jdb8167

Xed said:

wizard69 said:

Here are a few comments after a couple of weeks with an M1 based MBA:

1.   I bought the machine due to the idea that it would be a better machine than an iPad for the types of usages that I have in mind for an iPad.   Basically an iPad with a keyboard nad an OS that doesn't suck.   In this regard the MBA has been a huge success.

2.   In many ways I'm not really surprised at performance, if people have taken a serious look at iPad they would have realized that performance would be very good on an ARM based Mac.   So all of the noise about performance seems to be a bit artificial to me, we are getting pretty much what one would expect knowing what iPads have been doing.

3.   The big surprise is how well Rossetta 2 works.    So far that is pretty satisfying as not everything is native yet.

4.   Not everything is native but on the other hand we are getting native apps pretty quickly and they are generally pretty impressive.

5.   Absolutely silence operation.  

As to what I'm expecting from a refactored MBA in 2021:

1.   They will get rid of the heat spreader and mount the processor directly to the case so that it functions as a heat sink.   This might require redefining what is the bottom of the case is vs the top but a case mounted processor will sink heat to atmosphere quicker and more efficiently.   This will lead to better performance in a fanless machine.

2.   I don't expect a lot more ARM cores, maybe two if they can get below 5nm but rather improvements to the GPU.   An improved GPU would likely serve the needs of a greater range of MBA users than a lot more ARM cores.   If there is a place where M1 under delivers it is with respect to GPU performance (yes I know it is good but it should have been better).

3.   With the same reason as in #2 above, I'm expecting Apple to put a lot of focus on Neural Engine and other AI/ML accelerators.   Still not sure how they will proceed here, but I suspect that Apple has a lot of plans in this area including morphing Mac OS into an AI power operating system.   Just imagine ML performance advancing as fast as Apple advanced its ARM cores.

4.    Built in (optional) LTE support.   Seems like a no brainer to me, I'm not sure why iPad gets it while the MBA doesn't.

5     Wireless charging.   This would make the two port MBA far more usable.    Many of us still need ports and this is perhaps the MBA's greatest shortcoming if you want to use if for technical work.   For me I have a desktop so I don't expect to do much of that on the MBA but just maybe for field work it could pass if charging had a separate avenue.   On the flips side I don't see the battery going dead out in the field during a normal work day.   Maybe more user experience is needed here.

I otherwise don't see a need to upgrade the MBA physically.    The form factor is great, I don't use the web cam and the new keyboard is far better than the old crap from a couple of years ago.    More performance is always great and better heat sinking through the case would do much for that.   So any case refactoring would likely be to enable better thermals, not to enable new "design" as that does nothing for the user experience.  

In any event M1 based MBA's are game changing as they have promoted Apple to a value leader which is odd on its own.

I don't see LTE and wireless charging coming to Mac notebooks, even though I've wanted both. The extra long battery life and advanced that make connecting an iPhone to a Mac tell me that Apple has even less reason to add these features. Many years ago when I had an expensive USB dongle from Verizon to make my Mac connect over cellular I really wanted this to be built-in, but once they made tethering a built-in feature I no longer wanted that extra expense in HW or monthly contract costs.

I can see LTE/5G as soon as Apple gets their LTE/5G modem working. It will be integrated into the follow on SoC to the A14 which means it can also be included in the follow on to the M1. The word is that the reason Apple doesn't support LTE on Mac notebooks is because the licensing rules from Qualcomm which requires payments based on the total price of the device. Once Apple has their own IP, they can do WLAN without ridiculous payments to Qualcomm.

wizard69 said:

bageljoey said:

What is the word on compatibility with the Adobe Suite applications?  My son mostly uses those for his video and photo work. He has been limping along with a handed down Air.  Maybe it’s time to get a new machine. But I don’t want to go there if it’s going to introduce issues into his workflow...

As for native software I've been using Mac Ports and it literally gets better everyday.   So open source is coming along at a good rate.    

I'm an inexperienced MacPorts user but I've had pretty good luck so far. But I'm wondering if there is some way to find out what has been updated on MacPorts? I really need to read the documentation. 

No one is ever in my office but me and I would still be embarrassed to use that keyboard. No thanks.

xszuflax said:

Hello,

I'm facing a pretty annoying issue with the external monitor LG 34" 5K LG 34WK95U. At first, I could not get it to run 5K at all it was stuck at some wired 3xxx x 1440. What solved the issue was to downgrade the DP protocol from 1.4 to 1.2 and now it works with 5120x2160 but only when it wakes up ... I like to work in closed-display mode. I use BookArc form 12South. Every time I wake up my MacBook Pro from sleep by clicking the mouse or keyboard monitor does not wake up. Something happens because I can see the monitor backlight goes on and it searches for the video source but eventually, it fails and goes back to sleep. The only thing which works is opening the lead. But even with the lead open, I can see that the MBP at first wakes up build-in display and later it attaches the external one which obviously makes all the open windows to be resized. The setup is: MPB(M1) <Thunderbolt 3 Cable> Elgato Pro Dock <Thunderbolt 3 Cable> LG 34WK95U. Any idea?

Best,

Marcin Tomków

I'm seeing very similar problems with a M1 MacBook Air. Also with an LG monitor though mine is a cheap 24" 4K. I'm probably going to download the latest developer beta of Big Sur this weekend to see if that resolves or at least helps. I do think these are software problems and not hardware so a little patience to let Apple get a couple of updates out will probably resolve these issues.

gmgravytrain said:

I would think the improved battery life alone of M1 laptops would make them game-changers.  I really enjoy the long battery life of portable devices.  Getting hours of extra battery in a laptop is fantastic.  Intel and AMD with their x86 chips are going to really struggle to get extra battery life without putting in higher capacity batteries or throttling their processors.  I sincerely hope Apple can take advantage of the M1 chip's efficiency.  Knowing Apple, they'll probably do something stupid like shaving down the height of the chassis to make it lighter at the expense of longer battery life.  Thin and light is all that Apple ever strives for.  I wonder if that's what most customers want.  I certainly don't want ultra-thin and light and would rather have longer battery life.

I've been using a M1 MacBook Air since launch day. Many days, I start out at just under 100% and use it for 10 to 12 hours without plugging it in. This is incredible. I've never had a laptop that could go more than 4 hours or so with what I do which is developing software.

So, mostly I've been downloading and building open source software*. This is more developer ops than programming but what I've been doing is actually more battery intense than programming which is a lot of typing and less building (in general). Even under fairly heavy load, the MBA doesn't get particularly warm and outside of doing a very long x265 HEVC video encode (over 2 hours) nothing seems to affect battery life. I think people that pick up a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro in the future are going to be very pleasantly surprised. 

*I have gotten Linux virtual machines running in both small hypervisor demo programs and in QEmu which is a pretty complex virtual machine with virtualized hardware. This is all Arm64 but it is still quite a good sign for future compatibility. I've also gotten HandBrake (which I downloaded and didn't have to build) and ffmpeg working (which I did have to spend time to figure out how to build.) They are incredibly fast. Faster than my 6 core/12 thread 2013 Mac Pro by at least 30%. This is with CPU based encoding, not the new built-in encoders in the M1.

Everything is coming along great for these M1 machines to be complete replacements for Intel Mac notebooks except perhaps if you really need BootCamp though Windows VMs are still waiting on Microsofts cooperation. That doesn't look promising at all. My guess is that almost anyone will be able to upgrade to an M1(+) Mac sometime in 4-6 months without much compromise.