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Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

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Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#31

Post by deergomoo »

dkarp wrote: post #13

M1 is amazing and I bought my partner one and she loves it. However, when it came to buying a new engineer on our team a laptop, we had to go with the last 2020 Intel model. We still have some uncertainty over whether or not our development tools/environment will work on M1. Many python packages will take longer to install I imagine (if there are no wheels for the M1 mac, not sure if that's an issue) and I suspect so…

I don't have any Python experience but Docker has been a mixed bag but mostly fine.

ARM-native images are 100% fine, and x86 images are surprisingly usable via emulation (albeit considerably slower). During the technical preview stage some x86 images simply didn't work at all (MySQL being a big one that springs to mind). However, I've just checked it in the stable release and it's working now. Not sure if there's still images that don't work under emulation though.

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#32

Post by tyingq »

prepend wrote: post #6

This makes sense right since their new models have M1, I would expect a “new models sell more than old models.”

Perhaps he's trying to communicate that most of the initial issues with various pieces of software are now fixed. Without having to explicitly call it out.

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#33

Post by pdpi »

oblio wrote: post #22
haswell wrote: post #14

I see a myriad of comments that boil down to “duh”, but I think these comments are missing the point. Consider an alternate possibility: “sales of Apple’s new ARM macs outpaced by older models”. Had Apple not knocked M1 out of the park, this was a real possibility. Is it surprising that a well executed architecture change is now selling well? Not really. But the more interesting point is that the rest of the market a…

The thing is, even if M1 would have been middling, Apple would have still migrated everyone forcefully :-)

Eventually, at some point, begrudgingly.

People held on to their 2015 15" MBPs for as long as they could because they didn't like the upgrade paths. The 16" was well received and helped fix that. The M1 laptops were incredibly well received and people are excitedly jumping on them instead of feeling forced.

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#34

Post by santa_boy »

Not surprising. I hated buying my M1 (financial constraints) and I bought a Mac Air three months back.

I ended up buying a Mac-Mini M1 and am very happy with the overall experience. Fantastic speed and memory management.

I feel the M1 is doing to personal computing what the iPhone did to music.

Amazing how Apple pulled this off in a market that I thought was very mature for a game-changing innovation.

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#35

Post by haswell »

ZiiS wrote: post #15
haswell wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is great marketing? That they successfully sold the merits of their new architecture? Or are you saying that talking about the difference in chip sales is a marketing tactic? What is the relevance of Ryzen here?

It seems highly likely given past performance; if they had put any half-reasonable Intel or Ryzen chip in their $999 Air then that chip would be their best selling CPU. Saying the M1 "isn't just an upgrade, but a breakthrough," and supporting that with sales figures that don't really show anything is "great marketing".

M1 isn’t just an upgrade.

Staying on x86 would be nothing more than an incremental update, and would not be noteworthy.

Successfully executing an architecture change of this magnitude and immediately hitting these sales numbers is why this is a headline.

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#36

Post by bajsejohannes »

sneak wrote: post #7

The $999 Macbook Air has long been Apple's best selling computer by a pretty wide margin. The Air being M1 now (and retina, and still $999!) has probably accomplished most of this.

The fact that it has proper function-keys instead of a touch bar also makes it an easy choice. At least for people like myself :)

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#37

Post by sportsball »

pdpi wrote: post #33
oblio wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, even if M1 would have been middling, Apple would have still migrated everyone forcefully :-)

Eventually, at some point, begrudgingly. People held on to their 2015 15" MBPs for as long as they could because they didn't like the upgrade paths. The 16" was well received and helped fix that. The M1 laptops were incredibly well received and people are excitedly jumping on them instead of feeling forced.

Lots of marketing to Apple users worked? Is anyone surprised?

When market share changes/Apple becomes more consumer and developer friendly, wake me up.

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#38

Post by johnklos »

haswell wrote: post #14

I see a myriad of comments that boil down to “duh”, but I think these comments are missing the point. Consider an alternate possibility: “sales of Apple’s new ARM macs outpaced by older models”. Had Apple not knocked M1 out of the park, this was a real possibility. Is it surprising that a well executed architecture change is now selling well? Not really. But the more interesting point is that the rest of the market a…

Good point, but really it's more about usability than anything else.

Imagine that the M1 wasn't actually faster than just about everything out there. But also imagine that the new design decisions, the improved memory allocation methods, the significantly better power usage, and the materially lower price meant that it was faster, took less memory and less power for lots of things, or even for most things.

Would it be compelling for people who already have Intel to move? No. But would it be preferable to choosing Intel for a new machine? Certainly, at least for low-end models and applications.

And look at what Apple has done - the M1 is in the mini, the Air, the smaller (usually lower end) MacBook Pro, and now the 24" iMac (which is the lower end iMac). So, even though the M1 kicks Intel's ass, Apple is still playing it safe.

There'd be plenty of reason to choose ARM over Intel even if performance wasn't clearly better :)

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#39

Post by coder543 »

whizzter wrote: post #21
haswell wrote: post #14

I see a myriad of comments that boil down to “duh”, but I think these comments are missing the point. Consider an alternate possibility: “sales of Apple’s new ARM macs outpaced by older models”. Had Apple not knocked M1 out of the park, this was a real possibility. Is it surprising that a well executed architecture change is now selling well? Not really. But the more interesting point is that the rest of the market a…

Even w/o the perf of the M1 I think sales had been overwhelming, part because yes it's the "entry level" models but mainly because nobody wants to be left with a machine that won't get supported by the OS (even if I think low-mem M1 machines will be phased out of OS updates at some point)

I think you vastly overestimate how much the average consumer thinks about or cares about OS updates.

What you say is something that could affect the decision making process for highly technical people, but even then... we have no firm commitments from Apple on which platforms will get the longest support, so it's a gut-feeling decision, which isn't very technical.

As you hint, the M1 could be treated as a pathfinder platform and deprecated much sooner than subsequent platforms, kind of like the original iPad.

The M1 is not ARMv9 and lacks SVE2... ARMv9 is coming soon, and that may become the long-term supported standard for Apple's Mac-on-ARM platform.

Re: Apple Now Selling More M1 Macs Than Intel-Based Models, Says Tim Cook

#40

Post by nindalf »

dkarp wrote: post #13

M1 is amazing and I bought my partner one and she loves it. However, when it came to buying a new engineer on our team a laptop, we had to go with the last 2020 Intel model. We still have some uncertainty over whether or not our development tools/environment will work on M1. Many python packages will take longer to install I imagine (if there are no wheels for the M1 mac, not sure if that's an issue) and I suspect so…

I know it's not what you asked, but it might help someone else. Rust and JS/TS work well, no complaints so far. Performance is great. The only issue I had an issue where some package depended on Chromium for something and I couldn't get it to work. But it was a relatively minor thing so I let it go.
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