Poll: *** The official 2020 MacBook Air/13" MacBook Pro thread (it has the M1 chip and everything!) ***

What 2020 Apple Silicon notebook have you ordered?

  • MacBook Air

    Votes: 72 70.6%

  • 13" MacBook Pro

    Votes: 30 29.4%
  • Total voters
    102
Squink said:
How do the Airs hold up in outdoor use? I thinking specifically of bright sunshine, but with the screen facing away from the sun. I.e. could I do useful work on one in the garden? I know the Pros are +100 nits, but it's a bit of a gamble buying one at the moment what with the talk of refreshes.
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Mine has been fine in the garden (MacBook Air) with the sun in front of me.

With regards to the new models coming out later this year; I had the same thought as well (I've only had my MBA for a week). Yes, you could wait until later this year and then you could ask yourself the same question because at some point next year, there will be another new one on the horizon. This first version of the M1 is more than fine - it's brilliant.
 
Noticed a funny buzz on my left speaker today. Haven't heard it before but haven't listened to music through it at high volume (~50%) until today. Opened it up and it's got three little scratches and a chip out of the speaker itself!!?! I also had a small issue of the black taping coming off on the other side, so I'm visiting the Genius Bar tomorrow morning who have seen the images and will send it away for 7-14 days.. :(

2020 13" four thunderbolt model.
 
Posting this from my 16GB Air. Lovely machine so far. Few minor quibbles -
Building Golang lambdas in a dockerised x64 container works OK, so long as I only do one at a time. Parallel building, even with docker given 6 cores, makes qemu crap out.
Also got some issues using 'testcontainers' in my java builds. Docker again.

Other than these few rough edges, it's great. Also have it running two external screens just fine - My main 4k screen is plugged in directly via a thunderbolt cable. The second screen, network and other devices are attached to a Dell D6000 USB-C dock. With the displaylink drivers installed it works a treat and I could probably hang more screens off it.

It does mean that if I want to watch netflix or other protected content at a decent quality I need to unload the displaylink driver and lose the second screen, but as this is mainly for development, I can live with it. It's possible that DisplayLink and Apple will figure out a way to make this better down the line - it seems to be in their interests, really.

(Netflix will give me 720p in firefox regardless of video driver, but refuses to work at all in safari...)
 
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Since my annual bonus is rather healthy I’ve ordered the base model Air M1 from Amazon. I’m looking forward to having a play around with it.
 
Very tempted again by one of these given the discounts at the moment, can get a base Air for £870, or the 512 model for £1070.

Feels hard to justify going straight to Apple to get the RAM upgrade on the 512 model which ends up costing £1360 in total, £300 for that RAM :/
 
Ev0 said:
Very tempted again by one of these given the discounts at the moment, can get a base Air for £870, or the 512 model for £1070.
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Where are you seeing the base Air at £870 out of interest and is it a refurb or an education-only price?
 
Mine has arrived, just setting it up. The keyboard is a massive improvement over my 2018 15” Pro.

IMG-3166.jpg
 
First impressions - wow.

My work MacBook Pro is an i7 6 core with 32GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD, so it's all I have to compare it to really, plus a brief stint with an i7 6 core Mac Mini. I've just got around to installing iStat Menu's on the M1 Air just to see if it's busy doing much at all as it's not even what I'd call warm. Looking at CPU and network usage (TM Backup) it's quite busy and it's cooler to touch than my Pro. Also, it's silent (as expected without fans!) but even after doing a software update and installing a load of stuff it's not even that warm. My work Pro on the other hand will soon get to 95 degrees plus on the CPU and if I'm doing anything intensive it'll be hot to touch and the fans would be quite audible. I'm really impressed so far.
 
ChrisD. said:
Also, it's silent (as expected without fans!) but even after doing a software update and installing a load of stuff it's not even that warm.
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Great isn't it?
I've started using mine (in clamshell mode) as my daily driver instead of switching on the more powerful machine under the desk, just because of how nice it is to use a computer in complete silence. Other than some docker-related dev tasks, it does everything I need most of the time and it just sits there, quietly.
 
Jimmy Weirdarms said:
Great isn't it?
I've started using mine (in clamshell mode) as my daily driver instead of switching on the more powerful machine under the desk, just because of how nice it is to use a computer in complete silence. Other than some docker-related dev tasks, it does everything I need most of the time and it just sits there, quietly.
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Very, very cool - literally! All I have to do is load up a Twitch stream on my Pro and the fans will ramp up.

One thing that impresses me is the speed it switches display when you connect an external one and then go into Clamshell.
 
A cool, fast, silent laptop will win over so many people.

Apple should just give everyone out there an M1 laptop to use for a couple of days... as they return them back to the shop there is a big sign above the door saying ‘see you when you come back to buy one’.

:p
 
My machine that has gone for repair is still sat at the store. Was dropped off Saturday morning at 10am with "the repairs are taking longer than expected right now, so could be 10-14 days from now." :rolleyes:
 
The more I use the M1 Air the more impressed I am. It's insanely fast, silent and the battery life is ridiculous. It's one of the best tech purchases I've made for a long time.
 
I have searched for an answer on this without luck. Given the limited ports on the MacBooks, many people will require a USB-C-to-whatever dongle for external peripherals. If you plug in such a dongle in the office to use an external keyboard/mouse etc, is it safe to just yoink it from the MacBook's USB port when you want to use the laptop in another room, or is there an extended procedure for safe extraction? And is there the same faff (or not) when plugging the dongle back in?
 
Squink said:
I have searched for an answer on this without luck. Given the limited ports on the MacBooks, many people will require a USB-C-to-whatever dongle for external peripherals. If you plug in such a dongle in the office to use an external keyboard/mouse etc, is it safe to just yoink it from the MacBook's USB port when you want to use the laptop in another room, or is there an extended procedure for safe extraction? And is there the same faff (or not) when plugging the dongle back in?
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AFAIK not for peripherals such as monitor, keyboard etc but for external storage then yes you need to unmount prior to disconnecting.
 
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