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

9to5mac.com

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

#361

Post by saagarjha »

numpad0 wrote: post #336
aldanor wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy cow, that's true. New 2020 Mini with a 16GB RAM, seriously?

This is super interesting. I personally wouldn’t consider a 8GB or 16GB laptop this year as my daily driver, but it’s true that the performance gain from extra RAM beyond 8GB is marginal, especially for average audiences and especially when their performances are measured only externally. Like, you might get super frustrated, develop mental health issues, not that the corporate cares. Expenditure reduces, ROI might e…

> you might get super frustrated, develop mental health issues

Uh, what? Is your comment literally "because I don't have enough RAM in my computer my mental health will decline"?

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

#363

Post by kllrnohj »

klelatti wrote: post #247
kllrnohj wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but if it is, I think ARM will take over a large amount of server/cloud market. Seeing as how Apple has zero presence in the server/cloud market, how do you figure? Are you hoping they bring back xserve? Otherwise I don't see how Apple having a custom power-efficient chip in a laptop is going to do anything at all in the server/cloud market?

The argument has been that lack of credible Arm desktop / laptops has held back Arm in the cloud. If you can't compile on your desktop then it's much harder to develop / test etc. Now you can buy a Mac and use that to develop for AWS Arm etc.

I don't see your cloud infrastructure throwing everything away and wholesale switching platforms just because you bought a new macbook air, though.

This is all assuming you're doing anything at all that depends on the ISA and pushing prebuilts of it somewhere. Otherwise it's not like deploying Java, Python, JavaScript, etc... changes at all here.

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

#364

Post by whynotminot »

mehrdada wrote: post #249
vmception wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mmmmm yeah, I will let you all be the guinea pigs here and check back next month. I am very curious about the performance. If the macbook air is editing 6k videos and scrubbing smoothly, I am optimistic.

While a valid workload for a segment, I would be a bit skeptical of generalizing the extraordinary video editing capability to general purpose computing, as those things are facilitated heavily by hardware decoders.

Agreed, but they did mention what sounded like impressive code compilation times in the presentation too, which is pretty salient for most of us here.

Of course, we'll need to wait for third party verification in the end.

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

#366

Post by linuxhansl »

Do I need to worry now that a walled-garden company - with all its advantages - pulls ahead of open ecosystems?

I only use Linux at home. Will I be doomed to inferior H/W going forward?

This is not a rhetorical question or a flame... It's an honest question... Is Apple pulling ahead of everybody else and soon going to be our only option?

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

#368

Post by gen3 »

CraftThatBlock wrote: post #326
gen3 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows has an arm build, so I wouldn't count it out entirely. Edit: Never-mind, it looks like they are not porting bootcamp.

Apple said that only virtualization will be supported on their ARM chips. Locked through the bootloader (although wouldn't be surprised if exploits are released to load up Linux/Windows)

Ah! You're right! No bootcamp. https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/24/21302213/apple-silicon-ma...

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

#369

Post by ghaff »

kevinherron wrote: post #50

This all looks very promising but unless a solution for running VMs with an x86 OS/apps materializes my 16" MBP might be my last :-/

While not impossible, I would guess that something like that would probably be unusably slow.

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

#370

Post by BossingAround »

dschuler wrote: post #352

The most important feature of an M1-based Mac will likely be OS support into the distant future. I'm still using a 2012 rMBP, which was the first-gen retina version, and it's held up much better than any other computer I've ever bought, partly due to OS support into 2020. I imagine Apple will stand behind this new generation for a long time as well. The new M1 SOCs max out at 16GB RAM, which seems like a major limita…

> Overall, at the price they're offering the Mac mini (haven't really considered the other models for myself), I think it's ok to take the plunge.

I thought the same. I actually wonder whether the low prices aren't due to the App support being extremely limited at this point (basically only first party stuff)

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