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M1 Macs Review

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Re: M1 Macs Review

#31

Post by jstummbillig »

yhersk0vitz wrote: post #16

I feel like this may the first time that Macbooks might actually be worth their premium from a purely hardware perspective. Before people jump on this, I mean that for example the previous Intel MB Pro with i5 would cost like $1,500, which is far more than almost any windows laptop running the same specs.

What you are looking at, tho, is not the pure hardware perspective, but the pure hardware numbers perspective, which excludes ergonomics, design, build quality and hardware/software integration as well as stuff like speakers and screens which might not be comparable because no other vendor does them exactly alike.

I always found this strange, when looking at personal computers – or, in fact, most anything in life. As if what can not be checked or compared on a feature list has no meaning. Do people really feel this way about the world or is it just a way to deal with insecurity about what is important?

The most confusing thing about this is, that, to me, the human experience is pretty much the opposite: The soft parts beat the feature list every time. The better design wins.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#32

Post by mikece »

ricw wrote: post #25
mikece wrote: post #10

Speed is still relative. Yes the benchmark numbers for the M1 are impressive, but I am curious to see non-benchmark, real-world workloads compared. I'm reminded of a YouTube video (link below) in which the comparison was made between an $11,000 Mac Pro and a PC kit that also cost $11,000. In this case the PC was rocking a Ryzen chip with 32 (or was it 64?) cores and smoked the Mac Pro on every benchmark. But when com…

So you want someone to compare a starting at $699 m1 Mac to a $10k top of the line pro machine? That you are even interested in this shows how great the m1 chip performs, but as a comparison This is pretty useless.

No, more like comparing the M1 MacBook Pro to the i7 (or i9?) based MacBook Pro. Comparing the $699 Mac mini to the Mac Pro seems absurd... or at least I thought so until someone else replied with a link to a video where the video-dude is comparing the mini to a $4000 machine:

https://youtu.be/HxH3RabNWfE?t=626

Re: M1 Macs Review

#34

Post by robin_reala »

vishnugupta wrote: post #11
rimliu wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Original comment mentions MB Air, Air has no fans (now that sounds funny :)

Of all the things unveiled during the launch event no-fan thing completely blew me away. That, I was not prepared for! I now wonder, does that mean that MB Air has no moving parts inside it at all?

There’s the haptic feedback for the trackpad.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#35

Post by gnarbarian »

seqastian wrote: post #23
yhersk0vitz wrote: post #16

I feel like this may the first time that Macbooks might actually be worth their premium from a purely hardware perspective. Before people jump on this, I mean that for example the previous Intel MB Pro with i5 would cost like $1,500, which is far more than almost any windows laptop running the same specs.

People on the car forum comparing bmw with the same horse power as a fiat will agree with you.

Is the Mac comparable to the bmw because both are nearly impossible to work on and fix when they break?

Re: M1 Macs Review

#36

Post by tpush »

yhersk0vitz wrote: post #16

I feel like this may the first time that Macbooks might actually be worth their premium from a purely hardware perspective. Before people jump on this, I mean that for example the previous Intel MB Pro with i5 would cost like $1,500, which is far more than almost any windows laptop running the same specs.

Any Windows laptop with comparable display quality, SSD speeds, battery life etc. cost similar or more. And they still have trackpads that suck.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#37

Post by odshoifsdhfs »

I got the mbp when on day one but haven't been able to fully test it yet

BUT I have been using it (right now) for almost 2 hours reading reddit and whatnot, I went form 100% to 96%. On my current mbp (2019, i9, 16gb) 2 hours would kill 50% of my battery.

I don't care if compile time takes 2x. I can take my laptop with me at 8am and come back at 10pm and know I won't need a charger. It is amazing

Re: M1 Macs Review

#38

Post by m0zg »

Reviews (including this one) all say webcam sucks pretty bad though. Why Apple chose to release a laptop with a subpar webcam in 2020 is a mystery to me. This isn't even hard or expensive. Spend a couple dollars more on that webcam, Apple, don't be so greedy.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#39

Post by doublepg23 »

mikece wrote: post #29
rimliu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, see this e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxH3RabNWfE

Awesome -- that's what I'm looking for... but now I wish there was some explanation as to why a $699 machine is doing things that previously you needed a $4000 machine to do. I look forward to learning more!

Anandtech had some theories based on the A14s design. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...

Re: M1 Macs Review

#40

Post by sohooo »

ojosilva wrote: post #17

Here's looking at getting one. But I wonder what's the currently compatibility status of the dev stack: node, git, go, java, nginx, databases (pg, mongo, maria...), editors (macvim, vscode...), iTerm, et al. And the brew family of installs, which was covered as part of yesterday's thread [1]. Macos ships with some interpreters pre-installed as part of BigSur, including Ruby, Python and Perl. And most source distribut…

There's a detailed issue[1] on the homebrew repo where you can track their progress. The "Major blockers" section lists go, rust, gcc, and others.

[1] https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/7857

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