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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

#412
post #365

Seems there are two variants of the M1 chip in the MacBook Air, one with 7 GPU cores and one with 8. Wonder why that is the case. https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/

Probably to get better yield. If one of the GPU cores has a defect, they can still use the die. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning#Semiconductor_...

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

#413

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…

If you look at the power supplies it's 30 vs 60 Watts, definitely interested to see what kind of TDP Apple targets with these machines.

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

#415

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

And macOS doesn't support Linux-style compressed RAM either, at least as far as I know.

[1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/blockdev/...

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

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But Mac OS X isn't iOS.

Not yet. MacOS has been moving towards becoming iOS for a long time now. Now with iPad and iPhone apps running natively on them, they only need to lock a few more things down until it becomes an iPad with a windowed interface.

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

#418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which actually sounds like a good fit for a dev machine, where you only compile once in a while, but do not sustain high loads

looks at 1-hour compile-test runs on a threadripper yes, of course, great fit.

It’s a great option for office work.

Need a day off? Have some errands? Hit the compile button.

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

#419
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MBP now only has 2 USB-C/Thunderbolt ports which would support this theory.

That's the same as previous low-end MBP.

that's right but the 'regular' one had 4. I've already seen a pro user (in music production) complain about this.

But my point here is that the fact they are both the same supports the theory that the logic board is the same on both models.

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

#420
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While I use it for gaming, I cannot fathom anyone using Windows 10 professionally.
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