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
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.

Same. I've had mine now for nearly 3 weeks and I'm so impressed with it. The portability, the speed, the lack of internal noise, the battery and the fact it doesn't burn my legs like my old Asus gaming laptop did. I love the keyboard, the trackpad and the monitor. Well recommended for anyone considering one!
 
Does anyone find the sharp facing edge of the keyboard on the Pro makes it uncomfortable to use when typing on a flat surface (e.g. a table, NOT when on your lap)? Pretty much all I do is type, so I want it to be a nice experience. I have a 2011 Pro in my office (used for a single piece of software once per month) and the edge on that is too sharp, though it is of course far chunkier than the new ones. I know the Air is a little bit different, but I would prefer the Pro for its brighter screen and fan. If I ever run a game of WoW or something, I don't want it throttling from 60fps to 50 after 10 mins.

I realise I sound like a tyre kicker asking lots of questions about Macs, but really I have a genuine interest in the products. I am also very indecisive :P
 
I have the MacBook Pro and I'm really liking it. Can anyone recommend a hub that will allow me to plug in a couple of USB-A devices at the same time as allowing the laptop to charge? The second TB port is connecting the laptop to a monitor. I know there are plenty such hubs on Amazon, but I don't know if they're all much of a muchness. Ideally something that doesn't cost a hundred quid.

Also, are most people using wireless keyboards and mice when at a desk? I have my eyes on the MX Keys and MX Master 3, but a couple of hundred quid is a lot of money to pay for a tidy desk, especially when I already have decent wired peripherals.
 
Can anyone recommend a hub that will allow me to plug in a couple of USB-A devices at the same time as allowing the laptop to charge?

I have a Dell D6000 dock I attach to my air. This is great because it charges the machine, has a bunch of USB-A, one USB-C and audio ports, *and* if you install the displaylink driver it lets you attach more screens. I use it with my air in clamshell mode, one screen attached direct to one port, the dock hanging off the other port with the other screen and accessories attached.

It's pricey, but well worth it IMHO.
 
Also, are most people using wireless keyboards and mice when at a desk?

That's a yes, I have a Drevo Calibur keyboard (bluetooth, mechanical) that I made a custom MacOS keymap for, and a Logitech G703 (custom dongle).

Kinda wish I'd gone for a bluetooth mouse as moving the dongle when I want to go back to using my gaming machine at the same desk is a pain.
 
Does anyone find the sharp facing edge of the keyboard on the Pro makes it uncomfortable to use when typing on a flat surface (e.g. a table, NOT when on your lap)? Pretty much all I do is type, so I want it to be a nice experience. I have a 2011 Pro in my office (used for a single piece of software once per month) and the edge on that is too sharp, though it is of course far chunkier than the new ones. I know the Air is a little bit different, but I would prefer the Pro for its brighter screen and fan. If I ever run a game of WoW or something, I don't want it throttling from 60fps to 50 after 10 mins.

I realise I sound like a tyre kicker asking lots of questions about Macs, but really I have a genuine interest in the products. I am also very indecisive :p

In response to the WoW question, I'd assume the new M1 would be even better than my 2020 4TB Pro. Can't remember any of the settings sadly but I think they were about mid for the sliders and at a decent res. I found it very rarely running at below 60FPS, usually only in the capitals and near auction houses if the server was very populated. Dungeons and raids were never an issue and the fans rarely ramped right up for it. Although with playing on the smaller screen, I just decided to sacrifice stuff like AA in pursuit of silence. I think unless you're doing properly intensive workloads, file conversion, video editing, exporting, etc., you'd never really get the fans running. That's 10th gen Intel, not the new M1. Those rarely get hot it seems!!
 
In response to the WoW question, I'd assume the new M1 would be even better than my 2020 4TB Pro. Can't remember any of the settings sadly but I think they were about mid for the sliders and at a decent res. I found it very rarely running at below 60FPS, usually only in the capitals and near auction houses if the server was very populated. Dungeons and raids were never an issue and the fans rarely ramped right up for it. Although with playing on the smaller screen, I just decided to sacrifice stuff like AA in pursuit of silence. I think unless you're doing properly intensive workloads, file conversion, video editing, exporting, etc., you'd never really get the fans running. That's 10th gen Intel, not the new M1. Those rarely get hot it seems!!

Thanks for the response - I've got the Pro and it's an amazing piece of kit (albeit lacking in ports), and there's no sign of the sharp edge hurting my wrists (yet). WoW runs at 3440x1440 at 55-ish fps on detail 6 and 65-ish at detail 5 (from limited testing). If the fans have kicked in yet, I haven't heard them.
 
Heres another thing I love about the M1...the speed of these thunderbolt ports. I've only ever used USB for transferring data previously and it always felt slow. This seems to chew through it! Could just be because Ive only ever used slower computers though.
 
Heres another thing I love about the M1...the speed of these thunderbolt ports. I've only ever used USB for transferring data previously and it always felt slow. This seems to chew through it! Could just be because Ive only ever used slower computers though.
Out of interest have you used an Intel Mac or any other computer with USB-c or is your comparison against regular USB-a? The ports on the M1 Mac are the same standard as the Intel Macs however there is a difference in the controller. Furthermore, I’ve read that the M1 MacBooks are actually slower than the Intel counterparts due to the controller board on the M1 chip.
 
I noticed that my MBP tears through any transfer to my external storage drives for ~100% of any transfer, whether a single large file or lots of small ones. Using the same enclosure via USB3.0 is noticeably slower.
 
Out of interest have you used an Intel Mac or any other computer with USB-c or is your comparison against regular USB-a? The ports on the M1 Mac are the same standard as the Intel Macs however there is a difference in the controller. Furthermore, I’ve read that the M1 MacBooks are actually slower than the Intel counterparts due to the controller board on the M1 chip.

No, I haven't used any other Mac, Intel or otherwise. I was comparing it against my older Asus TUF504 gaming laptop which I think, has USB3 or 2.0. I'm going to do some reading on it later this evening when I get a chance because I'm keen to see how the official figures compare.
 
I have an 8/256 Pro but find myself fixated on the memory pressure gauge which occasionally jumps into yellow when I have a scattering of programs open - Word, OneNote, Excel, Apple News, Safari (with a few tabs). Nothing hugely out of the ordinary. I've been stung before on Apple products that are still supported but which don't function properly because they weren't properly specced at the outset (the 16gb iPhone 6s with less than 1Gb available for apps after the OS+Other takes everything else, an Apple Watch 3 that wouldn't update to Watch OS 7 because it didn't have enough space without doing a full wipe and reset). Are the 8gb/256 M1 models likely to suffer the same fate in 2-3 years?

I have my eye on a 16/256 Air in the refurb store.
 
If you can afford 16GB I think it makes much more sense to go with that, regardless of current usage and current MacOS memory management, the standard seems to have largely shifted to 16GB being the norm in my mind.
 
If you can afford 16GB I think it makes much more sense to go with that, regardless of current usage and current MacOS memory management, the standard seems to have largely shifted to 16GB being the norm in my mind.

Those were my thoughts. I might feel bad going to a smaller battery, but I'm mostly tethered to my desk, and I don't use the Touch Bar at all.
 
I'm using 8GB and it seems fine so far, that's with Lightroom, browsing, twitch, few remote sessions (ssh, rdp etc), Teams, Slack, Outlook, Word etc.
 
I'm using 8GB and it seems fine so far, that's with Lightroom, browsing, twitch, few remote sessions (ssh, rdp etc), Teams, Slack, Outlook, Word etc.

I definitely haven't seen a spinning beach ball yet, but the fact that I'm seeing pressure on the memory effectively from day 1, makes me worry that a couple of OS updates later, along with some changes to MS Office or what-have-you and it'll be spinning balls all the time. I should probably stop thinking about it :p

Either way, the 8gb Pro is going back, to be replaced by a 16/512 Air for £80 more than the £1152 I paid for the Pro. And thinking about the Touch Bar again, it's harmless enough but a total gimmick. I think I'd prefer the physical buttons.
 
I have a 2017 MBP that i am considering upgrading to a M1 Mac.

Don't know what to do tbh. What would be more important 16GB of RAM or the extra GPU core available? I ideally would like a pro but just don't think it is worth the money for the same kit, i don't use the touchbar often enough to pay that amount for it.
 
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