Celebrating the M1 Chip

Five years ago, Apple released the first M1 Macs. It’s hard to overstate how significant that moment was, not just for what it delivered technically, but for what it meant about Apple’s commitment to the Mac. Because the years leading up to that launch were rough.

The butterfly keyboard was a disaster. Not just for its initial failure, but also for Apple’s slow response and eventual correction. There was also way too much thermal throttling. Most frustrating was the long delays between updates that delivered the smallest incremental improvements (and more butterfly keyboards).

It felt like Apple had lost the plot on what made the Mac great in the first place. A lot of us wondered if Apple still understood the Mac, or if it had become an afterthought to the iPhone business.

Then the M1 arrived, and everything changed. I remember the jump from my last Intel Mac to that first Apple Silicon machine. It was one of those rare, obvious leaps you don’t see often in computing anymore. Like going from a spinning hard drive to an SSD. The speed, the battery life, the silence. It wasn’t just faster.

It was fundamentally different. Better in ways that affected every single interaction with the machine.

Five years later, Apple is still nailing it with the Mac. The MacBook Air is shockingly capable. The MacBook Pro is genuinely pro again. The Mac Studio and Mac Mini are giving people exactly what they need for desktop workflows. The only outlier is the Mac Pro, which feels adrift right now. But otherwise? The Mac lineup is in better shape than it’s ever been. And it all traces back to that decision to take control of the silicon.

What’s remarkable is that Apple doesn’t seem to be slowing down. The M5 family is just starting to arrive, and it’s another meaningful step forward. These machines keep getting more powerful while staying power efficient and cool.

The Mac isn’t just recovered from those dark days. It’s thriving. Five years in, Apple Silicon still feels like the beginning of something rather than a finished story.

Initial M1 Benchmarks Impress

While the initial reviews haven’t dropped yet, there are some benchmarks in the wild that show the fanless MacBook Air outperforming the high end 16” MacBook Pro and in the territory of the entry-level Mac Pro. Can you imagine how fast Apple Silicon will be for more dedicated high-performance machines?

M1 MacBook Air vs. MacBook Pro

Yesterday I purchased a new M1 MacBook. I want to have something running Apple Silicon to experiment with and cover here and on the podcasts. The question was, which one?

Both the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro feature the same M1 chip. But are they? Apple said nothing in the keynote to differentiate the chips themselves. There was no explanation of clock speeds or chip yields. Does the MacBook Pro only get the very best of the crop of new M1 chips so they can run them faster than those that make it in the MacBook Air? We don’t know. The only thing covered in the keynote was the inclusion of a fan in the MacBook Pro vs. the MacBook Air’s fanless design. With an active cooling system, I’m sure Apple will feel more comfortable pushing the M1 in the MacBook Pro harder. I expect that once we do get benchmarks, they’ll show that the MacBook Pro can do longer operations faster, like encoding video.

I wish Apple had done a better job of differentiating the two computers, but I suspect that when the benchmarks arrive, we’ll find that there isn’t that much difference between them. It is, after all, the same chip driving both machines.

Apple explained it would take two years to complete the transition to Apple Silicon Macs and what we got yesterday was only the first step. Even though it looks like the M1 will be a beast compared to other chips on the market, it will also be the lowest power M-series chip ever released. I can’t help but think that sometime next year, we’ll get a different Apple Silicon chip that will be even more powerful than the M1 for use in the 16 and 14(?) inch MacBooks Pro. Put simply, Apple is just getting started. I expect if you are looking for a pro workflow machine, the Apple Silicon Mac you are really going to want isn’t out yet.

So getting back to my decision as to which MacBook to buy, I was considering the pluses and minuses when my daughter came into the room to show me a video she made for a class using Final Cut on her very-much-not-top-of-the-line Intel MacBook Air. It was five minutes long and moved boxes of video contributed from seven different UCLA drama school students. There were visual and audio effects, and the non-M1 MacBook Air was doing it all without breaking a sweat. That was the moment where I realized all I need is a MacBook Air.

I have such fond memories of the first wedge-shaped MacBook Air from ten years ago. I used one for three years before giving it to my daughter, who used it for an additional five years. I do all of my production heavy lifting on an iMac Pro. The idea of a thin, light, fanless laptop that is wicked fast and can run iPad and iPhone apps sounds perfect. So I ordered a MacBook Air. (I did upgrade the RAM and storage. I am MacSparky after all.) I’ll have it in a week or two and report back once I receive it.

One additional point is Apple’s buyback program. I’m selling my existing laptop back to Apple as part of the purchase. I made some price comparisons with other reputable vendors, and Apple had the best price. I know I could make more selling the machine through eBay, but every time I try that, the buyer turns out to be a bozo. Selling it back to Apple is painless.