31–40 of 106 posts
Was expecting a bit more than a handful of paragraphs and three tests from this article.
I'm sure there are some around that would prefer this bit of terse review. There are less words in this tech review than in most "when I was a kid, mom would make us this" type of story before you can ever get to the actual recipe.
What I found shocking is just how drastically faster some workflows are. If you work in JS and Node (say doing unit tests for an angular web app) this machine is so much better it’s unbelievable. It’s probably less than half the time to run tests. Half. It’s real productivity change.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's excellent. I have the 8-core i9 16" Pro and I prefer the Air in every way for development. The keyboard is better (no touchbar), it doesn't get as hot, the battery life is better, it's faster, and it cost 1/4 as much ($999 vs about $4k). I bought the 16" in February, only 10 months ago. What a leap.
I've been using my girlfriend's M1 Air, and I am superbly impressed. You can feel how much more responsive the system is with every click. I am so tempted to upgrade my from my 2017 Pro. The only thing holding me back is the knowledge that the M1 is the slowest Macintosh chip Apple will ever make.
What I found shocking is just how drastically faster some workflows are. If you work in JS and Node (say doing unit tests for an angular web app) this machine is so much better it’s unbelievable. It’s probably less than half the time to run tests. Half. It’s real productivity change.
Great, now that we have this new fast hardware, time for developers to make everything 2x slower again.
God I hate this timeline.
Considering the positive reception of the M1, I'd like to see the cases where the M1 does sorely lose to the Intel chip as the post alludes to. The SIMD sounds promising in that regard, but I don't know processor technology that well. Does anyone know where the Intel chip greatly outdoes the M1?
What I found shocking is just how drastically faster some workflows are. If you work in JS and Node (say doing unit tests for an angular web app) this machine is so much better it’s unbelievable. It’s probably less than half the time to run tests. Half. It’s real productivity change.
Great, now that we have this new fast hardware, time for developers to make everything 2x slower again.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been using my girlfriend's M1 Air, and I am superbly impressed. You can feel how much more responsive the system is with every click. I am so tempted to upgrade my from my 2017 Pro. The only thing holding me back is the knowledge that the M1 is the slowest Macintosh chip Apple will ever make.
Feeling exactly the same. I am trying my hardest to wait for a couple of generations after grabbing a 2019 16".
The M1 has 8 instruction decoders while every Intel processor maxes out at 4. This enables many more instructions in flight than on Intel. The M1 can process twice as many instructions per clock cycle than an x86 processor can.
An x86 instruction can decode into many more uops than an ARM instruction. It could be more accurate to say the M1 can process twice as many half as complex instructions as x86.
Anecdotally I recently grabbed a M1 MacBook Air and it’s an incredible machine. I prefer it over my work issued 2019 pro. It could be that the MDM software has slowed down the pro, but overall the experience with the M1 is very good.