M1 MBP First Impressions (Former 16" MBP Owner)

[dukee101]

Former 16" MBP owner here who just got an M1 MBP. For the last year, my daily driver has been an Intel i9 2.3GHz 8-Core MBP w/ 5500M GPU. Sounds like a pretty hefty laptop to most people... until the M1.

I've spent the last day doing a fresh install and hand-migrating everything from scratch. I've filled its SSD with 1TB worth of data/media, and let it index it all and run its ML for classification and so forth -- and the fan literally never spun up. It never got hotter than 100℉. The battery didn't even go lower than 60% -- for a whole day's worth of heavy migration! It's just astonishing!

I've now got it hooked up to my LG UltraFine 5K and it's staying at a steady 90℉, while my 16" MBP would be at least 160℉. There's many other things I've noticed so far, in addition to what you've already heard from the reviews about how every app launches instantly, etc:

• 🖥️ When you connect to an external display, or make changes to the display configuration/arrangement, there's no "blank-out period" -- changes just happen instantly. It's a shocking moment when you first experience it.
• ⌨️ The keyboard's Fn key opens the character/emoji picker -- a useful change.
• 🌄 Accessing Recovery Mode, Safe Mode, etc is much more straightforward now. You simply hold down the power button until it says it's loading custom boot options, and then you're good. Much simpler than before.
• ⚙️ You will no longer have to go through an SMC/NVRAM/PRAM reset as a diagnostic step when troubleshooting, just like iOS devices. Those days are officially over!
• 📱 Using iOS apps on a Mac is a trip -- more of a novelty right now but could be useful. I'm invested in the Google Home ecosystem and it would be great to have a desktop client app for it. Google hid their Home app from the Mac App Store, but maybe I'll muster the energy to do the "IPA sideload" one of these days.
• 🎙️ The webcam might be the same old crappy 720p hardware we've had for years, but the microphone is much-improved. I used Voice Memos to compare the mic on this 13" M1 MBP to my 16" MBP (the M1 sounds slightly better), my LG 5K (M1 sounds decently better), and my AirPod Pros (M1 sounds wayyy better). Not sure if they're doing some signal processing on this too like they are with the webcam, but they might be.
• 👆️ Not sure if this is placebo, but Touch ID feels a few milliseconds faster. This would make sense, since whatever hardware was on the T2 chip is now integrated into the M1 SoC.
• ⚡️ Something's changed about macOS resource management on this system. I've used iStatMenus for years to monitor resource usage, and have a good sense for which activities and processes will spike the CPU or GPU, what percent they'll consume, etc.
  • Normally, during a migration, it's normal to expect mdworker and photolibraryd to take up like 30% CPU each, or even higher, for extended periods. The M1 Mac never shot it up past 2-3% *and* it indexed and classified everything in record time. We're talking about like ~120,000 high-res photos and videos alone here!
  • Hardly any process spikes the chip above 5-10%. It's bizarre and tells me there's more than meets the eye here. This could very well be Apple's new co-processors (Neural Engine, etc) taking over a lot of what Intel x86 chips had to do with their general-compute blocks. I can't think of another reason.
  • At rest, processes like kernel_task, WindowServer, etc, are consuming 0.2 - 0.4% CPU each. I've never seen this. On my Intel i9 8-core, I'd be looking at 1-2% at rest each.

Overall, this new M1 Mac just makes me question how I've approached computing my whole life, namely that there's inevitable tradeoffs we'll have to make for things to work snappier: more heat, more noise, more money, more weight, less battery, etc. And now this machine comes into existence and it says: forget all of that, that's not how computing has to be. It's mind-blowing.

All this said, I do already miss the larger, better screen of my 16", and the better speakers, plus the two extra ports, but there's no question that getting this M1 Mac was the right move for me. Good riddance to that 16". Here's to the higher-end machines Apple releases in 2021 (in addition to the other good things we await next year)! 🍻

 

[James_C]

@dukee101 nice summary, glad you are enjoying your new MacBook Pro. Getting my M1 MBA, it feels like getting a Mac again for the 1st time. Good riddance Intel.

 

[dukee101]

@dukee101 nice summary, glad you are enjoying your new MacBook Pro. Getting my M1 MBA, it feels like getting a Mac again for the 1st time. Good riddance Intel.

Thank you! I think you're going to love it! The MBA and the MBP should perform similarly. It honestly feels like the MBP's fan and extra GPU core are really there just for very intensive workloads, which is what we've been hearing from official reviewers also.

 

[TrueBlou]

Former 16" MBP owner here who just got an M1 MBP. For the last year, my daily driver has been an Intel i9 2.3GHz 8-Core MBP w/ 5500M GPU. Sounds like a pretty hefty laptop to most people... until the M1.

I've spent the last day doing a fresh install and hand-migrating everything from scratch. I've filled its SSD with 1TB worth of data/media, and let it index it all and run its ML for classification and so forth -- and the fan literally never spun up. It never got hotter than 100℉. The battery didn't even go lower than 60% -- for a whole day's worth of heavy migration! It's just astonishing!

I've now got it hooked up to my LG UltraFine 5K and it's staying at a steady 90℉, while my 16" MBP would be at least 160℉. There's many other things I've noticed so far, in addition to what you've already heard from the reviews about how every app launches instantly, etc:

• 🖥️ When you connect to an external display, or make changes to the display configuration/arrangement, there's no "blank-out period" -- changes just happen instantly. It's a shocking moment when you first experience it.
• ⌨️ The keyboard's Fn key opens the character/emoji picker -- a useful change.
• 📱 Using iOS apps on a Mac is a trip -- more of a novelty right now but could be useful. I'm invested in the Google Home ecosystem and it would be great to have a desktop client app for it. Google hid their Home app from the Mac App Store, but maybe I'll muster the energy to do the "IPA sideload" one of these days.
• 🎙️ The webcam might be the same old crappy 720p hardware we've had for years, but the microphone is much-improved. I used Voice Memos to compare the mic on this 13" M1 MBP to my 16" MBP (the M1 sounds slightly better), my LG 5K (M1 sounds decently better), and my AirPod Pros (M1 sounds wayyy better). Not sure if they're doing some signal processing on this too like they are with the webcam, but they might be.
• 👆️ Not sure if this is placebo, but Touch ID feels a few milliseconds faster. This would make sense, since whatever hardware was on the T2 chip is now integrated into the M1 SoC.
• ⚡️ Something's changed about macOS resource management on this system. I've used iStatMenus for years to monitor resource usage, and have a good sense for which activities and processes will spike the CPU or GPU, what percent they'll consume, etc.
  • Normally, during a migration, it's normal to expect mdworker and photolibraryd to take up like 30% CPU each, or even higher, for extended periods. The M1 Mac never shot it up past 2-3% *and* it indexed and classified everything in record time. We're talking about like ~120,000 high-res photos and videos alone here!
  • Hardly any process spikes the chip above 5-10%. It's bizarre and tells me there's more than meets the eye here. This could very well be Apple's new co-processors (Neural Engine, etc) taking over a lot of what Intel x86 chips had to do with their general-compute blocks. I can't think of another reason.
  • At rest, processes like kernel_task, WindowServer, etc, are consuming 0.2 - 0.4% CPU each. I've never seen this. On my Intel i9 8-core, I'd be looking at 1-2% at rest each.

Overall, this new M1 Mac just makes me question how I've approached computing my whole life, namely that there's inevitable tradeoffs we'll have to make for things to work snappier: more heat, more noise, more money, more weight, less battery, etc. And now this machine comes into existence and it says: forget all of that, that's not how computing has to be. It's mind-blowing.

All this said, I do already miss the larger, better screen of my 16", and the better speakers, plus the two extra ports, but there's no question that getting this M1 Mac was the right move for me. Good riddance to that 16". Here's to the higher-end machines Apple releases in 2021 (in addition to the other good things we await next year)! 🍻

Sounds like you made the right choice then 👍
I can't wait to finally get my hands on mine, the more I read about it, the more excited I get.
The only downside, when I do finally get it, I've not been this excited about a new computer since, well, since Apple switched to Intel. Now they're making me have that same childlike excitement I remember getting back then.... too many sleeps until Christmas

 

[richard371]

I really like my MBP M1 16/1TB. its almost weird how fast and cool it runs. Doesn't even feel like a computer.