I'm happy to pay for the electricity if I get faster builds.

My daily driver is a Hackintosh and with the CPUs pegged pulls about 70W from the wall. The two displays add another 90W.

M1 is impressively efficient but there's still a gap for fast, no-compromise workstations.

On a desktop, power consumption doesn't really matter.

But on a laptop, it matters a ton. Personally I prefer doing work from my couch rather than my desk; ergonomics and external monitors be damned.

I don't know how old are you but you might regret that later.

Around 40 years old is usually when you start to pay for carelessness with your body. Ask me how I know ...

100%, everything’s easy in your 20s! ;)

Except finances. :-)

Sounds like you need a better desk/chair.

> M1 is impressively efficient but there's still a gap for fast, no-compromise workstations.

Apple has already said that they are releasing a workstation-class M1X/M2 next year.

The point is that the M1 is already comparable to many workstations.

And yet everyone keeps comparing those and claiming how much faster Air is supposed to be based on a very funny benchmark.

Not sure how power use actually matters when I'm sitting and waiting for things to compile several times a day.

Sure, but his Hackintosh isn't running a laptop chip. 15W X86 CPUs would probably compile that faster than the M1 if the difference from Intel is that small.

Maybe 400W burst with a fast graphics card. Do we have actual measurements from the MBA yet?