Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Buy the M1 MacBook Pro or Wait for M2?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 52 posts

Re: Ask HN: Buy the M1 MacBook Pro or Wait for M2?

#41

Post by _0w8t »

iamwpj wrote: post #12
ja27 wrote: post #10

I'm still waiting but I keep coming close to grabbing a totally fanless M1 Air. But for my day-to-day use, even with barely leaving the house, a 15-16" display is much better for me. I would appreciate the speed and other features of the next-gen machines but the real deciding factor is the display. Sure, I would use it on my 27" 4K monitor a lot, but I like moving around even if it's just to the porch or couch, and…

I don't do video editing, just coding and plenty of windows along with Docker. I've never heard the fan and if I didn't know it was there according to the spec sheet I would just assume it didn't have a fan :D.

I need to compile a lot. As that sometimes takes hours with max load, I have discovered that Intel Mac book Pro 13” 2020 was surprisingly loud. It is louder than a water-cooled Windows desktop at the office. This became especially apparent with remote work as the ambient noise at home was much lover than at work.

But if I do not compile, it is silent even when running a Windows or Linux VM.

Re: Ask HN: Buy the M1 MacBook Pro or Wait for M2?

#42

Post by itbeho »

IceHegel wrote: post #20

Don't get the pro, the MacBook Air is what you want. I was a 13 inch pro user for 10+ years and tried the M1 Air because I didn't want the dumb Touch Bar. Honestly, I think this Air is the best laptop ever made. -the battery feels like it lasts 3x-4x longer than my 2019 13 mbp. -it compiles Typescript as fast(sometimes faster) as my brand new Ryzen 5800x based work station. -great performance on many small things tha…

All good points except the display on the Pro is supposedly +/- 100 nits brighter.

Re: Ask HN: Buy the M1 MacBook Pro or Wait for M2?

#43

Post by pornel »

Everything other than performance per Watt is not great.

• The boot process is very locked down, and is unfinished/buggy. My M1 MBP is acting up in ways that previously would have been solved with SMC/PRAM reset, but M1 doesn't have these and NVRAM can't be reset. I had to reinstall it via DFU mode. It felt like jailbreaking an iPhone.

• The hardware has a poor implementation of Thunderbolt with missing features and incompatibilities. Not only it supports only one external display, but only one specific port, and in multi-port docks you can't chose which one it picks. Some external disks benchmark poorly with inconsistent and slower-than-expected speeds.

• Having ports only on one side is more annoying than I expected.

• It's clearly a "rev.1" machine, and these usually age poorly and get dropped by Apple quicker than later, mature revisions.

• It's very fast for a 25W CPU, but in absolute terms power-hungry desktop CPUs are still faster. So my buggy M1 is gathering dust, because right now I'm not traveling anywhere, so I can use a desktop computer that is faster.

Re: Ask HN: Buy the M1 MacBook Pro or Wait for M2?

#44

Post by ashtonkem »

codegeek wrote: post #31
ashtonkem wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why laptop keyboards are so important to people; they’re all terrible. Use a better, external keyboard when you’re stationary, your wrists will thank you. Especially since it seems like even pre-pandemic laptops operated 80% of the time from a fixed position anyways.

I don't prefer using laptop keyboards but that doesn't mean I want shitty laptop keyboards. You may not always be around your connected keyboard (travelling, away from the workstation etc) and you really don't want to feel pissed when typing.

Some people use their laptops on the go, but I’ve observed that most people drastically overestimate how often they’ll actually do that. Even pre-pandemic most of my colleagues effectively used their laptops like Mac mini’s with built in battery backups.

Honestly, in a post pandemic world I feel like companies should start handing out more desktops. If I’m remote forever, why pay for a display that I’ll literally never open?

Re: Ask HN: Buy the M1 MacBook Pro or Wait for M2?

#46

Post by m463 »

twmiller wrote: post #40
m463 wrote: post #3

Thinking historically, maybe wait? There are a lot of things that don't work natively yet (maybe most of them) The iPhone 1, first macbook pro intel, all were refreshed with more capable models. Personally, I'm wondering what an apple-cpu mac pro will look like... if they refresh quicker than 6 years :)

I picked up a M1 Mac Mini. I honestly cannot tell the difference between a native and a non-native app on this thing. The Rosetta 2 emulation is mind blowing.

The powerpc switchover was similar. What was sort of annoying was that they retired it rather quickly.

maybe that's there way of saying "enough's enough" to lagging developers, but I kind of like Microsoft's model better -- you can still manage to get really old stuff running. That's a better way to get people on a newer OS.

Re: Ask HN: Buy the M1 MacBook Pro or Wait for M2?

#47

Post by danek_szy »

ksec wrote: post #24
danek_szy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2015 MBP also suffers from staingate and in many regards isn't good enough by todays standards... Not being able to keep up with decoding 4K HEVC footage is one. Another thing is that 15 inch model had Intel CPU from previous generation (unlike 13'), because Intel couldn't keep up with production of the latest architecture dies.

Apart from Staingate. Both of those are performance related issue though. I am decoding 4K HEVC just fine here, although at a low 5-10Mbps Bitrate with CPU going to 70%.

They are, but one cannot simply overcome them by replacing the CPU. You have to buy new laptop, which is why performance is taken into consideration when evaluating laptop models.

On a personal note, can't wait to switch off of my 2015 MBP 15', even though I agree with touchbar & touchpad size scepticism.

Re: Ask HN: Buy the M1 MacBook Pro or Wait for M2?

#48

Post by runjake »

runjake wrote: post #36

It initially wasn’t a concern, but the “only one external monitor” thing is really starting to get to me. Otherwise, performance, battery life, and lack of heat and fans are great. I will probably upgrade the moment a new one comes out, if I haven’t fled macOS yet. Edit: yes, I know about DisplayLink. I don’t do third-party kernel drivers, and the cost for a good DP module is more than I want to blow.

Update: I broke down and hooked up my DisplayLink adapter. It works like a charm and as far as I can tell the DP software does not install a kernel driver?

Re: Ask HN: Buy the M1 MacBook Pro or Wait for M2?

#49

Post by ponderingfish »

ksec wrote: post #15

2015 MacBook Pro is still the best in many regards. Better Keyboard with more Key Travel than the new Magic Keyboard. Sane Trackpad Size so you dont accidentally move your cursors every few months while typing. MagSafe that actually work the way it is intended if you are clumsy. Reliability seems to be so much better. 2016 MacBook Pro has Flexgate, Staingate, Butterfly keyboard, SSD Failure, Thunderbolt Frying CPU, a…

Unfortunately, the screen has a bad case of staingate and it's very annoying. After all these years, the trackpad has died and some keys. I might just get it repaired to see if I can eek out a few more months/years from it.
Post reply on HN