What am I missing, apple made a point of highlighting it, i've seen articles with people being excited about it, I open my 2013 Air (being replaced by a new M1 air), and it wakes up instantly already, so what am I missing with the new macs?
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Wake from sleep, what am I missing?
- Thread starter snomys
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None of the reviews seem to talk about this. The most annoying part of using a laptop vs. a desktop or iPad is that whenever you open it up, it takes forever to connect to wifi and download all your new messages, email, changes to notes, photos, reminders, etc. Is that no longer the case? I've got to believe that's what they mean by "instant on" but I'd really like to know for sure.
This was not my experience. My 2014 would be awake by the time I completely opened the lid, but the M1 is awake as soon as the screen leaves the keyboard. Not sure of usefulness though.
I understand what you're saying OP, I had the exact same thought. Some video reviews refer to the M1 being always-on, perhaps this is the difference.
Apple introduced Power Nap many years ago which keeps our computers up-to-date—downloading messages, calendar events, notifications, etc., while asleep. So I'm honestly still confused (and still really curious) what this new feature actually means.
Yeah, but the question is how is this different than any of the existing MacBooks? It always seemed pretty much instant on.
If power nap works for you, great. My experience has been (every new OS I try it and eventually give up) that it's just too flakey. Maybe once every two weeks or so the machine won't wake, or it rebooted itelf overnight or whatever.
I assume this is a consequence of just trying to handle "minimal wakeup" for as small a set as possible of the IO and various compute pieces, all while using the complexities and legacy of x86 hardware. And that on M1's we'll see this with the reliability of iPads and iPhones.
A different aspect (uninteresting today, but likely to appear in future machines) is think about notifications.
Right now notifications either are internal to the machine (if power nap is working...) or simply non-existent. In future they will be much more iPhone-like. I expect there will be some sort of small indicator panel on the macbooks (and even the non-macbooks?) that will be able to show you that something has happened on the device that you may find interesting.
I guess as I started this, and had a play with my new one last night, it is different, even though I never noticed any issues waking up my 2013 MBA, this one does seem more "instant on". It's like everything else, it just does everything super quick. Hardly a breakthrough feature, but one more little thing that makes the computer feel faster.
It's a subtle but noticeable change. It's on as soon as you lift the lid whereas on my 2019 MBP, it's only ready after the screen is open in position. If you use Unlock with Apple Watch, there's no practical change though, it still takes a second to connect to the watch and unlock.