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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

#551

Post by itsokimbatman »

the_duke wrote: post #189
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…

Yeah the marketing effort is immense, and it's really surprising to me how many eagerly lap up the angle Apple is pushing without much reflection, even on HN. Like the good old Apple hype days. Now to be fair, the M1 is an impressive iteration on the A* chip line. But the Ryzen 5000 mobile chips really don't look bad at all in comparison, and a 5nm version of those would level the field.

I don’t think “impressive iteration” begins to describe it. I am very rarely impressed by new tech these days, and the M1 is the first piece of new hardware I’ve seen in years that seems downright magical.

My previous laptop was a 2016 MBP with an i7, and the M1 destroys it. I can build large projects like LLVM or WebKit fast and it doesn’t even get hot.

I’ve also been running Linux VMs with the new Parallels and they feel native speed.

Rosetta 2 is incredible, Intel apps are very responsive on M1.

My work computer is a high end 16” 2019 MBP with 64 GB of RAM and honestly if it weren’t for needing the extra RAM or the occasional x86 VM I’d trade it in for an M1 in a heartbeat.

I’ll agree the Apple hype is unrealistic at times, but the M1 is one that absolutely deserves it.

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

#552

Post by zepto »

yoz-y wrote: post #528
reader_mode wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is almost always a generation behind with tech in surface products it's ridiculous because they look so appealing otherwise. I just feel like I'm buying last years model on launch.

That is really a problem only if you watch tech news. In reality people use computers for years, so having a 4 or 5 year old tech doesn't really matter that much.

It means the usable life is shorter, so even if it’s fine for a while, you need to think of it as a much more expensive device per useful year.

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

#554

Post by enragedcacti »

nnadams wrote: post #355
fireattack wrote: post #289

I was always taught ARM (and M1), being a RISC architecture, isn't as "capable" as x86 in some way , whatever it means. I am no longer sure if that's still the case, since they seem to work just as good, if not better (energy efficiency). Of course, it's not exactly an apple to apple comparison since Apple upgraded so many other things, but I just didn't see any mention about the limitation of being RISC in these art…

You are right that CISC processors (like x86) have more capabilities, i.e. more instructions. You as the programmer get to take advantage of the "extra" very specific instructions, so overall you write less instructions. Less instructions sounds great, but with CISC you do not know how long those instructions will take to execute. RISC has only a handful of instructions, that all take 1 clock cycle (with pipelining).…

> RISC has only a handful of instructions, that all take 1 clock cycle (with pipelining).

This isn't really the case with modern ARM. Fundamentally modern ARM and x86 CPUs are designed very similarly once you get past the instruction decoder. Both 'compile' instructions down to micro-ops that are then executed rather than executing the instruction set directly so the distinctions between the instruction sets themselves don't matter all that much past that point.

The main advantages for ARM come from the decode stage and from larger architectural differences such as relaxed memory ordering requirements.

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/13480/did...

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

#555

Post by fouric »

Someone wrote: post #216
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.

> decreases world-wide memory usage by a terabyte

While true, that's not going to motivate anybody. Memory is not a very scarce resource, we're making more all the time, we can continue to make more, and it's reusable.

Moreover, memory that isn't being used is almost completely useless - the only thing it does is act as disk cache.

Better to use memory than CPU, as the latter actually consumes power (leading to climate change if not powered using renewables etc.) - although even better to use less of both.

A more effective argument would be to look at the number of users on low-end devices, and point out that, the more memory you use, the less these users are able to run your applications.

Not that I'm expecting companies like Slack to care - they design for the high-end user, and if your company forces Slack on you and you have an older device, there's nothing you can do, and they exploit that.

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

#556

Post by zepto »

eertami wrote: post #344
skohan wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which Ryzen laptop currently competes with the latest macbooks in terms of form factor, performance, battery life and build quality? I'm honestly asking, I've been thinking about getting a Linux laptop in a while and I would be curious to see what the playing field is like

Have you used a recent Macbook? The Macbook Pro keyboard is unique in that is is the only time in my life I have ever experienced a keyboard breaking. I think people are a little too nostalgic when talking about Apple build quality. There's a 2011 MBP here that still works well. But recent releases... no better than the competition really.

> Have you used a recent Macbook? The Macbook Pro keyboard is unique in that is is the only time in my life I have ever experienced a keyboard breaking.

Given that you know the keyboard has been fixed, is there a reason why you didn’t make it clear that you were talking about older machines and not current ones?

You make it sound like the current machines have the flawed keyboard, which is not true as far as I am aware.

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

#557

Post by maliker »

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…

I agree that the M1 doesn't look good for high performance computing right now or anything with poor ARM support. But strategically, I think Apple is in a good spot. For heavy computation these days, I always remote into another machine. With increased bandwidth and more efficient remote desktop protocols, I even do all my graphics-intensive 3d work remotely now. By focusing on low-power processors, Apple is making the laptop/tablet/phone experience better, and I could see them handling the performance issues via remote compute. It could be a very effective strategy (if it is their strategy).

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

#558

Post by MrFoof »

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'm also staring at a Mid-2011 Sandy Bridge quad-core iMac that's been on my desk since May 2011.

It'll be replaced come August-ish with a 32-core Zen 3 Threadripper (with 256GB of ECC). Though in a few years I'll likely put an M3 Mac Mini alongside it to figure out when I'll feel comfortable going to ARM full time, as all my customers (and their applications) are still native x86 only... for now.

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

#559

Post by shaan7 »

dmos62 wrote: post #284
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…

> I'm a C++ programer and my workstation has 128GB of ram and I wouldn't accept any less What on earth are you programming?

One example is linking QtWebEngine (basically Chromium) which can sometimes take upwards of 64 GB of RAM.

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

#560

Post by simonh »

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 bought a new machine last year that came with 8GB and ordered a 16GB upgrade for it which didn't arrive for a few weeks. I literally just now remembered I've never got round to installing it.
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