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

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

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many Slack instances does your job require?!

16GB hasn't been enough for bigger development stacks for a while.

Especially if you need to spin up some VMs and do compilation there.

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

#232
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 goin…

Since about 2-3 years back, the film professionals I hang around with are all starting to dump Apple hardware in favor of PC workstations now, as they are tired of paying large amounts of money for something that can be had cheaper and with less restrictions. Especially when it comes to price vs quality for displays and hard drives that Apple sells.

I think today's presentation is just confirming what we've known for a while, Apple is pivoting away from professionals.

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

#234

Completely unconfirmed speculation incoming: There's a solid chance that the logic board is exactly the same on all of the Macs announced today and the only difference is the cooling solution. If you play around with the Apple Store configurator, the specs are all suspiciously similar between every new Mac. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch https://w…

The logic board probably isn't the same, but the SoC [probably] is identical, and with it a lot of the surrounding features/implementation. My own speculation as well of course :)

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

#237
post #161

I'm very curious to see some real benchmarks. I have no doubt that they've achieved state of the art efficiency using 5nm, but I have a harder time believing that they can outperform the highest end of AMD and Intel's mobile offerings by so much (especially without active cooling). Their completely unit-less graph axes are really something...

They can probably out perform them, but only for a few seconds/minutes. That's why they put a fan in the pro.

So if I understand they have the exact same chip in the Air as the Pro? Will better thermal make that much of a difference? Is there really that big of a reason to get Pro over Air at this point?

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

#238
post #24

Same price as previous MB Air - $1k. That's a HUGE selling point to me. I was ready to see $2k for their newest kit. They're looking for marketshare gains.

I'm curious to know why you expected 2k. With more vertical integration, the cost normally goes down. Why would the cost go up for apple here?

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

#239
post #24

Same price as previous MB Air - $1k. That's a HUGE selling point to me. I was ready to see $2k for their newest kit. They're looking for marketshare gains.

It was to be expected because they save a lot of money that they were paying to Intel. It was estimated that they could shave something like $100 per computer by switching to an in house chip.

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

#240

Completely unconfirmed speculation incoming: There's a solid chance that the logic board is exactly the same on all of the Macs announced today and the only difference is the cooling solution. If you play around with the Apple Store configurator, the specs are all suspiciously similar between every new Mac. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch https://w…

The wording in the event supports this. Particularly when speaking about the Mini's fan "unlocking" the potential of the M1 chip.
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