8 ms·

> "up to 1.8x faster when compared to the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro" I insist my 2020 Macbook M1 was the best purchase I ever made

d1str0 2y ago
Same. My MBP and M1 Air are amazing machines. But I’m now also excited that any future M chip replacement will be faster and just as nice. The battery performance is incredible too.
BenFranklin100 2y ago
I got a refurbed M1 iPad Pro 12.9” for $900 a couple years ago and have been quite pleased. I still have a couple of years life in it I estimate.
stetrain 2y ago
Yep. That's roughly 20% per generation improvement which ain't half-bad these days, but the really huge cliff was going from Intel to the M1 generation. M1 series machines are going to be fine for years to come.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  It feels like M1 was the revolution, subsequent ones evolution - smaller fabrication process for improved energy efficiency, more cores for more power, higher memory (storage?) bandwidth, more displays (that was a major and valid criticism for the M1 even though in practice >1 external screens is a relatively rare use case for <5% of users). Actually wasn't M1 itself an evolution / upscale of their A series CPUS that by now they've been working on since... before 2010, the iPhone 4 was the first one with their own CPU, although the design was from Samsung + Intrinsity, it was only the A6 that they claimed was custom designed by Apple.
drewbitt 2y ago
And my 2020 Intel Macbook Air was a bad purchase. Cruelly, the Intel and M1 Macbook Air released within 6 months of each other.
- rconti 2y ago
  In early 2020, I had an aging 2011 Air that was still struggling after a battery replacement. Even though I "knew" the Apple Silicon chips would be better, I figured a 2020 Intel Air would last me a long time anyway, since my computing needs from that device are light, and who knows how many years the Apple Silicon transition will take take anyway? Bought a reasonably well-specced Intel Air for $1700ish. The M1s came out a few months later. I briefly thought about the implication of taking a hit on my "investment", figured I might as well cry once rather than suffer endlessly. Sold my $1700 Intel Air for $1200ish on craigslist (if I recall correctly), picked up an M1 Air for about that same $1200 pricepoint, and I'm typing this on that machine now. That money was lost as soon as I made the wrong decision, I'm glad I just recognized the loss up front rather than stewing about it.
  - cantsingh 2y ago
    Exact same boat here. A friend and I both bought the 2020 Intel MBA thinking that the M1 version was at least a year out. It dropped a few months later. I immediately resold my Intel MBA seeing the writing on the wall and bought a launch M1 (which I still use to this day). Ended up losing $200 on that mis-step, but no way the Intel version would still get me through the day. That said...scummy move by Apple. They tend to be a little more thoughtful in their refresh schedule, so I was caught off guard.
    - drewbitt 2y ago
      When I saw the M1s come out, I thought that dev tooling would take a while to work for M1, which was correct. It probably took a year for most everything to be compiled for arm64. However I had too little faith in Rosetta and just the speed upgrade M1 really brought. So what I mean to say is, I still have that deadweight MBA that I only use for web browsing :)
- chrizel 2y ago
  Oh yes, my wife bought a new Intel MBA in summer 2020... I told her at the time Apple planned its own chip, but it couldn't be much better than the Intel one and surely Apple will increase prices too... I was so wrong.
shade 2y ago
I have the OG 13" MBP M1, and it's been great; I only have two real reasons I'm considering jumping to the 14" MBP M4 Pro finally: - More RAM, primarily for local LLM usage through Ollama (a bit more overhead for bigger models would be nice) - A bit niche, but I often run multiple external displays. DisplayLink works fine for this, but I also use live captions heavily and Apple's live captions don't work when any form of screen sharing/recording is enabled... which is how Displaylink works. :( Not quite sold yet, but definitely thinking about it.
- bombcar 2y ago
  The M1 Max supports more than one external display natively, which is also an option.
- KptMarchewa 2y ago
  I don't think it's niche. It's the reason why I and multiple of my coworkers waited till M1 Pro with buying one. I'm definitely still happy with it, but job offers upgrade to M4 so... why not?
AdamJacobMuller 2y ago
Yep. I've never kept any laptop as long as I've kept the M1. I was more or less upgrading yearly in the past because the speed increases (both in the G4 and then Intel generations) were so significant. This M1 has exceeded my expectations in every category, it's faster quieter and cooler than any laptop i've ever owned. I've had this laptop since release in 2020 and I have nearly 0 complaints with it. I wouldn't upgrade except the increase in memory is great, I don't want to have to shut down apps to be able to load some huge LLMs, and, I ding'ed the top case a few months ago and now there's a shadow on the screen in that spot in some lighting conditions which is very annoying. I hope (and expect) the M4 to last just as long as my M1 did.
- jader201 2y ago
  > I've never kept any laptop as long as I've kept the M1. My 2015 MBP would like to have a word. It’s the only laptop purchase I’ve made. I still use it to this day, though not as regularly. I will likely get a new MBP one of these days.
  - nicolas_t 2y ago
    Ah my 2013 mbp died in 2019. It was the gpu. No way to repair it for cheap enough so I had to replace it with a 2019 mbp which was the computer I kept the shortest (I hated the keyboard).
    - Jaxan 2y ago
      My 2011 MBP died in 2023, it was used daily but very slow at the end of its life.
  - ptmcc 2y ago
    My 2015 15" MBP is also still kickin, is/was an absolutely fabulous unit. Was my work machine for 3-4 years, and now another almost-6 years as my personal laptop. My personal use case is obviously not very demanding but it's only now starting to really show its age. I also have a M1 from work that is absolutely wonderful, but I think it's time for me to upgrade the 2015 with one of these new M4s. The longevity of Macbooks is insanely good.
JohnBooty 2y ago
Amen. I got a crazy deal on a brand new 2020 M1 Max MBP with 64GB/2TB in 2023. This is the best machine I have ever owned. It is so completely perfect in every way. I can't imagine replacing it for many many years.
- markus_zhang 2y ago
  Congratulations, just curious what is the deal?
  - giik 2y ago
    At the end of 2023 BH Photo Video was selling the M1 Max 16” 64G/2TB for 2,499. It’s the lowest I’ve ever seen it anywhere and I got one myself.
    - markus_zhang 2y ago
      Thanks! Looks like obscure retailers sometimes have good deals.
      - JohnBooty 2y ago
        BHPohotoVideo is huge, they've been around for like 20 years! Best way I've discovered to find those sorts of deals is to use Slickdeals and set up alerts.
    - karolist 2y ago
      Bought the same machine from the same store last December, been using it ever since with a big grin on my face. I'll probably consider upgrading in 2028 or later.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
I have the same one, but everyone I know with an M series Mac says the same thing. These are the first machines in a long time built to not only last a decade but be used for it.
leokennis 2y ago
I still use my MacBook Air M1 and given my current workloads (a bit of web development, general home office use and occasional video editing and encoding) I doubt I’ll need to replace it in the coming 5 years. That’ll be an almost 10 year lifespan.
misiek08 2y ago
M1 Pro compared to Intel was so big step ahead that I suppose we all are still surprised and excited. Quiet, long battery life and better performance. By a lot! I wonder if M4 really feels that much faster and better - having M1 Pro I'm not going to change quickly, but maybe Mac Mini will land some day.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Honestly it was a game changer. Before I'd never leave the house without a charger, nowadays I rarely bring it with me on office days, even with JS / front-end workloads. (of course, everyone else has a macbook too, there's always someone that can lend me a charger. Bonus points that the newer macbooks support both magsafe and USB-C charging. Added bonus points that they brought back magsafe and HDMI ports)
  - anArbitraryOne 2y ago
    There are so many ports that would be far more useful than MagSafe at a similar hardware cost
medion 2y ago
Except for the usb c charge port - magcharge was the best invention and I’ll never understand why it was removed.
- microtherion 2y ago
  It's the other way around, isn't it? MagSafe was removed in the 2016-2019 model years (not sure why; maybe to shave off another bit of thickness?), and then brought back in 2020 to MacBook Pro and 2022 to MacBook Air. Personally, I practically never use MagSafe, because the convenience of USB C charging cables all over the house outweighs the advantages of MagSafe for me.
- smileysteve 2y ago
  Pro tip, USB c magnetic adapter is cheap and works well enough
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  I have the M1 MacBook Pro with MagSafe and I still charge it via USB C simply because I can't be bothered to carry around another cable when all of my other peripherals are USB C.
  - anArbitraryOne 2y ago
    I have the same. I would much rather have a different port, like USB-A, than something I have never used
    - satvikpendem 2y ago
      That's interesting, I don't use USB A at all whatsoever anymore, and frankly I don't use the SD card reader or HDMI port either. Maybe I should just get a MacBook Air 15" but I do like the 120 hz screen of the Pro models, that's the main reason I'm holding out.
      - anArbitraryOne 2y ago
zmmmmm 2y ago
It's annoyingly good! I want to upgrade, but especially having splurged on 64Gb RAM, I have very little justifiable reason.
mirchiseth 2y ago
reading this for my late 2013 MBP. It is so old that I can't install the latest of Darktable on it.
boogieknite 2y ago
Agree, even without whisky (this whisky: https://getwhisky.app https://getwhisky.app). With whisky i feel like id never need anything else. That said, the benchmark jump in the m4 has me thinking i should save up and grab a refurb in a year or two
slmjkdbtl 2y ago
I switched from a 2014 MacBook pro to a 2020 M1 MacBook Air, yeah the CPU is much faster, but the build quality and software is a huge step backwards. The trackpad is feels fake, not nearly as responsive, keyboard also feel not as solid. But now I'm already used to it.
- seec 2y ago
  They also feel very bulky/innelegant while still being fragile for the most part and not really hitting workstation level territory. I don't understand how people are enamored with those things, sure it's better in some way than what it was before but it's also very compromised for the price.
WuxiFingerHold 2y ago
Yes, I got mine for 900 Euros (16, 256). Still working perfectly. What a bargain that was.
anArbitraryOne 2y ago
I don't like my M1. It's really good for using Lightroom at the coffee shop, but absolutely sucks for developing software
_19qg 2y ago
It's a very robust and capable small laptop. I'm typing this to a M1 Macbook Air. The only thing to keep in mind, is that the M1 was the first CPU in the transition from Intel CPUs (+ AMD GPUs) to Apple Silicon. The M1 was still missing a bunch of things from earlier CPUs, which Apple over time added via the M1 Pro and other CPUs. Especially the graphics part was sufficient for a small laptop, but not for much beyond. Better GPUs and media engines were developed later. Today, the M3 in a Macbook Air or the M4 in the Macbook Pro have all of that. For me the biggest surprise was how well the M1 Macbook Air actually worked. Apple did an outstanding job in the software & hardware transition.
lylo 2y ago
Yep. Bought an M1 Max in 2021 and it still feels fast, battery lasts forever. I’m sure the M4 would be even quicker (Lightroom, for example) but there’s little reason to consider an upgrade any time soon.
wkjagt 2y ago
I still have my base model M1 MacBook Air, and I never felt the need to upgrade. It never felt slow.
modmodmod 2y ago
8GB or 16GB?
pensatoio 2y ago
I upgraded to the M2 Air and I could have just kept the M1 Air this whole time. It was a perfect laptop.
xz0r 2y ago
I too bought a 2020 MBA M1, it was great initially, but now seems like its getting throttled, same goes with my iPhoneX, I used to love Apple, but its just pathetic that they throttle older devices just to get users to upgrade.
- Toutouxc 2y ago
  No one is throttling your M1 MBA.

d1str0 2y ago

Same. My MBP and M1 Air are amazing machines. But I’m now also excited that any future M chip replacement will be faster and just as nice. The battery performance is incredible too.

BenFranklin100 2y ago

I got a refurbed M1 iPad Pro 12.9” for $900 a couple years ago and have been quite pleased. I still have a couple of years life in it I estimate.

stetrain 2y ago

Yep. That's roughly 20% per generation improvement which ain't half-bad these days, but the really huge cliff was going from Intel to the M1 generation. M1 series machines are going to be fine for years to come.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago
It feels like M1 was the revolution, subsequent ones evolution - smaller fabrication process for improved energy efficiency, more cores for more power, higher memory (storage?) bandwidth, more displays (that was a major and valid criticism for the M1 even though in practice >1 external screens is a relatively rare use case for <5% of users). Actually wasn't M1 itself an evolution / upscale of their A series CPUS that by now they've been working on since... before 2010, the iPhone 4 was the first one with their own CPU, although the design was from Samsung + Intrinsity, it was only the A6 that they claimed was custom designed by Apple.

drewbitt 2y ago

And my 2020 Intel Macbook Air was a bad purchase. Cruelly, the Intel and M1 Macbook Air released within 6 months of each other.

rconti 2y ago
In early 2020, I had an aging 2011 Air that was still struggling after a battery replacement. Even though I "knew" the Apple Silicon chips would be better, I figured a 2020 Intel Air would last me a long time anyway, since my computing needs from that device are light, and who knows how many years the Apple Silicon transition will take take anyway? Bought a reasonably well-specced Intel Air for $1700ish. The M1s came out a few months later. I briefly thought about the implication of taking a hit on my "investment", figured I might as well cry once rather than suffer endlessly. Sold my $1700 Intel Air for $1200ish on craigslist (if I recall correctly), picked up an M1 Air for about that same $1200 pricepoint, and I'm typing this on that machine now. That money was lost as soon as I made the wrong decision, I'm glad I just recognized the loss up front rather than stewing about it.
- cantsingh 2y ago
  Exact same boat here. A friend and I both bought the 2020 Intel MBA thinking that the M1 version was at least a year out. It dropped a few months later. I immediately resold my Intel MBA seeing the writing on the wall and bought a launch M1 (which I still use to this day). Ended up losing $200 on that mis-step, but no way the Intel version would still get me through the day. That said...scummy move by Apple. They tend to be a little more thoughtful in their refresh schedule, so I was caught off guard.
  - drewbitt 2y ago
    When I saw the M1s come out, I thought that dev tooling would take a while to work for M1, which was correct. It probably took a year for most everything to be compiled for arm64. However I had too little faith in Rosetta and just the speed upgrade M1 really brought. So what I mean to say is, I still have that deadweight MBA that I only use for web browsing :)
chrizel 2y ago
Oh yes, my wife bought a new Intel MBA in summer 2020... I told her at the time Apple planned its own chip, but it couldn't be much better than the Intel one and surely Apple will increase prices too... I was so wrong.

shade 2y ago

I have the OG 13" MBP M1, and it's been great; I only have two real reasons I'm considering jumping to the 14" MBP M4 Pro finally: - More RAM, primarily for local LLM usage through Ollama (a bit more overhead for bigger models would be nice) - A bit niche, but I often run multiple external displays. DisplayLink works fine for this, but I also use live captions heavily and Apple's live captions don't work when any form of screen sharing/recording is enabled... which is how Displaylink works. :( Not quite sold yet, but definitely thinking about it.

bombcar 2y ago
The M1 Max supports more than one external display natively, which is also an option.
KptMarchewa 2y ago
I don't think it's niche. It's the reason why I and multiple of my coworkers waited till M1 Pro with buying one. I'm definitely still happy with it, but job offers upgrade to M4 so... why not?

AdamJacobMuller 2y ago

Yep. I've never kept any laptop as long as I've kept the M1. I was more or less upgrading yearly in the past because the speed increases (both in the G4 and then Intel generations) were so significant. This M1 has exceeded my expectations in every category, it's faster quieter and cooler than any laptop i've ever owned. I've had this laptop since release in 2020 and I have nearly 0 complaints with it. I wouldn't upgrade except the increase in memory is great, I don't want to have to shut down apps to be able to load some huge LLMs, and, I ding'ed the top case a few months ago and now there's a shadow on the screen in that spot in some lighting conditions which is very annoying. I hope (and expect) the M4 to last just as long as my M1 did.

jader201 2y ago
> I've never kept any laptop as long as I've kept the M1. My 2015 MBP would like to have a word. It’s the only laptop purchase I’ve made. I still use it to this day, though not as regularly. I will likely get a new MBP one of these days.
- nicolas_t 2y ago
  Ah my 2013 mbp died in 2019. It was the gpu. No way to repair it for cheap enough so I had to replace it with a 2019 mbp which was the computer I kept the shortest (I hated the keyboard).
  - Jaxan 2y ago
    My 2011 MBP died in 2023, it was used daily but very slow at the end of its life.
- ptmcc 2y ago
  My 2015 15" MBP is also still kickin, is/was an absolutely fabulous unit. Was my work machine for 3-4 years, and now another almost-6 years as my personal laptop. My personal use case is obviously not very demanding but it's only now starting to really show its age. I also have a M1 from work that is absolutely wonderful, but I think it's time for me to upgrade the 2015 with one of these new M4s. The longevity of Macbooks is insanely good.

JohnBooty 2y ago

Amen. I got a crazy deal on a brand new 2020 M1 Max MBP with 64GB/2TB in 2023. This is the best machine I have ever owned. It is so completely perfect in every way. I can't imagine replacing it for many many years.

markus_zhang 2y ago
Congratulations, just curious what is the deal?
- giik 2y ago
  At the end of 2023 BH Photo Video was selling the M1 Max 16” 64G/2TB for 2,499. It’s the lowest I’ve ever seen it anywhere and I got one myself.
  - markus_zhang 2y ago
    Thanks! Looks like obscure retailers sometimes have good deals.
    - JohnBooty 2y ago
      BHPohotoVideo is huge, they've been around for like 20 years! Best way I've discovered to find those sorts of deals is to use Slickdeals and set up alerts.
  - karolist 2y ago
    Bought the same machine from the same store last December, been using it ever since with a big grin on my face. I'll probably consider upgrading in 2028 or later.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

I have the same one, but everyone I know with an M series Mac says the same thing. These are the first machines in a long time built to not only last a decade but be used for it.

leokennis 2y ago

I still use my MacBook Air M1 and given my current workloads (a bit of web development, general home office use and occasional video editing and encoding) I doubt I’ll need to replace it in the coming 5 years. That’ll be an almost 10 year lifespan.

misiek08 2y ago

M1 Pro compared to Intel was so big step ahead that I suppose we all are still surprised and excited. Quiet, long battery life and better performance. By a lot! I wonder if M4 really feels that much faster and better - having M1 Pro I'm not going to change quickly, but maybe Mac Mini will land some day.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Honestly it was a game changer. Before I'd never leave the house without a charger, nowadays I rarely bring it with me on office days, even with JS / front-end workloads. (of course, everyone else has a macbook too, there's always someone that can lend me a charger. Bonus points that the newer macbooks support both magsafe and USB-C charging. Added bonus points that they brought back magsafe and HDMI ports)
- anArbitraryOne 2y ago
  There are so many ports that would be far more useful than MagSafe at a similar hardware cost

medion 2y ago

Except for the usb c charge port - magcharge was the best invention and I’ll never understand why it was removed.

microtherion 2y ago
It's the other way around, isn't it? MagSafe was removed in the 2016-2019 model years (not sure why; maybe to shave off another bit of thickness?), and then brought back in 2020 to MacBook Pro and 2022 to MacBook Air. Personally, I practically never use MagSafe, because the convenience of USB C charging cables all over the house outweighs the advantages of MagSafe for me.
smileysteve 2y ago
Pro tip, USB c magnetic adapter is cheap and works well enough
satvikpendem 2y ago
I have the M1 MacBook Pro with MagSafe and I still charge it via USB C simply because I can't be bothered to carry around another cable when all of my other peripherals are USB C.
- anArbitraryOne 2y ago
  I have the same. I would much rather have a different port, like USB-A, than something I have never used
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    That's interesting, I don't use USB A at all whatsoever anymore, and frankly I don't use the SD card reader or HDMI port either. Maybe I should just get a MacBook Air 15" but I do like the 120 hz screen of the Pro models, that's the main reason I'm holding out.
    - anArbitraryOne 2y ago

zmmmmm 2y ago

It's annoyingly good! I want to upgrade, but especially having splurged on 64Gb RAM, I have very little justifiable reason.

mirchiseth 2y ago

reading this for my late 2013 MBP. It is so old that I can't install the latest of Darktable on it.

boogieknite 2y ago

Agree, even without whisky (this whisky: https://getwhisky.app https://getwhisky.app). With whisky i feel like id never need anything else. That said, the benchmark jump in the m4 has me thinking i should save up and grab a refurb in a year or two

slmjkdbtl 2y ago

I switched from a 2014 MacBook pro to a 2020 M1 MacBook Air, yeah the CPU is much faster, but the build quality and software is a huge step backwards. The trackpad is feels fake, not nearly as responsive, keyboard also feel not as solid. But now I'm already used to it.

seec 2y ago
They also feel very bulky/innelegant while still being fragile for the most part and not really hitting workstation level territory. I don't understand how people are enamored with those things, sure it's better in some way than what it was before but it's also very compromised for the price.

WuxiFingerHold 2y ago

Yes, I got mine for 900 Euros (16, 256). Still working perfectly. What a bargain that was.

anArbitraryOne 2y ago

I don't like my M1. It's really good for using Lightroom at the coffee shop, but absolutely sucks for developing software

_19qg 2y ago

It's a very robust and capable small laptop. I'm typing this to a M1 Macbook Air. The only thing to keep in mind, is that the M1 was the first CPU in the transition from Intel CPUs (+ AMD GPUs) to Apple Silicon. The M1 was still missing a bunch of things from earlier CPUs, which Apple over time added via the M1 Pro and other CPUs. Especially the graphics part was sufficient for a small laptop, but not for much beyond. Better GPUs and media engines were developed later. Today, the M3 in a Macbook Air or the M4 in the Macbook Pro have all of that. For me the biggest surprise was how well the M1 Macbook Air actually worked. Apple did an outstanding job in the software & hardware transition.

lylo 2y ago

Yep. Bought an M1 Max in 2021 and it still feels fast, battery lasts forever. I’m sure the M4 would be even quicker (Lightroom, for example) but there’s little reason to consider an upgrade any time soon.

wkjagt 2y ago

I still have my base model M1 MacBook Air, and I never felt the need to upgrade. It never felt slow.

modmodmod 2y ago

8GB or 16GB?

pensatoio 2y ago

I upgraded to the M2 Air and I could have just kept the M1 Air this whole time. It was a perfect laptop.

xz0r 2y ago

I too bought a 2020 MBA M1, it was great initially, but now seems like its getting throttled, same goes with my iPhoneX, I used to love Apple, but its just pathetic that they throttle older devices just to get users to upgrade.

Toutouxc 2y ago
No one is throttling your M1 MBA.