Is your M1 getting sluggish?

Yes - I am actually contemplating a return to Linux.

I can't pinpoint exactly what's wrong, but things that used to feel instant now feel slower and I no longer believe it's just the web catching up (otherwise those websites would be completely unusable on x86). Just a couple JS-heavy pages open make the entire machine unusable (IntelliJ starts stuttering like crazy) and a video call is out of the question, despite me successfully using IntelliJ while on calls using a 12-inch Macbook with an entry-level x86 processor.

I'm not sure if it's a hardware problem (NAND wearing out due to a bug that just thrashes IO constantly?), software (I reinstalled the OS recently just in case) or something else. There's also so much shit running in the background (look in Activity Monitor) that it's hard to tell what's normal and what's not. I think of going back to Linux, at the very least it'll be a relatively simple system I can understand.

I share your frustration daily. I decided to buy the new M1 Pro (16GB RAM) because my old 13' MacBook pro (2017) was unusable due to its sub-hour battery life and unbearable sluggishness. There was always this lag between typing and the text appearing in my editor, which was stressing me out a lot. At first, I was amazed at how fast and smooth my expensive upgrade was, but after starting to use Docker, things changed for the worse. I assume (and I may well be wrong) that something is going on when running Docker on M1 macs.

My recent switch to vim from WebStorm was in hopes of preserving as much RAM as I could (WebStorm typically used 2~3GB of RAM on my machine) to prevent the bursts of slugginess.

Mine still runs beautifully after a year. I guess as a metric for usage:

- I keep Safari open 24/7 with probably ~40 tabs at a time.

- I build decent-sized Rust projects during my day work.

- Standard apps in use (IRC, TablePlus for SQL work, Telegram/Mail/etc)

- The only Electron app I use is Signal... which maybe contributes? i.e I'm avoiding a lot of runtime bloat.

16GB M1 MacBook Pro. I was going to buy a Max but I've heard concerns re: the smoothness of the screen and so want to avoid being a gen 1 tester.

Mine seems to be working fine. I usually have Slack, Discord, Chrome and Pycharm opened. However, when I try to play video games I can see the downgrade in performance. It starts to heat and becomes noisy. This combined with the lack of games on Mac is making me consider getting a windows laptop or trying Stadia.

This is Hacker News...

So you'll need to do better than a collection of symptoms without any analysis to describe your experience!

At least take a look at Activity Monitor, or run HTOP.

Are your Kybrd, Mouse and Audio devices connected via BT by any chance?

Is your SSD full?

Have you got a bunch of synching service installed?

A malware crypto miner? ;-)

But overall, for me, no, none of M1 Macs are getting sluggish! :-)

"Previously Macs don't slow down" ... what magical Macs have you been previously using? /s

Also, check if your HDD is full?

M1 Mini purchased Nov. 2020 -- still works great.

if they aren't getting slower how are they going to make you buy their new ones?

check the health of your harddrive

time to buy a new one! :pPPpPPp