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

Apple MacBook Pro 13” M1 Review- Why You Might Want to Pass

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 116 posts

Re: Apple MacBook Pro 13” M1 Review- Why You Might Want to Pass

#101

Post by qppo »

S_A_P wrote: post #20
xiwenc wrote: post #11

Two highlights for me that were useful: 1) keep expectations low in terms of compatibility. Most non apple apps will take time before they are ported to run natively on M1 2) related to point 1, the great battery life being marketed is not applicable if your apps arsenal is not native yet. These two might sound trivial to some but i did not think of them initially. I was ready to get the M1 if there’s a good deal nex…

To point 1- some native Mac apps are not Big Sur compatible yet. It could be 2 separate issues. I held off from upgrading to Big Sur on my audio/daw iMac Pro for this reason. 2- claim seems slightly dubious as it depends on the app. Some translated software is more cpu intensive than others. So maybe? Just like the native stuff will be.

If you're doing audio production you should never upgrade MacOS immediately. I get almost as many emails from developers telling me not to as I get notifications from Apple telling me to upgrade.

This has been true for at least the last 15 years, MacOS upgrades always screw something up. Usually iLok

Re: Apple MacBook Pro 13” M1 Review- Why You Might Want to Pass

#102

Post by soapdog »

bstar77 wrote: post #26
grey-area wrote: post #23

This is a review from someone who uses Microsoft Edge, Outlook, and Adobe Reader on a Mac. Those are very unusual choices nowadays for Mac software, so I don't think this applies to most Mac users considering upgrading.

I think I finally convinced my wife to stop using Acrobat Reader for Mac, which performs and looks like a java swing app. I don't know why she refused to use Preview for viewing PDFs, but I think some people just get set in their ways. That said, these people should not be writing technical reviews for major news organizations.

I had to use Acrobat Reader on a Mac to work with a book publisher because the comments they were attaching to the manuscript didn't work the same on Apple Preview. PDFs don't behave exactly the same everywhere for things that goes beyond just reading documents. For example, I had a reply on the PDF that was visible on Preview but vanished when you tried to read on Acrobat Reader, that caused a lot of trouble with the publisher that claimed I didn't answer... YMMV with regarding to these features and them working across apps.

Re: Apple MacBook Pro 13” M1 Review- Why You Might Want to Pass

#103

Post by specialist »

guitarbill wrote: post #100
specialist wrote: post #94

TLDR: 5G will replace wifi. The 5G bulletpoint will become true. Probably sooner than later. Listening to Horace Dediu (Asymco) alerted me to 5G's impact. (I just didn't care enough, so wasn't paying attention.) The 5x5 CriticalPath episode recapping the iPhone 12 launch. I don't understand Dediu's analysis well enough to repeat it. But the punchline is Apple put everyone on notice that 5G is the next thing. The rati…

unless i can somehow set up a 5g local network, i don't see how this is true? there's got to be a million if not a billion wifi networks for various different applications (like gopros). i have nothing that speaks 5g yet, no use-case for it, and even if i did, no meaningful coverage. carriers might be hyping it, but it doesn't make it so. DSL is still a thing in some places. 1gig ethernet, 2.4 GHz wifi, and various o…

Really good point. Hmmm.

Maybe I should have wrote "5G will displace wifi".

If I had to guess, Apple's notion for personal networking will be multi protocol. Bluetooth, wifi, 5G, UWB, NFC, etc. In combination. And Dediu's point is the 5G will finally be able a viable wifi replacement for a large fraction of Apple users.

Like all tech, wifi will peak, plateau, then long slow decline.

Question related to your point:

Will self-hosted 5G be an option? eg Will Microsoft be able to (feasibly) run their own campus 5G network?

Zero trust networking and software defined networks, for both consumer and enterprises, will definitely become the preferred solution. So me running my own LAN becomes less important. In that world, maybe self-hosting becomes "virtual".

Re: Apple MacBook Pro 13” M1 Review- Why You Might Want to Pass

#104

Post by teilo »

Typical Forbes Tech Council drivel. Alarmist, tunnel vision, contrived. I'm surprised it didn't start with "Apple has a serious problem with the M1."

Nothing written here is surprising.

The M1 models have been out for just over a week. No one expected all apps to work perfectly on a completely new architecture, but the fact that Rosetta 2 works SO well is extraordinary. As it is, MS Office is already native in the beta channel. So is Chrome and Firefox. Many popular apps were released native on day one. Microsoft has released a native OpenJDK 16 port. This is a remarkable level of adoption after just one week.

Lack of USB ports? How is that different from the existing models they replace, which, I might add, have far worse batter performance? These are not replacements for the top-tier pro machines. This was intentional. Apple intended these machines to be the foundation upon which the entire line is built, and to give developers the motivation to port their apps. And they are. Quickly.

I just setup a new Air for the chairman of the board at my company. He keeps texting me, raving about the thing. The best Mac he's ever owned (and he's owned nearly every Macbook there ever was).

Re: Apple MacBook Pro 13” M1 Review- Why You Might Want to Pass

#105

Post by akmarinov »

BossingAround wrote: post #67
nfg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know people who've kept Macs running for nearly a decade (e.g. 2011 Macbook Air) It’s no longer my primary machine but my 2009 MBP is still running just fine (new memory and disk 5 years back, battery is a bit shagged at this stage) and I use it all the time for storing and casting media, light dev work, office apps etc.

> new memory and disk Something you'll not be able to do with Apple Silicon hardware. I am interested in the longevity of the new devices, but they'll definitely age faster since the configuration you get today is it.

That's been the case since 2016, after that everything is soldered in, so you can't change anything. And even before that in the 2012 iteration you could only change the SSD with the RAM still being soldered in.

So all in all - it's been almost 10 years since they've been aging faster.

Re: Apple MacBook Pro 13” M1 Review- Why You Might Want to Pass

#106

Post by paulryanrogers »

closeparen wrote: post #95
Jonnax wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a review be biased if they want 5G or a touchscreen in their laptop? Those are features of other laptops. And Apple already ships the technogy to support both.

This is sort of like complaining about the passenger capacity of a 911 or the cornering on a minivan. You expect a review to describe how good something is at being what it intends to be, not how the reviewer prefers an entirely different style.

People can wish for things within creations that the creators never imagined or considered inappropriate. Which is why mod-ability is a nice escape hatch. Sadly Apple has rarely supported or encouraged that in their hardware.

Re: Apple MacBook Pro 13” M1 Review- Why You Might Want to Pass

#107

Post by S_A_P »

qppo wrote: post #101
S_A_P wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To point 1- some native Mac apps are not Big Sur compatible yet. It could be 2 separate issues. I held off from upgrading to Big Sur on my audio/daw iMac Pro for this reason. 2- claim seems slightly dubious as it depends on the app. Some translated software is more cpu intensive than others. So maybe? Just like the native stuff will be.

If you're doing audio production you should never upgrade MacOS immediately. I get almost as many emails from developers telling me not to as I get notifications from Apple telling me to upgrade. This has been true for at least the last 15 years, MacOS upgrades always screw something up. Usually iLok

absolutely- and I never do. Was mostly stating that there are legitimate reasons to not upgrade and that some software doesnt work with the latest OS that isnt necessarily related to M1.

Re: Apple MacBook Pro 13” M1 Review- Why You Might Want to Pass

#108

Post by lode »

uvesten wrote: post #12

Considering the software this reviewer focuses on, he can’t have much fun using a computer ever, and it shows.

In my 19 years of using Macs, I’ve never even heard of WinZip for Mac. Sure, I’ve used 3rd party compression tools for formats like 7Zip or bz2, but why you’d want to run WinZip on macOS today is beyond me.

Re: Apple MacBook Pro 13” M1 Review- Why You Might Want to Pass

#109

Post by grey-area »

pmontra wrote: post #50
grey-area wrote: post #23

This is a review from someone who uses Microsoft Edge, Outlook, and Adobe Reader on a Mac. Those are very unusual choices nowadays for Mac software, so I don't think this applies to most Mac users considering upgrading.

Edge and Adobe Reader maybe but there are mixed environment companies. What if your company's email and calendar server is Outlook? And what if everybody's writing docunents with Word and sheets with Excel? Furthermore a web developer probably wants to test in Edge even if I assume Chrome is enough.

Mail.app and Calendar.app work fine with outlook accounts and Word and Excel work fine in Rosetta 2.

Edge is based on Chromium now, and nobody uses it on the Mac, so there's not much point in testing rendering on a Mac (better to test on Windows Edge).

However if you're really bought into the MS ecosystem (or much of your company is), and can't do without outlook or old Windows programs like winzip (!) I'd agree with the author that you should wait, though I don't agree that it's a big problem to do so or this is somehow a failing of the new Macs.

Pretty sure this isn't going to be a problem for longer than a few weeks anyway, as MS have already announced the office suite working fine on early betas of M1 and new beta builds for the architecture:

https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/microsoft-office-big-sur-m1-...

In fact on checking I see the betas have already arrived:

https://twitter.com/Schwieb/status/1326728712948076545

Re: Apple MacBook Pro 13” M1 Review- Why You Might Want to Pass

#110

Post by kurko »

crb wrote: post #29

This device, and the non-Touch Bar "MacBook Escape" before it, succeed or fail based on what you think "Pro" means. John Gruber thinks when Apple says "Pro" they mean "deluxe" or "nicer". (See https://daringfireball.net/2015/11/the_ipad_pro for example.) You can argue that this could have been avoided by calling this particular device the MacBook. But that might have made people think it was the default choice, where…

Macbook and Macbook Fan.
Post reply on HN