Having just received an M1 MacBook Air, I was curious to see what applications would run and what wouldn't.

The applications I've tried so far:

• Betaflight Configurator: crashes with Big Sur but fixed by rebuilding with recent NW.js. This change is in the source code on GitHub, and in the nightly builds (https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight.../releases/) but not yet in the release build
  
• BLHeliSuite32
  
• BLHeli Configurator: fixes for Big Sur in source code on GitHub
  
• DJI Assistant 2
  
• FETtec ESC Configurator
  
• KISS GUI: also crashes with Big Sur but fixed with recent NW.js and 1 other change
  
• TBS Agent X
  
• Liftoff
  
• Velocidrone: runs well; crashes with an external monitor and mismatched resolutions
  
• Drone Racing League (DRL)
  
• ReelSteadyGoTrial: it works but is very slow under Rosetta 2
  

For CAD users, first impressions of Fusion 360 with Rosetta 2 are also good.

Good information.

My MacBook is showing it age. Maybe it is time I look into an upgrade. Not a fan of first Gen stuff, so I might wait. And I wish these MacBooks have more ports. Regardless, the benchmark looks amazing. Are you liking your Air?

(21-Nov-2020, 03:08 AM)voodoo614 Wrote: Good information.

My MacBook is showing it age. Maybe it is time I look into an upgrade. Not a fan of first Gen stuff, so I might wait. And I wish these MacBooks have more ports. Regardless, the benchmark looks amazing. Are you liking your Air?

You're right on the first gen stuff; the next round of Apple Silicon Macs will almost certainly be better again, will have updated designs, and by then more applications will be native. On the other hand, they're already so good. Watching a YouTube video of a base spec Mac Mini playing back, and colouring, 4K, 5K and 8K Red raw files in Davinci Resolve was mindblowing.

I have to say I love it so far. I can probably live with the shortage of ports with the right hub.

I am also very tempted but will have to wait a little for two technicalities. Homebrew and Docker support.
Do you use an external monitor? If so which one?
For what specs did you decide?
Thanks

(21-Nov-2020, 03:08 AM)voodoo614 Wrote: Good information.

My MacBook is showing it age. Maybe it is time I look into an upgrade. Not a fan of first Gen stuff, so I might wait. And I wish these MacBooks have more ports. Regardless, the benchmark looks amazing. Are you liking your Air?

MacBooks with M1 chipset are still in early stages. All the current applications has to be updated to work with M1 chipsets. This process may take years. MacBooks with Intel chipsets are still solid choice. For the time being, you can't take the advantage of M1 chipsets.

I beg to differ.
The M1 performances seem to be so good that even with the Rosetta2 layer to transcode the Intel apps mostly seem to work very well.
Of course native apps will even be better but definitely not a showstopper in most cases.

Unfortunately watching far too many Louis Rossmann and Paul Daniels repair videos has completely ruined my perception of Apple's supposed grand engineering and product design. Not that there aren't flaws in other manufacturers product designs, but there does seem to be a continuing and consistent pattern of design flaws in Macbooks that go back over a decade which they don't seem to learn from, and ones you are paying the privilege of thousands of dollars more for than other competitor products.

(21-Nov-2020, 08:03 AM)rjalex Wrote: I am also very tempted but will have to wait a little for two technicalities. Homebrew and Docker support.
Do you use an external monitor? If so which one?
For what specs  did you decide?
Thanks

Its an 8-core GPU MacBook Air with 16GB/1TB. I'll mostly use it without an external monitor I suspect but it does work with a USB-C to HDMI adapter going to a 1080/60 TV and a 2560x1440/60 monitor (not at the same time).

Well writing from my new Mac Mini with 16GB RAM Take care