Put it this way, these are the slowest Apple Silicon Macs ever. The next couple of years is very exciting, can’t wait to see the more powerful chips.
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I was planning to buy one of these and then I though that. Next years will probably be much faster, I may as well wait for M2 chips. I know they will get faster each year but being an early adopter isn’t always the best direction. Plus apps will be better suited then.
I am though looking forward to the direction Apple computers are going. I wonder how it will change Intel and AMD too (as well as Microsoft, ARM for Windows etc.)
Or wait a year and buy an M1 on the cheap 
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If it’s your first time buying a Mac it’s a great time to buy, It smokes all but the most top end of the Mac Pro’s
You can always wait and get something better. In my case this is what I’ve been waiting an age for.
I also don’t feel like they’re first gen products that I’m beta testing. The physical hardware has already been proven and Apple have been making ARM chips for years and have been king of the performance heap for years.
I have every confidence that they made the switch now because they knew they were ready.
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A Mac will last a decent amount of years too.
I really want one, I have absolutely no need for it though.
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Another 9 years and counting will do me nicely!
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My iMac is of similar age I expect. I don’t use it anymore, it just gathers dust.
That’s what I wouldn’t let the cost of one put me off, it might have been £1500 but for near a decade of use, you can’t really complain.
So I’ve had my M1 Air for about two weeks now and I’ve gotta say that it’s a fantastic machine.
I know that everyone is going on about benchmarks, but all I care about is that it performs magnificently and is likely to do so for the next 5-10 years. I haven’t had any issues with only going for the base model so fingers crossed the 8GB of RAM doesn’t become a problen, but its been more than fine so far.
I’ve been surprised by how iPad like it feels to use. It is ready to use literally instantly and the battery life is so good that I don’t really worry about charging it. Its nice to just close the lid and not worry about standby time eating up the battery at all. I’m charging it about once a week so far with a an hour or two of use each evening. The lack of fan and heat are also just super impressive. First laptop ever that you an actually use on your lap and not worry about heat dissipation issues.
Two biggest downers for me are the absolutely huge bezels and the lack of a touchscreen. But seem like easy wins but I’m sure Apple will get their eventually.
I’ve now got my eye on an M1 Mac Mini to replace my 2011 Sandybridge model.
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Hope the touch screen never comes, but the bezel issue should be fixed in the new designs next year which is what I’m waiting for personally, as tempting as the Air keeps making itself!
Willpower, @N26throwaway, self discipline! Breathe! 
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the new machine, I’m glad it’s showing that level of promise! Makes me even more excited for the M2 MacBooks next year.
I do think I’m going to need to dive in and grab a Mac mini in the new year though. I desperately need the SSD upgrade more than anything, and now it’s got Apple Silicon, it’s probably the best time to upgrade my home server to a model that will be sufficient for the next decade, and hopefully then some!
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I got my M1 MBP on Wednesday and it’s blown me away. Just using it for light browsing, emails (using Outlook), some other MS Office stuff, Evernote app running, and I’ve not charged it since the day I got it, and its still at 40% now. I’m not pushing it hard or anything of course, but this is how I’d normally use it in an office when I’d be lucky to get my old MBP to run until lunchtime. It really is running as well as something like an iPad would, and having it instantly wake up opening the screen feels like unlocking an iPad. I know all the reviews said it so I was aware in advance, but even now I’m blown away at how well it works. I think I’ll be using this laptop for years.
I went for the 16gb/1TB option - managed to find one listed in stock in an Apple Store right as I was about to submit an online order for delivery weeks down the line so I felt pretty smug. My old MBP was a 15" so its a little smaller, but it’s not hard to adapt (plus if I’m doing anything more intense I plug into a monitor).
(@ravipatel I hadn’t read your post when I wrote mine, I feel like I’ve repeated a lot of what you said!)
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I never understand this. I get not everyone likes touchscreens but it physically being there doesn’t affect anything for those that don’t want it. But on the plus side they could ditch the touchbar and bring back actual F keys.
Elements of Big Sur like Control Centre, Notifications and iPhone apps also just feel like they’re crying out for it
Can’t wait to see what new machines do look like going forward. I can’t see the Air changing fundamentally but that Mini could probably be the size of an Apple TV.
My work Precision 5550 is 15” and is only slightly bigger. It’s feels like using an iPhone 7 during the time of the Galaxy S8/9.
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For me, it’ll add unnecessary heft and cost for something that will be cumbersome to use and have little benefit in return.
The entire OS would need an overhaul to even remotely work half decent. Instead for those who desire this experience, I’d rather the focus was on making iPad a more desktop class machine.
Touch screen laptops are a hobbled, compromised and cumbersome experience, not just for touch based interactivity, but unless you have two different interfaces dedicated to each input method, noise and keyboard ends up a hobbled experience too. If they made MacOS touch friendly, it would ruin MacOS for mouse and keyboard I think. And having to reach across and touch the screen wouldn’t be pleasant to do, and I don’t see their being much benefit over mouse and keyboard, if any. Even on iOS, the trackpad is much nicer than touch in pro apps especially. But it’s hobbled by iPadOS.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re nearing the point where it’s actually cheaper to have a touchscreen than go out of your way not to.
I’d also wager that the saving from removing the Touch Bar would be far bigger.
I’m not actually asking for an OS overhaul. Simple actions like selecting and scrolling would just be easier and / or more natural in some instances. We’re long past the point where most people just expect screens to respond to touch.
Without putting words in your mouth, it seems like you’re referring to hybrids which pretend to offer first class touch experiences alongside being regular laptops. This isn’t what I’m asking for and I get the criticism.
Again, not actually what I’m asking for. But I’d put money on Apple being able to make it work if they wanted to.
I think the iPad Pro has proven that people are absolutely fine using touch in a laptop form factor. It’s not like you’re constantly holding your hand up. It’s about using both as when each are suitable.
What about the Pencil? It’s not just fingers that benefit from touch!
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I’ve no personal experience with a Touch Bar, but from what I’ve heard from peers, I’d rather have neither, and a slightly lower price.
I get that that isn’t what you’re asking for, but without it, or rather, touch based interactions with the current version of MacOS just wouldn’t be very user friendly. It’s dreadful enough with Windows, and that has been specifically optimised for touch in many cases.
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding what you’re asking for then. I consider laptops running windows 10, but with a touch screen to be hybrids, likewise with chrome books. Are those not the sort of experiences you want but with MacOS?
I disagree with this. I love using the iPad via touch. And I love keyboard and trackpad, but neither really at the same time. They get in the way of each other, and it’s tedious when I’m using a keyboard, and there’s a random element that I can only interact with via touch and not trackpad.
I have a pencil! Used it maybe once or twice. It has its niche benefits, but on a laptop screen? Yuck. Perhaps pencil support with the trackpad, would be nice for signing documents or drawing. But just trying to use the pencil with my iPad in notes right now, whilst it’s on the magic keyboard is so unnatural and uncomfortable.
Here’s the painting I made for you with this setup 
If I may just weigh into this one…
I’ve got a 2-in-1 with work, running Windows 10; I’ve got a MacBook Pro for myself and I’ve had an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil in the past…
It seems that whilst Windows 10 is capable of dealing with touch input, it does so really badly. It handles palm rejection occasionally, it feels rather unnatural and, let’s be honest having half a kilo of laptop attached to the screen as ballast isn’t a great experience.
The iPad is a great touch experience, but it iOS is often flummoxed by web pages that require a cursor or mouse input, whether on the iPad or iPhone. Dropping the cursor where you want it to go is often more luck than judgement. It has the power of a laptop, but not the features. It also lacks many apps such as Final Cut Pro etc
If Windows 10 had a tablet mode that worked like iOS and Windows on ARM was a legitimate competitor then the Surface Pro X would be tempting. If the iPad Pro had the ability to dual-boot into full OSX with a proper mouse pointer, that would also be tempting.
However, a touch screen Mac without the ability to detach the heavy part of the unit wouldn’t be that much better, although they’ve gone some way to address this with the shift to ARM chips, so now you can have a lightweight unit with a full desktop experience, it just doesn’t do touch…yet. Probably because it would cannibalise the iPad market.
I think from Apple’s point of view, the ideal solution is to have a Mac, but with an iPad and sidecar for those situations where touch/pencil is the best option.
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I got a 8gb/512gb MacBook Air delivered today. My other machine is a 2017 i7 MacBook Pro.
Part of my natural workflow is converting videos, so this afternoon I set them both up in Handbrake to convert a 1080 input to a 1080 output with a much reduced bitrate in order to lower the file size. This is actually something I needed to do, and each machine had a different source file, between 80 and 90 minutes each. So I am aware this is not a scientific test. The i7 averaged 31fps, and the M1 averaged 48fps.
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How do the M1s perform with Microsoft Office?
I don’t do anything particularly fancy with my 2016 13” MacBook Pro + 4K external display, but I usually have Mail, Safari, Spotify, Calendar, Messages, WhatsApp, Outlook, Word, EndNote, and maybe Excel open. (And, these days, maybe Teams or Zoom.) So several apps, but no real gaming or photo/video editing.
I’m toying with the idea of trading my 2016 MBP for an M1 Mini 
You’re going to be fine. I use a similar mix and Office is not an issue. Rosetta 2 is completely invisibile to me; I literally can’t tell when something is running translated as there’s just no performance hit.
Once it’s ARM native I assume it’ll be even better (not sure how).
