M1 issues: post them all here!

[Luposian]

Same problem here.... I can live with it though

No, no! You can't endure such a heavy burden! It will tear you apart! You need to give it to me... I have experience with these worthless Macs you speak of! I will give them a good home... make sure they are loved, until their wimpy integrated circuits die of spontaneous combustion! ?

 

[Sanpete]

If you look in the specific AS section of the forum and many of the M1 reviews, you would think the M1 is the holy grail of computing and as such it's not capable of having issues. I am surprised the Apple collective have not trashed the OP for making such a thread.

With such a vivid imagination you're likely to surprise yourself sometimes.

 

[Sanpete]

Hi,

I have the M1 Mac mini and the M1 MacBook Air (both base models) - I also have the 2018 i7 Mac mini with 32 GB RAM and eGPU (RX 580) and a 2016 MacBook and a 2019 15" MacBook Pro (base model, but with 16 GB of RAM).

The M1 MBA seems to be fine, have not had too much time to use it the past week since I got it but it convinced me to also get the M1 Mac mini. I normally browse that WWW and use Plex and my heaviest task is editing 4K H.264 footage in FCP (with some MotionVFX and other plugins). For that the M1 MBA was quite fast, thus the decision to get the M1 Mac mini for home.

But while the M1 Mac mini does perform well in FCP (at the beginning), after some time, the Mac becomes laggy, opening or switching apps seems to take a while (up to 10/15 seconds), then the in-app performance is lacking too, Safari at the moment had problems recognising my keys while pressing them or it takes a second or three to open a new tab an register the letters I have already pressed.
Clicking in the menu bar to take a closer look at some items sometimes takes another second or two.

As far as I have gathered, it might be related to uptime, as the Mac is quite responsive with every task the first hour or two.

At first I thought it was related to USB, Thunderbolt and Bluetooth, as I have the OWC 14-port TB3 Dock connected (now not anymore, it has to be replugged after a restart) and an MX Master 3 (for Mac, hahaha) via Bluetooth (now via Unify Dongle) and an USB 3 device.
Now I just have connected the display to the innermost USB-A port and connect from the Dell's four USB 3 ports (one Unify Dongle, one SSD and whatever comes next).

During initial setup I also had the problem of not being able to connect the MX Master 3 (it would have been its first computer, just bought it) or the Magic Keyboard with Numpad (A1843, worked fine on the 2018 i7 Mac mini).
Then I had the idea to connect my old Apple keyboard with USB cable (which works fine on the 2018 Mac mini and a Windows 10 box - its main use) and a USB mouse.
The mouse was registered if connected directly to the M1 Mac mini, but not via the USB keyboard, which also did not get recognised. A "logickeyboard" for FCP X helped me out in the end.
I still cannot get the M1 Mac mini to recognise the Apple USB keyboard though.

I also did a clean install at some point (this sentence took five seconds to appear after I typed "I als"), which is a bit more cumbersome, but doable using this Apple Support KB. (looking up the link in the Safari browser history took almost a minute with all the lag, but I will restart once this is posted)

The clean install did not help. I am on the verge of returning the M1 Mac mini or getting it replaced (however long it takes nowadays), as the performance in FCP is WOW and 4K playback is buttery smooth, but the overall performance is merde.

PS: The CPU was hardly above 30% (using iStat Menus), though the RAM usage is often around 75% (pressure around 70% - mostly yellow).


Well, anyone any ideas?

Seems likely you just need more RAM to take care of your main trouble. The memory pressure in the yellow is a warning of that. That's not unexpected with the tasks you describe.

 

[Zazoh]

Those with issues, did you do clean set up or migrate all the problems from an earlier build?
Not trying to yank chains, I did, new set up, installed two intel, Rosetta2 and Xcode. I've had no problems. Just trying to see if there is a common scenario.

 

[WildRaven]

I'm not an expert in coding whatsoever, so I was planning to do everything from scratch (aka manually drag/dropping files from usb drive to mba m1)

 

[JKNorth]

It's difficult to determine if some of the issues I've had are M1 related, or just Big Sur. I currently have a 13" Touchbar Intel MBP that has been at the Apple Store for days. Even after a complete wipe and diagnostic on every hardware component they can not get Big Sur to install. It's going to Engineering in California.

But back to the M1 MBP, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD.

External displays and Bluetooth: zero problems.

Battery performance: spectacular when running optimized apps, not good at all when running apps through Rosetta 2.

Unlock with Apple Watch: worked on 11.0, now does not work on 11.0.1. Tried a ton of the troubleshooting steps I found in Apple support forums, nothing worked. It's working fine on my iMac Pro, but the M1 just refuses.

Wake from sleep: sometimes this is sloooooow. Not at all like the keynote. Especially when connected to the LG UltraFine 4K, but it's happened with the internal display as well.

Beachballs and slowdowns: troublingly frequent during the first few days, but seems to have fully resolved now. I've set up many Macs and the early days as it is indexing, etc. can see these kinds of slowdowns. But the M1 seemed to be affected more than others. Seems not to handle big background tasks as smoothly as Intel.

iCloud: Had to turn iCloud drive on and off multiple times to get it to sync and then keep syncing.

Network: Flipped out and dropped all network connections when I plugged in a thunderbolt ethernet dongle. Only happened once though. Restart cleared it.

All in all it's about what I expected for a Gen 1 device. Some quirks for sure, but doesn't seem to be anything that can't be fixed in future updates. The keyboard is a dream. The speed combined with silence, cool temps and long battery life is totally worth it to me!

 

[fcracer]

Had to return my MBA M1 this morning... Here are the issues I found:

Retina display: I personally wish Apple would stop using this display, as many websites I use aren't compatible with it. Text is just fine but most images on websites turn out very blurry. I've toggled with all the options available and nothing helped.

Brightness/Contrast: I have poor vision, so using a screen with a very high contrast really screws with my eyesight. You aren't able to see things as clearly and are forced to turn the brightness all the way up (not that it makes much of a difference for said contrast issue. If anything it just blinds me...)

Sound quality: Audio sounded quite muffled on the speakers. Played around with MDMI settings but that didn't seem to help.

I currently use a 2015 MBA, no Retina, and honestly images on websites are much sharper, sound quality is clearer, and the low contrast is much easier on my poor eyes... While it's still in awesome condition, I'm worried about running into an issue that'll force me to replace it sooner than I'm comfortable with.

I can’t fathom how this can be from a new M1 Air. The display is very clear on my MacBook, and orders of magnitude better than a non-retina 2015 MBA. There has to be something wrong with your M1 machine settings or hardware.

Same with the sound quality, I’ve been impressed with the speakers and the spatial positioning of sounds (sounds appear to float above the computer rather than come from the speaker grills).

While brightness is not on par with an iMac display as an example, it’s still more than sufficient to overwhelm my eyes in anything but outdoor sunny conditions.

 

[WildRaven]

I can’t fathom how this can be from a new M1 Air. The display is very clear on my MacBook, and orders of magnitude better than a non-retina 2015 MBA. There has to be something wrong with your M1 machine settings or hardware.

Same with the sound quality, I’ve been impressed with the speakers and the spatial positioning of sounds (sounds appear to float above the computer rather than come from the speaker grills).

While brightness is not on par with an iMac display as an example, it’s still more than sufficient to overwhelm my eyes in anything but outdoor sunny conditions.

Oh it was new as new can be. I saw the same issue with previous models that also use Retina. I've been told time and time again that it's the website's fault for 'poor resolution' and not Retina itself. Apple's just charging too far ahead of what website graphics can keep up with.

This is literally how it looks like with Retina (not my own screen, this was from another user with same complaint with previous Retina model

 

[phoenix-mac-user]

I have the Mini and the keyboard problem when I first installed was one of the most ridiculous things I have ever had to deal with in my entire history of using Apple products.

It didn't recognize my very common Logitech wireless but thankfully my daughter had a wired gaming keyboard and I was able to install with that.

After that (and specifically 11.0.1) it has been smooth sailing.

 

[MrEcted]

I bought a base model M1 Mini because I couldn't help myself and I wanted to hook it up to my 65-inch OLED. I absolutely love it so far, it's so much more snappy than my maxed out 2015 15-inch MBP.

The only actual issue I've had is that the App Store has crashed on me a few times. No biggie. The biggest issue I'm having is not because of the M1 really, but I do music production on the side and my audio interface (Apollo) and a huge subset of my instruments/plugins/samplers (Native Instruments) don't work with Big Sur, let alone M1 and both have no timeline for when this stuff will be working, and Native Instruments is glacial with this type of stuff.

Of course this isn't the fault of the computer and I knew this before buying it. Right now I'm just enjoying it as a beastly HYPER-overpowered Apple TV replacement, and as something I can use to record scratch projects in Logic from my living room with a huge TV, which is far more comfortable than my office/studio space (apartment living and all that).

I bought it because I'm a tech nerd and I knew going in I was going to be a "beta tester", but for what it is, the M1 is *jaw dropping awesome, even this base model with 8GB RAM.

 

[Luposian]

I bought a base model M1 Mini because I couldn't help myself and I wanted to hook it up to my 65-inch OLED. I absolutely love it so far, it's so much more snappy than my maxed out 2015 15-inch MBP.

The only actual issue I've had is that the App Store has crashed on me a few times. No biggie. The biggest issue I'm having is not because of the M1 really, but I do music production on the side and my audio interface (Apollo) and a huge subset of my instruments/plugins/samplers (Native Instruments) don't work with Big Sur, let alone M1 and both have no timeline for when this stuff will be working, and Native Instruments is glacial with this type of stuff.

Of course this isn't the fault of the computer and I knew this before buying it. Right now I'm just enjoying it as a beastly HYPER-overpowered Apple TV replacement, and as something I can use to record scratch projects in Logic from my living room with a huge TV, which is far more comfortable than my office/studio space (apartment living and all that).

I bought it because I'm a tech nerd and I knew going in I was going to be a "beta tester", but for what it is, the M1 is draw dropping awesome, even this base model with 8GB RAM.

You are, indeed, someone who is wise about this transition to M1. Good going!

 

[CptPusheen]

My issue is with WiFi dropping connection from time to time and also generating lots of errors in log file. Described it here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mbp-13-m1-lots-of-error-in-var-log-wifi-log.2271604/

 

[fcracer]

Oh it was new as new can be. I saw the same issue with previous models that also use Retina. I've been told time and time again that it's the website's fault for 'poor resolution' and not Retina itself. Apple's just charging too far ahead of what website graphics can keep up with.

This is literally how it looks like with Retina (not my own screen, this was from another user with same complaint with previous Retina model

Can you share the websites that you’re looking at that have these issues? Apple is not doing anything unusual that could be seen as getting ahead of website graphics. It all comes down to how the website owner has decided on the trade offs between bandwidth, load times, and image quality.

 

[WildRaven]

Can you share the websites that you’re looking at that have these issues? Apple is not doing anything unusual that could be seen as getting ahead of website graphics. It all comes down to how the website owner has decided on the trade offs between bandwidth, load times, and image quality.

So far the websites I frequent that have had issues with retina are Flight Rising, Tumblr (specifically individual blogs), Twitter, and DeviantART.

I don't have screenshots as I've returned the MBA M1 this morning.

 

[Spindel]

My home office has become colder with my M1 Mini and now we are approaching winter where I live.

 

[consumeritis]

Displaying 72dpi content on a 144dpi screen will cause the content to be upscaled. Upscaling can either be nearest-neighbour (sharp but pixels become squares), or interpolated (smoother and more natural but gets slightly blurrier). The Mac tends to default to 'smoother and blurrier'. There isn't enough information in the original image to know what to put in-between the original pixels.

So for some kinds of graphics for specific people I can see that maybe a 72dpi panel will be better.

Personally I love high-resolution screens. I've never noticed any image blurriness for the kind of content I'm usually interacting with, and most apps and sites have retina assets by now. The increase in text sharpness alone is more than worth it.

No way would I buy a Mac with a 72dpi screen nowadays.

 

[wyrdness]

My home office has become colder with my M1 Mini and now we are approaching winter where I live.

Yes, with winter approaching, my legs were cold and I thought that my new laptop would warm them up. Instead it actually seemed to make them colder. ?

 

[RigSatMe]

Hi,

I have the M1 Mac mini and the M1 MacBook Air (both base models) - I also have the 2018 i7 Mac mini with 32 GB RAM and eGPU (RX 580) and a 2016 MacBook and a 2019 15" MacBook Pro (base model, but with 16 GB of
PS: The CPU was hardly above 30% (using iStat Menus), though the RAM usage is often around 75% (pressure around 70% - mostly yellow).
Well, anyone any ideas?

Thank you very much! I felt the same while had been testing M1 Air in a store.

 

[RigSatMe]

Had a hell of a time getting 11.0.1 installed on a base m1 Air, took three goes with beach ball central. USB speed on external ssd is disappointing. 15” MBP 2018 gets 520MB/s read on a 2TB T5 Samsung, this only can do ....

Thank you very much fo a great report!
Before buying M1 Air or Pro, I visited Apple store. Took iPhone 12 Pro Max, shoot two clips: 4K HDR 10-bit Dolby Vision 24fps and the same 60fps, 25 seconds long. Airdropped these video files to M1 Air. Opened Compressor 4.5, drop these video files and selected default export setting Apple Device 4K HDR 10-bit, Dolby Vision 8.4, slow export) for each clip:
RESULTS:
1. First clip 24fps of 25 seconds exported in 2 minutes and 21 seconds
2. Second clip 60fps of 25 seconds exported in 5 minutes and 1 second.
Yes, it took a bit longer on my MBPro 15” 2018 by factor 1.5x, but in both cases M1 and Intel processors, these results aren’t acceptable. Of course, when slow export switch to faster, both processors M1 and Intel exports with the same speed. So, it seems M1 is not fully optimized on hardware level.

 

[Bhampster]

The only thing I used my 2010 Mac Mini for was high res Audio. (24/96 5.1).

My glorious (2020) M1 Mac Mini HDMI is locked at 48Khz and higher sampling rates seem reserved for toslink which is limited to stereo. Also my iTunes collection (around 1100 Movies) is locked to 1080p.

So,... for now it’s worthless to me. It’s turned off and so am I.

it was a gift so I will not return it.

 

[Diskutant]

Problem:
The edge at the front of the open MacBook Air is quite sharp. When using and will hurt your hands when using the trackpad.
My old MBPr 2012 had the same problem though.

 

[The Game 161]

only issue I've had is the odd cut off with my air pods pro for some reason.

 

[WildRaven]

Displaying 72dpi content on a 144dpi screen will cause the content to be upscaled. Upscaling can either be nearest-neighbour (sharp but pixels become squares), or interpolated (smoother and more natural but gets slightly blurrier). The Mac tends to default to 'smoother and blurrier'. There isn't enough information in the original image to know what to put in-between the original pixels.

So for some kinds of graphics for specific people I can see that maybe a 72dpi panel will be better.

Personally I love high-resolution screens. I've never noticed any image blurriness for the kind of content I'm usually interacting with, and most apps and sites have retina assets by now. The increase in text sharpness alone is more than worth it.

No way would I buy a Mac with a 72dpi screen nowadays.

I've heard some folks mention something about being able to switch to a lower resolution on Retina displays, but I have no idea if that makes a difference for images, or if it's even an option with the M1 models.

 

[noobinator]

Base M1 Air: I’ve had it happen twice now where I wake from a sleep and click the messages icon at the bottom. The icon bounces endlessly but messages didn’t open. I had to do a restart both times to get it to work. I let it bounce for a good 5-10 minutes. No beachball or anything though and I can use the laptop while the icon is bouncing.

 

[23b]

My monitor (usb-c, 4K) randomly switches off for like 3 seconds every now and again (every hour?). I use a iPad Pro with sidecar and macbook air at the same time.