So is it true it doesn't have any fan at all, or is the fan just so silent and/or runs only in high usage?

I couldn't really tell when checking my colleagues Apple M1 laptop, there was one "hole" on some side that my colleague throught whether it is an exhaust port for the internal fan...

Anyway, if it is really totally fanless, that certainly is a major plus in my eyes, just showing how power-efficient it is. That is why I like my Raspberry Pi4 as well, as I am able to run it relatively cool with quite high usage, without any fans at all (using an aluminum case which acts as a big heat sink for its CPU, that is all the cooling the RPi4 really needs...).

Naturally Apple M1 is much more powerful than RPi4, so that is not a proper comparison...

Installing Linux on an M1 is only an option if you really hate the closeness of MacOS, but given you're not trapped with the App Store like on iOS, and you have access to pretty much the same functionality (except extreme low level customization...) I don't really see the need for it.

As for the Air, I have the 512gb SSD and 16gb RAM and it runs perfectly. Also, yes, it doesn't have a fan at all and I never even felt it more than a little warm at the base. I saw tests online where it reaches like 75 or 80 degrees (celsius). For the price, is not that expensive (almost the same as a comparable Thinkpad T or X series). The only holes are either the speakers at the sides of the keyboard, the two USB-C ports on one side and the lonely headphone jack on the other side. The Macbook Pro does have a fan, and it is supposed to be super silent.

Regarding the RAM specifically, the 8 vs 16gb doesn't make that much difference except when running games or some extreme video editing workflow, but it doesn't magically run twice as fast or twice as slow, it is pretty comparable. The M1 doesn't use the RAM the same way x86 processor do (like iPhones with half the ram of an Android device yet still working faster and more fluid... well, sort of). If you don't do heavy work, there's no need for 16gb and save that money to get more SSD. Also, EVERYTHING is soldered, so yeah, no upgrades AT ALL unfortunately.

I have a habit of running one or two virtual machines on the side which might make me a "power user" who consumes more RAM. Also, whenever I try to revive some old PC/laptop I have for a new life, usually the first thing that occurs to me is "does it have enough RAM?", not whether it has fast enough CPU or enough cores or big enough HDD/SSD. Usually those other things are not the bottleneck for common use, but the low amount of RAM may be (when considering installing a modern 64bit Linux or Windows or whatever on an older system which originally ran 32bit Windows XP or whatever...). So if I want to over-invest on some part, it is RAM, just in case.

I added the disclaimer "without voiding the warranty" because by googling at it, I got into some article where some Chinese user has successfully replaced both the RAM and the SSD. But at least they are not meant to be replaced by the end-users, that is clear...

Then again I've seen some odd solutions on some Windows laptops as well. My friend has an older cheaper Acer laptop that is running Windows 10 on 4GB RAM, so I considered helping him to upgrade it to 8GB or so.

I presumed I just need to open a couple of screws to see where the memory is installed, but when I googled for it... my god you have to open the whole laptop, remove the keyboard (detach its cable carefully), remove the SATA SSD, remove the motherboard, so that you can access the memory slots below the motherboard. OMFG... They just couldn't add one additional panel on the bottom of the laptop behind which the memory slots would be, could they?

So I guess you can replace the RAM on that cheapo Acer laptop... but they have certainly made it very hard.

I hope Gog concentrates on Windows & Linux Support. Please don't waste resources on niche OS.

GOG can only make available to customers what the developer/publisher of a game provides to them, so if the publisher does not provide GOG with a Linux version of a game even if one exists, then GOG can't sell it as they have not been given it by the publisher.

It's the same thing as Walmart not selling the green version of a given company's garbage can when they sell the blue and black ones. They can't sell the product unless the producer of the product ships it to them and says "sell this".

I do admit though how amazing it would be if GOG could just decide entirely on their own "we want to sell this game" and just produce the game out of thin air or something (magic maybe?) and sell it on their own decision, with complete immunity from copyright and other intellectual property laws. Man, the games we would all have available that aren't right now.

The only way to get a real answer to any kind of "why isn't game XYZ" or "why isn't variant B/C/D of game XYZ available on GOG?" is to contact the publisher of the game and ask them and hope they bother to even respond - which they probably wont.

I don't know the details of how this works, but I have Realms of the Haunting working with compiled versions of native Apple Silicon Dosbox. The game works flawlessly without Rosetta. Given that, as I said before, this could be done by GOG as well. I don't know if that game is supported anywhere.

New games I understand the publisher can say "No screw M1 and never publish it even if it works.) But what of the older titles that are defunct? That was what GOG used to do. I'm guessing that is no longer the case.

Erm, yeah, I thought that was obvious. I can answer "why isn't the Mac version of XCOM 2 on GOG" or "why aren't any Mac versions of Bioshock games on GOG" by saying "because Feral makes good ports but are jerks about having DRM-free versions". However Deep Silver is not averse to having other Mac games on GOG (e.g. Pathfinder) so the reasoning here is far less obvious.
Not quite sure what you're getting at, but after 10.15 was released, GOG did update a bunch of DOSBox games to 64-bit DOSBox, though not all. It's a bit early right now, but at some point I wouldn't be surprised if they did the same for the Apple Silicon version. (Would be nice if there was a better name...can't really say "M1 Macs" since M1 is only the first generation, and M2 should be out before long. "M-series" I guess?)

linux is niche tbh at least for gaming

I tried to find "Apple M1 market share" news, but google seemed to return articles from the beginning of January.

Anyway, I presume especially the M1 laptops are selling great, I mean, why wouldn't they? After all, even I'd be happy to get one, as long as my employer pays for it, not me.

The negatives I've heard so far:

1. The SSD and RAM can't be changed by the user (booooo! ...but doesn't matter much as long as I am not paying, but my employer).

2. My colleague, who has a M1 laptop. had to borrow a Windows laptop to run some virtual machine in VirtualBox, as apparently the virtualization isn't yet up to snuff on M1 Macs? I presume this has much to do with the different processor architecture...

3. Not related to M1 Macs, but Macs overall: one of my bosses has an Intel-based Mac laptop (not sure which model), and he constantly seems to have some keyboard issues when he takes remote desktop connections to e.g. Windows servers.

1. yes, but most slim laptops suffer from this, at least in case of ram
2. yes, as a dev - this laptop is near useless for my work (by this I men to run my enviroment without tinkering - docker, im looking at you...)
2. yes, partially, older macs had problem with keyboards, bat m1 macs had tendency to be killed by powered hubs until february - these arent magic machines....

That said - this is my first mac in my decades of experience. It is amazing, until I want to game or work - then it is useless :D Without thinking I can tel my sister or other less technically aware friends to buy it.

Intel, amd and generally pc sphere - are left behind and without very strong cooperation with microsoft, future doesnt look bright.

1. i bet this is done so customers chooses the more expensive version
2. hmm cant docker run on it?:O

so it is not good for gaming or work.. what a wonderful laptop , then what is it for ? Showing up?

1 dont think so - most popular is cheapest version. Soldered ram is usuall less power hungry, especially if like in case of m1 is integrated in soc.

2 docker runs fine and there is no problem if container is made for arm. But some containers I need for work bug out and didnt had time to fight with it. For my peace of mind is critical to migrate my work in minutes between machines, mac gives me trouble, but maby its just me

I'm still not sure if it is a good choice for me, it cost too much and I cant do with it, but none of my other, much more powerful hardware works so.. smooth. This, this is what you get when hardware and software is done by one company (even if i see apple for what it is - greedy anticonsumer corporation).

What is it for - rigt now for debuging soft on mac, so I need one mac in home. Also, every time to sit on couch, read, write post on forums, watch something - it is much more comfortable for me than any other device. Laptop that I use everyday for hours and charge every three/four days and when I open it up and it already ready to go? For casual use - I'm really impressed

What does that mean? How was that solved then, if it isn't an issue anymore?

For me Apple M1 might be suitable for work, as I mainly work by just opening VPN and a remote desktop connection to one of our (usually Windows) servers at work, and then do my work there, also taking remote desktop or ssh connections to various Windows or Linux servers from there, etc. (where I'd also run any docker containers and whatnot, if needed). Heck I can run the normal Office applications there too remotely, the little I need them (mainly some light Excel use occasionally).

Locally, on the laptop itself, I mainly need just the ability to read and write my work email, and be able to use Skype and/or MS Teams. Not sure if Skype and MS Teams already work on M1 Apple, they do work e.g. on my x86 Linux PCs which means they are just as suitable for all my work, as my Windows 10 work laptop is.

EDIT: Well of course they do, as that colleague of mine seems to be able to use MS Teams and Skype just fine on his Apple M1 laptop... not sure if he uses MS Teams through a web browser only, or if there is a separate M1 application for it already. For x86 Linux there already is an application, and it seems to work just fine.

However, also being able to run some virtual machines locally on the laptop is useful sometimes, but not crucial for my work. I can run them on the said remote servers as well, if needed, but sometimes it is just faster to try something out locally.

Mainly I am just interested in trying out the Apple M1 due its power efficiency (ie. days of use without charging it?), fanless operation etc. It just feels and sounds like the next generation of CPU architecture, and in a way I am hoping generic PCs would slowly move to a similar direction, and at some point if we want to run some older x86 games or applications, we can run them on emulators. It is not like modern PCs are MS-DOS compatible either, yet we can easily run any MS-DOS games in DOSBox, or Amiga games in WinUAE/FS-UAE, and so on and so forth...

So maybe in 2030 we can still run our beloved The Witcher 3 or Cyberpunk 2077 on an ARM or RISC V CPU based PC, which runs those games in some sort of x86 emulation (possibly hardware-assisted, as I've understood in M1 there is also some silicon for x86 emulation?).

Virtual machine are not emulator, they don't change the CPU architecture, VM can run on a M1 CPU but they will only work for M1 compatible machines, you cannot run x86 machines on them unless there is some sort of emulation involved.

Yeah I know, but I was under the impression that M1 Macs can (at least partially) run Intel Mac software through some kind of "emulation layer" or whatever, and that there is even some silicon on the M1 for that x86 emulation, ie. it is hardware-assisted.

So... it is unclear to me whether M1 Apples could still virtualize x86 OSes as well, by using that emulation layer (if any), but I guess at that point it is called emulation anyway...