Apple M1 Chip – why the Macbook Air’s back on top
I should preface this by pointing out that I currently have a Samsung S8+ and am writing on a Microsoft Surface Pro. I am not an Apple fanboy. Although I might be soon as I wrote previously. The M1 chip is going to turn a lot of people into happy iSheep and I suspect I will be contentedly bleating along with them. My computer of choice – the Macbook Air. Why?
A very brief laptop history
I have been a windows user from the mid 90s up until 2012. I researched the hell out of laptops when the old one was dying and consequently, they all lasted a reasonable amount of time. Which was around 3 years.
In 2012, I needed an ultra-portable laptop as I was travelling a lot. Every PC review I read kept talking about the product being a Macbook Air killer. I read so many of them I eventually turned to the dark side and bought a Macbook Air. It was superb and was all I used for 5 years straight. I even did some video editing on it for work and it was capable. Just. Barely. And only on lower-res Youtube videos for a presentation. It was theoretically possibly is my point.
I write for a living and for a hobby and so that thing took a hammering. After 5 years, the battery died. I was living in Bangkok and at that time there was no Apple shop. To replace the battery would cost a fortune and I would have to send it to Singapore. It would have taken 2 weeks. I toyed with going to a dodgy local expert but most of the ones I asked didn’t do it or didn’t have the parts for a 5-year-old laptop. I loved the thing but couldn’t go for two weeks without a writing device and as it looked like I might be doing a bit more video editing and visual work, I needed something more modern.
I thought a new Apple would do the trick but the Air was a bit shit back then with a crap keyboard, one port, and even the new ones still had slow innards. This was to be expected of the lowest end and cheapest Mac laptop. The Pro also had a crap keyboard but had decent insides – but was too pricey.
So I got a Surface. Switching between Windows and Apple is fine, I don’t care what people say. Most of my ‘ecosystem’ consists of Word, Google Docs, Kindle, YouTube, Evernote, Trello, etc. Cross-platform. But the battery has been slowly dying on my Surface and I found myself on a laptop hunt once again. (Surfaces are still pretty cheap though and there are some decent sales on.)
I was close to buying a Dell XPS 15 when the rumours about a new Apple chip started to appear. I watch a lot of YouTube tech videos (as you will find out) and so I thought I’d wait and see.
Enter the Apple M1 chip
It soon seemed apparent that the stories were true. Apple was building its own chip. The thing with Apple is that they build everything themselves. All the software has to be optimised and all the hardware was theirs. Apart from the Intel chips. They’re like control freaks. But this is a good thing.
If you are doing a pure spec comparison then Apple hardware, for what you pay, is generally not as impressive as elsewhere. But they integrate things so well that the average punter can’t notice. An iPhone compared to a Samsung based purely on stats fares pretty poorly in comparison. Except that even with less RAM and smaller batteries, the iPhone 12 is still an awesome phone according to reviewers.
That is why Apple tends to avoid specific statistic comparisons and does the vaguest graphs you will ever see. Here is one of my favourite tech reviewers, Marques Brownlee, explaining this in more detail (most of the stuff I mentioned is near the beginning but the whole clip is great):
Battery Life
The M1 chip allows for around 18 hours of video on the Macbook Air and 20 on the Macbook Pro. That is astounding. I can’t remember many of my laptops even getting close to 10 hours and often that was just using Word. My Surface is now down to about two hours but to be fair it is old. When I say old, I mean 3 years. Which makes it a bit strange that if I want to write somewhere with no power plugs, I have to take my 2015 iPad Pro and Bluetooth Keyboard as it lasts longer. Because – Apple.
Multiple reviewers have confirmed the battery life and it is fucking bonkers.
What about performance?
Good question, voice in my head. Again, because of the M1 chip being so damned efficient, performance is also insane. I know, I am sounding like a fanboy now.
I don’t have one yet, so can’t test one and geek out about lovely specs and test results. Also, I might love tech but I can’t explain it well. For that, there is the awesome Dave Lee.
Too long didn’t watch? It looks speedy. Stupidly speedy. What emerges from a lot of these videos is that both the Macbook Air and the Macbook Pro are utterly incredible but also that they are pretty damned similar. Except in price. The Pro is $300 USD more. The Air is $999! Less than $1k! You can see prices at the store here. (That’s the US store.)
How similar are they? What is the point of the Pro?
Another corking question and another thing I will hand over to an expert. Here is Max Tech doing an in depth comparison.
Too long didn’t watch? They are very similar. Even though the Pro wins in most cases, it is by a tiny amount. These are much closer than ever before and both are way ahead of similar competition.
In case that wasn’t enough for you, here is another clip, this time by Luke Miani, who questions the need for a MacBook Pro.
Too long didn’t watch? It seems like the Air is pretty damned awesome for pretty much everyone except power users.
Why I will be getting the Air
These are the main concerns for me right now when it comes to a laptop:
- Keyboard – Apple keyboards used to be great, then the whole butterfly thing came along. They are now great again and I adore writing on them (I have a Bluetooth keyboard).
- Weight and size – Pretty much the same.
- Battery life – Huge win for both compared to nearly all the competition. (There might be a laptop out there with longer life but I don’t know of it.)
- Can it run all the programs I want to run? – Yes.
Earlier, I mentioned that the one extra thing I might need to do on my laptop in the future is some video editing. Can the M1 chip on a MacBook Air let it do even that? The answer comes from my final clip from the very watchable Everyday Dad.
Too long didn’t watch? Yes you can, it is easy and more than capable.
So there you have it. The M1 chip is going to change a lot for Apple and the future looks awesome. No longer will I bitch about trying to find a plug. These computers do everything I need a laptop to do and they do it speedily with a great keyboard. I love it when I can stop researching and know what my next laptop will be.
Apologies for the video-heavy article, I just think things like these are better demonstrated than having me write a long list of stats and specs.
Now I just have to wait for the MacBook Air M1 to reach where I live. I feel frustration ahead.
Here is a link to the Apple shop so you can see the specs.
Here is a link to Amazon so you can see reviews. (And it’s an affiliate.)
