Sunday, April 25, 2021

Review: Apple MacBook Air M1

Inna purchased the latest Apple Macbook Air M1 with 512GB SSD in silver from Costco.com for my delayed New Year's present. It was on sale for $1099 ($100 off) at Costco.com and was an excellent choice. 

I asked her to delay the purchase as I hoped Apple would release their Apple 14" or 16" Macbook Pro with an M1X or M2 CPU, but the release of these next-generation laptops was getting delayed.

When I first powered on the Macbook Air, I tried to update OS X 11.2.3, but it got stuck. I had to reboot the Macbook, and then it completed the update. However, I found that Cryptomator would crash the Macbook whenever I tried to create new files. There is a software bug in OS X that Apple has not fixed yet.

Today, April 28, I updated my Macbook Air to the latest OS X 11.3 Big Sur, and this Cryptomator bug has been fixed!


Apple MacBook Air M1 Scorecard

Highlights

  • $1099 price at Costco for the 512GB SSD model
  • Light
  • Thin
  • Silent
  • Excellent Keyboard
  • Long battery life (15 hours)
  • Fast

Lowlights

  • 2 USB-C ports only (no other USB ports or SD Card slot)
  • Only 8GB of RAM
  • The screen is not as bright as the Macbook Pro's
  • The majority of released software is not optimized for Apple's M1 CPU (ARM CPU)
  • Random operating system crashes (Finder)




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