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Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

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Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does include practically every white collar occupation at this point.

I’d extend it to mean someone for whom the non-pro model is less sufficient (for example, they are using dev tools or video editing as opposed to Excel, Word and email).

I don’t think it’s necessarily good that people say Word or Excel is non-Pro tasks fit for cheap and “lite” computers.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#242

This idea of “actual professionals” that always comes up in response to apple’s “Pro” moniker amuses me to no end. Everybody throws the term around and no two people have the same definition! What in the world is an actual professional? There are professional journalists that just need a browser and text editor. There are professional programmers working on huge code bases in compiled languages that do need a beefy m…

My friends brother runs a landscaping business, purely off his iphone. He asked me for advice on how to get his iphone onto a laptop, like with an emulator or something. This was about a year ago, so the ARM mac stuff was just rumors at that stage, and I mentioned that it wasnt possible.

Now, I can say hey if you get one of the new macbooks / mac minis, you can run your iphone apps natively. He probably will be one of their first customers.

I wouldnt be surprised if there was a huge 'professional' market that is untapped. not the traditional professional market but the ones which want something as simple & familiar as a iphone, on a desktop.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#243
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, yes. The benchmarks are calculating/computing the same things on both architectures, and the various sub-benchmarks are based on real-world non-trivial computational problems rather than microbenchmarks that are easily manipulated by instruction set differences.

Unless they are written in optimised Asm I would not compare across architectures, because there is considerable leeway in compilers and my experience has shown that a good human can often beat a compiler solidly --- at least on x86. https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=185109&curpost...

How often is software written by a good human?

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#245
post #48

This is pretty crazy to see, even if the full story isn't clear yet. A base level MacBook Air is taking the crown of the best MacBook Pro. Wow. SVP Johny Srouji and all of the Apple hardware + silicon team have been smashing it for the past many years. For what it's worth, I have a fully specced out 16 inch MacBook Pro with the AMD Radeon Pro 5600m and even with that I'm regularly hitting 100% usage of the card, and…

I wonder if M1 dominates an i9-9980HK at multithreaded workloads that make full use of available SIMD? Does an M1 dominate at peak theoretical flops?

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#246

This idea of “actual professionals” that always comes up in response to apple’s “Pro” moniker amuses me to no end. Everybody throws the term around and no two people have the same definition! What in the world is an actual professional? There are professional journalists that just need a browser and text editor. There are professional programmers working on huge code bases in compiled languages that do need a beefy m…

Here is my definition:

In this context, a professional is someone whose productivity is limited by the power of the computer. A developer compiling large code base on their computer. A person doing video editing. These are examples. And maybe “professional” is the wrong term, but I think that is what people are aiming for when they use that word in this context.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely a version that can beat a 8 core Xeon is made for 'actual professionals'?

It still has a lot of limitations that matter to many pros - max 16 GB of RAM, max 2 displays (only 1 external for laptops), only enough PCIe lanes to support 2 thunderbolt ports. eGPUs aren't supported either, but hopefully that is a software thing that will be fixed. It will be very interesting to see what the performance will be of the more "pro" chip that overcomes those limitations that they'd put in the 16" and…

max 2 displays (only 1 external for laptops)

I wonder if that includes AirPlay screens, or just wired.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#250

This idea of “actual professionals” that always comes up in response to apple’s “Pro” moniker amuses me to no end. Everybody throws the term around and no two people have the same definition! What in the world is an actual professional? There are professional journalists that just need a browser and text editor. There are professional programmers working on huge code bases in compiled languages that do need a beefy m…

We say the 'pro' in MacBook Pro hasn't stood for professional grade equipment in at least a decade, but for equipment for someone who considers themself to be a professional.

People also regularly misplace their importance and prevalence in industry. For instance, you see more Linux than Mac in the big color and VFX houses.

It's important to trust and value your tools, which is how prosumers generally feel about their Macs, and they do make nice frontends for the computers that perform the actual work.

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