I just looked up some benchmarks. Apparently a m1 is 2-4x faster at many tasks than my wife’s gaming desktop from 5 years ago. It’s comparable in many benchmarks to my ryzen cpu as well?
What’s the catch?
What’s the catch?
I went from a mid-2015 15" MBP to 13" M1 with 8GB. I made the impulsive purchase to get 8GB ASAP rather than wait for 16GB (which was backordered). My primary apps are DaVinci Resolve, Lightroom and Photoshop. On the 15", the fans would run on full constantly. I would have to create proxy video files to work with.
On the M1, I don't create any proxies at all and the video files I work with just play in real-time.
Main catch for me is the two USB ports and one external screen limitation. I have a hub (card readers, USB, HDMI, etc) and a 10-port USB hub coming off that (with 7 external drives connected). As soon as there is a 15/16" available that handles two external displays, I will get that as well.
I dislike the TouchBar and the lone external display, but everything else about the M1 has been excellent for me.
Honestly I feel like multi monitor setups are actually worse than single monitor. Having to bend your neck to use some of your windows left me with neck pain. Now I only use one large monitor and use the workspace switching shortcuts to move everything around so I only look forwards.
My productivity is identical and my neck feels better. I'd only say its worth it for when you really do need to see a huge amount at once like watching the feeds of 30 security cameras. Not for general work/programming.
Seems like multi monitor setups become more of a looks thing because they make people feel like they are sitting in the FBI command center rather than a generic office worker desk.
I can simply keep the specification/documentation/stack overflow alongside editor/IDE window alongside debugger. If I had to put the benefit in words, I can offload the state of my programming session all on screen, instead of in my head, taking space where more of the abstract logic and relational graph can reside, before it gets turned into code.
On the other hand, it gets way easier to get distracted because you can keep a chat window on one side, constantly getting pinged.
Outside of unreal, I usually find workspace switching to be a better workflow than alt tabbing my way to a window on a second screen
Designate one of them as the 'main' monitor, and put anything you need to work with for long periods of time on that. Add an office chair, so you can swiwel to look straight at the other(s) instead of twisting your neck. And you'll find there's no such issue.
I feel confident running the system for a while now. Seeing more software come on board. Even for the extra money, I say go. I’m a dev/product designer, most of my work is coding, product development, product management and graphical design. It does everything I need faster, no lag.