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

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441–450 of 1001 posts

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

#441

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…

Regardless of the "Pro" meaning, my 2014 MBP is significantly faster than my top end 2018 Macbook Air. The MacBook Air was frustratingly slow. The most noticeable place was switching apps (like Cmd-Tab) and having it not keep up but there were plenty of other places.

Pro to me = Provides more power. That's it.

Looking forward to the next MBP

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

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. You can check the clock speeds: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/4620493.gb5 Up to 5050MHz is stock behavior for the 5950X and it's using standard DDR4 3200 memory.

Yet it still makes it very clear: a properly implemented ARM core can easily bury an X86 of equivalent size because of inherent advantage of not having to pay interest on 40 years of technical debt in the ISA.

ISA has very little to do with it, ARM is almost as old as x86.

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

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very impressive. It seems like the open computing platforms where you have control of your hardware/ os are in real trouble. I use Mac at work, but Linux at home, if the hardware isn’t competitive....

> It’s very impressive. It seems like the open computing platforms where you have control of your hardware/ os are in real trouble. Not really. The M1 may objectively and factually be a very good CPU, but it comes bundled with the cost of being locked into a machine with a locked bootloader and not being able to boot any other OS than MacOS. And many people will find such a cost unacceptable.

I have a hard time believing that the amount of people that care so deeply about loading other OSs as to switch their computing platform of choice is significant. Perhaps more significant for those who are already doing that with either a mac or something else and choose not to switch, likewise for virtualization, but I sure as hell wouldn't switch away from mac for the ostensible benefit of multibooting Windows or Linux, and I'm at least in the subset of people who might.

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

#444
Couple one of these with a good USB-C hub and a cloud based Windows 10 VPS, and you have the future of professional workstations. Though, how good are these hubs yet nowadays? I'd want 1x USB-C power, 1x thunderbolt USB-C passthrough, 2x USB-A, 1x HDMI and 1x gbit ethernet in a portable format. maybe throw in SD card and a sound card with separated microphone port, and you'd have pretty much the universal I/O hub.

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

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that was to pass, wouldn't linux just port itself to the new platform? After all linux supports powerpc and Motorola 68k.

They're locked down. You can install anything on it without apples permission. Like secure boot, just without an off switch

I hear "hold my beer" moments now. I give it a year max for luser usable jailbreak.

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

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very impressive. It seems like the open computing platforms where you have control of your hardware/ os are in real trouble. I use Mac at work, but Linux at home, if the hardware isn’t competitive....

> It’s very impressive. It seems like the open computing platforms where you have control of your hardware/ os are in real trouble. Not really. The M1 may objectively and factually be a very good CPU, but it comes bundled with the cost of being locked into a machine with a locked bootloader and not being able to boot any other OS than MacOS. And many people will find such a cost unacceptable.

Myself, yes. Most people here, maybe. My friends asking me for advice when buying a new computer, they care about the price, not speed. They assume that anything at 300 or 400 Euro will be good enough for their needs and they're right. Only one of them ever asked me about a Mac but went back to looking at some low end Windows laptop after I gave them the link to the page with the price of the Macs. It's not that all of them cannot afford a Mac, they can't just see what they gain for the extra cost.

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

#447
post #371
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mac Mini supports two monitors one 6K and one 4K. https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/specs/

If you count the display in the macbook that's the same number of screens

So if the Macbook is closed can you drive two?

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

#448
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To think I lived to see the day when you buy a macbook for value

If you were alive a decade ago, you already have. When the SSD transition started the MacBook Air was a surprisingly good value with a better quality SSD than almost any of the PC options at any price (integrated controller versus the overhead of a separate chip) and most of the sub-$1k competition had spinning metal.

Meanwhile they kept spinning metal on the iMac for a decade.

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

#449

Couple one of these with a good USB-C hub and a cloud based Windows 10 VPS, and you have the future of professional workstations. Though, how good are these hubs yet nowadays? I'd want 1x USB-C power, 1x thunderbolt USB-C passthrough, 2x USB-A, 1x HDMI and 1x gbit ethernet in a portable format. maybe throw in SD card and a sound card with separated microphone port, and you'd have pretty much the universal I/O hub.

Maybe one of these hyper hubs are for you: https://www.hypershop.com/collections/usb-c-hubs

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

#450
These benchmarks are impressive. The non upgradable ram capping out at 16gb is very disappointing though.

I'm hoping the rest of the PC market benefits from this increased market for ARM compatible desktop software. ARM has less of an issue with patent encumbrance and more competition. Desktop CPUs could get a lot cheaper in the future if ARM Windows and ARM Linux get more use as well as Mac.

(In case you didn't know, you can run ARM Windows now (sort of unofficially, you'll need to google)! App support is a bit spotty, but it can also run 32 bit x86 apps through a translation layer (why it's limited to 32 bit I don't know, I guess it's easier to do?))

Edit: The Switch is ARM too, so there's a reason for some AAA games to come to the otherwise small market too.(for traditionally Console/PC games, I'm aware mobile gaming is a huge market, it's just not one I find to produce much quality output)

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