I recently picked up an M1 MacBook Pro as I needed a portable rig since I’m travelling a lot for work.

I’m normally a Windows guy, but let’s face it, windows laptops suck and support for them disappears faster than a deadbeat father. So I decided to try a Macbook for the first time in my life.

I figured I’d share my experience so far.

Hardware Configuration:
100% get 16GB of RAM, the current state of Rosetta emulation hogs a lot as I think they’re “pre-converting” to make it seem smooth. Dropbox uses 700mb of ram, a. Empty Studio One uses 4GB.
Get at least 512GB of storage, there’s limited ports and no SD card reader. 512GB is enough for a fair assortment of plugins, and working set of samples.

User Experience:
It’s a great piece of hardware, the display is amazing and running it at native resolution gives a ton of screen real estate to work with on the go.

Performance even with Rosetta is great and probably comparable to an entry level Mobile i7. Though some tests have shown native support to boost performance by 2x.

The battery life is amazing. I easily get 10+hours while making beats all while powering my Atom SQ too.

Warezz:
I’m running legit as much as possible mainly because I want to maintain compatibility with my Windows rig. But for a few plugins that I’m waiting for sales on, Im running k’d. Initially it was a headache and nothing would work - even free plugins. I ended up disabling Gatekeeper and now it’s much easier. I believe Catalina is a bigger roadblock to warez than M1 and M1 plug-in compatibility largely has to do with your DAW in which regards Studio One has been great.

Conclusion:
Overall it’s been a learning experience but I’m very happy with my purchase and think the future is bright for Apple silicon. The only thing stopping me from changing my desktop rig to Mac mini when the m1x comes out is the fact that I’d need to spend $700 on docks and external hard drives which I find silly.

 

I'm not an apple fan, but I've been with mac since mac os9.2.

I have an ibook g4 a g4 MDD, a macpro intel7 16 inches with SDD, also an imac M1, and a windows PC HP.

my user experience is that mac machines are more stable, they get hot like intel machines, power is managed by apple software, so you are acquiring a machine that the manufacturer itself designs for its exclusive software.

My reason for having mac is that I accumulate a lot of equipment, always to use logic, they were more stable than windows, I am a type of logic pro x and nothing works better for the power of the audio tracks in an apple machine.

Otherwise, I would not be with these machines and I would sell everything to have something more stable as possible, in this case the apple machines are the most stable to make music with core audio.

 

Have you tried logic in native Apple Silicon Mode?!
I did and the performance is awesome with its native plugins.
And if you have a CPU hog VST try autosampler
After that remove teh hoggy instrument and play the autosampled in sampler.
Have a look at the CPU
Simply awesome.

I also use StudioOne and its performance is a joke compared to native Logic X.
Besides that i get micro clicks "somethimes" especially with spiking plugins like avenger.
I also got a complete freeze with studio one , just spinning beachball of death.
Heck I had to push the power button !

 

moonlight, what are some good VST plugins that you use but you cannot get as Audio Units? I usually delete that folder contents periodically in case any vst get installed on accident.

 

The only problem that i have with my m1 mac is serum timebomb issue with ableton live, it works fine with logic pro. but when i reopen plugin window in live it asks for the serial everytime.

 

This is my personal opinion, but I despise how Logic looks.
Your performance issues with S1 are most likely due to your interface driver.
I'm running presonus hardware and its all seamless.

 

Other way around here, I prefer Logic's interface over Studio One. I also have multiple FaderPorts which integration was the only thing why I was using S1 at all.

I recentky bought a Behringer X-Touch just to see how well it is integrated with Logic, and guess what it woks perfect as the Faderport with Studio one.

At the moment I don't see any reason to use S1 again, also teh new Sampler and Autosampler are worth using Logic for me.

I shrinked down the number of 3rd party plugins to its minimum, since most stuff comes with Logic. Anyways I haven't found any plugin which comes without a AU.

I have the legit version and it even works natively under logic Heck I can't even max out teh CPU with one serum anymore since Serum has a ~1188 voices limit, and that at 16 sampels buffers size

Anyon with a M1 should try out Logic just to see how natives apple silicon software performs.

 

Unlike windows, macs tend to not require drivers for the external sound cards. the bulk of them are class compliant devices, which means that you do not need to install anything to use it.

 

im a originally windows user, but as you say these laptops are simply great to use, and with this new architecture they are even better.

Now, I feel I must always stress and remind (myself) why to get any given product, that to make great music you do NOT need any extraordinary hardware or specific brand, you are not going to make better tracks with a mac. As long as we are truly conscient of that simple fact it’s great to enjoy nice hardware like this.

one of the for me biggest problems with MacBooks is the ridiculously expensive drive spac, If you want to avoid external drives. The basic models are fantastic, it’s when you need extra space they they finally assault you. Other than that, super nice gadgets.

 

Have you guys heard about that : "Mac M1: Users Report Excessive SSD Wear" ?
Google sure heard about it. It is not very clear yet. https://www.macworld.com/article/33...-ssd-read-write-excessive-data-terabytes.html
That is a pity because everyone agrees , those machines are incredible, even compared to previous powerful macs.

.
Well, that is Apple ! That is why costumers are so angry. They charge you so much for internal storage that is not possible to replace no more !
It's a shame. They could sell macpros for more than 5000€ with a 256Gig HD inside ! I am on mac since 20 years because of the system, but Apple, man !...

 

Never heard of this issue before. That's why I backup everything on Dropbox + 2 other large separate SSD Time Machine Drives just in case something happens to internal memory. Anyway when you buy Mac like me for the past 10 years, you know you'll have to change every 2/3 years to stay on top of your game - including internal memory.

I'm quite happy with the basic M1 I have to be honest, coming from the shitty Intel Mac before it's a great upgrade. But in a year or so I'll get the M1X/M2 with 16 core and 64GB RAM to max out my specs in Ableton, and a 16-inch screen to get more estate as well.