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Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

extremetech.com

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Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#211

Post by mysterydip »

emteycz wrote: post #190
klelatti wrote: post #150

One thing which I don't think has been commented on is the marketing effort behind the M1. It's getting a lot of prominence and its use across lots of computers means that there can be a consistent message that "M1 is great - get a new Mac and get an M1". It also provides an opportunity to distinguish between M1 and the next generation M2 (presumably). I've always thought Intel's marketing was a bit confused - i7 sta…

There's a value in that too - people know immediately that i7 is powerful, and everyone [that cares] already knows that processors are renewed frequently. Though yeah, perhaps something like 7i1, 7i2 would've been better. Apple solved this nicely (given the naming is confirmed) with M1X.

That's fine if you're buying new. Is there an i5 that beats an older i7 in performance? When buying a used laptop or desktop, how much extra research do I need to do to figure out which processor I'm actually getting? There's been 13 years of i7's.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#212

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

nightowl_games wrote: post #72
speedplane wrote: post #69

The M1 processor is a direct result of the death of Moore's law. It's an amazing processor, but a sad sign of things to come. The performance gains from Moore's law have typically come from shrinking die size. That has ended, you can't juice more performance from general purpose CPUs. If general purpose processors no longer advance quickly enough, the only way to get performance gains is to build custom chips for com…

On his recent Lex Fridman podcast appearance, Jim Keller speaks to exactly this mindset. He says that they've been heralding the death of Moore's law since he started and that the "one trick ponies" just keep coming. He says he doesn't doubt that they will continue.

"Moore's law" was strictly about the average cost of a transistor, not performance in general.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#213

Post by iSnow »

daemoon wrote: post #139
londons_explore wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they have the fab capacity to be able to do that. Since M1 products are selling very well, they likely have reallocated fab capacity they had planned for the successor to the M1 back to making the M1. A higher performance M1 would have a bigger die size. It would have a lower yield and get fewer dies per wafer. The same capacity would sell fewer products. Apple probably earns more profits by simply sell…

> they likely have reallocated fab capacity they had planned for the successor to the M1 back to making the M1 Got any proof or something? This is a bold claim to make.

Some benchmark sites claim they saw performance reports. Whether they make those up to see more traffic, I cannot tell. If I worked at Apple, I would not tell :)

For example https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-apple_m1x-1898 talks about a 12 Core CPU but with only 16GB RAM.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#214

Post by mrweasel »

sto_hristo wrote: post #153

Make it as fabulous as much as you want, $1700 for an 8 core, 8 gigs of ram machine is just one plain fabulous joke. This in the time when 16 gigs ram is the baseline if you plan to do anything more than facebook and instagram.

Really? I still use seven year old MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM. It’s perfectly fine for developing in at least Python, Go or Nim, with a Docker container or two and MariaDB in the background.

Sure, when/if I upgrade I’d go for 16GB of memory, but one should be careful about projecting ones own needs onto other.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#215

Post by anthk »

fogihujy wrote: post #117
monkmartinez wrote: post #15

You get an M1 with the new iPad Pro as well! I hadn't thought of the situation as the article presents. When shown in that light, it made me pause to reflect. The M1 doesn't make sense when its in every darn product. The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? I will admit that I switched to Thinkpad and Win10 about two years ago when I had to return my butterfly for the 5th time. I am not looking back eithe…

> The M1 doesn't make sense when its in every darn product. The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? Why not? It's basically back to where we were in 1980 when "everything" had a Z80 or 6502 (or both!) in it, and the major differences were in what else was in the system.

6809.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#216

Post by Someone »

sto_hristo wrote: post #153

Make it as fabulous as much as you want, $1700 for an 8 core, 8 gigs of ram machine is just one plain fabulous joke. This in the time when 16 gigs ram is the baseline if you plan to do anything more than facebook and instagram.

On the other hand “16 gigs ram is the baseline if you plan to do anything more than facebook and instagram” is something to cry about.

Programmers working on products with a billion users should realize that every kilobyte they save decreases world-wide memory usage by a terabyte.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#217

Post by iSnow »

thefz wrote: post #183
iSnow wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure what the end-game for releasing those under-powered machines is, tbh. I am a bit more extreme in that I am not buying any machine below 32GB given RAM is no longer upgradable, but even if my mom came and asked me about those iMacs, I'd tell her to not buy. It's a shame that Apple is so great at greenwashing and at the same time spits on every way they could help create truly sustainable products by just…

> I am not sure what the end-game for releasing those under-powered machines is, tbh The lowest and highest tier exist only to shift consumers towards the middle tier, where Apple profits the most and where lies less value for the consumer. It is a marketing strategy invented by Apple IIRC (it's been a long time since my marketing exam).

I know, but AFAIK those new iMacs ALL feature just 8GB of RAM? There isn't really a middle-tier, that what makes it so weird. you'd expect one machine with top SSD and 16 GB (and space grey, lol).

Probably going to be the next iteration of the 27" iMac, spanning from 8GB/256GB (LOL) to 16 GB/1TB or something.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#218

Post by grishka »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #101

> Apple’s gamble, with the M1, is that its custom CPU performance is now so high, at such low power consumption, that the choice of chip inside the system has become irrelevant within a given product generation. This is clearly wrong as they are still selling Intel versions of the MacBook and MacMini. Apple makes a lot of money by offering a range of processor options. At the moment we are early in the transition but…

Did they also offer a range of processor options back when they were using PowerPC? I get the impression that they did not.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#219

Post by gambiting »

bluedino wrote: post #197
klelatti wrote: post #150

One thing which I don't think has been commented on is the marketing effort behind the M1. It's getting a lot of prominence and its use across lots of computers means that there can be a consistent message that "M1 is great - get a new Mac and get an M1". It also provides an opportunity to distinguish between M1 and the next generation M2 (presumably). I've always thought Intel's marketing was a bit confused - i7 sta…

The i7 name was ruined by dual core mobile parts It meant at one time “quad core”

I mean......the very first generation of i7s already had a dual-core mobile part, i7-620M was a dual core cpu.

So I'd argue you can't really "ruin" something you've just introduced. I do agree that for a while it was standard that a desktop i7 was a quad core and a mobile one was dual core.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#220

Post by gambiting »

klelatti wrote: post #205
bluedino wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The i7 name was ruined by dual core mobile parts It meant at one time “quad core”

At one point I think hyperthreading was i7 only too?

Mobile i5s always had hyperthreading from the beginning.

Edit: nope, actually, I'm wrong - Core i5-430M was a straight dual core, no hyperthreading part.

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