Apple M1: Its not about performance
If you praise the performance of Apple’s new chip you might be missing the point. Here’s what I think makes the M1 really unbeatable.
A little bit of time has passed since Apple unveiled their new lineup of products featuring the very first Apple Mac CPU, the M1. Since that time, a lot has been written. Really a lot.
To say the truth, it was too much.
How fast does it feel?
Which other CPU monster does it crush?
How fast can you render?
I won’t tell you. Because to some degree, I do not care.
So why did I get one, then ?
I spend my day coding Craft CMS websites, and sometimes, I had to do that job on my MacBook Pro dating back from 2016. It was a nice machine back then, I always felt having a better machine because of its touchbar that never really proved to increase usability. But hey, thats a different story.
The key issue was that it became slow and slower. We all know the CPU does not decrease in performance over time, but the newer the OS got, and the more loops and dings you install, the less power is left available to the user. So… I said bye-bye.
When I moved to the M1 MacBook Pro I now have, a few things immediately became noticeable.
Whats so cool about my little M1 MacBook Pro besides its performance is what I get at the end of the day. What I get in real world.
I got a much better keyboard — or at least one less error prone. I also got less USB-C ports, which proved to be something I could live with. I lso liked the fact that I ended up with a faster machine because the M1 of course has more performance than the elderish Intel CPU despite of what I mentioned above saying I do not care.
1. Readyness
When I open the lid to use the MacBook, the display is turned on before I actually have moved it up enough to see it. No waiting for the light go on. This is a huge benefit to me as it lowers the bar of accessibility. Quickly check something with Google? Open, Touch ID, search, read, close. Not a single annoying waiting time here.
2. Battery
This is the point I make with this article. The battery lasts forever. I started to forget about charging, like you do with an iPad. You just use it for more than a day, and when you actually have to charge it, you feel astonished you did’t have to charge it before making you forget about it completely. I don’t think I have to explain what level of ease of use this adds to the machine.
Three hours of coding in the night? Just do it, don’t charge the computer neither before nor after your session. How cool is that?
3. Heat
What heat? There is no heat. In the next summer, I will put the lap-top on my laps without burning them. Can you? Quite certainly you can feel the MacBook Pro getting warm when you start editing 4K videos as well as you will see the battery drain. But the point is that the machine is so efficient, it is putting literally every other portable computer to shame.
4. Performance
Here we go. You knew it, didn't you? He’s going to pick up the subject on performance despite he said he would’t.
Sorry for that. Just a quickie from the perspective of a web dev:
Using Docker for Mac finally is no more a pain in the a..shes. I have not come across any Intel i7 based Mac that would run a Docker image with acceptable speed. That is, unless you got used to it anyway. Since I came over from Laravel Homestead, I never was in the mood for a slow web development environment.
Now on my little M1 machine, where Homestead does no longer run, working with Docker is just as fast as Homestead was. Even though macOS keeps on telling me Docker is a power drain, the battery lasts for hours that I never counted yet.
Got a Conclusion ?
The overall package you get with an M1 equipped Mac is what thrills me. Everything feels smooth, and well-thought. Of course once you get to deliver such a processor — or system-on-a-chip as it should be called – it seems easy to make a compelling product out of it, yet it takes a little more than just putting it inside a box and hook it up with a battery.
Yet again, you get a bargain by buying an Apple MacBook Pro. Not because its the cheapest unit out there but because its cheap somewhere else: It lets you do your work. Peacefully, silently, no annoyances. It keeps you relaxed and focused. This pays out too, right?
Update: Due to several concerns about clickbaiting with the initial title of my article and to avoid confusion, I changed it to properly reflect the message of my text (2022/02/08)
