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So ready to get rid of Intel
- Thread starter RumorConsumer
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They just took my money, twice.
I got an M1 Air 13" for the wife shortly after mine. We both still have our 2011 MBP's, and the've been very good to us, but they're really starting to show their age now. Where the fans on both machines would spin up to a small roar doing routine things like Netflix binging, web browsing and Photos/iMovie, doing the exact same things on the fan-less M1 Air's, they remain cold, even connected to an external monitor in clamshell mode or split screen.
If anyone is worried about storage space, just get a 2TB Samsung T7 SSD for only €285. Much cheaper than the extra €900 it will cost you to go for the 2TB internal upgrade. At least those are the prices in Belgium. Connected directly without a dongle via USB-C to USB-C, I've formatted the Samsung to APFS and a 105k image 700GB Photos library is flying.
Again, none of this making my M1 slightly warm.
From what I can gather, the only advantage in getting a Pro M1 over the Air M1 is maybe a little longer battery life, a brighter screen (with same Retina resolution), and a fan, for if you really need to run heavy processes over sustained periods. Otherwise, the performance is exactly the same. The Air is also several hundred grams lighter and quite a bit thinner than the Pro. The slightly lower screen brightness of the Air is a non issue for me because I generally don't work in direct sunlight.
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This is exactly what I was wanting to hear. I know that the M1 Macs are going to be blazingly fast, but I was more worried about what to do about additional storage, especially for something being portable. I haven't been able to back up my iPhone 11 Pro to my Mac because of its requirements for the latest iTunes, but iTunes requires the latest OS, and they dropped support for my 2011 MBA 2-3 years ago. Plus at this point, my iPhone has the same HD space as my Mac, so I would have to have double the space on my Mac just to take the first backup of my iPhone.
I knew I was going to run into this problem when I get the next MBP to come out, but didn't know if I should try to keep everything internal or go the peripheral (read: hub and dongle) route. But seeing that I can get a 5TB for cheap right now I may go that route and save the money and hassle of trying to keep everything internal.
My only question for you: With having your Photos library on an external drive, how does Time Machine handle that? Would you have to have a drive that is the size of your Mac plus the 2TB that your SSD is to handle the backups?
BL.
Yes, it's best to have a TM drive that is at least equal to the total of your internal and your external/s combined. The bigger, the better, as you'll be able to keep backups for that much longer, then TM starts auto deleting the oldest. For some of my backups, I'm using a pair of 5TB Seagate's from Amazon that cost just €120 each. I now have 3 TM backups of all our stuff kept in 3 separate locations.
Just be sure to include the extra drive/s in your TM backups. With the external drive containing your photos, music etc attached together with the drive for Time Machine also attached, open the main computer settings > time machine > options. Then, by default, you should see the external in the exclude list. Just remove it from the list and it will now be included in your next TM backup. I think excluding externals by default is a very good idea, because you don't want TM backing up a drive you might borrow from someone else. You will see the drive 'Sabine 4TB', that's my wife's drive, which is backed up by TM on her computer. When TM is finished, you can browse the folders on the backup drive to verify that the external has also been backed up.
You didn't exactly ask, but if I may, I would caution against using cheap HDD's for certain things, like huge photo libraries, unless you have time. Pay attention to the read/write speed of the drive. I learned my lesson the hard way. Our 700GB Photos library was unusable on a regular drive, but at 1,000MBps, the speed of it on the Samsung T7 makes my eyes water. A winning combination together with the M1. Oh, and the physical size of the Samsung SSD is tiny. It's as big as a credit card, as thick as a pencil and weighs only 50grams. A perfectly portable setup. The old HDD is now being repurposed as an extra TM backup and will be left at home.
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Got ya.
Photos I'm not really worried about, because I have a Synology NAS that those are going to as well as any other vital docs (copies of birth certificates, Power of Attorney docs, wills, family tree info, etc.) which is being backed up to an external drive and stored elsewhere. Right now my biggest hog is my iTunes library, which if I can move that off to an external drive and then use TM to back up that and my Mac to another external drive, I'll be good to go.
BL.
I’ve had an external “iTunes” drive for years, and now on Big Sur Music and TV external, has been no problem at all.
What’s your hold up?
Yea, I'm probably preaching to the choir, but that's the problems with forums like this, you don't easily know who knows what. At least someone else might find the info useful.
Anyhow, I have my 180GB/22k track iTunes library on a regular HDD and it works fine, but that's probably considered a very small library. However, I might get a Samsung SSD for it anyway just because of the size and weight of the drive.
When I got my M1 Air I set it up as a new machine and manually copied over only what I really needed from my MBP which has a 1TB internal. Getting a 256GB internal has 'forced' me to do some serious spring cleaning. I think a lot of us will be surprised just how much digital junk we collect over the years. We otherwise just end up buying new drives because they're getting cheaper and cheaper by the week. Off the top of my head, I think I have a grand total of about 30 TB worth of drives lying around.
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This is where I was 10 years ago. I came to my 256GB MBA from maintaining my own Linux box for 15 years, and having 3 separate disks of 3TB each in it.. I had to think about what really was important and what was either totally outdated or for geek show. The important stuff went to the NAS, any apps that weren’t able to be compiled or ported to the Mac went to it, and the rest went away. I maintain Linux servers for a living; I didn’t need to do it at home anymore..
but with my iTunes library growing (apps for the kids, music, etc), 256GB gets tight, and I haven’t been able to use an external drive because of lack of ports. I have a bunch of disks lying around as well, but sometimes too much is too much..
BL.
yeah. im talking more about ownership of the pinnacle of intel mac portable ownership which is this 8 core monster that is an awesome machine but is way further down the line from your mac. Yours was produced during a period where the power to speed ratio was still favorable.
yeah true, mine is also just a base model, the top of the range from this era (the mid-2015 Dual Graphics 15" MBP) ran hot has hell too...
Just chiming in here.
Doing some pro work [revit, CAD work] this morning on my 8 core i9 32gb ram and 5600m using bootcamp.
screen is fantastic, the right size, with no fans at all, running super smoothly [as good as any PC laptop]. Macos runs the same.
This model is awesome, although I have had the horrible experience with the lower end AMD MBP too and yep that is crap.
It does get far too hot though, and is unusable as a ''laptop'. great on the desk though.
For me, given I need intel for my work, will just get an M for my media activities [photography, music, video] and stay on windows for pro CAD and Vis work [much better for my line of work anyway, and have basically removed Apple from the studio, as many others I know have]. It is just selecting the right tool at the time to do the job at hand.
For consumer life, Apple wins handsdown for me over windows, and M's all the way !
Totally agree. Same exact unit here. This heat wave and the 4k monitor I have it driving pushed it beyond its comfort zone and really had me see how delicate a balance it actually is in there. I think apple silicon will change that and have it be that we can push the machine way further without it breaking a sweat.
My MBP16 has worked fine since the day I got it. Sorry you are having issues.
Mine, too. Mostly, that is. I use it part of the time connected to an LG UltraFine 5K via Thunderbolt cable (on the right side of the Mac) and it performs similar to what RumorConsumer reported. Yes, the fans do kick up rudely when on Zoom calls, so I've delegated those to my base model M1 Mac mini. (Strangely, the Mini takes much longer to wake from sleep, and doesn't "feel" as smooth as the my MBP 16.)
This is fine, because I really prefer using my MBP as a notebook computer -- this way I get True Tone (not available on the external display when the MBP is in clamshell mode) and also use of the Touch Bar, which, according techie bloggers and YouTubers, only myself and 5 other people actually enjoy.
Am I looking forward to an Apple Silicon 16 inch? Oh, YES -- in 2022 when the M2X version ships.
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Odd comment. Not saying my machine has issues at all. I think it’s operating normally given the conditions: warm room during a heatwave and a 4K display connected. If I disconnect the display and go to my friends house that’s insulated and a more livable temperature then “issues” ie fan noise and heat “magically resolve”. Like, did you even read the thread?
I would be quite disappointed if the M2X 16" MBP does not got hot at all, meaning that Apple left alot of performance on the table.
The reason why the 13" MBA is fanless and the 13" MBP and Mac Mini are so quite is because the M1 is basically an iPad chip. So no wonder it requires very little cooling.
The reason why the 13" MBA is fanless and the 13" MBP and Mac Mini are so quite is because the M1 is basically an iPad chip. So no wonder it requires very little cooling.
I’m doing the same things with my M1 Air if not a bit more than what I did with my 2011 MBP, yet the M1 doesn’t even think about breaking a sweat, whereas my 2011 will huff and puff like there’s no tomorrow.
The M1 completes the same size of Time Machine backups at least 5 times faster, a 1TB external photo library in less than 4 hours. No heat that I can feel. The 2011, over 16 hours, same library, fans running full speed.
So yes, I think the M1 is performing way better than your average intel based Mac. I’m pretty sure the next gen of chips will perform even better, while being used as an active cooling device.
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Possibly. But we also know that the m1 and phone chips do amazing feats without getting hot. And you will want to check your facts on the M1. Its not an "iPad chip". They made that pretty clear in the unveiling and then when they put it in the iPad. Just because it works, doesnt meant it was built "for it". By all accounts its still massively overpowered in an iPad. More a show of strength and a flaunt on Apple's part.