M1 MacBook Pro - 3 Decades Long PC God User Review

I have been actively involved with Windows, in more ways than can easily be listed here, since the 3.1 days, and have had access to multiple PC's for the most part of my 40 years of life. You can search me on these here interwebs, I actively develop for fun, for multiple platforms and devices, and I pretty much use a PC for all that, whether that PC is running Windows/Linux/MacOS in a Virtual Machine or on Bare Metal in multiboot configurations. Now, I have owned Macintosh devices during this time, but only for novelty and information purposes or to fix iCloud issues with phones, but not for any of my technical work. But, still, everything I do or have done technically involved has been for the longest time solely on a PC configuration. It to some extent is a part of me. Also, I don't game on a PC. I use a console because it is superior in every way in my opinion to any super expensive Gaming PC I have ever used. So my opinions here may not be what you will come to.

I recently purchased a refurbished 2020 13" MacBook Pro M1 16GB/1TB BTO variant. My honest reasons for purchasing were from a lot of the hype about it, wanting to test its virtualization capabilities and power delivery, and to be on the cutting edge of the AArch64/Arm64 revolution that is taking place at the moment for consumer devices in the computing realm. I wanted an updated MacBook Pro for under $900, with 16GB RAM / 1TB Storage in perfect condition, and when after a year and half of waiting I found one I immediately pulled the trigger and purchased.

I have used it for about 3 days now, almost exclusively yet not independently from my Dell Laptop PC--more on this later--and I have to say officially, I will probably never go back to a PC for daily use and workflow ever again. The power and the battery life of this secondhand, refurbished device are top notch. I have been running virtual machines using UTM, giving them 4 cpu cores and half my RAM, and having like 20 safari tabs open, iCloud syncing, musing playing, etc, and this thing "Just Works," no hangups, no lockups, no lagging, not hot at all, and the battery not losing power fast enough for how I am using it if you ask me, and I have not really lost much in the way of development.

In fact, when I am not using Windows, I really don't need anything that Windows has to offer. I like one image editing software called PaintDotNet that is exclusive to Windows, but other than that, I don't need it. Visual Studio is a neccessity for some of my projects, but, I can run it in a VM no problems on this device. In fact, other than the poor limitations of Windows 10 arm64, Windows 11 arm64 virtualized on this machine runs almost as well as on my Intel i5 quad core [with 3.2GHz boost running a lot of the time too] on bare metal on nvme. That's right, virtualized arm64 11 virtualized on this M1 runs almost as fast as on bare metal x64 on intel i5 quad core, and unlike with the intel, the single fan on this M1 rarely runs fast enough to be heard unless I manually do so with MacsFanControl.

Windows 10 was the best version of Windows Microsoft was able to deliver, and as time goes on, this will become obvious to most PC Power Users pretty quickly once they upgrade to a new device that comes with 11 natively. Windows 11 is extremely tedious to use, cluttered and pretty to look at simultaneously, and has failed at the tabeltization of the PC in every way possible, while trying to force this without any real reason to do so. Windows could stay just like 10 indefinitely and people would be fine with it, as long it still received security updates and support from M$, because Windows users don't care about a new product every year or new version very often because instead they like what works to continue to work and Not Change, and personalization and modification become so much more capable and mature as the OS only grows instead of changing because the communities around such grow and develop and share the information. This has been shown over and over again with every version of Windows since XP.

The disaster that is Windows 11 is also another reason I decided to switch, or at first attempt to switch fully over to a Mac environment for everything. And, now that I have basically, I find that in fact I really don't need Windows at all unless I am doing specific Windows things like bootloader repair, or like I mentioned before Visual Studio.

I have had to use my Dell Laptop to get to this point however, as I had to find the necessary Windows 10 Insider Devel build to actually test virtualization on this M1, and it was just easier with all that I have already on that device. But now that I have both 11 (just for work purposes) and 10 running in VM's on this M1, I no longer really need my Dell unless I am out working in the field on very niche issues that I would be aware of beforehand. And, I really don't even think that will be an issue at this point and I really can just bring this M1 which is much more convenient to travel with, even though I chose the 15" for my Dell because it is a dedicated workhorse.

Let me give some data to truly define what I have seen in use. In a full, one 24 hour period only, with my battery stating it's full capacity is at 86% when compared to brand new, I went from 100%, installed Windows 10 arm64 in UTM, installed Debian 11.7 arm64 in UTM, got all my personal settings and programs setup in each, browsed the web, downloaded lots of files from my Dell over my network, typed a lot, used a usb drive through an adapter, let it sleep for 6 hours, used my virtual machines and everything else for some time more, and still had 23% left when I plugged it in to charge. That is one 24 hour period. Basically Unbelievable.

I have no doubts that MacOS will probably overtake Windows in the coming years as the leading OS for Consumer Computing Devices, though probably not for Business Devices. Once the mass of PC Gods out there get their hands on an Apple Silicon Computer, and really get to playing with them, unless they are gamers, will very seriously consider and probably will make the switch. As much as I hate to say it because of my history as PC User, these things truly are superior in power and efficiency. I only wish now I would have up'd my budget and got something like an M3 Max with 64GB RAM and 2TB storage.

Apple Silicon is the future.

 

I just want to update this a little.

I am most highly impressed by the capability, efficiency, raw power, and aesthetic design of this M1.

After plenty more hours of use, and simulating my average PC workload on this device, both natively and through virtual machines, and without a doubt, I am done with a PC. I won't be going back, but I won't be ditching my i5 Dell either. Just because it has sentimental value now.

This M1 can do whatever my i5 can, just as quick and quicker, more quietly, and with using less battery power, so yeah, Apple Silicon for the win.

I think others would be wise to look into doing the same, albeit maybe spend more money and get even more power.

I have yet to really play with my music software yet, but I have no doubts it will fly on this thing.

 

oh, and nested virtualization is somewhat working, because WSL is working in 10 Arm64, with Ubuntu

 

Here is an example of the performance I am talking about. In this instance, which is my goto instance to test both file operation performance and processing performance is this:

Code:

sudo fallocate -l 8192m ./testfile
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=./testfile bs=1024 count=8388608

All this does is create a swapfile of 8GB allocating in 1MB blocks.


Here are the individual results:


M1 MacBook Pro 16GB/1TB (nvme)--Ubuntu WSL terminal inside a Windows 10 Arm64 VM with 4 cores 8GB RAM:

Code:

+0 records in
8388608+0 records out
8589934592 bytes (8.6 GB, 8.0 GiB) copied, 65.3213 s, 132 MB/s

Dell i5 quad core 16GB/1.5TB (nvme)--Debian WSL terminal inside Windows 10 x64 bare metal install uefi:

Code:

+0 records in
8388608+0 records out
8589934592 bytes (8.6 GB, 8.0 GiB) copied, 58.2025 s, 148 MB/s

As you can see, the M1, running essentially the same software but within a Virtual Machine is not far behind my intel i5 quad core installed on bare metal much better storage than the soldered storage of the M1, and it is a whole 7 seconds behind the i5, but with the Virtualization that is going on and writing to a virtual disk that is spread over multiple files, the M1 proves superior. Those 7s are so negligible that it seems stupid to even use my Dell now.

A Real Powerhouse honestly.

 

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I haven't investigated it much, but I think the MicrosoftWindowsUnlockedDevKit_cw5n1h2txyewy included in the image has something to do with it.

it has 4 different architectures in the Windows dir too. system32, sysWoW64, sysArm32, SyChpe32.

not sure really.

I am about to try a manul install of the wim from 10 22h2 and see if it just is an error in the installer.

 

I can confirm a manual install dism applying the wim from 10 22h2 or earlier and booting does not get past the unhandeled expception bsod at boot

there must a bad driver or something compared to this insider build. i think it is strange that "someone out there" knew this Insider Image 21390.1 worked on arm for sure. must be kind of M$ development driver present or something. I just really don't know.

What I do know is the x86/x64 emulation layer works perfectly so nothing else really matters to me.

 

It didn't work...

I will keep investigsting in my free time though

 

negative.