Apple’s M1 Macs

The latest releases from the Californian titans are the first to use Apple’s new self-produced chips. How does that affect musicians?

>Major product announcements from Apple tend to generate a full spectrum of responses, from rabid fandom excitement to angry dismissals (we can practically feel the eye-rolls from PC users wondering why we’re devoting column inches to this). But however you feel about the brand, Mac and iOS hardware, as well as Logic and GarageBand, remain popular choices for creatives, and significant updates to their ecosystem can have major repercussions for musicians and production gear.

Apple’s latest batch of Mac updates are particularly significant, since they’re the first to use Apple’s new self-produced silicon M1 chip, as opposed to third-party chips from Intel. What does that mean in real terms? Well, according to Apple, these new M1 Macs can deliver up to 3.5x faster CPU, 6x faster GPU and up to 15x faster machine learning capabilities. Additionally, battery life on the M1-powered laptop models is said to be up to twice as long.

Silent and deadly?

Three Macs are available with the new chips so far. The new MacBook Air contains an 8-core CPU and up to 8-core GPU, and as there’s no fan inside, promises to run in complete silence. There’s a Retina display, and two Thunderbolt ports with USB 4 support. Prices start at £999.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro appears to have similar raw specs, though it does have an ‘active cooling system’. What’s more, it seems that you’re stuck with just two

Thunderbolt ports, rather than the four you get on the higher-end Intel-powered 13-inch MacBook Pro. Prices for this one start at £1,299.

Finally, there’s the Mac mini

– still a dark horse for music production use, and a good option for those who already own a keyboard/monitor. Once again, you’re looking at an 8-core CPU/GPU M1 chip here, with Apple claiming that you can use up to three times more real-time plugins in Logic Pro (presumably when compared to the previous model, although Apple are often vague with these claims). Again, there are two Thunderbolt/ USB 4 ports, plus two USB-1 ports. The Mac mini starts at £699.

There are implications regarding which of your existing software applications you can use, however. These new M1 chips will require developers to create new universal versions of DAWs and plugins in order for them to be natively compatible. Fortunately, in the meantime, older versions of software can be run within the M1 system using Apple’s Rosetta 2 tech, and early reports seem to indicate that the process of running legacy software is pretty seamless.

Are we compatible?

Unsurprisingly, Apple’s own Logic and Garageband are already good to go. Logic 10.6 arrived in the past few weeks, bringing full optimisation for the new M1 silicon Macs along with several other improvements, including usability improvements for Live Loops, Step Sequencer and the new Sampler.

One interesting and potentially very significant side effect of Apple

THIS COULD OPEN UP A WHOLE NEW WELL OF CREATIVE TOOLS

moving to these M1 chips is that, since they’re based on the same technology found in iPhones and iPads, it means that Mac users can now run iOS apps within macOS. Given how powerful and, most significantly, affordable iOS synths and effects are, this could potentially open up a whole new well of creative tools for music making. We’re yet to see or test how this will work out in practice though.

The other factor to consider is that, alongside these new Macs, Apple have unleashed a new operating system – macOS Big Sur – which will come pre-installed on any new M1

Mac and brings its own compatibility issues. As ever with major OS updates, there will probably be bugs and quirks that will likely be ironed out quickly. More pressing still is the fact that many music software developers will need to update their applications in order for them to run smoothly.

At the time of writing, several major brands including Steinberg, Reason Studios, Native Instruments, Universal Audio and Slate Digital are warning users against updating yet – although updates may have addressed these issues by the time you read this.

M1 to watch…

These cautionary notes aside, however, early reviews from (mostly non-music making) reviewers have been very positive about the power and battery life of these new Macs. Some potential misgivings around the range of I/O ports aside, once the compatibility issues settle down – which they will, hopefully within a matter of weeks – these are looking like excellent options for music making. Just be sure to check with the makers of your favourite production tools before going ahead and taking the plunge!