Live data from Hacker News

Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

9to5mac.com

201–210 of 1001 posts

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#202

Max 16GB of RAM on these new machines is really not that great to be honest. The mini supported up to 64GB before.

And it's unified memory too, shared with the graphics.

Which makes it worse, Intel Macs look appealing than these.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#203
post #86

Apple mentions TensorFlow explicitly in the ongoing presentation due to the new 16-core "Neural Engine" embedded in the M1 chip. Now that's an angle I did not expect on this release. Sounds exciting! Edit: just to clarify, the Neural Engine itself is not really "new": > The A11 also includes dedicated neural network hardware that Apple calls a "Neural Engine". This neural network hardware can perform up to 600 billio…

It's kind of sad that AMD spent years to get mediocre TensorFlow support and Apple walks in with this. It really shows how huge Apple is.

But they needed to, MacBooks are simply no option if you want to train models. I dont expect crazy performance but would be great if MacBooks would be an option again for prototyping / model development at least

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#204
post #140

I don't know if this will be a big success, but if it is, I think ARM will take over a large amount of server/cloud market.

Will the presence of ARM silicon over Intel mean these macbooks will be poorer developer machines?

Not if servers are also runing ARM

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#205

Max 16GB of RAM on these new machines is really not that great to be honest. The mini supported up to 64GB before.

Really, 16GB max? I find it very strange how Apple went from targeting professionals, seeing the strategy work from the ground up for many years, but now somehow want to pivot to hobbyists/others instead of professionals. Could someone try to help me figure out the reasoning behind Apple changing the target customer?

My guess is the pros are going to be the tock to the consumer tick in the Apple silicon upgrade cycle. It takes months before pros are comfortable upgrading MacOS to begin with, and it will probably be a year or two before they're comfortable that pro software vendors have flushed out their bugs on the new architecture.

Basically I'm guessing that no one who wants more than 16GB on their professional machine was going to upgrade on this cycle anyway. We'll see

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#206

Apple mentions TensorFlow explicitly in the ongoing presentation due to the new 16-core "Neural Engine" embedded in the M1 chip. Now that's an angle I did not expect on this release. Sounds exciting! Edit: just to clarify, the Neural Engine itself is not really "new": > The A11 also includes dedicated neural network hardware that Apple calls a "Neural Engine". This neural network hardware can perform up to 600 billio…

[deleted]

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#207

Max 16GB of RAM on these new machines is really not that great to be honest. The mini supported up to 64GB before.

Wow, that's actually a pretty big limitation. I guess it's tough to do 64 GB with their on-package unified memory. I wonder if they're working on a version with discrete memory and GPU for the high end? They'll need it if they ever want to get Intel out of the Mac Pro.

I suspect/hope they are for the 16” MacBook Pro, which is still Intel-based.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Universal apps" that only run on OSX and Apple's mobile OS I presume?

Universal apps run on both Apple Silicon (ARM) processors and Intel processor-based Macs.

Oh, so if I run Windows/Linux on the Intel based Mac I can run these Universal apps? Sounds very un-Apple-like if true.

If not true, then my original comment seems to still stand.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#209
post #96
post #49

All the Macs looked quite impressive! It was well worth waiting for these (at least for me). But I was disappointed that the maximum RAM is 16GB. I would’ve preferred a 32GB option for better future proofing (especially with web applications needing more and more memory). Edit: Considering the fact that the RAM won’t be upgradeable (it’s part of the SoC), this limitation is a big bummer. What may be worse is that all…

It's wild to me. I still love my 1st gen MBP Retina and it has 16GB memory.

Same! Mid-2012 rMBP. Turns out I could upgrade the AirPort card with a used one from ebay for $20, as well as the SSD (although that was maxed out at 1TB with mSATA). Eight years later, it's still a good computer.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#210

Max 16GB of RAM on these new machines is really not that great to be honest. The mini supported up to 64GB before.

iPhone has typically had lower specs while outperforming its competitors in benchmarks. I think the integration goes a long way toward efficiency.

But Mac OS X isn't iOS. The relative memory usage should be the same between an intel Mac and an ARM Mac. Which means for power users this is extremely disappointing.
Post reply on HN