If you go online right now to buy a new Mac, you’ll be faced with the following choice: Buy one that runs on the usual Intel processor or one with the new M1 processor, the first to be designed and built by Apple.

Which do you choose?

As you may have heard, Apple’s new M1 chips do run faster, even in the Intel environment for which they were written. This is made possible by the Rosetta emulation of this programming environment on M1 computers.

For this reason, if you ask any computer hardware expert, they’ll tell you to put your money towards the M1 if you’re about to buy a new Mac anyway.

Compared to the basic configurations of predecessors running on Intel chips and other similar equipment, the M1 Macs have also even become slightly cheaper.

But there are still exceptions: If you need more than 16 GB of RAM - for example for complex music and video production - you may not want the M1.

The same goes if you depend on software that does not yet run on M1 Macs. In this instance, you should wait for programme updates or buy an Intel Mac. The latter will still be available for about two years.

The current M1 processor is based on the so-called ARM architecture, which has always been used in smartphone processors. The next generation of ARM Macs will probably have an even more powerful chip with more cores and will also come out with more than 16 GB of RAM, experts suspect.

To distinguish M1 from Intel Macbooks, look for a new symbol on the ”fn” button at the very bottom left: M1 Macbooks now have an additional globe on the bottom left.

 - dpa