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

macrumors.com

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

#511

Post by jmnicolas »

fludlight wrote: post #320
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear, but here's some knowledgeable speculation: - All M1 models only have 1 Thunderbolt Controller, thus can only handle 2 Thunderbolt ports on all announced models so far. - All M1 models only support 1 monitor, but up to 6K. - No M1 model supports >16GB of RAM or 10GB Ethernet. All of the above seem like bandwidth limitations to save cost that a future "M1X" or "M2" or "X1" would be extremely likely to f…

Is there a legitimate laptop purpose that requires 10GB internet? If so, how niche is that purpose?

I have about 20TB of data on several external hard disks / nas / machines. Due to some disks failures I had to move these data and believe me I wish I had 10GB Ethernet so that transfers don't take literally days.

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

#512

Post by gabereiser »

throwaway4good wrote: post #508

They are going to sell these things like cup cakes ... why buy a pc laptop when these are around?

Benchmarks came in and I stared at an older 2013 MBP 15” and decided, “Yup! Time to upgrade”. Tons of others at my work are looking at these with drool coming from their mouths. 2020+ is going to be the decade of extreme-computing on ARM I guess.

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

#513

Post by gabereiser »

Jonnax wrote: post #509
throwaway4good wrote: post #508

They are going to sell these things like cup cakes ... why buy a pc laptop when these are around?

Because they're expensive and the best selling laptops are half the price?

You’re right... these M1 MacBooks ARE half the price of a high end pc laptop AND are 4x-12x the performance. :D

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

#515

Post by jmnicolas »

willvarfar wrote: post #469

Any thoughts and experience around using the current (slow) Mac Mini as a web and java dev box? And any thoughts and expectations around using the (fast?) M1 Mac Mini for web and java dev? I'm right now getting frustrated with my company's lead times ordering a new HP Zbook laptop. (Its not like I particularly want the Zbook, its just that's what devs get here.) But I'm a remote home worker, and I'm thinking "M1 Mac…

I don't know what you do with Java, but here Windows 10 + Android studio + an Android emulator consumes around 11GB of ram.

So add dozens of tabs open in a couple browsers, maybe a VM or 2 and 16GB or ram is going to be insufficient.

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

#516

Post by tonyedgecombe »

mirthflat83 wrote: post #303
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is also a moral angle that disturbs Windows fans to this as well: This is validation that Apple's heavy-handed walled-garden approach can, in fact, work and even sometimes beat an open ecosystem. That's freaky.

Not really. Apple is one of the few companies that invests in this kind of cohesive experience. It didn’t come out of the blue. Doubt Windows does much in this regard given their atrocious UX

A lot of this dates back to the nineties. Companies like Dell, HP and Lenovo were happy to suck on the WinTel teat. Now it has mastitis they are going to suffer.

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

#517

Post by californical »

bawolff wrote: post #410
derefr wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What in the world is an actual professional? I would say that generally , a "professional" user of pretty much any tool, is someone for whom the tool's quality is a constraint on their professional productivity. A professional paint user is an artist. A professional telescope user is an astronomer—or a sniper. A professional typewriter user is a stenographer. A professional shoe user is an athlete. In all these cas…

I'm a professional programmer... hardware constraints aren't exactly the limiting factor when i use vim all day.

You missed their point slightly. You wouldn’t be one of the users that is limited by the constraints of that tool.

If I’m a professional driver, but my passenger likes being discreet for example, then maybe I drive a Camry instead of a Rolls Royce. In your case, you probably don’t need a professional-grade laptop.

Me however, also a professional programmer, I run about 10 docker containers, a big ide, and lots of other hungry programs. I definitely am less limited when my computer is faster.

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

#519

Post by hbbio »

maz1b wrote: 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…

It's also funny that Johny Srouji and probably others in his team come from the team at Intel in Israel that "saved" Intel in the early 2000s by designing the Intel Core architecture which is still used by Intel today.

cf. Anandtech article from 2003:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1083/2

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

#520

Post by jillesvangurp »

willvarfar wrote: post #469

Any thoughts and experience around using the current (slow) Mac Mini as a web and java dev box? And any thoughts and expectations around using the (fast?) M1 Mac Mini for web and java dev? I'm right now getting frustrated with my company's lead times ordering a new HP Zbook laptop. (Its not like I particularly want the Zbook, its just that's what devs get here.) But I'm a remote home worker, and I'm thinking "M1 Mac…

Been thinking about this:

- openjdk is being ported to the new hardware but it's not there yet. I'm not sure if it works with the emulator; or how well.

- if you use anything by Jetbrains, like I do, you'll likely have to wait for them to use that and package up a new release. It's a resource hog as it is and emulation is not going to improve things probably; assuming that works at all.

- things like android studio that rely on virtualization for running simulated phones will likely need upgrades too; but since the emulated hardware is arm that should be doable.

- things like docker which most server side developers like me won't work until Docker releases an arm version. Then the next problem is going to be that the vast majority of docker images out there are x86.

- If you are a web developer and want to test on something else than safari, you'll have to wait or accept worse performance of chrome, firefox, edge, etc. in emulated mode.

- pro hardware with >64GB; 16 GB is a non starter for me. I upgraded to that in 2014. I'd frankly want that dedicated to GPU memory in a modern setup. If you are a pro video or graphics user; I imagine those are not strange requirements. If your workflow involves third party tools and plugins that are x86; I'd wait a couple of years before even considering. Long term, this could be great; short term it's going to be rough depending on what you use.

- Also nice would be for things like opencl (Darktable) and games to work. I have a few steam games and X-plane. I expect that Steam Mac is going to be once more decimated. With the last release 32 bit games stopped working. Essentially all of the remaining games are x86 only. I look forward to seeing some benchmarks of how these are running under rosetta 2; but I don't get my hopes up. I'm guessing, Apple is looking to unify the IOS and Mac gaming ecosystem instead and is actively working to kill off the PC gaming ecosystem on mac. This will be an app store only kind of deal. Likewise, if they finally make moves in VR, it will be ARM and app store only.

So in short, for me it doesn't make sense to upgrade until most of that stuff is covered. None of it is impossible but it's going to take some time. I would be in the market for a 16" x86 mac pro but of course with this transition, long term support for that is very much going to be an afterthought. I might have to finally pull the trigger on a move to Linux.

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