mikegreenwald wrote:
I’ve been using a M1 MacBook Pro with 16 GB RAM, 1TB internal SSB drive and exclusively SSD external drives and USB C connections, plus a BenQ 27” external monitor. The entire system is blazingly fast, and far exceeds the the 2017 iMac Pro with hard drives in and out and USB connections. The scanner and printers are still slow though.
I can’t speak to the M1 iMac (24” largest available) - I’ve never tried one.
Probably by the end of October, we shall see Apple's next generation of Apple Silicon Macs, featuring M1x processors. Long rumored to be up first are 14" and 16" MacBook Pros. They will feature a completely new design, bring back some legacy ports and the MagSafe charger connection, come with new display technology, and of course, the extended capability processor, M1x. Beyond those, still to come are a new Mac Mini, new MacBook Air, larger (pro?) 30" or 32" iMac, and a new Mac Pro, probably all of which are coming by 12/2022.
That said, the M1 MacMini, MacBook Air, 13" MacBook Pro, and 24" iMac are killer machines.
I have the M1 Air with 8 core CPU, 8 core GPU, 16 core Neural Engine, 16GB Unified Memory, and 1TB SSD. It smokes most other hardware under the $1400 I paid for it, refurbished. It has NO FAN, but I haven't been able to choke it or get it even mildly warm yet, even rendering a 12-minute 4K video. It renders a 292MB 16-bit TIFF (or an 8-bit JPEG of the same raw file) in well under three seconds. Critics and skeptics had me cautious at first, but dozens of glowing reviews have compared this machine against many Intel Macs and PCs. Most of the time, it comes out ahead on most tests. You have to add a third party graphics card to a PC to beat it.
Battery life of both M1 MacBook Air and Pro is amazing. M1 is far more efficient than Intel processors, so over ten hours of real world use is not at all unusual.
The chief drawbacks of M1 are its "sealed box" design (get the largest memory and internal storage configuration you think you might need, because it CANNOT be upgraded), and the lack of ports. You'll need a hub, dock, or adapter dongles to connect things. When it dies in a few years, the battery IS replaceable... with removal of the bottom panel. iFixIt.com has replacements, guides, and tools.
The M1 does throttle back a smidge under heavy tasks, but not so badly that it's a meaningful annoyance. The M1 Air, without a fan, is maybe 12% to 15% slower than the Pro for extended video rendering or 90-track audio mixing. (The base M1 Air at $999 can render over 90 tracks of heavily processed audio. It's $999 Intel predecessor with the same 8GB RAM and 256GB storage could handle 8 tracks, if you were lucky!)