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.
What will you be using your M1 Mac for?
- Thread starter The Cockney Rebel
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
A large part of my Mac needs still require Intel. So, I'm getting a 2020 4-port Intel Ice Lake 13" MacBook Pro. However, I'm likely getting an M1 MacBook Air on top of that. Said M1 Air's primary purpose is for me to become familiar with the changes to booting, restoring, recovering and setup on an Apple Silicon Mac (as these are very different from Intel Macs in that regard and I do consult for many Mac users that will be buying Apple Silicon Macs from here on out; also, I do IT for a living, so it behooves me to be as familiar with the new changes as possible). Otherwise, it won't be my primary Mac.
Pretty light duty as I'm a prof and it's a portable office machine:
It order of usage:
1. gmail via web-based access (100+ emails/day)
2. Zoom (10-15h / week)
3. Google Meet (5h / week)
4. MS Word (three PhDs fighting to finish and a paper / grant going in)
5. Preview (tons of PDFs)
6. MS Excel (simple number crunching ... are my colleagues submitting enough grants, papers)
7. web-based browsing (news, banking, etc...)
8. MS PPT (lecture slides and paper-ready figures)
9. Panopto (short videos)
10. Videos/news (PBS, SkyNews, RT, NFL Game Pass, Channel 4)
Seems to get around 10-14h per battery charge (even with DropBox/PureVPN, Zoom, YT open all the time). No battery leak overnight and even Zoom is less than 10%/h and I can get 8h of Zoom on a single battery charge.
It order of usage:
1. gmail via web-based access (100+ emails/day)
2. Zoom (10-15h / week)
3. Google Meet (5h / week)
4. MS Word (three PhDs fighting to finish and a paper / grant going in)
5. Preview (tons of PDFs)
6. MS Excel (simple number crunching ... are my colleagues submitting enough grants, papers)
7. web-based browsing (news, banking, etc...)
8. MS PPT (lecture slides and paper-ready figures)
9. Panopto (short videos)
10. Videos/news (PBS, SkyNews, RT, NFL Game Pass, Channel 4)
Seems to get around 10-14h per battery charge (even with DropBox/PureVPN, Zoom, YT open all the time). No battery leak overnight and even Zoom is less than 10%/h and I can get 8h of Zoom on a single battery charge.
Games (World of Warcraft Classic), Microsoft Office and web browsing. Going to do some photo editing with Capture One but I have not tried this yet.
Is WoW Classic Apple Silicon native too? Or is it just standard Shadowlands WoW that's Apple Silicon Native? Also, is the Blizzard launcher now native? Curious.
According to the activity monitor, neither the launcher nor the client is native. I don't play retail but supposedly shadowlands is.
That said, the game runs absolutely fine, 60 fps at medium graphics. The MBA gets a little warm when raiding and there's a lot happening on screen, so then I usually use an external monitor.
Using my Air M1 (8GB, 7 GPU) mainly for Office365 (Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, some Excel - using AS beta versions), Teams/Zoom, Web Design (mainly via Safari and Firefox), Affinity (mostly Publisher) and some light video editing. Also gaming (Hearts of Iron V) - which was not planned: It just runs way smoother than my main gaming rig (massive CPU hog, no proper optimization) - I don't know what Rosetta 2 does to it but unbelievably it runs way longer smooth than on my dedicated windows machine.
In work hooking it to my old iMac 2013, at home to one 4K monitor and one 1080 display using DisplayLink. Works flawlessly. I am so impressed by this machine. Had a Pro 13' 2015 before.
In work hooking it to my old iMac 2013, at home to one 4K monitor and one 1080 display using DisplayLink. Works flawlessly. I am so impressed by this machine. Had a Pro 13' 2015 before.
I use the Mini mostly for web development stuff. So several terminal things, vscode, Docker etc. But I typically like to keep many things open at the same time which is why I ordered a 16GB model to replace this 8GB one. I am also doing a little games.
I'm a mechanical building engineer and use AutoCAD and Revit for building design and construction. Of course, ACad and Revit don't run natively on Mac so I'm VPNing into a beefy windows machine for that work. Otherwise the MacBook Pro runs all the other general office stuff and zoom/teams meetings and my personal work.
I'm currently testing and migrating from a 2020 i5 MBP to the M1 and am so far impressed by a few things. First is how cool the M1 stays, the i5 pretty much always has the fans going on zoom meetings when I'm sharing a screen, MS Teams is even worse...get more than 3 people on a call and I share the screen leads to the fans full blast 75% of the time. second, it seems so snappy with applications even the intel based ones it is running via Rosetta.
I'm currently testing and migrating from a 2020 i5 MBP to the M1 and am so far impressed by a few things. First is how cool the M1 stays, the i5 pretty much always has the fans going on zoom meetings when I'm sharing a screen, MS Teams is even worse...get more than 3 people on a call and I share the screen leads to the fans full blast 75% of the time. second, it seems so snappy with applications even the intel based ones it is running via Rosetta.
Read, read, read, read and play about once you have. Get something like Mastering Swift 5 for example and go from there.
Take a look at the sample code Apple provides, once you’ve got even a basic handle on things. And of course, read the developer documentation provided by Apple. There’s a LOT of it, so don’t overdo it all at once, or you’ll probably be put off.
Don’t be afraid to ask when you’re stuck with something, you’ll find that in the development community, we’re pretty friendly and always happy to help. Ask questions, or check if they’ve been asked, on the Apple developer forums and places like StackOverflow.
At the end of the day. It’s not really any different to learning a foreign language. You’re just learning new words and terms for things, mixed in with physics and mathematics. So if none of that phases you, you’ll do just fine. Oh, and don’t rush, take it in small steps, you’ll hit too many walls if you try to run before you can walk.
Be autistic, you’ll pick it up in no time - ok, that’s just me, but I’m sure it helped 😂 😂
Thanks, Blou.
I knew you'd help out
.I'm going to start tomorrow. I'll be using my iPad Pro for video and reading, and I'll be coding on my MBP.
It's funny ... my iMac got me into photography. I had this big, beautiful machine, and it just cried out "INSPIRE ME!". The new MBP is now inspiring me to learn to code. This is the kind of thing I love about Apple products.
Thanks, Blou.
I knew you'd help out
I'm going to start tomorrow. I'll be using my iPad Pro for video and reading, and I'll be coding on my MBP.
It's funny ... my iMac got me into photography. I had this big, beautiful machine, and it just cried out "INSPIRE ME!". The new MBP is now inspiring me to learn to code. This is the kind of thing I love about Apple products.
Its good when you're inspired to learn new things, aside from the practical benefits one obtains from learning, it is incredibly beneficial to the old grey matter, particularly as you get beyond a certain age - speaking for myself there of course 🤣
Not making excuses, but I believe it's more difficult to learn new things when you're older. Kid's brains are like sponges, whereas us older peeps have brains like bricks!
I'll just have to apply myself
.Not making excuses, but I believe it's more difficult to learn new things when you're older. Kid's brains are like sponges, whereas us older peeps have brains like bricks!
I'll just have to apply myself
I completely agree, it can be more difficult to absorb all of the information we need to learn new things as we get older. However, I do think that keeping an active mind helps immeasurably. If you never stop learning, I've always had a thirst for knowledge, your brain stays active and heathy, which in turn make it easier to learn - well, that's my theory
Good theory, buddy.I completely agree, it can be more difficult to absorb all of the information we need to learn new things as we get older. However, I do think that keeping an active mind helps immeasurably. If you never stop learning, I've always had a thirst for knowledge, your brain stays active and heathy, which in turn make it easier to learn - well, that's my theory
My dream is to travel the world, staying at exotic places, while earning my money by coding along the way.
I'm always trying to think of "that one app" that's not been thought of yet.
I'll tell you mine, if you tell me yours
.PS: I bet it's really getting to you, not being able to use your new Air until Christmas!
I'll tell you mine, if you tell me yours
PS: I bet it's really getting to you, not being able to use your new Air until Christmas!
Nope, not in the least bit bot... Who am I kidding, it’s like some sort of cruel and unusual punishment
Don’t get me wrong, I love the anticipation part of getting any new shiny. But ordinarily that would just be putting an order in and waiting on delivery.
Knowing it’s been there for, either weeks, or feels like it, now that’s different. By the time Christmas comes, I may actually explode when I unwrap it and have a big whiff of that new Apple smell
I hope you've at least been able to check it's in working order?Nope, not in the least bit bot... Who am I kidding, it’s like some sort of cruel and unusual punishment
Don’t get me wrong, I love the anticipation part of getting any new shiny. But ordinarily that would just be putting an order in and waiting on delivery.
Knowing it’s been there for, either weeks, or feels like it, now that’s different. By the time Christmas comes, I may actually explode when I unwrap it and have a big whiff of that new Apple smell
I hope you've at least been able to check it's in working order?
Chance would be a fine thing. My dad took great delight in showing me the box, before it was wrapped up, just to wind me up. But that’s as close as I got.
Obviously it will be nice if it has no issues, considering it’s a present. But at least there’s the extended returns window for the festive season, and it’ll still be within the time limit for AppleCare to get added on.... Still, I’m hoping it all goes well, for my folks more than myself. My dad would get very upset if there was something wrong with it.
I'm going to be installing Crossover this week and play around with it to see just how close I can get to replacing my Windows machine outright...
Blizzard released a native version of Shadowlands on the same day the M1 Macs officially released. Neither the launcher nor any other Blizzard game is native at this time.
Day 1 can be a bit overwhelming. It will all fall into place eventually, just remember this, we absorb more information in the first 10 and last 10 minutes of any learning session, than we do what's in-between, So keep each session short and have a break to let your mind relax again, before you dive back in.
What are you starting off with?