A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I ordered an M1 MacBook Air for my wife to replace her broken 12" MacBook. The good news is that her MacBook Air arrived last week. The bad news is that I mistakenly ordered the wrong keyboard layout. She wanted the English (USA) layout, and I apparently ordered the Japanese (JIS) model – oops. So, we returned that one, and Apple’s sending us a new one with the correct keyboard layout. It’ll arrive sometime in mid-December.
Beyond that, I also ordered a Space Gray M1 MacBook Air for myself. After watching pretty much every YouTube review on it, I could no longer resist. To be fair, it wasn’t exactly an impulsive buy – at least I don’t think so – because I think it’ll have a positive impact on my workflow and efficiency.
Right now, I’m using a tricked out 2019 16" MacBook Pro.
- 2.4 GHz 8-core Intel Core i9 CPU
- 64 GB RAM
- AMD Radeon Pro 5500M CGPU
- 4 TB SSD
The M1 MacBook Air I ordered has the following specs.
- Apple M1 Chip (8-core CPU/8-core GPU)
- 16 GB RAM
- 2 TB SSD
According to the various benchmarks floating around the Internet, the M1 chip in the new MacBook Air outperforms or matches the Intel Core i9 chip in my 16" MacBook Pro. I can’t get over how absurd that is!
The two other notable differences between the two configuration are 64 GB vs. 16 GB of RAM, and 4 TB SSD vs. 2 TB SSD. The music production work I do, or used to do, does often consume a considerable amount of RAM. However, Apple’s new unified memory seems to be a new take on RAM, so I’m not sure if it can be compared to traditional RAM in Intel MacBooks at a 1:1 ratio. In other words, I thik I’ll be fine with the 16 GB of RAM in the M1 MacBook Air.
At the moment, I’m using ~2.2 TB of storage on my MacBook Pro. I think about 500 GB of that is from old Final Cut Pro projects that I can consolidate or delete. I’ll probably move a bunch of my music production samples to an external SSD as well since I don’t do much of that stuff anymore. After that, the 2 TB of disk space in the new M1 MacBook Air should be plenty.
My MacBook Air should arrive sometime between 12/20 and 12/27.
Looking forward to sharing my thoughts and experiences!