Apple announces ARM-based M1 chip lineup (MacBook Air, 13" Pro, Mac Mini; Nov. 17th launch)
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In Big Sur the control center in the top right toolbar has a keyboard brightness toggle
This is very specialized so I'm not sure anyone will have an answer for it, but I've been wanting to get a M1 16" MBP for Adobe work, particularly AfterEffects. But I'm hearing that it may not actually be suitable because apparently with M1 it won't have 32GB of RAM or a dedicated GPU, and that the current 16" might be better with i9 32 GB.
Apple MacBook Pro 13” M1 Review- Why You Might Want To Pass
#1-ranked tech analyst Patrick Moorhead reviews the new Apple MacBook Pro 13" M1 processor.
www.forbes.com
Take this for what it's worth.
Well, a 16 inch with the M1 doesn't exist yet, so its hard to say what the specs will be when it comes out.
Yeah, it's just from what I'm reading it sounds like it's unlikely there will be anything past 16GB RAM with a dedicated GPU in a theoretical 16" M1 MPB and that we'll have to wait for one with a better chip. I'm seeing that the Intel 13" MBP still available comes with 32 GB of RAM while the new M1 maxes out at 16.
But yeah, hopefully the specs end up being good, I just don't want to wait for nothing.
who says that there even will be a M1 16"? I personally expect the future 16" to come with an "M1X" or "M2", especially because of the 16GB limitation of the M1. But that is just speculation on my part.
Yeah, I don't see them doing this transition if it isn't coming to the entire lineup at some point, and if they want to keep customers who actually use the machines for work, they need computers with more ram and dedicated gpu's. I couldn't tell you when they'll show up, but I would guarantee they'll happen at some point.
I just rewatched the keynote and I agree with this. They very clearly outline a "family of chips" for the transition.
Yep. Almost certainly be an M1X, and maybe an M1Z for work stations. M2 will come but it will be across the product line M2X etc.
The number designation will be the broad architecture, the letter will be the power / form factor. Remains to be seen if they do M architecture changes annually like iPhone or bi-annually.
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I know this isn't the thread for it specifically, but anyone else just really pleased with the Big Sur aesthetic?
Everything finally feels cohesive again in OS X... cough... Mac OS. I've been using a Mac as my primary machine since they first flipped to Intel with the Core Duo MacBook, and when they went to the more modern, flat design with Mavericks in ... shit, 2013 (had to look that up), I've felt everything felt oddly placed, icons didn't match, window shapes were goofy, the menu bar didn't have any cohesion with the rest of my Apple products... it just felt very... "held together by gum and tape."
Big Sur is aesthetically cohesive. It finally feels like it fits in with my iPhone and my iPad. The Dark Mode doesn't feel like an after thought. There's still COLOR and "fun" in the icons/sounds. And it's running like a dream. Can't believe on the year of a chipset transition, I feel like MacOS is more full featured and with less ghosts in the machine and quirks in the system than I have in a long time.
This is a really pleasant OS to us that feels like a perfect match for this M1 MBA.
Everything finally feels cohesive again in OS X... cough... Mac OS. I've been using a Mac as my primary machine since they first flipped to Intel with the Core Duo MacBook, and when they went to the more modern, flat design with Mavericks in ... shit, 2013 (had to look that up), I've felt everything felt oddly placed, icons didn't match, window shapes were goofy, the menu bar didn't have any cohesion with the rest of my Apple products... it just felt very... "held together by gum and tape."
Big Sur is aesthetically cohesive. It finally feels like it fits in with my iPhone and my iPad. The Dark Mode doesn't feel like an after thought. There's still COLOR and "fun" in the icons/sounds. And it's running like a dream. Can't believe on the year of a chipset transition, I feel like MacOS is more full featured and with less ghosts in the machine and quirks in the system than I have in a long time.
This is a really pleasant OS to us that feels like a perfect match for this M1 MBA.
In my mind a theoretical M1X
has 12cpu(6+6), 12gpu cores
supports for 32+ gb memory
has 4 thunderbolt ports instead of 2
Goes in
High end 13" MBP
High end mac mini
Entry level 16" MBP
Low end iMac
then a M1Z is like 16x16 cores
64+gb ram
more i/o goes in high end MBP, High end iMac, Mac Pro etc
has 12cpu(6+6), 12gpu cores
supports for 32+ gb memory
has 4 thunderbolt ports instead of 2
Goes in
High end 13" MBP
High end mac mini
Entry level 16" MBP
Low end iMac
then a M1Z is like 16x16 cores
64+gb ram
more i/o goes in high end MBP, High end iMac, Mac Pro etc
Yeah, that's fair. I agree that it feels more cohesive than it did prior. I'm not for or against the aesthetic they went for, but I agree that it all feels more uniformly in line with everything else is very helpful, rather than feeling a bit... disjointed like it did before?
I'm running it on my 2015 MBP while I wait for the M1 machine to arrive, and it's been a noticeable speed upgrade over Catalina as well as unifying a lot of things that had felt a bit disconnected prior.
The notification centre is a prime example. I've literally never used it before, except to dismiss everything once a week, because it felt like a separate interface layer. Now it feels like part of a cohesive whole, and it's actually useful - because it works basically the same way it does on my phone.
“We are giddy”—interviewing Apple about its Mac silicon revolution
Craig Federighi, Johny Srouji, and Greg Joswiak tell us the Apple Silicon story.
arstechnica.com
Is it safe to use my old 2017 MBP charger with the new Air? It's bigger so I assume it can charge faster.
For some reason I didn't think Filezilla worked on M1 yet. I'll just use that then!
For some reason I didn't think Filezilla worked on M1 yet. I'll just use that then!
Saw this article today that serves to throw some cold water on the hype. I think it's pretty fair, there are going to be a lot of use cases where these just aren't ready yet https://www.forbes.com/sites/patric...ewwhy-you-might-want-to-pass/?sh=5b9eb280786a
the one external display thing is nuts to me. Dual monitors have been running on almost all laptops with docking stations for well over a decade now.
it still seems like it's in a class of its own for an amazing portable computer for most people right now, but there's going to be a lot of use cases and workflows that just break it.
Yeah, I think the timeframe for it really taking off will be back to school 2022
Eh, Moorhead doing Moorhead things on top of starting his article with "I want to provide balance to the other reviews about M1...".
Even his App compatibility section is inconsistent with what other reviewers - even on video - proved otherwise. Moorhead says that OBS is apparently incompatible with M1, yet Linus showed it working flawlessly on his second channel on the MBA. The section about Zoom etc working sluggish are also inconsistent with other video reviews that show Zoom running flawless on the MBA and even outperforming the Intel MBA on both responsiveness and battery efficiency.
Not sure if this is a good place to ask, but if I want to move from a Windows laptop to a Macbook Air. Would the new M1 one be a good choice?
I'm currently using a bulky gaming laptop, and I've already moved 90% of my gaming back to next gen consoles, at least for the foreseeable future. I don't want to carry such a heavy PC in my packpack.
The only games I would like to run on my Mac would be WoW: Shadowlands and League of Legends. I know that WoW has a native "Apple silicon" port already, which is great.
For work I'm connecting to a cloud desktop, so I wouldn't have to run any productivity applications on my Mac. Personally, I would like to use Skype, Discord, Steam to some extent and the above mentioned games. Not sure if Firefox is available on Mac, but if yes, then I would like to use it as well.
If I'm looking for something small, light, with a nice screen and good battery life, and a way to try out Apple ecosystem, is the M1 Macbook Air a good place to start..?
I'm currently using a bulky gaming laptop, and I've already moved 90% of my gaming back to next gen consoles, at least for the foreseeable future. I don't want to carry such a heavy PC in my packpack.
The only games I would like to run on my Mac would be WoW: Shadowlands and League of Legends. I know that WoW has a native "Apple silicon" port already, which is great.
For work I'm connecting to a cloud desktop, so I wouldn't have to run any productivity applications on my Mac. Personally, I would like to use Skype, Discord, Steam to some extent and the above mentioned games. Not sure if Firefox is available on Mac, but if yes, then I would like to use it as well.
If I'm looking for something small, light, with a nice screen and good battery life, and a way to try out Apple ecosystem, is the M1 Macbook Air a good place to start..?
It seems a LOT of people wanted this to fail for one reason or another. Months ago, so many people were shitting on the prospect of Apple doing their own chips, and the reveal was even worse. Benchmarks were dismissed as marketing, and now that people have the things in their hands and just about all of the claims are panning out (performance, battery life, etc) now we have moved on to nitpicking and some outright false claims about the machines.
I can see how the one external display and only two ports can hurt workflows for a lot of people though.
For the games you want to run, the M1 Mac should be able to handle those without too many issues (Intel macs already do, and these have better performance)
For all the programs you mentioned, all are available for mac, but might not have native M1 binaries yet, but Rosetta should have you covered easily until they do. For a light to medium usage machine, the new Air seems to be a fine choice.
I can see how the one external display and only two ports can hurt workflows for a lot of people though.
For the games you want to run, the M1 Mac should be able to handle those without too many issues (Intel macs already do, and these have better performance)
For all the programs you mentioned, all are available for mac, but might not have native M1 binaries yet, but Rosetta should have you covered easily until they do. For a light to medium usage machine, the new Air seems to be a fine choice.
Interesting article“We are giddy”—interviewing Apple about its Mac silicon revolution
Craig Federighi, Johny Srouji, and Greg Joswiak tell us the Apple Silicon story.
That quote is also quite interesting for people hoping that Apple will continue to release Intel based Macs alongside M-Series Macs:
Going forward, M-Series Macs it is then.
So I kind of did this exact thing over the weekend actually. I have been on Windows for the most part for about 30 years (yes I'm old enough to go back to the DOS and Windows 3.1 days) and I've been carrying around a Razor Blade Advanced for the past couple of years as my daily machine. It's not ridiculously bulky, but it does weight over five pounds. Also I just don't game on it nearly as much as I intended with my gaming PC at home I built and having all of the consoles. I had dabbled with MacBooks a few times over the years and always either returned them or sold them off because I wasn't a fan of losing a ton of performance if I had an Air, or the size of carrying around something like the 16" Pro. I decided to grab the base model M1 MacBook Air this weekend to give it a shot and I am so happy I did. So far it's been able to tackle everything I want, which admittedly isn't a super heavy workflow. It has also handled the two games that I've thrown at it with ease, Football Manager 2021 and Crusader Kings III neither of which have native M1 versions.
I figured no harm in trying out the gen 1 M1 Air with extended returns at Apple, but I don't see myself returning my Air and I think it will quickly be my daily machine. I went with the base 8 gb RAM/256 gb SSD because if I'm not loading up a laptop with games I don't need that much storage and I'm the type of person that will inevitably will end up replacing this sooner than I should when there's a redesign, they offer mini-LED, or they go to the M1X or M2 that offers a crazy performance increase.
Wait, just to be clear before I spend the money, you're able to run Crusader Kings III on the base 8GB MacBook Air?
Yes, although I only messed with it for about 10 minutes. In case you didn't see it pages back, here is a spreadsheet that someone has been keeping with games that have been tested. Someone test CKIII on the 8 gb Air and reported good performance as well.
Games Tested on Apple Silicon
Hmm, thanks! I might wait to see some more detailed impressions or YouTube footage, but this is incredibly exciting.
They always said they'd phase out intel chips within 2 years? I'm sure MacOS LTS would be another 5 years beyond that.
It's pretty wild actually. My desire to game on a laptop isn't very high considering my setup at home, but it's great to be able to play something like CK3 or Football Manager on an ultra portable laptop with 8gb or RAM and no fans.
UK folk,
For reference, this exact model is £899 direct from Apple.
However, it isn't too clear if this is really the 512GB model, or they'll just ship you the 256GB model. I've contacted them for clarity but they haven't replied. Simply because in the description it says both 256GB and 512GB as being the storage in separate parts of the listing.
YMMV
For reference, this exact model is £899 direct from Apple.
However, it isn't too clear if this is really the 512GB model, or they'll just ship you the 256GB model. I've contacted them for clarity but they haven't replied. Simply because in the description it says both 256GB and 512GB as being the storage in separate parts of the listing.
YMMV
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I have CK3 through GamePass on my PC but...if the new MBA plays it reasonably well, that could be dangerous.
For one thing, people are having astonishing results comparing video rendering/editing performance in their 16gb M1 Mac vs iMac Pro with 128gb of RAM. The memory access speed is so high people are seeing great results even when using gigabytes of virtual memory. So unless you are dealing with individual files that are themselves 16gb, you might find you don't actually need 32gb.
The second thing is that these are the lowest end Macs. When we get a 16" MBP, it will definitely offer at least 32gb and 4 ports, not two, and probably more cores too.
Had this same dilemma last night, and needless to say I now own the Steam version lol.
Taking out the unnecessary snark of the second sentence. He's right that Steam works like shit. It literally scrolls like a full second after I do the gesture. But you can still use it. And the performance of the steam client has nothing to do with how the game actually performs?
I think the 2 most impressive things I've personally seen this 8GB MBA do are... running Metroid prime at 1080p60fps and that it loads the Mac version of Planet Coaster, and it's playable (at the lowest settings). My 2018 MBP couldn't even run Planet Coaster on Windows particularly well.
That Moorhead article is going to be linked multiple times per page now, isn't it? There are a couple of good points in it, but the majority of it boils down to "if you're using this for professional work, make sure that the apps you use are either Apple Silicon native or run well with Rosetta 2." Which seems to be common sense, right? If you had a tool that was fundamental to your job, you'd do due diligence before switching it out?
That's ignoring the poorly-researched compatibility commentary, overall snark, and talking about "Apple-chosen" reviewers nine times.
That's ignoring the poorly-researched compatibility commentary, overall snark, and talking about "Apple-chosen" reviewers nine times.
Oooo. I'd love more detailed impressions on the performance if you get a chance! And...would save games be transferrable?
That Moorhead article is going to be linked multiple times per page now, isn't it? There are a couple of good points in it, but the majority of it boils down to "if you're using this for professional work, make sure that the apps you use are either Apple Silicon native or run well with Rosetta 2." Which seems to be common sense, right? If you had a tool that was fundamental to your job, you'd do due diligence before switching it out?
That's ignoring the poorly-researched compatibility commentary, overall snark, and talking about "Apple-chosen" reviewers nine times.
Oooo. I'd love more detailed impressions on the performance if you get a chance! And...would save games be transferrable?
I'm not taking his word as absolute fact, but I think it was useful to cool my hype jets a bit and make me realize that these probably aren't ready for me yet. But I'm still extremely excited about a potential 2021/2022 model that will be the right one for me.
the issues with steam are also fixed if you go into steam settings and turn off hardware acceleration and smooth scrolling. after I did that steam ran like a dream.
1. He is obviously correct regarding checking compatibility for essential programs you need.That Moorhead article is going to be linked multiple times per page now, isn't it? There are a couple of good points in it, but the majority of it boils down to "if you're using this for professional work, make sure that the apps you use are either Apple Silicon native or run well with Rosetta 2." Which seems to be common sense, right? If you had a tool that was fundamental to your job, you'd do due diligence before switching it out?
That's ignoring the poorly-researched compatibility commentary, overall snark, and talking about "Apple-chosen" reviewers nine times.
Oooo. I'd love more detailed impressions on the performance if you get a chance! And...would save games be transferrable?
2. LMAO this fool is salty as fuck that Apple made a chip that is objectively far superior to anything else on the market today. Those "Apple-chose" reviewers aren't faking the benchmarks for fucks sake.
Oh, totally. There are a ton of workflows out there that are absolutely not ready for prime time on the M1s. It was just funny that he's running almost-exclusively Microsoft apps on a Mac, week 1 of an architecture change, and acting like "see? Rosetta 2 sux." The greater issue I had with the article is extrapolating that to "if you only run Safari and 100% Apple-made apps, you'll probably be ok." Like, there's tons of us out here running third-party apps, some via Rosetta, that are absolutely just fine.
I'm not even going to give that article the benefit of my click. I've seen enough people give these things amazing reviews to know that this is just some salty jackass looking for ad revenue. Screw it. These Macs are only going to get better, and even for a first generation release they're pretty goddamned amazing right out of the gate.
