> "up to 1.8x faster when compared to the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro"
I insist my 2020 Macbook M1 was the best purchase I ever made
I insist my 2020 Macbook M1 was the best purchase I ever made
I've never kept any laptop as long as I've kept the M1. I was more or less upgrading yearly in the past because the speed increases (both in the G4 and then Intel generations) were so significant. This M1 has exceeded my expectations in every category, it's faster quieter and cooler than any laptop i've ever owned.
I've had this laptop since release in 2020 and I have nearly 0 complaints with it.
I wouldn't upgrade except the increase in memory is great, I don't want to have to shut down apps to be able to load some huge LLMs, and, I ding'ed the top case a few months ago and now there's a shadow on the screen in that spot in some lighting conditions which is very annoying.
I hope (and expect) the M4 to last just as long as my M1 did.
My 2015 MBP would like to have a word.
It’s the only laptop purchase I’ve made. I still use it to this day, though not as regularly.
I will likely get a new MBP one of these days.
I also have a M1 from work that is absolutely wonderful, but I think it's time for me to upgrade the 2015 with one of these new M4s.
The longevity of Macbooks is insanely good.
Longevity is not only a thing of MBPs. OTOH, IIRC, some 2017-2019 MBPs (before the Mx switch) were terrible for longevity, given their problematic keyboard.
Last one with upgrade capabilities, now it has two fast SSDs and maximum Ram. I changed the battery once.
Only shame is that it doesn’t get major MacOS upgrades anymore.
Still good enough to browse the web, do office productivity and web development.
12 years of good use, I am not sure I can get so much value anywhere now
Thanks for reminding me that everything is possible, I may try Opencore to keep it even longer !
Sold mine last year for $100 to some dude who claimed to have some software that only runs on that specific laptop. I didn't question it.
I think this M-series macbook airs are a worthy successor to the 2012 MBP. I fully intend to use this laptop for at least the same amount of time, ideally more. The lack of replaceable battery will probably be the eventual killer, which is a shame.
Rebuilding a bunch of Docker images on an older intel mac is quite the slow experience if you're doing it multiple times per day.
Anything you can buy online ships with all required screw drivers and dozen of Youtube videos or ifixit will give you step by step instructions.
10-15 minutes and you'll have the old battery replaced all by yourself.
It's that simple.
The 2012 MBP 15" Retina was probably the only machine I bought where the performance actually got better over the years, as the OS got more optimized for it (the early OS revisions had very slow graphics drivers dealing with the retina display)
The M1 Pro on the other hand, that was a true upgrade. Just a completely different experience to any Apple Intel laptop.
It's been too long, I guess I had blocked out just just how terrible those Intel MacBooks were.
For it's time, the 2015 model was a fantastic package: reliable and robust in form and function.
Would've kept going on it had Apple silicon and 14 inch not come around.
Barring super niche LLM use cases, I don't see why one would need to upgrade.
When you upgrade, prepare to be astonished.
The performance improvement is difficult to convey. It's akin to traveling by horse and buggy. And then hopping into a modern jetliner, flying first class.
It's not just speed. Display quality, build quality, sound quality, keyboard quality, trackpad, ports, etc., have all improved considerably.
A family 2018 Macbook Air got a second life with a battery replacement. Cheap kit from Amazon, screwdrivers included, extremely easy to do. Still in use, no problems.
When I migrated all my laptops to SSDs (lenovos at the time, so it was drop-dead simple), I thought to myself, "this is a once-in-a-generation feeling". I didn't think I would ever be impressed by a laptop's speed ever again. It was nice to be wrong.
Traded it for an M1 Air in 2021 and was astonished at how much faster it was. It even blew away my 2019 16" from work.
You're going to be even more blown away!
I recently replaced it with a used MBA M1, 16GB, 2TB.
It's insane how much faster it is, how long the battery lasts and how cool and silent it is. Completely different worlds.
It has gotten significantly slower the last 2 years, but the more obvious issue is the sound, inability to virtual background, and now lack of software updates.
But if you had told me I'd need to replace it in 2022 I wouldn't believe you
I was considering upgrading to an M3 up until about a month ago when Apple replaced my battery, keyboard, top case, and trackpad completely for free. An upgrade would be nice as it no longer supports the latest MacOS, but at this point, I may just load Ubuntu on the thing and keep using it for another few years. What a machine.
Can't get the latest macOS on it though, but otherwise it still works perfectly well.
Kinda considering upgrading it to a used M1/M2 one at some point.
I have either assembled my own desktop computers or purchased ex corporate Lenovo over the years with a mix of Windows (for gaming obviously) and Linux and only recently (4 years ago) been given a MBP by work as they (IT) cannot manage Linux machines like they do with MacOS and Windows.
I have moved from an intel i5 MBP to a M3 Pro (?) and it makes me want to throw away my dependable ThinkPad/Fedora machine I still uses for personal projects.
Could you get more money by selling it? Sure. But it's hard to be the convenience. They ship you a box. You seal up the old device and drop it off at UPS.
I also build my desktop computers with a mix of Windows and Linux. But those are upgraded over the years, not regularly.
My laptop is my work life and my personal life.
I spend easily 100 hours a week using it not-as-balanced-as-it-should-be between the two.
I don't buy them because I need something new, I buy them because in the G4/Intel era, the iterations were massive and even a 20 or 30% increase in speed (which could be memory, CPU, disk -- they all make things faster) results in me being more productive. It's worth it for me to upgrade immediately when apple releases something new, as long as I have issues with my current device and the upgrade is enough of a delta.
M1 -> M2 wasn't much of a delta and my M1 was fine. M1 -> M3 was a decent delta, but, my M1 was still fine. M1 -> M4 is a huge delta (almost double) and my screen is dented to where it's annoying to sit outside and use the laptop (bright sun makes the defect worse), so, I'm upgrading. If I hadn't dented the screen the choice would be /a lot/ harder.
I love ThinkPads too. Really can take a beating and keep on going. The post-IBM era ones are even better in some regards too. I keep one around running Debian for Linux-emergencies.
Me too. Only one complaint. After I accidentally spilled a cup of water into it on an airplane, it didn't work.
(However AppleCare fixed it for $300 and I had a very recent backup. :) )
What’s more annoying is that I’d jus to get a new one and recycle this one, but the SSD is soldered on. Good on you for having a backup.
Do not own a Mac unless you bought it used or have AppleCare.
And yeah, this incident reminded me of why it's important to back up as close to daily as you can, or even more often during periods when you're doing important work and want to be sure you have the intermediate steps.
Never had AppleCare or any other extended warranty program.
Did just fine up to now.
1) a slight overall savings, though I'm not sure about that. 2) a lack of stress when something breaks. Even if there isn't an overall savings, for me it's been worth it because of that.
Certainly, my recent Mac repair would have cost $1500 and I only paid $300, and I think I've had the machine for about 3 years, so there's a savings there but considerably less recent stress. That's similar to the experience I've had all along, although this recent expense would have probably been my most-expensive repair ever.
As I've noted in a sibling comment, I'll probably stop purchasing mobile Macs until the repair story on Macbooks is improved -- the risk for accidents and repairs is simply much higher on portable machines. That's only going to happen through third-party repair (which I think would simultaneously lead Apple to lower their first-party repair costs, too).
I’ve underwritten my own Mac ownership since the very first Intel MacBook Pro and just like you I’ve been just fine.
Apple is putting raw NAND chips on the board (and yes soldering them) and the controller for the SSD is part of the M-series chip. Yes, apple could use NVMe here if you ignore the physical constraints and ignore fact that it wouldn't be quite as fast and ignore the fact that it would increase their BOM cost.
I'm not saying Apple is definitively correct here, but, it's good to have choice and Apple is the only company with this kind of deeply integrated design. If you want a fully modular laptop, go buy a framework (they are great too!) and if you want something semi-modular, go buy a ThinkPad (also great!).
Day to day I don't mind but when needs change or something breaks it's unfortunate to have to replace the whole machine to fix it.
I don't truly mind that they solder on the SSD, embed the controller into the processor -- you're right that it's great we have choice here. I mind the exuberant repair cost _on top of_ Apple's war on third party repair. Apple is the one preventing me to have choice here, I have to do the repair through them, or wait until schematics are smuggled out of China and used/broken logic boards are available so that the repair costs what it should: $300 to replace 2 chips on my logic board (still mostly labor, but totally a fair price).
I love Apple for their privacy focus and will continue to support them because I need to do Mac and iOS development, but I will likely stop buying mobile workstations from them for this reason, the risk of repair is simply much higher and not worth this situation.
I actually use my laptop on my lap commonly and I think the i9 was going to sterilize me.
Now on M2 MBP and will probably be using it for a very long time.
What different lives we live. This first M1 was in November 2020. Not even four years old. I’ve never had a [personal] computer for _less_ time than that. (Work, yes, due to changing jobs or company-dictated changes/upgrades)
That’s a feature, not a bug, for some. When I upgraded to an M series chip MacBook, I had to turn up the heat because I no longer had my mini space heater.
Other example - I'm by no means rich, but I have a $300 mechanical keyboard - it doesn't make me type faster and it doesn't have additional functionality to a regular $30 Logitech one - but typing on it feels so nice and I spend so much of my life doing it, that to me it's completely justified and needed to have this one then.
I still have a running Thinkpad R60 from 2007, a running Thinkpad T510 from 2012, and a modified running Thinkpad X61 (which I re-built as an X62 using the kit from 51nb in 2017 with a i7-5600U processor, 32 GB of RAM and a new display) in regular use. The latter required new batteries every 2 years, but was my main machine until 2 weeks ago when I replaced it with a ThinkCentre. During their time as my main machine, each of these laptops was actively used around 100 hours per week, and was often running for weeks without shutdown or reboot. The only thing that every broke was the display of the R60 which started to show several green vertical bars after 6 years, but replacement was easy.
- More RAM, primarily for local LLM usage through Ollama (a bit more overhead for bigger models would be nice)
- A bit niche, but I often run multiple external displays. DisplayLink works fine for this, but I also use live captions heavily and Apple's live captions don't work when any form of screen sharing/recording is enabled... which is how Displaylink works. :(
Not quite sold yet, but definitely thinking about it.
I'm definitely still happy with it, but job offers upgrade to M4 so... why not?
M1 series machines are going to be fine for years to come.
Actually wasn't M1 itself an evolution / upscale of their A series CPUS that by now they've been working on since... before 2010, the iPhone 4 was the first one with their own CPU, although the design was from Samsung + Intrinsity, it was only the A6 that they claimed was custom designed by Apple.
Bought a reasonably well-specced Intel Air for $1700ish. The M1s came out a few months later. I briefly thought about the implication of taking a hit on my "investment", figured I might as well cry once rather than suffer endlessly. Sold my $1700 Intel Air for $1200ish on craigslist (if I recall correctly), picked up an M1 Air for about that same $1200 pricepoint, and I'm typing this on that machine now.
That money was lost as soon as I made the wrong decision, I'm glad I just recognized the loss up front rather than stewing about it.
That said...scummy move by Apple. They tend to be a little more thoughtful in their refresh schedule, so I was caught off guard.
This is the best machine I have ever owned. It is so completely perfect in every way. I can't imagine replacing it for many many years.
Best way I've discovered to find those sorts of deals is to use Slickdeals and set up alerts.
The only thing to keep in mind, is that the M1 was the first CPU in the transition from Intel CPUs (+ AMD GPUs) to Apple Silicon. The M1 was still missing a bunch of things from earlier CPUs, which Apple over time added via the M1 Pro and other CPUs. Especially the graphics part was sufficient for a small laptop, but not for much beyond. Better GPUs and media engines were developed later. Today, the M3 in a Macbook Air or the M4 in the Macbook Pro have all of that.
For me the biggest surprise was how well the M1 Macbook Air actually worked. Apple did an outstanding job in the software & hardware transition.
I don't understand how people are enamored with those things, sure it's better in some way than what it was before but it's also very compromised for the price.
With whisky i feel like id never need anything else. That said, the benchmark jump in the m4 has me thinking i should save up and grab a refurb in a year or two
The battery performance is incredible too.
(of course, everyone else has a macbook too, there's always someone that can lend me a charger. Bonus points that the newer macbooks support both magsafe and USB-C charging. Added bonus points that they brought back magsafe and HDMI ports)
Personally, I practically never use MagSafe, because the convenience of USB C charging cables all over the house outweighs the advantages of MagSafe for me.