6 ms·

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 desig

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.
    - webmobdev 6y ago
      Thanks for the list of all such laptops to avoid, along with Apple macbooks. Soldered ram, soldered SSD, unremovable batteries etc. all are designed with planned Obsolescence in mind. We should all boycott such products to protect our RIGHT TO REPAIR.
  - PostThisTooFast 6y ago
    Yes, the soldered-in SSD blows. It’s basically a disposable computer.
- dukeofdoom 6y ago
  The 256 is too small for me, I edit videos sometimes. $200+ to upgrade the internal drive. I'm hoping the 14 inch will come with a larger internal drive, and more upgrades.
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    Samsung has quite cheap high speed external SSDs the T5 is like $150 for the 1TB drives now. USB type C Gen 2 10gig is fast enough for most video editing especially any editing you could do on a device like the M1. Personally if I was editing videos I would be using an external storage device both due to the capacity and the fact that my data is then portable. With the full disk encryption on the M1 I wouldn’t be storing anything other than your scratch pad unless you can guarantee a 24/7 backup as you go scheme anyhow since any failure would like be irrecoverable.
    - jackson1442 6y ago
      +1 on the Samsung SSDs. I have mine partitioned 500/500 for backup and external storage and it works wonderfully.
    - jsjohnst 6y ago
      I was just about to reply the same. I own a handful of Samsung T5 and T7 SSD drives (the new T7 being twice as fast, but also more expensive) and they are great. 1-2TB is sufficient as the internal HD for me (aka make no representation of other’s needs) and everything else goes on my NAS or when remote a SSD HD like the T5/T7. When I need extreme performance (aka video editing usually), I’ve got a Samsung X5 which uses TB3 and NVMe to get nearly 3GB/s speeds. If they weren’t so expensive, I’d use only the X5s, but instead have a mix of T5/T7/X5 for various purposes.
      - dogma1138 6y ago
        And potentially if you edit videos even portable SSDs aren’t enough. Raw 8K RED footage at 75 FPS which is what you would be recording at if you master at 4K 60* is about 120GB a minute that’s over 7TB an hour. No reasonable internal drive could support that and you’ll be looking at a high speed NAS or an NVME JBOD/DAS solution to support that. *The extra frames and pixels are really important for final mastering as you need extra bits to do image stabilization, cropping, color grading and sharpening correctly it also makes more complex post processing work easier to perform even things like rotoscoping are much easier to do when your objects are twice the size and you have much less pixel bleed between what you want to roto and the rest of the frame.
- nevi-me 6y ago
  How about the RAM? I'm assuming that you got 16GB? I thought 8GB would be barely usable for me, but I've been pleasantly surprised. I still use my desktop for heavy enough work, but 8GB is manageable for now.
  - angulardragon03 6y ago
    The SSD is so fast that swapping pages in and out of memory is barely noticeable until you are really cranking up the memory pressure.
    - nevi-me 6y ago
      I'm trying to find out how much faster than a typical PCIe4 nvme SSD, which I have on my desktop. I'm not finding anything useful. Do you haave an idea?
      - phonon 6y ago
        M1 MacBook Air: 2,190.1 MB/s write, 2,676.4 MB/s read https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/m1-air-benchmark/ https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/m1-air-benchmark/
    - erik_seaberg 6y ago
      Running code out of readonly mapped SSD pages is pretty compelling. I know each cell only has a finite charge that decays very slowly, can you read the same page forever without ever rewriting it and incurring wear?
  - breck 6y ago
    Yes I went with 16GB. Would have been nicer to have more, but generally I need <16GB or >500GB
mrehler 6y ago
Agreed. It’s tempting given how old my current MBP is, but I priced out a 16” MBP last year to budget for, and the 2TB drive, 32GB RAM, and 16” of screen size (especially since Big Sur is Big Sur) are too many compromises to make to jump on the M1 Macs today.
bouk 6y ago
Yep I had to get a dock, but it's fine. I just plug in one cable and everything is connected.
- joegahona 6y ago
  Which dock? I have a dock and still have all four ports on my MBP 16 filled up too.
  - bouk 6y ago
    I got this one: https://www.anker.com/de/products/variant/anker-8in1-usbc-hub,-powerexpand-usbc-adapter/A83830A1 https://www.anker.com/de/products/variant/anker-8in1-usbc-hu...
    - AlexeyBrin 6y ago
      I have the same Anker hub too, but I found that it gets a bit hot when I plug in an external 4K display. Tested on an Intel based Mac and on the new M1.
  - sjs382 6y ago
    I use the VAVA 8-in-1 (https://amzn.com/B07QQ11BP6 https://amzn.com/B07QQ11BP6) at home and one built into my display (https://amzn.com/B07WKX11JY https://amzn.com/B07WKX11JY) at work. Both work great.
  - panda88888 6y ago
    I use the Caldigit thunderbolt hub and it works great. https://www.caldigit.com/ts3-plus/ https://www.caldigit.com/ts3-plus/
cheeze 6y ago
If it's this good according to folks already, I cant wait to see what gen2 looks like. Not a big apple fan but I'll be closely looking at the next generation of these in a year or so.

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.
  - webmobdev 6y ago
    Thanks for the list of all such laptops to avoid, along with Apple macbooks. Soldered ram, soldered SSD, unremovable batteries etc. all are designed with planned Obsolescence in mind. We should all boycott such products to protect our RIGHT TO REPAIR.
- PostThisTooFast 6y ago
  Yes, the soldered-in SSD blows. It’s basically a disposable computer.
dukeofdoom 6y ago
The 256 is too small for me, I edit videos sometimes. $200+ to upgrade the internal drive. I'm hoping the 14 inch will come with a larger internal drive, and more upgrades.
- dogma1138 6y ago
  Samsung has quite cheap high speed external SSDs the T5 is like $150 for the 1TB drives now. USB type C Gen 2 10gig is fast enough for most video editing especially any editing you could do on a device like the M1. Personally if I was editing videos I would be using an external storage device both due to the capacity and the fact that my data is then portable. With the full disk encryption on the M1 I wouldn’t be storing anything other than your scratch pad unless you can guarantee a 24/7 backup as you go scheme anyhow since any failure would like be irrecoverable.
  - jackson1442 6y ago
    +1 on the Samsung SSDs. I have mine partitioned 500/500 for backup and external storage and it works wonderfully.
  - jsjohnst 6y ago
    I was just about to reply the same. I own a handful of Samsung T5 and T7 SSD drives (the new T7 being twice as fast, but also more expensive) and they are great. 1-2TB is sufficient as the internal HD for me (aka make no representation of other’s needs) and everything else goes on my NAS or when remote a SSD HD like the T5/T7. When I need extreme performance (aka video editing usually), I’ve got a Samsung X5 which uses TB3 and NVMe to get nearly 3GB/s speeds. If they weren’t so expensive, I’d use only the X5s, but instead have a mix of T5/T7/X5 for various purposes.
    - dogma1138 6y ago
      And potentially if you edit videos even portable SSDs aren’t enough. Raw 8K RED footage at 75 FPS which is what you would be recording at if you master at 4K 60* is about 120GB a minute that’s over 7TB an hour. No reasonable internal drive could support that and you’ll be looking at a high speed NAS or an NVME JBOD/DAS solution to support that. *The extra frames and pixels are really important for final mastering as you need extra bits to do image stabilization, cropping, color grading and sharpening correctly it also makes more complex post processing work easier to perform even things like rotoscoping are much easier to do when your objects are twice the size and you have much less pixel bleed between what you want to roto and the rest of the frame.
nevi-me 6y ago
How about the RAM? I'm assuming that you got 16GB? I thought 8GB would be barely usable for me, but I've been pleasantly surprised. I still use my desktop for heavy enough work, but 8GB is manageable for now.
- angulardragon03 6y ago
  The SSD is so fast that swapping pages in and out of memory is barely noticeable until you are really cranking up the memory pressure.
  - nevi-me 6y ago
    I'm trying to find out how much faster than a typical PCIe4 nvme SSD, which I have on my desktop. I'm not finding anything useful. Do you haave an idea?
    - phonon 6y ago
      M1 MacBook Air: 2,190.1 MB/s write, 2,676.4 MB/s read https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/m1-air-benchmark/ https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/m1-air-benchmark/
  - erik_seaberg 6y ago
    Running code out of readonly mapped SSD pages is pretty compelling. I know each cell only has a finite charge that decays very slowly, can you read the same page forever without ever rewriting it and incurring wear?
- breck 6y ago
  Yes I went with 16GB. Would have been nicer to have more, but generally I need <16GB or >500GB

mrehler 6y ago

Agreed. It’s tempting given how old my current MBP is, but I priced out a 16” MBP last year to budget for, and the 2TB drive, 32GB RAM, and 16” of screen size (especially since Big Sur is Big Sur) are too many compromises to make to jump on the M1 Macs today.

bouk 6y ago

Yep I had to get a dock, but it's fine. I just plug in one cable and everything is connected.

joegahona 6y ago
Which dock? I have a dock and still have all four ports on my MBP 16 filled up too.
- bouk 6y ago
  I got this one: https://www.anker.com/de/products/variant/anker-8in1-usbc-hub,-powerexpand-usbc-adapter/A83830A1 https://www.anker.com/de/products/variant/anker-8in1-usbc-hu...
  - AlexeyBrin 6y ago
    I have the same Anker hub too, but I found that it gets a bit hot when I plug in an external 4K display. Tested on an Intel based Mac and on the new M1.
- sjs382 6y ago
  I use the VAVA 8-in-1 (https://amzn.com/B07QQ11BP6 https://amzn.com/B07QQ11BP6) at home and one built into my display (https://amzn.com/B07WKX11JY https://amzn.com/B07WKX11JY) at work. Both work great.
- panda88888 6y ago
  I use the Caldigit thunderbolt hub and it works great. https://www.caldigit.com/ts3-plus/ https://www.caldigit.com/ts3-plus/

cheeze 6y ago

If it's this good according to folks already, I cant wait to see what gen2 looks like. Not a big apple fan but I'll be closely looking at the next generation of these in a year or so.