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After nearly a year in the M1 world, I bought an intel Macbook Pro 16 today.

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4743913

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Original poster
Aug 19, 2020
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This post is about a personal notebook, not a work one. I know that for some jobs, this will sound ludicrous.

I traded in my 2017 Macbook Pro when the M1 Air was announced. It was a nobrainer as I lived in constant fear of my keyboard failing and my AppleCare had expired 3 months earlier (wasn't renewable back then). So for the past year I have been all-in on the M1 way of mobile computing life. On the mac side of things, performance was just awesome. I had no complaints ever in my non-gaming applications. However, the things I had to go through to get sub-par Windows performance just continued to grind on my nerves. Some games required Parallels, some required Crossover. Some games were never going to work. So I weighed my options. Do I really need M1 speed to run Omnifocus, Fantastical, Screenflow, Drafts, etc.? Nope, the intel Macs handle all of my productivity stuff just fine. Do I really need an intel to run my games? That answer was yes.

There is nothing wrong with M1 for what it is meant to do. It runs macOS and its apps beautifully. The only issue I ever had with the M1 on the macOS side was that apple reneged on the deal to allow us to run iOS apps on it. I know, the devs are the ones actually to blame but it was promoted by apple. But the void left by not having Boot Camp is too much for me to overcome at this time. Maybe by skipping the M1x Macbook Pros, I will give Apple/Microsoft time to bridge the gap to ARM Boot Camp. But it looks like that will be a few years if ever. So for my personal notebook, I am doing the unthinkable. I am buying a 2+ year old architecture "new" macbook pro on the eve of the release of the next gen macbook pros.
 
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The other option would have been to keep the MBA and added a 27" Intel iMac. In a laptop the M1's performance per watt is hard to beat. In a desktop plugged into the wall it doesn't matter nearly as much. For Windows games, the iMac can be ordered with some very nice GPUs.

I replaced my MPB 15" with a 2020 27" iMac and aside from being much faster, it is also much quieter. My daughter has my 15" MBP now and when she plays Minecraft I can hear it from across the room. Because of Covid, I really don't need a laptop right now. If and when that changes, I will get something with Apple Silicon inside.
 
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ADGrant said:
The other option would have been to keep the MBA and added a 27" Intel iMac. In a laptop the M1's performance per watt is hard to beat. In a desktop plugged into the wall it doesn't matter nearly as much. For Windows games, the iMac can be ordered with some very nice GPUs.

I replaced my MPB 15" with a 2020 27" iMac and aside from being much faster, it is also much quieter. My daughter has my 15" MBP now and when she plays Minecraft I can hear it from across the room. Because of Covid, I really don't need a laptop right now. If and when that changes, I will get something with Apple Silicon inside.
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I have a 2020 27" iMac and it has become my favorite machine of all time. It's one of the reasons I got the Macbook Pro. I travel a lot for work and I want it with me all the time. This is as close as I can get to it. Battery life is not a concern as I usually stay plugged in when I use my notebook.
 
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The M1 actually simplified the choice for me a bit: During the entire Intel period I was aiming - but procrastinating the purchase decision due to their price - for Macs that were powerful enough to play my games on at acceptable fidelity.

With Apple Silicon, I now know the single computer lifestyle is out the window for me, and so I can budget for a much cheaper Mac for productivity only, with the knowledge that I unfortunately also need to keep maintaining my Linux-based gaming PC. That machine on the other hand is comparably cheap: The fastest 16 GB of RAM I could find was cheaper as a set of 2x8 sticks than upgrading from 8 to 16 GB in a Mac. I could lift my old 1TB SSD from my previous computer. A Ryzen 5600X has similar per-core performance to the M1's performance cores but has 6 of them instead of 4 and so still beats the M1 in a multicore benchmark. And I'll be able to only upgrade my GPU the next several times, when required, without replacing the entire computer.

Now I'm just waiting for the M1X to see what it provides over the M1, and hoping against hope for an Apple branded 27"+ retina Thunderbolt Display replacement to plug my next laptop into.
 
Mikael H said:
The M1 actually simplified the choice for me a bit: During the entire Intel period I was aiming - but procrastinating the purchase decision due to their price - for Macs that were powerful enough to play my games on at acceptable fidelity.

With Apple Silicon, I now know the single computer lifestyle is out the window for me, and so I can budget for a much cheaper Mac for productivity only, with the knowledge that I unfortunately also need to keep maintaining my Linux-based gaming PC. That machine on the other hand is comparably cheap: The fastest 16 GB of RAM I could find was cheaper as a set of 2x8 sticks than upgrading from 8 to 16 GB in a Mac. I could lift my old 1TB SSD from my previous computer. A Ryzen 5600X has similar per-core performance to the M1's performance cores but has 6 of them instead of 4 and so still beats the M1 in a multicore benchmark. And I'll be able to only upgrade my GPU the next several times, when required, without replacing the entire computer.

Now I'm just waiting for the M1X to see what it provides over the M1, and hoping against hope for an Apple branded 27"+ retina Thunderbolt Display replacement to plug my next laptop into.
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If it were desktops I would agree, but Im not going to tote two notebooks. I added the optiplex for gaming when my only mac was the 2017 macbook pro. but now I want my games with me. Another option I considered was a high end gaming laptop and running macOS in a VM.
 
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ADGrant said:
The other option would have been to keep the MBA and added a 27" Intel iMac. In a laptop the M1's performance per watt is hard to beat. In a desktop plugged into the wall it doesn't matter nearly as much. For Windows games, the iMac can be ordered with some very nice GPUs.

I replaced my MPB 15" with a 2020 27" iMac and aside from being much faster, it is also much quieter. My daughter has my 15" MBP now and when she plays Minecraft I can hear it from across the room. Because of Covid, I really don't need a laptop right now. If and when that changes, I will get something with Apple Silicon inside.
Click to expand...
Yep, I got a 2020 iMac 5K, core-i9 (10900), 128 MB RAM, 4 TB SSD, AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT 16 GB, and 10 gb ethernet.

Booted under Windows, this thing plays Mass Effect Legendary Edition with 4K assets at full 5K resolution.

I sold my loaded 2019 16" MacBook Pro prior to WWDC in anticipation of its value tanking when the M1x version emerged. Still waiting ...
 
4743913 said:
I have a 2020 27" iMac and it has become my favorite machine of all time. It's one of the reasons I got the Macbook Pro. I travel a lot for work and I want it with me all the time. This is as close as I can get to it. Battery life is not a concern as I usually stay plugged in when I use my notebook.
Click to expand...
Agreed, the MBP 16 is the closest thing to a portable 2020 iMac.
 
I put the M1 in the closet and have not even thought about it.

installed Paragon Tools so both OS have access to the entire ssd regardless of partition size.
 
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