Apple Silicon (ARM based) Macs buyers and owners thread (1 Viewer)

[DaveF]

Do you have a BackBlaze or similar online backup service?

 

[Sam Posten]

No. I have physical backups I rotate out of state every 6 months

 

[Sam Posten]

Nice nice.

 

[DaveF]

No. I have physical backups I rotate out of state every 6 months

 

[Sam Posten]

 

[Sam Posten]

My iMac formatted the Sandisk 4tb SSD in 3 seconds. The issue must be Monterey or the MBP itself:

It's not super fast tho:

 

[Ronald Epstein]

I am immensely enjoying my new MacBook Pro.

However, I am considering returning it and getting the 2TB model. Have to put more thought to it today.

 

[DaveF]

I am immensely enjoying my new MacBook Pro.

However, I am considering returning it and getting the 2TB model. Have to put more thought to it today.

Is that more or less storage than you initially bought?

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Is that more or less storage than you initially bought?

The 2019 MBP I bought was 2TB

I would have to wait till the end of December for a new machine if I returned this one. I am leaning towards just leaving things alone.

 

[DaveF]

Yep.

My wife is still trying to figure out why m1 Mac runs worse than decade old Intel Mac. Rosetta and memory management and multiple apps seems to not work great yet? Don’t really know. But workloads old Intel could do keep dying on m1.

Finally found others having similar application memory problem. Maybe a Law of Large Numbers issue, unfortunately. Maybe a rare quirk in first-gen hardware. I just learned that it happens when she wakes iMac from sleep. I’ve advised her to turn off sleep. (Sleep doesn’t matter on a desktop and we’ve got “free” electricity from solar so I super don’t care. )

 

[DaveF]

The 2019 MBP I bought was 2TB

I would have to wait till the end of December for a new machine if I returned this one. I am leaning towards just leaving things alone.

And since I’m asking… what’s your offsite backup approach?

I used BackBlaze for years. But I belatedly and begrudgingly concluded that iCloud desktop and documents can suffice as my cloud backup. Need to get my wife on that as well. Dropping BackBlaze will pay for iCloud 2TB storage for us.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

No offsite backup.

I use Time Machine with an attached external drive

I also use SuperDuper for backups that I do every few months. I am not sure SD is M1 compatible, but I am assuming it is.

 

[DaveF]

No offsite backup.

I use Time Machine with an attached external drive

I also use SuperDuper for backups that I do every few months. I am not sure SD is M1 compatible, but I am assuming it is.

SuperDuper is brand newly able to do bootable M1 backups. You should buy a new copy of SD, start with a brand new Erase Then Copy backup. Then set it for your regular Smart Update backups from then on. Details here:

Shirt Pocket Watch

Users on Apple silicon systems with older (pre-2019 or so) licenses will need to either purchase a new license or run under Rosetta.

 

[Clinton McClure]

Finally found others having similar application memory problem. Maybe a Law of Large Numbers issue, unfortunately. Maybe a rare quirk in first-gen hardware. I just learned that it happens when she wakes iMac from sleep. I’ve advised her to turn off sleep. (Sleep doesn’t matter on a desktop and we’ve got “free” electricity from solar so I super don’t care. )

Sleep has long been a MacOS and Windows issue. I haven’t let any machine of mine sleep for close to 20 years because weirdness tends to ensue when it wakes.

 

[JohnRice]

SuperDuper is brand newly able to do bootable M1 backups. You should buy a new copy of SD, start with a brand new Erase Then Copy backup. Then set it for your regular Smart Update backups from then on. Details here:

Shirt Pocket Watch

That's good to know. It did run an upgrade this week. But... why do you need to buy a new copy of SD?

 

[Thomas Newton]

My iMac formatted the Sandisk 4tb SSD in 3 seconds. The issue must be Monterey or the MBP itself:
View attachment 117406


It's not super fast tho:
View attachment 117407

Is that a SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD V2 drive?

https://www.westerndigital.com/prod...isk-extreme-pro-usb-3-2-ssd#SDSSDE81-1T00-G25

The specifications on that indicate that it has a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 ("up to 20 Gbps") interface. Unfortunately, USB4 defines three incompatible "up to 20 Gbps" modes. The USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 one is optional. According to a couple of reports I've seen in other forums, M1-based Macs don't support it. When you plug in a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 drive, the M1-based Mac and drive fall back to USB 3.1 Gen 2 ("up to 10 Gbps"). Yes, even though the ports support 40 Gbps USB4 transfers and 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 3 transfers (both optional), there is no requirement to support 20 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 transfers.

It's too early to know whether for certain whether the M1 Pro and Max have a different arrangement. There is no indication in Apple's technical specifications, one way or the other.

Still, 943.4 MB/s (7547.2 Mb/s) is about 3/4th of 10 Gbps, which suggests that the MBP and drive are communicating using USB 3.1 Gen 2, with some overhead.

 

[Carlo_M]

An extremely positive review of the new MBPs. Except for gaming. To answer Ron's previous question about "are these now gaming machines?" the Verge's review addresses this at 12:27 mark. They don't do poorly, so you can game, but you can get better gaming performance from gaming focused non-Mac Intel laptops at half the price.

TL;DR, The most powerful laptops they've ever tested, and if you're doing heavy video work, get the Max over the Pro. Still not a top-tier gaming laptop.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

@Ronald Epstein @Sam Posten - this one is cool:

I had a feeling what the end-game would be on this video given the fact Dave had recommended it.

Pretty wild how fast the new Pro Macbook is over a beastly Windows PC!

 

[DaveF]

That's good to know. It did run an upgrade this week. But... why do you need to buy a new copy of SD?

They explain it in their blog. They have legacy code problem with their licensing system. You can’t upgrade from Intel-version to M1-version on a pre-2019 license.

You can run SuperDuper in Rosetta if you have the older license and don’t want to pay for an upgrade.

I’ve gotten so much value out of $30 paid years ago, I have no heartburn about buying anew for M1 hardware.

 

[DaveF]

Finally found others having similar application memory problem. Maybe a Law of Large Numbers issue, unfortunately. Maybe a rare quirk in first-gen hardware. I just learned that it happens when she wakes iMac from sleep. I’ve advised her to turn off sleep. (Sleep doesn’t matter on a desktop and we’ve got “free” electricity from solar so I super don’t care. )

Wife called Apple Support. They didn’t have a known solution. But they said that “Application Memory” problems is not caused by having 8GB vs 16GB.

That gets me out of the doghouse for buying 8GB instead of 16GB.