Should I Buy an Apple M1 Silicon Mac Today? Three Options Explored

Our Current Recommendation (as of November 2020)

Not recommended. We currently offer no support for Apple M1 Silicon MacBook Pros.

Why?

• Many applications do not have Big Sur support including Techsmith Capture
• Adobe Creative Cloud is not officially supported on Apple M1 Silicon Macs

IT Services has ordered a couple of Apple M1 Silicon based MacBook Pro models to actually test them out, but we will not be receiving them for a few weeks. Apple is touting some pretty impressive performance numbers, however there are a number of compatibility hurdles to consider, including Big Sur and Apple M1 Universal Binary support for applications and peripherals.

What Applications are Currently Supported by macOS Big Sur and Apple M1

Please refer to our knowledgebase article Support for macOS Big Sur and Apple M1 Processors

Your Options

1. Wait until the early reviews are out from us and various media outlets. Your safest option is to wait for long-term reviews and support from all developers.

2. Purchase an Intel based MacBook Pro. If you need a computer right now purchasing an Intel-based Mac is a completely reasonable option.

3. Be wild and be an early adopter. You will likely enjoy nice performance of the new processor, but you will need to accept that some things are just not going to work properly, and live with an unclear timeline as to when they might be resolved. Unfortunately, we will not be able to support you yet.