Apple Mac Studio M1

Regarding moats: it's been said by everyone else, but it doesn't seem like Anthropic has a moat. Everyone can easily switch from Claude to Codex, OpenCode, Pi, or any of the other zillions of harnesses. They can even have Claude do the migration for them if they want and it will oblige – that's what I did when I canceled my Claude subscription. The idea that hardware and compute is their moat is interesting, but open/local models become more capable each week. As I write this, I have 3 instances of some no-name model working on 3 separate worktrees on my M1 Mac Studio. It was viable for me ages ago, and I'm not an AI enthusiast (I just happened to have bought a Mac several years ago that can run these models). I haven't paid Anthropic or OpenAI a cent since the early part of 2026.

For me (M1 Studio) it works at least as well and as quickly as Handy or GhostPepper, which are considered two of the best. (Turn on with Keyboard > Dictation , works anywhere you can type text.)

Same. My personal laptop is an M1 Air and I also have an M1 Studio desktop. My work machine is an M4, and in "regular" use I can't tell the difference between them.

yeah my m1 mac studio shows no signs of stopping and i can't justify another upgrade until doing so really unlocks something new at a reasonable price (like running local llms that are competitive with the cloud services at a decent speed, which presumably the mac studio M5 Ultras can do with qwen 3.8 but the 256GB Ultra config is more than $10k!)

I dual boot my M1 Mac Studio with Fedora Asahi Remix (native Linux for Apple Silicon for those unfamiliar). I'm far more comfortable and productive in Linux for development, but wanted to keep macOS there for times when I needed it. It turns out I haven't needed it, and I honestly don't remember the last time I've booted into macOS on that system. I like Apple hardware, but the last time I enjoyed using macOS was pre-2010.

I think Tahoe is great on my m1 studio. It’s the first os update in a long time that I actually like. The new design feels very futuristic. And I think I’ll get an m5 MacBook Air. There no better computer deal . Even my m1 computer 5 year old still never has any issue with video or render. It’s insane.

I’m already planning on swapping mine for an M4 Ultra. I love my M1 Studio. It’s the Mac I always wanted - desktop Mac with no integrates peripherals, a ton of ports - although I still use a high end hub to plug in… lot more. Two big external SSDs, my input peripherals (I’m a wired mouse and keyboard kind of guy) then a bunch of audio and USB midi devices. It’s even a surprisingly capable gaming machine for what it is. Crossover is pretty darn good these days, and there are ARM native Factorio and World of Warcraft ports that run super well.

While I don't feel I have enough information to comment about the likelihood that Apple would try to stop the Asahi project, those who are knowledgable are of the opinion that they would not. However, as a Mac Studio M1 owner that has used Asahi as a daily driver for software development since the first release (originally Arch, later Fedora), I can confidently say that I could care less. By running the software I want to run far faster than macOS could on the same hardware, Asahi has saved me countless hours and made me far more productive. And I'm incredibly grateful for this tangible benefit, regardless of what happens in the future.

How much will this matter to (somewhat graphics demanding) end users? I'm somewhat eagerly awaiting swapping out my M1 Studio with the M4 Studio that is all but confirmed to be coming at some point next year... More GPU grunt would certainly make me happy. Even the M1 is a far more competent gaming machine than I expected but I came from an i9/3080 machine so, well, more is more, as long as they can keep it near silent and relatively cool running.

I will say that my M1 Mac runs Factorio like an absolute dream. There is an ARM native port now and it’s really good. It something like doubled UPS over the old Intel binary. One of the big advantages the M chips have is the insanely fast integrated memory, since it’s all right on the die. It’s much closer to ultra high spec GPU ram than PC ram. My M1 studio has 200GB/sec of memory bandwidth. Extant DDR5 modules are under 50GB/sec

Last year I went from an Intel Mac Pro (6,1 from 2013) that I used for 8 years to the M1 Studio. I expect to use that for many years to come.