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I just got a 13" Macbook Pro with M1. My expectations were exceedingly high, based on all the reviews and stories like this. After a few days of use, my take:

I just got a 13" Macbook Pro with M1. My expectations were exceedingly high, based on all the reviews and stories like this. After a few days of use, my take: It's good. It's not the messiah-of-tech that I was led to believe, but it's good. Honestly, I think the hype is overblown. If it wasn't for the hype, I might have thought this machine was amazing. But the expectations being set by all this hype is crazy town. Not trying to take away from the real technical accomplishment. I'm sure if I put it through the ringer with benchmark tests, it would beat everything with flying colours. But my day-to-day experience using it hasn't been much different than my previous 2016 Macbook Pro. Yet so many reviews make it seem like everything is so fast that you simply have to experience it to believe it, that every action you take feels faster and better. And that, in my own experience, is proving to be a load of B.S.

leokennis 5y ago
To me it’s not the performance that’s the “messiah-of-tech” part of the M1 laptops (have an Air myself). It’s that I can do the same things at the same speed as an Intel MacBook, but: * The machine is dead silent (literally no sound coming from it) * The battery life is incredible I’m not sure if it’s as simple as this, but I guess if they said: we don’t mind blaring fans and 6 hours of battery life, then they could clock the M1 so high it would have truly insane performance.
- foobiekr 5y ago
  I think the mini and iMac both serve as indicators that this isn’t true - they have identical performance. I’m willing to guess that thermal transport for the SoC isn’t all that good and while a fan would help likely not as much as you’re crediting. ASIC teams design for a specific envelope. I was really hoping the iMac would do as you say.
dabernathy89 5y ago
I'm on the Air, and I had medium expectations because my previous work laptop (16" Pro, i7, 32GB RAM) was already incredibly snappy and rarely struggled except occasionally with Docker. I was still very impressed even with my tempered expectations. For the kind of work I do, it's just as capable as the 16" MBP was - but with no heat, no noise, and real all-day battery.
solarkraft 5y ago
My experience exactly mirrors yours. Battery life is really good. Processing speed is good, but it's not like stuff compiles instantly now. There are, contradicting reviews, waiting times. I've seen many beach balls using my MBP and it comes free with a couple of issues: - After a few hours of developing an Angular app using ng serve kernel_task consumes insane amounts of CPU time, resulting in extreme lag and completely locking up the device on an attempted restart (not even the touchpad clicks anymore). - Sometimes MPEG4 videos just would not play until after a reboot That said: Besides some minor UI glitches it's really, really solid. x86 compatibility is perfect. The GPU is good (again, not amazing, but Minecraft runs at good settings). Over all it's not revolutionary. Slow software is going to be slow on these too. What they pulled off is amazing ecosystem wise, but as an end user you can be happy about some non-revolutionary pretty good decent spec bumps. I just worry about the SSD's life. I'm already about 20TB down after a few weeks.
- joshstrange 5y ago
  The SSD issue appears to have just been a reporting issue and it was fixed in 11.4: https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/04/apple-resolves-m1-mac-ssd-storage-longevity-issue-in-macos-114-beta https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/04/apple-resolves-m1...
  - solarkraft 5y ago
    I'm on the 12.0 beta, though. The article also doesn't put any hard numbers on the actual expectancy. If the smartmontools reading is wrong, what's my estimated actual TBW? Because at that speed it won't take all that long to reach the rated amount for a typical SSD (even at a multi X factor we'd still be talking about a low number of years).
- iaml 5y ago
  > kernel_task consumes insane amounts of CPU time If my understanding of how mac works is correct, this is caused by overheating and basically is throttle mode.
  - 5y ago

leokennis 5y ago

To me it’s not the performance that’s the “messiah-of-tech” part of the M1 laptops (have an Air myself). It’s that I can do the same things at the same speed as an Intel MacBook, but: * The machine is dead silent (literally no sound coming from it) * The battery life is incredible I’m not sure if it’s as simple as this, but I guess if they said: we don’t mind blaring fans and 6 hours of battery life, then they could clock the M1 so high it would have truly insane performance.

foobiekr 5y ago
I think the mini and iMac both serve as indicators that this isn’t true - they have identical performance. I’m willing to guess that thermal transport for the SoC isn’t all that good and while a fan would help likely not as much as you’re crediting. ASIC teams design for a specific envelope. I was really hoping the iMac would do as you say.

dabernathy89 5y ago

I'm on the Air, and I had medium expectations because my previous work laptop (16" Pro, i7, 32GB RAM) was already incredibly snappy and rarely struggled except occasionally with Docker. I was still very impressed even with my tempered expectations. For the kind of work I do, it's just as capable as the 16" MBP was - but with no heat, no noise, and real all-day battery.

solarkraft 5y ago

My experience exactly mirrors yours. Battery life is really good. Processing speed is good, but it's not like stuff compiles instantly now. There are, contradicting reviews, waiting times. I've seen many beach balls using my MBP and it comes free with a couple of issues: - After a few hours of developing an Angular app using ng serve kernel_task consumes insane amounts of CPU time, resulting in extreme lag and completely locking up the device on an attempted restart (not even the touchpad clicks anymore). - Sometimes MPEG4 videos just would not play until after a reboot That said: Besides some minor UI glitches it's really, really solid. x86 compatibility is perfect. The GPU is good (again, not amazing, but Minecraft runs at good settings). Over all it's not revolutionary. Slow software is going to be slow on these too. What they pulled off is amazing ecosystem wise, but as an end user you can be happy about some non-revolutionary pretty good decent spec bumps. I just worry about the SSD's life. I'm already about 20TB down after a few weeks.

joshstrange 5y ago
The SSD issue appears to have just been a reporting issue and it was fixed in 11.4: https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/04/apple-resolves-m1-mac-ssd-storage-longevity-issue-in-macos-114-beta https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/04/apple-resolves-m1...
- solarkraft 5y ago
  I'm on the 12.0 beta, though. The article also doesn't put any hard numbers on the actual expectancy. If the smartmontools reading is wrong, what's my estimated actual TBW? Because at that speed it won't take all that long to reach the rated amount for a typical SSD (even at a multi X factor we'd still be talking about a low number of years).
iaml 5y ago
> kernel_task consumes insane amounts of CPU time If my understanding of how mac works is correct, this is caused by overheating and basically is throttle mode.
- 5y ago