As Apple promised at WWDC20, the first Macs with Apple silicon are here. The new M1 chip comes to both the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro 13″. At the surface, this blurs the line between both laptops even more, and makes the Pro 13″ look like a bad value. But, there are some differences which could make or break your purchase decision, so let’s dive in.
MacBook Air
Design-wise, the only thing that changes compared to the older MacBook Air is the lack of a fan. The power efficiency of the M1 chip makes it so that it only required passive cooling to achieve the great performance it delivers.
Apple is making some large claims for a passively-cooled chip. They’re touting that the CPU is 3.5x faster than the older i7-1030NG7, while the GPU is 5x faster than the Iris Plus G7 graphics found on the old version. All this extra performance comes with no decrease in battery life, rather 6 more hours of battery backup for a total of 18 hours. And as you could guess, the fanless design makes it totally silent. All USB ports now support the new USB 4 standard and Thunderbolt.
You can configure the Air with up to 16GB of Unified memory, 7 or 8 GPU cores, and up to 2TB SSD storage. The base model costs $999 (and thankfully gets rid of the paltry 128GB option), and can go up to $1,999 for a maxed-out variant.
MacBook Pro 13″
The MacBook Pro 13″ gets the same M1 chip as the Air, but with a fan for active cooling. The larger chassis also gives it space for a larger battery. This fan may give the M1 more thermal headroom, allowing it to boost higher and give more performance compared to the passively-cooled Air, so keep that in mind before purchasing. As always, keep an eye out for the independent third-party reviews to confirm my theories.
Apple continues to make large performance claims about the new M1 chips. They’re touting that the CPU is 2.8x faster than the older i7-8557U, while the GPU is 5x faster than the Iris Plus 645 graphics found on the old version. The battery life gets even better due to the additional capacity — for a maximum of 20 hours. This is genuinely game-changing for the thin-and-light laptop space. 18 hours. And as you could guess, the fanless design makes it totally silent. All USB ports now support the new USB 4 standard and Thunderbolt.
You can configure the Pro 13″ with up to 16GB of Unified memory, and up to 2TB SSD storage. The base model costs $1,299 (and thankfully gets rid of the paltry 128GB option), and can go up to $2,099 for a maxed-out variant.
Redefining the thin-and-light laptop
The new MacBooks have changed the way people look at portable lightweight laptops. Usually, you get decent battery life, at the cost of “meh” performance. The M1 chip seems to change that (at least on paper) and give the best of both worlds, and I hope it translates well to real-life usage and scenarios as well. The processor also enables running iOS and iPad OS apps natively on the Mac, which is a huge boon for the target audience of these machines.
The real exciting part is future products. Apple has emphasized a few times now that they’re making a series of chips for the Mac. If the M1 is the least powerful variant, the high-power versions for devices like the MacBook Pro 16″, iMac, iMac Pro, and even the Mac Pro could be game-changing. Those devices might only come out at the end of next year, so Intel and AMD along with the whole Windows platform can rest at ease for a year. But when it does happen, I won’t be surprised to see a lot of Windows users shift over to Mac. Unless the big chip makers and Microsoft push ARM-based software and hardware, Windows and PC might just become for gaming.
