Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by 908B64B197 » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

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".

More than that, I always assumed that the base models were the most popular. Since they are all M1 now, it would make sense.

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

#202

Post by jaegerpicker » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 6:39 PM UTC

harperlee wrote: post #17

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…

See Surface Pro X as an example of that alternate possibility.

I hated my Surface Pro when I had, granted this was 3 years ago. It had terrible battery life, windows was horrible with the touchscreen, very few apps responded to touch events at all let alone correctly. All together one of the worst laptops/tablets I've ever used. I have an M1 macbook air and it's the best laptop I've ever used, same with my iPad Pro. Apple has really nailed the Arm device/os combo IMO.

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

#203

Post by nottorp » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

toomanybeersies wrote: post #162

eatbitseveryday wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> running emulators (mobile dev) 16GiB is insufficient for mobile? iPhone SE has 3GiB and 12 has 6GiB. That is less than half your M1 RAM. How much more does the emulator consume?

I'm not a mobile developer, but between docker, my IDE, Chrome, and whatever other crap I've got running on my 16 GB MBP, I'm using 14.8 GB of RAM and 20 GB of swap.

I'm using 25 G of ram (out of 32) right now and I only have one IDE open.

When I need to run VMs as well, sky's the limit.

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

#204

Post by nottorp » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

andy_ppp wrote: post #160

sz4kerto wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My M1 MBA lasts around 6 hours if I do a lot of Google Meet calls.

Yes I've noticed something about Javascript and video seems to consume huge amounts of battery life. What do we think the battery life of an AMD 5800U laptop would be at Google Meet if you could buy one of course...

Doubt you can have battery life and javascript in the same phrase. They'll find a way to nullify any technological advance.

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

#205

Post by 908B64B197 » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 6:55 PM UTC

mumblemumble wrote: post #88

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".

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 knowl…

An old app in Apple's ecosystem isn't the same as an old app in Windows.

You can still run executables compiled under Windows2000 today. Meanwhile, programs as old simply won't work in MacOS (at the time, Apple was shipping OS9).

I have no doubt that a Windows release with legacy components removed can run fast on ARM (it was already demonstrated with Windows 10 mobile).

But that's just the tip of the iceberg: Nobody is shipping a chip comparable to the M1. All the ARM vendors are focused on phone chips, with completely different power optimization goals.

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

#206

Post by DonHopkins » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 7:01 PM UTC

addaon wrote: post #101

yardie wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ex…

6502 -> 680x0 -> PPC601 -> x86 -> x86_64 -> ARMv8.5 (Apple M1) The original Intel Mac's ran the 32-bit Core Duo, although a mid-season refresh took them to the (64-bit) Core 2 Duo. That generation of purely-32-bit hardware being out in the wild had some real impact on moving the OS forward, later down the road.

Hey don't forget the poor old Apple ///, Apple //e, and Apple //GS! ;)

6502 -> 6502B -> 65C02 -> 65C816 -> 680x0 -> PPC601 -> x86 -> x86_64 -> ARMv8.5 (Apple M1)

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

#207

Post by DonHopkins » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 7:02 PM UTC

js2 wrote: post #110

yardie wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ex…

6502 was only used in the Apple II and MacOS never ran Apple II software on its 68k processor, so it doesn't really belong in that list.

No fair. But it FUNDED the start of that list! ;)

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

#208

Post by greedo » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 8:09 PM UTC

mumblemumble wrote: post #159

krrrh wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decade of hand wringing about Tim Cook’s deficiencies as CEO compared to Steve Jobs have got to be put to rest by even the biggest skeptics. The timing, execution, and scale of this transition has been so well done.

I'd argue that the fundamental worry of the skeptics is correct. Apple hasn't been innovative in the same way. Apple's not brought out any products that created or disrupted an entire market niche since Cook took over, and it's arguably taken fewer risks. Instead, Apple's big wins over the past decade have been things like this: Really impressive operational successes. Personally, I'm OK with that. But I've never rea…

The Watch, or AirPods? I give Cook a lot of crap for being a bean counter, but AirPods are amazing and dominate the market.

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

#209

Post by valesco » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 8:15 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #189

DrBazza wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Windows ARM laptops were and are poorly executed. Apple is carrot and stick, where the carrot is performance and the stick is obsolescence. With Windows, there's neither carrot or stick. ARM isn't that much more performant, the battery life isn't that much better, and they're certainly not abandoning Intel. OTOH, Microsoft could invest a huge amount of their money on making ARM attractive, but the Wint…

> and the stick is obsolescence Does this really apply? My gf and I each earn FANG salaries and could upgrade a,couple of times a year if we were so inclined but haven’t bothered until the M1 arrived. IPhone 6s & 7, watch 0 & 3, 2016 Macbook + 2017 MacBook Air (TBF she has a big 2019 Intel MBP from work though)...upgrading that old gear didn’t seem worth it. Patches and upgrades continued to arrive (except for the wa…

Depends on who you’re asking. My 2012 Thinkpad is on the latest Windows 10. It works very well with its SSD and it is really quiet (new thermal paste). Meanwhile, my 2011 MBA cannot even get GarageBand from the App Store because its OS won’t upgrade. Otherwise it’s fine...

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

#210

Post by bayindirh » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 9:06 PM UTC

bogdanoff_2 wrote: post #154

bayindirh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 coo…

Could someone comment why the response times are faster? Is it entirely a question of which CPU is used or does it have to do with something else?

Apple fused a high performance core to a platform which used to run a latency critical platform, the iPhone. Actually it happened over the years.

- They learned to design a phone platform.

- Then, shoehorned a modified version of macOS on top of it.

- Then, they started to iterate on performance. Added iPad. They increased the performance while keeping latency criticality of iOS platform. Trying to have performing CPU/GPU and trying to keep power consumption low paved the way, year over year.

This iteration over and over resulted in M1. A descendant of iPhone and iPad, but with unbelievable performance. They kept the best parts of every platform since they can design from the processor to the latest bit of the software.

At the end of the day, M1 is greater than sum of its parts. An M1 Air behaves a lot of like an iOS device in some parts. Connect to power, screen comes on, a big battery appears with "XY% charged" message and you hear iOS charging chime. It's funny, yet hints on the heritage.

Apple fused everything together. A unified ARM platform. Variety of OSes with the same roots. One optimization for all. With a big blow, they theoretically reduced the software work they have to do dramatically, so they can build magical software again with last effort and can transfer technologies from one to another virtually with no effort.

See: iPad Pro with M1. iMac with M1, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with M1. They are the same device. Same performance. A slightly different OS on iPad. That's just it.