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Apple M1 Hands-On Comparison: MacBook Air vs. MacBook Pro vs. Mac Mini
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120,000 lines of Swift, another 30,000 lines of objective C.
Or maybe save $200 and in the future, you can afford to upgrade to an even faster computer sooner
Wait - does this mean that the M1 throttled is STILL more powerful than the Intel maxed out?
err firebase ? I'm not google staff nor qualify to be their staff. if they can change simulator to emulator a god send. My dream is I can test directly XCode in iPad.
I can not wait for 2 years when Apple has the M3 processor and a AMD radeon graphics processor for the the MacBook Pro 16 or a Mac mini Pro. I will upgrade then when more of the application has been written for the ASIC processor and the GPU performance improves. My MacBook Pro 16 with AppleCare will do me fine until then. 
I do hope at some point, people stop using Geekbench. It means nothing to anyone. Real testing like rednering video in Final Cut is an actual test. Not some super short, CPU bursting, synthetic benchmark.
That's the way I looked at when I ordered my 16GB MBA two weeks ago. I figure it'll be my daily laptop for at least three years. That works out to 18 cents per day. And then after three years I'll keep it around for occasional use, making that daily cost even less.
Sure but I bet you do not purchase the entry level machines to do that either.
That is something we all need to remember. These are the base models of Mac's. Its all good to see how far they go and even better that they are out performing the base level Intel Mac's they are replacing.
In the end these are entry level Mac's or Mac's best suited for you typical student, home user or office worker. Email, web browsing, documents, light photo work, remove that redeye or organize those new photos into a photo album, watch a video, and maybe even on rare occasions create a movie with iMovie. Yes people will push them beyond their intended use, Mac mini for sure.
Once you push past those needs you need to step up. 16inch MacBook, iMac, iMac Pro, Mac Pro. I have no doubt Apple will fill those classes of Mac with new M(x) versions in the near future. I am most interested in seeing how they address the replacement of dedicated GPU's that out perform any ARM solution we have seen and by a wide margin.
I purchased a M1 Mac mini the day it was available to order and received it last week. I've been using it every day since. The model I purchased is the base model: 8GB/256GB. I was initially hesitant about the 8GB RAM but I didn't want to wait until late December/early January for the 16GB model to ship. My hesitation has been proven misplaced.
On a daily basis - I work from home - I have 9 apps open all the time: Mail, Calendar, Apple Music, MS Teams, MS Outlook, MS Word, Terminal, Pulse Secure, and Affinity Photo. With these apps open, and some background apps running (like Sophos Anti-Virus) I regularly see around 3.5GB of RAM still free. I have rarely seen it dip below 2GB of free RAM even after running a couple of other apps in addition to the above.
Obviously, memory management in the M1 Macs is done differently than in their Intel counterparts.
I am very satisfied with the extremely fast performance of the M1 Mac mini.
On a daily basis - I work from home - I have 9 apps open all the time: Mail, Calendar, Apple Music, MS Teams, MS Outlook, MS Word, Terminal, Pulse Secure, and Affinity Photo. With these apps open, and some background apps running (like Sophos Anti-Virus) I regularly see around 3.5GB of RAM still free. I have rarely seen it dip below 2GB of free RAM even after running a couple of other apps in addition to the above.
Obviously, memory management in the M1 Macs is done differently than in their Intel counterparts.
I am very satisfied with the extremely fast performance of the M1 Mac mini.
Ditto. I have a Surface Laptop 3 which has a touchscreen and I don't think I've ever used it. (Finger prints on a display drives me nuts anyway. LOL!)
I find it amusing, and a bit sad, that so many people are posting about how the M1 MBA will "throttle" under load, when they have zero experience with it.
To say nothing of those who say it will throttle compared to a iMac or 16" MacBook Pro. The M1 MBA (and MBP) are the BASE models. And they're benchmarking faster than the prior fastest Macs.
To say nothing of those who say it will throttle compared to a iMac or 16" MacBook Pro. The M1 MBA (and MBP) are the BASE models. And they're benchmarking faster than the prior fastest Macs.
So true for so long. Now with that keyboard and finally mouse support the iPad, the largest one, can be used like a laptop gaining its better UI than the traditional iPad UI. That said buying that keyboard, 12.9inch iPad Pro and a mouse probably exceeds the cost of the new MacBook Air maybe even the MacBook Pro 13inch.
I never use touch on my work Thinkpad that has touch. Hardly anything is optimized for it.
Basically my dream laptop right now. I could live with 32gigs of RAM.
“Powerful” is a really subjective term.
From what I gather the M1 doesn’t draw more power to do the same work, keeping it from throttling as hard as an intel chip from lack of heat, while crushing the tasks thrown at it.
I suppose yes, though, depending on how you break it down.
8gb is screaming with my M1 13” right now. And that is with many apps that aren’t even optimized for the M1.
I did open every app, 10 tabs in safari with 9 playing YouTube and 1 playing Netflix, while downloading logic and final cut, and also running 2 4K Sony a7iii videos just to see if there was some system degradation.
There wasn’t. Everything played buttery smooth and all transitions when clicking and gesturing with the trackpad were flawless.
It’s Almost like the minimal 2gb or 3gb ram on our phones and how they run so well transitioned into the Macs and how well the Macs handle the minimum ram. I’d say this MacBook Pro is future proof as developers will take a little time to max the efficiency of apps for M1 to start, and when they do max the efficiency, the apps will require less ram...
Just like some people never really got a handle on using a mouse and always preferred using the command line, some people will never be comfortable with touch and always prefer a keyboard and mouse. The majority are buying iPads FAR more than any Mac.
Last I checked, Final Cut costs $299, so not likely a useful benchmark for the vast majority of people. iMovie testing would be far more useful.
I really don’t understand the disdain for benchmark testing... Geekbench showed “M1 is faster than most Intel processors” and the non-Geekbench tests are showing the same. I mean, really, is there a recent example of a Geekbench result showing something vastly different from what more generalized testing shows? Is it really just a coincidence that the results from Geekbench and other benchmark tests happen to agree with the majority of non-benchmark tests? OR, can we finally say that benchmark results do tell a general story about performance deltas?
To answer your rhetorical question, yes. The best example I can bring up is the i9 MacBook Pros. Obviously they were faster than the i7 ones in bursty tests, but (at least the first year) they were actually slower in long-running tests.Last I checked, Final Cut costs $299, so not likely a useful benchmark for the vast majority of people. iMovie testing would be far more useful.
I really don’t understand the disdain for benchmark testing... Geekbench showed “M1 is faster than most Intel processors” and the non-Geekbench tests are showing the same. I mean, really, is there a recent example of a Geekbench result showing something vastly different from what more generalized testing shows? Is it really just a coincidence that the results from Geekbench and other benchmark tests happen to agree with the majority of non-benchmark tests? OR, can we finally say that benchmark results do tell a general story about performance deltas?
I've got nothing against benchmarks. What I'm saying is, include both a short and a long benchmark, and if you only want to pick one, pick the long one. These Geekbench results alone make it look like the Air barely suffers from the lack of cooling, but that's not the case except in bursty tasks.
Bursty tasks are common too, so the Geekbench results are useful for that. The biggest reasons I can see to pick Geekbench as THE test is 1. they're clearer about the differences between versions 2. long-running test results will depend more on the room temperature and other factors, making them less clean. But I think it's still too far from the average use case.
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Oh it'll throttle, but it'll be faster than a throttling Intel Mac.