I just switched jobs, and when I learned that my new company supports Macs, I was very tempted to switch. I've used Windows professionally for 10+ years as an accountant (controller), and am very fast with shortcuts in excel. I was so disappointed with my work PCs (last one was only 1 year old HP Elitebook with 32gb of RAM), that I made the leap to a MacBook Pro M1 (unfortunately the IT group gave me 8 gb RAM, but it's holding up great)
One large spreadsheet in particular (200K+ rows, lots of formulas/calculations, tabs, pivots) would take 30 seconds or more to Calculate with every change you made. Many times if I had other applications running, Excel would turn to Not Responding and crash. On the M1 MBP, each calculation takes maybe 1-2 seconds. You can see the CPU spike up when I make a change (it goes up to 550% of usage, which I don't understand), but I never get a beachball. The spreadsheet is still large, and it lags a bit when moving around, but never a spinning circle like I would get in Windows all the time.
Between the combination of assigning specific shortcuts in Excel in SysPref, the Accelerator Keys for Excel program, and the now excellent shortcut support in O365 (which keeps the majority of Windows shortcuts on the Mac), Excel is 98% the same for me as the Windows counterpart. There were a few new keystrokes to learn, but that took about a week to put into muscle memory. There are a few nitpicks - no moving through the items in a filter window with page up/page down/home/end to select them, no shortcuts for formatting pivot tables, and a couple others. Overall, I would take the speed and responsiveness in calculating large spreadsheets over losing out on a few shortcuts.
I also traded in my iPad Pro, because I watch movies and surf the web after work on my MB instead of my iPad. Previously, I needed an iPad because I couldn't use my work laptop for doing any of that - it would heat up in my bag, the battery wouldn't last more than an hour, and it's too hot and clunky to have on your lap for casual movie watching. I could go on and on - Love Love Love my MBP M1! I wouldn't have made the switch a few years ago with the old versions of Excel for Mac, but we've finally hit that point - hopefully they continue to improve Excel for Mac.
TL/DR: Most reviews focus on workflows for creative professionals - but the M1 makes for a killer corporate finance laptop as well.
One large spreadsheet in particular (200K+ rows, lots of formulas/calculations, tabs, pivots) would take 30 seconds or more to Calculate with every change you made. Many times if I had other applications running, Excel would turn to Not Responding and crash. On the M1 MBP, each calculation takes maybe 1-2 seconds. You can see the CPU spike up when I make a change (it goes up to 550% of usage, which I don't understand), but I never get a beachball. The spreadsheet is still large, and it lags a bit when moving around, but never a spinning circle like I would get in Windows all the time.
Between the combination of assigning specific shortcuts in Excel in SysPref, the Accelerator Keys for Excel program, and the now excellent shortcut support in O365 (which keeps the majority of Windows shortcuts on the Mac), Excel is 98% the same for me as the Windows counterpart. There were a few new keystrokes to learn, but that took about a week to put into muscle memory. There are a few nitpicks - no moving through the items in a filter window with page up/page down/home/end to select them, no shortcuts for formatting pivot tables, and a couple others. Overall, I would take the speed and responsiveness in calculating large spreadsheets over losing out on a few shortcuts.
I also traded in my iPad Pro, because I watch movies and surf the web after work on my MB instead of my iPad. Previously, I needed an iPad because I couldn't use my work laptop for doing any of that - it would heat up in my bag, the battery wouldn't last more than an hour, and it's too hot and clunky to have on your lap for casual movie watching. I could go on and on - Love Love Love my MBP M1! I wouldn't have made the switch a few years ago with the old versions of Excel for Mac, but we've finally hit that point - hopefully they continue to improve Excel for Mac.
TL/DR: Most reviews focus on workflows for creative professionals - but the M1 makes for a killer corporate finance laptop as well.