Apple announced Apple Silicon. I wanted parts of the event. When Apple announced M1, I knew the future had arrived. As usual, the video was amazingly well-made and the specs (or the lack of) made it something intriguing. I purchased a MBP 13’ the day after they were released. This is not a purchasing guide or review, but rather an “essay” through the perspective of a “tech nerd, a true tech nerd” - Dave Lee.

Cinebench:

I got around 7737 on multi-core. That’s some serious speed for a laptop that never even gets hot to the touch. It is cool to the touch when doing light workloads, and becomes slightly warm after Rosetta 2 Blender renders and use-cases similar to that.

Speaking of Rosetta 2, the emulation is great. However, there are many applications that do not work. Does it ARM? is a great resource to check if your favorite apps are supported or not.

Everything feels snappy and quick. Opening Xcode no longer takes 10 hours (or so it seems). As Austin Evans would agree on, M1 MacBooks are now the automatic laptop recommendation for the average user.

However, with such a large changed, there are many places that are much changed and unfortunately dead. First, dual booting is 99% dead, unless someone can make a OS with a boot loader and all that stuff I know nothing about. At the same time, csrutil disable to disable the SIP and security functions don’t do much now. I tried (I might not have done it the right way though) with no luck. Secondly, iPhone and iPad apps don’t actually just download. Since developers have the choice to have their app available on Apple Silicon Macs or not, many choose NO. Here are just a few COD: Mobile, Clash of Clans, Snapchat, Instagram, and much, MUCH more. Of course, have the ability to download iOS and iPad OS apps should not be your main reason to buy one.

The looks have stayed the same, and now there are only 2 Thunderbolt 3/USB 4 ports. Why? I guess nobody knows. (EDIT: The lack of ports could be due to the M1 SoC's inherent limitations)

The Apple Silicon M1 Macs are the BEST Macs ever made. Apple has combined all the failures they have learned over the past few years (butterfly keyboard, thermal throttling, etc.) and fixed 99% of them going into the Apple Silicon Macs. Even thought I said this wasn’t going to be a buyer’s guide, I have to say this: Now’s a great time to buy a Mac.