What are you MOST impressed by, with your M1 Mac?

[deeddawg]

I think the people that gripe such as myself use the function keys and touch type. Having the Touch Bar is counter productive to touch typing.

Yes - lack of tactile feedback would be an issue, and a very valid one.

Though I'd also say not everyone who touchtypes also does so with the Fn keys -- I've touchtyped for decades across myriad different keyboards yet don't use the Fn row for much beyond the hotkey functions.

 

[deeddawg]

What's different between the two Touch Bars?

See post #45 - original version didn't have a physical ESC key, and if there was a setting to display the hotkey functions like the prior physical row I was unaware of it.

 

[ipponrg]

Yes - lack of tactile feedback would be an issue, and a very valid one.

Though I'd also say not everyone who touchtypes also does so with the Fn keys -- I've touchtyped for decades across myriad different keyboards yet don't use the Fn row for much beyond the hotkey functions.

Yeah, I primarily use it for hot keys as well. The efficiency of hot keys in a daily workflow is understated. I actually used the physical function keys quite a bit before the Touch Bar. I don’t currently use the touchbar for anything other than sliding my brightness or volume. I manually click the UI with what the function keys did which is sometimes problematic because you have to look for it

 

[ipponrg]

I'm really looking forward to getting to grips with the Touch Bar.

Never had a Mac with one before, but I'm intrigued.

The biggest change I had to adjust when I first got it was training your fingers to not "float" over the touchbar because you might accidentally trigger a button with any finger. This is where the physical ESC button is valuable and is now a dedicated button. Depending on your posture, it can take some adjustment, but it's obviously doable. I have a 2016, 2017, and a 2018 MBP.

 

[The Cockney Rebel]

The biggest change I had to adjust when I first got it was training your fingers to not "float" over the touchbar because you might accidentally trigger a button with any finger. This is where the physical ESC button is valuable and is now a dedicated button. Depending on your posture, it can take some adjustment, but it's obviously doable. I have a 2016, 2017, and a 2018 MBP.

Thanks for the advice.

My M1 MBP arrived (at my nan’s) today, so I’ll get to play with it over the weekend.

I have a really good feeling about it.

 

[deeddawg]

Yeah, I primarily use it for hot keys as well. The efficiency of hot keys in a daily workflow is understated. I actually used the physical function keys quite a bit before the Touch Bar. I don’t currently use the touchbar for anything other than sliding my brightness or volume. I manually click the UI with what the function keys did which is sometimes problematic because you have to look for it

Can't think of anything that I normally do which is dependent on F1/F2/F3 etc keys beyond the volume/brightness stuff - always been more of a control/alt/shift modifier sorta guy anyway. Maybe 'cuz "back in the day" there wasn't a Fn row (VT100 terminal) or it wasn't easily reached touchtyping (IBM Model M style)?

Have you tried switching your touchbar over to Expanded Control Strip? Once I did that I quit messing with volume or brightness sliders. Granted, there's not the tactile feedback, but the functionality is as it was.

 

[bill-p]

Hopefully they will perform better on M1 Macs. One of the reasons i went with the M1 MBA over MBP was for the lack of touch bar.

It does. I hit the language switch key very often and it doesn't miss a beat (my typical typing speed is around 90WPM). The old touch bar implementation is quite laggy, and as someone wrote... it often froze up. This one is instant.

I'm guessing it's because we don't have to go through a T2 chip anymore. M1 takes care of everything, so communication between Touch Bar and system is now instant.

 

[ipponrg]

Can't think of anything that I normally do which is dependent on F1/F2/F3 etc keys beyond the volume/brightness stuff - always been more of a control/alt/shift modifier sorta guy anyway. Maybe 'cuz "back in the day" there wasn't a Fn row (VT100 terminal) or it wasn't easily reached touchtyping (IBM Model M style)?

Have you tried switching your touchbar over to Expanded Control Strip? Once I did that I quit messing with volume or brightness sliders. Granted, there's not the tactile feedback, but the functionality is as it was.

View attachment 1690787

View attachment 1690788

As a developer, you can map a lot of keys to function keys and not interfere with existing mappings.

Yeah, I knew about the Expanded Control Strip since my 2016 MBP.

There are 2 issues with your picture:
1. I previously held the "FN" key (or was it Option?) and hit the number keys that corresponded to each of those. There was no real need to have a dedicated touchbar key for them.
2. As I mentioned before, you cannot rest your fingers close to the touch bar.

My current set up looks like this: [ ESC VOL BRIGHTNESS ]

Yeah there's a lot of black areas between the "ESC" key and the Volume slider

 

[deeddawg]

As a developer, you can map a lot of keys to function keys and not interfere with existing mappings.

Makes sense for that use case. I'm not a developer (background is sysadmin/operations), which is likely why it isn't an issue for me.

There are 2 issues with your picture:
1. I previously held the "FN" key (or was it Option?) and hit the number keys that corresponded to each of those. There was no real need to have a dedicated touchbar key for them.

Interesting - first I've heard of that capability - when was that feature available and when was it removed?

If you prefer to set the touchbar to display F1 F2 F3 etc that's easy enough too.

2. As I mentioned before, you cannot rest your fingers close to the touch bar.

My current set up looks like this: [ ESC VOL BRIGHTNESS ]

Yeah there's a lot of black areas between the "ESC" key and the Volume slider

I've not had issues with my fingers inadvertently resting on/near the touchbar, but I can see that being a problem for folks who've developed that habit.

You may also wish to look at BetterTouchTool - I've not tried it myself but you might find it lets you make use of that large black space between ESC and the volume slider.

 

[MBHockey]

It does. I hit the language switch key very often and it doesn't miss a beat (my typical typing speed is around 90WPM). The old touch bar implementation is quite laggy, and as someone wrote... it often froze up. This one is instant.

I'm guessing it's because we don't have to go through a T2 chip anymore. M1 takes care of everything, so communication between Touch Bar and system is now instant.

i’m glad to hear that. i do prefer the physical row and will enjoy it in this macbook air for years while they continue to improve the touch bar

 

[ipponrg]

Interesting - first I've heard of that capability - when was that feature available and when was it removed?

My mistake. My memory is getting worse. It was bound to the physical Function keys. Take a look at the 2015 MBP. The function keys had the alternate option. Removed in 2016+

Yeah I am aware of BTT. BTT is a (partial) solution to a problem that was created as a solution to a non existent problem. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple takes their idea and runs with it natively similarly to how they took ideas from many Cydia apps.

 

[deeddawg]

My mistake. My memory is getting worse. It was bound to the physical Function keys. Take a look at the 2015 MBP. The function keys had the alternate option. Removed in 2016+

Yes - I'm aware of the dual-functions of the Fn key row, why was why I was puzzled at the number-key row mention. No worries, we're all getting older day by day.

FWIW, the touchbar does easily replicate the dual (alternate) functions of the Fn row if you wish. You can set it to display the Fn keys or Expanded Control strip as primary and the other when you hit the physical Fn key.


Thus you alternate between these two via holding the Fn key

Sure, still doesn't help if you're used to touchtyping the Function key row and/or resting your fingers on that part of the keyboard, but the functionality is there.

Notice the above preserves the keyboard backlight controls and Launchpad hotkey which you'll remember they've replaced on the M1 MBA with Spotlight, Dictation, and DoNotDisturb. Folks now have to go to Control Center to change keyboard backlight.

You can also reassign the Control Strip hotkeys as you wish:

 

[matrix07]

Frankly I’m most impressed that I can lightly touch, not click, the TouchID to wake my MBA AND get into desktop. Even iPhone can’t do that (definitely not my last Touch ID iPhone - 6s). iPhone has to be clicked to get in.
I found this by accident lol. I wouldn’t have thought it’s possible. Was very sure I need to wake the screen first before using Touch ID.

 

[Luposian]

I’m most impressed by the fact Apple actually ditched Intel and allowed me the privilege to actually want to be a Mac owner again! Yay!

 

[consumeritis]

It compiles code three times faster than my old laptop. I click build, and where I would normally glance away for half a minute to let the compiler do its thing, I don't need to, because it's already done.

 

[smithrh]

16 Gb mini here.

I'll get to the cool part in a second, but elsewhere on the site I read something along the lines of "Apple has made it possible for devs to manage memory in better ways, but it's still up to the dev to do it" and that's exactly right. If your app was a memory hog before, it's still a memory hog. I've sent a nicely worded email to a few devs with that sentiment, no replies yet, but holding out hope that the M1 momentum will carry though over time. I waited extra for the 16 Gb model, very glad I did.

OK, got that out of the way.

What I'm really happy with is the fact that sustained high CPU use isn't directly correlating to high temps. In fact, I haven't had any high temps. Max temp for any sensor with the fan never kicking in was... 160F, this after maybe 90 minutes of CPU in the 50-60% range.

Outstanding!

In fact, idle temperatures for nearly every sensor are not that much higher than ambient, which is crazy!

 

[vigilant]

So I've been using a MacBook Pro 16 since April. The fan is always on and LOUD during conference calls. I've said it before, but I spend probably 7 hours a day on conferences. Hearing that blasted fan drives me crazy.

After hearing all of the reviews and seeing the speed tests, I sold my wife's 2017 MacBook Pro 13 and my 2019 MacBook Pro 15 for Apple Silicon models.

My MacBook Pro 13 16/1TB I expect in a week. I upgraded my wife because she always complained that her laptop was really hot. I got her a MacBook Air base model I think 2 weeks ago. I've been using that until mine comes in.

The base MacBook Air with base memory beats the snot out of my sold MacBook Pro 16. Conference calls, no slowdown on MOST use cases, and doesn't get hot at all. Can I slow this thing down? Sure, I have on maybe 3 occasions. It's important to note that I can slow down my old MacBook Pro 16 daily. I completely expect my MacBook Pro 13 will blaze through my expectations considering it will be actively cooled, and have twice the memory. I typically like to have two displays connected, but the performance is just so high, I'm not looking back.

The real under appreciated feature is Rosetta, and the high efficiency cores. Rosetta just works. For me, it's just as fast as my MacBook Pro 16. Apps that are Apple Silicon built seem to start up with one bounce. I haven't done enough testing, but the performance, for a device that again, isn't actively cooled is just blowing me away.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Hopefully they will perform better on M1 Macs. One of the reasons i went with the M1 MBA over MBP was for the lack of touch bar.

I was quite happy when my wife told me she wanted to replace her Pro with an Air. I have a touchbar on a 15" and hate it.

 

[vigilant]

What's different between the two Touch Bars?

The biggest difference is he now has an escape key

 

[Captain Trips]

I purchased an M1 MacBook Pro (8/256) and I will say I am most impressed with the overall value, because I can't choose just one thing:

• Very fast, especially noticeable when first opening apps and when copying large amounts of files (50+ GB)
• Battery life
• Intel Mac apps on my M1 MBP seem to perform as well as on my Intel 2014 Mac mini

 

[magbarn]

I love how there's many comparisons to the 15/16 models as that's the winning combo for me. Almost as much power as my MBP 16 in a MBA 13 size package. No fan, minimal heat. It's weird using a laptop and not feeling heat on my lap! Blew away my 2020 MBP 13 so much I sold it the next day. The battery life also is crazy good

 

[Nozuka]

Base Macbook Air model.

- How cool it stays and that it is fanless (very nice, because i always use it on my lap)
- Battery Life
- But mostly, how Apple managed to make the Intel -> ARM transition so smoothly

Looking back it is very funny, because a lot of people here always said, that Apple is never going to switch to ARM, because the performance would be bad. And how annoying it would be to switch the platform again.

Yet here we are with the new M1 devices and they are very fast and almost everything still runs just fine.

 

[dmccloud]

I got the MBP with 8GB RAM and the 512GB SSD. What's impressed me the most is just how well the system performs on battery, and how much battery life I get from the machine. A close second is how cool this system runs. Last night after work, I decided to play some Diablo III (through the Battle.net app running via Rosetta 2), and the system only got warm, never hot even though the game was running on medium-high settings at full Retina resolution (2560x1600). I had a chance to play around with one of the Developer Toolkits prior to the official release of the new Macs, and what I saw there was enough reason to fully commit to the M1 when these models were released.

 

[The Cockney Rebel]

I got the MBP with 8GB RAM and the 512GB SSD. What's impressed me the most is just how well the system performs on battery, and how much battery life I get from the machine. A close second is how cool this system runs. Last night after work, I decided to play some Diablo III (through the Battle.net app running via Rosetta 2), and the system only got warm, never hot even though the game was running on medium-high settings at full Retina resolution (2560x1600). I had a chance to play around with one of the Developer Toolkits prior to the official release of the new Macs, and what I saw there was enough reason to fully commit to the M1 when these models were released.

And they charge really quickly.

I charged mine from zero to 100%. Set a timer on my iPhone for 2.5 hours and when I checked my MBP it was fully charged.

 

[spiderman0616]

Base model MBA here:

1. It's way faster than my 2019 15" MBP from work.

2. I got it almost a week ago and the battery is still at 43%.

3. Does not burn my leg skin off when I use it in my lap.

4. I can easily open it and pick it up off of surfaces, neither of which I ever figured out how to do gracefully with the 12.9" iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard that it replaced.

5. It runs all my essential iPad apps, and even most of the non-essential ones.

6. I don't feel like it's going to bend in half in my backpack.