Yay, surprisingly my mba arrived today!

The inability for this M1 to work on heavy Excel file really frustrated me. Smooth on PC for 250MB file, but on this M1, its slow to response to changes and almost 50% of the time will hang.

This post has been edited by eikozai: Mar 4 2021, 12:10 PM

excel latest version?

It's not the issue with the M1.

It's MacOS that's the issue.

Excel for Mac - runs terribly slow (on super heavy spreadsheets) on my MacBook Pro 16" Intel Core i9 as well. However, the spreadsheet has no issues with my 3 year old PC running windows with average hardware specs.

The same goes for the entire Microsoft Office app suite for Mac, including Word too.

This post has been edited by shockk: Mar 4 2021, 03:27 PM

I'd say it's Microsoft. They didn't build it to be performant on MacOS. Unfortunately, if you want the best performance, you're just going to have to use a Windows machine or Parallels/Fusion and hope that MS has a change of strategy one day.

Yes, excel for Mac isn't just optimised as well as for PC. I have a 450mb excel file which runs smoothly on my 2nd gen Core i7 PC but runs super slow on a iMac Pro at the office....

Same size file have less crashing rate in my 2013 MBA, although still load/save and response slow in changes in the file, especially formula related amendments.

The crashing rate in M1 is much higher and frequent compared to that.. hmmph..

Kinda agreed the issue is much related to the optimization to ARM MacOS.

Other than this, im quite happy with my M1 performance in other areas.

Been tinkering around for a day, macos is so different from before. Last mac i used was mbp on snow leopard.

What app do u guys use for reading books? ibook is gone and i dont think apple books have in our region. kindle seems not native to m1.

Books is the new version of iBooks. You can't buy books via the Apple book store, but you can import ePubs and PDFs into the app.
Just buy it from elsewhere (need to be DRM free), and then you can double click them to import into Books app (if it is the default).

I put mine in Google Play Books mostly to make it easy to access from my other devices. But the Google Play Book reader (on iOS) is not very good.

This post has been edited by tcwan: Mar 5 2021, 09:29 AM

I actually read on the Kindle app on my iPad instead. I am not too sure but perhaps you can try downloading it via the App Store on the M1 since the M1 can open apps meant for iOS or iPadOS

-DELETED-
Sorry, meant to post this in the Mikrotik forum.

This post has been edited by soonwai: Mar 6 2021, 04:24 PM

Whats the alt browser you guys use besides safari and chrome?
Tried to use chrome but its really consuming too much resources and generating a lot heat also..I tested using chrome to watch some live Twitch streaming on full screen and the cpu reached 100c, while safari only recorded at around 50+ degree on the same video streaming settings.
Safari is no doubt a good browser, but just wanted to know if there is something better outside.

Brave or Firefox are good options to replace Chrome

Just got my Macbook Air M1. I am a happy man now.
Trying to set it up instead of transfer from my MBA 2013.
Still need to get used to the keyboard distance.
Kinda disappointed that still need to delete some items in keychain access in order to unlock from my Apple Watch.

Microsoft Edge

Silly me, i was trying to find the Books app in the mac store but couldnt find it. thought it was region lock. didnt check it was already preinstalled .


Yeah for iOS the kindle app is available, but i cant seem find it in the macos app store.


Im using microsoft edge.

The new Microsoft Edge is a good replacement for chrome since it also based on Chromium.
But I will just stick to Safari on Mac and using Edge on Windows.

When you search for an app, there are tabs at the top which says iOS and iPadOS. That is where you usually download those apps.

Use Chrome. Safari will destroy your SSD. It loves to swap.

Could be your extensions. All kinds of streaming is very gentle on the M1.

I just tested on some random stream at 1080p60.
CPU util 60% (of 800%).
SOC Die temp is 41C.



This post has been edited by ionStorm: Mar 8 2021, 03:53 PM