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Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

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Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#81

Post by martinald »

brink wrote: post #49
dkarp wrote: post #13

M1 is amazing and I bought my partner one and she loves it. However, when it came to buying a new engineer on our team a laptop, we had to go with the last 2020 Intel model. We still have some uncertainty over whether or not our development tools/environment will work on M1. Many python packages will take longer to install I imagine (if there are no wheels for the M1 mac, not sure if that's an issue) and I suspect so…

As an engineer on an M1, I have to say you made the right choice. Half the stuff that I try to work on is just straight up broken, especially Python/AI related tools. I have to switch to my Linux laptop regularly to get anything done. I've wasted days just trying to get certain dev tools working.

I've found the experience better, most stuff I've used works out of the box, but there are often weird lib problems that require various hacks. You then can't check them into source control as it'll break intel users, and it becomes a bit of a headache remembering all this.

I think the situation should continue to improve, but there is an extremely long tail of stuff to get working.

The other thing I would mention is that Rosetta is very very slow. A lot of the initial impressions made out it was basically a bit slower, but for a lot of stuff it's slow as hell. You do not want to for example run an IDE in Rosetta.

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#82

Post by imwillofficial »

e-clinton wrote: post #72
imwillofficial wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The low end new shiny model of just 2 variants are out selling all of the older and more expensive models combined. That’s big.

I assume Apple sells vastly more Airs and 13” Pros than they do any other machine they make. The lower price is a huge contributor. If the M1 were only on the top end machines, this thread wouldn’t exist.

That’s a lot of assumptions to make. Based on what?

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#83

Post by bayindirh »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #45
haswell wrote: post #14

I see a myriad of comments that boil down to “duh”, but I think these comments are missing the point. Consider an alternate possibility: “sales of Apple’s new ARM macs outpaced by older models”. Had Apple not knocked M1 out of the park, this was a real possibility. Is it surprising that a well executed architecture change is now selling well? Not really. But the more interesting point is that the rest of the market a…

I wonder how many of those who got an M1 mac recently are aware of what exactly that means, besides that it's new and fast. I could imagine a large part of those sales to fall into the "I need a new computer, I'll get another Macbook Air" category. Those buyers wouldn't have much reason to care anyway; I guess you'd have to do pretty specialized work to really notice a big difference besides "cool" and "fast".

I'm using an M1 MacBook Air right now. It's more nuanced than speed. That thing's responses are insane. It's an insanely fast computer which wakes up like an iPhone and has an endurance like a vintage, entry level Nokia phone.

It's ready to work before I finish opening up the screen and, they forgot to tell the battery that it needs to deplete after some time.

It doesn't matter for ordinary people to know all the cool tech and architectural stuff running below that keyboard, because at the end of the day, your ordinary applications are running, using way less power and it responds so fast that you can't even think.

This matters way more for end users than for us, developers. Because we the devs & admins know the nature of the beast, and the ordinary users have unmoored expectations (and it's not a bad thing TBH).

I have a personal intel Mac and office gave me an M1 one. I reach for M1 without even knowing.

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#84

Post by yardie »

haswell wrote: post #14

I see a myriad of comments that boil down to “duh”, but I think these comments are missing the point. Consider an alternate possibility: “sales of Apple’s new ARM macs outpaced by older models”. Had Apple not knocked M1 out of the park, this was a real possibility. Is it surprising that a well executed architecture change is now selling well? Not really. But the more interesting point is that the rest of the market a…

6502 -> 680x0 -> PPC601 -> x86_64 -> ARMv8.5 (Apple M1)

Apple has a long, long history of pulling off well executed architecture changes. If you are a Apple computer shopper then you would know by now that by the time they release a new architecture, internally, that platform has long been retired for their internal users.

It would have been an even bigger headline if Apple released the M1 and it didn't live up to expectations.

I'm actually more surprised about the iPad Pro going from the A-series to the M-series. And now, the new iMac looks very iPad-like.

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#85

Post by btown »

smilekzs wrote: post #57
dividedbyzero wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many of those who got an M1 mac recently are aware of what exactly that means, besides that it's new and fast. I could imagine a large part of those sales to fall into the "I need a new computer, I'll get another Macbook Air" category. Those buyers wouldn't have much reason to care anyway; I guess you'd have to do pretty specialized work to really notice a big difference besides "cool" and "fast".

I would imagine opinion from early adopters (and tech media in general) have non-trivial influence over even said buyers' decisions.

Right, even if it's distilled down to "I've heard great things about these new Macs" that's still reflective of an incredible technical and marketing accomplishment.

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#86

Post by frant-hartm »

onethought wrote: post #55
userbinator wrote: post #44

Cheaper, faster, more locked-down and proprietary. Unfortunately most people don't seem to care about the last point.

Because it isn’t a point. What’s locked down about an M1 that isn’t locked down about an intel?

Proprietary was the point. There is no open source support (in the Linux kernel). There are attempts to make it run, but before it becomes even barely usable Intel will catch up and AMD will be far ahead in performance and catch up with power consumption.

Then there will be new models from Apple, but you the cycle will repeat itself, again no linux support etc..

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#87

Post by chrisfinazzo »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #45
haswell wrote: post #14

I see a myriad of comments that boil down to “duh”, but I think these comments are missing the point. Consider an alternate possibility: “sales of Apple’s new ARM macs outpaced by older models”. Had Apple not knocked M1 out of the park, this was a real possibility. Is it surprising that a well executed architecture change is now selling well? Not really. But the more interesting point is that the rest of the market a…

I wonder how many of those who got an M1 mac recently are aware of what exactly that means, besides that it's new and fast. I could imagine a large part of those sales to fall into the "I need a new computer, I'll get another Macbook Air" category. Those buyers wouldn't have much reason to care anyway; I guess you'd have to do pretty specialized work to really notice a big difference besides "cool" and "fast".

In some ways, it reminds me of the Intel transition in that regular consumers might not have been aware that this move was coming until they saw it in front of their eyes.

I often see that transition dated to 2006 at MacWorld, but the reality is that it was previewed at WWDC the previous year and there was only a minor spec bump to - I think - one model before the iMacs appeared to kick things off.

On a related note, I was not surprised - but definitely disappointed - to hear them describe the iMac changes as "making the computer disappear." Such 'appliances' have always seemed cheap and purposefully limited (not in a good way), yet this is what the market seems to want.

Regular people continue to not understand how computers work and they probably never will.

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#88

Post by mumblemumble »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #45
haswell wrote: post #14

I see a myriad of comments that boil down to “duh”, but I think these comments are missing the point. Consider an alternate possibility: “sales of Apple’s new ARM macs outpaced by older models”. Had Apple not knocked M1 out of the park, this was a real possibility. Is it surprising that a well executed architecture change is now selling well? Not really. But the more interesting point is that the rest of the market a…

I wonder how many of those who got an M1 mac recently are aware of what exactly that means, besides that it's new and fast. I could imagine a large part of those sales to fall into the "I need a new computer, I'll get another Macbook Air" category. Those buyers wouldn't have much reason to care anyway; I guess you'd have to do pretty specialized work to really notice a big difference besides "cool" and "fast".

ARM Windows laptops have been around for a while, and have not taken off.

Some of that could be that these computers don't represent a shift in the wind - x86 remains the primary architecture for Windows. But I think that another big part of it is that every review of a Windows ARM laptop is full of caveats. Some programs will run slower, some programs won't run at all. Knowing which is which requires technical knowledge that a lot of people don't have, such as the ability to distinguish native executables from Java or .NET apps, or the ability to distinguish 32-bit programs from 64-bit ones.

Apple, on the other hand, really outdid themselves here. The story for most consumers is just, "It will run all your old apps, no problem." The worst-case-scenario story for a certain niche is, "Docker may be flaky until later this year."

IOW, the fact that "those buyers wouldn't have much reason to care anyway" represents an enormous accomplishment on Apple's part.

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#89

Post by gigatexal »

haswell wrote: post #14

I see a myriad of comments that boil down to “duh”, but I think these comments are missing the point. Consider an alternate possibility: “sales of Apple’s new ARM macs outpaced by older models”. Had Apple not knocked M1 out of the park, this was a real possibility. Is it surprising that a well executed architecture change is now selling well? Not really. But the more interesting point is that the rest of the market a…

“Duh” comments come from all the wins they’ve had in the mobile space. They have been and likely will continue to be 2 or more generations ahead in performance per watt on mobile. So when they were talking about doing a desktop and laptop chip it wouldn’t be a stretch to think they’d “knock it out of the park”.

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#90

Post by jbverschoor »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #26
jbverschoor wrote: post #16

I can't wait to run macOS on the ipad pro omg

Is there any indication that's going to be possible?

We're able to run iOS apps on the M1 computers. The iPad is essentially the same hardware and has a proper keyboard / trackpad. I see no reason why it won't be like that.
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