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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

#541

Post by simonh »

kevstev wrote: post #466
hutrdvnj wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've always thought Intel's marketing was a bit confused - i7 stays the same over 10+ years I think that is because the performance has been the same for the past 10+ years.

I am continually astounded that the quad core sandy bridge core-i7 I bought in January 2011 is still completely serviceable for pretty much all tasks outside of gaming. The bezel and overall form factor is clownishly large by todays standards, and the screen is starting to look a bit faded, but as a portable but mostly stationary PC it still works great alongside my main laptop I use for work. I knew back in 2011 I w…

I have to admit this is right. Even my old 2012 i7 Mac mini is still a perfectly serviceable machine to this day.

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

#542

Post by lghh »

tazjin wrote: post #375
maigret wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I know why all the websites I use are so slow :D

You joke, but I think this is actually true. If companies gave their developers of client-facing software slower computers the resulting software would end up being faster.

But it would take them an order of magnitude longer to ship it. `npm install` even on a fast machine is a slog.

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

#543

Post by foldr »

afavour wrote: post #321
ianai wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His “as tested” was 11 hours for AMD and 13 for M1. His “max time use” for AMD was 14.5 and 20 for M1. That’s a 38% greater time for the M1 in a best possible outcome and 18% on “average”. Substantial differences that users would perceive noticeably.

I’m not so sure. I think it reaches a meaningful maximum. Can I do an entire days work on the laptop? Yes to both. Can it last an entire flight, even a long one? Yes to both. It’s not that it doesn’t matter at all, it’s just that it matters a lot less once you’ve checked boxes like that. The effective experience of both would be “you only need to charge it overnight”

What the sibling says, but you've also got to take battery degradation into account. Even at 80% of its original battery life, an M1 Macbook Pro/Air will still give you a full day's usage.

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

#544

Post by emteycz »

afavour wrote: post #321
ianai wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His “as tested” was 11 hours for AMD and 13 for M1. His “max time use” for AMD was 14.5 and 20 for M1. That’s a 38% greater time for the M1 in a best possible outcome and 18% on “average”. Substantial differences that users would perceive noticeably.

I’m not so sure. I think it reaches a meaningful maximum. Can I do an entire days work on the laptop? Yes to both. Can it last an entire flight, even a long one? Yes to both. It’s not that it doesn’t matter at all, it’s just that it matters a lot less once you’ve checked boxes like that. The effective experience of both would be “you only need to charge it overnight”

It matters to me a lot. I was constantly out of charge with my previous laptop, it's exactly these extra hours that fixed it.

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

#545

Post by mehlmao »

Macha wrote: post #483
earthboundkid wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this point is so obvious, I feel like I've got to be missing something. I am a professional programmer. I am vaguely aware that Intel chips have X-Lake based codenames. I have no idea how to compare the chip in my current laptop to a new laptop based on Intel's marketing names. To convince myself to upgrade, I just go to Geekbench, because nothing else in the marketing tells me the new chip is better. Seems like…

Intel CPU numbering: iX-YYZZZ[Suffix] X = 3/5/7/9 = market positioning bucket. Higher is better Y = generation, currently at 11. This is basically a numeric form of the "* Lake" naming, except for 10th gen where Ice Lake (10nm, better power efficiency) and Comet Lake (14nm, higher max perf) co-existed in laptops ZZZ = position within that generation, higher is better, more detailed than the i3/i5/i7/i9 bucketing. Suf…

There's also the T suffix for desktop processors, indicating lower power usage. I put one of those in my NAS/Plex server.

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

#546

Post by memsom »

jean_tta wrote: post #426
hutrdvnj wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've always thought Intel's marketing was a bit confused - i7 stays the same over 10+ years I think that is because the performance has been the same for the past 10+ years.

Most people have no need to compare CPUs between mobile/non mobile or generation. They just need to know if the laptop they're looking at has the high end / middle end / low end CPU. You'd be comparing a new laptop with latest(-ish) CPUs. The i3/i5/i7 makes it plain & simple to know that. You don't need to figure out what the "middle end" CPU is called this year. It's the i5, problem solved.

When you can walk in to a store and be presented with laptops with "Core i5" that are 1 or more generations apart, and where a newer processor isn't always better than an older generation (different architecture, cores caches etc), I think having more than "it's an new laptop and it has an i5" is quite helpful. I think with the Apple chips, there is always a progression so far. If they keep that up, the marketing is on point and you'd always know that what you are buying is "one better than last year". I appreciate we can't guess what they will actually do, and the reality might be as diluted as the ia32/X64 marketplace is now.

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

#547

Post by _fat_santa »

presentation wrote: post #343
gambiting wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So my sister does professional photography, and went from a 16GB MacBook Pro(2016) to an 8GB Air, and reports no decrease of productivity - quite the opposite, in her experience all Adobe programs run much faster, and the machine is quieter and lighter to boot. So yeah, I'm not sure - maybe the ram amount isn't as a big deal as people make it out to be. On the other hand I'm a C++ programer and my workstation has 128…

Web developer, I had an 8GB M1 MacBook Air and if I ran vscode with my 50kish typescript codebase and dev server for api and frontend + native postgres and redis at the same time I’d be right at the limit of my machine slowing to unusable levels. Switched it for a 16GB one and I’ve never had any noticeable performance issues since.

I think the efficiency of the new M1 is what blows everyone away.

When the M1 first came out I was super super skeptical, seemed like an under powered chip compared to what's in the x86 world.

Now I'm convinced that it's got some magic inside it. Everyone I've talked to said it chews throw whatever they throw at it.

I'm consistently floored by Apple's ability to innovate.

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

#548

Post by onli »

klelatti wrote: post #531
onli wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what did you upgrade? Apple had no competitive product with modern processors. Where is the Zen3 macbook with which you compared that? Did the laptop you compared with had an equivalent fast SSD?

Given Apple had/has competitive products with 2020/21 Intel CPUs this is patently not true.

Hm, I'm surprised by that statement. The Ryzen 5000 mobile CPUs were a lot faster than the Intel competition and I am pretty sure Apple does not have them in any laptop. And the very fast SSD is a new addition, isn't it? Did I miss something?

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

#549

Post by zerkten »

oblio wrote: post #484
jsmith45 wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But let's say that a 5nm Ryzen comes out ahead for mobile usage. (But not necessarily by very much.) Chips like the M1 (or ideally, something similar made available to other device manufacturers) is still really interesting. The ARM architecture can scale down better than x86/x64 can, allowing a device maker to hit low end performance targets with less cost than x86 chips can manage. For the low end, it also tends to…

> This makes M1 type chips really interesting for any manufacturer who want to make devices that span a huge scale of performance requirements, from slow kiosks performance range to the decent laptop range. This is purely theoretical. Apple will > sell its chips to other companies. So if you were expecting Apple Silicon on its own to start a revolution, that's never going to happen.

The poster stated "M1 type chips". That is not setting an expectation that Apple will sell their chips.

Microsoft already have a Surface product with an ARM chip that didn't get updated in this round AFAIK. It already has solid ARM performance, but it's not as good as M1. It was let down with how well x86 emulation worked, but there seem to have been improvements including x64 support. If they focused on improvements with the chip design then they could see improvements along the lines of Apple. It's a question of whether the investment is made rather than whether it's possible.

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

#550

Post by eitland »

jean_tta wrote: post #529
Aperocky wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah and then they get surprised at why the mobile one suck. That was me trying to play games on laptops with 'i7' about a dozen years ago.

I am not arguing that the product naming is perfect, only that is not completely absurd as others claimed. Comparing the performance of laptop and desktop is a niche case. Most people know whether they want a laptop or a desktop and then choose among those categories.

> Comparing the performance of laptop and desktop is a niche case. Most people know whether they want a laptop or a desktop and then choose among those categories.

I think you will find many people thinking that is a very useful thing to compare.

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