My first M1 "wow" moment.

[usagora]

I've been using my M1 MBA since March, but didn't really notice a huge performance difference in my everyday workflow from my old 2012 MBA it was replacing. I was only replacing the other MBA because it wasn't supported by Big Sur.

Well, the other night I rotated a 1+GB .mov file in Finder, which would take like 50-60 seconds on my 8-core i9 2019 iMac, and it took less than 3 seconds on my M1 MBA

 

[robertosh]

I'm more surprised about the non "wow" moments... I would expect the M1 to bury a 2012 Mac left and right !!

 

[dandeco]

Yep, I remember how pleasantly surprised I was when I would initially render/export videos in iMovie and Final Cut Pro on my M1 MacBook Air with 16 GB of RAM, and the rendering took a third of the time it does on my 2012 quad-core i7 Mac Mini!

 

[pshufd]

I have a fast Windows desktop so adding the M1 didn't blow me away on performance. It is, though, just a really smooth platform that uses a tiny amount of power. My main design goal on the Windows desktop was to minimize power consumption - so the M1 made for an easy purchase. I would like an M1X to replace the Windows desktop so that I'd have an M1X mini + M1 mini to power my four systems.

 

[usagora]

I'm more surprised about the non "wow" moments... I would expect the M1 to bury a 2012 Mac left and right !!

I guess nothing in my normal "MBA" workflow was something that had any huge "leaps and bounds" improvements. Like I said, the only reason I even upgraded was because my 2012 was no longer supported for upgrading macOS. I wasn't dissatisfied with its performance at all. It served me well!

 

[Andropov]

I'm more surprised about the non "wow" moments... I would expect the M1 to bury a 2012 Mac left and right !!

Thing is, people with really old Macs are probably the least impressed about M1 Macs, because you expect 10 years worth of CPU improvements and in reality the CPU performance stood still for half the decade and only got a significant boost in the last year.

 

[mi7chy]

Software encoding vs hardware encoding comparison so nothing special. It'll be more interesting to compare M1 hardware encoding speed and quality with current Intel Quick Sync. For quality, software encoding is still king.

 

[usagora]

Software encoding vs hardware encoding comparison so nothing special. It'll be more interesting to compare M1 hardware encoding speed and quality with current Intel Quick Sync. For quality, software encoding is still king.

So you're saying on my Intel MBA, the video was being rotated by software, and on my M1 MBA, the video was being rotated by hardware?

Also, the video quality looks identical after rotating on my M1.

 

[Jorbanead]

I'm more surprised about the non "wow" moments... I would expect the M1 to bury a 2012 Mac left and right !!

They are also using an 8-core 2019 iMac. So the wow factor for them is probably subconsciously comparing more to the newer iMac than the 2012 model.