I think I've had a change of heart on the ARM Macs.

[scaramoosh]

I bought an Air, I opened it up and put a gelid on it so it transfers some of the heat to the shell. So I'll say that now before people say they have had a different experience to me.

I really love the battery life, and I really love the perfromance relative to not having any active cooling and form factor. I do not think there is a Laptop out there that can compete on those two fronts, and so I'd say it's definately worth the £899 I paid for the 8 core GPU 512GB 8GB version. It never throttles which amazes me, it'll just keep going and the battery keeps going too. I've never had a Laptop that'll do more than 4/5 hours on a workload.

That said there is one major issue and that is the 8GB of ram, it just isn't enough it's full with just a few tabs of Safari open. It must really be working that SSD inside as it's 40mb free with only one program open, which is a big bummer for the logevity considering the SSD is soldered on. So I'd say Apple were really tight arses for having a base model with 8GB at that price. But the bigger program is just that the ram is soldered on, it is a big turn off and the Laptop suddenly isn't a competitive price if you want 16GB of ram.

It's such a shame because I would say ram aside, it's the best price/performanc/form factor Laptop out there. Though I reckon they should make a £600 Macbook SE, which would just use the last gen base model Air, and whack an M1 in it. That could be a big hit with the normals who just aren't willing to spend £1000.

I guess I'm mostly excited for the M2, I really want to see if they can get a GPU to compete with say at least a 2060 or something. If they could do that, then gaming on Macs could be a thing at last!

Two final points...

- The GPU is still dog crap, but at least it isn't as bad as every Intel intergrated GPU out there. We know Apple will eventually get there with the GPU, so that is exciting for the future.

- I still have a feeling Apple will lock down Mac OS like IOS, and if that happens... it's dead to me. But if the EU do change the law to make it so Apple has to allow sideloading on IOS, that might never happen.

 

[mi7chy]

Wonder if sinking the heat to the metal shell will prevent much of the throttling and ~24% drop in performance under sustained load. Probably a marketing decision to not sink it to shell otherwise people will feel the heat on the palm rest and lap and Apple can't claim how cool it runs.

 

[JMacHack]

- The GPU is still dog crap, but at least it isn't as bad as every Intel intergrated GPU out there. We know Apple will eventually get there with the GPU, so that is exciting for the future.

- I still have a feeling Apple will lock down Mac OS like IOS, and if that happens... it's dead to me. But if the EU do change the law to make it so Apple has to allow sideloading on IOS, that might never happen.

Best igpu bar none, by a wide margin. Maybe that’s dog crap by gamer kiddie standards but unless you’re willing to pay scalper prices for 5 year old gpus, you can’t get better.

This conspiracy has been thrown around for more than a ****in decade now. They’re not locking down MacOS. Nobody would buy a Mac if they did and Apple knows it.

And Mac will never be a viable gaming platform, ever.

 

[Mike Boreham]

That said there is one major issue and that is the 8GB of ram, it just isn't enough it's full with just a few tabs of Safari open.

Can you post your Activity Monitor > Memory Pressure graph when it is "full".

What user effects of the memory being full are you seeing?

macOS is designed to use memory and release it when needed.

Apple provided the Memory Pressure graph as indication of how stressed RAM is.

 

[ader42]

The safari tabs you have open are probably the issue. Poorly designed web-sites.
If you buy the low end option (8GB RAM) then you need to use it like a low end machine.

But you don’t seem to be saying it’s not fast enough or you run out of RAM so I don’t know what you are complaining about really. You maybe should have bought the 16GB RAM but would probably get the same experience and would still complain about what appears to be nothing.

 

[Pummers]

Try running an alternative browser to see if memory usage is better.

I run Safari with often hundreds of tabs, and it loves to suck up my RAM, regardless of architecture and OS version.

My bandaid solution is to check activity monitor and look in your memory tab sort by memory used. You might be shocked by the consumption of RAM by various tabs, especially over time (Gmail). Usually this is a memory leak of some kind.

Since I have lots of tabs opened up it's a hassle to identify the specific window, but I get by by going into the Safari debug menu and turning on Debug -> Misc. Flags -> Show Web process ID in Page Titles.

This means you can find the PID from Activity Monitor in the Safari title.

This helps because Activity Monitor is not apple scriptable, but now that we have the PID to show in Safari's window title, we can manually input the RAM hogging pages into an applescript to manipulate Safari, using Script Editor.

Compile this into an app and put it in your dock. Check your activity monitor for pages that keep growing in RAM usage and run the applescript to bring the offending safari page to the front and close it, or copy pasta into a fresh tab to start the RAM hog cycling over again.

set question to display dialog ("Find Safari tab whose name includes:") default answer ""
set searchpat to text returned of question

tell application "Safari"
    --
    -- *** Step 1. get a list of all tabs that match "searchpat" ***
    set winlist to every window
    set winmatchlist to {}
    set tabmatchlist to {}
    set tabnamematchlist to {}
    repeat with win in winlist
        if (count of tabs of win) is not equal to 0 then # ignore spurious windows with no tabs
            set tablist to every tab of win
            repeat with t in tablist
                if (searchpat is in (name of t as string)) or (searchpat is in (URL of t as string)) then
                    set end of winmatchlist to win
                    set end of tabmatchlist to t
                    set end of tabnamematchlist to (id of win as string) & "." & (index of t as string) & ".  " & (name of t as string)
                end if
            end repeat
            
        end if
    end repeat
    --
    -- *** Step 2. open the desired matching tab ***
    if (count of tabmatchlist) = 1 then
        set whichtab to (item 1 of tabnamematchlist)
        my openTab(whichtab)
    else if (count of tabmatchlist) = 0 then
        display notification "No matches"
    else
        set whichtab to choose from list of tabnamematchlist with prompt "The following tabs match, please select one:"
        if whichtab is not equal to false then
            my openTab(whichtab)
        end if
    end if
end tell

on openTab(whichtab)
    tell application "Safari"
        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "."
        set tmp to text items of (whichtab as string)
        set w to (item 1 of tmp) as integer
        set t to (item 2 of tmp) as integer
        set current tab of window id w to tab t of window id w
        set index of window id w to 1
        -- this code is an essential work-around to activate a specific window ID in Mojave
        tell window id w
            set visible to false
            set visible to true
        end tell
    end tell
end openTab
tell application "Safari"
    activate
end tell

 

[Lemon Olive]

- The GPU is still dog crap, but at least it isn't as bad as every Intel intergrated GPU out there. We know Apple will eventually get there with the GPU, so that is exciting for the future.

Get where? This is exactly the kind of GPU this product should have.

- I still have a feeling Apple will lock down Mac OS like IOS, and if that happens... it's dead to me. But if the EU do change the law to make it so Apple has to allow sideloading on IOS, that might never happen.

They won't be locking down macOS more than it is, and they won't be opening iOS. The E.U. is a joke, and does not control things like this, no matter how much they want to believe they can.

 

[Apple_Robert]

What have your memory pressure readings been, OP? In my opinion, that is what you should be focusing on.

I have had numerous tabs open watching 4K videos while transcoding video at the same time, and haven't had any bad experiences in usage.

 

[BATman.Berlin]

Wonder if sinking the heat to the metal shell will prevent much of the throttling and ~24% drop in performance under sustained load. Probably a marketing decision to not sink it to shell otherwise people will feel the heat on the palm rest and lap and Apple can't claim how cool it runs.

I think they had to make a decision to either preserve battery health or allow continuous loads on the CPU. When the thermal pads are applied, the shell can get quite warm and heat up the batteries thus risk reducing their lifespan. That might not be a issue in 80% of indoor use cases, but here in Cali it can get quite hot outside in the summer. Adding the CPU thermal through a pad might have serious effects to the batteries. My MBA went in thermal protection mode last weekend during the heat wave and that was when I made the decision not to install thermal pads on mine. Thermal management should not be compromised in my opinion. If you need continued max loads, spend the extra and get a active ventilated pro.

 

[CheesePuff]

What have your memory pressure readings, OP? In my opinion, that is what you should be focusing on.

I have had numerous tabs open watching 4K videos while transcoding video at the same time, and haven't had any bad experiences in usage.

Exactly, unused RAM is wasted RAM. If there is no yellow or red memory pressure, then there is no issue. Also not blindly standing up for Apple but I wonder why he thinks the GPU is so poor, its a huge improvement over the replacement Intel iGPU.

 

[CMMChris]

That said there is one major issue and that is the 8GB of ram, it just isn't enough it's full with just a few tabs of Safari open.

On macOS you don't need to care about how much of your RAM is used. You need to check memory pressure. I doubt it's in the red area with just a few tabs in Safari.

 

[ADGrant]

Best igpu bar none, by a wide margin. Maybe that’s dog crap by gamer kiddie standards but unless you’re willing to pay scalper prices for 5 year old gpus, you can’t get better.

I agree that the M1 GPU is not dog crap (unlike the gpu in the Intel Mac mini). However plenty of other Intel Macs ship with better discrete GPUs, in particular the 16" MBP and the 2020 27" iMac. In the case of the 27" iMac, it is available with far better GPUs than the M1 in the 24" iMac.

 

[Budgiemac]

I got the 16 gb model. It stay using 8 gb's of ram always. I never really goes over 8 gb's of ram. I would go by how the machine works not what the app tells you. There are many apps like 'Memory diag' which always shows that I'm in the red. And then there is another app that tells me I have 9 gb's of ram free. So Becareful which apps your using. Some of them aren't made for soc.

 

[scaramoosh]

I think they had to make a decision to either preserve battery health or allow continuous loads on the CPU. When the thermal pads are applied, the shell can get quite warm and heat up the batteries thus risk reducing their lifespan. That might not be a issue in 80% of indoor use cases, but here in Cali it can get quite hot outside in the summer. Adding the CPU thermal through a pad might have serious effects to the batteries. My MBA went in thermal protection mode last weekend during the heat wave and that was when I made the decision not to install thermal pads on mine. Thermal management should not be compromised in my opinion. If you need continued max loads, spend the extra and get a active ventilated pro.

As someone who has shipped a product, there are laws to how hot something can get.... it's probably just that. I used to make to order and I'd always tell them "I have to ship it this way, you can remove the heat sensor and it'll be fine". Just have to do it under EU law as the aluminium couldn't go above a certain temp, cannot remember what it was now though.

 

[MrGunny94]

Please don't complain about the GPU, coming from a 16" with a UHD 620 this is a godsend.

 

[ZipZilla]

I can't imagine buying an 8GB RAM machine in 2021, especially since it's soldered on and can't be changed. As the 1.0 ARM Mac, it will be the first to have support dropped and be forgotten (remember the Intel Core Solo?)

For me, I have to wait for the Pro ARM Macs and hopefully a 32GB Max

 

[scaramoosh]

Please don't complain about the GPU, coming from a 16" with a UHD 620 this is a godsend.

Well it's obviously better than Intel, but it's not even as good as an Nvidia GPU from several years ago. I wont praise it too much as you still cannot game on it unless you like 30FPS on low, but it actually does run games now lol.

Also I know it's a memory shortage and it caching to the SSD. I can just compare to a 16GB machine and scroll on an endless news site, the 8GB machine is slow at loading... it's caching to the SSD because the ram is full. You NEED 16GB, 8GB is not enough unless you're that clueless and upgrading from an old Laptop and cannot tell the difference.

I've just wanted to confirm that, yeah searching on many videos, the 8GB is constantly holding the Mac up, it just isn't enough.

 

[Lihp8270]

As someone who has shipped a product, there are laws to how hot something can get.... it's probably just that. I used to make to order and I'd always tell them "I have to ship it this way, you can remove the heat sensor and it'll be fine". Just have to do it under EU law as the aluminium couldn't go above a certain temp, cannot remember what it was now though.

LTT did a video on this.

At the max ambient temp in the spec the base of the laptop was within 1c of the allowable temperature

 

[Yebubbleman]

I bought an Air, I opened it up and put a gelid on it so it transfers some of the heat to the shell. So I'll say that now before people say they have had a different experience to me.

I really love the battery life, and I really love the perfromance relative to not having any active cooling and form factor. I do not think there is a Laptop out there that can compete on those two fronts, and so I'd say it's definately worth the £899 I paid for the 8 core GPU 512GB 8GB version. It never throttles which amazes me, it'll just keep going and the battery keeps going too. I've never had a Laptop that'll do more than 4/5 hours on a workload.

That said there is one major issue and that is the 8GB of ram, it just isn't enough it's full with just a few tabs of Safari open. It must really be working that SSD inside as it's 40mb free with only one program open, which is a big bummer for the logevity considering the SSD is soldered on. So I'd say Apple were really tight arses for having a base model with 8GB at that price. But the bigger program is just that the ram is soldered on, it is a big turn off and the Laptop suddenly isn't a competitive price if you want 16GB of ram.

Apple's RAM prices have never been competitive. But you haven't been able to upgrade the RAM after the fact in a Mac notebook with any Mac notebook introduced after 2012; so you have to pay Apple's pricing. So, pre-configuring with what you think you might need down the road for additional overhead is an absolute must. People on here will love to argue that 8GB is plenty and while that is totally likely to be true for today, (a) it's not true for every user's use case and, more importantly (b) there's no evidence to suggest that it will continue to remain true as these M1 Macs age and as Apple releases new major releases of macOS.

It's such a shame because I would say ram aside, it's the best price/performanc/form factor Laptop out there. Though I reckon they should make a £600 Macbook SE, which would just use the last gen base model Air, and whack an M1 in it. That could be a big hit with the normals who just aren't willing to spend £1000.

I guess I'm mostly excited for the M2, I really want to see if they can get a GPU to compete with say at least a 2060 or something. If they could do that, then gaming on Macs could be a thing at last!

Two final points...

- The GPU is still dog crap, but at least it isn't as bad as every Intel intergrated GPU out there. We know Apple will eventually get there with the GPU, so that is exciting for the future.

- I still have a feeling Apple will lock down Mac OS like IOS, and if that happens... it's dead to me. But if the EU do change the law to make it so Apple has to allow sideloading on IOS, that might never happen.

The M1's GPU ought to perform comparably well to a 3 year old mid-range desktop-class (as opposed to those that you'd find in a notebook) discrete GPU. Given that the only non-Apple-Arcade game that is Apple Silicon native at this point is World of Warcraft, and given that Boot Camp is not an option, I'd say that whether or not the M1's GPU is good for gaming is pretty moot. Though, even assuming a native app, it's not like most currently sold 64-bit Intel Mac games don't run fine on Intel 13" MacBook Pros from 2018 and newer. The real bummer here is lack of eGPU support (but, again, with no native games, that's a moot point).

Best igpu bar none, by a wide margin. Maybe that’s dog crap by gamer kiddie standards but unless you’re willing to pay scalper prices for 5 year old gpus, you can’t get better.

Definitely. Though, again, lack of native titles and conspicuous lack of support on the parts of Feral Interactive and Aspyr for Apple Silicon Macs (in favor of increased emphasis on Linux support), it's moot as far as gaming is concerned. It seems like it will be plenty beastly for video work though.

This conspiracy has been thrown around for more than a ****in decade now. They’re not locking down MacOS. Nobody would buy a Mac if they did and Apple knows it.

Right. It WAS seeming like it was headed down this direction with the T2's security settings. But given that you can now set those on a per-OS-installation basis, that really opens things up. Though, to be fair, as far as modifying the OS is concerned, Apple IS locking more and more things down a la iOS and iPadOS. But certainly not in terms of how, which, or from where Apps are installed.

And Mac will never be a viable gaming platform, ever.

You know, circa 2009-2015, it was a pretty decent platform for casual gaming. You had most of the popular big name titles on both platforms and you had Boot Camp to run Windows when all that failed. Apple ditching 32-bit Intel app support REALLY hurt that, but you still had Boot Camp and there are still more games that are 64-bit Intel native than most casual gamers will even have time for in their life. I think Apple Silicon Macs will change this for the worse. But, Apple is banking on iOS games coming to the Mac rather than Windows/XBox/Playstation games coming to the Mac and hoping that anyone else that wants to is enticed by Metal (which they likely won't be).

 

[Kung gu]

- I still have a feeling Apple will lock down Mac OS like IOS, and if that happens... it's dead to me. But if the EU do change the law to make it so Apple has to allow sideloading on IOS, that might never happen.

I don't get this fear that Apple will lock down the Mac. The Mac is where you develop and create.

ARM Macs have a unlocked bootloader, can boot into unsigned older macOS, gatekeeper can be bypassed meaning
apps/programs can be installed from ANYWHERE( to disable gatekeeper its 'control and right click and press open on the app'), SiP(System integrity Protection) can be disabled and dual booting macOS is available.

The day Apple "locks" down the Mac is when Apple removes the said features but the perfect time to do it so was the launch of M1 but the fact Apple did not shows Apple has no intention of Apple locking the Mac.

 

[Shirasaki]

Best igpu bar none, by a wide margin. Maybe that’s dog crap by gamer kiddie standards but unless you’re willing to pay scalper prices for 5 year old gpus, you can’t get better.

This conspiracy has been thrown around for more than a ****in decade now. They’re not locking down MacOS. Nobody would buy a Mac if they did and Apple knows it.

And Mac will never be a viable gaming platform, ever.

That’s hardly a conspiracy given the only thing apple talks about it is a single line from Craig. But that’s a bit off-topic. All I can say here is time will tell.

 

[Shirasaki]

I don't get this fear that Apple will lock down the Mac. The Mac is where you develop and create.

ARM Macs have a unlocked bootloader, can boot into unsigned older macOS, gatekeeper can be bypassed meaning
apps/programs can be installed from ANYWHERE( to disable gatekeeper its 'control and right click and press open on the app'), SiP(System integrity Protection) can be disabled and dual booting macOS is available.

The day Apple "locks" down the Mac is when Apple removes the said features but the perfect time to do it so was the launch of M1 but the fact Apple did not shows Apple has no intention of Apple locking the Mac.

They don’t need to do it now. Remember. M1 is STILL a beta chip for Mac, no matter how long it has been for iOS devices. Designing a good chip is very difficult.

After the transition period ends, apple can suddenly pull the plug and flip the switch so macOS becomes a glorified iOS with no advanced feature people love today. I’d love to see how people reacts to all of that.

 

[ian87w]

I agree that the M1 GPU is not dog crap (unlike the gpu in the Intel Mac mini). However plenty of other Intel Macs ship with better discrete GPUs, in particular the 16" MBP and the 2020 27" iMac. In the case of the 27" iMac, it is available with far better GPUs than the M1 in the 24" iMac.

You are comparing a larger device with the smaller ones. No 13" retina intel Macbook Pros ship with discrete GPU. They all have integrated intel graphics. The same with Macbook Airs. The larger 16" Macbook Pro should be compared to its future Apple Silicon replacement. The larger form obviously allow faster and/or extra components.

It's like complaining the Macbook air has integrated GPU and not as fast as a PC tower with nVidia RTX 3090...

 

[Kung gu]

They don’t need to do it now. Remember. M1 is STILL a beta chip for Mac, no matter how long it has been for iOS devices. Designing a good chip is very difficult.

I don't believe that cause then that would make the Mac an iPad. Also the M1 is not a BETA product.

The A12Z Dev Kit Mac mini was the BETA kit. I would 100% expect macOS to remain the same as it now even after
the transition ends.

 

[Kung gu]

After the transition period ends, apple can suddenly pull the plug and flip the switch so macOS becomes a glorified iOS with no advanced feature people love today. I’d love to see how people reacts to all of that.

Apple themselves said they treat the Mac different than iPhone and iPad and Craig said the Mac will always be able get
apps from ANYWHERE. See the 2020 WWDC interview with John Gurber.