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Sequoia for Macbook Air M1

I

ixc

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 28, 2024
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Hello everyone!
I have macbook air M1 2020 8gb. All the time since the purchase I have used the macos "Big Sur". In general, I was happy with everything, I didn’t even think about updates. Now I spontaneously upgraded to "Sequoia" and began to worry. How does a far from new and not top-end MacBook behave on this system? Which is better, use the old one and not update, so as not to lose performance and battery. Tell me, I'm not a very experienced user in this matter.
Thank you in advance!
 
That's a good question, and I'm not sure exactly what the answer is. Later major system versions do bring some processor-dependent features, but sometimes, in some ways, later versions increase efficiency and performance for older devices. (For example, OS X Mavericks introduced compressed memory, timer coalescing, and dynamic allocation of graphics memory – that may have been a beneficial upgrade for older devices.)

Also, newer OS versions deployed for older devices don't always support the newest features; preserving the ability of those older devices to perform well for the purposes for which they were originally designed, is part of that rationale. Part of Apple's job is to make decisions about which older devices will support which newer operating systems, and they know users are trusting them to make those decisions carefully while still aiming to provide years of upgrades for any device.

Big Sur to Sequoia is quite a leap! Speaking for myself: I'm using an M1 Mac mini – a system similar to your MacBook Air – and I don't perceive a drop in performance; I intend to continue upgrading to new OS releases in the future. (I haven't yet installed OS 18.1, though, which sounds like something of a fundamental architecture shift with the big Apple Intelligence features. I'll be waiting to hear a little more from users about how it runs for them.)
 
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ixc said:
Hello everyone!
I have macbook air M1 2020 8gb. All the time since the purchase I have used the macos "Big Sur". In general, I was happy with everything, I didn’t even think about updates. Now I spontaneously upgraded to "Sequoia" and began to worry. How does a far from new and not top-end MacBook behave on this system? Which is better, use the old one and not update, so as not to lose performance and battery. Tell me, I'm not a very experienced user in this matter.
Thank you in advance!
Click to expand...
I would not worry. It will tailor the resources to your hardware. Of course incrementally there may be some areas where new features demand more performance but in those cases those features may or may not be active on your device but I am pretty sure you will experience no meaningful degradation over what you are doing now with Big Sur. You may actually have more features that you will like that you didn't know about rather than poor performance.

I would upgrade but that is me. I always update and once my device starts to noticeably slow down then I generally upgrade. With m series Macs you don't notice slow downs like past Intel and Power PC processors. M series is a new paradigm and M1 is a part of that!!
 
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WarmWinterHat said:
I can tell no performance difference between the day I bought my M1 Air (a couple months after it was released) and fully updated today.

It has 16gb ram, if that makes any difference.
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Same. I am finding Sequoia performs nicely on my M1 Air (16 GB RAM). At some point I'm sure there will come an OS update that will slow it down, but it seems it hasn't happened yet. We'll see how it does as the Apple Intelligence stuff rolls out...
 
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I installed 15.1 on my M1 (16GB). So far so good, no issues, performs well.
 
I have the same configuration MacBook Air (8GB/256GB/M1) and can say that Sequoia runs fine with the latest update.
 
I am still on big sur 11.2.3 for ability to sideload ios apps and run l2tp vpn share (ethernet in and wifi vpn out) on my m1 air. Not looking to upgrade at all.
 
All people ever say "performs fine", which has been proven too vague for me unfortunately, especially given Apple's history of under-optimising or even deliberately slowing down (we'll never know) older devices (and I'm not talking the about Batterygate, with which I think they got off cheap, but that's a different topic).

When I updated my Macbook Air M1/16 to Sonoma, I did notice some slowdown at certain tasks, like opening System Preferences and using Safari, which still fits into "runs fine" I guess, but makes me reluctant to update to Sequoia.
 
yoli said:
All people ever say "performs fine", which has been proven too vague for me unfortunately, especially given Apple's history of under-optimising or even deliberately slowing down (we'll never know) older devices (and I'm not talking the about Batterygate, with which I think they got off cheap, but that's a different topic).

When I updated my Macbook Air M1/16 to Sonoma, I did notice some slowdown at certain tasks, like opening System Preferences and using Safari, which still fits into "runs fine" I guess, but makes me reluctant to update to Sequoia.
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I think that is just humans brain. When something slowly worsened then it gets unnoticed.

I personally bought air m1 to test out the waters in comparison to powerful windows laptop. Wouldn’t lie as it was a tad slower than windows, but i figured i can live with it.

Next major os update, i start seeing beachballs everywhere. After ton of research was able to downgrade using another mac (how good i had old one laying around).

After that i keep my items in stock condition with no tuning. Like if i bought laptop today and it performs well to my taste, then i don’t touch it and let it be.
 
yoli said:
All people ever say "performs fine", which has been proven too vague for me unfortunately, especially given Apple's history of under-optimising or even deliberately slowing down (we'll never know) older devices (and I'm not talking the about Batterygate, with which I think they got off cheap, but that's a different topic).

When I updated my Macbook Air M1/16 to Sonoma, I did notice some slowdown at certain tasks, like opening System Preferences and using Safari, which still fits into "runs fine" I guess, but makes me reluctant to update to Sequoia.
Click to expand...

Just install it, make sure it works for you specifically, and roll it back if it doesn’t.


Easy peasy.
 
mblm85 said:
I have a 4 year old M1 8/256 and always update to the latest version available. Current running Sequoia 15.1. I'm a run-of-the-mill home user. Not noticed any reduction in performance.
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I am going to concur here!
 
mblm85 said:
I have a 4 year old M1 8/256 and always update to the latest version available. Current running Sequoia 15.1. I'm a run-of-the-mill home user. Not noticed any reduction in performance.
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How about navigating System Preferences compared to Monterey/Ventura?
 
Unlike iOS, MacOS is very mature OS so its updates are mostly cosmetic. There is not much fundamental difference in operations between the recent upgrades. Most drastic was probably Catalina. So Sequoia and Monterey are principally very similar, except some difference in widgets, icon color, etc
 
Yes, that's the conventional wisdom, but experience is vastly different. Remember the days, when a new OS X was actually faster that the previous one? Not anymore.
 
yoli said:
Yes, that's the conventional wisdom, but experience is vastly different. Remember the days, when a new OS X was actually faster that the previous one? Not anymore.
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Those are also the days of $20 dollar OS update fees. I guess they worked better when it was paid service and right now it almost like a free to play mmo releasing bug fixes every other week.

You remember how ios7 was actual redesign and much faster than ios 5 and 6? Long gone are the days.
 
Apple made their money on hardware back then too, and even more so today.
 
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