So I guess Windows won't run on M1, so none of my Windows software/Steam games will work either. Will software developers start dropping support for Mac now that they'd need to maintain an ARM version as well? It's not clear how long Apple will support emulation with Rosetta before cutting it off. What's the Linux landscape look like for this chip? It's great that there's performance and battery life improvements, but Microsoft said the same things about WindowsRT and their move to ARM in 2012, and we know how well that turned out.
Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
261–270 of 1001 posts
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#262Completely 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…
I guess the cooling let’s them tweak the CPU clocks accordingly? Wonder if we can hack the Mac mini with water blocks and squeeze higher clocks. The memory limitation makes it a dud though.
8GB and 16GB configurations seem more than enough..
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#263Out of curiosity, how many people are actually constrained by 16GB of RAM? What applications are you using it for that 16GB vs 32GB is actually a deal breaker for you? Thinking about your average end-users, like most of my family, 8 to 16GB is about all they need for their systems (and if software were better written they'd probably need less). So is this specific work like machine learning? Video and image processin…
I often use more than 16 GB of RAM. Generally, I have 3-4 Windows 10 VMs running which each take at least 4GB to be stable. So if I have 4 running that is all the RAM already.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Better thermal will make a big difference for anything where you need high power for a long period. Like editing video for example. Anything where you need only shorter bursts of power won't make as big of a difference.
But better thermals will probably mean they can run the CPU in the Pro at higher base clock speed anyway, so it will probably be faster than the air all around - we'll have to wait for benchmarks to know for sure though.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#265Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#266Completely 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…
If you compare the M1 Air and Pro, the only difference seems to be the addition of the Touchbar, 10% better battery life, and a "studio" speaker/mic on the Pro. https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/ I assume the addition of a fan on the Pro gives it better performance under load, but there doesn't seem to be a hugely compelling reason to not just get the Air.
My guess is different clock speeds, also base air has one gpu core less...
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#267Wait, they pulled out the FAN?
For sure this was expected, but the fan was actually pulled out in the 12" MacBook 2015 edition (dual-core Intel Core M processor). https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/176391/which-macbook-doesnt-have-any-fans/176393
none of the 12" macbooks had fans, and the early Air's didnt, but the later ones did.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#268Completely 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…
I noticed the slides kept saying "Up to" 8 GPU cores.
That left me wondering if there are different variants of the M1 with different core counts.
(Note: It always said 8 CPU cores)
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#269Out of curiosity, how many people are actually constrained by 16GB of RAM? What applications are you using it for that 16GB vs 32GB is actually a deal breaker for you? Thinking about your average end-users, like most of my family, 8 to 16GB is about all they need for their systems (and if software were better written they'd probably need less). So is this specific work like machine learning? Video and image processin…
On my 2015 MBP with 16gb I currently have 20-ish tabs in Chrome, Scrivener, GitKraken, Capture One, Slack, WhatsApp, Messenger, Books and Xcode open. The only things that's really bogged down is Capture One.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#270What happens when Apple deprecates support in macOS for these machines in 7 somewhat years? Is there an upgrade path to install Linux on them like you currently can with Intel-based Macs? Or are these SoCs like every other ARM SoC that requires a custom kernel and bootloader to get Linux running on them?
You don't get the privilege of controlling your Apple hardware for the most part so probably not easily.