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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

#241

Post by dpatterbee »

apatheticonion wrote: post #154

Can't wait for an iPhone Pro with an M1 processor that I can plug into a thunderbolt/usbc dock, run monitors, a keyboard, ethernet, and have it running MacOS when in desktop mode. EDIT: A little context; when I am in the office, I use vscode over ssh to connect to my desktop PC at home. My desktop takes care of my language server, syntax highlighting, compilation and vscode forwards my ports and spins up terminals. A…

This is the utopian future I dream of, but unfortunately there is 0 economic incentive for a company like apple to create a product like this. With how powerful our phones are, they could easily be the main workstations for millions, but they're forced to remain as toys. I'm somewhat surprised google don't try to push this more.

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

#242

Post by novaRom »

apatheticonion wrote: post #154

Can't wait for an iPhone Pro with an M1 processor that I can plug into a thunderbolt/usbc dock, run monitors, a keyboard, ethernet, and have it running MacOS when in desktop mode. EDIT: A little context; when I am in the office, I use vscode over ssh to connect to my desktop PC at home. My desktop takes care of my language server, syntax highlighting, compilation and vscode forwards my ports and spins up terminals. A…

Basically many modern Android phones today work perfectly well paired wirelessly with modern TV screen. Enable desktop mode, pair with a mouse and keyboard, and you have a kind of working environment: video chat, programming, text editing, office apps - all exists.

That's actually how to watch youtube without ads, because non-Android TV has no freetube/newPipe apps.

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

#243

Post by jeswin »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #172
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.

I don't disagree that 8GiB for $1700 machine is absurd, however, I feel compelled to point out that MacOS is significantly more aggressive with memory compression than other operating systems and they come with blazingly fast SSDs, allowing devices to get away with less available memory.

> and they come with blazingly fast SSDs...

Actually, they're somewhat slow compared to the competition.

A 500GB M1 SSD gives you about 3.1GB/s of write and 2.75GB/s of read performance [1]. In comparison - a $219 Samsung 980 Pro benchmarks at 4.2GB/s of write and 5.2GB/s of read performance [2]. Both on Disk Test from Black Magic.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/k2lhi8/ssd_speedtest_o...

[2]: https://www.servethehome.com/samsung-980-pro-500gb-pcie-gen4....

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

#244

Post by ianai »

the_duke wrote: post #225
HatchedLake721 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...

This doesn't contain any comparison graphs relevant to my question, and couldn't, because it's from November. The Ryzen 5000 mobile chips came out this year.

Here’s the AMD benchmark and it’s using up to 3x the power of the M1.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16446/amd-ryzen-9-5980hs-ceza...

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

#245

Post by floatboth »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #109
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…

Death of moore’s law? Hmm. Meanwhile I just got a R9 5950X and it is drastically faster than my 5 year old i7. There must be some doubling of transistors in there, right? Also maybe buying a 5950X at the birth of a new generation of ARM CPUs wasn’t the wisest choice. Or maybe it is, idk.

Maybe buying a 5950X at the birth of DDR5, PCIeGen5 and TSMC's 5nm wasn't the wisest choice. Ehhhh seems like all that new stuff would still take lots of time to actually get ready, and the 5950X is the best CPU now.

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

#246

Post by Simon321 »

speedplane wrote: post #76
nightowl_games wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. The situation is clearly far worse than what you suggest. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, apparent computer performance was doubling roughly every two years. Your shiny new desktop was obsolete in 24 months. Today, we're lucky to get a 15% gain in tw…

This is false, computer performance has been doubling nearly every year. See for example https://www.top500.org/statistics/perfdevel/

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

#247

Post by oblio »

mrweasel wrote: post #214
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.

Your web browser probably doesn't have many tabs open, and those that are open, are probably not web apps (think Slack, Facebook, WhatsApp, various internal corporate apps, etc.).

I can't even remember a time when just my web browser used up less than 4-5 GB of RAM, on its own.

Add at least 500MB - 1 GB for the OS itself, and we're talking about 2 - 3.5GB for apps. I'd immediately swap with just 8GB of RAM with an IDE and a DB running.

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

#248

Post by tempay »

iSnow wrote: post #217
thefz wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You can upgrade them to 16GB. Having been developing heavy applications in a M1 Mac mini for since they were released they’re definitely adequate for most users. Obviously some people need ~100 cores and ~1TB of ram (myself included for other parts of my job) but that segment is always going to be better served by companies other than Apple.

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

#249

Post by raxxorrax »

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.

I have an M1 from work (which I now mainly use for private stuff...) and it does have 16gb memory. It did cost a bit less than $1700 (after taxes) I believe, although I am not sure. I know it has some upgraded gpu compared to the standard model in some form, but didn't know about the memory.

As for the device: It is neat, but not revolutionary to any degree. I do paint and model and can run blender/krita just fine, it is even quite performant. This is through emulation, I don't have native builds for arm. Maybe those have become available in the meantime, but you don't notice the emulation at all.

But it won't be the end of x86 in my opinion. Why would it?

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

#250

Post by madeofpalk »

Heliosmaster wrote: post #168
baq wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thermals would be quite bad for performance here, but the vision is quite appealing.

Isn't basically the same vision Canonical had for Ubuntu Touch/Phone? You carry your (main) computer with you in your pocket. If you're on the go, you use its screen. If at home, you plug it in better screens/inputs peripherals.

Many have had this concept, no one has actually executed well on it.
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