If Apple is so good at chip design why don't they just pivot to that? Then we can all standardize on the single (objectively superior) software stack that is Android. There is a lot of money to be made with licensing and they wouldn't need to run a huge supply chain anymore. It doesn't seem right that the best architecture in the world is locked in to a very specific ecosystem when the whole world could be benefiting from their innovations.
Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
871–880 of 1001 posts
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#872Completely 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 compare the M1 Air and Pro, the only difference seems to be the addition of the Touchbar, 10% better battery life, and a "studio" speaker/mic on the Pro. https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/ I assume the addition of a fan on the Pro gives it better performance under load, but there doesn't seem to be a hugely compelling reason to not just get the Air.
Battery is not so important post-covid.
Air is clearly the better value option, if you really want to get one of these.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#873OK, 8 cores, but big little config, so probably 4x A53 + 4x A72. So nothing revolutionary new here IMHO. Where is the 16 core A72 SoC we all want?
Apple hasn’t used off the shelf arm cores since like early 2010’s. They make their own custom CPUs. Only the ISA is ARM
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#874Earlier quoted context omitted.
16GB is fine for mobile and low end. I'm a developer and struggle to fill that amount of memory, even with VMs running. I guess they made a cost trade-off for these machines, which will not be carried forward to the high-end. Perhaps a new "M2" chipset, with discreet RAM and graphics. Next year? It would be amazing if they could bring ECC for a decent price as well, time will tell.
I'm a rails dev and I constantly struggle with 16GB. Once you start up rails, background workers, webpack, vs code, MS teams, a database, plus your web browser you very quickly run out of memory.
Wasting that much is a choice.
I develop Django and unfortunately have to run a 4GB Windows 10 vm in the background for work, still have plenty of ram and don’t even have swap enabled.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#875Earlier quoted context omitted.
16GB is fine for mobile and low end. I'm a developer and struggle to fill that amount of memory, even with VMs running. I guess they made a cost trade-off for these machines, which will not be carried forward to the high-end. Perhaps a new "M2" chipset, with discreet RAM and graphics. Next year? It would be amazing if they could bring ECC for a decent price as well, time will tell.
Doing mobile dev on my 16GB MBP causes it to constantly swap, and on my 32GB desktop I often get very close to using all 32GB. I wouldn't buy a new dev machine with less than 64GB.
I do Android stuff occasionally and never got close to that. I suspect you’ve made some choices to use that much, and it’s your prerogative. Hardly necessary however.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#876No PCIe, meaning no eGPUs. How did they look past that?
Are there any M.2 slots in these or will they'll just be set in stone with the storage they have?
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#877No PCIe, meaning no eGPUs. How did they look past that? Are there any M.2 slots in these or will they'll just be set in stone with the storage they have?
The internal storage they have is set in stone in the Intel machines.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#878I think Apple has done an amazing job of pulling off their own silicon. At Sun I got to be involved peripherally in the effort that created SPARC and it was way more work than I had suspected. So kudos to Apple's design, engineering, and QA teams! I am also noting that they have killed the "ARM SoC's will never match what Intel can do" story line. That always reminded me of the "Microcomputers will never be able to d…
I agree about the upgradability/repairability. However, if you look at like a cell phone maybe it makes more sense. No one has ever complained that you couldn't update the RAM or the CPU in a iPhone. In order to upgrade the hardware of your cell phone you have to purchase another one. I'm guessing Apple is looking at the Mac hardware in the same light. "Want more power? Buy a new laptop!"
The more interesting question is how does this affect the Mac desktops? It would be a shame to throw out a whole Mac Pro machine just because it only has 64GB RAM. Then again, this event did release the Mac Mini, which is a desktop and does not have upgradable RAM or storage or CPU. Hmmmm...
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#879No PCIe, meaning no eGPUs. How did they look past that? Are there any M.2 slots in these or will they'll just be set in stone with the storage they have?
> No PCIe, meaning no eGPUs. How did they look past that?
With ease, I imagine. eGPUs are niche at best, and user-serviceable hardware and GPU vendors are two of Apple’s least favourite things. Macs’ support for eGPUs, such as it is, has always struck me as a strange aberration. I say this as the owner of an eGPU, which I’ve given up any hope of using outside Boot Camp.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#880No 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 n…
When Apple does eventually produce larger than 16GB / 2TB / 2-port Macs I hope they don’t name them MacBook Pro Max. As long as they are called Macs this naming convention seems silly. I’d prefer that we don’t have any Max Macs.