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What are you MOST impressed by, with your M1 Mac?
- Thread starter The Cockney Rebel
- Start date
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Performance, definitely insane level of performance for this form factor and power consumption level. MacBook Pro 13", 16GB here.
8 core 512GB/16GB MBA. I'm blown away by the speed. It stays very cool even under load. The battery life is incredible. I've never had a laptop last this long on a single charge. The speed at which it wakes up from sleep. It's already awake before I even finish opening the lid. My early 2015 MBA was much slower with this. The screen is very nice coming from a non-retina display. And I love the keyboard. It's way better than my old MBA and way, way, way better than the butterfly keyboards.
8/512 Mac Mini. I have had occasional high memory pressure issues that slow things down, but that depends on usage so it's not a problem with the computer itself.
That said, I am very impressed with the overall speed. The computer is also silent and there's cool air coming out of the fan from the back
CPU usage is very low most of the time even with several things open and the temperature is around 40C most of the time.
That said, I am very impressed with the overall speed. The computer is also silent and there's cool air coming out of the fan from the back
CPU usage is very low most of the time even with several things open and the temperature is around 40C most of the time.
Same spec as mine, but I upped the storage to 512.
Will be receiving mine on Friday, so I’ll update with my own opinions.
Base model pro...I’m most blown away by the price. For what it is, it blows out computers literally twice or more the price. It shouldn’t perform as well as it does or have the battery life it does, either. An iPhone easily runs $1000+ so the m1 laptops are nuthouse crazy at the price point
I forgot to mention the price too! These machines are incredible for what they cost
I agree, these new Pros (and the Airs) are extremely competitively priced.
My price increased a bit, as I went for 16 gigs of ram, and 512 gigs of storage.
Looking forward to receding mine on Friday.
Base model air... incredible performance for the price.
And the battery is endless!
And the battery is endless!
Base air - Price and battery life. Upgraded from a 2018 IP Pro 11'.
Its instant on and stays cool to the touch
Its instant on and stays cool to the touch
I'm impressed at how completely seamless the transition to Apple Silicon has been for me.
Everything I need/want to do works just fine, and I have to look at Activity Monitor CPU tab to see whether something's running native or via Rosetta.
2nd most impressed is I wouldn't know my M1 MBP 16/1T had a fan if it weren't for the specs/discussion/teardown.
Everything I need/want to do works just fine, and I have to look at Activity Monitor CPU tab to see whether something's running native or via Rosetta.
2nd most impressed is I wouldn't know my M1 MBP 16/1T had a fan if it weren't for the specs/discussion/teardown.
My M1 MacBook Air doesn’t seem to get beyond slightly warm no matter what I throw at it. It doesn’t seem to slow down much under heavy load and it doesn’t heat up. And with no fan, it is completely silent. There is nothing like it on the market.
Mine arrives on Friday.
I’ll feed back once I’ve had a chance to get to grips with it.
I’m coming from a 2008 iMac, so I should be impressed by everything
.I’ve ordered a 512 16 MBP.
Base mini
Overall speed and being dead silent, I don't think the fan has ever kicked on, which makes sense with the ambient temperature being only 12C I suppose.
Overall speed and being dead silent, I don't think the fan has ever kicked on, which makes sense with the ambient temperature being only 12C I suppose.
Day three with the M1 MacMini 512GB SSD and 16GB RAM. Even driving two 27" monitors everyday tasks are fast. This thing runs stone cold, and no noise that I can hear. So far so good!
Glad you’re enjoying your new Mac Mini.
Same specification as my MBP, which arrives on Friday.
I think everyone’s missing the point. Yeah, it’s fast, and — pinch yourself — we’re finally able to edit those 4k video files we couldn’t edit for the last three or four years. So these M1 machines actually are three years late.
What’s impressive to me is the Big Picture: that Apple was able to design and manufacture its own state-of-the-art chips, and pull away from a struggling Intel. Everyone with a 2018 iPad Pro knows how fast and powerful these ARM chips were getting. Apple was obviously running an ARM-based macOS in the lab for years, the same as Jobs had a prototype os running on Intel in the ppc days.
This M1 innovation is what comes from Apple’s trillion dollar pile of money selling iPhones. The whole long-term strategy is fascinating, with Steve Jobs’ philosophy, independent daring-do, and fingerprints all over it. Wonder what was in that proposed roadmap for Apple that Jobs’ left behind when he pulled his last shut down command?
What’s impressive to me is the Big Picture: that Apple was able to design and manufacture its own state-of-the-art chips, and pull away from a struggling Intel. Everyone with a 2018 iPad Pro knows how fast and powerful these ARM chips were getting. Apple was obviously running an ARM-based macOS in the lab for years, the same as Jobs had a prototype os running on Intel in the ppc days.
This M1 innovation is what comes from Apple’s trillion dollar pile of money selling iPhones. The whole long-term strategy is fascinating, with Steve Jobs’ philosophy, independent daring-do, and fingerprints all over it. Wonder what was in that proposed roadmap for Apple that Jobs’ left behind when he pulled his last shut down command?
Like so many already said. It's a mac and it's just like a mac! Except it isn't! At all! They switched to a completely new processor architecture and it feels just like it's one of the old machines. I don't think that's been done -ever- in computer history. It's really Apple - it just works - except the efforts they went through to pull this one off is on a completely different level.
And it works pretty well, too. Haven't tried anything special yet, just installing software and doing some office things, but except for the Rosetta startup delay, it's very fluid. I will be doing some video editing then next few days or weeks, to test whether I can safely hand an M1 mac to one of my guys and he'll be okay with it.
M1 mini 16/512.
And it works pretty well, too. Haven't tried anything special yet, just installing software and doing some office things, but except for the Rosetta startup delay, it's very fluid. I will be doing some video editing then next few days or weeks, to test whether I can safely hand an M1 mac to one of my guys and he'll be okay with it.
M1 mini 16/512.
Base MacBook Air M1 that I bought out of curiosity. I have a top spec MBPro 16 and Razor Blade Pro 17 which I use for CAD work and Twinmotion Architectural rendering.
This MBAir runs SketchUP, ArchiCAD and Twinmotion easy and fast. I am blown away by how well it runs them. I can only imagine how cool it would be if they were native!!
All other machine have 32GB ram and dedicated GPUs to run those programs!!!
This MBAir runs SketchUP, ArchiCAD and Twinmotion easy and fast. I am blown away by how well it runs them. I can only imagine how cool it would be if they were native!!
All other machine have 32GB ram and dedicated GPUs to run those programs!!!
Well, speed is okay. I'm used to the Core i9 in MacBook Pro 16" now so... this is somewhat just about the same as what I had before. <- meaning "I'm impressed, but probably not as much as many others". Some apps still feel like they are lagging a bit, but I'd fully expect them to perform better when they are compiled for arm64.
I do like how the machine runs very cool and quiet most of the time despite that level of computing performance.
Graphics... well, is a major step back compared to the 16" for me. I still feel like the 16" is 2-3x faster in most cases. Games that could run 2560 x 1440 @ 60fps almost max settings are now down to about 1440 x 900 medium settings with "almost" 60fps. Granted, though, both cooling and battery life are very impressive still when gaming. The 16" wouldn't last longer than 2 hours with the same game, whereas M1 Pro can probably do 5 - 6 hours. So... at least gaming on the go is now more feasible.
I do like how the community has moved fairly quickly to address the missing pieces of the puzzle. We now have full Linux VM (and Docker works!), plus more and more brew packages are fixed as daily, so my workflow is almost at a point where I can say that it's "on par" with how I had my Intel Mac set up, and I'm not missing much, if anything.
This probably also seems trivial, but... I'm actually most impressed with the responsiveness of the Touch Bar. It feels faster than it is on my 16" MacBook, and it can now keep up with my typing speed (I assign some special shortcut keys to Touch Bar).
I've got the Pro M1 16GB 1TB, by the way. I like the machine, but it's only making me very curious how the 16" with M1X will be. I do miss the extra graphics horsepower and the screen real estate.
I do like how the machine runs very cool and quiet most of the time despite that level of computing performance.
Graphics... well, is a major step back compared to the 16" for me. I still feel like the 16" is 2-3x faster in most cases. Games that could run 2560 x 1440 @ 60fps almost max settings are now down to about 1440 x 900 medium settings with "almost" 60fps. Granted, though, both cooling and battery life are very impressive still when gaming. The 16" wouldn't last longer than 2 hours with the same game, whereas M1 Pro can probably do 5 - 6 hours. So... at least gaming on the go is now more feasible.
I do like how the community has moved fairly quickly to address the missing pieces of the puzzle. We now have full Linux VM (and Docker works!), plus more and more brew packages are fixed as daily, so my workflow is almost at a point where I can say that it's "on par" with how I had my Intel Mac set up, and I'm not missing much, if anything.
This probably also seems trivial, but... I'm actually most impressed with the responsiveness of the Touch Bar. It feels faster than it is on my 16" MacBook, and it can now keep up with my typing speed (I assign some special shortcut keys to Touch Bar).
I've got the Pro M1 16GB 1TB, by the way. I like the machine, but it's only making me very curious how the 16" with M1X will be. I do miss the extra graphics horsepower and the screen real estate.
8gb. I bought the base one intentionally to test it know that it would only get better from there. I will definitely upgrade if they bring out more powerful machines next year.
This is what I'm wanting too. The Air M1 that I bought was just to "play" with and test. I will hand it on to my kids when a real M1 base MacBook Pro 16 comes out.