So ... 6 months on are you Happy with your M1 Mac ?

[GadgetComa]

I have a gorgeous 32” Benq 4K monitor that I use for photo editing (Lightroom and Photoshop). I decided to replace my 2014 MacBook Pro with an M1 mini, figuring I’d get an iPad Pro for my mobile use (I just ordered the 2021 12.9“). I don’t regret it at all. My mini has 16G/1TB, which is the same config as my old laptop. Lightroom is so much faster even though it‘s not Apple Silicon-native yet. Everything I do on the mini is so much faster. The combined price of the mini and the new iPad Pro is about what a new laptop would cost, too.

 

[thegiftofdom]

Was mostly happy with my purchase, I bought the 8GB/512 configuration back in November. Absolutely handled everything I threw at it, but I noticed that swap usage was high. Decided to sell the 8GB Air and was able to pick up a 16GB/512 configuration this week. Noticing that swap usage is much lower, and it gives me peace of mind knowing that this machine will probably last at least 5+ years with the extra ram. The M1 Air is easily the best computer I've ever used.

 

[dogslobber]

My wife is as she can play WoW at max graphics settings for everything.

 

[valentinjesse]

Silent computing was the only benefit (Macbook Pro M1). The rest of the time I'm just using the activity monitor to close apps because at one point they all rely on swapping due to insufficient amount of RAM. Most of the time I just want to throw this M1 Facebook machine into the trash because of how many beachballs and severe slowdowns it greetes me with on a daily basis.

8GB of RAM in modern computers is a joke as most of it is already used by the bloated OS's, leaving you with very little room to execute tasks properly. I hope none of you will make the mistake of buying an 8GB, especially if multitasking or working with more than 50 browser tabs or using the Adobe suite. You will hate it

To put it in perspective, I have workflows where Finder alone uses 4GB of memory when having multiple folders opened up as tabs. A few layers on a psd and Photoshop is already at 4-8GB of memory used. Keep Chrome open in parallel and the computer melts. Most of the time it relies on swapping which is always much slower than the RAM.

Time for re-evaluation

Just bought another MacBook Pro, this time 16gb/2TB. What can I say other than This thing is shockingly fast!

Not sure what was the issue with the 8gb/512gb one. RAM too low ? Maybe a bad ssd from factory, maybe too much swap has ruined it gradually? I went from beach ball hell on a daily basis to everything launching almost instantly. I can keep tons of apps open without worrying about slowdowns. Amazing device that makes me even more hyped up for the new generation of 16 inch MacBook Pros

 

[za9ra22]

Time for re-evaluation

Just bought another MacBook Pro, this time 16gb/2TB. What can I say other than This thing is shockingly fast!

Not sure what was the issue with the 8gb/512gb one. RAM too low ? Maybe a bad ssd from factory, maybe too much swap has ruined it gradually? I went from beach ball hell on a daily basis to everything launching almost instantly. I can keep tons of apps opened without worrying about slowdowns. Amazing device that makes me even more hyped up for the new generation of 16 inch MacBook Pros

My MBA is 8Gb, and suffers none of the issues you describe here, so I suspect the problem lies with your specific laptop, or with something installed on it that is causing problems. Mine flies, with no beachballing. Admittedly, I don't run 50 tabs in a browser, but workflow on it is pretty much the same as my i5 iMac with 32Gb RAM - and it beats that pretty easily.

 

[spiderman0616]

Time for re-evaluation

Just bought another MacBook Pro, this time 16gb/2TB. What can I say other than This thing is shockingly fast!

Not sure what was the issue with the 8gb/512gb one. RAM too low ? Maybe a bad ssd from factory, maybe too much swap has ruined it gradually? I went from beach ball hell on a daily basis to everything launching almost instantly. I can keep tons of apps opened without worrying about slowdowns. Amazing device that makes me even more hyped up for the new generation of 16 inch MacBook Pros

Something had to have been wrong with your first one. I'm on the base model M1 MBA, and it has always been "shockingly fast" like you describe above. Games, recording, editing, designing, whatever I throw at it seems to work without the machine getting any hotter than slightly above room temperature, all while literally sipping battery. It's crazy how good this laptop is.

 

[souko]

I am really satisfied with M1 MBA 8/256

Pros
quiet
performance (video editing, photo editing, games, 30 tabs, and many apps open. Everything ok. Really fast and responsive UI)
battery life (minimum about 7 hours, average about 12 hours)
display
keyboard
trackpad
8GB memory is much more effective than 8GB RAM on Intel
price
materials and production quality
speakers
I use external monitor - DELL U2720Q and it works without any issue for me.
Big Sur after 11.4 (or even 11.3)
I played Dirt rally and Metro Last Light Redux on it and it was good experience for me.

Cons
Big Sur related. I am OK with that because this is big transition. I had kernel panics before 11.3 every 2 days or so, but never lost any work. I had excessive writes too. But 11.4 fixed it for me.



I came from MBP16" - performance is simillar but battery life is 2-3 times better on M1 for me. I tried to go back to MBP16" but the noise and 2,5h battery life during video conference was enough for me to sell it and use only MBA M1. (I have about 7 hours during similar scenario.)

I look forward for 14" Pro - I need 16/512 config (I know - my mistake that I did not take it with MBA) and looking forward for miniLED and next steps with Apple silicon.

 

[OneGrit]

Ordered MBP M1 at launch but had to wait about a month for it to come from China because I configured it with 16GB RAM and 512GB storage. The only thing I can say is that I haven't held any x86 laptop in higher regard since day one and I believe it's the beginning of the entire PC industry's transition from legacy x86 to more modern architectures.

 

[fwilers]

My 2013 iMac is much faster than that, and my gf's M1 MBA is even faster.
My 2019 HP EliteBook at work gets annihilated in every single aspect and it's not even funny.

I read your post and I suspect you either have a problematic unit, or you just don't like Apple and you're here to say it.

It's startup of those programs from clean boot. I have one and so does my wife, so I doubt we have two problematic air's. Outlook connected to exchange is the 2nd worst next to Teams. I can actually open owa from web browser faster, which shouldn't be the case. And this is our company's 2019 Exchange server that I setup and run I've deployed out over 100 Lenovo's that can all start and run those programs much faster.
The point is, Apple doesn't give 3rd parties the magic sauce needed for immediate launching of programs like it does it's own.
Just watch a youtube video or test yourself. Try Edge, Chrome, Remote Desktop, Spotify, Word, Teams, and count how long after you click until you can actually use the program.

Your assumption that I don't like Apple is based on what? Just made up fear that you don't like to hear something bad?
I have an iphone 12, apple tv 4k, ipad air, 2014 macbook air, 2018 macbook pro, macbook air m1, and a ipad pro 12.9" on order. I guess I should stop buying these if I don't like Apple.

 

[lumpycustard]

Extremely happy. I've been using Windows for 25 years, since i was a kid, and while I still continue to use Windows, the M1 was the moment that finally convinced me to give macOS a serious try. Up until the M1 i had used iPads and iPhones for years and years, but the M1 was when I finally changed my daily workflow and jumped into macOS 100%

The M1 is truly a paradigm shift in personal computing, incorporating excellent day to day performance, portability, and insane battery life, in a neat, clean package. Up until this point i had been suggesting the Dell XPS13 to everyone considering a new laptop, but the MBA and MBP are now at the top of my list. I personally don't feel there's a better, more comprehensively equipped laptop for the price.

I'm currently on a 512GB MBP 13" with 8GB of RAM and i've honestly not noticed any performance degradation despite the hundreds of tabs i have open in Chrome. I've got dozens of apps running in the background ranging from Photoshop, RoyalTSX and SSH for server management, Apple Configurator preparing iPhones in the background, Outlook, Word, Excel -- point is, everything stays open, and the MBP doesn't skip a beat. At this point my Windows laptop running 16GB of RAM would be struggling.

if a redesigned 14" MBP is released it'll be a day 1 purchase for me. The 16" is too large and unwieldy for me.

 

[PsykX]

Your assumption that I don't like Apple is based on what?

Your whole rant on May 1st. But I see I was mistaken.

Of course be perfect from day 1 - even if it's Apple. The good old days of "it just works" are over and far behind us.

But the number of problems you reported about M1 Macs is just unreal. Even one of my IT friends who hates Apple with passion, who finds problems everywhere, had to try one for work last week and... well he was actually quite impressed.

By the way, if developers use public frameworks and the latest version of Swift and Xcode, it's literally just a click away to compile as a native ARM application. Apple has somewhat of an edge because they know their strategy, they know what's coming, but committed developers should not really struggle to release a native ARM app.