Mostly Apple's own apps, which already ran great on Macs even before this. Some apps - but not many as of yet - have been optimized as universal apps to run natively on the M1. The real difficulty comes in deciding if the M1 Mac ecosystem is ready for you and your specific needs. We'll continue to test and compare these systems to other MacOS and Windows devices and offer updates to our advice as needed.Ĭomparing the new M1 Macs with their Intel counterparts at the CNET Labs Brooklyn outpost. Note that these hands-on impressions are based on spending just a few days with all three new M1 Macs, so they should be considered preliminary. Read more: MacBook Air M1 hands-on: Apple silicon and Big Sur bring big changes And using that standard, even decently specced Macs from earlier in 2020 just could not keep up.
Yes, benchmark tests are different than real-world use, but at least they give us a standard to judge similar things by. I got a chance to test all three new systems - the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac Mini - those performance boosts were confirmed when compared to the early 2020 versions. By switching away from Intel chips to its own Apple silicon M1 design, the latest Macs were much faster than previous versions, even faster than most Windows PCs.
The early performance numbers proffered by Apple and others looked promising.
