After a slightly awkward dialog at the shop where I had to clear up whether I was looking for “training” or “trade-in” (

A somewhat less important positive change for me was the presence of the physical escape key, alongside the touch-bar — which I myself like and use quite a lot, but objectively, it’s not seen as the invention of the decade. The only occasion where the lack of Function Keys messes with my workflow is toggling VoiceOver via Cmd F5, which I now do via mouse or trackpad, though in fairness I could always remap VO to other keys in the keyboard settings.,Before I answer that question, I think it’s worth looking at the larger picture — does it cover all the software needs I have on a day to day basis. I am not planning to use this machine just for development. The goal here is to end up using this machine for everything other frying eggs and keeping my coffee hot which I now cannot, because this machine is as cold as Tutankhamun.,In terms of checks, it was a quick cosmetic test to look for scratches or dents, a visual integrity check of the keyboard and the presence of the charger, whether the machine was set back to factory defaults, and if the touch-pad worked. I feel the whole process took less than 60 seconds. To my surprise when I asked if these machines end up on the refurbished store, I was told that they will actually be taken apart for parts and the aluminium chassis recycled into new machines — because it helps the environment. I suppose, though I still think reselling a completely operational machine is more environmentally friendly than the aforementioned approach. But hey, who am I to argue with Apple? I was just happy to get a good valuation for my MacBook Air, and get a Pro M1 for 890 bucks (tax included)!,Benchmarks aren’t something that overly excite me, but give the people what the people want, right? So here goes the obligatory screenshots of numbers that may or may not mean much. If you would like to see a comparison between my 2018 15' MacBook Pro and the Pro M1, you can check it out on Geekbench. Long story short, every score is pretty much either double or more on the Pro M1.,I think the first important point I have to make in hopping on the M1 bandwagon, is that I might have not done it, have I not had the option to trade in an existing device. In Ireland — to my knowledge — trade-in options that offered more than just the usual Apple peanuts recycle value, have not existed before, so I was excited just by the mere fact of experiencing handing over something old for something new.,touch-bar — not so much because I like it, but rather the fact that I am a developer, so being able to test these features, and develop for the touch-bar more reliably, made sense.,While some might argue it’s not exactly a design perk, but more of a holistic architecture side-benefit, I think it’s worth mentioning that the Pro M1 is not only silent, but cold. Yes, cold and MacBook Pro in the same sentence! For the first time in history, I think… Not old enough to remember the old PowerPC models, but from what I hear, they were worse than the current Intel chips. While I have been using this machine for three days straight now, I have yet to hear the fans come on or feel any heat radiating off the chassis.,I was very curious to find out what gets inspected on the old device, how quick the process was and how the valuation happened. The only other similar experience I had in the past, was via CEX, which while still a viable option, it suddenly felt a lot less practical. Not only do they offer a little less money than my local premium reseller, CompuB for your device, it also takes a few working days for the money to reach your bank account. I urge everyone to compare what they’d get via an Apple affiliated trade-in or some other independent shop, before jumping the gun. In my case, CompuB offered 25 bucks on top of what CEX would have and it was an instant process as well.,My main browser is Chrome, but that’s mainly because I am a developer. Then I have a few secondary browsers such as: Firefox Developer Edition, followed by Safari and Tor Browser (which technically is still Firefox). Brave and Edge for Mac, I keep around out of sheer curiosity. Based on my tests, they all work, and I have not experienced any installation issues either, but worth noting that only Chrome and Safari have native support for the M1 chip. All the others run under Rosetta 2.,I genuinely want to attempt to make the M1 machine my primary daily driver and development machine, be that web, Flutter or native. If it pans out as I hope it will, that leaves my 2018 MacBook Pro 15' available for trading in for potentially an Apple Silicon iMac or iMac Pro in 2021.,All the scores I could generate were 100% consistent with findings published earlier by major sites. If you’d like even more detailed results, I urge you to check out Rene Richie’s video or ZoneOfTech’s own results.,No matter how much the Linus and the Louis Rossmans of the world complain about the unchanged design of the M1 machines, I found the lack of change in this regard, comforting. Yes, it’s the same ol’ slab of aluminium we’ve been used to for a few years now. I for one am perfectly happy with the design and build that stayed virtually unchanged since 2012, with the introduction of the first ever Retina MacBook Pro, which I owned thanks to my best buddy Andrew Gribben.,The one important change I was though happy about, was the keyboard, as it’s now the same reliable one they brought back in mid 2019 or so, using an improved version of the very familiar and beloved scissor mechanism. No more butterfly bullshit! What were they thinking?!?,I prefer to prepare my own meals — so switching over to keto recipes was reasonably painless for me. I bought some ground pork and beef for the first time in, like, forever! I found a rich storehouse of keto recipes online, particularly at what have become my two favorite recipe sites. I’ll share them with you here:,I will likely trade this M1 Pro in as well before the 2 year warranty (yes, I got 2 years, as it’s a premium reseller), for a newer model, but until then I wanted to see what’s the most this amazing little new CPU can handle.