M1 Migrants from Intel: Your Thoughts on VoiceOver Performance

Short answer: don't expect the wow factor at all.
I don't know, maybe it's because voiceover is not being optimized,. I upgraded 8 months ago from an intel i7 to an m1 Mac, and yes, X Code works better, some other tasks, such as rendering on reaper has improved, but my desktop windows machine still needs less time to start, Safari sometimes is busy, busy, busy on simple web pages, and changing between apps has no noticeable super power ups.
The battery is incredible, of course, but in terms of raw power, I think voiceover users are somewhat left behind.
To be honest, programming and working on the new Mac for a while, then switching to a good windows machine with nvda feels like: oh my god, what a powerful machine, I almost forget how lightful and responsive can a screen reader be.

My use case is primarily browsing, email, and text editing, so I can't meaningfully answer your question. However, I have to say that for my very undemanding use case, the switch from a 2015 i5 MBP to an M1 MacBook Air was incredibly disappointing in terms of VoiceOver performance.

Perhaps I was unrealistic, but I truly expected “busy, busy, busy” to be a thing of the past. I would say that it's somewhat improved... probably going away quicker. But, it's still too prevalent than I would expect considering the performance claims of the M1 chip.

I have to agree with the previous poster in wondering if Apple has failed to tuned VoiceOver to take advantage of the extra power under the hood.

The M1 Pro and M1 Max are clearly a big step up from the M1, but so is your use case compared to mine.

Maybe a reminder of Apple's no questions 14 day money back policy is in order here ☺️

VoiceOver is a little bit faster but you still have the feeling that NVDA for example is so much more responsive that I personally coldn't justify spending money on a Mac.

That leaves me with a 2015 Macbook Air in base configuration which is way too slow to do anything with it and Windows machines that are four years old that outperform the Macbooks in every category accept for the battery and the speakers.

I have bought three Macbook Airs with M1 and did give them back cause there were too much lag compared to my Windows machines with NVDA. Sad because I would relally love to use Macs and have them as performant as say the iPhone or iPad.

It seems like there needs to be a complete overhaul of VoiceOver on the Mac which I don't see Apple undertaking any time soon.

I believe the Safari busy busy busy problem is related to the current Safari v15 and exists independent of processor. It has been discussed in a couple other forum threads. Here's one.

I came to M1 from using a late 2013 Pro with an I7 that I used extensively for 5 years, which later I gave to a relative around Catalina's release because I did more work on Windows and the web which VoiceOver wasn't very good at. Not going into more broad details where Mac OS has advantages over Windows, I now come away very happy with my M1 air which has mostly became my primary machine.

Is VO perfect? No, and there are occasional moments where Windows screen readers still have advantages on some websites. At the same time, I found that now it works much faster and more consistently than it used to. The massive Safari busy spikes people have mentioned are indeed a recent thing that was introduced last month that effect all Macs that got Safari 15, and fortunately Apple has started addressing this in Safari 15.1 and Monterey betas.

For audio, I've used Reaper+OSARA extensively with a range of plugins, both intel and M1 optimized, and everything always felt snappy and responsive - I can actually load more resource intensive plugins on this Mac than on my I7-6700 Windows desktop.

Full disclosure, I don't need to use many office applications for detailed word processing or spreadsheets, or business oriented communications like teams or Slack so I haven't tested any of these. I have used some other large electron apps though, like VSCode or Discord, the latter of which is still running under Rosetta. All of these have been running great.

Something else worth talking about I think is also future prospects for these machines which is partly why I got back into the Mac. Mac VoiceOver is behind iOS VoiceOver now in many ways, but we're starting to see Apple sharing more and more code between the 2 platforms, and we've seen what the neural engine can do for accessibility with features like screen recognition. I wouldn't be surprised if a year or two from now we're going to start seeing features like this on the Mac, which would be huge for accessibility.

All nice CPU and whatever makes the mac work wells would not make a difference if Voiceover does not work well with OS. Also with the apps that suppose to make the experience great. The key here is VO.

Hello,

I used a 2016 MacBook Pro, and switched to an iMac 24 and a MacBook Air.

I am incredibly happy with the performance! I'm French, the Nuance Voices with Intel were incredibly slow, now It's perfect!

With Monteray I find VoiceOver even faster, especially in Messages or Podcast.

I am very amazed to read people who are disappointed with the Mac m1. In my opinion, there is a huge progress related to VoiceOver.

Open Logic Pro natively, and open it with Rosetta, and we find the same bugs and slowness as on a Mac Intel. For me, VoiceOver has been improved and will be improved again on m1 Macs, I no longer recommend buying an Intel Mac.

We have to take the processor and memory together as a unit with the M1. I got 16 gigs of memory and have relatively no complaints. The new MacBook Pro's are crazy with their system configurations. If you have enough money to afford one, go for it have fun! Remember, always get the most memory with a system that everything is integrated on. I don't care if you are running windows or Mac the same statement applies. I know that it may seem expensive to get the most system memory, but you can always attach an external hard drive which are far cheaper than the hard drives which you can spec inside your MacBook. Those are just my few bits of advice: from personal experience. You can tell me I am full of stupid but opinions are like elbows and belly buttons everybody has at least one or two of them.

One of my Christmas gifts on Saturday was an M1 MBA to replace the one on which I'm typing this. I've had this puppy since the end of 2013, and it's really starting to show its age. When my mother and I first unwrapped the new Mac and took it out of the box, I opened up the lid and it immediately started talking. But as my brother immediately pointed out, it was talking in a sexy French male voice. The next day I fired it up again and somehow was able without VoiceOver running, to select English as my language. This was immediately confirmed by Siri in one of the female voices. Then VoiceOver started speaking in English, and I was patiently guided through setup. It gave me the option of finishing setup later, so I am going to do that within the next few days. However, I'm noticing more of a base quality to VoiceOver and it sounds great indeed. I'm a bit confused by the button at the top right-hand side though. It doesn't seem to be the Power button, or if it is it was a bit finicky. But perhaps that's a new feature which will eventually grow on me. So based on this limited exposure to my M1 Mac, I'm pretty impressed.

Hi,

Congratulations on receiving your new m1 MacBook Air! The button you found at the top right is the power button. It also serves as the touch ID button. I have an M1 MacBook Air myself, and absolutely love it! Prior to that, I had a 2016 MacBook Pro.
My M1 MacBook Air has 16 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB SSD. It’s extremely fast

I also just got an M1 MacBook Air with 1 TB of storage and 16 GB ram, and love it. That's the power button, and Touch ID button. I as well had the weird experience with it starting on a different language, but pressing the arrow keys a few times and listening to Siri got me all set up.

surprise no one has mentioned this. The battery life is the main standout. On light usage like text editing, my battery goes down about 4% per hour. Much more, of course, depending on what I’m doing. total silent running is also plus.
Performance is bogged down by voiceover and other application-specific factors. fourth things like Microsoft office and Safari, I didn’t notice any difference between my M1 MacBook Air and 2013 MacBook Air with an I seven. I didn’t try audio editing, though. I did get 16 gig ram

I got my m1 about a month ago, and it is the base configuration, so only 8 gb of ram, and I still have had none of the problems some folks have described here. I do all my audio work in Amadeus Pro, and that is very snappy. Also, Safari is responsive enough for my needs. Would love to see a Facebook app for the Mac, as the fb website with VO is a mess, but it's not exactly a thrill to use on Windows either as far as I'm concerned. Otherwise, everything else works great. Battery life is incredible. I haven't noticed VoiceOver being either better or worse to be honest, coming from a 2015 MacBook Pro with an i7 (I think) and 16 gb ram. But every other part of the system has made it worth switching.
My one downside to the m1 MacBook Air is no bootcamp. I didn't feel like jumping through tons of hoops to install a VM, plus with only 8 gb ram, that would be pushing it a bit.
So, to resolve not having bootcamp, I have also picked up a low powered old Dell Latitude tablet and keyboard. Not a ton of stuff I need to be able to do with that, just use NVDA Remote to control a server, and stream audio to said server and receive audio as well, which I can do with TeamTalk. The server is for an online radio station. So, NVDA Remote plus Teamtalk even on such a low powered device still makes for a great remote broadcast machine, and so I don't even worry about continuing to try to get all that set up on my Mac. So, I use the Mac for what it does well, and have a basic windows two-in-one for the few things I haven't been able to get working in Mac OS. I realize not everyone can do that, but everyone's use case will be different.

Hi all. I think I'd have to agree that battery life on here is very good. I haven't done much if anything to let the battery run down yet, but it's certainly better than my mid-2013 MBA at this point. My tutor and I are currently in the process of transferring over my entire AT&T account using the Migration Assistant. Since the right arrow on my other Mac is dead, he's been helping me but the tool seems to work well with VoiceOver. Another feature which I checked out is the VO recognition found in the VO Utility. I tried this feature out on the website of a local nonprofit in which I'm involved. Their site has several photos of past events, and the recognition feature worked very well on them.