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Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

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Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#281

Post by ksec »

paulpan wrote: post #217
SigmundA wrote: post #141

Really would like to know more about the GPU and Ram. At 128 gpu cores vs the 8 in the M1 you talking 16 times the potential GPU power which could put it up there near the top of discrete GPU's.

Curious about this too. Anything more than 16 GPU cores seems like it'd too big to fit on die (share with CPU cores and everything else), so may need to be a discrete solution. Would Apple then make discrete GPU solutions using PCIe5? Makes sense for the Mac Pro given the edge cases for requiring multi-GPU solutions.

>Anything more than 16 GPU cores seems like it'd too big to fit on die

32 HP Core with 8 HE Core, 128 GPU Core give you ~650mm inclusive of L2 and SLC. Adding in I/O, NPU, ISP, VPU etc this chip should still be within the reticle limit of ~850mm2.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#282

Post by 1_player »

jagger27 wrote: post #260
1_player wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple aren't making nor selling datacenter chips. They have zero interest in doing that.

https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/mac/ It might not be a 19" rackmount chassis like the Xserves of yore, but it's hard to deny Apple hardware will continue to find its way into real datacenters. The high end Mac mini SKU mentioned in TFA sounds great for this application, especially now that they have 10Gig Ethernet.

The point is driving down the power consumption in datacenters. I doubt the Apple hardware at AWS is cause of high power consumption, and I also doubt Apple hardware will replace Linux and Windows machines that compose the vast majority of AWS computing power.

ARM might replace Intel, but it won't be branded Apple, that's for sure.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#283

Post by threeseed »

melq wrote: post #252
D13Fd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had MacBooks since 2005, and I'm an amateur photographer. I really don't miss the ports or MagSafe at all. I actually like the USB charging better, as it allows you to connect the cord to either side, and it doesn't get accidentally knocked out if I use it on my lap. I've found that the cord being on other side is nearly as good as magsafe anyway, as it will be better positioned to pull out if it gets yanked. Ye…

As a musician with tons of peripherals, some of which are annoyingly sensitive and can't be used through hubs or anything but straight-through adapters (my turntable mixer's digital interface, for example), I welcome the return of the ports. Its not uncommon to have an audio interface, one or more midi controllers, the aforementioned mixer all connected for instance. And basically all of those things still use USB-B…

> and I never see USB-B to C cables ever

Have you heard of these obscure websites called Amazon or eBay.

They have tens of thousands of cables in every configuration you need.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#284

Post by bredren »

mikece wrote: post #2

"Company developing Mac Pro desktop with 40 cores, new Mac mini" It will be interesting to see how close the rumors are to fact when real hardware announcements happen. Given how fast the M1 in the MacBook Air is performing for tasks like video editing I wonder if they will really need to push to such extremes as putting 40 cores in a Mac Pro -- unless they plan to edit four 8K streams at once?

Apple has a one-off modular product in the Mac Pro called Afterburner that offers 6 streams of 8k play back.

My theory is Apple will release the new Mac Pro with an updated Apple Silicon Afterburner card focused on pro video.

They will debut a new AI / ML compute "accelerator" focused on the data science space also under the Afterburner moniker.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26956886

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#285

Post by drewzero1 »

vmception wrote: post #247
D13Fd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had MacBooks since 2005, and I'm an amateur photographer. I really don't miss the ports or MagSafe at all. I actually like the USB charging better, as it allows you to connect the cord to either side, and it doesn't get accidentally knocked out if I use it on my lap. I've found that the cord being on other side is nearly as good as magsafe anyway, as it will be better positioned to pull out if it gets yanked. Ye…

XQD has never caught on and there hasn't been a camera released that uses them since 2018 Whats up with photo/video people gatekeeping “serious” vs functional Your point might have some merit but SD will hold out for the next 5-8 years that purchasers of this machine will expect

Regardless of the potential merits of alternative storage formats, it's a good point that people who have needed an SD card reader since their removal have probably gone out and bought external ones by now. I'd expect the standalone units to generally be higher-quality than the ones that would be built in.

That said, I'm glad to see Apple has finally realized some of the ways they've been alienating their customer base, and they appear to be walking back some of their most unpopular changes.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#286

Post by cuddlybacon »

bogomipz wrote: post #270
cuddlybacon wrote: post #231

I've been waiting for a 16-inch M1 MacBook Pro to come out. I've been delaying my work upgrade for it. I'm curious what the I/O situation will be. Will it be able to output to two 4k screens or not. The 13-inch cannot, so I'm not holding my breath.

I'm curious why the 13" MBP can't drive two 4K monitors? Any insight into this limitation?

I'm have no insight into why. But it is what's listed on the specs:

https://www.apple.com/ca/macbook-pro-13/specs/

> Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at millions of colours and:

>One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#287

Post by cuddlybacon »

wyre wrote: post #258
cuddlybacon wrote: post #231

I've been waiting for a 16-inch M1 MacBook Pro to come out. I've been delaying my work upgrade for it. I'm curious what the I/O situation will be. Will it be able to output to two 4k screens or not. The 13-inch cannot, so I'm not holding my breath.

Article says the chip will be able to support multiple thunderbolt ports, and they are adding HDMI. I would imagine it will support 2 4K monitors.

That's a good sign. I do hope it works out that way.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#288

Post by niels_bom »

cuddlybacon wrote: post #231

I've been waiting for a 16-inch M1 MacBook Pro to come out. I've been delaying my work upgrade for it. I'm curious what the I/O situation will be. Will it be able to output to two 4k screens or not. The 13-inch cannot, so I'm not holding my breath.

A 2019 15” MBP can do that, it would be surprising if the 2021 16” couldn’t.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#289

Post by chaostheory »

periheli0n wrote: post #171
chaostheory wrote: post #157

Is this going to be inside an affordable box ie do I have to spend close to 5 figures for it? This is about as exciting as new cellular data speed announcements in a world where most data plans are extremely limited and quickly throttled one way or another. I still use Macs, but my resentment is building up from Apple's past choices e.g. thinness overrides every other feature, every component being solder on, ...

I would be very surprised if those Macs were offered at a much lower price point than the current top of the range. They are selling the M1 MacBooks and Mini at a similar price as previous models with comparable number of ports, amount of ram, ssd. Only the CPU performance gain was for free ;)

The original title was "Apple readies 40 core M1". I was speaking of a desktop because I highly doubt that this is going into a laptop, Mac mini, or the non-pro iMac. If it is then I am happily wrong.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#290

Post by skrtskrt »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #218
skrtskrt wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any rumors about that? That's the only change that my next laptop isn't a ThinkPad

You hate the Touch Bar so much that if Apple's next round of laptops includes one you'll stop using macOS and start using Linux (or Windows) on your laptop instead?

Right now I have an Air. Besides price, the main reason for getting an Air was not having the touch bar. That's non negotiable for me.

I want to both beef up the memory/processing power of my laptop and switch to Linux (which comes with built-in performance bonus of native Docker). So I am headed to ThinkPad anyway, but there's a chance Apple could keep me locked in if they make a nicely-powered proper dev machine with no damn touch bar.

Migrating to Big Sur has been a pain in the ass even though I am still on an Intel model. Tons of Python language versions and packages are a total PITA to get built on Big Sur.

To be fair this seems to be a pretty Python-specific issue, but the inability to do much about it really has dug the feeling into me that I don't own/control my machine, Apple does.

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