Apple's M1 Macs turned the computing world on its head a bit, offering impressive performance and jaw-dropping battery life at prices that were much more affordable than traditional levels, ushering in a new era of computing for creatives. This great video review discusses the M1 MacBook Air as a long-term solution for creatives and if it can handle the often heavy demands we place on our computers.
Coming to you from Gajan Balan, this excellent video review discusses using an M1 MacBook Air for creative use for the long-term. So far, Apple's M1 computers have been very well received, offering highly impressive performance and true all-day battery life in the laptop models. Perhaps the best part has been the fairly seamless compatibility with software, with Apple's Rosetta 2 doing a very good job of maintaining compatibility while manufacturers transition their apps to the new architecture. Personally, I am quite excited to eventually see the larger MacBook Pros updated to Apple's own chips, as I prefer a bigger screen, and my current computer is starting to get a little long in the tooth, and the thought of having such long battery life is quite exciting. Check out the video above for Balan's full thoughts.
I've got one. Base model, bought refurbed from Apple for $850. Couldn't be happier. It's super quick, the battery lasts forever and it's. so light I have to visually verify it's in my bag.
I have an M1 and NO, it's not the best laptop for creatives but it's a good start.
Probably an M3 will match the performance (in real workflow not specific ad hoc benchmark) of the traditional platform.
Luca, I bought one as well and I am disappointed in it in so many ways. As a UNIX/Linux system administrator I expected to be able to leverage the "BSD goodness" and use things like the DTrace Toolkit until I found out a number of the filesystems are mounted read only. If you are in a Windows environment such as I am, you have to spend money in order to mount a NTFS/CIFS volume read/write and the performance under load is the equivalent of my daughter's 5 year old Ryzen desktop.
My go-to machine is my HP Omen 15 gaming laptop which is faster, has double the memory (after upgrading), twice the storage (again after upgrading) and two GPU's.The battery life might not be as long but it makes up for with ports galore and a CF card reader!!! And I can play games on it if I want to!!!
There is no "best" for everyone, but my 8/256 M1 MBA is a powerhouse and a tremendous bargain. I'm frankly AMAZED that $999 will buy this much laptop.