Last week was super busy and I was cranking late, testing a project that would be rolling out for release the next morning. I made some final adjustments before putting an old friend to sleep for the last time. My 2015 15″ MacBook Pro had served me well for years but when trying to awaken it the next day I got the flashing folder of doom.
I tried many things to bring the machine back to life including:
- Reset the NVRAM
- Reset the SMC
- Startup in recovery mode
- Startup in diagnostics mode
Everything was pointing to SSD failure. I had another SSD since I had upgraded mine a few years ago and even that one wouldn’t work. Recovery mode was not showing the drive at all. After losing half a day of a work it was beginning to look as if the issue is connectivity to the drive. It could be as complex as the logic board or maybe the issue is someplace else… I gave into the fact this was not going to be resolved quickly and decided I needed a new machine and fast. My old 2015 was heading for retirement before this but I was holding out for the 16″ MacBook Pro M1 or whatever M chip it will have. I like a larger machine, screen and was leery about having only 8GB of RAM on board. But, beggars can’t be choosers so I snagged the last one from my local Best Buy. I also needed to get up and running quickly, so downloading my image from Backblaze was not really an option. So, I opted to get the HDD version of my data and restore as I go. That should be here later this week.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Out of the box this thing looks and feels great. It weighs much less than my 2015 model and is much thinner. Yes, it is smaller but still the weight very noticeable. The 13″ MacBook Pro is also really snappy compared to my old 2015 model, another plus. I have mixed feelings about the Touch Bar. On one hand having emojis available while typing is kind of nice. I have also seen a few more decent uses of this but overall, I just kinda want my buttons back. The touch pad to unlock is kinda cool but nothing beats unlocking with my watch. However, passwords to sites and ApplePay with my finger is pretty nice. And, speaking of touch, the trackpad is HUGE. I was really concerned that I would be accidentally touching it all of the time, but it doesn’t seem to happen that often.
THE RAM
8GB of RAM… This was a huge downer and the thing I worried most about. I was constantly hitting the ceiling on my old machine with 16GB. To my surprise, these machines do more with less RAM and I have not had trouble with this yet. I am not quite sure how this is possible but it just seems to find a way.
BATTERY LIFE
Everything you have heard is true. The battery life is insane. I left work on Friday and worked on the machine over the weekend several times for maybe 4-5 total hours and the battery is still 3/4 full. For my old machine I had 2 cords, one for work and one for home. Initially I thought I would need a second cord for this Mac M1, but I really don’t think that is necessary. My monitor at work accepts USB C as an input so I may never even use the power supply that came with the machine. For now, it just stays in my laptop bag.
WEB DEVELOPMENT ON A MAC M1
Another major concern I had was how well this machine would do with web dev tools. I remember the move to Intel and parts of that did not go smoothly.
First up, Git
I didn’t have any projects load up yet and out of habit I ran to my development directory to get started.
Top comments (3)
The giant touchpad on my 2020 model does the thing where when you're typing you suddenly find the cursor has moved to another window and you're writing in your calendar instead of your browser. The more reasonably-sized touchpad on my 2015 model did the same. I do not expect Apple to have fixed this if they've made the pad even bigger.
I don’t know how the 2020 one was but it doesn’t seem terrible on this one. But, I also mostly use it docked and haven’t used it as a laptop too much yet.
Yeah, I use mine with external everything too :)