MacBook Air M1 chip SO slow?

I recently bought the newest MacBook Air with M1 chip, an upgrade from my very old MacBook Pro which was getting on a bit and had hardly any storage left.


But so far, I am SO disappointed with it - it’s so much slower than my old MacBook and I hardly have anything saved on it yet at all so it shouldn’t be a storage related issue?


Ive been trying to use Adobe CC such as Illustrator and Photoshop on it but it takes me twice as long to get anything done as it is constantly freezing, crashing, loading etc. I’ve heard that the issue here could be that Adobe hasn’t updated its software/applications to run on an M1 chip device?


Is anyone else having issues with theirs, or does it sound like I have perhaps got a faulty device? This was seriously not at all what I was expecting and right now I wish I bought the 2020 version, but thought the newest one would be best. I was expecting to have these sort of issues (lagging, constant loading etc) once the MacBook is a few years old and I’ve saved a lot onto it, but so far I have yet to be able to get anything finished to save because of how unresponsive it is!


Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated! I’m debating ringing technical support too.

MacBook Air

Posted on Dec 15, 2020 7:19 AM

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Posted on Jan 11, 2021 5:15 AM

I have been using 8g m1 air for 1 month and very happy with it. I also use photoshop without any problem. Remember to use the latest photoshop and if it's still slow try the beta version which is designed for apple silicon

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36 replies

Mar 10, 2021 7:43 AM in response to imdxo

I do not think it is a ram issue. I know 8 GB is mediocre but since I already have a desktop that perform well with my photoshop I did not bother even planning to upgrade my Macbook especially since it is for school and just for Blender/Photoshop. The requirements for Adobe Photoshop is 8GB so it should not crash frequent. I am starting to believe it is the M1 Chip since I heard some applications do not support the new M1 chipset. I think it goes slow when you use the regular macintosh intel version instead. I heard they have to convert it in order to make it able to work with the M1 version, so maybe that is the main reason why it is slow. Simply because Adobe Photoshop does not have the Apple Chip version application yet. I currently do not heavily rely on adobe so I just use Gimp, the only thing slow with it is just scrolling while doing your work. I use the side and bottom bar instead of scrolling which is a bit slower and annoying but it gets the job done. It is much faster than Adobe on this Mac. Other than that, most applications I am getting have the M1 support, I personally like the Mac a lot for my needs but I am a bit impatient to fact that not all applications support it making it slow for example like Adobe. All I can say is just wait for it to be more accessible in a few months when more application make M1 Chip support.

May 16, 2021 10:24 AM in response to imdxo

Just to let you know fellows. My problem has been resolved. I can let you know how this will be resolved.


And I can tell you M1 is really really fast. Can say fastest machine available in retail for users at mass scale.


This is a change of architecture and I have read from.majority of software vendors that they are starting to role out arm architecture compiled versions.


And just google about how to find the best software version for M1. As far as dev tools are concerned your problems will be resolved fast. But at the same time I can tell you we are guinea pig who decided to buy this quite early. Its going to take time for vendors to role out a compatible version.

Apr 4, 2021 2:08 AM in response to imdxo

The M1 chips are awful, I bought a new macbook air (MacBookAir10,1 8GB) from apple and they refuse to refund it after attending genius bar and expressing my concerns about how slow it is. Like for like my 8 year old macbook air is almost 5 times as fast when using the following applications, seems apple have made a huge mistake taking on their own chips, mis leading customers that they are super fast when in reality they are up to 5 times slower for my general usage.


  • Chrome rendering charts with jupyter notebooks (x5 slower on M1)
  • Java compilation with open jdk 8 and 11 (x2 slower on M1)
  • Mysql operations (5x slower on M1)
  • matlab (3x slower on M1)


Effectively my nice new shiny M1 macbook air is useless for my main usages, and feel totally rip off my apple and their arrogance that they will not refund my M1 as I should be be using an macbook air with such applications. For an organisation that claimed moving to their own silicon was to improve the end to end user experience, all they have managed to do it kill it dead.


Time to ditch apple and move fully to linux.


Anyone want to buy a 2 week old macbook air (MacBookAir10,1 8GB) ?




Mar 22, 2021 9:28 AM in response to imdxo

It is slow as ****. AndI am repenting that I ordered two of these at the same time. Will follow up with someone on Apple to get this resolved for me or else I will tell all the customers at their showroom to refrain from ordering Mac devices. Will demonstrate the performance of this device to each one of them. Also I am not using 8GB RAM version. I am at 16GB RAM version of macair m1

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MacBook Air M1 chip SO slow?

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