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What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

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Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#181

Post by JohnTHaller »

alberth wrote: post #176
klelatti wrote: post #49

Just looking at the economics of the Mac Pro based on sales of the machine itself doesn't quite capture the full picture. An Apple Silicon Mac Pro could have many roles: - A flagship product that demonstrates just how powerful Apple Silicon can be. This in turn could enhance the Apple / Mac brand for a certain group of users. - An aspirational product for users who think that they might need more power in the future.…

Does the Mac Studio not address all those points?

A similarly priced Windows PC is expandable and upgradeable while also being faster than a Mac Studio.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#182

Post by ajross »

klelatti wrote: post #178
ajross wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A flagship product that demonstrates just how powerful Apple Silicon can be. The danger there is what if it isn't? Apple's riding high right now but what if AMD or Qualcomm or whoever takes the next crown? This is one of the things that almost killed the company back in the G4 days. Jobs would be up there on stage essentially lying to our faces about the "Personal Supercomputer" when any of us could look at the lit…

Hmmm, performance has been a key part of Apple’s branding for decades from Power PC (don’t disagree with your point on G4 though) through Intel in the MacBook Pro and Mac Pro and now on iPhones and M series Macs. Edit - this is a comment about branding ie how Apple presents itself not actual performance.

I think the marketing of performance has always been a subthread.

But the actual machines have always been merely "good enough". The 68k macs lagged PCs significantly. PPC had a brief moment where it was faster than 486/P5 devices but then got demolished by P6+ cores, to the extent that Apple had to switch to Intel themselves. Then for almost two decades they shipped what amounted to the same silicon as high end windows laptops. MacBooks were "high performance", but not in a way that wasn't accessible to HP or Lenovo.

But all that relies on it not being a lie. If you lock your platform marketing not into merely "Insanely Great" but into the idea of Apple Silicon being best, then you need to make damn sure it actually is. And right now it is! But it needs to stay that way if you're going to bet the platform on it.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#183

Post by sylens »

philistine wrote: post #151
sylens wrote: post #76

Apple’s high end desktop strategy has been confusing to me for several years now. They made a big deal out of the iMac Pro, even though that seemed like an obvious quick fix for power users since the new Mac Pro wasn’t ready at the time. However, I never understood why Pros would want to pay more for an an all-in-one they couldn’t self service or upgrade when they probably already had monitors they preferred using. T…

In 2006, computing was less generous. A music producer probably needed a Mac Pro for their workflow to be efficient. Since then, Intel has massively reduced the delta between laptop and desktop chips. Coupled with the increase in computing ability of our processors while most tasks do not increase their needs (that music producer does not need more computing than in 2006) and desktops slowly faded to nothing but the…

That's a really good point. I think it would be far more likely to see that same freshman with a Mac Studio in their dorm now instead of a Mac Pro even if it was at a similar price point as the Studio - just smaller and more practical.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#184

Post by dagmx »

eole666 wrote: post #82
dagmx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VFX has largely been on Linux workstations since the demise of SGI. There’s never really been a Mac presence at the workstation level at those studios. Windows is already in many studios due to VR or Virtual Production work, since Unreal Engine kind of sucks on anything that isn’t Windows, and the same goes for VR. However there are a few areas that Macs are used heavily and where I don’t think Apple need to be worri…

"macOS has much better colour handling than windows". How is that ? Do you just mean apple screens have a better color calibration when you get them ? Or the OS come with some tools to handles colors in some ways Windows can't ?

Windows has fairly poor colour management throughout the OS.

If you stick to apps that are specifically colour managed, and manage your own screen profiles, it’s fine, but compare it to the Mac where:

* you get much better EDR/HDR support at the OS level, so it tries to handle perceptual EDR ranges when apps switch to EDR.

* the OS itself has better management for colour profiles for the screen (also better refresh rate management when it comes to common film rates)

* Macs come with P3 colour handling for their first party displays https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT210435 , and while you can colour manage a windows/Linux machine post facto, it’s nice to have a system come with a good baseline that reflects their screen properties. For example, coordinators don’t need colour accuracy BUT it does help when their laptops present it well. Most desktop users would use an Eizo instead.

* safari does a better job than chrome/Firefox at handling embedded image colour metadata , and also managing EDR colour.

* similarly Preview, QuickTime and Finder are better at respecting embedded colour profiles and EDR where applicable than Windows Media Viewer and Explorer.

Most of this can of course be replicated on Windows, but you have to go out of your way to do so. Plus you’d still lack the macs EDR handling that is great for review sessions etc…

macOS doesn’t cover everything of course. Images with custom LUTs still need their own viewer apps, but I can’t emphasize how nice it is to have much more trust in what you’re seeing and reducing the mental friction while doing a lot of your ancillary work outside specific apps. It’s not perfect, but so much better then Windows where it’s a crapshoot what colour you’re going to see depending on how you view it.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#185

Post by martinald »

SirGiggles wrote: post #180
klelatti wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm, performance has been a key part of Apple’s branding for decades from Power PC (don’t disagree with your point on G4 though) through Intel in the MacBook Pro and Mac Pro and now on iPhones and M series Macs. Edit - this is a comment about branding ie how Apple presents itself not actual performance.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say efficiency instead? It's to my understanding that the latest offerings from both AMD and Intel are competitive in regards to synthetic benchmarks at the cost of higher power consumption.

The other problem with Apple is just how expensive the RAM/SSD upgrades are now.

I've got a Mac Mini M1 as soon as it came out.

I recently got a Ryzen PC, 6 core 5600G w/ 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD. Cost approx £500. Upgrading the M1 spec from 256GB SSD to 1TB (£400) costs basically the same as the entire PC I bought. I'm impressed with the 5600G, it is super cool and quiet compared to what I was expecting and the 32GB of RAM makes much more of a difference to performance than the extra CPU perf of the M1.

It's really a bit ridiculous that Apple is still selling products with a base config of 8/256. I'm pretty sure that hasn't increased since I got the retina macbook pro in 2012 unless I'm mistaken?

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#186

Post by amelius »

dpflan wrote: post #156
trenchgun wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did they lose those key employees?

Add on: who are the key employees?

Apple doesn't want to speak about them.

In fact the only recent Apple employee other than Jobs or Cook that I have ever heard about is Jony Ive.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#187

Post by Maxburn »

Maxburn wrote: post #43

Niagara makes HVAC control software and there's a big push to get it Mac compatible. Seems like a terrible time to make the investment now with two architectures involved. Prolonging the transition isn't in anybody interest.

People that are downvoting, what am I missing?

Developers either target apple silicon and ignore intel, ignore apple silicon and rely on rosetta2 for as long as that's here, or invest in both to optimize performance and just eat all the extra work both require? I'm not a mac user, is there such a thing as making a app targeting apple silicon work on a x86 machine?

If someone is looking to add their application to Mac it really seems like a bad time to do it, wait a year and more apple silicon will be out there and you could reasonably target just that and be OK. Apple prolonging the transition is not good for anybody, but I guess we can blame this on supply chain.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#188

Post by seiferteric »

martinald wrote: post #185
SirGiggles wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say efficiency instead? It's to my understanding that the latest offerings from both AMD and Intel are competitive in regards to synthetic benchmarks at the cost of higher power consumption.

The other problem with Apple is just how expensive the RAM/SSD upgrades are now. I've got a Mac Mini M1 as soon as it came out. I recently got a Ryzen PC, 6 core 5600G w/ 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD. Cost approx £500. Upgrading the M1 spec from 256GB SSD to 1TB (£400) costs basically the same as the entire PC I bought. I'm impressed with the 5600G, it is super cool and quiet compared to what I was expecting and the 32GB of…

> with a base config of 8/256

On a MacBook PRO no less.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#189

Post by brookst »

klelatti wrote: post #49

Just looking at the economics of the Mac Pro based on sales of the machine itself doesn't quite capture the full picture. An Apple Silicon Mac Pro could have many roles: - A flagship product that demonstrates just how powerful Apple Silicon can be. This in turn could enhance the Apple / Mac brand for a certain group of users. - An aspirational product for users who think that they might need more power in the future.…

Yes, exactly. Add two more: a prestige product that motivates top talent, and senior management likes these products.

Halo cars like Corvette Z06 are exactly the right analogy. They sell at most 8000/year; there is no way it’s profitable as a line item. But it gets made for all of those indirect reasons.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#190

Post by brookst »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #181
alberth wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the Mac Studio not address all those points?

A similarly priced Windows PC is expandable and upgradeable while also being faster than a Mac Studio.

. . . and much louder, and much bigger, and running Windows.

Macs have never been about highest possible performance at any price point. But there is a niche where people want a very fast computer that is quit and not too ugly (and who can find their apps on macOS).

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