One of the problems is that I don’t notice a meaningful difference(that’s worth the money) between my M1 and my M4 workloads. (Dev/video). Obviously the rendering is faster but the OS isn’t. Tahoe makes my M2 feel like an intel mac.
Chip, memory and storage are really fast, but I’m fully convinced that the OS is crippling these machines.
> Sorry you made your first gen chip so good that I don't feel the need to upgrade
M1 MacBooks are ~5 years old at this point, and if you've been working a laptop hard for 5 years it's often worth getting an upgrade for battery life as well as speed.
I don’t think it’s the fact that it’s plugged in so much. I used mine plugged in pretty much all the time. It only charges to 80% but every once in a while, I drain it down to zero. I do live in a cooler climate as well and I probably don’t use my computer as much as most people.
What magic are you and everyone else doing ? I already have only 92% on my less than year old M4 14inch Pro.
I haven't booted up the older M1 recently to check, but I remember it was throwing replace battery warnings well before I got the upgrade and that I think that triggering below 80%.
I actually went to the Apple Store last spring with battery upgrade in mind, but Apple Store in Burlingame told me it will take 3-5 business days to do the change.
I didn't have a spare laptop to work with at that time for a week so i held of[1]. This is probably a reason for lot of people opting out of upgrades.
After the M4 came there was hype for the new screen which performs better in sunlight and M1->M4 seemed worth it plus vRAM which is certainly handy.
[1]The screen was also deteriorating - no physical issues just wasn't as bright as it was new) and they said I should replace that too. The economics a new Air worth of money on a older laptop with just 1-2 years primary use life left is shaky.
2. Batteries age faster in the beginning and then their ageing rate plateaus. It's the same for electric cars. E.g. a Tesla can lose 5% efficiency in the first 30k miles, but will lose the next 5% over 60k+.
Perhaps something is wrong with way I cycle it or set my apps up. I always feel it never hold charges anywhere close to what everyone is saying they get.
The only time battery is not a problem is when video streaming for hours, presumably the decoding is offloaded to the dedicated media chips on the board.
I don’t use it a lot and I keep it plugged in some majority of the time. It only charges to 80%. I also occasionally, probably every month, drain the battery to zero.
Also, the majority of time it’s been in my van, which is pretty chilly most of the time.
From my understanding, battery health is based on use and environment.
I have been monitoring temperatures closely with mac-stats https://mac-stats.com/ over the last few months.
It typically runs around 110-130 for CPU and the battery is 85-90 on light usage like say browser or slack.
However if i run a full compile of the repo or just about anything a bit compute intensive CPU jumps easily to 170-200 range regularly and battery to 120.
I am now frequently running the fans higher manually to cool it down[1]
I think Apple is optimizing for being quiet over battery and laptop life and have kept the fans low speed even if it would benefit the hardware to speed them up earlier under load.
[1] This is not because I can the temps all the time in the top bar. The palm rests do become noticeably hotter and bit uncomfortable than the noise would be.
frankly nothing holds a candle to the battery performance of the M series machines so it’s likely a safe bet to assume that advantage will also translate into longer overall life/battery health until we see otherwise. We’ll see in a few years I suppose.
I felt the same way about the battery in my 2018 MacBook ... it was losing capacity, but I didn't mind as it still ran for hours between charged.
Then it started having issues waking up from sleep. Only the OG Apple charger could wake it up, then it would see it actually had 40-60% battery but something had gone wrong while sleeping and it thought it was empty.
Intel MacBooks had terrible SMC issues, so maybe this won't afflict the M-series. Just sharing because I could still use that MacBook a few hours between charged, it just couldn't be trusted to wake up without a charger. That's really inconvenient and got me to upgrade combined with new features.
I switched from an M1 to a new M4 (this is my work laptop and it had a problem) and the old M1 has a much better battery life than the new M4. Quite noticeable. The M1 was such an awesome machine. The M4 is faster, but the M1 was plenty fast.
I spilled a sugary coffee drink in my keyboard, and having it replaced under AppleCare+ meant they also replaced half the rest of the machine (battery, display etc). I think I'm set for another 5 years.
How much would you charge me to swap out my MacBook Pro 2018 15.4" battery using authorized methods to not cause other damage? I want my laptop back within a few days, a 90 day warranty on parts and labor, and I want a genuine Apple battery - not some unknown 3rd party.
For battery replacement you really want to take this to a local electronics repair shop (read the reviews so you find a good one). They'll do it same day or next day.
It'll probably be around $200-$300 if you want an official battery. More like half that if you're willing to accept a 3rd party one.
Apple doesn't sell the official battery as a standalone part even to Authorized Apple repair shops, so anyone telling you they're installing an official battery is already lying to you or putting in something used.
Even if a local shop somehow sourced a legit, new Apple battery, why wouldn't I go to the Apple Store if it's the same cost and would only be the battery?
(For $299, Apple replaces the speakers, touchpad, batteries, top case, and keyboard and provides a parts and labor warranty for 90 days)
I got that as well.. more annoying are comparisons with the last Intel options, which sucked then.
I'm still doing fine with a 16gb M1 Air, I mostly VPN+SSH to my home desktop when I need more oomph anyway. It lasts a full day, all week when you just check email on vacation once a day.
Yeah, I am using a 2020 Macbook Air M1 with macOS 15.7.1 (which I am about to install Ashasi Linux) and I have no issues as a casual user. For most people who use macbooks I see no reason to but an M5 or M4 over an M1.
When I handed in my M1 Max MBP for repair, I bought a M3? Or M4 MBA to return when I get my MBP back, or to keep if I really notice a difference.
Used it for a week and came to the same conclusion, I felt absolutely no difference in day to day usage except that the MBA is nice and slim. And better battery.
In terms of performance, thermals, and battery life, it was a huge upgrade for me when I moved from Intel to the M1 Max. M1 Max to the M4 Max... improvements were mainly on very heavy tasks, like video transcoding with Handbrake or LLMs with Ollama.
It is night and day between the last intel macbook and the m1. I held out for a long time because of poor python support, but that was not a good move. The m1 is much better.
The M1 MacBook Pro has GB6 ST of 2350, and MT of 8400
The M5 is expected to be ~4150 and MT of ~15500
And nearly 3x speed for SSD.
And yet there is nothing about the new MacBook Pro ( on M4 at least ) that feels faster. I would much rather pay for macOS upgrade that increase performance rather than useless features after features.
Eh, I have an m1 pro and it's definitely showing its age..
My colleagues on m3/m4 have a night and day difference in programming performance.
CPU, memory bandwidth, latencies, working on javascript projects that involve countless IOs on small files...It really shows. I can't wait for the upgrade.
Sorry you made your first gen chip so good that I don't feel the need to upgrade lol.