Not to start this blog off with a blatant admission of which side of the PC Wars™ I happen to sit on but… the new Apple Silicon Macs are absolutely the best computers I’ve ever used.
Now, before you go all “Linux on the Desktop is real,” let me explain.
Ever since I got into computers in the 90s, there has always been a performance ceiling to what I was doing. Whether that was playing Oregon Trail or bouncing a 2 hour podcast, I’ve always somehow hit that upper limit on every computer I’ve come across.
There have been beach balls, there have been hour glasses, and oh my goodness have there been kernel panics and blue screens. However, through it all, I persisted and kept falling deeper in love with computers. I got used to the foibles and I found ways around them (or I simply just got up to go get a drink).
I got used to knowing where the celiing was.
I got used to hearing fans no matter what at some point. I even knew what would cause my computer to turn into the audio equivalent of a jet engine.
I was complacent.
Then on November 10, 2020, a year that I otherwise could have done without, Apple introduced the M1. This thing was insane — it blew away almost every Intel chip in Apple’s line (and any other line for that matter).
Apple knew what it was doing too.
They put this chip in their base model offerings — the MacBook Air and the base MacBook Pro. They knew who they were aiming for — the M1 was the baseline.
The BASELINE!
That’s insane — their base line processor was enough to nearly outperform my 16” MacBook Pro with its whopping 8-core i9 and 32 GB of RAM.
To quote Wallace Shawn, “Inconceivable!” But it wasn’t — this was real life and it was a whole different existence.
Me being the person I am, I didn’t want to settle for the M1 (even though it was insanely fast) because I knew in my mind that this thing was the baseline and I knew they had more to come. I was right.
Almost a year later on October 18, 2021, Apple introduces the M1 Pro and M1 Max which are the chips I was waiting for. These things are powerhouses.
For my use, the 10-core M1 Pro with 32 GB of RAM does the trick and likely will for a long time into the future (the M1 Max is mostly geared towards video production which I don’t do).
This is where the love letter aspect of this post hits — this thing is the fastest computer I have ever used.
That celing I talked about? Gone.
Fans? Yeah, they’re in here but I haven’t heard them once. I mean, I barely know when the thing is getting warm.
Open the display — it’s awake instantly. Reboot — you’re up and running within 20 seconds. I haven’t found the ceiling yet and I can even use this thing as an actual LAPtop because it never even gets warm for me.
Also — the screen on the 14” ane 16” model is an absolute dream — 120hz ProMotion is a life changing thing that I’ve had on my iPhone 13 Pro and my iPad Pro, and to finally have it on my favorite computer? That’s a win all around.
These chips are absolutely next level — they’re seeing huge upticks in Enterprise use and even Android developers are turning to them becuase of how fast they are.
No really — there’s a whole post about it on Reddit from one of the Reddit engineers talking about rendering their Android app. These things are the real deal and I am so glad I am here for them.
This is the dream of computing that I always wanted when I was a kid and it’s finally here.
I welcome it with open arms.
— Ryan
