11 ms·

Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Review

130 points by cube2222 6y ago

simonebrunozzi 6y ago
> compared to the last version of this [Macbook Pro] model we reviewed in 2019, the new one has no concerns with its keyboard, excellent battery life, and even better performance. It’s an upgrade all around. That's the most important part.
_fat_santa 6y ago
I'm still cautiously skeptical about the new M1 chips. While for typical users running chrome, facetime, mail, etc it should be fine, I'm still wondering how it will fare under other workloads. I know apple mentioned that it will be able to export video much faster than intel chips, I'm still wondering what performance will look like for various tech stacks.
- jamil7 6y ago
  XCode initial and incremental build times are faster than a 16" MBP on all the M1 macs.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Very interesting. Do you have a reference for that?
    - Synaesthesia 6y ago
      https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro-is-powerful-but-its-the-battery-life-that-will-blow-you-away/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro...
- drivebycomment 6y ago
  Based on the analysis of https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste... , M1 is absolutely competitive with the best laptop class CPUs in raw performance, while being dramatically lower in power consumption. This is definitely one of the best out-of-order processor pipelines ever created.
danpalmer 6y ago
It's worth noting that while there are still quite a few caveats to the M1 MacBook Pro when looking at "pro workflows", this is only intended to replace the "low end" MacBook Pro which was already quite restricted. Given all the missing parts could require a fair bit more development (eGPU support is not something iPhones have needed so far after all), I expect we'll see these on the next generation of CPUs, along with a range of new higher-end MacBook Pros, the iMac Pro, potentially even the Mac Pro.
- jamil7 6y ago
  I don't think we'll see a Mac Pro for a long time, this will be the most difficult (and interesting) one to see move over to ARM.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    Why? ARM server CPUs are already a thing for years now.
    - api 6y ago
      Discrete GPUs probably, though I don't see a reason Apple couldn't cram more of their own GPU cores onto a die.
  - qz2 6y ago
    I predict it will disappear from the market within 2 years with no replacement leaving people to limp along on an iMac. Not like it hasn't happened before.
    - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
      I've been wondering about that. I have a suspicion that the sales volumes don't justify the effort Apple needs to put into a device like that. On the other hand it would be nice to see a slightly more grown up MacMini, something with expansion in mind.
judge2020 6y ago
> We found one strange Rosetta bug in this test: we set Premiere to export at a 40mb/s bitrate, but in Rosetta across three M1 Macs, it would deliver… 20. When we set it to 80mb/s, it delivered 40. Sure. We told Adobe, and the company gently reminded us that running Creative Cloud apps in Rosetta 2 is unsupported. So... be careful out there. Rosetta 2 might be a bumpy ride, but nice to see that Creative Cloud tools even work in it.
- mmargerum 6y ago
  I saw something yesterday where Rosetta 2 ran apps faster than real Intel chips on the M1. Crazy
  - StillBored 6y ago
    It was noted years ago (https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/1999/HPL-1999-78.html https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/1999/HPL-1999-78.html) that dynamic runtime optimization could speed up native programs (aka x86 on x86, or in the above case pa-risc on pa-risc). But in the end, the reason we don't have similar systems everywhere today is that the vast majority of the benifit has been consumed by modern OoO machines and Profile guided optimization. If your seeing significant x86 speedups in rosetta its likely one of two things are happening. So you could be running very poorly optimized x86 code, or its a system call/graphics/etc heavy benchmark which is spending the majority of its time in the OS. The latter was a big conversation during the early PPC years when apple was claiming their machines were faster than x86's running x86 code because of this one x86 benchmark that ran better on a PPC mac (can't remember the name). But it turned out it was mostly an OS benchmark, and 99% of the time it was just measuring native PPC macos performance vs windows95. The former (poorly optimized x86) can happen for a number of reasons, one of the most common is people targeting the base x86-64 instruction set and ignoring avx/etc, or just simply unoptimized builds.
- diebeforei485 6y ago
  The native Apple Silicon version of Photoshop is already available in beta. Most professional apps (the ones that cost real money) will be available natively within a year.
joenathanone 6y ago
I wonder why the performance for Microsoft's Surface Pro X under performs so much in comparison... Color me surprised, I didn't know ARM could perform so well for desktop applications.
- qz2 6y ago
  Because Microsoft, much like most of the ecosystems around ARM, didn't build their own CPU. They got an off the shelf mobile chipset, customised it slightly, rebranded it and then chucked the whole shit heap of windows on top.
  - Eric_WVGG 6y ago
    I have also heard that Microsoft put lower priority on the x86 emulation layer, because they felt like if it was really good, developers would have no incentive to make native compiles. While this sounds instinctively ridiculous to me, as of late I’ve become very cognizant of general laziness in our industry, so who knows…
    - qz2 6y ago
      That’s about right. I remember when they switched windows phone 7 from CE to NT with similar arrogance and everyone went pfft and walked away.
    - the_lucifer 6y ago
      > I have also heard that Microsoft put lower priority on the x86 emulation layer, because they felt like if it was really good, developers would have no incentive to make native compiles. It's not surprising to me, Microsoft has always prided on having backwards compatibility as much as possible so this is in character for them
oatmeal_croc 6y ago
Is any web developer planning to get the new Apple Silicon Macs? How's docker support (for ARM and x86 images)? Do the major IDEs work on Rosetta? What's support looking like for languages like GO, Rust now/in the near future?
- cpuguy83 6y ago
  All (-ish?) the core images have arm variants, and no need to change your "FROM" for those. Docker itself does not currently work on M1 Macs, though.
- supermatt 6y ago
  No docker support at present - will be just ARM images when it is ready.
- kabes 6y ago
  Docker is a wip: https://www.docker.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-chips-and-docker/ https://www.docker.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-chips-and-docke... .
  - jaequery 6y ago
    Docker never really worked well on Mac to begin with. Can’t wait for it to work how it should have worked from day one.
- dawnerd 6y ago
  vscode is getting an arm build by end of month apparently. I use vscode's remote development feature so the m1 macs are actually perfect for me.
  - AgloeDreams 6y ago
    There already is an insider build :)
    - dawnerd 6y ago
kabes 6y ago
Too bad it only supports 1 external display, especially for the macbook pro.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  It is the entry level device, hopefully it will be a different picture in a few months.
- diehunde 6y ago
  Ultrawide monitor to the rescue!
nedsma 6y ago
More than awesome performance. Unfortunately, I'm quite reluctant to upgrading, I'll pass a generation or two. I don't want to spend time baffling around software issues.
_zachs 6y ago
Once they remove the touch bar and add back normal function keys I'll switch back from my ThinkPad to a Macbook Pro.
- freehunter 6y ago
  You can get the function keys with the Air, which has the same internals as this Pro.
  - gootdude 6y ago
    The air is missing the active cooling. The next upgrade that puts apple chip in the 4 port pro would be the ideal version to purchase without a Touch Bar impacting usability and battery life.
    - Eric_WVGG 6y ago
      The active cooling might not make as big a difference as you think… in The Verge’s benchmarks, literally the only place they saw a significant difference in speed was a multicore benchmark involving 30 solid minutes under full load. https://www.theverge.com/21569603/apple-macbook-air-m1-review-price-specs-features-arm-silicon https://www.theverge.com/21569603/apple-macbook-air-m1-revie...
      - gootdude 6y ago
        The results are excellent and give me hope they will be able to keep the chips from throttling with active cooling under the most stressful loads. My current work laptop is a the 16 inch 2019 Macbook Pro with 8-Core Intel Core i9 at 2.3 GHz, and using the Intel Power Gadget, the form factor can not achieve the max frequency of 3.6ghz on a single core. I have the machine elevated on a stand with the maximum air flow, even with no external monitors connected, it still throttles.
    - marfan 6y ago
      >The air is missing the active cooling. You say this like it's a negative thing. For me, personally, computer fan noise is uniquely aggravating. I wanted to buy the 2015 Macbook specifically because it was fanless, but decided against it because a x86 CPU trying to run in that fanless form factor essentially made it a $1K netbook. Now that we're seeing the M1 MacBook Air rival the 16-inch MacBook Pro from last year in an extended CineBench test (even through Rosetta!), it's a different story entirely. I'm not saying active cooling doesn't help, obviously the Air is going to thermal throttle in cases the Pro wouldn't. But I am saying that the new chipset needs active cooling a lot less than the old one did; not just cause it's RISC vs CISC but its also 'cause it's TSMC's 5nm process vs Intel's 14nm one. Also, I'd give up on the hope that they'd get rid of their stupid meme bar on the Pro. They seem committed to it.
zepto 6y ago
“Apple’s insistence that reaching up to touch a laptop screen is too burdensome is just getting silly, especially when that is not a problem on the iPad and across the universe of Windows laptops, and most especially when these laptops can run iPhone and iPad apps natively.“ In a way Nilay is right - ultimately it makes no sense not to allow touch interaction. However Apple is also right in a different way. If apps are designed to work primarily with touch, reaching up all the time will negate the value of keyboard and touch pad and will be needlessly fatiguing. Apps need to be designed to accommodate both kinds of usage. Windows gets away with this because most apps are designed as laptop first. By delaying the introduction of the touch screen, Apple is pressuring developers to make their Apps work in both contexts. When they introduce a touch screen they’ll say something like “Back in 2020 most touch apps weren’t designed for the kinds of uses laptop and desktop users expect. Since then developers have done an amazing job of giving all our our users a great experience. Thanks in part to their hard work, today we’re proud to introduce the first computer that truly combines what we have learned about how to build great touch apps, with the decades of understanding that has gone into making MacOS into the worlds most advanced desktop operating system.”
- woah 6y ago
  I’ve used windows laptops with touchscreens a lot and never really used the touchscreen. There doesn’t seem to be a point.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    The most annoying thing that can happen to a laptop short of breaking is smudges on the screen. I really don't want to ever have to be required to physically touch the screen in order to complete any operation.
  - Technically 6y ago
    I've found it has uses with pairing. Otherwise yea I agree.
  - wlesieutre 6y ago
    I used to have a Surface, and when I was using it with the keyboard the most common thing I'd do on the touchscreen was scrolling. You can extend your arm out and rest your wrist off to the side, which puts your thumb in a nice spot to reach an inch or two at the bottom of the screen. I used pinch to zoom on the web as well. It's just nicer than weird key combos like ctrl-wheel, and your average user doesn't even know that exists. But I bet they know about pinch to zoom.
Shivetya 6y ago
Interesting for many games, Blizzard announced native support for World of Warcraft[0] on Apple Silicon. This give hope to other games from Blizzard coming to the platform as well and may encourage other developers to join in. The M1 has been shown to run Civ6 and Rise to Tomb Raider through Rosetta faster than previous integrated GPU mac hardware[1] [0]https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/mac-support-update-november-16/722775 https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/mac-support-update-n... [1]https://www.macworld.com/article/3597198/13-inch-macbook-pro-m1-review-amazing-breakthroughs-in-processing-and-battery-performance.html https://www.macworld.com/article/3597198/13-inch-macbook-pro...
achow 6y ago
Super interesting part for me was - on this legacy apps would run just as fast as they would on Intel Macs. But the real nut of it is that it has managed to make a chip so powerful that it can take the approximate 26% hit (see the following charts) in raw power to translate apps and still make them run just as fast if not faster than MacBooks with Intel processors. https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro-is-powerful-but-its-the-battery-life-that-will-blow-you-away/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro... We run a standard Adobe Premiere export test, and the MacBook Air beats the latest Intel laptops with integrated graphics and holds its own with some laptops with proper discrete GPUs... the thing to pay attention to is that Adobe Premiere haven’t been optimized for this chip yet. They’re running through Apple’s Rosetta 2 translation layer. https://www.theverge.com/21569603/apple-macbook-air-m1-review-price-specs-features-arm-silicon https://www.theverge.com/21569603/apple-macbook-air-m1-revie...
dr_dshiv 6y ago
In looking for another device to supplement a macbook pro, an ipad with magic keyboard or macbook air?
- Goosee 6y ago
  If you currently have an intel based mbp, choose the m1 mba if you think the m1 might replace the mbp in the future (i.e. same performance in more portable form factor) Otherwise get the ipad with keyboard & pencil if it's just a 'supplement'. Pencil provides a whole new layer of input possibilities. If you read a lot of PDF documents, ipad is also really nice.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

130 points by cube2222 6y ago

> compared to the last version of this [Macbook Pro] model we reviewed in 2019, the new one has no concerns with its keyboard, excellent battery life, and even better performance. It’s an upgrade all around. That's the most important part.

_fat_santa 6y ago

I'm still cautiously skeptical about the new M1 chips. While for typical users running chrome, facetime, mail, etc it should be fine, I'm still wondering how it will fare under other workloads. I know apple mentioned that it will be able to export video much faster than intel chips, I'm still wondering what performance will look like for various tech stacks.

jamil7 6y ago
XCode initial and incremental build times are faster than a 16" MBP on all the M1 macs.
- zepto 6y ago
  Very interesting. Do you have a reference for that?
  - Synaesthesia 6y ago
    https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro-is-powerful-but-its-the-battery-life-that-will-blow-you-away/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro...
drivebycomment 6y ago
Based on the analysis of https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste... , M1 is absolutely competitive with the best laptop class CPUs in raw performance, while being dramatically lower in power consumption. This is definitely one of the best out-of-order processor pipelines ever created.

danpalmer 6y ago

It's worth noting that while there are still quite a few caveats to the M1 MacBook Pro when looking at "pro workflows", this is only intended to replace the "low end" MacBook Pro which was already quite restricted. Given all the missing parts could require a fair bit more development (eGPU support is not something iPhones have needed so far after all), I expect we'll see these on the next generation of CPUs, along with a range of new higher-end MacBook Pros, the iMac Pro, potentially even the Mac Pro.

jamil7 6y ago
I don't think we'll see a Mac Pro for a long time, this will be the most difficult (and interesting) one to see move over to ARM.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  Why? ARM server CPUs are already a thing for years now.
  - api 6y ago
    Discrete GPUs probably, though I don't see a reason Apple couldn't cram more of their own GPU cores onto a die.
- qz2 6y ago
  I predict it will disappear from the market within 2 years with no replacement leaving people to limp along on an iMac. Not like it hasn't happened before.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    I've been wondering about that. I have a suspicion that the sales volumes don't justify the effort Apple needs to put into a device like that. On the other hand it would be nice to see a slightly more grown up MacMini, something with expansion in mind.

judge2020 6y ago

> We found one strange Rosetta bug in this test: we set Premiere to export at a 40mb/s bitrate, but in Rosetta across three M1 Macs, it would deliver… 20. When we set it to 80mb/s, it delivered 40. Sure. We told Adobe, and the company gently reminded us that running Creative Cloud apps in Rosetta 2 is unsupported. So... be careful out there. Rosetta 2 might be a bumpy ride, but nice to see that Creative Cloud tools even work in it.

mmargerum 6y ago
I saw something yesterday where Rosetta 2 ran apps faster than real Intel chips on the M1. Crazy
- StillBored 6y ago
  It was noted years ago (https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/1999/HPL-1999-78.html https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/1999/HPL-1999-78.html) that dynamic runtime optimization could speed up native programs (aka x86 on x86, or in the above case pa-risc on pa-risc). But in the end, the reason we don't have similar systems everywhere today is that the vast majority of the benifit has been consumed by modern OoO machines and Profile guided optimization. If your seeing significant x86 speedups in rosetta its likely one of two things are happening. So you could be running very poorly optimized x86 code, or its a system call/graphics/etc heavy benchmark which is spending the majority of its time in the OS. The latter was a big conversation during the early PPC years when apple was claiming their machines were faster than x86's running x86 code because of this one x86 benchmark that ran better on a PPC mac (can't remember the name). But it turned out it was mostly an OS benchmark, and 99% of the time it was just measuring native PPC macos performance vs windows95. The former (poorly optimized x86) can happen for a number of reasons, one of the most common is people targeting the base x86-64 instruction set and ignoring avx/etc, or just simply unoptimized builds.
diebeforei485 6y ago
The native Apple Silicon version of Photoshop is already available in beta. Most professional apps (the ones that cost real money) will be available natively within a year.

joenathanone 6y ago

I wonder why the performance for Microsoft's Surface Pro X under performs so much in comparison... Color me surprised, I didn't know ARM could perform so well for desktop applications.

qz2 6y ago
Because Microsoft, much like most of the ecosystems around ARM, didn't build their own CPU. They got an off the shelf mobile chipset, customised it slightly, rebranded it and then chucked the whole shit heap of windows on top.
- Eric_WVGG 6y ago
  I have also heard that Microsoft put lower priority on the x86 emulation layer, because they felt like if it was really good, developers would have no incentive to make native compiles. While this sounds instinctively ridiculous to me, as of late I’ve become very cognizant of general laziness in our industry, so who knows…
  - qz2 6y ago
    That’s about right. I remember when they switched windows phone 7 from CE to NT with similar arrogance and everyone went pfft and walked away.
  - the_lucifer 6y ago
    > I have also heard that Microsoft put lower priority on the x86 emulation layer, because they felt like if it was really good, developers would have no incentive to make native compiles. It's not surprising to me, Microsoft has always prided on having backwards compatibility as much as possible so this is in character for them

oatmeal_croc 6y ago

Is any web developer planning to get the new Apple Silicon Macs? How's docker support (for ARM and x86 images)? Do the major IDEs work on Rosetta? What's support looking like for languages like GO, Rust now/in the near future?

cpuguy83 6y ago
All (-ish?) the core images have arm variants, and no need to change your "FROM" for those. Docker itself does not currently work on M1 Macs, though.
supermatt 6y ago
No docker support at present - will be just ARM images when it is ready.
kabes 6y ago
Docker is a wip: https://www.docker.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-chips-and-docker/ https://www.docker.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-chips-and-docke... .
- jaequery 6y ago
  Docker never really worked well on Mac to begin with. Can’t wait for it to work how it should have worked from day one.
dawnerd 6y ago
vscode is getting an arm build by end of month apparently. I use vscode's remote development feature so the m1 macs are actually perfect for me.
- AgloeDreams 6y ago
  There already is an insider build :)
  - dawnerd 6y ago

kabes 6y ago

Too bad it only supports 1 external display, especially for the macbook pro.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
It is the entry level device, hopefully it will be a different picture in a few months.
diehunde 6y ago
Ultrawide monitor to the rescue!

nedsma 6y ago

More than awesome performance. Unfortunately, I'm quite reluctant to upgrading, I'll pass a generation or two. I don't want to spend time baffling around software issues.

_zachs 6y ago

Once they remove the touch bar and add back normal function keys I'll switch back from my ThinkPad to a Macbook Pro.

freehunter 6y ago
You can get the function keys with the Air, which has the same internals as this Pro.
- gootdude 6y ago
  The air is missing the active cooling. The next upgrade that puts apple chip in the 4 port pro would be the ideal version to purchase without a Touch Bar impacting usability and battery life.
  - Eric_WVGG 6y ago
    The active cooling might not make as big a difference as you think… in The Verge’s benchmarks, literally the only place they saw a significant difference in speed was a multicore benchmark involving 30 solid minutes under full load. https://www.theverge.com/21569603/apple-macbook-air-m1-review-price-specs-features-arm-silicon https://www.theverge.com/21569603/apple-macbook-air-m1-revie...
    - gootdude 6y ago
      The results are excellent and give me hope they will be able to keep the chips from throttling with active cooling under the most stressful loads. My current work laptop is a the 16 inch 2019 Macbook Pro with 8-Core Intel Core i9 at 2.3 GHz, and using the Intel Power Gadget, the form factor can not achieve the max frequency of 3.6ghz on a single core. I have the machine elevated on a stand with the maximum air flow, even with no external monitors connected, it still throttles.
  - marfan 6y ago
    >The air is missing the active cooling. You say this like it's a negative thing. For me, personally, computer fan noise is uniquely aggravating. I wanted to buy the 2015 Macbook specifically because it was fanless, but decided against it because a x86 CPU trying to run in that fanless form factor essentially made it a $1K netbook. Now that we're seeing the M1 MacBook Air rival the 16-inch MacBook Pro from last year in an extended CineBench test (even through Rosetta!), it's a different story entirely. I'm not saying active cooling doesn't help, obviously the Air is going to thermal throttle in cases the Pro wouldn't. But I am saying that the new chipset needs active cooling a lot less than the old one did; not just cause it's RISC vs CISC but its also 'cause it's TSMC's 5nm process vs Intel's 14nm one. Also, I'd give up on the hope that they'd get rid of their stupid meme bar on the Pro. They seem committed to it.

zepto 6y ago

“Apple’s insistence that reaching up to touch a laptop screen is too burdensome is just getting silly, especially when that is not a problem on the iPad and across the universe of Windows laptops, and most especially when these laptops can run iPhone and iPad apps natively.“ In a way Nilay is right - ultimately it makes no sense not to allow touch interaction. However Apple is also right in a different way. If apps are designed to work primarily with touch, reaching up all the time will negate the value of keyboard and touch pad and will be needlessly fatiguing. Apps need to be designed to accommodate both kinds of usage. Windows gets away with this because most apps are designed as laptop first. By delaying the introduction of the touch screen, Apple is pressuring developers to make their Apps work in both contexts. When they introduce a touch screen they’ll say something like “Back in 2020 most touch apps weren’t designed for the kinds of uses laptop and desktop users expect. Since then developers have done an amazing job of giving all our our users a great experience. Thanks in part to their hard work, today we’re proud to introduce the first computer that truly combines what we have learned about how to build great touch apps, with the decades of understanding that has gone into making MacOS into the worlds most advanced desktop operating system.”

woah 6y ago
I’ve used windows laptops with touchscreens a lot and never really used the touchscreen. There doesn’t seem to be a point.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  The most annoying thing that can happen to a laptop short of breaking is smudges on the screen. I really don't want to ever have to be required to physically touch the screen in order to complete any operation.
- Technically 6y ago
  I've found it has uses with pairing. Otherwise yea I agree.
- wlesieutre 6y ago
  I used to have a Surface, and when I was using it with the keyboard the most common thing I'd do on the touchscreen was scrolling. You can extend your arm out and rest your wrist off to the side, which puts your thumb in a nice spot to reach an inch or two at the bottom of the screen. I used pinch to zoom on the web as well. It's just nicer than weird key combos like ctrl-wheel, and your average user doesn't even know that exists. But I bet they know about pinch to zoom.

Shivetya 6y ago

Interesting for many games, Blizzard announced native support for World of Warcraft[0] on Apple Silicon. This give hope to other games from Blizzard coming to the platform as well and may encourage other developers to join in. The M1 has been shown to run Civ6 and Rise to Tomb Raider through Rosetta faster than previous integrated GPU mac hardware[1] [0]https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/mac-support-update-november-16/722775 https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/mac-support-update-n... [1]https://www.macworld.com/article/3597198/13-inch-macbook-pro-m1-review-amazing-breakthroughs-in-processing-and-battery-performance.html https://www.macworld.com/article/3597198/13-inch-macbook-pro...

achow 6y ago

Super interesting part for me was - on this legacy apps would run just as fast as they would on Intel Macs. But the real nut of it is that it has managed to make a chip so powerful that it can take the approximate 26% hit (see the following charts) in raw power to translate apps and still make them run just as fast if not faster than MacBooks with Intel processors. https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro-is-powerful-but-its-the-battery-life-that-will-blow-you-away/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro... We run a standard Adobe Premiere export test, and the MacBook Air beats the latest Intel laptops with integrated graphics and holds its own with some laptops with proper discrete GPUs... the thing to pay attention to is that Adobe Premiere haven’t been optimized for this chip yet. They’re running through Apple’s Rosetta 2 translation layer. https://www.theverge.com/21569603/apple-macbook-air-m1-review-price-specs-features-arm-silicon https://www.theverge.com/21569603/apple-macbook-air-m1-revie...

dr_dshiv 6y ago

In looking for another device to supplement a macbook pro, an ipad with magic keyboard or macbook air?

Goosee 6y ago
If you currently have an intel based mbp, choose the m1 mba if you think the m1 might replace the mbp in the future (i.e. same performance in more portable form factor) Otherwise get the ipad with keyboard & pencil if it's just a 'supplement'. Pencil provides a whole new layer of input possibilities. If you read a lot of PDF documents, ipad is also really nice.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]