Ask HN: Buy the M1 MacBook Pro or Wait for M2?

[ponderingfish]

My usage: blogging, image and video editing, podcasting. I don't program any longer and even if I do, it'll probably be putting together shell scripts and some python for text processing.

The heaviest usage will be using FFmpeg for some video processing, that my 2015 Macbook Pro handles well enough (for comparison).

[ksec]

2015 MacBook Pro is still the best in many regards.

Better Keyboard with more Key Travel than the new Magic Keyboard. Sane Trackpad Size so you dont accidentally move your cursors every few months while typing. MagSafe that actually work the way it is intended if you are clumsy. Reliability seems to be so much better. 2016 MacBook Pro has Flexgate, Staingate, Butterfly keyboard, SSD Failure, Thunderbolt Frying CPU, and now finally "accepted" Battery Non-Charging issues. Latest M1 MBA already has a few logic board dead issues. And somehow all of the above issues were described by Apple apologist as "acceptable failure" of any electronics. ( M1 MBP seems fine so far).

What does all these means. Apart from some performance benefits. 2015 MacBook Pro Models were so good that it seems ~7 years after its introduction it is still hard to beat. And with every introduction of New MacBook Model Apple seems to have messed up one thing or another.

It is one thing that your company buy you a new MacBook for you to play and trash every two years. If you are spending your own money and with immediate need for a new one my suggestion is to wait.

Oh, did I mention for the first time in 10+ years Apple stopped mentioning Mac User Satisfaction rating in their Investor notes or WWDC.

[danek_szy]

2015 MBP also suffers from staingate and in many regards isn't good enough by todays standards... Not being able to keep up with decoding 4K HEVC footage is one.

Another thing is that 15 inch model had Intel CPU from previous generation (unlike 13'), because Intel couldn't keep up with production of the latest architecture dies.

[ksec]

Apart from Staingate. Both of those are performance related issue though.

I am decoding 4K HEVC just fine here, although at a low 5-10Mbps Bitrate with CPU going to 70%.

[danek_szy]

They are, but one cannot simply overcome them by replacing the CPU. You have to buy new laptop, which is why performance is taken into consideration when evaluating laptop models.

On a personal note, can't wait to switch off of my 2015 MBP 15', even though I agree with touchbar & touchpad size scepticism.

[ashtonkem]

I have no idea why laptop keyboards are so important to people; they’re all terrible. Use a better, external keyboard when you’re stationary, your wrists will thank you.

Especially since it seems like even pre-pandemic laptops operated 80% of the time from a fixed position anyways.

[codegeek]

I don't prefer using laptop keyboards but that doesn't mean I want shitty laptop keyboards. You may not always be around your connected keyboard (travelling, away from the workstation etc) and you really don't want to feel pissed when typing.

[ashtonkem]

Some people use their laptops on the go, but I’ve observed that most people drastically overestimate how often they’ll actually do that. Even pre-pandemic most of my colleagues effectively used their laptops like Mac mini’s with built in battery backups.

Honestly, in a post pandemic world I feel like companies should start handing out more desktops. If I’m remote forever, why pay for a display that I’ll literally never open?

[ponderingfish]

Unfortunately, the screen has a bad case of staingate and it's very annoying. After all these years, the trackpad has died and some keys. I might just get it repaired to see if I can eek out a few more months/years from it.

[codegeek]

I bought a refurbished MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014) in late 2015. I have some weird issues in rebooting but it works like a charm overall and I don't even know if I have a need to upgrade. I will continue to wait another 2-3 years before thinking of an upgrade.

[beckler]

I just upgraded to the M1 Air. I was on a 2011 MBP, but I started having so many issues with it being deprecated and out-of-support that I finally caved. I also thought about waiting for the M2, but honestly who knows when that will launch, and what those laptops will look like. The M1 outperforms far beyond my expectations, and has some serious benchmarks that made me realize that I didn’t make a bad decision in pulling the trigger on it.

I think I wanted to wait for the M2 because I had FOMO for the next generation, while also thinking that the M1 was gonna have a bunch of weird bugs. If anything there are known limitations (like with external displays and booting from external drives), but I don’t really fall in those categories so I was okay with it.

If I were you, as long as you’re not in a rush to upgrade, just wait and see what the M2 is like. If you can’t wait, know that you’ll be in excellent shape with the M1.

[speedgoose]

Buy the hardware when you need it. Better hardware will always be coming.

Is your 6 years old laptop still good enough? Wait. Do you want/need a new faster laptop with an exceptional battery life now? Get a MacBook pro M1.

[wegs]

My philosophy isn't to wait for /better/ hardware, so much as to wait for /tested/ hardware. I've been burned often enough buying first-gen technologies.

Second generation usually has the bugs worked out.

Apple has done an impressive enough job with the M1 that if I really needed a new computer right now, I might make exception -- the reviews have been phenomenal -- but barring that, I'd wait for M2.

Perhaps irrelevant to this discussion, but with non-critical things, I also often buy used. It's eco-friendly. I wouldn't buy a used /work/ computer, but for something like school or entertainment, there's a lot of upside to buying used:

* You can find teardowns on iFixit if you need to fix something.

* Someone has figured magical Linux kernel commands to disable NCQ to prevent some oddball crash.

* All the bleeding-edge stuff is supported; drivers are in mainline.

* If there's a keyboard design issue, fan failure, etc. people will have discovered it.

* In a lot of domains, you can also get upgraded/off-lease corporate/industrial equipment, which tends to be cheap and a few quality brackets up. Companies will offload old AV equipment, off-lease laptops, lab equipment (oscilloscopes, etc.), etc. A 5-year-old professional 1080 camcorder will wipe the floor with consumer 4k equipment.

Buying older stuff, you also spend around 1/2 to 1/3, and it's no different from having been born 2-5 years earlier. If you were born in 1990, you'll get the same equipment at the same age as someone far wealthier than you born in 1985.

Except for expiring Android phones and Chromebooks. Google like landfills.

[sradman]

> My philosophy isn't to wait for /better/ hardware, so much as to wait for /tested/ hardware.

The M1 is essentially what would have been the A14X for the iPad. I don’t consider it first-gen technology. macOS for ARM is first-gen but it seems to exceed expectations across the board.

[febrianrendak]

its exceed expectations as everyday computing device, but lacking many features for power users. Can't run docker, virtualization isn't here yet. I hope M2 will come with these features.

[ep1cman]

Docker: https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/apple-m1/ Parallels: https://www.parallels.com/blogs/parallels-desktop-apple-sili...

[sradman]

I suspect macOS Virtualization [1] will be addressed with software updates rather than new silicon. Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) transitions incur tradeoffs and the mobile-like SoC architecture of the M1 has to make hard decisions about what goes in the SoC (e.g. Ultra Wideband doesn't seem to be included in the M1).

I suspect that something like a M1X, an M1 scaled with additional cores and more memory capacity, will target higher TDP Apple laptops/desktops/workstations. More of the same continuous innovation, a good thing, in my opinion. Many of these decisions are pure marketing; a cheaper MacBook Air with an A14 makes sense to me technically as does the 13" MacBook Pro offering both low-TDP M1 and high-TDP M1X.

A departure from the existing continuous innovation might be a Neoverse-style chip like the Graviton for desktops/workstations. The current big.LITTLE architecture of the M1/A14 makes perfect sense for mixed use devices.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization

[messe]

> suspect macOS Virtualization [1] will be addressed with software updates rather than new silicon

It's already here. No updates to software or hardware needed.

[messe]

> Can't run docker, virtualization isn't here yet

Both of those are available on M1. Virtualization was even demoed in the keynote discussing the switch to ARM.

[_0w8t]

If I need to get a M1 Mac, I will not bother with Pro. Surely under sustained load it is like 20% faster as Air throttles down, but if this important, then I guess just get a desktop which will still be faster despite using older Intel CPUs.

The big plus of Air is that it is completely passive and silent. As such it will last longer. Depending on the dust level one may need to open the notebook each 6 months or even more often to vacuum clean and to avoid any throttling due to dust accumulation.

[pornel]

Everything other than performance per Watt is not great.

• The boot process is very locked down, and is unfinished/buggy. My M1 MBP is acting up in ways that previously would have been solved with SMC/PRAM reset, but M1 doesn't have these and NVRAM can't be reset. I had to reinstall it via DFU mode. It felt like jailbreaking an iPhone.

• The hardware has a poor implementation of Thunderbolt with missing features and incompatibilities. Not only it supports only one external display, but only one specific port, and in multi-port docks you can't chose which one it picks. Some external disks benchmark poorly with inconsistent and slower-than-expected speeds.

• Having ports only on one side is more annoying than I expected.

• It's clearly a "rev.1" machine, and these usually age poorly and get dropped by Apple quicker than later, mature revisions.

• It's very fast for a 25W CPU, but in absolute terms power-hungry desktop CPUs are still faster. So my buggy M1 is gathering dust, because right now I'm not traveling anywhere, so I can use a desktop computer that is faster.

[IceHegel]

Don't get the pro, the MacBook Air is what you want. I was a 13 inch pro user for 10+ years and tried the M1 Air because I didn't want the dumb Touch Bar. Honestly, I think this Air is the best laptop ever made.

-the battery feels like it lasts 3x-4x longer than my 2019 13 mbp.

-it compiles Typescript as fast(sometimes faster) as my brand new Ryzen 5800x based work station.

-great performance on many small things that I never even thought of as slow

The Air has a nicer form factor and basically the same panel as the pro. Only reason to get the pro if you want to keep complaining about the Touch Bar.

[ajconway]

> Only reason to get the pro if you want to keep complaining about the Touch Ba

Also active cooling if you want to run CPU at full capacity for extended periods of time.

[easton]

It’s worth noting that the Air only throttles about ~20% under load (and you have to push it pretty far to get there). It probably isn’t a dealbreaker unless you are using it as a desktop replacement.

[itbeho]

All good points except the display on the Pro is supposedly +/- 100 nits brighter.

[webmobdev]

As one of my friend always says, "Let the rich pay for the development of the new tech, while we commoners can settle for the tried and tested."

With a newer technology, often priced higher, it's always better to wait for the 2nd or 3rd generation iteration as they usually iron out all the pre- and post-manufacturing bugs, and becomes cheaper over time (don't see that happening with Apple though).

E.g. External boot disks still don’t work properly with M1 Macs: https://eclecticlight.co/2021/02/10/external-boot-disks-stil...

[neximo64]

The m1 air is the cheapest computer apple sells

[ianai]

Other than the Mac mini.

[ja27]

I'm still waiting but I keep coming close to grabbing a totally fanless M1 Air.

But for my day-to-day use, even with barely leaving the house, a 15-16" display is much better for me. I would appreciate the speed and other features of the next-gen machines but the real deciding factor is the display. Sure, I would use it on my 27" 4K monitor a lot, but I like moving around even if it's just to the porch or couch, and my use of machines with 12-14" has felt fairly cramped when doing actual dev work.

I know the M1 MBP's fan is apparently very, very quiet but if I were recording podcasts, I'd be really tempted to go totally fanless with the Air. No noise, no vents to block, no dust build-up, true all-day battery life, no &#(* touch bar, and relatively cheap.

A huge factor for waiting is if you want to run multiple external displays. The M1 MBP and MBA can only drive the internal display and one external. I personally like one big display but if you need that multi-monitor life, you need to wait (or get the M1 Mini or use a DisplayLink adapter).

[iamwpj]

I don't do video editing, just coding and plenty of windows along with Docker. I've never heard the fan and if I didn't know it was there according to the spec sheet I would just assume it didn't have a fan :D.

[_0w8t]

I need to compile a lot. As that sometimes takes hours with max load, I have discovered that Intel Mac book Pro 13” 2020 was surprisingly loud. It is louder than a water-cooled Windows desktop at the office. This became especially apparent with remote work as the ambient noise at home was much lover than at work.

But if I do not compile, it is silent even when running a Windows or Linux VM.

[floatingatoll]

Wait. You're content with your current mac and Homebrew with M1 support only came out a week or two ago. Give it more time to bake. The first wave of M1 products was literally "replace the mainboard component only and leave everything else unchanged", the second wave will probably include iPhone-quality webcams and fancy audio and stuff.

(If you were interestedly in contributing time and patches to fixing M1 software issues on M1, then you could of course get one for that, but you'll want to keep your existing Mac as your primary work computer.)

[SantiagoElf]

With most of the work being done remotely or from home these days.

Nothing can beat a 30+ inch ultra wide monitor and a good old desktop. You can always change the keyboard :)

Just Saying.

[influx]

I regularly plug in my M1 laptop to my ultra wide monitor and mechanical keyboard.

[tluyben2]

I was going to wait but then earlier this week my really old macbook stopped working completely. I need it for ios dev (the rest of my work is fine under linux; x220/ubuntu/i3wm) so I ordered an mb air m1. I thought the hype was mac fans being crazy but I stand corrected: it is an absolute marvel. I have the cheapest one (it was a special offer from some big chain here: cheaper than via Apple) and using it as I do, it seems to not break a sweat. The past few days I have done everything on it that I normally do one 2 laptops and still it remains fast, enough mem and actually too cold for my hands to work on.

I would buy it now if I were you; probably you can sell it off for a good price anyway when the new one arrives.

[iamwpj]

When I switched to my M1, I noticed that my hands were always cold -- it's because there was no heat coming off it. My 2018 MBA and Dell Latitude had done a good job of keeping my hands warm, but the M1 just doesn't do a good job warming up my hands.

[tluyben2]

Yes, but a laptop not getting warm I cannot see as too much of a negative!

[runjake]

It initially wasn’t a concern, but the “only one external monitor” thing is really starting to get to me. Otherwise, performance, battery life, and lack of heat and fans are great.

I will probably upgrade the moment a new one comes out, if I haven’t fled macOS yet.

Edit: yes, I know about DisplayLink. I don’t do third-party kernel drivers, and the cost for a good DP module is more than I want to blow.

[runjake]

Update: I broke down and hooked up my DisplayLink adapter. It works like a charm and as far as I can tell the DP software does not install a kernel driver?

[m463]

Thinking historically, maybe wait? There are a lot of things that don't work natively yet (maybe most of them)

The iPhone 1, first macbook pro intel, all were refreshed with more capable models.

Personally, I'm wondering what an apple-cpu mac pro will look like... if they refresh quicker than 6 years :)

[twmiller]

I picked up a M1 Mac Mini. I honestly cannot tell the difference between a native and a non-native app on this thing. The Rosetta 2 emulation is mind blowing.

[m463]

The powerpc switchover was similar. What was sort of annoying was that they retired it rather quickly.

maybe that's there way of saying "enough's enough" to lagging developers, but I kind of like Microsoft's model better -- you can still manage to get really old stuff running. That's a better way to get people on a newer OS.

[daviddever23box]

The biggest use case is the amazing battery life; this gives you, as a writer, the ability to work within your stream, then set the device down later in the day when you're ready to take a break.

Come back in an hour or so, and you're nearly fully juiced up.

Performance-wise, with appropriate software (i.e., M1-compatible, and none of this Rosetta stuff), it'll be faster than your 2015 MBP, even with half the RAM.

I recommend the MBA-M1 with 512 GB storage; the 8 GB RAM is plenty, and still has better effective memory bandwidth than my Core i9-9980HK MBP 15 (with twice that). Really.

Also - latest FFmpeg is compatible: https://isapplesiliconready.com/app/FFmpeg

[unstatusthequo]

I assume all electronics are kind of a lease. Buy the beat you can at the time within reasonable time to its initial release, then follow the cadence and attempt to sell it just before the new model comes out. The actual cost is really just the delta in the new price versus the cost you sold it at. Average that over the time you used it.

I was always told buy things that appreciate in value and lease those that depreciate. Given that all of these depreciate, my model is akin to leasing since it have planned disposition (like a car lease after 36 months) and a decent idea of expected value. I don’t trash my shit, so I generally get great sales prices from it.

I bought the MacBook Pro M1 and Mac Mini.

[lolive]

Went again to my local store, and my error rate on the new keyboard is just super high. What's the opinion of M1 owners, after a few months of experience?

[happynacho]

I too have a 2015 15in MBP but I'm waiting for the M2 14in refresh. For heavy duty stuff I have my desktop and mobile, well, I'm not going out much nowdays lol.

The biggest reason for me is battery life. Going from a 3 hour life to 15+ is game changing.

[mick_schroeder]

Hardware seems fine, this is like Apple's 20th ARM chip or something close to that

However, the software transition is still very much ongoing

Check all your software is compatible before making the switch

[latexr]

The M1 MacBook Air should fulfil your stated needs: https://youtu.be/53xBuFfz6H8

[ponderingfish]

It sure looks like that ... the lack of ports is a bummer though.

[tubularhells]

Buy a ThinkPad.

[ponderingfish]

I have my eyes on a T490 - I've used ThinkPads in the past, and they are fabulous. I still do love Macs - their build quality is exceptional and the stability of the macOS is something I appreciate. I've never had a Win machine last 5+ years. YMMV

[tubularhells]

Me neither. I run Linux on everything I own.