Apple M1 5nm chip launched for macbook air and pro 13 inch

It's finally here. No pics for now sorry but got my M1 Air 2 days back. Due to being work days, haven't been able to get much time to play around and weekend is busy. But damn this thing is super fast. I have no way to compare to any other macbook or so but it flies.
Using MacOS for first time, fluid, gestures are awesome, still learning. Have to Google how to do many things. Me and wife will be watching few getting started youtube videos, especially ones targeted over windows users coming to Mac. If anyone has recommendations on some great youtube tutorials, it would be very much appreciated.

I am literally baby sitting the macbook, not letting kids touch it and such. Have installed Microsoft office 365 and because I am a "student" [emoji6] I got free subscription too (to clarify, not because I got student discount but I have a not real .edu Email id).

There is so much to discover so will take time and want to make sure my wife becomes expert in it as she needs laptop to make notes for my kid.

Couple of hiccups I saw are, for some reason, mail app was stuck and won't quit and "Quit Mail" was greyed out. So had to use the force close method.
Second, I have a usb c dongle and it's USB A ports etc work fine but when connected to HDMI to TV, the display was not proper and also nothing would move on screen. Not sure if dongle is faulty. Will try in another tv and cable. I am not considering buying anything new or apple original as my need of connecting to TV or monitor isn't there yet.
 
Last edited:
It's finally here. No pics for now sorry but got my M1 Air 2 days back. Due to being work days, haven't been able to get much time to play around and weekend is busy. But damn this thing is super fast. I have no way to compare to any other macbook or so but it flies.
Using MacOS for first time, fluid, gestures are awesome, still learning. Have to Google how to do many things. Me and wife will be watching few getting started youtube videos, especially ones targeted over windows users coming to Mac. If anyone has recommendations on some great youtube tutorials, it would be very much appreciated.

I am literally baby sitting the macbook, not letting kids touch it and such. Have installed Microsoft office 365 and because I am a "student" [emoji6] I got free subscription too (to clarify, not because I got student discount but I have a not real .edu Email id).

There is so much to discover so will take time and want to make sure my wife becomes expert in it as she needs laptop to make notes for my kid.

Couple of hiccups I saw are, for some reason, mail app was stuck and won't clock and "Quit Mail" was greyed out. So had to use the force close method.
Second, I have a usb c dongle and it's USB A ports etc work fine but when connected to HDMI to TV, the display was not proper and also nothing would move on screen. Not sure if dongle is faulty. Will try in another tv and cable. I am not considering buying anything new or apple original as my need of connecting to TV or monitor isn't there yet.
The only suggestions I can add are :

1) You probably already know this - but OS X works a lot better if you always use standby (ie close lid when done) instead of shutting it down when done for the day. (Some of us older folks have an ingrained habit of shutdown )

2) USB C to HDMI - while you don’t need one, 4k60 cables are just about 1200-1500. If you do get one, make sure you check the specs
 
The only suggestions I can add are :

1) You probably already know this - but OS X works a lot better if you always use standby (ie close lid when done) instead of shutting it down when done for the day. (Some of us older folks have an ingrained habit of shutdown )

2) USB C to HDMI - while you don’t need one, 4k60 cables are just about 1200-1500. If you do get one, make sure you check the specs

Yes first day after using little at night, I closed lid and in morning after 12 hours, it had only lost 3% battery. The again closed and opened at night so another 12 hours or so and it had lost 2% battery. Then yesterday night I shut down fully.
Why are you saying it is better to keep on standby ?
 
Yes first day after using little at night, I closed lid and in morning after 12 hours, it had only lost 3% battery. The again closed and opened at night so another 12 hours or so and it had lost 2% battery. Then yesterday night I shut down fully.
Why are you saying it is better to keep on standby ?
That fragrance of a new Apple device. Man, I envy you. Enjoy the beast! Hope it serves you well for years to come.
 
Yes first day after using little at night, I closed lid and in morning after 12 hours, it had only lost 3% battery. The again closed and opened at night so another 12 hours or so and it had lost 2% battery. Then yesterday night I shut down fully.
Why are you saying it is better to keep on standby ?
Always - unless you are not going to use it for a couple of weeks or so
I have gone months without a reboot

This one is still un-rebooted after initial boot and update to 11.1

Reason is two-fold:
The first (obviously) being convenience - there isn't anything to gain by shutting down and a lot more convenient to have the machine ready to use instantly when needed

The second is that unix based systems run maintenance scripts in the background - which can only work if system is in standby
so keeping it suspended rather than shutdown will keep the performance good

Edit: Coming to think of it, if the Intel ones were supposed to be kept on standby... So all the more reason to keep this oversized iPad in standby as one never shuts down a phone or iPad anyway
 
Last edited:
Always - unless you are not going to use it for a couple of weeks or so
I have gone months without a reboot

This one is still un-rebooted after initial boot and update to 11.1

Reason is two-fold:
The first (obviously) being convenience - there isn't anything to gain by shutting down and a lot more convenient to have the machine ready to use instantly when needed

The second is that unix based systems run maintenance scripts in the background - which can only work if system is in standby
so keeping it suspended rather than shutdown will keep the performance good

Edit: Coming to think of it, if the Intel ones were supposed to be kept on standby... So all the more reason to keep this oversized iPad in standby as one never shuts down a phone or iPad anyway
I won't agree with always keeping the Mac on sleep mode and never shutdown for months.

1. If the area you reside in has too much humidity then there is a good chance of damage to the motherboard or any of the parts due to constant current. For that reason if you are traveling in humid conditions then always shutdown first, this is coming from actual experience and knowledge of this happening and gettings tips from Apple engineer who changed my board.

2. Even if the above is not true, atleast shutdown/restart it once a month which will help maintain healthy ssd life as I read in some forum that it's a good practice to do that. It's like detoxification of ssd and other components.

Thanks [emoji106]
 
I won't agree with always keeping the Mac on sleep mode and never shutdown for months.

1. If the area you reside in has too much humidity then there is a good chance of damage to the motherboard or any of the parts due to constant current. For that reason if you are traveling in humid conditions then always shutdown first, this is coming from actual experience and knowledge of this happening and gettings tips from Apple engineer who changed my board.

2. Even if the above is not true, atleast shutdown/restart it once a month which will help maintain healthy ssd life as I read in some forum that it's a good practice to do that. It's like detoxification of ssd and other components.

Thanks [emoji106]
Been doing that for 14 years now so has worked for me at least
Since I do carry my laptop on long trips so I cannot really think of a time when I have left it in shutdown intentionally..

Reboots also only after OS upgrades or the occasional glitch.

Regarding the hypothesis on constant current flow, I will have to disagree.
If lets say the hypothesis of condensation on the board causing catastrophic failure in normal use is true, it will have a greater likelihood of harming the board during the higher power/ current draw of a startup then on standby/resume.

Of course, if you are travelling in wet conditions and expect water to possibly get into the laptop then you would want to turn it off till you can dry it up ... But that is not a normal usage scenario
 
Last edited:
I earlier told I had issues with the USB C dongle and using TV to mirror display. Seems it was user (me) error.
By default, it was like MacBook extended the desktop to secondary display. Cursor movements were only seen on MacBook and not on TV screen. Then from top right control center, I selected screen mirroring and selected the tv and now display was mirror and started a YouTube video but then audio won’t come from TV. So then did that setting too and audio also came from TV. SO yes the Dongle works perfectly well.
 
Could you tell us what is the RAM used after a fresh restart? Basically trying to understand how much RAM is consumed by OS and and how much is available for the end user.

when you say during swap usage, the performance is reduced, did you notice any kind of lag or stutter?
No 90% of the time the performance decrease is not noticeable. Only a couple of times there was a significant drop in performance although i'm not sure what caused it. might be some app related bug? I'm betting it on the lack of ram though. I restarted and everything was back to normal. 8gb would do perfectly fine for a year or 2 even for heavy usage but beyond that I'm not sure. It's all personal preference. like @superczar mentioned, 8gb on a windows gaming machine was much worse than this when I had to use it for a month.

It's finally here. No pics for now sorry but got my M1 Air 2 days back. Due to being work days, haven't been able to get much time to play around and weekend is busy. But damn this thing is super fast. I have no way to compare to any other macbook or so but it flies.
Using MacOS for first time, fluid, gestures are awesome, still learning. Have to Google how to do many things. Me and wife will be watching few getting started youtube videos, especially ones targeted over windows users coming to Mac. If anyone has recommendations on some great youtube tutorials, it would be very much appreciated.

I am literally baby sitting the macbook, not letting kids touch it and such. Have installed Microsoft office 365 and because I am a "student" [emoji6] I got free subscription too (to clarify, not because I got student discount but I have a not real .edu Email id).

There is so much to discover so will take time and want to make sure my wife becomes expert in it as she needs laptop to make notes for my kid.

Couple of hiccups I saw are, for some reason, mail app was stuck and won't quit and "Quit Mail" was greyed out. So had to use the force close method.
Second, I have a usb c dongle and it's USB A ports etc work fine but when connected to HDMI to TV, the display was not proper and also nothing would move on screen. Not sure if dongle is faulty. Will try in another tv and cable. I am not considering buying anything new or apple original as my need of connecting to TV or monitor isn't there yet.
Congo! :D I guaranteed you you'll love it. this thing is really awesome. no amount of grams or kilograms would ever give you even 50% of this experience.;)

Reboots also only after OS upgrades or the occasional glitch.
I like to reboot once in like 2-3 weeks to make sure to get rid of any possible glitches.
 
I earlier told I had issues with the USB C dongle and using TV to mirror display. Seems it was user (me) error.
By default, it was like MacBook extended the desktop to secondary display. Cursor movements were only seen on MacBook and not on TV screen. Then from top right control center, I selected screen mirroring and selected the tv and now display was mirror and started a YouTube video but then audio won’t come from TV. So then did that setting too and audio also came from TV. SO yes the Dongle works perfectly well.
LoL
It will be limited to 4k30 though unless you use A2119 or a dedicated cable...
Not an issue with 1080p though

also, generally better to use extended display (for most use cases) rather than mirroring because your external and internal display will be running at their respective native resolution with extended vs a single resolution (either TV or internal) getting used on both if mirroring.
——————————————————-

While on the topic, i think this anecdote is worth sharing.
I have always maintained two (or more) separate systems - A desktop for when I have to do any serious work and a laptop for casual usage

Not that I do anything very computing intensive like running encodes or even playing AAA games yet somehow this is how it has always been for me - probably given the improved productivity with a large monitor and a discrete Mouse/KB/ ethernet/ peripherals etc

So am glad to report that for the first time in 2.5 decades, I no longer have a desktop
Sold it off after I realized that this tiny machine is comfortably faster than my erstwhile decent desktop rig

Icing on the cake :
- A single wire connection is all it takes to convert this to a full blown desktop setup (4k monitor, gbe ethernet, headset, ext mic, camera, SD reader etc)
- The internal monitor adds a very welcome extended workspace for things like chat windows and calls
- A single mouse click adds a third (and very usable) wireless display - first tested it as a gimmick but soon realized it which makes for an interesting (and effective) way of working for certain usage scenarios
 
Well I would rarely use extended display. Also I don't even know yet how to use the extended display so need to learn.
There is nothing to learn. Drag your mouse to the edge of laptop screen and drag further and it will be on the second screen (and vice versa)

Next grab any window and drag it to screen 2 (or vice versa)

I will try add a video later today

Edit: depending on whether your laptop is kept to left /right of external screen, you may need to click on display arrangement tab to have it match your actual physical placement

Edit: Here you go :)
 
Last edited:
Lol. That is how it works in Windows also.
Not with a wireless display AFAIK..
There may be roundabout ways to achieve it but it is neither as seamless nor anywhere as lag free..

What sorcery is this?
Lol.. :)
The Mac is connected to a thunderbolt hub through 1 cable that powers the laptop and drives the external (4k60) monitor and connected peripherals/Ethernet

The third extended display is an iPad ..
If there's an iPad on the same network , os X will offer it as a wireless external display selectable from the taskbar
 
Not with a wireless display AFAIK..
There may be roundabout ways to achieve it but it is neither as seamless nor anywhere as lag free..


Lol.. :)
The Mac is connected to a thunderbolt hub through 1 cable that powers the laptop and drives the external (4k60) monitor and connected peripherals/Ethernet

The third extended display is an iPad ..
If there's an iPad on the same network , os X will offer it as a wireless external display selectable from the taskbar

I tried to do sidecar yesterday but it told me I need 2FA enabled on my apple id. So I will do that once I enable 2FA.
 
1610865980405.png

1610866010936.png

From Aptronix website. Now is a good time to grab these devices.
 
Back
Top