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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

#451

Post by bla3 »

kayson wrote: 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...

If they could outperform AMD/Intel today, they would've offered 16" MBPs / iMacs / Mac Pros. Today, they have power-efficient chips, so they converted their low-end machines, and Mini so that companies porting their software can start migrating their build farms.

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

#452

Post by FireBeyond »

carstenhag wrote: post #44
highfrequency wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long does it take the current gen of macbooks to wake from sleep, ~1 second?

Takes some seconds in my experience. And about 10 in total for both of my external displays to be displaying useful stuff. Definitely annoying.

The displays always seem to be the challenge.

With my Mac Pro, as soon as I wake it, I can see the LED on my monitors are 'alive', but it still takes that same 10s or so to be displaying data.

Also on macOS, if you have an always-on VPN, that can absolutely cause wake time challenges.

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

#454

Post by xondono »

kayson wrote: 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...

The thing is that even new Ryzen cores start shining at >20W, while ARM SOCs (especially with 5nm) can do very well at these low power envelopes.

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

#456

Post by elicash »

linuxhansl wrote: post #366

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?

Your situation won't be worse than what would exist had Apple not moved so far ahead of the others. In fact, Apple moving ahead only encourages others to up their game. So you're better off, due to Apple, even if you don't buy their machines.

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

#457

Post by beervirus »

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…

It sucks that the SSD is (presumably) not upgradeable anymore. Apple generally charges a ton for the larger SSD offerings, but it used to be that you could just buy a base model and replace the thing later.

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

#458

Post by ValentineC »

saagarjha wrote: post #435
heavyset_go wrote: post #258

What 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 can turn off boot security.

I really hope we will be able to. All the mentions of "security" in the keynote were making me cringe.

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

#459

Post by numpad0 »

saagarjha wrote: post #361
numpad0 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

Yes, literally?

I’m talking about 4GB DDR4 non-SSD Office machines still in production that are borderline crime against humanity.

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

#460

Post by turtlebits »

AnonHP wrote: post #49

All the Macs looked quite impressive! It was well worth waiting for these (at least for me). But I was disappointed that the maximum RAM is 16GB. I would’ve preferred a 32GB option for better future proofing (especially with web applications needing more and more memory). Edit: Considering the fact that the RAM won’t be upgradeable (it’s part of the SoC), this limitation is a big bummer. What may be worse is that all…

These are all targeted towards consumers. My last three personal Macs have had 8GB of ram and they were fine.

My work machines on the other hand were all specced with 32GB.

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