most impressed with my iPad Pro M1. Wow that thing is fast, snappy and quick. The reason I am mentioning this is, Apple did make it out that the MacBook was quick and I was kinda expecting that but its nowhere near as snappy as the iPad. My windows desktop is roughly the same speed as my Mac book for my general day to day and development and there was no massive wow this is fast factor when using the MacBook, but it is definitely streaks ahead of an intel laptop, but not my desktop.
So I'm an early adopter of the MacBook Air M1 and bought on release day the M1 Pro. I have been trying out all sort of workloads on it and have moved my production workloads to Apple Silicon, two weeks after the MacBook Air came out.
Everything runs well. I love Apple Silicon, it's everything I ever wanted in a small factor laptop.. However there are a couple of things that still annoy me
- M2 MacBook Air base model being 8GB just doesn't cut it anymore
- M1/M2 base chips not supporting more than one external display on their laptops
- M1 Pro chip having an option of two more binned performance cores and only featuring 2 efficiency cores (Should be 4 in my opinion)
- Still not able to Daisy Chain 4K/5K External Displays
- No 14"M1 Pro 32GB SKUs available in stores annoys the hell out of me (Europe)
- No M2 16GB RAM in store models (Europe)
Other than these complaints everything is fine, I only have two apps which are messaging ones that don't support Apple Silicon natively, the rest everything already supports it.
For me it's the issue with the base M1/M2 chips not supporting more than one external display that annoys me. In my dream machine I would use a MacBook Air M2 with 24GB of RAM paired with a ASD Display and my 4K monitor however I'm forced to upgrade to an M1 Pro be able to connect with full support both displays.
I do love my 14" just wish we had a bit more battery life of 2h-3h additional hours. The size is great and the port selection is works well for me.
Love the 120hz Mini-LED Display absolutely amazing.
In terms of performance I never used more than 30% of the CPU clusters in my M1 Pro
In terms of GPU never more than 50%
However.. When it comes to memory I think I should have opted for 32GB because I'm always between 55-65% of memory pressure with my 16GB option.
To avoid any issues I moved my local VMs to the cloud.
I did notice with Apple Silicon, that my Window Server gets crazy high when connected to external displays either be monitors or Sidecar iPad display.
Everything runs well. I love Apple Silicon, it's everything I ever wanted in a small factor laptop.. However there are a couple of things that still annoy me
- M2 MacBook Air base model being 8GB just doesn't cut it anymore
- M1/M2 base chips not supporting more than one external display on their laptops
- M1 Pro chip having an option of two more binned performance cores and only featuring 2 efficiency cores (Should be 4 in my opinion)
- Still not able to Daisy Chain 4K/5K External Displays
- No 14"M1 Pro 32GB SKUs available in stores annoys the hell out of me (Europe)
- No M2 16GB RAM in store models (Europe)
Other than these complaints everything is fine, I only have two apps which are messaging ones that don't support Apple Silicon natively, the rest everything already supports it.
For me it's the issue with the base M1/M2 chips not supporting more than one external display that annoys me. In my dream machine I would use a MacBook Air M2 with 24GB of RAM paired with a ASD Display and my 4K monitor however I'm forced to upgrade to an M1 Pro be able to connect with full support both displays.
I do love my 14" just wish we had a bit more battery life of 2h-3h additional hours. The size is great and the port selection is works well for me.
Love the 120hz Mini-LED Display absolutely amazing.
In terms of performance I never used more than 30% of the CPU clusters in my M1 Pro
In terms of GPU never more than 50%
However.. When it comes to memory I think I should have opted for 32GB because I'm always between 55-65% of memory pressure with my 16GB option.
To avoid any issues I moved my local VMs to the cloud.
I did notice with Apple Silicon, that my Window Server gets crazy high when connected to external displays either be monitors or Sidecar iPad display.
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The iPad runs on a more lean OS than the MacBook. Your i5 12600K desktop is faster in single core and multicore than the M1 Pro MacBook but at a higher power cost. I love competition between Apple and Intel and I hope they both continue to deliver great chips.
Even just plugging in a LG OLED TV I have had HDR support just go missing sometimes. On some displays HDR support has only worked at 60 Hz but no higher, the option just disappears. That's what I mean by flaky. No such reliability issues on Windows, even using the same cables.
Speaking of TVs, those already support multiple modes focusing on image processing vs gaming performance etc. Desktop displays implement picture presets and pixel overdrive options for improved response times at the expense of possible overshoot. I don't see why this sort of stuff is somehow difficult for Apple to support on the same display panel.
According to Rtings.com's review, the Apple Studio Display (for a more apples to apples comparison to other desktop displays) even has poor response times which would be pretty bad for content creators working with video if the image shows trailing artifacts in motion. The Macbook Pros have about double the response times of that so the problem is even worse. It's certainly something Apple should pay more attention to if they aim to push for 120 Hz displays.
But maybe a discussion for another thread as this doesn't have much to do with Apple Silicon and more with MacOS and the displays themselves.
Which it does which is why I made the switch to Mac last year. So many Mac haters became Mac lovers because of the M1 chip. The Apple Silicon Macs are so good they're now dominating the laptop market outselling everything else, and it's hard to recommend any other laptop now because the price to performance ratio plus absurdly long battery life on the Apple Silicon Macs cannot be matched.
Unless you're running Cinebench, lol no. Of course the Apple Silicon Macs will get warm, but nowhere near to the point of the Intel ones. The Intel ones thermal throttled at over 100 degrees celsius right out of the box after just putting in under a tiny bit of load.
Meanwhile on the M1 Pro/Max running Cities Skylines at megapolis stage, the fans didn't even kick in above idle stage and the game was still running at a solid framerate with all the computations. On an Intel Mac you'd be hearing a Boeing 737 through your Mac.
Wait a minute...
There's your answer. You're using a 14 inch with the M1 Max chip in it. That chip drains the battery quickly compared to the M1 Pro as the smaller laptop doesn't have bigger batteries to handle the M1 Max. I applaud Apple for giving the option to put the M1 Max in the 14 inch body, but that chip was clearly meant for the big 16 inch or the stationary Mac Studio.
Wait so do you have a 14 inch M1 Max AND a 16 inch M1 Pro? You have the beefier chip in the smaller laptop and the midtier chip in the bigger laptop. I...I don't...whyyyyyyy?!
The M2 Macbook Air doesn't have a fan in it so of course there's a speed difference. It also doesn't have the same CPU as the M1 Pro and Max chips, with 4 high performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, versus the 2 efficiency and 8 performance cores in the M1 Pro/Max. It's also why the pro laptops have different battery life since they have less efficiency cores since they're meant to be running demanding programs.
But...they have delivered. Those laptops outperform the 2019 Meme Pro at a third of the cost, even at base spec.
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I did research on this forum about M1 performances. I have a MBA 2013 (8/128) that cost me 1300 euros in 2014. Absolutely all on this machine is great. From being lightweighted, to the good battery life (5/6 hours nowadays), having ports and MagSafe. The keyboard is great, bigger (and better to me) than the recent ones. With Excel, Word and PDF Preview, the working flow was cool, but in the recent months I felt a lot of beachballs on my thesis document. Sometimes it became very hot.
Because I’m doing my PhD, I’ve bought a second handed MBA M1 (780 euros; 8/256). My thought was to prevent the crash of the old MacBook, and improve speed and overall experience. The M1 is faster, and the screen is a joy!
I dont know why, but memory pressure is higher now. I believe is due to the Safari cache. Also, and most important for me, beachballs haven’t disappeared. Something in the document might be corrupted, i’ll have to check it better.
To conclude, to what I do, the M1 has not been the explosive experience I was thinking: Intel models are still remarkably secure. I’ll Sell my old MBA to my sister, after the right cerimony, because it was a pleasure to work with this piece of technology. The newer one has to conquer me!
Because I’m doing my PhD, I’ve bought a second handed MBA M1 (780 euros; 8/256). My thought was to prevent the crash of the old MacBook, and improve speed and overall experience. The M1 is faster, and the screen is a joy!
I dont know why, but memory pressure is higher now. I believe is due to the Safari cache. Also, and most important for me, beachballs haven’t disappeared. Something in the document might be corrupted, i’ll have to check it better.
To conclude, to what I do, the M1 has not been the explosive experience I was thinking: Intel models are still remarkably secure. I’ll Sell my old MBA to my sister, after the right cerimony, because it was a pleasure to work with this piece of technology. The newer one has to conquer me!
And the voting shows that this is likely a troll thread.
Just to clarify, the 2020 MacBook Pro 13 you referenced, was it the late 2020 with the M1? Because there’s not a blown away difference between those two machines. You must be referring to a early or Mid 2020 MacBook with Intel.
This is one of the most entertaining threads I’ve ever read here so thank you for that.
I don’t think the OP is making their experience up. I also don’t understand their need to so emotionally defend their stance.
I have an M1 Max 32 core 16” model. I’ve been using Apple products since the Apple II, and have worked in the creative space professionally for over 30 years. I don’t work in IT anymore but I do oversee a team where that’s a component. I am not bragging nor do I care to - just some basic background.
In my experience the 16” Max has been a revelation. I get at least 3 hours of heavy use editing compressed 10 bit 422 4K with effects in real time in FCP and Davinci Resolve. We edit documentaries, training, indie films and we don’t use iMovie. We do much more work in a shorter timeframe, for a lot longer, with this machine over the old i9 laptop we had. Most posters here have echoed the same.
Apple is selling (at least with this product, don’t get me started on the M1 Ultra…) a vastly improved experience over their older Intel units especially with video editing - and this is being proven out in reality by many, many people.
My M1 Max unit in fact plays back and renders complex timelines far smoother and faster (anywhere between 30 and and 100 percent) than our old Vega 64 10 core Intel iMac Pro - a $7,000 machine as configured.
In a laptop. That rarely turns on it’s fans.
It seems the OP’s experience is real, but also an outlier. Instead of trying to understand what’s wrong and accept the help of others here, all I see is angry defense of their position and their resume being thrown at the wall.
Sometimes the most confident and powerful thing someone can do is admit they might be wrong and work to figure out what the solution is, instead of painting every customer and every unit Apple put out with the same broad negative strokes.
Just because my car sucks with repairs doesn’t mean every car ever made by that company sucks. Maybe I drive it hard or maybe my roads have more potholes or whatever. Maybe I live in California vs Colorado.
I certainly wouldn’t be here shouting that no matter what all cars made by company X were a sham.
I don’t think the OP is making their experience up. I also don’t understand their need to so emotionally defend their stance.
I have an M1 Max 32 core 16” model. I’ve been using Apple products since the Apple II, and have worked in the creative space professionally for over 30 years. I don’t work in IT anymore but I do oversee a team where that’s a component. I am not bragging nor do I care to - just some basic background.
In my experience the 16” Max has been a revelation. I get at least 3 hours of heavy use editing compressed 10 bit 422 4K with effects in real time in FCP and Davinci Resolve. We edit documentaries, training, indie films and we don’t use iMovie. We do much more work in a shorter timeframe, for a lot longer, with this machine over the old i9 laptop we had. Most posters here have echoed the same.
Apple is selling (at least with this product, don’t get me started on the M1 Ultra…) a vastly improved experience over their older Intel units especially with video editing - and this is being proven out in reality by many, many people.
My M1 Max unit in fact plays back and renders complex timelines far smoother and faster (anywhere between 30 and and 100 percent) than our old Vega 64 10 core Intel iMac Pro - a $7,000 machine as configured.
In a laptop. That rarely turns on it’s fans.
It seems the OP’s experience is real, but also an outlier. Instead of trying to understand what’s wrong and accept the help of others here, all I see is angry defense of their position and their resume being thrown at the wall.
Sometimes the most confident and powerful thing someone can do is admit they might be wrong and work to figure out what the solution is, instead of painting every customer and every unit Apple put out with the same broad negative strokes.
Just because my car sucks with repairs doesn’t mean every car ever made by that company sucks. Maybe I drive it hard or maybe my roads have more potholes or whatever. Maybe I live in California vs Colorado.
I certainly wouldn’t be here shouting that no matter what all cars made by company X were a sham.
Whats the point of the vote though? The participants arent exactly a random selection.
“No I will not change my expectations.”
Cool, return unit and buy an ASUS laptop or something. /thread
Cool, return unit and buy an ASUS laptop or something. /thread
Are you always this condescending and unwilling to admit you're wrong?
Just read these whole 7 pages and question yourself a bit. It'll do you some good.
Finally something we can all wholeheartedly agree on.
The problem is, its a bit like that ‘dunning Kruger’ effect- these kinds of people are SO emotionally stunted they can’t: self regulate, empathise, and be critical with their own opinions.
introspection doesn’t work when you spend all day telling everyone you’re right and they are obviously wrong.
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