Slow performance from new macbook pro m1 ?

Hey!

Thank you for answering ! :D

Ref what you said "I just tried scrolling trough the thumbnails on Pinterest and it´s just as you described. Buttery smooth on Chrome (CPU usage about 45%), but very laggy using Pinterest (CPU usage between 25-35%)." You mean buttery smooth with chrome, and laggy using safari (pinterest)?

I´ve been looking for someone with the MBA M1 to share experiences. Im glad im not the only one who is having these problems. Im also a windows guy, been using i5 8400, 16 gb with geforce gtx 1060 lately. Few years ago I had the MBA i5/8gb/128gb ssd 2014 model, and safari was fantastic. I was afraid this was a hardware problem due the new M1 chip, but it seems most likely its a software problem. My gf have a MBP 16" with i9 processor/32gb/1tb and had the pinterest lag in safari after updating to Big Sur 11.2.3.

I hope it wil be a fix soon, but its scary that there isnt one yet. The new apple silicon and Big Sur has been out there for quite a while. Apple claims that safari is optimized with the new chip and Big Sur, so im very disappointed.

I did a geekbench 5 test of my device, and it delivers the power it supposed to.

Again, thankyou!

Jonas

Oh sorry, yes I meant that it´s perfectly fine with chrome, but very laggy with safari.

If this problem appeared with Big Sur and it´s also happening on the Intel machines, I think we´ve found the reason.

I think it´s not that easy to create an OS für x86 and ARM. This needs some time and is part of the jump to a new platform.

Cheers,

Tom

Same case here,

already opened the RMA and got all the papers for returning. Then I tried it a very last time, formatted the SSD and disabled the OS updates. I´m also really impressed by this machine and it does everything I expected. But I´m a little bit disappointed from the software since this is one major thing apple is all about and now that I finally switched from windows am expecting the same, or even worse, issues.

But once again: daily tasks and my editing workflow are working as expected and better than on my windows machine. I´m still using my windows machine for all the vm´s, gaming and heavy renderings. But the MBA makes so much so easy and that´s just what I wanted to reach with this purchase.

Cheers,

Tom

Correct! Ive been a Apple user for years and the software is the main reason why I pay this huge amount of money. You Get a good specced Windows pc for the prize of a MBA. But again the MacOS experience have been worth it, until this day... still have a week to decide.....

Another question. Did you have troubles erasing the disk, and then re-install Big Sur? I had «No users available for authorization”. When trying to install after the format. I was able to fix it in a weird way using the Apple user «tgermaneri» soultion which is following: «I was able to fix it by allowing it to boot into normal mode where it asked me to use my apple account to activate the mac, before I "quit recovery assistant" button (IIRC that's what it said) I chose "Erase Mac" from the menu up top. That took a few seconds, rebooted and I was able to continue a fresh install, this time without the “No users available for authorization” message.»

keep me updated, Tom!

Best regards

Jonas

I´m not so satisfied with the OSX-experience but I´ll hope this will change in the future. The hardware is great, but from this point I can´t say that I would be willing to pay an extra amount of cash just for the software if hardware would be the same as in windows land.

When formatting the MBA the first time, everything went well. But the second time I deleted it from icloud and did everything I should do for selling it. Then I couldn´t create my user because of the weird message. So I deleted everything again and then it worked. I´m pretty good at building PC´s an working with hard drives, partitions an so on but I wasn´t sure what I was doing when setting the MBA new up. But maybe it was because I had some kind of rage-mode and just wanted to return it and forget about apple and their M1´s and my big expectations.

Since I´m all new to apple and OSX there are so many things I have to learn oder just change my way of thinking and working with this machine. Formatting the drive is very different since there are some instances left over the main partition. But I didn´t have much time messing around with that and sure won´t do in da near future while my MBA works as it should.

If I expect something new, I´ll post it here.

Cheers, Tom

The M1 is slow and hangs up on iPad Pro 2000 with M1 and my MacBook air also is slow and Hangs up and doesn't shut down properly. The audio jack is inconsistent.

reinstalling software doesn't help. It is just slow.

I hope there is a solution soon :)

got my mini and same lag issues. how can some reviewers say something good about m1 and we are experiencing the opposite of what they are saying???

i cant even use this for my other productivity tools. lags so much.

i hope i will not regret getting the m1.

i hope fix will come?

I have a 2020 Macbook Pro with the M1 and 8GB of memory. I've read this chat stream and some indicate that there's an issue with only 8GB but not with 16. Others say they are experiencing slow performance even with 16. This new machine is MUCH SLOWER than my 2016 Macbook Pro. I have the macOS Big Sur version 11.2.3. I don't use elaborate apps; just MS Office and Chrome for the most part. Even my Outlook is super slow. I get the spinning beach ball with nearly every app. Very frustrating! If anyone has a magic solution, please share!

Same. The youtube reviews and online articles sold me so much that I thought buying the M1 was a no brainer. I've only had my M1 Air base model and it's already lagged twice. Once when I first installed an app, Spotify, the dock lagged. Second, after I put it to sleep whilst Netflix was open, when I re-opened it, the device also lagged. I had to shut it down for the first time, and I waited a while for the second time because even command+Q didn't work. I hope this is just a new product thing.

i got the mini 1tb 16gb. going to be my daily. but sad thing my apps are not native and it is bad. even the resolve that they claim native is so laggy. or maybe i am missing a setting or something?

oh btw, do you have the get info rosetta thingy? it is not showing in mine.

if you have it, how did you set your mac? is it out of the box?

i also tried the ones they suggested using the terminal and i still cant see it.

feels like a bubble.

Mine unfortunately also gets slow from time to time. most problems are with finder an especially using the lan connection with a dongle. Also some programs like Microsoft Word (newest version, apple silicon native) take forevery to start. Even if the system is not checking the app before opening is, it sometimes takes more than 10s so start. While photo editing works really well, basic office stuff is struggeling a lot.

Yesterday I made the update to Big Sur 1.3. Despite the updates seemed to make it worse in first place, I´m hopening for performance increase this time.

what a crazy bad experience i had !

long story short :

got my mini base model, fast performance in PS and overall

new update (cant remember the version, currently on latest 11.3.1) then ALL goes to **** ! very laggy and slow in ALL apps.

talked to apple phone call for almost 2 hrs !

returned to apple to reinstall the big sur as the call center couldnt figure out !

it was fast again !

another update ( 11.3.1 )

again goes to **** performance !

was planning to get pro for my workstation but i just wait for the next upgrade M2 maybe !

(but again i wont buy it unless im sure it wont give me a headache similar to this !)

I've got exact same issue on the M1 13" MacBook Pro. Worst apps are the Adobe Suite which ran great on my top end 2018 MacBook Pro. I (maybe foolishly) swapped from that one to this based on crazy GeekBench scores but I'm thinking the Apple Sales guy's promises that an 8GB M1 MacBook Pro would be more than sufficient compared to my 32GB MacBook Pro.

It takes up to a minute or more to simply open Adobe Premiere as well as other adobe apps. Can't even do any basic editing in Premiere cuz its excruciatingly laggy and delayed (even with just 1/8 resolution for playback). Haven't even bothered trying Adobe After Effects cuz can't imagine how delayed it would be with rendering.

Scary thing is more simple apps like native Safari or the Brave browser seem to be a little laggy.

Crazy and frustrating.

I´m on 11.3.1 right now with my MBA and lucky me, I didn´t have any performance issues like I had with the first updates. One big problem is the connection to my Synology NAS. Finder is very laggy from time to time. I´ve never had any issues with Network Shares with any of my PC´s or laptops running windows no matter how weak their CPU was. Also with old Wifi standards network folders with content were showing instantly (opening or copy was an other thing despite the 54Mbit-connection but the content did always show in proper times).

The M1 MBA sometimes is just loading and loading and even after a few seconds, I still have no clue if there´s some content in that folder. Very annoying. Got my new OWC Thunderbolt 3 pro dockingstation today and connected it to my NAS with 10GbE. When ejecting the network shares after using wifi and reconnect it with enabled 10GbE, the connection seems fine. But browsing throw folders is still very slow compared to my Windows workstation.

Opening apps also isn´t very fast. Resolve or Word for instance take much longer than on my Windows workstation an even my old Dell laptop with only a dual core i5 from 2013 and an SATA SSD.

Browsing the web with the M1 is very snappy. In direct comparison with my Workstation it´s definitly faster, but I never had any problem with the Windows machine, neither I´m having now when I use it side by side with the M1. So it is faster, but not that big of a deal.

I really love my MBA with the M1, but there are still some tradeoffs that I will have to live with. Maybe some things are fixed in future updates.

Cheers,

Tom

Apps that have yet to be converted to M1-code will be visibly slower -- exactly when they are launched for the first time -- as a portion of their Intel-code is translated by Rosetta into M1-code on first opening. This will be reduced as more Apps are offered in Universal-binary form, which offers Intel-code and M1-code in one package, and selects at run-time.