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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

#941

Post by pjmlp »

Aperocky wrote: post #763
cheeze wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, this reminds me of college. I remember some of my first CS courses, everyone either had a brand new mbp or an ALIENWARE super beefy laptop. I had a 300 dollar 7" netbook. Turns out that unless you're doing deep learning, etc. (which you might as well just run remote IMO), a bottom of the line intel atom processor can handle the workloads that a CS program throws at it no problem. I mean, in reality you're doing…

CS courses are the least demanding of all on computers. Usually the other courses when it comes to computer would need either office suite or specific software, both are vastly more demanding than the CS toolchain that has been mature since the 90s. That is, unless the course somehow uses Java, which practically forces you to use an IDE that are full of bloat.

Netbeans, Eclipse and VS run just fine on my 2009 Asus laptop with 8 GB, now InteliJ and Android Studio, I can forget about even trying.

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

#942

Post by pjmlp »

Jtsummers wrote: post #218

Out 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…

8GB is still quite good for me. For container stuff there are servers.

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

#943

Post by jacobwilliamroy »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #489

I 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 think that the future of computer customization is in virtualization. Instead of having a single very expensive machine to upgrade, we just go grab 30 servers from a bulk seller and use something like Xen or Proxmox to use them all as a single machine with 1 virtual CPU, 1 virtual disk and 1 virtual network interface. Got another computer? Just add it to the pool. So while computers are getting harder to disassemble, it's also getting easier to pool them together to share compute, network and storage.

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

#944

Post by arvinsim »

tgv wrote: post #346
Jtsummers wrote: post #218

Out 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…

I develop, and make music with rather substantial sample libraries, but 16GB is still comfy. 32GB is not worth it, IMO.

I think the storage size is more important in that

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

#945

Post by kristofferc »

rvanmil wrote: post #897
myrandomcomment wrote: post #573

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 lev…

Welp, I guess all those years of development I’ve been doing on my MacBook Air were nothing professional.

Of course it is possible to use almost any computer for work. That doesn't change the type of users that the particular model is designed for though.

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

#946

Post by cwhiz »

Joeri wrote: post #909
0xcoffee wrote: post #894

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really worried that AMD has won the battle, but lost the war in terms of x86 being replaced by ARM in the next decade.

There is no danger to AMD in the PC market from ARM. Apple will not sell their cpu’s to other PC vendors, and other ARM chipmakers aren’t even competitive with intel, let alone AMD. What this shows most of all is that the instruction set is not what matters, it is all about the core architecture. Intel is still dragging the ghost of skylake along, while AMD has something better with zen, apple has their A cores, and…

I doubt this. Apple may end up with a massive competitive advantage over other laptops. I doubt Microsoft and PC OEMs are just going to stand on the sideline and watch Apple eat their lunch.

I would expect there to be an arms race on... ARM. And maybe MS suddenly stops treating Windows on ARM as a hobby project.

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

#947

Post by jamil7 »

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…

Only for the Air, the M1 Pro is tested against the equivalent i7 Pro so I assume not throttled as much.

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

#948

Post by cwhiz »

manquer wrote: post #939
myrandomcomment wrote: post #573

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 lev…

It is literally called Pro if that is not for professionals then what is ? its $1,000+ price tag is pretty steep if exclusively targeted towards consumer market. Also the wife and kids have plenty of alternative devices including the iPad to do basic school, web and multimedia, the value prop for just that market is not convincing enough for me Why would I buy and iPad and MB Pro if they are basically going to do the…

They have pro versions of their phones. It doesn’t mean anything anymore.

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

#949

Post by eugeniub »

asimpletune wrote: post #74

Also, mb air has no touch bar, but includes fingerprint scanner. I’m sure a lot hackernews will be pleased with that, despite it not being in a machine with the pro moniker.

Touch ID has been on the MacBook Air since 2018.

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

#950

Post by whywhywhywhy »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #482
onepointsixC wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Power-users generally won't be purchasing the lowest/mobilest end for work purposes.

Some of us are power users don't have a choice in what computer our work provides us with and many companies just buy the absolute base level MBPs, "cos it's Pro right, says it right there on the box so its good enough"
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