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M1 Macs Review

sixcolors.com

51–60 of 391 posts

Re: M1 Macs Review

#51

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

A battery life of 4 hours doesn't sound okay, my 2013 MBP lasts longer (original battery).

I will be honest, I also don't think it is good. It is a company issued one so I won't bother too much with it. I remember when the i9 came out, Apple had some issues with it, so maybe the battery usage is still a problem?

But even so, 2 hours of my usage, in pretty much every mbp I owned (and I had a few) always depleted minimum 25% of battery. (maybe the websites I use are more draining that simple static ones?) And we are talking about 4% now with this one. No matter how you dice it, it is still a big difference.

quick edit: it has been 2.5 hours right now since I unplugged it. Browsing Reddit and Hacker News, Whatsapp and Slack applications. 5% of the battery has been used!

Re: M1 Macs Review

#52

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 we’re talking about hardware ergonomics the lack of a del key and placement of the fn key alone make me never buy a macbook again. I also hate the difference in cmd, alt and ctrl keys from other keyboards.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#53
Copy-pasted the comment I left at another forum:

The the M1 is Zen3 5600X performance in an ultra-portable form factor. Whether that's revolutionary or not particularly noteworthy depends on the individual use case. If you're don't care that much about power/heat/fan-noise, it's neat but not (yet) world shattering. Bit if you live your life on a small laptop, it may well be.

According to rumors, we'll see Apple's 8 Firestorm + 4 Icestorm CPU within a quarter or two in the 16-inch MacBook (current M1 is 4 Firestorm + 4 Icestorm, where Firestorm is the high-performance core). That will perform somewhere between a 5800X and 5900X (or some recent 16-core Xeon that nobody remembers the name/number of). Again, revolutionary or meh depends on use case.

Linux native is not in the cards but it won't matter, it will work fine virtualized with hardly any performance penalty (for ARM64 linux). If for some reason you insist on native linux, it's time to recognize that Apple hardware is not for you.

Personally I run my server workload on servers far away and let other people deal with infra (particularly, power, networking and physical security). But it's probably great for heavy media creators on the go.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#54

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

A battery life of 4 hours doesn't sound okay, my 2013 MBP lasts longer (original battery).

I wouldn't be surprised depending on usage. My Intel MBA 2020 is 4 months old (should have waited ;_;) but CoconutBattery already reports it <90% of design capacity.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#55
post #38

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.

Honestly, because it's good enough for most people. I mean, yes, they could and absolutely should upgrade the webcam, I just don't see it as a major selling point, the existing is "fine".

Re: M1 Macs Review

#56
post #53

Copy-pasted the comment I left at another forum: The the M1 is Zen3 5600X performance in an ultra-portable form factor. Whether that's revolutionary or not particularly noteworthy depends on the individual use case. If you're don't care that much about power/heat/fan-noise, it's neat but not (yet) world shattering. Bit if you live your life on a small laptop, it may well be. According to rumors, we'll see Apple's 8 F…

"Linux native is not in the cards"

Sorry I'm not in the loop.. but why is that? Does the hardware somehow preclude it?

Re: M1 Macs Review

#57
post #13
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MacBook Air that GP mentioned doesn't even have a fan! That's certainly a nice benefit.

I really want the air for when I work outside in the summer. I worked from an iPad quite often with the magic keyboard, and it started throttling and sometimes overheated to the point of failure while outside in the sun. It's too cold in Chicago to test, but I would love to see if the MacBook Air can work while outside in direct hot sun - it's the only reason I'm considering the MBP.

The Daring Fireball review of the MBP had this to say about the fan ...

"The two machines are equivalently fast in a sprint, but the MacBook Pro will win a distance race. But Apple doesn’t call it a “fan”. They call it an “active cooling system”. That sounds like a marketing euphemism, but it’s not fair to call this a “fan”. It is something else altogether, and nothing at all like the cooling systems in any previous Mac laptop.

I’ve never once heard it in an entire week.

Never. Not once. Not a whisper.

I presume it has engaged at times when I’ve taxed the system. Again, the Cinebench multi-core CPU benchmark taxes every available CPU core for 10 minutes. But if the active cooling system has kicked in, I never heard it. I’ve never felt any air moving out of the vents, either. This is nothing at all like the fans on Intel-based MacBooks, which, if you’re not familiar, you can definitely hear, to say the least."

https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/the_m1_macs

Re: M1 Macs Review

#58
post #53

Copy-pasted the comment I left at another forum: The the M1 is Zen3 5600X performance in an ultra-portable form factor. Whether that's revolutionary or not particularly noteworthy depends on the individual use case. If you're don't care that much about power/heat/fan-noise, it's neat but not (yet) world shattering. Bit if you live your life on a small laptop, it may well be. According to rumors, we'll see Apple's 8 F…

> Linux native is not in the cards but it won't matter, it will work fine virtualized with hardly any performance penalty. If for some reason you insist on native linux, it's time to recognize that Apple hardware is not for you.

How would one run a graphical Linux distro virtualized and by which software?

Re: M1 Macs Review

#59
I have a 2017 MBP 15". Can't wait to get an M1 Pro, and I don't even care that much for the battery life -- it's all about the better performance on NLE software for me...

Re: M1 Macs Review

#60
post #53

Copy-pasted the comment I left at another forum: The the M1 is Zen3 5600X performance in an ultra-portable form factor. Whether that's revolutionary or not particularly noteworthy depends on the individual use case. If you're don't care that much about power/heat/fan-noise, it's neat but not (yet) world shattering. Bit if you live your life on a small laptop, it may well be. According to rumors, we'll see Apple's 8 F…

>If for some reason you insist on native linux, it's time to recognize that Apple hardware is not for you.

And so, all the people that would provide support for their family and friends due to using the same hardware split paths. And now those Apple users have to go to Apple for support. A double win for the corporation.

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