Second Opinion #109: MacBook Pro 13-inch M1 Review

Ryan reviews the wonderful MacBook Pro with M1 chip! It's an incredible machine, but you might be satisfied with a MacBook Air - find out more!

Ryan reviews the wonderful MacBook Pro with M1 chip! It's an incredible machine, but you might be satisfied with a MacBook Air - find out more!

Pricing

$1299 base model with 256gb storage + 8gb ram
$1499 with 512gb storage + 8gbram
My model is BTO

$1850
Includes $200 to bump to 16gb ram
Includes tax

I hope future models of the 13’’ or 14’’ (if that happens) comes with 16GB standard

I think $1500 should be getting you 16GB
I hope the 16’’ model comes with 16GB standard

Display

Size

13’’ screen

I notice the difference between this and the 15’’ MBP I use for work – what a difference
It’s mostly a screen space / resolution difference – just can’t fit as much on here at once

Special features

No remarkable features
I still appreciate the white balance calibration that these modern macs do

Physicals

Look and feel, build quality

Footprint

It’s adorable
It’s not even a MacBook Air
I was surprised, this does not have intakes along the sides like my 15’’ MBP for work does

Weight

Noticeably lighter than my 15’’ model for work

Battery

I charged up to 100% and then used the computer normally until it ticked down to 99%

1 hour 40 minutes

Out of the box, it was at 87%
Through setup and a bunch of installs and compiling Node and more

Down to ~40%

Easily getting through two days of usage

It’s telling me at 98% I might get 17 hours on this charge

Hahahahahahahaha

Ports

Two Type C / Thunderbolt ports
1 headphone jack (it could be a combo jack, but I’m not sure)

Charging

It’s a bummer that the charging ports (type c shape / thunderbolt inside) are only on the left side
At least there’s two ports!

Speakers

They are fine
Get real speakers

Buttons

This is a MacBook Pro so it has a TouchBar!
This model has an escape key

Such novelty
Much depression
The fingerprint sensor for TouchID is in its own separate button, making it easier to press in properly

The TouchBar

It’s mostly OK
I would not pay any extra for it if it were a BTO option

Keyboard

The keyboard is weird relative to what I am used to now
I use a Magic Keyboard (space gray)

The keyboard on this MacBook feels similar, though still different than that, maybe even more firm
It doesn’t have the bottom-out harshness that the 15’’ MBP I use for work has, I’m still getting used to it

I like it overall!
The layout is smaller, which is what I notice most

This means I need to reposition my hands, so I have some hand/arm pain
My left hand is getting the brunt of this right now, it’s slightly more turned in than I’d like

If someone tells me I’m crazy and there’s no difference between the keyboard positions between the sizes…

Performance

Work machine

I think I saturate Disk IO and that bottlenecks everything
RAM saturation might be a part of it too
It’s going to take a while to replicate that issue on this machine
OK, so I push the machine to its limits and I need it to work functionally, reliably

M1 MBP

I have Chrome with a dozen tabs, Slack, iTerm, and VSC open running at 25% RAM
This has not turned its fan on yet for regular usage

It did when I was compiling Node (more on that later)

Instant on is appreciated, we’ll see if it keeps up
Fingerprinter TouchID sensor is fast!

WarGame Benchmarks

Recap on what the WarGame is

It is a silly benchmark I started in highschool and worked on iteratively through college up until I started working full time
The headlining version is the rust version which is as native as it gets
The “score” is games per millisecond of the “war card game”

M1 MBP: 403 score
AMD Phenom 2 945 (Q2 2009): 48

Software

OS

Big Sur is pretty looking!

I’ve enjoyed using the new Finder skin
The System Preferences is a bit strange
Everything else seems fine, it’s some aesthetics changes but nothing notice or nitpick if it doesn’t bother me

Development

Work and hobby time is different but also the same
Macos still initializes git on its first usage
VSC has a exploration build for M1
Brew does not work natively yet, but the Intel process was smooth enough

Brew can be installed though, in M1 native mode, but most packages require local side compilation
This machine is fast but not fast enough to compile Node in less than 10 minutes (with fans running even!)

Docker has working previews, you might need rosetta for some things

https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/apple-m1/ 

Final thoughts

It’s good
Can you work on it?

Invest ~2-3 hours beforehand

Go to your tools’ repos and search for Apple Silicon issues or M1 problems
Search for software you use on “does it arm”
Read on the various subreddits and forums

The 16’’ MacBook Pro could utterly decimate this in performance / battery capabilities
The 14’’ MacBook Pro is rumored and could add more ports, new baseline spec, who knows
Development tooling will slowly fill in gaps, and every week away from release, the ecosystem will get better

Other working types?

Do the same due diligence before buying

MacBook Air or MacBook Pro?

I wanted the Pro in case I needed the fan
If you’re on a budget, go for the MacBook Air
If you were going to buy a MacBook Pro earlier in 2020, then MacBook Pro

What happens when the 16’’ comes out at WWDC?

It will be madness
See you then

Attributions

Free Music Archive: Beat Doctor – Organic (electric edit)

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