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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

#811

Post by rsynnott »

aeyes wrote: post #738
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this could be a good time to jump the apple ship. it's pretty clear their focus is not their power users' focus. Their focus is not on power users ? They just completed the first, small, step of the migration to ARM. They only updated the very low-end models, those who were never targeted at power users anyway, and we're seeing that their cheapest, lowest-end models are whooping the i9 MBPro's ass. Sure, the featur…

They also updated the MacBook Pro so that is exactly the performance you are going to get for this generation. The big screen model might give you more cores and RAM but IPC is going to be exactly the same.

They updated the lesser 13" Pro, but not the high-end 13" Pro (since 2016, it's been separated into two lines, with the high end one distinguished by higher TDP, four thunderbolt ports, and more fans) or the 16". IPC will be the same, sure, but I'd expect the higher end 13" and the 16" will have more cores or higher clock speed or both, to soak up the extra TDP headroom.

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

#812

Post by cesarb »

xenadu02 wrote: post #669
josteink wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In what respect is Apple “locking down their software hard” with respect to these new Macs? Locked bootloader only booting stuff signed by Apple. So these CPUs can only be used to run MacOS, no Linux or other alternate open platforms.

Where are you people getting this from? This is not accurate. You can in fact downgrade security from recovery OS. ARM doesn't have a generic platform like PC but I'm sure someone will figure out how the device tree works if they haven't already.

ARM does have a generic platform like the PC, it's the BSA (https://developer.arm.com/documentation/den0094/a).

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

#813

Post by AnthonyMouse »

asah wrote: post #751
marcan_42 wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until all software is ported to ARM, it will run in emulation, which is going to be slower in most cases. People invested in plug-in ecosystems, like DAWs or video editing, will likely have an endless long tail of plug-ins that aren't getting ported, or that require a re-purchase to get an ARM version. And due to Rosetta's architecture, you can't mix ARM and x86 plug-ins (in-process, like VSTs - Apple wants you to us…

won't emulation catch up in those timeframes ? still, 3+ yrs which is a long time...

Three years isn't that long for CPU performance gains anymore, but even if it was, it isn't the emulation that gets faster, it's the hardware. Contemporary ARM machines emulating x64 would still be slower than contemporary x64 machines natively executing x64.

You're also going to be in a bind if Apple decides they don't care about the long tail and stops supporting emulation before all of your plugins have been converted (if they ever are).

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

#815

Post by ProAm »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #391
willio58 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customers seem to be pretty happy with Apple in general so I can’t imagine they feel disrespected by the price and performance.

I’ve done this exercise a couple times: pick a random Apple laptop configuration and find an equivalent from another vendor: they’re frequently so close price-wise it doesn’t matter (depends on what you want, but I’m willing to pay $200 or so for macOS and not having to deal with Linux power management.)

There was a period of time where the laptops were not updated for almost 5 years and the price didnt change. No one remembers the past

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

#816

Post by _jal »

blunte wrote: post #698
wffurr wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Starts at $999 for the base laptop version. You can get much cheaper still good Windows laptops.

You lost me at "good Windows laptops". macOS has plenty of warts, but my experience with high quality equipment (Thinkpad, XPS, Alienware) has left me ultimately disappointed with Windows in many day to day situations compared to Mac. Windows is still clunky, despite many improvements. And aside from a Thinkpad Carbon X1, I haven't used any laptop with the performance and build quality (for the size/money) as a Macbo…

In my experience, the Thinkpads are indeed the only real competition, hardware-wise.

When my current Mac dies, that's where I'm headed, but running Linux; Microsoft is less of a danger, so I don't outright boycott anymore, but I still find Windows super annoying to use.

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

#817

Post by ralfd »

delfinom wrote: post #793
avalys wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what respect is Apple “locking down their software hard” with respect to these new Macs?

Apple is moving to basically ban non-Apple store installs of Mac software. It's been in progress the last few years but they are on the final stages of turning Macs into iPhones. Gotta take their 30% cut of everyone's revenue.

In the release event they featured prominently Cable Sasser from Panic and an App which is not in the App Store.

https://twitter.com/cabel/status/1326271980081876992

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

#818

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Tepix wrote: post #595
adrian_b wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As expected, the Apple M1 is a little faster than Inter Tiger Lake in single-thread applications, but it is a little slower than AMD Renoir in multi-threaded applications. So for things like software development where you compile frequently your projects, the new Apple computers are a little slower than similar computers with AMD CPUs. So even when taking only CPU performance into consideration, there are reasons to…

> Of course, nobody will decide to buy or not buy products with "Apple Silicon" based on their performance. That's exactly the reason why you would chose Apple Silicon right now where you can choose between Intel and Apple SoC. There are of course other reasons such as battery life and price.

Not really. Right now Apple Silicon would be translating most code and therefore be slower and possibly have worse battery life. By the time that isn't true anymore, the option of buying Intel from Apple will be gone and your choices will be ARM from Apple or a PC with Intel/AMD.

The x64 options from Apple are also uncompetitive with existing PCs already because they're using Intel processors when AMD's are faster.

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

#819

Post by jbverschoor »

ojosilva wrote: post #719
Tepix wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 GA502IV-AZ115 is likely to be faster. It is cheaper than the Macbook Air M1 with 16GB/512GB, too (in Germany: 1465€ vs 1588€). It has an AMD Ryzen 7 4800HS CPU and a RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU.

But that's a gaming laptop. Macbook Air is a "notebook" laptop, aka "ultraportable". Also the G15 Geekbench 5 is 1100 for single core, which is like 35% slower than the single core performance of the M1. Obviously for gaming benchmarks, then that's a different story... I'm starting to wonder if Apple's "faster than 98% of PC laptops" is an understatement, at least within its class.

Also the resolution of the screen is a totally different beast.

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

#820

Post by _ph_ »

arrrg wrote: post #644
miskin wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably have a lot of customers still demanding Intel CPUs. Mac minis are often used in server farms as build servers and there are many companies that would require Intel CPU there for some time.

All of that is true, however it is notable that the models they replaced (are not selling anymore) are all the lower end models. The two port MacBook Pro, the Air, only the lower end mini. Seems pretty obvious to me that there will be another more higher end variant of the M1, though maybe the only difference will be the amount of RAM, the number of GPU cores, the number of supported USB4 ports or something like that…

Yes, it looks like the M1 was designed mostly for the MacBook Air. The specs are a perfect fit and it makes a lot of sense, as the Air is their most popular laptop. Having the perfect Air - and the new one is truly impressive - will make for a lot of Mac sales. Also, they also put it in the bottom end MB Pro and Mini. But indeed with the next variant of Apple Silicon, the higher end variations, and other devices are probably going to be supported.
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