M1 Macbook Air – First Impressions Are…Mostly Positive

Mar 19, 2021

Transcript Follows

I did it, I went out and I bought a MacBook at historically my entire life. 

Basically, I’ve held a bias against Apple and their products. 

I’ve never gotten the idea of why would anybody want to lock themselves into an ecosystem. 

I still don’t have an answer to that question, by the way. 

That necessity drove me to buy this. 

I have a client, they use the. 

Office suite of Apple exclusively. 

So Numbers keynote page. 

Is that whole deal and swapping files back and forth with me using Microsoft Office or even Google Drive? 

It was just too much so I decided I would run out and get just the entry level model just to get started so I can manipulate those files and create them and all that kind of stuff without all this back and forth that we were dealing with and what I found is kind of like this thing. 

Definitely more than I thought that I would, which is why I’m making the video. 

It’s really surprised me, but also it’s. 

Windows in Windows based laptops or manufacturers like Razer and Lenovo are much farther ahead than people realize. 

Now, of course, from the outside perspective, this is gorgeous. 

There is nothing about this that I can complain about other than the outside being a little too sharp. 

Their cut very sharp and you’re not going to get cut or anything like that. 

But it doesn’t make holding it very comfortable. 

So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been holding it from the back like this as I walk, and that does seem to help. 

I’ve been doing. 

 

But if you wanna hold it on the sides, it’s just too thin and too sharp for my comfort level. 

Now of course you can use a sleeve or a bag and problem solved, but a lot of people grab your laptop and move it from spot to spot. 

It’s part of the advantage of having a portable computer, so there you go with that. 

Now. 

Other than that you know the the keyboard. 

The trackpad are all awesome displays, nice and sharp. 

The bezels are quite large now. 

What other manufacturers do with their 16 by 9 ratio displays? 

Is they have a bigger forehead? 

Sorry, a bigger channel, smaller forehead Apple does the opposite, so you’ll find that the change is not quite so obnoxious of a bezel, but the top is now, regardless of what you think about that, the side bezels are definitely larger than on any other laptop. 

I’ve tested in a couple of years, so that’s a problem. I’d love to see Apple address and I’m sure they will, but hey, they’ve got an age old design that people resonate very well with, and when I put this next to my friends MacBook Air from 5-6 years ago, it looks pretty much the same. So I guess there’s something good about that, but for me, somebody who likes to have choice. 

That’s where Windows machines Excel. 

Now for IO you get 2 Thunderbolt four ports in the head. 

Phone Jack Apple retain the headphone Jack. Way to go Apple and there’s also a fingerprint reader on the inside so you have that and the webcam is pretty decent quality, which surprised me. The speakers and microphone also quite good. Somebody that I don’t understand is why everyone is raving about the performance of even this particular build. The 256 eight gig M1 on the Mac book Air, which is fanless by the way. So it’s all passively cooled. 

Which can affect performance. 

My 8 gigabyte razor Portia Rs which is an Ultrabook 14 inch outperforms this thing and just day to day activities. 

Opening word, opening, Excel, opening. 

Microsoft Teams edge all those types of applications open faster in Windows. 

Now you can definitely make the argument that Microsoft Office suite is optimized for Windows Machines. 

I would imagine that it is better optimized for Windows, right there it is for Apple, but I’m trying to give you this perspective. 

As somebody who primarily uses Windows or an historically is used Windows but is now in a position where. 

At least for a portion of my day I’m in the Mac ecosystem and I’m sure there are a lot of people out there that have to deal with that, or choose to deal with that. 

So I’m going to do a full work up on this, but the number one thing I want to call out is beautiful design. 

Not as awkward of an OS as I remember it being and performance is. 

It’s fine, but it’s not quite what people I think are rating about it. 

There’s a lot of Cinebench and in different PC mark and all these different benchmarks floating out there that just blow away the 11th Gen Intel processors, but the actual day to day use for somebody like me it’s a hair slower. 

To be free. 

Now one more thing, battery life. 

Battery life is unbelievable. 

I’ve never used a laptop. 

That’s this power efficient before and one of the coolest things about this is that even after an overnight, you know I go to bed. 

I wake up in the morning. 

I can lift the lid and it is instantly on like a cell phone. 

The display turns on before I’ve even gotten a chance to see the display, right, you know. 

As I lifted up, very impressive and the battery life. 

Despite that standby capability is insanely good. 

There was one morning where I was drinking my coffee and doing some light work. 

You know, mostly browsing in. 

You know browser work, Microsoft Word type work, outlook was open. 

I was doing some outlook email. 

And in 90 minutes I lost 1%. Not a joke, so I don’t know how they do it. I don’t know what’s going on. It seems like magic. And yeah, Apple, you’ve earned my respect with that capability and this is I’ve even tested the razor Book 13 which supposed to have good battery life, didn’t have nearly as we better life is this. Now there is my Portia Rs which. 

It does have really good battery life. I’ll get you a full review soon, I promise. Let me know what you want to see, what you want to know is somebody like me. If you’re in this position, what do you want to know about what it’s like to use the M1, MacBook Air or just Mac OS in general? And I will give you that feedback, thanks. 

 

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