Apple MacBook Air with Apple Silicon M1

This is a Post in Progress. I’ll update whenever I learn more.

Learnings from a Ubuntu user that wants a fanless solution and beautiful screen.

Why did I want this?

  • Fanless is just so nice
  • Meet, Zoom, … all these are killing my Ubuntu machines when sharing screens and doing fancy stuff
  • My desktop machine (an Intel NUC) has come of age and needed a replacement/upgrade.

Like

Before the negatives, there are some things which are great.

  • The keyboard is nice (no magic toolbar)
  • Many things are rather fast
  • Physical headphone jack
  • Amazing sleep/start up
  • Amazing battery
  • Speakers are really good, not like on the Pro but still really likeable and almost too good to provide “background noise/radio” while working.
  • Rosetta seems to work rather well (but really solves one problem by creating another, see Python below)

(Yes, “Amazing” is not an absolute, but a very subjective opinion.)

DISlike

Python2.7.16

Yes it’s true - Apple Ships Python 2.7.16 as the interpreter, although that was sunset over a year ago!

  • Ansible?
  • Want Python3 as main interpreter?
  • Want to only have ARM wheels?

DON’T! It’s a mess. You soo easily end up with some wheels from your interpreter running “as” x86, and some “as” arm. Jikes.

No USB-A port

The USB-A universe is just so ubiquituiuos and prevalent … Lots of new prefererals needs to be bought. The two USB-C ports

Window Management, Workspace management

Yes this a pain. Rectangleapp.com helps for windows, but creating workspaces is still a pain. The second monitor (anyone that isn’t “primary”) is always fixed.

Moving windows with Meta + click: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/365860/400142

Resizing windows with Meta + right-click: Not Yet Found.

Sloppy focus: No Good Solution found.

Biggest pain: ARM

Want npm/nvm?

  • https://github.com/serverless/serverless/issues/8696
  • https://github.com/nodejs/build/issues/2474

Want Homebrew to manage packages for you?

  • https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/7857
This work by Fredrik Wendt is licensed under CC by-sa.