June 20, 2020, the date on which Apple’s first virtual WWDC took place. A historic Keynote in which the Apple Silicon project was unveiled. The third processor transition for Mac had arrived.
Four years later, we have the M3 Chips in a good number of Macs, and we may even soon meet the M4 Chip. Four generations are a enough time to look back and begin to be aware of what has happened in these four years. Some years that have felt like a decade entire if we speak in evolutionary terms.
The M1 Chip, a first generation that is not a first generation
Surely you have heard this phrase: “The first generations of Apple never turn out well”. And in a way it is true. The first iPhone, the first iPad, the first Apple Watch and even the first Apple Vision Pro. They are all very special products for being revolutionaryHowever, they had and have a lot of room for improvement.
This has not happened with the M1 Chip, in fact, it is a Chip that Is it still for sale on iPad Air and MacBook Air. And if you use it today, Even if you come from an M3 Chip, you will barely notice a difference. Later we will talk about a personal situation that is what motivated me to write this article.
Apple already had a lot of experience in manufacturing processors
Now We go back to 2010, when Apple introduced the first iPad. The A4 Chip was hidden inside it, the first processor designed by Apple. Months later it would arrive on the iPhone 4. Such has been the evolution that now, with the A17 Pro Chip, we can play video games on the iPhone 15 Pro. Who would have thought that would be possible!
Besides, Apple provided the rest of its products with its own processors. The Apple Watch with the S Chips, the AirPods with the W Chips. How could the Mac not have its own processor? It is because of that the M1 Chip is not a first generation; It has been years and years of evolution to achieve a product mature enough to convince the most professional Mac users.
With the M1 Chip we said goodbye to bad computers
Sorry, I don’t want to offend anyone. But if, There were Macs with Intel processors whose performance was very questionable. I have been a salesperson in Apple stores and I was embarrassed to sell a 1500 euro MacBook with an Intel Core M. And if you hurry me, I will also sell a 13″ MacBook Pro with an Intel graphics card. Yes, it was the technology that existed. But the Mac deserved more, much more.
These Macs are still usable; I myself have a MacBook from 2010 and it is still moderately functional. The same happens with the MacBook Pro from 2012, 2016… Maybe even you are reading me from one of them. What is happening? Well, the M1 Chip represented such a brutal break with the processor paradigm that Even buying it today, you would get an incredibly superior computer to what was offered until not so many years ago.
The M1 Chip gave us almost a decade of computing progress in a single year
He MacBook Air M1 is easily found for 899 euros. The MacBook Air M3 has a base price of 1,299 euros. If you had asked me six years ago, when I was working selling Apple on the street, that this was going to happen, I wouldn’t have believed it in my wildest dreams..
I did the experiment of going back to the last Mac with Intel and the first with M1
I have recently changed jobs; Yes, I have come to Applesfera. In my previous company I used a MacBook Pro M3 Pro and when I left it, I had to go back to a MacBook Air M1 for a few days. My surprise was that it was perfectly usable.
Yes, editing video gave me the odd tug. The design was not the most current. But I could work without a problem! No warm-ups, with a brutal batteryand without seeing the famous beach ball spinning around.
Days later I visited a friend’s house, and he had a MacBook Pro from 2020. The latest MacBook Pro with TouchBar. These Macs had the same amount of RAM (8GB), SSD drives, and a “pro” Intel processor. The experience? Of course very different.
The Mac It got hot just by making a video call. The battery, despite being in good health, felt like it was going down by the minute. The performance was not bad, but for very basic use. Netflix, email, Safari browsing… Of course, with the fan always running.
On the one hand I’m glad my friend still has an eight-year-old Mac and use it in your daily life, and also, in a quite happy and satisfied way. However, Inside, I can’t help but think:
My goodness, the beast you would have today with the money you spent
It is clear that Current Macs are not perfect. For example, they still have 8GB of RAM in a basic way. Something insufficient for 2024, as we have already discussed in Applesfera. However, You can buy a four-year-old Mac with the M1 Chip and feel a real revolution if it is your first Mac or you want to renew your model with Intel.
Apple 2022 MacBook Air Laptop with M2 Chip 13.6-Inch Liquid Retina Display, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD Storage, Backlit Keyboard, Space Gray
*Some prices may have changed since the last review
And Apple did it so well, that it seemed to realize
The leap that the M1 Chip represented with respect to Intel processors was so great that In the following generations the scaling in performance has been decreasing. We have gone through the M2 Chip, the M3 Chip and perhaps soon we will meet the M4 Chip.
Partly, Apple has accelerated the pace of updates of Chip M to encourage purchase and renewal. A marketing-first tactic. Feeling that something is old because there is a number much higher than yours. Apple is aware of this, and as you can see the performance peak that occurred with Intel’s move to the M1 Chip It has not been produced again.
And jumping from one generation of Mac to another makes no sense unless your work pace has changed radically. If Macs already enjoyed good longevity, now imagine that an M1 MacBook Air from four years ago works like a MacBook Air M3 for most users.
Maybe Apple should have announced the M1 Chip as the first processor that really allows you to have a once-a-decade renewal cycle
With this article I have tried to achieve several things: The first of them is that sIf you have a Mac with Chip M1 onwards, you should be proud and participate in the best Macs that have ever been in history. On the other hand, if you have a Mac with Intel and you are happy with it, congratulations. But you have to know that there is a world to which it’s worth stopping byand when you do, you’ll wonder how you ever did without it.
You don’t have to change right now; maybe you can squeeze some more time out of your current Mac or Windows. The golden age of Macs began in 2020 and is waiting for you so that all the power of the M Chips is with you.