M1 Apple MacBook Air

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock you probably heard about the new apple silicon.

Super fast and insane battery life. And in essence most apps will work in real time converting mode via rosetta 2. So especially for people like us that do a lot on location and really need both speed and battery life and a small form factor this sounds absolutely Awesome, but is it?

Of course we ordered the M1 as soon as we got the chance. But that enthusiasm was quickly killed when we found out that apple limited the output to 1 external screen.

Now that might seem not a big thing but realise that when you use a drawing tablet with a screen that counts as one so that’s it. And there is no trick with clamshell to get another screen. It’s one external screen and that’s if.

This was a huge deal breaker till we found a 4k60 display link adaptor from startech that is mac compatible and sells for a whopping 125.00. But it gives you 2 extra screens. And for 100.00 one. We did order one and hope to receive that very soon.

The original idea was to just receive the m1 and send it back right away because both Annewiek and I use two external screens and need video on those screens.

Because we couldn’t send it back to apple right away due to a lockdown we decided to keep it another 5 days (our return window for this label) and test it a bit more

So I’m curious to see how the convertor handles that seeing the older solutions were literally terrible with everything that was moving too fast.

So that is one problem “solved”, and with fresh enthusiasm I started the test process. And that’s where things went sideways (for me at least)

The good, the bad and…

1. Don’t think about doing a fresh install. I’m pretty tech savvy and it took me 2 hours to get the fricking thing working again and you need a second mac. Otherwise it’s back to apple so beware

The reason we needed a fresh install was literally because we gave up after testing the hardware we had in the studio to connect the screens and decided to send it back with a fresh install. Because you don’t want your account info on there somewhere. And we’ve done it countless times on other mac’s ranging from macpros to imacs and notebooks (we sold apple for a short period of time in our store and did support on them for customers).

In the end you will need to do the refresh via a second mac and the apple configurator 2. If you don’t know what you’re doing… Just go back to apple.

But it didn’t stop there….

2. First software I tried was vital for me. The studiomanager software for the yamaha 01v96v2. I also use it our home recording studio and this app is older and will probably not be updated anymore. On windows and intel it runs on the M1 no way. Installer asks for rosetta 2 and after that… It’s only a message that the developer needs to update the app. So no option to run in forced sandbox or whatever it’s just game over for me as it seems. Without that software my console is not easy to operate

So with me out of the game let’s try for annewiek

3. The wireless Epson printer installed without a glitch. But… Our HP8600 plus will not even be detected. When I ping the printer it replies and even the whole websuite works (direct IP access) but no bonjour and even the drivers from HP tell me there is no network printer…. This is bizarre seeing we can find it on our phones and the old laptop and even ping and access it from a browser

Conclusion

There is also good news of course.
The battery life is insane.
Did the whole installation yesterday starting with 94% and at the end it was as 80% I think the old macbook would be close to empty

All Adobe software seems to be working fine. But I didn’t test any plugins.

Fcpx flies, so that’s pretty awesome

Overall it promises a lot. But it can only be successful if of course there is a way to sandbox older apps. I understand you can’t support things forever. But this was the first software I tried and it doesn’t really bode well if within 1 day there are already 2 serious issues….

That being said…
If you only use new gear (released in the last 2-3 years) I think you will be fine. Just be prepared to spend another 100.00 for a second monitor and to upgrade some hardware and adjust your workflow.

I really wanted to make the switch back with the promise of insane battery life and speed. But for now I’ll be using my dell xps9570 and for annewiek it’s going to be a case of “do we get that printer to work” plus her labels scanner and apps….

Now before you start flaming me ;). I do realize this is the first version. And indeed it’s a complete transition from one chipset to another and that’s a HUGE undertaking and I really feel this is the future seeing the insane speed and battery life.

That being said

At the moment we can’t run windows via bootcamp or even in a virtual sandbox although I’m 99% sure that for example parallels will be updated and at that moment I would love to see if I can run the studio manager. Or maybe that apple will create a sandbox solution. I don’t care about speed in that sandbox as long as it works.

The main thing I worry about a lot is however something else.

A year ago we started our test with replacing my laptop with an ipad pro and in all fairness every day I’m more and more impressed with the iPad pro. It’s awesome. But…. Severely crippled by apple. I still for example can’t copy lager files via “files” without severe artifacts (it really destroys the files). When I use the third party app “file browser business” it all works like a charm but it’s an extra step

Same problem appears when uploading to youtube or saving a file from garageband. You just can’t use Files reliably. Upload to youtube only works via photos or a third party app and saving via garageband only works when you use share and than select the files app.

Now this bug has been there since the beta of 13 and I even bought a new ipad pro (12.9) and did a full new install in that one to make sure I was not causing the issue myself. But when I posted the problem I was shocked by how many people experienced the same issues.

Now you might say that the iPad pro is something else and the M1 Will be better. But…. If they can’t even get the files app working on their flagship laptop replacement…. What about getting older apps running in a completely new operating system…

Now I really want to like the new m1 because it promises everything we would dream about…. But with apples trackrecord of closing things off and not allowing developers to really dive in…. I do worry about older apps. So if you have some of those that are vital make sure you check it before doing to much work.

I hope we get the printer to work and the screens. Because it’s very exciting to see this develop. It’s a HUGE step forward. And if they do it right this might be the biggest revolution we ever saw in a short period of time.

UPDATE :

Ok that didn’t take long ;(. HP confirmed it’s a big sure problem and they don’t know when it will be fixed (?)

Also the label printer is a dead end. ;(. It’s a shame but we will send it back till they fix this. Except the big names like Adobe and apple we can’t work with this at the moment.