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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

#571

Post by reader_mode »

acchow wrote: post #498
bla3 wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They probably beat AMD/Intel on perf/power efficiency, which is why it makes sense for MBA and 13" MBP. The smaller machines are also likely held back by cooling solutions, so if you have Intel beat on power efficiency in a tiny form factor, you can boost your clock speed too.

Considering how AMD also beats intel on power/perf by a wide margin and they compared their results against Intel CPUs I wouldn't be surprised if their power/performance was close to AMD (they do have heterogeneous CPU cores which of course is not the case in traditional x86)

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

#572

Post by 1123581321 »

greggman3 wrote: post #544
ksec wrote: post #195

The M1 is basically what would Apple would call A14X / A14Z if it was on iPad Pro. So they decided to reuse the A14X / M1 across all three products. And the only differentiation are their TDP cooling. The MacBook Air is 10W TDP, and both Mac Mini and MacBook Pro are likely ~35W range. The did mention MacBook Air's SSD performances is now twice as fast, so this isn't exactly an iPad Pro with Keyboard. That is great ex…

I was hopeful they'd weigh less. An iPad Pro 12.9 inches weighs 1.4lbs. The 13.3 inch MacBook Air M1 is 2.8lbs. I'm sure there are reasons but there are companies, LG for instance, that make 2 lbs 13.3 inch notebooks and 3 lbs 16 inch notebooks. No I don't want an LG but I was hopeful for a 16" Arm Macbook Pro that weight 3 lbs. Now I'm pretty confident it will be the same as an Intel Macbook Pro 16" at 4.4lbs (heavy…

The 12.9” iPad Pro plus Magic Keyboard weighs 3lbs. Subtract a little weight for the wrapper and you are basically equivalent to an air with screen + keyboard + trackpad.

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

#573

Post by myrandomcomment »

So there is an interesting trend here in the comments because HN is very developer focused. Everyone seems to say "well this does not work for my XXX because of RAM, etc." I would say yes, no surprises there! With this line up Apple is fine with that, because the Air and 13" are not targeted at you. This is the laptop for my wife or kids that use it for school, web, some music and video, nothing at a professional level. That battery life will make both of them very happy.

The reality of this is that it is very likely they focused on yield for the chip vs market segment for what they can ship today. For the professional user I would very much to expect to see follow on products with more RAM and cores in 1Q21 (MacBook Pro 16" and iMacs).

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

#574

Post by klelatti »

sz4kerto wrote: post #467

"Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based MacBook Air systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with prerelease Final Cut Pro 10.5 using a 55-second clip with 4K Apple ProRes RAW media, at 4096x2160 resolution and 59.94 frames per second, transcoded to Apple ProRes 42…

The Pro is quoted as 2.8x the 1.7 GHz i7.

Not Intel's fastest chip but, if these benchmarks are correct, that's a big speed bump and the higher end Pro's are to come. How fast does it have to be in this thermal envelope to get excited about?

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

#575

Post by markdog12 »

quotemstr wrote: post #415
greenpresident wrote: post #89

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/...

It does compress RAM, although I’m not sure if you mean something different here.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/os-x-10-9/17/

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

#576

Post by Tepix »

kalleboo wrote: post #286
jonplackett wrote: post #42

The pricing is pretty impressive. Shame no 16 inch pro though. Surely they need to update that quick because who is going to want a 16 inch intel Mac now?

After seeing how big a downgrade these machines are over their intel counterparts (16 GB max RAM, max 2x thunderbolt, max 1 external display on the laptops, no 10 GbE on the mini), I'd absolutely buy an Intel machine now to tide me over until Apple can catch up in a generation or two

Pretty sure most MBP16 are sold with 16GB RAM

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

#577

Post by k0stas »

satysin wrote: post #165

No 32GB options on any of the models announced today is a shame. Or not I guess as it means I won't be buying anything today M1 looks impressive, hopefully it scales as well to higher TDPs. Pretty much what I expected today with all the low power models getting updated. With no fan I expect the Air will throttle the CPU quickly when using the high performance cores. Calling it an "8-core CPU" is a little cheeky IMHO…

> No 32GB options on any of the models announced today is a shame. Or not I guess as it means I won't be buying anything today

I think this was the fastest way to get something out quickly and cover as many SKUs as possible.

We'll need to wait for the next/larger SKU models to get out of the 16B / 2TB / 2-port limitations. Maybe they should call those devices the Macbook Pro Max.

I wonder how many more SKUs will be needed. Obviously they are going to minimize them, but will they be able to cover Macbook Pro 16", iMac, iMac Pro and Mac Pro with only one (unlikely) or two (likely) more SKUs?

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

#578

Post by jbverschoor »

I'm actually surprised by the price. I thought it'd be more expensive. I'd easily had paid another $250 extra for 2 ports on the other side, and even some more for 32GB ram. Better camera + 14" screen would also be nice. Basically I was expecting to pay between 3-3.5k for a new macbook :-)

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

#579

Post by zerkten »

ogre_codes wrote: post #357
kevindong wrote: post #186

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…

This makes sense. Most likely this is why the CPUs are all limited to 16GB. It's likely when they unwrap the 16 inch MacBook Pro, it will open up more configurations (more RAM in particular!) for the 13" MacBook Pro and hopefully the mini.

Going into the event, my thinking was that they'd have two aims:

1. "Wow" the audience given the anticipation without a full overhaul of the range. 2. Deliver some solid products that enable the transition while being effective for non-enthusiasts.

From my viewing they hit both. I expect they'll fill in the range next fall with bigger upgrades to the form factor.

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

#580

Post by PragmaticPulp »

therealmarv wrote: post #525
belval wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal opinion, no insider info I think it's a good CPU, but I don't think it'll be a great CPU. Judging by how heavily they leaned on the efficiency, I am pretty sure that it will be just good enough to not be noticeable to most Mac users. Can't wait to see actual benchmarks, these are interesting times.

You skipped the keynote parts where they say faster 2x, 4x, 8x... and they say faster than every other laptop CPU and faster than 98% of laptops/PCs in their class sold last year? They said it several times. But I agree... let's wait for the benchmarks (btw. iPads already overturns nearly all laptop CPUs)

> You skipped the keynote parts where they say faster 2x, 4x, 8x... and they say faster than every other laptop CPU and faster than 98% of laptops/PCs in their class sold last year? They said it several times.

The important part there is "in their class".

I'm sure the Apple silicon will impress in the future, but there's a reason they've only switched their lowest power laptops to M1 at launch.

The higher end laptops are still being sold with Intel CPUs.

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