I wonder what's the chance of running Linux on these, probably slim to non-existant, but they would make an exelent Linux machine. I've been waiting for an AMD laptop with thunderbolt/USB4 for GPU passthrough for ages. Sadly we're still far away from gaming on ARM.
Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
381–390 of 1001 posts
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
8GB and 16GB configurations seem more than enough..
I went to Apple's website right after I finished watching the keynote with the intention of buying a new Mac mini ... the lack of memory options above 16GB stopped that idea dead in its tracks though.
I think it is notable the new mini’s colour is light silver, rather than the previous dark ‘pro’ silver. Presumably there will be another model a year from now.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#383Completely 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 MBP now only has 2 USB-C/Thunderbolt ports which would support this theory.
That's the same as previous low-end MBP.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#384Max 16GB of RAM on these new machines is really not that great to be honest. The mini supported up to 64GB before.
This is the first CPU/ SoC and the first SKUs. It's likely (almost certain) 32GB options for the 13" MBP will come out when the 16" MacBook is launched. I'm not so sure about the Mac mini, but considering they are just dropping the same chip on all three devices, I suspect the mini will have a higher end option as well.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#385Max 16GB of RAM on these new machines is really not that great to be honest. The mini supported up to 64GB before.
I know use cases are different but I can't imagine 95% of people needing more than 16GB of RAM especially with mac os "unified memory". I have intellij, pycharm, firefox, slack and a mongodb instance running on my windows laptop and its only using 10GB. Who knows how much of that 10GB could be reduced.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#386Out 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…
Adobe Premiere Pro barely works on 32GB, let alone 16GB. Perhaps not "normal people", but it is a Pro device. And bear in mind, due to the UMA, that 16GB is shared between GPU and CPU.
I have 74GB on my system (10GB of which is GPU) so I can run my dev env (Kubernetes, PGSQL, Visual Studio), data science, machine learning and do 6K video editing. But then, there's also zero chance that I would consider doing this on a laptop.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's think about that a little bit. If the RAM is fast and the SSD is fast and the virtualization options are limited, then this is good enough? Or, inspire me. Which processes really require occupying and allocating bigger blocks of RAM? I personally don't want to purchase another machine with 16gb RAM but that's mainly because I want the option of having a powerful Windows guest or two running at the same time. Bu…
Virtualization and containers. Especially if you want to run an Electron based code editor next to it.
Containers on Mac rely on virtualization, don't they still? Will the new CPU arch have a native virtualization SW? Because if not, I suspect that the virtualization layer might break with the translations to and from X86, and/or might take pretty significant performance penalty.
A wild unsubstantiated guess of course, at this point (or rather, a worry of mine).
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#388The M1 looks very promising, looking forward for real-life reviews. The biggest winner might be the Air - going to 4+4 cores and longer battery life while dropping the fan sounds like the perfect portable laptop. It will be interesting how much performance difference the fan in the MB Pro brings. The Mini at a lower price point is also great news. When introduced, the Mini brought a lot of new users to the mac at 499. While it is still far from that, bringing the starting price of the Mini down is great, especially with the fast CPU/GPU.
The big letdown are the upgrade prices for RAM and SSD. Even at half the prices Apple would make a decent profit. As a consequence, the excitement about the affordable entry prices quickly vanishes and many people might not get the amount of storage they should - or they go somewhere else. At least for the Mini, you would probably only upgrade the RAM and buy a TB SSD.
For the Mini and the MB Pro, not having a 32GB option hurts. These are machines which should be made for real workloads.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#389Out 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…
Now that the processors are different, there will be cases where we will need to run multiple VMs to use Linux or to use Windows etc. Then having more RAM will be very helpful.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#390Pros: * Amazing chips. Probably more faster than both i9 MacBook Pro 16 and iMac Pros, and GREAT battery life! * Finally better camera and wifi 6 * same price Cons: * Wont not run all apps in full speed for now (temporary) * Memory expansion is expensive and limited to 16GB (temporary) Most limitations are temporary, I think these are amazing products unless you want more than 16GB memory.
You probably want two newlines between those bullet points.