I recently got a new 14” MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro silicon. The base model, nothing fancy. Considering that my previous machine was a 2018 Intel MacBook Air, the base model seemed like it would be totally capable of supporting my development activities. To be honest, the only thing that really was becoming an issue with the Air was the hard drive space - only 128GB.

I had given my wife my old MacBook Pro, a late 2016 model, and gotten my self the Air. Her old computer was getting a bit long in the tooth, a 2008 MacBook Pro, again a hand-me-down. I know, she seems to always get my old laptops, but she doesn’t mind (I hope).

Well, that laptop bit the dust - see Measuring Time in Laptops. The built-in display would not work no matter what I tried. I even took it to the Apple store, and they were like “whelp, it will cost you $900+ to get it fixed”. They didn’t even look at it, or try to see if there was an easy fix. They just looked up how much a replacement screen would cost. Maybe one day I’ll open it up and see if it just a loose cable or something silly like that.

So, she needed a a computer, kind of urgently. I had the Air that I was only really using for side projects and writing. I could use one of my Linux machines (all servers) to do what I needed to do, so I wiped the Air and re-installed her profile and documents to it. Overall she is happy with the switch. She likes the portability of the Air, it is much lighter than the MacBook Pro, but she is not a fan of the small screen.

I managed to get by like that for a couple of weeks, but ultimately, the freedom afforded me by a laptop eventually won out. I enjoy working from my couch, or on the train when I commute. Being tethered to a machine in my home where I have to physically locate myself near it was not conductive to my productivity. I picked up the M1 not too long after that.

My first impression is that this thing is fast. I mean amazingly fast. I can’t hardly believe it. It is almost as if it is anticipating what I intend on doing and is one step ahead of me all the time. Applications start nearly instantaneously. I have not, yet, experienced the dreaded beachball1

The battery life is crazy good. I can go a full day without needing a charge, with capacity to spare. I haven’t gotten the courage to leave the house without dragging along the power adapter yet though. It’s foolish really, I know that I won’t need it but I get nervous just thinking about taking it out of my bag. Too many scars from being caught with a low battery and no way juice it up I guess.

It is cool. Not cool as in trendy or hip, but cool as in temperature. I can actually rest it on my lap (it is a laptop mind you) without getting burned. I definitely cannot say that about any other laptop I have used in the past.

It is also quiet. I know this thing has a fan, but I don’t think it has ever kicked in, at least I have not heard it, not even in a dead silent room. When my previous, Intel based, MacBook Pro got going it sounded like a jet airplane.

I will admit that I have not fully setup my complete development environment yet2, so take all of the above points with a grain of salt. However, every day things like email, web, writing, watching videos, listening to podcasts/music, messaging, etc. it is by far the smoothest, fastest experience I have had with a computer in a long time (maybe even ever).

Only time will tell if there will be hiccups with developing on this new architecture, especially since my target deployment machines are all Linux based for the most part. I am hopeful that most of the tools I use in my day to day development workflow have been vetted and/or ported to this new architecture, as it has been out in the wild for over a year now.

I’ll definitely keep you posted on my development experiences using this new tech.

Thanks for visiting.

  1. I am hedging with the “yet” because I have only had this machine for a couple of weeks now. ↩

  2. I’m trying to focus more on writing than developing in my personal time - see Bootstrapping. ↩