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After 6 years away from being "all in" on Apple, yesterday my base spec MacBook Air M1 arrived. Battery life is the key takeaway for me. Performance is fine bu

After 6 years away from being "all in" on Apple, yesterday my base spec MacBook Air M1 arrived. Battery life is the key takeaway for me. Performance is fine but I'm used to a powerful desktop so it's not blowing me away but the battery life definitely is blowing me away. To run things under rosetta there's an arch command: e.g. arch -x86_64 brew install xxx - the arch preference is inherited by sub processes. I'm kind of amazed how well intel binaries run here. I can't tell the difference in usage and it just works, even games like Cuphead from steam seem fine.

cjrp 6y ago
If a laptop's performance is on a par with a desktop's, and the fan's aren't going crazy, I'd call that a big win! My 2018 MB Pro has the fans running most of the time, and even then sometimes throttles back the CPU.
- rimliu 6y ago
  Original comment mentions MB Air, Air has no fans (now that sounds funny :)
  - vishnugupta 6y ago
    Of all the things unveiled during the launch event no-fan thing completely blew me away. That, I was not prepared for! I now wonder, does that mean that MB Air has no moving parts inside it at all?
    - xuki 6y ago
      Yes, like an iPhone or iPad.
      - kgwgk 6y ago
        And like the 2015-2019 MacBook.
        rorykoehler 6y ago
        I hope they do this form factor again with the new chips
        ksec 6y ago
        I am thinking may be next year or the year after. The MacBook Pro will get new Design, at 16" and 14". ( I hope instead of going thinner they could stay within the current cooling TDP ) Then the MacBook Air will have a 14" as well, before a 12" MacBook Air is introduced at a lower price range, possibly at $799.
        kgwgk 6y ago
        > a 12" MacBook Air is introduced at a lower price range, possibly at $799. That would be great. But it could make more difficult to sell an iPadPro (starting at $799) with a MagicKeyboard (starting at $300) as an alternative to a laptop.
    - robin_reala 6y ago
      There’s the haptic feedback for the trackpad.
    - TMWNN 6y ago
      >I now wonder, does that mean that MB Air has no moving parts inside it at all? In addition, does that mean that the Air has no air vents? Is it a completely sealed unit, like an iPhone?
      - BooneJS 6y ago
        Don’t dunk it in water like an iPhone. Unlike lightning, usb-c is likely energized and not sealed.
      - nacs 6y ago
        It's not a sealed unit.
      - jandrese 6y ago
        It has a keyboard, not a big glass touchscreen. It is not sealed.
    - Joeri 6y ago
      The keyboard is still a big mess of moving parts, but there is indeed one less moving part to break.
    - mensetmanusman 6y ago
      The electrons are moving millions of miles.
- snazz 6y ago
  The MacBook Air that GP mentioned doesn't even have a fan! That's certainly a nice benefit.
  - davio 6y ago
    That's the entire reason I bought mine. Replaced the early 2020 model. I had complete peace and quiet during all of my video calls yesterday
  - shmoogy 6y ago
    I really want the air for when I work outside in the summer. I worked from an iPad quite often with the magic keyboard, and it started throttling and sometimes overheated to the point of failure while outside in the sun. It's too cold in Chicago to test, but I would love to see if the MacBook Air can work while outside in direct hot sun - it's the only reason I'm considering the MBP.
    - duncanawoods 6y ago
      > I would love to see if the MacBook Air can work while outside in direct hot sun I'm not optimistic. An unused iPhone 7 will go into an overheating error state if left in direct sunlight on a British summer's day. I don't know how newer models cope.
    - markphip 6y ago
      The Daring Fireball review of the MBP had this to say about the fan ... "The two machines are equivalently fast in a sprint, but the MacBook Pro will win a distance race. But Apple doesn’t call it a “fan”. They call it an “active cooling system”. That sounds like a marketing euphemism, but it’s not fair to call this a “fan”. It is something else altogether, and nothing at all like the cooling systems in any previous Mac laptop. I’ve never once heard it in an entire week. Never. Not once. Not a whisper. I presume it has engaged at times when I’ve taxed the system. Again, the Cinebench multi-core CPU benchmark taxes every available CPU core for 10 minutes. But if the active cooling system has kicked in, I never heard it. I’ve never felt any air moving out of the vents, either. This is nothing at all like the fans on Intel-based MacBooks, which, if you’re not familiar, you can definitely hear, to say the least." https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/the_m1_macs https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/the_m1_macs
- drewolbrich 6y ago
  If your MBP fans are running all the time, you may want to open it up and see if it's filled with dust and lint.
  - mixmastamyk 6y ago
    The process table as well.
  - cjrp 6y ago
    Oh I have, thanks. It's just that running my dev. environment plus Teams and all of the other "necessary" accoutrements ends up using a fair chunk of CPU.
sgillen 6y ago
Do you mind sharing what battery life you are seeing for your real life workloads? And also an idea of what those work loads are?
- CraigJPerry 6y ago
  It arrived with 69% charge, by this morning 11am i had reached 21%. I left the screen brightness on the default setting and usage was a mix of installing software (mostly I/O i suppose), a lot of safari, around 4 hours of Citrix remote desktop, around 90 minutes of zoom, some light gaming last night to see if it works. If you do anything that's heavy on I/O (packaging jar files in my case), this laptop is faster than my big desktop, the I/O is crazy fast actually. Memory pressure has been low so far - my biggest fear opting for the base model but looks like i'll be fine - i spun up bunch of dev processes and was fine.
  - jk563 6y ago
    8GB integrated memory spec?
    - CraigJPerry 6y ago
      Yeah. I don't hold out hope of it surviving any vm workloads (vagrant, docker desktop etc.) but i'm ok with just installing the cli tools and connecting to remote clusters.
  - simonh 6y ago
    >the I/O is crazy fast I seem to remember watching a real time video transcoding demo, or something like that, on an iPad Pro and the dev demoing it saying it was the I/O that made it possible. Desktop machines with much faster processors would choke due to bandwidth limitations, but Apple can custom tune every aspect of the iPad architecture and aren't limited to standard, generic interfaces between components. The original 5k iMacs were a similar case in some ways. It was only possible in an all-in-one design, because there wasn't a standard video connection at the time that was capable of the throughput.
  - 6y ago
boltzmann_brain 6y ago
Great to hear that! I got myself the last Intel based mbp 16" fully jacked with R5600 HMB2 memory, as this is the last one that will run Windows, which I need often. I also need larger screen, so I'm waiting for M2 or M3 generation, that will inevitably come with 16" screen factor - looking forward to that amazing machine in a few years!
rsanheim 6y ago
Yeah so far the performance is very close to my 10 core iMac Pro I use for day to day development. This is on a MacBook Air with no fan, and so far I haven't felt the machine even get warm even when compiling _and_ also running tests or importing data in other processes. This is when running a decently sized Rails monolith w/ PostgreSQL & Redis, so a fairly typical modern Rails setup. It's seriously impressive.
- yagya 6y ago
  Once I get mine, I plan on building AOSP and seeing what limits I can push the hardware to.
- mekster 6y ago
  Does it mean you can no longer easily tell if a process has gone crazy and takes high CPU usage without a fan and you also can't even feel the slow down.
  - brianpan 6y ago
    Totally broke my workflow: https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    I was wondering something similar. VSCode tends to fly off the handle every once in a while and the only way I notice currently is a subtle lagging and the fan spinning up. Though recently I switched back to VIM so perhaps this won't be an issue anymore.
  - bartvk 6y ago
    That is true in many situations, like a remote server. That's why we have top on the commandline, or iStat Menus. But I'm not sure if iStat Menus actually works on the new machines. https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
    - mekster 6y ago
wil421 6y ago
How can you tell your battery life if you’ve only had your Mac one day?
- GeekyBear 6y ago
  Some of the reviews have mentioned what running a particular heavy workload reduced their charge level by. >After a single build of WebKit, the M1 MacBook Pro had a massive 91% of its battery left. I tried multiple tests here and I could have easily run a full build of WebKit 8-9 times on one charge of the M1 MacBook’s battery. In comparison, I could have gotten through about 3 on the [Intel] 16” and the 13” [Intel] 2020 model only had one go in it. 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...

cjrp 6y ago

If a laptop's performance is on a par with a desktop's, and the fan's aren't going crazy, I'd call that a big win! My 2018 MB Pro has the fans running most of the time, and even then sometimes throttles back the CPU.

rimliu 6y ago
Original comment mentions MB Air, Air has no fans (now that sounds funny :)
- vishnugupta 6y ago
  Of all the things unveiled during the launch event no-fan thing completely blew me away. That, I was not prepared for! I now wonder, does that mean that MB Air has no moving parts inside it at all?
  - xuki 6y ago
    Yes, like an iPhone or iPad.
    - kgwgk 6y ago
      And like the 2015-2019 MacBook.
      - rorykoehler 6y ago
        I hope they do this form factor again with the new chips
        ksec 6y ago
        I am thinking may be next year or the year after. The MacBook Pro will get new Design, at 16" and 14". ( I hope instead of going thinner they could stay within the current cooling TDP ) Then the MacBook Air will have a 14" as well, before a 12" MacBook Air is introduced at a lower price range, possibly at $799.
        kgwgk 6y ago
        > a 12" MacBook Air is introduced at a lower price range, possibly at $799. That would be great. But it could make more difficult to sell an iPadPro (starting at $799) with a MagicKeyboard (starting at $300) as an alternative to a laptop.
  - robin_reala 6y ago
    There’s the haptic feedback for the trackpad.
  - TMWNN 6y ago
    >I now wonder, does that mean that MB Air has no moving parts inside it at all? In addition, does that mean that the Air has no air vents? Is it a completely sealed unit, like an iPhone?
    - BooneJS 6y ago
      Don’t dunk it in water like an iPhone. Unlike lightning, usb-c is likely energized and not sealed.
    - nacs 6y ago
      It's not a sealed unit.
    - jandrese 6y ago
      It has a keyboard, not a big glass touchscreen. It is not sealed.
  - Joeri 6y ago
    The keyboard is still a big mess of moving parts, but there is indeed one less moving part to break.
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    The electrons are moving millions of miles.
snazz 6y ago
The MacBook Air that GP mentioned doesn't even have a fan! That's certainly a nice benefit.
- davio 6y ago
  That's the entire reason I bought mine. Replaced the early 2020 model. I had complete peace and quiet during all of my video calls yesterday
- shmoogy 6y ago
  I really want the air for when I work outside in the summer. I worked from an iPad quite often with the magic keyboard, and it started throttling and sometimes overheated to the point of failure while outside in the sun. It's too cold in Chicago to test, but I would love to see if the MacBook Air can work while outside in direct hot sun - it's the only reason I'm considering the MBP.
  - duncanawoods 6y ago
    > I would love to see if the MacBook Air can work while outside in direct hot sun I'm not optimistic. An unused iPhone 7 will go into an overheating error state if left in direct sunlight on a British summer's day. I don't know how newer models cope.
  - markphip 6y ago
    The Daring Fireball review of the MBP had this to say about the fan ... "The two machines are equivalently fast in a sprint, but the MacBook Pro will win a distance race. But Apple doesn’t call it a “fan”. They call it an “active cooling system”. That sounds like a marketing euphemism, but it’s not fair to call this a “fan”. It is something else altogether, and nothing at all like the cooling systems in any previous Mac laptop. I’ve never once heard it in an entire week. Never. Not once. Not a whisper. I presume it has engaged at times when I’ve taxed the system. Again, the Cinebench multi-core CPU benchmark taxes every available CPU core for 10 minutes. But if the active cooling system has kicked in, I never heard it. I’ve never felt any air moving out of the vents, either. This is nothing at all like the fans on Intel-based MacBooks, which, if you’re not familiar, you can definitely hear, to say the least." https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/the_m1_macs https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/the_m1_macs
drewolbrich 6y ago
If your MBP fans are running all the time, you may want to open it up and see if it's filled with dust and lint.
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  The process table as well.
- cjrp 6y ago
  Oh I have, thanks. It's just that running my dev. environment plus Teams and all of the other "necessary" accoutrements ends up using a fair chunk of CPU.

sgillen 6y ago

Do you mind sharing what battery life you are seeing for your real life workloads? And also an idea of what those work loads are?

CraigJPerry 6y ago
It arrived with 69% charge, by this morning 11am i had reached 21%. I left the screen brightness on the default setting and usage was a mix of installing software (mostly I/O i suppose), a lot of safari, around 4 hours of Citrix remote desktop, around 90 minutes of zoom, some light gaming last night to see if it works. If you do anything that's heavy on I/O (packaging jar files in my case), this laptop is faster than my big desktop, the I/O is crazy fast actually. Memory pressure has been low so far - my biggest fear opting for the base model but looks like i'll be fine - i spun up bunch of dev processes and was fine.
- jk563 6y ago
  8GB integrated memory spec?
  - CraigJPerry 6y ago
    Yeah. I don't hold out hope of it surviving any vm workloads (vagrant, docker desktop etc.) but i'm ok with just installing the cli tools and connecting to remote clusters.
- simonh 6y ago
  >the I/O is crazy fast I seem to remember watching a real time video transcoding demo, or something like that, on an iPad Pro and the dev demoing it saying it was the I/O that made it possible. Desktop machines with much faster processors would choke due to bandwidth limitations, but Apple can custom tune every aspect of the iPad architecture and aren't limited to standard, generic interfaces between components. The original 5k iMacs were a similar case in some ways. It was only possible in an all-in-one design, because there wasn't a standard video connection at the time that was capable of the throughput.
- 6y ago

boltzmann_brain 6y ago

Great to hear that! I got myself the last Intel based mbp 16" fully jacked with R5600 HMB2 memory, as this is the last one that will run Windows, which I need often. I also need larger screen, so I'm waiting for M2 or M3 generation, that will inevitably come with 16" screen factor - looking forward to that amazing machine in a few years!

rsanheim 6y ago

Yeah so far the performance is very close to my 10 core iMac Pro I use for day to day development. This is on a MacBook Air with no fan, and so far I haven't felt the machine even get warm even when compiling _and_ also running tests or importing data in other processes. This is when running a decently sized Rails monolith w/ PostgreSQL & Redis, so a fairly typical modern Rails setup. It's seriously impressive.

yagya 6y ago
Once I get mine, I plan on building AOSP and seeing what limits I can push the hardware to.
mekster 6y ago
Does it mean you can no longer easily tell if a process has gone crazy and takes high CPU usage without a fan and you also can't even feel the slow down.
- brianpan 6y ago
  Totally broke my workflow: https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  I was wondering something similar. VSCode tends to fly off the handle every once in a while and the only way I notice currently is a subtle lagging and the fan spinning up. Though recently I switched back to VIM so perhaps this won't be an issue anymore.
- bartvk 6y ago
  That is true in many situations, like a remote server. That's why we have top on the commandline, or iStat Menus. But I'm not sure if iStat Menus actually works on the new machines. https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
  - mekster 6y ago

wil421 6y ago

How can you tell your battery life if you’ve only had your Mac one day?

GeekyBear 6y ago
Some of the reviews have mentioned what running a particular heavy workload reduced their charge level by. >After a single build of WebKit, the M1 MacBook Pro had a massive 91% of its battery left. I tried multiple tests here and I could have easily run a full build of WebKit 8-9 times on one charge of the M1 MacBook’s battery. In comparison, I could have gotten through about 3 on the [Intel] 16” and the 13” [Intel] 2020 model only had one go in it. 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...