Macbook M1 guide.....

[MAK04]

need your help.....i could not able to decide which storage option is suitable 256 or 512..... and which is better, macbook pro or macbook air, I decided to go with 16gb ram...i am switching from windows to mac...... I decided to do heavy video editing so give your suggestion.... My budget is around 1500 USD....

[Eigenvektor]

The pro should be slightly more powerful than the air, so for video editing it's probably the better choice. As for 256 vs 512… that depends entirely on how much space you need. Just keep in mind that you can't upgrade it later on if you change your mind, so bigger is probably better in that regard. It's not like you can have too much storage.

[SupaKomputa]

How long do you plan to use the laptop? And what will you use it for?

Macbook M1 from my analysis is a short term device, like your smartphone, you will use it for 2-3 years until you change it to a newer one or it depleted.

Yes, it depletes, why? An M1 have all the components soldered together, the crucial one is the memory chip and the SSD, these two are the things that will make your laptop live longer. On a regular laptop, these two option can be upgraded if the capacity is not enough or replaced if broken.

If you wan to use it for browsing, office, touching up photos the 8gb maybe enough, but more than that, you are risking the laptop of premature death.

When you use more memory than your ram capacity, it will use the SSD for the swap / virtual memory extension, this is very write heavy task.

All SSD have MTBF rating, which stated the amount of writes it can perform in its lifetime.

This is no problem in regular laptop, dead ssd can just be replace, FOR CHEAP. 256gb ssd is only $40.

Dead SSD on a macbook M1 means the death of the laptop as a whole.

Think about this if you want to go for M1, i highly suggest you get the largest SSD option, or RAM.

https://www.pcgamer.com/apple-m1-macs-appear-to-be-chewing-through-their-ssds/

 

[MAK04]

1 hour ago, Eigenvektor said:

The pro should be slightly more powerful than the air, so for video editing it's probably the better choice. As for 256 vs 512… that depends entirely on how much space you need. Just keep in mind that you can't upgrade it later on if you change your mind, so bigger is probably better in that regard. It's not like you can have too much storage.

Yes pro is better but it's over my budget if go for 512gb storage... I just made a rough idea how much space I need, my documents, video files and apps all is about 210 to 230GB......btw thanks.....

[MAK04]

1 hour ago, SupaKomputa said:

How long do you plan to use the laptop? And what will you use it for?

Macbook M1 from my analysis is a short term device, like your smartphone, you will use it for 2-3 years until you change it to a newer one or it depleted.

Yes, it depletes, why? An M1 have all the components soldered together, the crucial one is the memory chip and the SSD, these two are the things that will make your laptop live longer. On a regular laptop, these two option can be upgraded if the capacity is not enough or replaced if broken.

If you wan to use it for browsing, office, touching up photos the 8gb maybe enough, but more than that, you are risking the laptop of premature death.

When you use more memory than your ram capacity, it will use the SSD for the swap / virtual memory extension, this is very write heavy task.

All SSD have MTBF rating, which stated the amount of writes it can perform in its lifetime.

This is no problem in regular laptop, dead ssd can just be replace, FOR CHEAP. 256gb ssd is only $40.

Dead SSD on a macbook M1 means the death of the laptop as a whole.

Think about this if you want to go for M1, i highly suggest you get the largest SSD option, or RAM.

https://www.pcgamer.com/apple-m1-macs-appear-to-be-chewing-through-their-ssds/

 

I plan to use it for 3 years...and yes I know about memory swap that's why I am going for 16gb of ram......I am buying mac because if I want to trade in my laptop for another laptop it will be feasible.... And as far as I know mac retains it's value better than windows laptop, so if I want sell my laptop in future it will be beneficial for me....also battery life is very good of M1 macbooks....as compared to their topnotch performance... Can you suggest any other laptop just like M1 performance under 1500 bucks...

[SupaKomputa]

Performance per watt there's no comparison for M1. It is simply the best.

For overall performance M1 is neck in neck with Ryzen 4900h, it's better in single threads (10-15%) but loose out in multicore performance.

The gap will be bigger as soon as Intel 8 cores 11th gen and Ryzen 5000 laptop arrive which is roughly 20-30% faster than 4900h.

As for the alternatives:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-Best-Windows-Alternatives-to-Apple-s-MacBook-Pro-13.129395.0.html

[just_dave]

On 3/2/2021 at 8:32 AM, MAK04 said:

I plan to use it for 3 years...and yes I know about memory swap that's why I am going for 16gb of ram......I am buying mac because if I want to trade in my laptop for another laptop it will be feasible.... And as far as I know mac retains it's value better than windows laptop, so if I want sell my laptop in future it will be beneficial for me....also battery life is very good of M1 macbooks....as compared to their topnotch performance... Can you suggest any other laptop just like M1 performance under 1500 bucks...

Lenovo Slim 7 Pro with AMD or ThinkBook 14p (both coming June). Also dont buy M1 MBP. It's not good value. The Air is better.

[just_dave]

On 3/2/2021 at 6:56 AM, SupaKomputa said:

Dead SSD on a macbook M1 means the death of the laptop as a whole.

Theoretically not, needs more research, but it will make life a lot less convenient.

On 3/2/2021 at 6:56 AM, SupaKomputa said:

Macbook M1 from my analysis is a short term device, like your smartphone, you will use it for 2-3 years until you change it to a newer one or it depleted.

Depends on the use. Mine would take about 10 years at the current rate to reach the SSD's warranty life, which is about 10% of it's total lifespan.

[just_dave]

On 3/2/2021 at 6:16 AM, MAK04 said:

I decided to do heavy video editing

The M1 cannot do that

[Commodus]

4 hours ago, just_dave said:

The M1 cannot do that

It absolutely can, just within reasonable limits. Want to edit 4K in Final Cut? Go for it, it should be buttery smooth. 8K in Adobe Premiere? Probably not.

[SupaKomputa]

11 hours ago, just_dave said:

Theoretically not, needs more research, but it will make life a lot less convenient.

Depends on the use. Mine would take about 10 years at the current rate to reach the SSD's warranty life, which is about 10% of it's total lifespan.

Theoretically yes, a dead ssd is a dead macbook. No way to recover it without doing a "Louis Rossman" new SSD chip implant. And apple would never do that.

SSD lifespan is still a mystery, some SSD will outlast it's TBW rating for miles, some died before that, i had mine dead right after the warranty period is over. Would you risk that on a non replaceable laptop.

 

11 hours ago, just_dave said:

The M1 cannot do that

Yes it can, even with x86 emulated environment, please watch reviews on youtube.

You're underestimating the power of that cpu. People are carried away with the base 8gb model as it can do video editing with ease, but forget about the pagefile usage.

 

[just_dave]

14 hours ago, Commodus said:

It absolutely can, just within reasonable limits. Want to edit 4K in Final Cut? Go for it, it should be buttery smooth. 8K in Adobe Premiere? Probably not.

It highly depends on the codec. H264/H265 runs great. BRAW not so much

 

[just_dave]

7 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

Theoretically yes, a dead ssd is a dead macbook. No way to recover it without doing a "Louis Rossman" new SSD chip implant. And apple would never do that.

SSD lifespan is still a mystery, some SSD will outlast it's TBW rating for miles, some died before that, i had mine dead right after the warranty period is over. Would you risk that on a non replaceable laptop

It is possible to boot from an external Thunderbolt SSD, so once you notice you have like 1% Spare left, you can install macOS on the external SSD and use that.

[SupaKomputa]

23 minutes ago, just_dave said:

It is possible to boot from an external Thunderbolt SSD, so once you notice you have like 1% Spare left, you can install macOS on the external SSD and use that.

yeah we probably will see some people using macbook with a hdd dangling on the side in 3-5 years. lol.

[Commodus]

11 hours ago, just_dave said:

It highly depends on the codec. H264/H265 runs great. BRAW not so much

 

That's certainly true. I'm talking about it more in the general sense. Frankly, it's wild to think you can easily handle some 4K editing on a MacBook Air where that was a pipe dream just a year ago.