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Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

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

#191

Post by emptyfile »

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.

> blazingly fast SSDs

So like, 2 times as fast as any other SSD? No? The comment reads like marketing spiel.

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

#192

Post by emteycz »

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.

But there isn't a 5nm version of those... And laptop battery life is vastly different between these two.

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

#193

Post by [deleted] »

iSnow wrote: post #185
Heliosmaster wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wish they had had the firepower to develop this. I'm not exactly unhappy with Android, but I'd bought that in an instant.

[deleted]

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

#194

Post by ForHackernews »

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…

On the contrary, I think this is fantastic news:

- It means consumers won't have to keep buying new electronic crap every couple years. Maybe we can finally get hardware that's built to be modular and maintainable.

- It means performance gains will have to come from writing better software. Devs (and more importantly, the companies that pay devs) will be forced to care about efficiency again. Maybe we can kill Electron and the monstrosity of multi-MBs of garbage JS on every site.

The sooner we bury Moore's Law and the myth of "just throw more hardware at it" the better.

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

#195

Post by kingosticks »

thitcanh wrote: post #119
wmf wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the M1 lacks any (usable) way to connect to other M1s.

For now?

Yes and they need to go away and design a very different chip. It's not trivial. x86 vendors already have chips like this.

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

#196

Post by iSnow »

daniellarusso wrote: post #99
Corrado wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? I think that's the point. Until now, buying a computer has always been focused on the CPU and RAM stats. If you wanted faster/bigger you had to spend more. With Apple's new strategy you almost don't even care about CPU/RAM stats. They are focusing on providing value in other ways; larger screen, lighter weight, different colors, more ports, etc. I think this is t…

In high school, I worked a retail job for an office supply store, and one of the PC brands we would sell was Packard Bell. We sold many different models with similar specs, and the main feature many of the potential buyers would be concerned with: Will it fit with my current office furniture? We sold both desktops and tower configurations, and the type of desk the computer would be used with was the determining facto…

And essentially, why not? If I want to work on a machine, I want it to be fast. Not 1.33x of the baseline benchmark CPU when equipped with X GB RAM. Just fast enough it doesn't annoy me.

And with today's PCI-E-based SSD's, waiting for data to be written to "disk" is a non-issue, so the system feels much faster.

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

#197

Post by bluedino »

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”

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

#198

Post by adhambadr »

Economics of scale. my bet is Apple will develop a cluster of M1s and call them M-power-2 to address the 1.5TB RAM workstation market you mentioned. It will be practically an array of M1s (or next gen) together. The way the M1 is used from iPad to iMacs is genius in terms of cost reduction at scale and for an end consumer, who doesnt care who else uses their chip, I get a good $/cpu power bargain. Tim Apple being the supply-chain guy he is, I see him doubling down and scrambling engineers to user more M1s in array to build a stronger core. Maybe an M1-based server rack for AWS?

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

#199

Post by matkoniecz »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #186
runeks wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A blazingly fast SSD is excruciatingly slow RAM.

I am trying to figure out where I said anything on the contrary.

You mentioned "they come with blazingly fast SSDs" as part of what is "allowing devices to get away with less available memory"

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

#200

Post by kamranjon »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #186
runeks wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A blazingly fast SSD is excruciatingly slow RAM.

I am trying to figure out where I said anything on the contrary.

I think they are saying that you will start swapping to disk with that little ram.
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