The M1 Macs: Should you buy one?

The new M1 Macs are definitely deserving of all the hype, they are some seriously impressive chips. But as these are first-generation chips, perhaps waiting would be wise.

The M1 chips have been all the hype these past few months for Apple. Reviewers all over the internet have hyped the computer’s insane performance and benchmarking scores. For a first-generation product, the M1 is remarkable. Even the MacBook Air with an M1 chip seems to overpower Apple’s own MacBook Pro line for computers with an Intel processor. While Intel chips still use the older more complicated x86 instruction set, the M1 is built on the ARM architecture that powers most smartphones and Apple’s own iPhone chips. Even though ARM-based CPUs are based on a simpler interaction set, they’ve grown into powerful chips that can easily handle laptop- and desktop-like production environments. Microsoft and Qualcomm both have dabbled with ARM-based CPUs before, although not to the same success as Apple, and we’ve also already seen large screen implementations of Android by companies like Huawei and Samsung.