14 ms·

The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

227 points by bouk 6y ago

amelius 6y ago
"owned"
- messe 6y ago
  Yep, a machine owned by the user. They're free to install whatever software they want on it, including the OS. Now, it happens that Linux and other free OSes don't support the hardware yet, but that doesn't diminish the fact that they can be ported. Is there a particular point you'd like to make?
  - harperlee 6y ago
    I can make the point that those “ownership” quotes would very well apply to iphone and ipad, based on your OS installability criterium.
    - messe 6y ago
      Other than the fact that those require a jailbreak to do so, and are far more locked down than the M1 Macs because of that.
      - harperlee 6y ago
        Yes, that’s exactly my point.
  - amelius 6y ago
    > Now, it happens that Linux and other free OSes don't support the hardware yet, but that doesn't diminish the fact that they can be ported. Is the specification of the M1 processor including the GPU part open then? And can the laptop be repaired by the user?
RobRivera 6y ago
is it built like a tank?
- dehrmann 6y ago
  A tank that grinds into your wrists.
dukeofdoom 6y ago
I'm reluctant to buy it because of ports, and tiny amount of drive space. Waiting for the 14 inch, hoping for more ports, larger base hard drive, and new design for similar cost of upgrading the air.
- breck 6y ago
  I got the 1TB SSD. Wouldn't call that tiny. Then I have external arrays for bigger datasets. How much space would you need? IIRC they go up to 2TB or maybe even 4TB.
  - webmobdev 6y ago
    It's expensive and is still not upgradeable is the point.
    - beckler 6y ago
      Pretty sure Mac laptops haven’t been upgradable since 2015.
      - erik_seaberg 6y ago
        Does any laptop have any kind of upgrade path? I've always cheaped out and treated them as disposable.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Most PC laptops have the option to upgrade memory and disks, specially the enterprise lines on the same price levels as Apple hardware.
    - inkyoto 6y ago
      Laptop upgradbility is a game of luck and a guessing game, in general. Laptops are, by design, a finished product, and it is a lucky happenstance, if it (and what) can be upgraded for a variety of reasons. My 2008 Sony Vaio VGN-Z17GN laptop is, technically, upgradable. But, the chipset does not support more than 4Gb of RAM, and I already have 4Gb installed. So I do not have the RAM upgrade option. I replaced a HDD with a SDD years back, and it was a fairly risky enterprise with a high chance of the laptop incurring a permanent damage due to how the Vaio keyboard is wired up with the mainboard. The laptop is still very much usable even for moderate development activities since it has been running Linux for years. Other laptops have their own quirks or limitations of sorts. Now, a few random picks amongst contemporary laptops (Lenovo and Acer): Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 5: 8 Gb (i5-10210U CPU) or 16 Gb (i7-10510U CPU) of soldered on RAM and 512 Gb Opal2 NVMe (no information on the SSD upgradability). The 16Gb RAM / 512 Gb configuration is AU$1,100+ more expensive than the 16Gb / 512 Gb 13" Macbook Pro M1 (AU$1,699). Lenovo ThinkPad X390 Yoga: i7-8565U CPU, 8Gb of soldered on RAM, 256 Gb NVMe (no information on the SSD upgradability). It is AU$400+ more expensive than the 16Gb / 512 Gb 13" Macbook Pro M1 (AU$1,699). Lenovo ThinkPad P1: i7-8750H, 1x 16GB SO-DIMM DDR4-2666 non-ECC (no information of the max amount RAM supported), 512GB NVMe SSD (no information on the SSD upgradability). It is AU$1,000 more expensive than the 16Gb / 512 Gb 13" Macbook Pro M1 (AU$1,699). Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold: i5-L16G7, 8Gb of soldered on RAM, 512GB NVMe SSD (no information on the SSD upgradability), AU$5,799. It is AU$4,000 (four thousand) more expensive than the 16Gb / 512 Gb 13" Macbook Pro M1 (AU$1,699). This is 3.411 times more expensive than the M1 laptop. Lenovo ThinkPad T14s: AMD Ryzen™ PRO 4750U CPU, 16GB soldered on DDR4-3200, 512 Gb Opal2 NVMe ((no information on the SSD upgradability). It is nearly AU$500 more expensive that the 16Gb / 512 Gb 13" Macbook Pro M1 (AU$1,699). Acer TravelMate P614, Intel Core i7, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, AU$2,299: no information on RAM and SSD upgrade options. The laptop is AU$600 more expensive that the 16Gb / 512 Gb 13" Macbook Pro M1 (AU$1,699). Acer Swift 3, AMD Ryzen 7-4700U, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, AU$1,999: no information on RAM and SSD upgrade options. The laptop is AU$300 more expensive that the 16Gb / 512 Gb 13" Macbook Pro M1 (AU$1,699). Other Acer laptops are less capable, use Pentium or Core i3 CPU's, slower SSD's and are cheaper than M1 laptops; some are twice as cheaper. They are marketed as «student» laptops. Out of 7 PC laptops above, only one has upgradable RAM, and it is a guessing game whether the SSD can or can't be upgraded. Every PC laptop above is also more expensive than the latest, stats wise comparable, 13" MacBook Pro M1. A few of those are significantly more expensive. Yes, there are cheaper options, and, yes, some laptops can be upgraded easily or more easily, but that is not the primary market for laptop makers. Wholesale purchasers (corporates) and average consumers do not typically ask whether or not they can later upgrade their laptop. Also, if one wants an ultraporatble or a compact laptop, they had better accept the fact that RAM and/or SSD will be soldered on, and they won't be able to upgrade them, be it an Apple or a commodity PC laptop. It is a commonplace now.
daemonk 6y ago
Yeah, the combination of features at the right quality level makes it the best laptop I've ever owned.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  Third here (although I have the MBP): I particularly enjoy the battery life, I mostly use my laptop unplugged again.
soperj 6y ago
>It is even the best Windows PC The delusion is very strong here.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  Depends on what you prioritise. If you value silent operation and heaps of battery life, I imagine it is.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  Huh? Windows with WSL is such a bad experience that running Windows apps on Mac OS is far superior to me, even with Wine. I also think it's the best Linux machine. It's not very hard to do. Can we stop with the ridiculous condescension ("delusional") towards opinions we disagree with and make no effort to interpret charitably?
  - webmobdev 6y ago
    When you say it is "the best Linux machine" with a straight face, I am sure it is hard not to invite such condescension! The M1 can barely run Linux on it, if at all.
    - dev_tty01 6y ago
      Just a guess on my part, but he may have meant "unix" and is using "Linux" incorrectly. Mac OS is a unix system. Linux has become so common that I have heard many people say Linux when they mean the more general term unix. Let's assume the best instead of the worst.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Running Windows in a VM has long been more satisfactory in certain ways than running it on real hardware (for example, applying updates in a VM takes seconds instead of hours because the VM doesn't drop your block caches when it reboots). I can see why the author could be pleased with the outcome.
- vmception 6y ago
systemvoltage 6y ago
Except the interface which has been designed for touch interfaces without having any touch capability on the Mac, for the sake of "design unity" bullshit. You can't have M1 without macOS Big Sur. Not only on macOS, but generally the entire web is mobile-first and desktop-last philosophy.
- nicbou 6y ago
  I like Big Sur. Everything works just as well with the mouse as before. They made many quality of life improvements to the touch bar, and didn't mess with the other things. What exactly was made worse by it?
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25072644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25072644 Instead of repeating same things over, there has been plenty of discussion on HN about macOS big sur design changes.
    - user-the-name 6y ago
      Do you not have opinions on your own that you can express?
- valuearb 6y ago
  Blatantly false assertion. No touch design changes in Big Sur, confirmed by Hair Force One.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    The following explains and illustrates the problems with macOS and how they've shoehorned design changes that do not belong to Desktop environments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXG5REBi2fo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXG5REBi2fo
    - 6y ago
stevefan1999 6y ago
...and is probably one of the least libre* computer I've seen in the 21th century, too. Before that, Linux can't run on MacBooks, and after a few years of development it's just barely working, now this thing. This is never going to be Desktop Linux compatible. Even Linus claimed he would like to but the effort is tremendous. >>> I'd absolutely love to have one, if it just ran Linux.. I have fairly fond memories of the 11" Macbook Air (I think 4,1) that I used about a decade ago (but moved away from because it took Apple too long to fix the screen - and by the time they did, I'd moved on to better laptops, and Apple had moved on to make Linux less convenient). Apple may run Linux in their cloud, but their laptops don't ;( I've been waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time. The new Air would be almost perfect, except for the OS. And I don't have the time to tinker with it, or the inclination to fight companies that don't want to help. Linus >>> Maybe you can run just some more productivity apps by sacrificing your freedom to be kept captive by Apple. But this also means your machine isn't entirely yours. *: used liberal here. I don't know what's the exactly word to use but it turns out there are people so sensitive to politics and thought the otherwise.
- paddim8 6y ago
  Actually, Linux might actually run quite well on it soon. https://asahilinux.org/ https://asahilinux.org/
  - Lammy 6y ago
    Looks like it "might" "soon" start booting a kernel: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Project-status https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Project-status
  - christkv 6y ago
    It will take some time to get a GPU driver I imagine
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    > Might Ignoring that it's completely up to apple whether this exists in a years time, reverse engineering an entire SOC is really fucking hard. ARM isn't like x86, you basically can't assume anything. The GPU may be completely off limits for years, for example, unless they somehow (this isn't impossible) make a blob out of Apple's actual drivers.
xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
New computer is better than old computer. Shocking. The M1 is a good chip. It is great that we have ARM cores that can go toe-to-toe with Zen 3. It is hardly a revolution and it would not be trivial to scale it to a workstation or server design. It is telling to see someone acting like the competition is still Intel. Intel has been playing catchup since Q1 of 2017. Their server parts in particular are woefully outdated.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Toe to toe? It starches every Ryzen chip in single core performance, and every mobile Ryzen under 45 watts TDP in multicore despite only having 4 performance cores and 15 Watts TDP.
  - adrian_b 6y ago
    You are correct only about Ryzens based on the old Zen 2. Any new Ryzen 5xxx based on Zen 3 is faster in single-thread than the best Apple M1. In general-purpose benchmarks, like Geekbench 5, the maximum Apple M1 score is 1752, while Ryzen 5xxx score between 1800 and 1876. In computational benchmarks, where the IPC is limited by some execution resources reaching 100% utilization, so the higher average IPC of Apple M1 does matter much less, Apple M1 is even slower compared to Ryzens. For example Ryzen 7 5800X is 22% faster than Apple M1 in gmpbench (the benchmark was run for both CPUs after tuning specific to Apple M1 and tuning specific to Zen 3 were added to libgmp, so it is a comparison of apples with apples).
    - valuearb 6y ago
      https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-7-5800x https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-7-5800x The 5800x is a 105 watt part(!!!), still gets starched by the M1 in single core, and is only about 40% faster in multicore despite using all that power to drive double the performance core count. But by all means, go off to cherry pick more niche benchmarks...
      - 6y ago
tomatotomato37 6y ago
Not to invalidate the author's enjoyment of his own purchase, but it would be nice if he clarified which computers he had owned in the past
- esquevin 6y ago
  > The performance feels a lot better than my MacBook Pro 16”, which is only a year old and about 3x the price. Last sentence of the first paragraph
  - webmobdev 6y ago
    > which is only a year old and about 3x the price. Rich people problem.
  - noir_lord 6y ago
    I was issued the 16" last gen Intel MacBook pro at last job (new job I'm back on whatever I want) and it was a seriously underwhelming experience for 3K's worth of hardware, screen was good, touchpad was sublime -everything else was crap. Battery life was mediocre (worse still if you actually use it), it got ridiculously hot under load, the fans where really loud and pitched at a frequency it was hard to ignore - I'd have put it down to a bad unit but everyone else with the same model had the same issues. It was fine but for double good thinkpad money it wasn't fine enough. I was glad to hand it back, new place doesn't care what I run so I'm back on Fedora on a fast desktop and I'm happy again, I still have a work issued macbook pro but it sits on a shelf behind me until I need to test something.
    - Hamuko 6y ago
      The most mind-blowing part of the 16-inch MacBook Pros are really the speakers, which are really nice for laptop speakers. However, that's also quite sad that it's the highlight.
Waterluvian 6y ago
If their first M1 out the gate is this good, I'm excited to buy whatever comes second.
bla3 6y ago
I love my M1 MBP, but I use my 16" MBP more day to day. The larger screen seems to be more important to me than the noisiness and shorter battery life. Definitely looking forward to bigger arm macs.
- breck 6y ago
  Curious, why not an external monitor? I have the M1 13 for on the go. An external monitor for day to day.
  - threedots 6y ago
    The 16" MBP is terrible with an external monitor (or at least mine is with my external monitor). Fans spin up like crazy and the case gets hot enough to fry an egg on. It's the one terrible weakness of an otherwise great machine.
    - breck 6y ago
      Oh wild, didn't know that. This is the M1 16" MBP, or the older Intel one?
      - varjag 6y ago
        There's no M1 16" MBP.
      - eyelidlessness 6y ago
        Only the low end 13” MBP has an M1 release currently.
      - justincormack 6y ago
        The old one, there isn't an M1 16" yet
        breck 6y ago
        Ah thanks! Didn't realize that.
croes 6y ago
More RAM would be nice.
- breck 6y ago
  Would always be nice, for sure, but for Deep Learning I use a big cheap box with loads of RAM and the 16GB in my M1 MBP with the 1TB SSD seems plenty good so far. I don't have use cases yet where I notice a problem (other than yeah, overhead of having to do DL jobs on a different machine). What causes you to hit the limits? I don't do any video editing, so I could see that being a slowdown for that use case.
  - _huayra_ 6y ago
    Being able to locally run the integration tests for my work on my 32GB thinkpad has been a godsend during the 'rona times. If I only had 16 (or even 24) I'd have to carefully consider whether I should close Firefox to run them. These tests spin up a bunch of containers and run certain components with instrumented runtimes that take up gobs of RAM, so having a fat laptop is very useful.
- bouk 6y ago
  Maybe, but the RAM and disk performance is so good [1] that it might not be needed so badly. Unless you want to run a whole bunch of VMs https://mobile.twitter.com/Sirupsen/status/1344267019944947713 https://mobile.twitter.com/Sirupsen/status/13442670199449477...
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    I'd like to see how much gaming Apple Silicon can support. So I'm very curious to see what next year's M1X/M2 machines will bring. Of course, we're also at the dawn of widespread cloud gaming so perhaps this consideration will also be moot.
alphadevx 6y ago
In my experience, the latest computer I buy is always "the best computer I've ever owned". They get better every year, why is this still surprising?
- Fricken 6y ago
  Your experience apparently doesn't include the first paragraph of the article.
- procinct 6y ago
  Generally this is surprising because the user bought the "Air" model instead of his usual "pro" model which is much more expensive. The impressive part here is that the air outperforms last years pro (according to the author) which is 3x the price.
  - DennisAleynikov 6y ago
    this is what people meant prior to the m1 coming out with "macs are a horrible deal" they used to be priced at roughly 3x markup compared to the market. they finally fixed their co-dependency with intel and suddenly wow the price gouging goes out the door because gasp the macbook air could have always been the pro it was just never possible with using old chips. ANYTHING using arm absolutely FLIES open your eyes people
    - denimnerd42 6y ago
      yeah and then those are poor devs like me whose work notebook is a U series intel on an enterprise HP/DELL body which probably cost $800.
      - DennisAleynikov 6y ago
        some older intel chips are good and faithful (apple wasnt the ones passing the savings on to you like HP) they prefered to both give you outdated intel chips but also ask you $3500 for the honor
Huntsecker 6y ago
surely this is the case for any new computer anyone buys technically speaking. If you go out now and buy a new computer it replaces one less good and at that point in time is the best computer you have ever owned...
- Traster 6y ago
  This has not been true in the past - Apple hit a peak in the early 2010s. It then had ups and downs - Retina was a good step, but the CPU bumps have been lame, the Touchbar has been an active step backwards, the port situation has got progressively worse and the keyboard have been terrible. Some models like the Air just got no progression for years on end. Life in the Apple eco-system isn't like life in the normal computer eco-system, there's very little competition once you're committed to the OS.
webmobdev 6y ago
Yeah, right - if you choose to ignore the following: You can't upgrade the RAM, you can't upgrade the SSD, it doesn't have replaceable battery and you are forced to run a crippled OS on it (macOS Big Sur deliberately cripples VPN and firewall on it so that select Apple softwares can bypass them, allowing Apple better access and control over your data and softwares). (And if you don't care about any of the above, then sure, give in.)
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  Everything you prefer in life has downsides that you accept because the upsides outweigh the trade-offs.
  - everyone 6y ago
    yeah but Apple downsides are particularly infuriating cus they're not the result of technical limitations.. The downsides are intentional on Apples part. They didnt try to engineer the most useful computer, they intentionally crippled various things in their OS for shady business reasons.
- SubiculumCode 6y ago
  cripples vpn? that is not a small thing.
  - messe 6y ago
    It's false. That was debunked: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/k0c00f/macos_big_sur_does_not_bypass_vpns/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/k0c00f/macos_big_sur_d...
  - webmobdev 6y ago
    It cripples some VPN apps. And some VPN softwares that used their own kernel extensions. More here - https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/ https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/
- frereubu 6y ago
efwfwef 6y ago
I have the MacBook Air 2018 (13-inch, 1.6 GHz i5, 16 GB memory) and it gets pretty slow for my dev side-projects, the battery is good but definitely not as good as my iPad pro (but much better than my macbook pro), and my keyboard has been acting, I got a replacement, and now it's acting again... Without the keyboard issue, and the slowness, it'd really be perfect.
longtimegoogler 6y ago
I just bought one and my reaction was, meh.
niftylettuce 6y ago
tldr; I got a Macbook Pro M1 for $975 in mint-condition at a Best Buy and already put the return label on it. While Geekbench showed great results, actual usage of the machine and headaches ensued were contrasting. To put it bluntly - M1 machines are currently unstable. There are numerous Bluetooth issues [1], formatting issues [2], Wifi 6 issues [3], VPN issues [4], firewall issues [5], and shocking security issues in general with Big Sur and Apple's silicon [6]. I'm a power user and this is way too experimental for actual use. At the least get the 16 GB variant if you want to get anything done and not experience freeze/lockup (but for that much money you're better off with Librem 14" or System76 w/AMD Threadripper). [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/kpu2hy/mouse_lag_when_using_bluetooth_mouse_on_m1_mac/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/kpu2hy/mouse_lag_when_... [2]: https://mrmacintosh.com/reinstalling-big-sur-on-apple-silicon-macs-with-11-0-20a2411-error/ https://mrmacintosh.com/reinstalling-big-sur-on-apple-silico... [3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/jy3yc7/is_anyone_else_experiencing_issues_with_wifi_on/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/jy3yc7/is_anyone_else_... [4]: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2020/11/16/big-no-big-sur-mullvad-disallows-apple-apps-bypass-firewall/ https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2020/11/16/big-no-big-sur-mullva... [5]: https://github.com/objective-see/LuLu/issues/208 https://github.com/objective-see/LuLu/issues/208 [6]: https://sneak.berlin/20201204/on-trusting-macintosh-hardware/ https://sneak.berlin/20201204/on-trusting-macintosh-hardware...
- _huayra_ 6y ago
  "You're just using it wrong" /s https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/ https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/
- bgorman 6y ago
  I have a MacBook Air 2020 (Intel). After upgrading to Big Sur, I have experiences a general degradation of performance, graphical glitches and serious Bluetooth problems (failing to connect to Apple mouse and keyboard). The fundamental problem seems to be that with proprietary consumer hardware/software- only the initial version is reviewed and after that the vendor can push software full of bugs with no consequences.
- nojito 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
izacus 6y ago
[This ad sponsored by Apple Inc.] ?
sandGorgon 6y ago
Here's the intersting part - there's no alternative to that price/performance ratio for atleast a year.
sam1r 6y ago
Amen.
- sam1r 6y ago
  Or should one say, awomen. http://awomen.urbanup.com/6512560 http://awomen.urbanup.com/6512560
jeswin 6y ago
I think we really need a break from people submitting more M1 Mac unboxing articles, unless there's significant original technical content. This is turning into fanboyism.
- dagaci 6y ago
  They probably have a quota to fill. Apple spending an ocean of cash on pushing this project.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please review the site guidelines—they ask you not to post like this. If you have evidence, or are worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look into it.
  - kowlo 6y ago
    Are you implying the OP or HN itself are promoting the M1 line for $?
    - DennisAleynikov 6y ago
      beyond ridiculous conspiracy, apple just took the ARM pill finally and release a "real os" running on arm and every closeted anti-ipad and anti-chromeos user finally breathed a sigh of relief that "real computers" can be good again, finally
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- bouk 6y ago
  It's just... really good. It's an uncanny feeling that many haven't had for a while
  - DennisAleynikov 6y ago
Jonnax 6y ago
There's a lot of love for the M1 Macs. Medium send me emails of recommended articles and always at least one is a blog about how good it is. What are the issues people have been experiencing? No laptop is perfect.
- cehrlich 6y ago
  The laptops only support 1 external monitor unless you do some hacky stuff, they only have two ports, and still have mediocre webcams, and you’re forced to use Big Sur which still needs a bit of work. Also while the vast majority of software runs great on the M1, there are a few very niche things that still don’t. But I wouldn’t call these “issues”, as anyone who reads the spec sheet can know them before purchase. That’s it, really. These computers are astonishingly good.
GeekyBear 6y ago
The comparison to Microsoft's more expensive 2020 Surface Pro X is especially stark. Windows runs at less than half the speed on Microsoft's own flagship ARM hardware. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhESSZIXvCA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhESSZIXvCA
- MikusR 6y ago
  Because the CPU in Surface Pro X is half the speed of M1.
rhexs 6y ago
Is parallels running the ARM windows preview emulating 64 bit X86 fast enough for anything practical? Can I play ten year old games?
- mhh__ 6y ago
  > Can I play ten year old games? Based on peak performance at least I would assume yes. Honestly I'd be a little bit worried if you couldn't considering just how expensive they are.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Expensive compared to what?
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      Copied from a different comment of mine: £999 is a lot of PC. The processor in the M1 air is about 20% faster than the one in my laptop (£550 IIRC), but to spec an M1 out with the same amount of storage and RAM brings it to £1999. I should stress that my now slightly ageing laptop is much thicker than an Air, but it's also used to play modern games so that balances out. Personally, for the price of an Air I could actually use I'd just get something cheap and a big PC setup.
      - zepto 6y ago
        What’s the battery life like on your PC? It sounds like the things you care about are raw performance per £, and other factors are not important. If that’s what you are looking for then the Air is not for you, but it doesn’t mean it’s expensive. It just means you don’t need the things it offers for the money. If you do care about battery life, then the M1 Air is cheaper than the only comparable alternative - the M1 MacBook Pro. Nobody else even makes anything comparable.
        mhh__ 6y ago
        > What’s the battery life like on your PC? Actually not too bad - not good, but good enough for it to last long enough to write up lab data for 5 hours or so which is all I needed it to do. It's pretty diabolical in Linux, but I think that's partly my fault because I've not bothered to fettle with the power (not an unreasonable requirement given that the rest of the distro has been fiddled with)
DoctorNick 6y ago
Unfortunately, you don't actually "own" it. https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/ https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/
chubot 6y ago
Prediction: The M1 will make the web slower for most people. Web devs will buy the M1 because it executes their slow dev tools faster (npm ecosystem). Then they will test their web pages on the M1 and deploy them when they are "fast enough". Result: web pages will be even slower on mobile phones and non-M1 laptops. Software is a gas; it expands to fill its container - Nathan Myhrvold
- reocha 6y ago
  Web devs do test against other hardware. They have to, google ranks webpages (partially) based on their performance.
  - chubot 6y ago
    In my experience, most of them don't. I would be surprised if even 10% of web devs do real performance testing on other hardware (i.e. with actual measurements). Example: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25357409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25357409 It's not limited to Google either. Try ordering food on a web app on your phone, etc. For example I just loaded doordash.com in Chrome's mobile view, and it made 110 requests and consists of 7.7 MB of resources. It took 1.12 secs to load on a core i7 desktop connected to a wired network. How long do you think it will take on a phone with a slower CPU over a wireless network? For a web page that shows pictures of food. FWIW I worked at Google for over a decade, and this was a problem that got worse over the entire decade. People talked about making the network slow to fix this systemic problem, but it never happened (at least while I was there). You also have to test on different networks, although admittedly the M1 doesn't make your network faster so that problem won't be exacerbated. I still stand by the original statement; the M1 will make the web slower, assuming it's adopted by a bigger fraction of web devs than consumers (which seems very likely).
- enw 6y ago
  Correction: bad devs make the web slower
- Hamuko 6y ago
  But our devs already work on top-of-the-line hardware. If anything, this will bridge the gap for users if they can expect the same performance out of a $1k MacBook that you'd previously expect out of a $3k MacBook.
z92 6y ago
This post says how unpredictable it is. Come on, you can run a linux distribution on a non-apple hardware and not even worry if any of those software will run on it. Plus any of the 40 other top TIOBE tools.
- bouk 6y ago
  I've used a Linux laptop before and it was always so painful to get basic things working, like it being able to suspend when you close the lid. Packaging is usually better, if you don't want any nice GUI programs (like iaWriter) or games
  - kitsunesoba 6y ago
    Linux laptops are massively YMMV. Some work almost perfectly out of the box while others are plagued with quirks that never seem to get fixed. Point in case I have a circa 2008 Dell workstation laptop that runs Linux pretty well, except for some reason its volume buttons (which, as far as I can tell, send standard key codes) only work as expected under some distros running some desktop environments. It's oddly spotty for such a basic function, and last I checked there was no surefire fix for it, just an endless list of "try this".
dharma1 6y ago
Bought one for my kid, been testing it out and it’s so good that I’m tempted to buy one myself - much better than any of the recent mbpro’s I’ve had. Super responsive while staying cool on the lap, completely silent and all day battery life. Can’t wait for mbpros with miniled display and more arm cores later this year.
- sfblah 6y ago
  My kids use Chromebooks. Macs are a little pricey.
bouke 6y ago
Nice post, makes me wanna dump my 16” as well and if it weren’t for my work’s heavy dependency on Windows. — O and I really dig your domain name! ;-)
pachico 6y ago
Regardless of what computer that is, having what you think it is the best computer you ever had is such a great sensation, at least for me that I spend at lease 9 hours a day in front of it. In my case it's a Dell XPS, but it doesn't matter. Treasure this sensation, it won't last forever :)
- mkaic 6y ago
  I just built my first PC about a month ago and am still in that phase. Went from a 2013 laptop with integrated GPU to having a much nicer discrete GPU and the difference still blows me away on the daily :)
  - pachico 6y ago
    I suspect you would enjoy it that much even if it wasn't so much superior to your old laptop, but just because you built it yourself.
thejellypen 6y ago
Been using MacBooks since 2014 for hobby development/work I bought a new macbook pro m1 in December. Returned 2 days later after realizing that it only supports one external monitor and even found articles stating that ultra wide monitors were not supported on initial release. "Just use display link adaptor?" No thanks I don't want a 150$ adaptor that may or may not work with my current setup. Even with display link I've heard of displays flickering on initial startup or not starting at all in clamshell. People saying the MacBook pro 16" might solve the issue but tbh I think this is apples way of pigeonholing users to either their desktop version or their laptop.
- grzm 6y ago
  > People saying the MacBook pro 16" might solve the issue but tbh I think this is apples way of pigeonholing users to either their desktop version or their laptop. This is their first generation M1 and they haven't rolled it out across their entire line (which they have said they intend to do). Today marks the second month since they were released (10 Nov 2020). They haven't yet released something in the same class as the MacBook Pro 16", which it sounds like you'd prefer. Give it a year before assuming malicious intent.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
RomeoDelta 6y ago
I am no Apple fanatic. I'm a die-hard Linux user and open source proponent. I wouldn't touch the M1 with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole. But with all that said... I kind of like articles like these. I enjoy seeing people happy with good tech because I like good tech. It pleases me that there are people getting this much enjoyment out of innovative and (I'll admit it) quite impressive hardware. So rock on, Apple fans. But when there's a Linux computer that is even a bit better, I hope you can tolerate me shouting from the rooftops, because you bet I will be!
- fvv 6y ago
  I feel the same and hope that moment will come in about 1.5y zen4 5nm ddr5 64gb ecc 2tb nvme linux laptop ..without having to trade my body parts to buy it :)
  - aquir 6y ago
    Sounds awesome! Can you share what type of laptop are you using?
    - fvv 6y ago
      Right now it,s an xmg which is a seller of clevo probably i will remain with that because I can change parts without voiding warranty , my reseller leave me add rm and hdd of my choice after the sale, i can buy without hdd and ram.. aalso have swappable battery and even if touchpad may not be apple quality i usually use mouse or trackball , but with the next I'll take a look at what Lenovo, hp dell etc will offer by that time , about linux compatibility and drivers.. I'm quite sure is improving every year.. except for macbooks ;)
      - aquir 6y ago
        Thanks, I'll have a look!
      - inkyoto 6y ago
        Are you seriously comparing a gaming XMG Clevo laptop (I looked up the Clevo NH57ADS) that has been designed for the gaming crowd, that requires a 230W external power supply in a maxed out configuration, that is nearly 3x heavier and 3x thicker than a 13" MacBook Air ultraportable, more than 2.5x heavier and 2x thicker than a 13" MacBook Pro? I could not quickly find stats on the battery life for the latest and greatest Clevo NH57ADS, but – since they use a desktop CPU in it – I do not expect it to be that great. If I were to apply your logic, I could then declare that my POWER9 2U blade is a portable device ahem laptop (technically, I can carry it around as well as keep the blade on my laps, yes) that surpasses any other known laptop in terms of hardware configurability, and Linux compatibility will be even greater, too.
ezluckyfree 6y ago
they seem good and stuff but Mac OS and the Mac ecosystem are awful
atemerev 6y ago
I have bought an M1, and so far I am slightly disappointed. Intel macbook pro was quite fine, too. Firefox is still occasionally slow. No significant improvements in compilation speed (well, homebrew still relies on Rosetta 2). Instant wakeup is cool, but not a life-changing improvement. Etc.
- bouk 6y ago
  Homebrew works without Rosetta 2, maybe you have to reinstall it so it runs natively. It should be installed under /opt/homebrew
  - atemerev 6y ago
    Oh? that was fast. Only a month has passed since opening the issue. Thank you.
timvisee 6y ago
You're talking about software here. You'd have the same experience on almost any macbook. In fact, for the things you're describing you'd probably have a better experience with a non M1 machine. There's only one line that is related to the actual M1 MacBook Air hardware. Have you tried other machines as well, such as a ThinkPad? Have you ever used Linux?
- bouk 6y ago
  Yes I'm talking about Software because it has a new CPU architecture. I have used a thinkpad with Linux and it was a terrible experience.
archsurface 6y ago
Is this post even about the macbook? Nix, homebrew, go, terraform, ... ?
- bserge 6y ago
  [deleted]
  - archsurface 6y ago
    I don't see how that makes it a great laptop. It's a very low bar to say that the software working makes it a great laptop. I'd call that par.
adamredwoods 6y ago
I'm still on a MacBook Pro 2011. Chrome runs great. Newer Xcode doesn't work, though.
loh 6y ago
The most interesting thing about this to me was the bit at the end about Windows and Games. I've heard of Windows emulation on Mac before but this is the first time I've heard of Parallels. > Now you can download Steam and basically install anything and it will probably work. Microsoft really did some amazing magic in getting both 32-bit and 64-bit x86 programs running on arm64. The author makes it sound like you can run basically all Windows software on Mac without issues with Parallel, including more demanding software like games you'd find on Steam. Does anyone here have experience with Parallels? How does performance compare? My assumption with this kind of emulation was always that performance would typically suffer too much for it to be worth it.
- deevolution 6y ago
  Parallels has been around for a while... I used it to play the homeworld franchise years ago but more recently I have used bootcamp. Not sure about performance on M1 tho.
- emrah 6y ago
  I have Parallels and my experience on my intel MBP is gaming is not very good on it. It's mostly graphics support that is lacking I believe. I'm not sure how M1/arm support would make it work better but I sure hope so.
- nwotnagrom 6y ago
  I prefer browser based options such as shells.com where you can actually just access Windows or Linux on a virtual cloud computer. Much easier than messing with Parallels...
- immigrantsheep 6y ago
  I wouldn't bet on it. Specially since his go to game is Age of Mythology. A game that came out in 2002.
- ksec 6y ago
  You used to get anywhere between 10-30% performance drop on the Mac running Windows Emulation with roughly the same Hardware. With M1 since the chip is quite a bit faster you get report saying it actually runs Windows Apps on a M1 Mac better than on x86 Windows. Of course YMMV, and those Apps were not Gaming, which are mostly bottlenecked by the GPU and Drivers.
tlarkworthy 6y ago
I have one too. Yes, all those things are nice but mine is fricken GOLD. Note pinky rose gold, but GOLD FRICKEN GOLD gold. Best color ever.
nevi-me 6y ago
My wife has a 2012 MBP, which is usable because I upgraded the RAM to 16GB and added an SSD. I had limited experience and use of macOS, but didn't like it much. I bought the Air last month under duress, because I was going to a place that's 10°C warmer than my home, and my laptop's GPU passes the idle quiet threshold. I have tinnitus, so the laptop fan noise becomes unbearable. I'm enjoying using the Mac, I mainly develop in Rust, so the experience has been mostly good. I've had a few hard crashes of other software that restarted the machine, that's fine though. I still mainly remote into my beefy Windows desktop in the other room, but I haven't needed to turn on my work laptop as Microsoft also updated Office to work on Arm64. I didn't know about Parallels, I'll try it out, as sometimes I can't remote into my desktop conveniently.
- thefz 6y ago
  > My wife has a 2012 MBP, which is usable because I upgraded the RAM to 16GB and added an SSD. More or less same story with my previous Mid 2009 13'' MBP. The only reason why it has survived this long is because I've been able to add RAM, replace an SSD, replace the battery twice and replace a faulty touchpad too. Sadly this is no longer possible and modern Apple laptops are increasingly harder to repair.
  - nevi-me 6y ago
    Yea, Apple has great build quality. I have a 2013 HP Envy 17 that's also survived because of the ability to replace (keyboard, battery 2x, SSD). Its chassis has unfortunately started collapsing, but I want to fix it and donate it to a relative. I hope these newer Macs that have everything soldered together, at least last 4-5 years. I'm going to try get a Mac as my next work device, maybe 2 years from now, so my wife can use my current one in future.
ttul 6y ago
Since getting my M1, I can now barely tolerate using my 2019 high-spec'ed iMac. Nearly all interactions with the UI appear to be instantaneous. I can't describe what a positive experience that is. It's cognitively very rewarding to use.
- wildrhythms 6y ago
  I also picked up the M1 Macbook Air, and I'm shocked at how well it performs without a fan. I had an Intel 13-inch Macbook Pro before this, and simply running, for example, a high-viewer Twitch stream with chat open in the background would heat the chassis to ridiculous levels, and blast the fan constantly. On my M1, not only is there no fan, but the unit is completely cool to the touch with all of the same applications running. I'm impressed to say the least.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
emrah 6y ago
It's all about the battery life. It had become miserable lately. I wasn't going to upgrade for any gimmicks but 2X battery life (or thereabouts) is a game changer
glandium 6y ago
For some reason, the link doesn't work for me (on mobile, domain not found). My own take, owning one, and only mentioning things I've never or rarely seen mentioned: - unibody with no openings for ventilation is kind of mindblowing for a machine that can build Firefox in 20 minutes and 30 seconds. Which also means it won't accumulate dust inside, assuming the keyboard is hermetic. - it actually feels pretty heavy for its size. - the edges are very sharp. Too sharp. Not cutting sharp, but uncomfortably sharp. - it's cold to the touch (except after using the cpu for a while). - leaving it unplugged and sleeping (lid closed) consumes more battery than on a MBP late 2013.
arvinsim 6y ago
I would have appreciated it if he posted the exact configuration he bought.

227 points by bouk 6y ago

amelius 6y ago

"owned"

messe 6y ago
Yep, a machine owned by the user. They're free to install whatever software they want on it, including the OS. Now, it happens that Linux and other free OSes don't support the hardware yet, but that doesn't diminish the fact that they can be ported. Is there a particular point you'd like to make?
- harperlee 6y ago
  I can make the point that those “ownership” quotes would very well apply to iphone and ipad, based on your OS installability criterium.
  - messe 6y ago
    Other than the fact that those require a jailbreak to do so, and are far more locked down than the M1 Macs because of that.
    - harperlee 6y ago
      Yes, that’s exactly my point.
- amelius 6y ago
  > Now, it happens that Linux and other free OSes don't support the hardware yet, but that doesn't diminish the fact that they can be ported. Is the specification of the M1 processor including the GPU part open then? And can the laptop be repaired by the user?

RobRivera 6y ago

is it built like a tank?

dehrmann 6y ago
A tank that grinds into your wrists.

dukeofdoom 6y ago

I'm reluctant to buy it because of ports, and tiny amount of drive space. Waiting for the 14 inch, hoping for more ports, larger base hard drive, and new design for similar cost of upgrading the air.

breck 6y ago
I got the 1TB SSD. Wouldn't call that tiny. Then I have external arrays for bigger datasets. How much space would you need? IIRC they go up to 2TB or maybe even 4TB.
- webmobdev 6y ago
  It's expensive and is still not upgradeable is the point.
  - beckler 6y ago
    Pretty sure Mac laptops haven’t been upgradable since 2015.
    - erik_seaberg 6y ago
      Does any laptop have any kind of upgrade path? I've always cheaped out and treated them as disposable.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Most PC laptops have the option to upgrade memory and disks, specially the enterprise lines on the same price levels as Apple hardware.
  - inkyoto 6y ago
    Laptop upgradbility is a game of luck and a guessing game, in general. Laptops are, by design, a finished product, and it is a lucky happenstance, if it (and what) can be upgraded for a variety of reasons. My 2008 Sony Vaio VGN-Z17GN laptop is, technically, upgradable. But, the chipset does not support more than 4Gb of RAM, and I already have 4Gb installed. So I do not have the RAM upgrade option. I replaced a HDD with a SDD years back, and it was a fairly risky enterprise with a high chance of the laptop incurring a permanent damage due to how the Vaio keyboard is wired up with the mainboard. The laptop is still very much usable even for moderate development activities since it has been running Linux for years. Other laptops have their own quirks or limitations of sorts. Now, a few random picks amongst contemporary laptops (Lenovo and Acer): Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 5: 8 Gb (i5-10210U CPU) or 16 Gb (i7-10510U CPU) of soldered on RAM and 512 Gb Opal2 NVMe (no information on the SSD upgradability). The 16Gb RAM / 512 Gb configuration is AU$1,100+ more expensive than the 16Gb / 512 Gb 13" Macbook Pro M1 (AU$1,699). Lenovo ThinkPad X390 Yoga: i7-8565U CPU, 8Gb of soldered on RAM, 256 Gb NVMe (no information on the SSD upgradability). It is AU$400+ more expensive than the 16Gb / 512 Gb 13" Macbook Pro M1 (AU$1,699). Lenovo ThinkPad P1: i7-8750H, 1x 16GB SO-DIMM DDR4-2666 non-ECC (no information of the max amount RAM supported), 512GB NVMe SSD (no information on the SSD upgradability). It is AU$1,000 more expensive than the 16Gb / 512 Gb 13" Macbook Pro M1 (AU$1,699). Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold: i5-L16G7, 8Gb of soldered on RAM, 512GB NVMe SSD (no information on the SSD upgradability), AU$5,799. It is AU$4,000 (four thousand) more expensive than the 16Gb / 512 Gb 13" Macbook Pro M1 (AU$1,699). This is 3.411 times more expensive than the M1 laptop. Lenovo ThinkPad T14s: AMD Ryzen™ PRO 4750U CPU, 16GB soldered on DDR4-3200, 512 Gb Opal2 NVMe ((no information on the SSD upgradability). It is nearly AU$500 more expensive that the 16Gb / 512 Gb 13" Macbook Pro M1 (AU$1,699). Acer TravelMate P614, Intel Core i7, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, AU$2,299: no information on RAM and SSD upgrade options. The laptop is AU$600 more expensive that the 16Gb / 512 Gb 13" Macbook Pro M1 (AU$1,699). Acer Swift 3, AMD Ryzen 7-4700U, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, AU$1,999: no information on RAM and SSD upgrade options. The laptop is AU$300 more expensive that the 16Gb / 512 Gb 13" Macbook Pro M1 (AU$1,699). Other Acer laptops are less capable, use Pentium or Core i3 CPU's, slower SSD's and are cheaper than M1 laptops; some are twice as cheaper. They are marketed as «student» laptops. Out of 7 PC laptops above, only one has upgradable RAM, and it is a guessing game whether the SSD can or can't be upgraded. Every PC laptop above is also more expensive than the latest, stats wise comparable, 13" MacBook Pro M1. A few of those are significantly more expensive. Yes, there are cheaper options, and, yes, some laptops can be upgraded easily or more easily, but that is not the primary market for laptop makers. Wholesale purchasers (corporates) and average consumers do not typically ask whether or not they can later upgrade their laptop. Also, if one wants an ultraporatble or a compact laptop, they had better accept the fact that RAM and/or SSD will be soldered on, and they won't be able to upgrade them, be it an Apple or a commodity PC laptop. It is a commonplace now.

daemonk 6y ago

Yeah, the combination of features at the right quality level makes it the best laptop I've ever owned.

fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
Third here (although I have the MBP): I particularly enjoy the battery life, I mostly use my laptop unplugged again.

soperj 6y ago

>It is even the best Windows PC The delusion is very strong here.

Hamuko 6y ago
Depends on what you prioritise. If you value silent operation and heaps of battery life, I imagine it is.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
Huh? Windows with WSL is such a bad experience that running Windows apps on Mac OS is far superior to me, even with Wine. I also think it's the best Linux machine. It's not very hard to do. Can we stop with the ridiculous condescension ("delusional") towards opinions we disagree with and make no effort to interpret charitably?
- webmobdev 6y ago
  When you say it is "the best Linux machine" with a straight face, I am sure it is hard not to invite such condescension! The M1 can barely run Linux on it, if at all.
  - dev_tty01 6y ago
    Just a guess on my part, but he may have meant "unix" and is using "Linux" incorrectly. Mac OS is a unix system. Linux has become so common that I have heard many people say Linux when they mean the more general term unix. Let's assume the best instead of the worst.
jeffbee 6y ago
Running Windows in a VM has long been more satisfactory in certain ways than running it on real hardware (for example, applying updates in a VM takes seconds instead of hours because the VM doesn't drop your block caches when it reboots). I can see why the author could be pleased with the outcome.
vmception 6y ago

systemvoltage 6y ago

Except the interface which has been designed for touch interfaces without having any touch capability on the Mac, for the sake of "design unity" bullshit. You can't have M1 without macOS Big Sur. Not only on macOS, but generally the entire web is mobile-first and desktop-last philosophy.

nicbou 6y ago
I like Big Sur. Everything works just as well with the mouse as before. They made many quality of life improvements to the touch bar, and didn't mess with the other things. What exactly was made worse by it?
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25072644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25072644 Instead of repeating same things over, there has been plenty of discussion on HN about macOS big sur design changes.
  - user-the-name 6y ago
    Do you not have opinions on your own that you can express?
valuearb 6y ago
Blatantly false assertion. No touch design changes in Big Sur, confirmed by Hair Force One.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  The following explains and illustrates the problems with macOS and how they've shoehorned design changes that do not belong to Desktop environments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXG5REBi2fo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXG5REBi2fo
  - 6y ago

stevefan1999 6y ago

...and is probably one of the least libre* computer I've seen in the 21th century, too. Before that, Linux can't run on MacBooks, and after a few years of development it's just barely working, now this thing. This is never going to be Desktop Linux compatible. Even Linus claimed he would like to but the effort is tremendous. >>> I'd absolutely love to have one, if it just ran Linux.. I have fairly fond memories of the 11" Macbook Air (I think 4,1) that I used about a decade ago (but moved away from because it took Apple too long to fix the screen - and by the time they did, I'd moved on to better laptops, and Apple had moved on to make Linux less convenient). Apple may run Linux in their cloud, but their laptops don't ;( I've been waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time. The new Air would be almost perfect, except for the OS. And I don't have the time to tinker with it, or the inclination to fight companies that don't want to help. Linus >>> Maybe you can run just some more productivity apps by sacrificing your freedom to be kept captive by Apple. But this also means your machine isn't entirely yours. *: used liberal here. I don't know what's the exactly word to use but it turns out there are people so sensitive to politics and thought the otherwise.

paddim8 6y ago
Actually, Linux might actually run quite well on it soon. https://asahilinux.org/ https://asahilinux.org/
- Lammy 6y ago
  Looks like it "might" "soon" start booting a kernel: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Project-status https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Project-status
- christkv 6y ago
  It will take some time to get a GPU driver I imagine
- mhh__ 6y ago
  > Might Ignoring that it's completely up to apple whether this exists in a years time, reverse engineering an entire SOC is really fucking hard. ARM isn't like x86, you basically can't assume anything. The GPU may be completely off limits for years, for example, unless they somehow (this isn't impossible) make a blob out of Apple's actual drivers.

xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago

New computer is better than old computer. Shocking. The M1 is a good chip. It is great that we have ARM cores that can go toe-to-toe with Zen 3. It is hardly a revolution and it would not be trivial to scale it to a workstation or server design. It is telling to see someone acting like the competition is still Intel. Intel has been playing catchup since Q1 of 2017. Their server parts in particular are woefully outdated.

valuearb 6y ago
Toe to toe? It starches every Ryzen chip in single core performance, and every mobile Ryzen under 45 watts TDP in multicore despite only having 4 performance cores and 15 Watts TDP.
- adrian_b 6y ago
  You are correct only about Ryzens based on the old Zen 2. Any new Ryzen 5xxx based on Zen 3 is faster in single-thread than the best Apple M1. In general-purpose benchmarks, like Geekbench 5, the maximum Apple M1 score is 1752, while Ryzen 5xxx score between 1800 and 1876. In computational benchmarks, where the IPC is limited by some execution resources reaching 100% utilization, so the higher average IPC of Apple M1 does matter much less, Apple M1 is even slower compared to Ryzens. For example Ryzen 7 5800X is 22% faster than Apple M1 in gmpbench (the benchmark was run for both CPUs after tuning specific to Apple M1 and tuning specific to Zen 3 were added to libgmp, so it is a comparison of apples with apples).
  - valuearb 6y ago
    https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-7-5800x https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-7-5800x The 5800x is a 105 watt part(!!!), still gets starched by the M1 in single core, and is only about 40% faster in multicore despite using all that power to drive double the performance core count. But by all means, go off to cherry pick more niche benchmarks...
    - 6y ago

tomatotomato37 6y ago

Not to invalidate the author's enjoyment of his own purchase, but it would be nice if he clarified which computers he had owned in the past

esquevin 6y ago
> The performance feels a lot better than my MacBook Pro 16”, which is only a year old and about 3x the price. Last sentence of the first paragraph
- webmobdev 6y ago
  > which is only a year old and about 3x the price. Rich people problem.
- noir_lord 6y ago
  I was issued the 16" last gen Intel MacBook pro at last job (new job I'm back on whatever I want) and it was a seriously underwhelming experience for 3K's worth of hardware, screen was good, touchpad was sublime -everything else was crap. Battery life was mediocre (worse still if you actually use it), it got ridiculously hot under load, the fans where really loud and pitched at a frequency it was hard to ignore - I'd have put it down to a bad unit but everyone else with the same model had the same issues. It was fine but for double good thinkpad money it wasn't fine enough. I was glad to hand it back, new place doesn't care what I run so I'm back on Fedora on a fast desktop and I'm happy again, I still have a work issued macbook pro but it sits on a shelf behind me until I need to test something.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    The most mind-blowing part of the 16-inch MacBook Pros are really the speakers, which are really nice for laptop speakers. However, that's also quite sad that it's the highlight.

Waterluvian 6y ago

If their first M1 out the gate is this good, I'm excited to buy whatever comes second.

bla3 6y ago

I love my M1 MBP, but I use my 16" MBP more day to day. The larger screen seems to be more important to me than the noisiness and shorter battery life. Definitely looking forward to bigger arm macs.

breck 6y ago
Curious, why not an external monitor? I have the M1 13 for on the go. An external monitor for day to day.
- threedots 6y ago
  The 16" MBP is terrible with an external monitor (or at least mine is with my external monitor). Fans spin up like crazy and the case gets hot enough to fry an egg on. It's the one terrible weakness of an otherwise great machine.
  - breck 6y ago
    Oh wild, didn't know that. This is the M1 16" MBP, or the older Intel one?
    - varjag 6y ago
      There's no M1 16" MBP.
    - eyelidlessness 6y ago
      Only the low end 13” MBP has an M1 release currently.
    - justincormack 6y ago
      The old one, there isn't an M1 16" yet
      - breck 6y ago
        Ah thanks! Didn't realize that.

croes 6y ago

More RAM would be nice.

breck 6y ago
Would always be nice, for sure, but for Deep Learning I use a big cheap box with loads of RAM and the 16GB in my M1 MBP with the 1TB SSD seems plenty good so far. I don't have use cases yet where I notice a problem (other than yeah, overhead of having to do DL jobs on a different machine). What causes you to hit the limits? I don't do any video editing, so I could see that being a slowdown for that use case.
- _huayra_ 6y ago
  Being able to locally run the integration tests for my work on my 32GB thinkpad has been a godsend during the 'rona times. If I only had 16 (or even 24) I'd have to carefully consider whether I should close Firefox to run them. These tests spin up a bunch of containers and run certain components with instrumented runtimes that take up gobs of RAM, so having a fat laptop is very useful.
bouk 6y ago
Maybe, but the RAM and disk performance is so good [1] that it might not be needed so badly. Unless you want to run a whole bunch of VMs https://mobile.twitter.com/Sirupsen/status/1344267019944947713 https://mobile.twitter.com/Sirupsen/status/13442670199449477...
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  I'd like to see how much gaming Apple Silicon can support. So I'm very curious to see what next year's M1X/M2 machines will bring. Of course, we're also at the dawn of widespread cloud gaming so perhaps this consideration will also be moot.

alphadevx 6y ago

In my experience, the latest computer I buy is always "the best computer I've ever owned". They get better every year, why is this still surprising?

Fricken 6y ago
Your experience apparently doesn't include the first paragraph of the article.
procinct 6y ago
Generally this is surprising because the user bought the "Air" model instead of his usual "pro" model which is much more expensive. The impressive part here is that the air outperforms last years pro (according to the author) which is 3x the price.
- DennisAleynikov 6y ago
  this is what people meant prior to the m1 coming out with "macs are a horrible deal" they used to be priced at roughly 3x markup compared to the market. they finally fixed their co-dependency with intel and suddenly wow the price gouging goes out the door because gasp the macbook air could have always been the pro it was just never possible with using old chips. ANYTHING using arm absolutely FLIES open your eyes people
  - denimnerd42 6y ago
    yeah and then those are poor devs like me whose work notebook is a U series intel on an enterprise HP/DELL body which probably cost $800.
    - DennisAleynikov 6y ago
      some older intel chips are good and faithful (apple wasnt the ones passing the savings on to you like HP) they prefered to both give you outdated intel chips but also ask you $3500 for the honor

Huntsecker 6y ago

surely this is the case for any new computer anyone buys technically speaking. If you go out now and buy a new computer it replaces one less good and at that point in time is the best computer you have ever owned...

Traster 6y ago
This has not been true in the past - Apple hit a peak in the early 2010s. It then had ups and downs - Retina was a good step, but the CPU bumps have been lame, the Touchbar has been an active step backwards, the port situation has got progressively worse and the keyboard have been terrible. Some models like the Air just got no progression for years on end. Life in the Apple eco-system isn't like life in the normal computer eco-system, there's very little competition once you're committed to the OS.

webmobdev 6y ago

Yeah, right - if you choose to ignore the following: You can't upgrade the RAM, you can't upgrade the SSD, it doesn't have replaceable battery and you are forced to run a crippled OS on it (macOS Big Sur deliberately cripples VPN and firewall on it so that select Apple softwares can bypass them, allowing Apple better access and control over your data and softwares). (And if you don't care about any of the above, then sure, give in.)

hombre_fatal 6y ago
Everything you prefer in life has downsides that you accept because the upsides outweigh the trade-offs.
- everyone 6y ago
  yeah but Apple downsides are particularly infuriating cus they're not the result of technical limitations.. The downsides are intentional on Apples part. They didnt try to engineer the most useful computer, they intentionally crippled various things in their OS for shady business reasons.
SubiculumCode 6y ago
cripples vpn? that is not a small thing.
- messe 6y ago
  It's false. That was debunked: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/k0c00f/macos_big_sur_does_not_bypass_vpns/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/k0c00f/macos_big_sur_d...
- webmobdev 6y ago
  It cripples some VPN apps. And some VPN softwares that used their own kernel extensions. More here - https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/ https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/
frereubu 6y ago

efwfwef 6y ago

I have the MacBook Air 2018 (13-inch, 1.6 GHz i5, 16 GB memory) and it gets pretty slow for my dev side-projects, the battery is good but definitely not as good as my iPad pro (but much better than my macbook pro), and my keyboard has been acting, I got a replacement, and now it's acting again... Without the keyboard issue, and the slowness, it'd really be perfect.

longtimegoogler 6y ago

I just bought one and my reaction was, meh.

niftylettuce 6y ago

tldr; I got a Macbook Pro M1 for $975 in mint-condition at a Best Buy and already put the return label on it. While Geekbench showed great results, actual usage of the machine and headaches ensued were contrasting. To put it bluntly - M1 machines are currently unstable. There are numerous Bluetooth issues [1], formatting issues [2], Wifi 6 issues [3], VPN issues [4], firewall issues [5], and shocking security issues in general with Big Sur and Apple's silicon [6]. I'm a power user and this is way too experimental for actual use. At the least get the 16 GB variant if you want to get anything done and not experience freeze/lockup (but for that much money you're better off with Librem 14" or System76 w/AMD Threadripper). [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/kpu2hy/mouse_lag_when_using_bluetooth_mouse_on_m1_mac/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/kpu2hy/mouse_lag_when_... [2]: https://mrmacintosh.com/reinstalling-big-sur-on-apple-silicon-macs-with-11-0-20a2411-error/ https://mrmacintosh.com/reinstalling-big-sur-on-apple-silico... [3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/jy3yc7/is_anyone_else_experiencing_issues_with_wifi_on/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/jy3yc7/is_anyone_else_... [4]: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2020/11/16/big-no-big-sur-mullvad-disallows-apple-apps-bypass-firewall/ https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2020/11/16/big-no-big-sur-mullva... [5]: https://github.com/objective-see/LuLu/issues/208 https://github.com/objective-see/LuLu/issues/208 [6]: https://sneak.berlin/20201204/on-trusting-macintosh-hardware/ https://sneak.berlin/20201204/on-trusting-macintosh-hardware...

_huayra_ 6y ago
"You're just using it wrong" /s https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/ https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/
bgorman 6y ago
I have a MacBook Air 2020 (Intel). After upgrading to Big Sur, I have experiences a general degradation of performance, graphical glitches and serious Bluetooth problems (failing to connect to Apple mouse and keyboard). The fundamental problem seems to be that with proprietary consumer hardware/software- only the initial version is reviewed and after that the vendor can push software full of bugs with no consequences.
nojito 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

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izacus 6y ago

[This ad sponsored by Apple Inc.] ?

sandGorgon 6y ago

Here's the intersting part - there's no alternative to that price/performance ratio for atleast a year.

sam1r 6y ago

Amen.

sam1r 6y ago
Or should one say, awomen. http://awomen.urbanup.com/6512560 http://awomen.urbanup.com/6512560

jeswin 6y ago

I think we really need a break from people submitting more M1 Mac unboxing articles, unless there's significant original technical content. This is turning into fanboyism.

dagaci 6y ago
They probably have a quota to fill. Apple spending an ocean of cash on pushing this project.
- dang 6y ago
  Please review the site guidelines—they ask you not to post like this. If you have evidence, or are worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look into it.
- kowlo 6y ago
  Are you implying the OP or HN itself are promoting the M1 line for $?
  - DennisAleynikov 6y ago
    beyond ridiculous conspiracy, apple just took the ARM pill finally and release a "real os" running on arm and every closeted anti-ipad and anti-chromeos user finally breathed a sigh of relief that "real computers" can be good again, finally
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
bouk 6y ago
It's just... really good. It's an uncanny feeling that many haven't had for a while
- DennisAleynikov 6y ago

Jonnax 6y ago

There's a lot of love for the M1 Macs. Medium send me emails of recommended articles and always at least one is a blog about how good it is. What are the issues people have been experiencing? No laptop is perfect.

cehrlich 6y ago
The laptops only support 1 external monitor unless you do some hacky stuff, they only have two ports, and still have mediocre webcams, and you’re forced to use Big Sur which still needs a bit of work. Also while the vast majority of software runs great on the M1, there are a few very niche things that still don’t. But I wouldn’t call these “issues”, as anyone who reads the spec sheet can know them before purchase. That’s it, really. These computers are astonishingly good.

GeekyBear 6y ago

The comparison to Microsoft's more expensive 2020 Surface Pro X is especially stark. Windows runs at less than half the speed on Microsoft's own flagship ARM hardware. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhESSZIXvCA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhESSZIXvCA

MikusR 6y ago
Because the CPU in Surface Pro X is half the speed of M1.

rhexs 6y ago

Is parallels running the ARM windows preview emulating 64 bit X86 fast enough for anything practical? Can I play ten year old games?

mhh__ 6y ago
> Can I play ten year old games? Based on peak performance at least I would assume yes. Honestly I'd be a little bit worried if you couldn't considering just how expensive they are.
- zepto 6y ago
  Expensive compared to what?
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    Copied from a different comment of mine: £999 is a lot of PC. The processor in the M1 air is about 20% faster than the one in my laptop (£550 IIRC), but to spec an M1 out with the same amount of storage and RAM brings it to £1999. I should stress that my now slightly ageing laptop is much thicker than an Air, but it's also used to play modern games so that balances out. Personally, for the price of an Air I could actually use I'd just get something cheap and a big PC setup.
    - zepto 6y ago
      What’s the battery life like on your PC? It sounds like the things you care about are raw performance per £, and other factors are not important. If that’s what you are looking for then the Air is not for you, but it doesn’t mean it’s expensive. It just means you don’t need the things it offers for the money. If you do care about battery life, then the M1 Air is cheaper than the only comparable alternative - the M1 MacBook Pro. Nobody else even makes anything comparable.
      - mhh__ 6y ago
        > What’s the battery life like on your PC? Actually not too bad - not good, but good enough for it to last long enough to write up lab data for 5 hours or so which is all I needed it to do. It's pretty diabolical in Linux, but I think that's partly my fault because I've not bothered to fettle with the power (not an unreasonable requirement given that the rest of the distro has been fiddled with)

DoctorNick 6y ago

Unfortunately, you don't actually "own" it. https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/ https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/

chubot 6y ago

Prediction: The M1 will make the web slower for most people. Web devs will buy the M1 because it executes their slow dev tools faster (npm ecosystem). Then they will test their web pages on the M1 and deploy them when they are "fast enough". Result: web pages will be even slower on mobile phones and non-M1 laptops. Software is a gas; it expands to fill its container - Nathan Myhrvold

reocha 6y ago
Web devs do test against other hardware. They have to, google ranks webpages (partially) based on their performance.
- chubot 6y ago
  In my experience, most of them don't. I would be surprised if even 10% of web devs do real performance testing on other hardware (i.e. with actual measurements). Example: Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25357409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25357409 It's not limited to Google either. Try ordering food on a web app on your phone, etc. For example I just loaded doordash.com in Chrome's mobile view, and it made 110 requests and consists of 7.7 MB of resources. It took 1.12 secs to load on a core i7 desktop connected to a wired network. How long do you think it will take on a phone with a slower CPU over a wireless network? For a web page that shows pictures of food. FWIW I worked at Google for over a decade, and this was a problem that got worse over the entire decade. People talked about making the network slow to fix this systemic problem, but it never happened (at least while I was there). You also have to test on different networks, although admittedly the M1 doesn't make your network faster so that problem won't be exacerbated. I still stand by the original statement; the M1 will make the web slower, assuming it's adopted by a bigger fraction of web devs than consumers (which seems very likely).
enw 6y ago
Correction: bad devs make the web slower
Hamuko 6y ago
But our devs already work on top-of-the-line hardware. If anything, this will bridge the gap for users if they can expect the same performance out of a $1k MacBook that you'd previously expect out of a $3k MacBook.

z92 6y ago

This post says how unpredictable it is. Come on, you can run a linux distribution on a non-apple hardware and not even worry if any of those software will run on it. Plus any of the 40 other top TIOBE tools.

bouk 6y ago
I've used a Linux laptop before and it was always so painful to get basic things working, like it being able to suspend when you close the lid. Packaging is usually better, if you don't want any nice GUI programs (like iaWriter) or games
- kitsunesoba 6y ago
  Linux laptops are massively YMMV. Some work almost perfectly out of the box while others are plagued with quirks that never seem to get fixed. Point in case I have a circa 2008 Dell workstation laptop that runs Linux pretty well, except for some reason its volume buttons (which, as far as I can tell, send standard key codes) only work as expected under some distros running some desktop environments. It's oddly spotty for such a basic function, and last I checked there was no surefire fix for it, just an endless list of "try this".

dharma1 6y ago

Bought one for my kid, been testing it out and it’s so good that I’m tempted to buy one myself - much better than any of the recent mbpro’s I’ve had. Super responsive while staying cool on the lap, completely silent and all day battery life. Can’t wait for mbpros with miniled display and more arm cores later this year.

sfblah 6y ago
My kids use Chromebooks. Macs are a little pricey.

bouke 6y ago

Nice post, makes me wanna dump my 16” as well and if it weren’t for my work’s heavy dependency on Windows. — O and I really dig your domain name! ;-)

pachico 6y ago

Regardless of what computer that is, having what you think it is the best computer you ever had is such a great sensation, at least for me that I spend at lease 9 hours a day in front of it. In my case it's a Dell XPS, but it doesn't matter. Treasure this sensation, it won't last forever :)

mkaic 6y ago
I just built my first PC about a month ago and am still in that phase. Went from a 2013 laptop with integrated GPU to having a much nicer discrete GPU and the difference still blows me away on the daily :)
- pachico 6y ago
  I suspect you would enjoy it that much even if it wasn't so much superior to your old laptop, but just because you built it yourself.

thejellypen 6y ago

Been using MacBooks since 2014 for hobby development/work I bought a new macbook pro m1 in December. Returned 2 days later after realizing that it only supports one external monitor and even found articles stating that ultra wide monitors were not supported on initial release. "Just use display link adaptor?" No thanks I don't want a 150$ adaptor that may or may not work with my current setup. Even with display link I've heard of displays flickering on initial startup or not starting at all in clamshell. People saying the MacBook pro 16" might solve the issue but tbh I think this is apples way of pigeonholing users to either their desktop version or their laptop.

grzm 6y ago
> People saying the MacBook pro 16" might solve the issue but tbh I think this is apples way of pigeonholing users to either their desktop version or their laptop. This is their first generation M1 and they haven't rolled it out across their entire line (which they have said they intend to do). Today marks the second month since they were released (10 Nov 2020). They haven't yet released something in the same class as the MacBook Pro 16", which it sounds like you'd prefer. Give it a year before assuming malicious intent.
deleted 6y ago
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RomeoDelta 6y ago

I am no Apple fanatic. I'm a die-hard Linux user and open source proponent. I wouldn't touch the M1 with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole. But with all that said... I kind of like articles like these. I enjoy seeing people happy with good tech because I like good tech. It pleases me that there are people getting this much enjoyment out of innovative and (I'll admit it) quite impressive hardware. So rock on, Apple fans. But when there's a Linux computer that is even a bit better, I hope you can tolerate me shouting from the rooftops, because you bet I will be!

fvv 6y ago
I feel the same and hope that moment will come in about 1.5y zen4 5nm ddr5 64gb ecc 2tb nvme linux laptop ..without having to trade my body parts to buy it :)
- aquir 6y ago
  Sounds awesome! Can you share what type of laptop are you using?
  - fvv 6y ago
    Right now it,s an xmg which is a seller of clevo probably i will remain with that because I can change parts without voiding warranty , my reseller leave me add rm and hdd of my choice after the sale, i can buy without hdd and ram.. aalso have swappable battery and even if touchpad may not be apple quality i usually use mouse or trackball , but with the next I'll take a look at what Lenovo, hp dell etc will offer by that time , about linux compatibility and drivers.. I'm quite sure is improving every year.. except for macbooks ;)
    - aquir 6y ago
      Thanks, I'll have a look!
    - inkyoto 6y ago
      Are you seriously comparing a gaming XMG Clevo laptop (I looked up the Clevo NH57ADS) that has been designed for the gaming crowd, that requires a 230W external power supply in a maxed out configuration, that is nearly 3x heavier and 3x thicker than a 13" MacBook Air ultraportable, more than 2.5x heavier and 2x thicker than a 13" MacBook Pro? I could not quickly find stats on the battery life for the latest and greatest Clevo NH57ADS, but – since they use a desktop CPU in it – I do not expect it to be that great. If I were to apply your logic, I could then declare that my POWER9 2U blade is a portable device ahem laptop (technically, I can carry it around as well as keep the blade on my laps, yes) that surpasses any other known laptop in terms of hardware configurability, and Linux compatibility will be even greater, too.

ezluckyfree 6y ago

they seem good and stuff but Mac OS and the Mac ecosystem are awful

atemerev 6y ago

I have bought an M1, and so far I am slightly disappointed. Intel macbook pro was quite fine, too. Firefox is still occasionally slow. No significant improvements in compilation speed (well, homebrew still relies on Rosetta 2). Instant wakeup is cool, but not a life-changing improvement. Etc.

bouk 6y ago
Homebrew works without Rosetta 2, maybe you have to reinstall it so it runs natively. It should be installed under /opt/homebrew
- atemerev 6y ago
  Oh? that was fast. Only a month has passed since opening the issue. Thank you.

timvisee 6y ago

You're talking about software here. You'd have the same experience on almost any macbook. In fact, for the things you're describing you'd probably have a better experience with a non M1 machine. There's only one line that is related to the actual M1 MacBook Air hardware. Have you tried other machines as well, such as a ThinkPad? Have you ever used Linux?

bouk 6y ago
Yes I'm talking about Software because it has a new CPU architecture. I have used a thinkpad with Linux and it was a terrible experience.

archsurface 6y ago

Is this post even about the macbook? Nix, homebrew, go, terraform, ... ?

bserge 6y ago
[deleted]
- archsurface 6y ago
  I don't see how that makes it a great laptop. It's a very low bar to say that the software working makes it a great laptop. I'd call that par.

adamredwoods 6y ago

I'm still on a MacBook Pro 2011. Chrome runs great. Newer Xcode doesn't work, though.

loh 6y ago

The most interesting thing about this to me was the bit at the end about Windows and Games. I've heard of Windows emulation on Mac before but this is the first time I've heard of Parallels. > Now you can download Steam and basically install anything and it will probably work. Microsoft really did some amazing magic in getting both 32-bit and 64-bit x86 programs running on arm64. The author makes it sound like you can run basically all Windows software on Mac without issues with Parallel, including more demanding software like games you'd find on Steam. Does anyone here have experience with Parallels? How does performance compare? My assumption with this kind of emulation was always that performance would typically suffer too much for it to be worth it.

deevolution 6y ago
Parallels has been around for a while... I used it to play the homeworld franchise years ago but more recently I have used bootcamp. Not sure about performance on M1 tho.
emrah 6y ago
I have Parallels and my experience on my intel MBP is gaming is not very good on it. It's mostly graphics support that is lacking I believe. I'm not sure how M1/arm support would make it work better but I sure hope so.
nwotnagrom 6y ago
I prefer browser based options such as shells.com where you can actually just access Windows or Linux on a virtual cloud computer. Much easier than messing with Parallels...
immigrantsheep 6y ago
I wouldn't bet on it. Specially since his go to game is Age of Mythology. A game that came out in 2002.
ksec 6y ago
You used to get anywhere between 10-30% performance drop on the Mac running Windows Emulation with roughly the same Hardware. With M1 since the chip is quite a bit faster you get report saying it actually runs Windows Apps on a M1 Mac better than on x86 Windows. Of course YMMV, and those Apps were not Gaming, which are mostly bottlenecked by the GPU and Drivers.

tlarkworthy 6y ago

I have one too. Yes, all those things are nice but mine is fricken GOLD. Note pinky rose gold, but GOLD FRICKEN GOLD gold. Best color ever.

nevi-me 6y ago

My wife has a 2012 MBP, which is usable because I upgraded the RAM to 16GB and added an SSD. I had limited experience and use of macOS, but didn't like it much. I bought the Air last month under duress, because I was going to a place that's 10°C warmer than my home, and my laptop's GPU passes the idle quiet threshold. I have tinnitus, so the laptop fan noise becomes unbearable. I'm enjoying using the Mac, I mainly develop in Rust, so the experience has been mostly good. I've had a few hard crashes of other software that restarted the machine, that's fine though. I still mainly remote into my beefy Windows desktop in the other room, but I haven't needed to turn on my work laptop as Microsoft also updated Office to work on Arm64. I didn't know about Parallels, I'll try it out, as sometimes I can't remote into my desktop conveniently.

thefz 6y ago
> My wife has a 2012 MBP, which is usable because I upgraded the RAM to 16GB and added an SSD. More or less same story with my previous Mid 2009 13'' MBP. The only reason why it has survived this long is because I've been able to add RAM, replace an SSD, replace the battery twice and replace a faulty touchpad too. Sadly this is no longer possible and modern Apple laptops are increasingly harder to repair.
- nevi-me 6y ago
  Yea, Apple has great build quality. I have a 2013 HP Envy 17 that's also survived because of the ability to replace (keyboard, battery 2x, SSD). Its chassis has unfortunately started collapsing, but I want to fix it and donate it to a relative. I hope these newer Macs that have everything soldered together, at least last 4-5 years. I'm going to try get a Mac as my next work device, maybe 2 years from now, so my wife can use my current one in future.

ttul 6y ago

Since getting my M1, I can now barely tolerate using my 2019 high-spec'ed iMac. Nearly all interactions with the UI appear to be instantaneous. I can't describe what a positive experience that is. It's cognitively very rewarding to use.

wildrhythms 6y ago
I also picked up the M1 Macbook Air, and I'm shocked at how well it performs without a fan. I had an Intel 13-inch Macbook Pro before this, and simply running, for example, a high-viewer Twitch stream with chat open in the background would heat the chassis to ridiculous levels, and blast the fan constantly. On my M1, not only is there no fan, but the unit is completely cool to the touch with all of the same applications running. I'm impressed to say the least.

deleted 6y ago

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emrah 6y ago

It's all about the battery life. It had become miserable lately. I wasn't going to upgrade for any gimmicks but 2X battery life (or thereabouts) is a game changer

glandium 6y ago

For some reason, the link doesn't work for me (on mobile, domain not found). My own take, owning one, and only mentioning things I've never or rarely seen mentioned: - unibody with no openings for ventilation is kind of mindblowing for a machine that can build Firefox in 20 minutes and 30 seconds. Which also means it won't accumulate dust inside, assuming the keyboard is hermetic. - it actually feels pretty heavy for its size. - the edges are very sharp. Too sharp. Not cutting sharp, but uncomfortably sharp. - it's cold to the touch (except after using the cpu for a while). - leaving it unplugged and sleeping (lid closed) consumes more battery than on a MBP late 2013.

arvinsim 6y ago

I would have appreciated it if he posted the exact configuration he bought.