MacBook Pro 13″ 2020 (M1)

Introduction

So here I go again. A new Apple product. It doesn’t happen very often.

As it stands I have a MacBook Pro 13″ Mid 2015 and it was the first MacBook I ever purchased brand new! Before that I had a MacBook Pro late 2008, MacBook 2006, PowerBook G4 15″ 2005.

So I have had a Mac before. But buying the MacBook pro-2020, has brought back some memories. When I upgraded from my PowerBook to my MacBook 2006, I made the transition from PowerPC to Intel. I did this rather late as I was a student buying old kit. But I had to make sure that my apps would run, as I had old adobe licenses that I had to transfer. But this time, I am making the transition from Intel to Apple Silicon. This time I am adopting this very early.

Why?

So why am I doing this? Well to be honest with you because my previous macbook has suffered some hardware failures.

I was using my 2015 macbook pro quite happily. Yes it had aged a little. Mainly the battery had gone from lasting all day to lasting bearly 2 hours. But I accepted that as it was getting older. The other problem I had sometimes. Is that when the fan was running, if I moved the machine I could hear the bearings starting to go. As there was a very faint grinding sound.

So one day. About 2 months before I wrote this post. I went to turn on my MacBook Pro. Nothing! The MacBook fired up; I got the bong. But nothing on screen. My heart sank. I then plugged in a display and I did get a picture once, but it was not reliable. Sometimes when I plug in a display it worked and sometimes it did not. So I think the problem is graphics related.

The problem

This was a bit of an issue. Mainly because I had some outstanding web development projects in progress. So I had to get somthing working again. Luckally. I could still use VNC to get into the mac, as I have always had screen sharing enabled. So I managed to get into the machine and backup the outstanding projects onto another machine.

I do have time machine setup to my TrueNAS server, but I don’t run that machine all the time as it is kind of power hungry. I leaned my lesson here. I need to be more strict with doing my time machine backups.

I could continue my projects using my 2010 Mac Mini. This is a very old machine and it is stuck on El Capitan. But I could use it to finish my projects. I honestly found it interesting using this machine. As it was a little slow, but not too bad. I did replace the 500GB hard drive for a 256GB Western Digital Green SSD and this made the world of difference. I left the 4GB of ram as I did’nt need to change this out.

Choosing a new mac

This is always a ticky choice to make and this time was no different. In 2015 when I got my last MacBook. didn’t have much choice. There was not many options. There was the MacBook Air or the MacBook Pro. At the time the MacBook air was not very popular. It suffered its own issues, that I wont digress into here.

This time it has harder. I had the same options. The MacBook Pro or the MacBook Air. Again there was no standard MacBook option as Apple seem to be killing this off and bringing it back all the time.

I very nearly went with the MacBook Air this time, as the reviews where so good. The entry level MacBook air is almost identical (spec wise) to the current MacBook Air. So I was quite happy to just purchase this. However somthing kept sliding me to the MacBook Pro.

It might just be because I have been a MacBook Pro user for so long. The only real-world difference between the two machines is the active cooling and the touch bar. The touch bar does not bother me too much. I have never had one before so I would not miss it. However the active cooling did worry me a bit.

I work in theatre. So my MacBook would be sometimes working so very hard. I use a lot of 3D visualization and even sometimes I use QLab on my MacBook to run projections during performances. So for these reasons I wanted the added option of a cooling fan.

So I chose the MacBook Pro. Now for the rest of the specs. This was very easy. I don’t need anything more than the base specs. 256GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. So that was easy. The next thing to choose was the colour. Sounds like a simple question. But I am going to be stuck with this for years, as I don’t buy new machines very often. I had 3 options: Gray, Silver and Gold. Gold was ruled out right away, I didn’t like the look of it. But that left the Gray and Silver. I could not make a choice. So I got my partner todo it for me. She chose the Silver. So I ordered it.

Ordering

I ordered the MacBook Pro 2020 with M1, 8GB Ram and 256GB storage in Silver from Currys/PCWorld in the UK. So I bet a few of you readers are now going mad. “Why didn’t you just buy it from the Apple store?”. Well because I had quite some high value in gift vouchers to spend. So I got money off.

Here is what I ordered: https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/apple-macbook-pro-13-3-2020-m1-256-gb-ssd-silver-10216306-pdt.html

The wait seemed like so long. The only citisum I had was that online, it said it was in-stock. So I ordered it click-and-collect from my local store (it was closed due to the Coronavirus pandemic) thinking I could just get strate in my car and go and get it. As it did clearly show it was in-stock. So now I had to wait over the weekend. Not a problem but I was very exited for my new Mac. But I was a little annoied because it was in-stock, but I quickly found out that this was not the case. It just ment that Currys had them in their wearhouse.

When I got the notification that it was ready for collection I waisted no time in going to collect it.

It was here

On Monday 29th March, I got notification from Currys that it was ready for collection. When I collected it. I got it home right away to do the setup. It was such a nice unboxing and setup experience, Once setup I installed my most used apps and got the MacBook to name a few:

• NordPass
• Firefox
• Microsoft Office
• VS Code

The experience

The MacBook Pro, is such a plesure to use. I think the worst experience I ever had was the 2006 MacBook, it was so hard to use for long periods of time as the hard edges where quite sharp and after a while it gave a nice red mark on the rists. But this machine was a deam. The MacBook Pro is so ergonomic to use I found myself wanting to use it so often. The trackpad is very large and makes navigation very quick and officent. The keyboard is so nice to type on, probably the best I have ever had. I was worried about this after the butterfly experience with the 2016s.

The hardest part of this upgrade was the USB-C situation. I have never used USB-C before (outside of the PSU for a Raspberry Pi). I was worried about the dongle situation as I didn’t want to run around with a bag full of different adaptors. When I purchased this Mac. I ordered a new USB-C hub to go with it. This was a all-in-one job from Amazon, that had. HDMI, 2x USB 3, 1x USB 2, SD card and micro SD. This was made by a company called “Monkin” and I have been put off the cheaper adaptors for a while now.

Having the touch bar is still somthing I am not used to yet. I use it for the odd shortcut here and their (mainly in Outlook). But other than that, I don’t think it gives me as much functionality to make it somthing I could not live without. However, I do not think this is down to me, I think it is because I am not used to it yet.

The performance of the M1 is outstanding. I have never had a machine this quick. Right now I am activly learning Node.JS and electron applications. This is not a particulaly intensive application, but to put it into real world senarios. Compling the same application on my Mac Mini would take 10 seconds, where as I can’t count on the M1 as it is too quick.

Conclusion

I would recomend any M1 mac to anyone who wants a mac. But the MacBook Pro stands out the most as the real power house. They price for what you are getting right now is out of this world.

Apple, Hardware, Tech

April 3, 2021