Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
So ... 6 months on are you Happy with your M1 Mac ?
- Thread starter hungryghosty
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Soundsource is the name. Surprisingly its optimized for M1. Still havent decided if i will buy it since i seem to be getting beachballs. Though i did update my mac today so I am not sure if its the update or soundsource causing it
Hmm. That is weird. I have to admit, I haven't had that problem because I use a speaker set with mine...sorry you are having trouble. I hope you get it figured out. If you have Linux level trouble-shooting skills it shouldn't be bad at all.
I take it AudioSwitcher didn't work? Might be worth a shot even if it doesn't for $2.
I take it AudioSwitcher didn't work? Might be worth a shot even if it doesn't for $2.
Last edited:
Wait until you have to uninstall some apps that involves using Finder to search through multiple folder locations and manually deleting files. Or, the plethora of subscription nagware, memory management bloat, broken palm rejection, slow boot time, slow app load time, etc.
This is the reason I use Arch Linux on as my main OS on my AMD PC. You did everything yourself so that you always know what happed to your system and how to fix it. Both Windows and macOS made decision for user and "assume" that is correct, which causes problem when the assumption is not correct, this is the tradeoff of been "just works".
I'm mostly pleased but my M1 Mac mini has been plagued by the wake/resolution issue and also (in the last two months) more frequent BT keyboard dropouts - with Apple's own Magic Keyboard.
I gave up hoping for a fix for these things. It would have happened by now.
I gave up hoping for a fix for these things. It would have happened by now.
I replaced my 13" 2012 MBA (i5/4GB/128GB) with a 2020 MBA (M1/8GB/256GB) because my 2012 was too old to upgrade to Big Sur (at least by the book it was too old). I was pleasantly surprised at how much smaller it was. I don't use it heavily (it's mainly for presentations), but have no complaints so far.
Last edited:
Apple has fixed Bluetooth issues already. Everyone still experiencing hickups either suffers from 2.4GHz interference that is beyond Apple's control or faulty hardware.
I'm "only" 3 months in with a pro 8gb/512gb.
To be honest, nearly every day I am regretting not getting 8gb. It's fine most of the time unless I have a tab run away in Firefox, which does unfortunately happen(usually Facebook).
With that said, the real disappointment has been Lightroom. On my ancient, relatively speaking, 2012 15" MBP, which I'd upgraded to 16gb RAM, it was no issue to have Lightroom running in the background doing an import/batch convert. On the M1, the system becomes all but unusable for anything else with Lightroom import/convert running. Even with Lightroom in the background but not doing anything, I find it uncomfortably slow. I can easily see that it's memory bound, and memory pressure shoots up to 70% or better.
This in and of itself is a big disappointment to me, as it's a step backwards from my nearly 10 year old computer. I bought in the first place convinced by all the articles saying 8gb on an M1 wasn't like 8gb on Intel. There's really no substitute for physical RAM, regardless of the tricks used.
For a couple of reasons, I needed to make this purchase through Best Buy and not Apple, and 16gb isn't an option for an M1 through them. I'm counting down the days until I can get either a 14" or 16" with an M2 and hopefully 32gb RAM, although I know at this point it's just speculation as to what the future will bring.
Otherwise, I love the fact that I quite literally can use it all day without plugging it in. I spend at least an hour, or usually more, on Zoom every day. Even with the 13" 2015 I no longer have, I wouldn't have dreamed of starting a Zoom session without at least a charger in tow. Now, before a meeting, I just glance at my battery and if it's at 50% or better, off I go. I'm often using something(if not a couple of things) in Zoom that need USB-A, and the hub I have now takes over both my ports even though it does have PD pass-through. Still, though, I've only charged through the hub a handful of times, and don't like to because of how hot it gets.
Starting the day fully charged, I could easily do a full(miserable) 8 hour day of video conferencing without charging and without getting anxious about running out. Taking video conferencing out of the equation, for normal web browsing/word processing use I could easily only plug it in every other day even using it 12+ hours a day. Battery life is insane-I don't think I could even get that on my iPhone.
To be honest, nearly every day I am regretting not getting 8gb. It's fine most of the time unless I have a tab run away in Firefox, which does unfortunately happen(usually Facebook).
With that said, the real disappointment has been Lightroom. On my ancient, relatively speaking, 2012 15" MBP, which I'd upgraded to 16gb RAM, it was no issue to have Lightroom running in the background doing an import/batch convert. On the M1, the system becomes all but unusable for anything else with Lightroom import/convert running. Even with Lightroom in the background but not doing anything, I find it uncomfortably slow. I can easily see that it's memory bound, and memory pressure shoots up to 70% or better.
This in and of itself is a big disappointment to me, as it's a step backwards from my nearly 10 year old computer. I bought in the first place convinced by all the articles saying 8gb on an M1 wasn't like 8gb on Intel. There's really no substitute for physical RAM, regardless of the tricks used.
For a couple of reasons, I needed to make this purchase through Best Buy and not Apple, and 16gb isn't an option for an M1 through them. I'm counting down the days until I can get either a 14" or 16" with an M2 and hopefully 32gb RAM, although I know at this point it's just speculation as to what the future will bring.
Otherwise, I love the fact that I quite literally can use it all day without plugging it in. I spend at least an hour, or usually more, on Zoom every day. Even with the 13" 2015 I no longer have, I wouldn't have dreamed of starting a Zoom session without at least a charger in tow. Now, before a meeting, I just glance at my battery and if it's at 50% or better, off I go. I'm often using something(if not a couple of things) in Zoom that need USB-A, and the hub I have now takes over both my ports even though it does have PD pass-through. Still, though, I've only charged through the hub a handful of times, and don't like to because of how hot it gets.
Starting the day fully charged, I could easily do a full(miserable) 8 hour day of video conferencing without charging and without getting anxious about running out. Taking video conferencing out of the equation, for normal web browsing/word processing use I could easily only plug it in every other day even using it 12+ hours a day. Battery life is insane-I don't think I could even get that on my iPhone.
I have exactly zero of those problems on my MBA. My windows machine on the other hand? Hmmm....Nah it's mostly fine too--of course I only use it for gaming.
That reminds me. Why does an update feel like I am updating a supercomputer at nasa? I can watch an episode on netflix during the time it takes to update
Nope., and nope, and nope.Oh I bet you do. Doesn't have to immediatly just before some other use has claimed the memory. Also it is just the sensible thing to do, since absolut no work needs to be done. Why you want empty memory over memory which can be reclaimed, but might serve a purpose till then.
You are quite focused on launch speed, which is not a thing I have noticed. Maybe you are running rosetta apps ?♂️
Also macOS has som online malware and certificate check, which might cause it. Read under Privacy protections:
Safely open apps on your Mac - Apple Support
macOS includes a technology called Gatekeeper, that's designed to ensure that only trusted software runs on your Mac.support.apple.com
Sure it does
Apple has some documentation about virtual memory. It has some priorities, but I am pretty sure swap is low on that list.
I don't use those app's but make sure you are running a arm version if possible. Capture one doesn't yet have a native arm version, but is comming:
https://support.captureone.com/hc/e...pture-One-run-on-my-ARM-based-Apple-computer-
According to adobe, the marts version of Photoshop is available as native arm. You can check in activity monitor by enabling the kind column under cpu (right click headers to enable it).
Again look at the memory pressure, not free memory. As long as memory pressure is green, you don't have an actual problem.
Check if your Mac needs more RAM in Activity Monitor
Use Activity Monitor on your Mac to see if memory is being used efficiently and if you need more memory (RAM).support.apple.com
Not gonna lie, that with 24GB in my iMac, I would have prefered 32GB if an option, but I don't have an actual problem and just as you, I should stop worrying unless it becomes a problem.
And no, memory pressure is not green.
I know what I'm talking about.
There is no good reason not to release the memory when I quit a program. Otherwise I would minimize the program.
If you never compared the launch speed between Windows and Mac, then you don't know what you are missing.
And I know Capture one is emulated, and I know my Photoshop is native. It doesn't make any difference if it's Chrome, any Office app, etc.
Currently I have my first teams meeting with my new M1 and holy s... even after 2h it doesn't get hot. Its ice cold! No fan! Unbeliveable! + losing maybe 8% per hour. My intel would have been dead after 3-4h.
So far so good! Been using M1 1tb/16gb MacBook Pro 13" as my daily driver for coming up on six months now.
The only issue I've had is an unfortunate hardware problem. Next time it happens, will have to take a video of it with my phone. It seems pretty random, but rarely I see a small circular flickering near the middle of the monitor/screen. It's about the size of a quarter, comes and goes, it's hard to see, but most noticeable on dark colors. Shows up on YouTube (dark theme) and Discord at times.
The only issue I've had is an unfortunate hardware problem. Next time it happens, will have to take a video of it with my phone. It seems pretty random, but rarely I see a small circular flickering near the middle of the monitor/screen. It's about the size of a quarter, comes and goes, it's hard to see, but most noticeable on dark colors. Shows up on YouTube (dark theme) and Discord at times.
This makes no sense at all. First, the SSD wear "issue" has been blown out of proportion by certain members of the media and Windows fanboys. Second, because of UMA the M1 Macs arguably make better use of system RAM than any x86 machine where the RAM is partitioned between the CPU and iGPU. If you think the M1 is a "beta" product then you either have extremely unreasonable expectations or just want to bash Apple and the M1 at every opportunity regardless of what the facts actually are.
I'm just under the six month mark for my Mac (bought it in mid-December), and I've been extremely impressed with it so far. The ability to leave my AC adapter at home and take the machine with me several days in a row is a gamechanger, because I only have to charge the machine once a week, sometimes twice a week if I'm heavily using it. I'm flying from Anchorage to Jacksonville at the end of the month, and I'm so confident in the M1s battery life that I will be packing my AC adapter in my checked bag and running the M1 entirely on battery for the trip across the country. Apps such as Photoshop, Premiere, and Lightroom open much faster on the Mac than they do on my Windows gaming PC, and I haven't had any issues regarding memory pressure hitting red even when running PS, LR, Firefox, and Zoom at the same time. The only time I managed to even get a spinning beachball to appear was when I intentionally pushed Safari as far as possible, which was 180 open tabs with ~20 of those being YouTube videos.
On the development side of things, the vast majority of the tools I use on a regular basis have either already been updated for the M1, run fine via Rosetta, or (in the case of the JDK) have alternatives already released that are M1-native. Code compilation is fast, and I've run head to head tests with my Mac and Windows machines both compiling the same code, and the M1 beats the Windows machine (i7 with 16GB RAM and a GTX1660ti videocard) every single time. I'm at the point now where the Windows machine (a gaming laptop) stays docked to my monitors and external drives as a desktop and the Mac has become my daily driver, whereas the Windows machine was my primary machine prior to picking up the M1 Mac.
On the development side of things, the vast majority of the tools I use on a regular basis have either already been updated for the M1, run fine via Rosetta, or (in the case of the JDK) have alternatives already released that are M1-native. Code compilation is fast, and I've run head to head tests with my Mac and Windows machines both compiling the same code, and the M1 beats the Windows machine (i7 with 16GB RAM and a GTX1660ti videocard) every single time. I'm at the point now where the Windows machine (a gaming laptop) stays docked to my monitors and external drives as a desktop and the Mac has become my daily driver, whereas the Windows machine was my primary machine prior to picking up the M1 Mac.
All related to slow disk I/O on M1. That's why Big Sur uses a big chunk of RAM to cache some apps in memory. Of course some will claim it's a non-issue or spin it so slow disk I/O is a positive.
Not knowing the bandwidth of the user to whom you were responding, I'd really not feel competent to make such an assertion - particularly since updates are in the multi-Gb realm these days.
Incidentally, on my Intel MBP, it took rather more minutes to update than on my M1 MBA. Which would indicate to me the issue is really not 'slow disk I/O on M1'.
And in response to the original question: Yes, very happy. The M1 MBA is the best laptop I've had, and is working flawlessly.
No one competent would make such a statement, because it's been discussed in tons of mailing lists. It's not the disk I/O on the M1. Updates take just as long on Intel Macs and for that matter also on Intel and AMD Hackintosh, even it you throw 980 PROs into the mix with the latter.
It's the way macOS works by design. Don't like it? Just go somewhere else. I have to do the same for some of my research, because there's no alternative to Nvidia GPUs. That doesn't mean macOS isn't my choice as a daily driver. Simple as that.
No one competent would make such a statement, because it's been discussed in tons of mailing lists. It's not the disk I/O on the M1. Updates take just as long on Intel Macs and for that matter also on Intel and AMD Hackintosh, even it you throw 980 PROs into the mix with the latter.
It's the way macOS works by design. Don't like it? Just go somewhere else. I have to do the same for some of my research, because there's no alternative to Nvidia GPUs. That doesn't mean macOS isn't my choice as a daily driver. Simple as that.
I think your post was really aimed at someone else, but I certainly agree with your points.
Nah, just wanted to back you up on what you said. I agree.
The text/fonts don't look sharp. It looks great on an LG ultrafine 4k though. Display port preferred over HDMI
I think that is more of a Big Sur thing, since I have seen that on my old non retina mba. I have tried enabled old style font smoothing in TinkerTool and can't recall, if I have seen it happen since.
Last edited: