OK, it has been a number of weeks since the new MacBook Pro M1 and MacBook Air M1 came out.
There has been so much hype and hyperbole over the performance,
there has been time to find some bugs, there has been time for the M1 MacBooks to settle
into people’s lives. And now that the honeymoon period is over people really want to know should
they upgrade from an Intel MacBook to one of the new MacBooks with M1.
Hey, Im Jerry and you know all about the MacBook Pro M1 and the MacBook Air M1 by now.
You know that these are apple’s first laptops running with their own Apple Silicon processor.
You know they look just like the previous versions of the MacBooks. Buy what you
may not know is if you should upgrade and I am going to try and help you decide in this video.
There are 4 main things about these new laptops that all the previous MacBooks
need to be compared against. Performance, Battery life, Heat and fan, and compatibility.
Using those 4 items can help you decide if you should upgrade your MacBook.
Performance wise, the M1 processors really are good.
Whether you look at the typical benchmarks like Geekbench and cinebench or toward so
called real-world performance tests like video exports, or scrubbing through lightroom, the
reviewers mostly agree that the performance that is possible with the M1 MacBooks seems impossible.
In some tests the base model MacBook Air M1 can beat out the 2020 iMac with a 6-core i5
like the one I had with 40Gb of ram that costs 2.5 times a much.
And don’t even try to compare it against something like the i3 MacBook Air
or the now discontinued 12” MacBooks. Its not even funny how much of a different there is.
Not only can the M1 MacBooks Beat the 2020 iMac in some tests,
and others have shown even crazier comparizons, it does it completely silently and much cooler.
The MacBook Air does not even have a fan to spin up because it doesn’t need it. The MacBook Air
M1 can run a zoom or Teams call all day while I have email, docs, browser and oneNote up,
while barely getting above room temperature. And yes….its possible to push the Air M1 to its limits
but it takes a while and the frequency in which you may do that is probably pretty slim.
The MacBook Pro does have a fan but its not like you ever hear it.
It is completely silent almost all the time to the point that I am not sure it is even on at all.
There are only 2 occasions where I can get the fans on the MacBook pro M1 to spin up.
When running cinenbench for nearly 10 minutes or when exporting a video with Premiere Pro.
Premiere Pro isn’t even optimized for the M1 so that kind of makes sense, but even then the
fans are so much quieter than something like the i3 MacBook Air or the 16” MacBook Pro.
Battery life on the 2 MacBooks with M1 is insane. I mean really, I cant think
of another word for it. For so many years the iPad was my benchmark for actual usable
battery life in a device. I loved that I could get a realistic 10 hours of use from the iPad
with standby that was so little I didn’t need to worry about plugging it in between uses.
And now the MacBooks Air and Pro with M1 completely crushes the battery life of the iPad.
You can literally charge your M1 laptop at night,
disconnect it, and use it for work stuff, browsing, email, video,
whatever all day and not even think about plugging in. If you use your laptop for 8 hours or less
a day you can easily get 2 days in between charging, especially with the MacBook pro M1.
Then, there is compatibility. Apple built a new version of Rosetta translation called…you
know this….Rosetta2. The first version of Rosetta was used in the PowerPC to Intel transition and
worked a bit different, more like an emulator. Rosetta2 works by translating code on install
or first run to work with Apple Silicon. All that matters here,
is that most Mac software will just run on the m1 Macs which means coming from an Intel Mac does not
need to be scary. There isn’t 100% compatibility using Rosetta2 but most software runs
really well, some run better than native, and some bigger programs are a bit slower.
If software you rely on is not compatible, or if you need to run Windows in bootcamp or virtualized
than you probably need to stick with whatever Intel MacBook you have now.
So what type of MacBook do you have now and should you upgrade? Assuming Money is not a problem,
let me just get this out of the way. If you have a 12” MacBook or a MacBook Air,
of any kind, age, or configuration, you should absolutely upgrade to a MacBook with M1.
In any and all possible metric you will get a much better computer out of the MacBook Air M1 or Pro,
vs any previous 12” MacBook or MacBook Air. The performance, even with apps that need Rosetta2,
will blow your Intel MacBook out of the water. It will do everything you need it to,
run all day and stay cool. Beyond that you will also get upgrades in Camera quality,
screen color, microphones and the instant sleep/wake, just like an iPad.
What if you have a 13” MacBook Pro? Performance wise, I still think that the M1 is going to be
more powerful for 90% of whatever needs you may have. Even if you are running professional apps
for stuff like video or photo editing, the lack of dedicated GPUs on the 13” Intel MacBook Pros
means you are still limited to hotter CPUs that can’t take full advantage of those types
of applications. The 8 GPU cores of the M1 have proven. To be much faster than the integrated
graphics of previous MacBooks. If you bought a higher end 13” MacBook Pro with 4 USB-C ports
then you must have a reason for needing that many ports like dedicated tools or
audio equipment, and that could be reason enough to hold onto the 13” Pro with Intel.
The 16” MacBook pro is where things get a little Tricky.
If you have a 16” MacBook pro and you bought it to run professional applications,
depending on the applications, you may be better off keeping the 16”.