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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

#461

Post by sudosysgen »

baybal2 wrote: post #342
the_duke wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the Ryzen 5000 mobile chips really don't look bad at all in comparison, and a 5nm version of those would level the field. Not look too bad best to say. Even if we add a one node advantage, we still have a ~15 watt chip making 20W-30W chips sweat. If you downclock Zen 3 to match 15W TDP, you may well get M1 beating it by double digit margin. M1 is simply a way more efficient chip than any X86 chip can be because…

That's not how downclocking chips work. Reducing the wattage reduces performance by much less.

In multicore workloads Zen 3 slaps the M1 even per watt.

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

#462

Post by _xnmw »

slver wrote: post #279
_xnmw wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple Silicon is NOT just an ARM CPU. It's also a deep integration with macOS, and a unified memory architecture (less unnecessary copying on the bus). For example on the M1, certain very common operations for macOS apps, like freeing Objective C pointers, which happens millions of time per second, are optimized at the hardware level. The M1 is not a CPU. So no, the Ryzen 5000 with 5nm would NOT level the field.

How are objective c pointers handled?

I can't find the interview now, but I distinctly remember someone at Apple saying that Cocoa apps benefit from hardware-level optimizations of common Objective C operations in the M1.

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

#463

Post by giantrobot »

afavour wrote: post #319
Grustaf wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a future hypothetical AMD processor could be as good as the M1, and that shows how M1 is just marketing hype?

I think the OP is saying that it could be a mistake to focus on the processor so much when it might turn out that worthy competition is just around the corner. Apple have ever focused on processor like this before, instead opting to focus on the whole product, fit and finish, etc. Which arguably still very few rival them on even today.

While the competition might have M1 competitors (perf/power) "just around the corner", Apple has the M1 out right now. You can go buy an M1 Mac today. If I need to wait until next quarter or the second half of the year to get an M1 competitor that doesn't help me much today.

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

#464

Post by kareful4mktng »

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.

>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.

Post purchase Rationalization or Apple uses upvote farms or fake accounts.

All 3 are marketing. Not surprising in the slightest bit. Apple lives by marketing where the competition has to live by product quality.

I look at my real world peers that fall for Apple and none of them are excellent when it comes to tech.

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

#465

Post by echlipse »

skohan wrote: post #292
the_duke wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Probably a Thinkpad. But depends on completely the type of work you wanna do. With anything you end up buying it's a long term investment. So whichever gets your job done and whichever has a good build quality (also something which you can easily upgrade yourself and repair easily) is the one you should buy.

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

#466

Post by kevstev »

hutrdvnj wrote: post #378
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…

> 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 was buying something that was going to be pretty future proof, but 10 years... I would have laughed at you.

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

#467

Post by nsxwolf »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #399
eertami wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once bitten, twice shy. I considered that keyboard to be designed to fail. I'm not interested in gambling that another component won't fail the same way. It's easier to use products that have not demonstrated such designed failures. The good news however is that due to this garbage tier engineering I've discovered that desktop Linux is more stable for me than post-Catalina OSX - I'd have probably never found this out…

Designed to fail is preposterous. Apple lost a ton of money due to that problem, both directly in paying for repairs, and indirectly in damage to their stock price. It's pretty clear what happened, and it's unfortunate but banal: someone went too far with making the key mechanism as thin as possible, and all plastic to make it easier to manufacture. Ends up the plastic wasn't strong enough for the little pins in the…

The new keyboard is what they should have had the last few years. A refinement of the scissor switch keyboard from the glory days of the MacBook. It's great.

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

#468

Post by ben7799 »

eertami wrote: post #386
BOOSTERHIDROGEN wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to test new keyboard on M1 MBA/MBP

Test it for what exactly? All ultrabook keyboards are garbage, but they shouldn't out-right fail. "Testing" one isn't going to tell me if it will fail, it's just going to feel as crappy as the other keyboards. If a product fails within the first 10% of expected lifespan I'm no longer interested in that product. If it fails _AND_ the manufacturer refuses to take responsibility until months of bad press and class actio…

The point is the keyboard on a 2018 Macbook when Jony Ive was allowed to push his nonsense is just not the same keyboard as on a current Macbooks.

It's a different keyboard. Different mechanism, very different feel, larger key travel, much more comfortable.

I have a 2018 i7 MBP and a 2020 M1. The keyboards feel incredibly different. On top of that the 2020 M1 has a real Escape key which is a huge upgrade for anyone in unix land/developer land, etc..

The 2019+ keyboard has had no controversy or reputation for failing.

My 2018 one does feel like it's on it's last legs FWIW. It's a work machine.. just hoping to get a refresh before it dies.

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

#469

Post by caslon »

jean_tta wrote: post #426
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.

Most people have no need to compare CPUs between mobile/non mobile or generation. They just need to know if the laptop they're looking at has the high end / middle end / low end CPU. You'd be comparing a new laptop with latest(-ish) CPUs. The i3/i5/i7 makes it plain & simple to know that. You don't need to figure out what the "middle end" CPU is called this year. It's the i5, problem solved.

You can't forget that there are multiple variants of i3, i5 and i7 every year! And presumably now the i9 but I haven't been paying attention.

6400 6500 6600 6600k random assortment of numbers and letters!

It hardly works! The consumer still has to do just as much work!

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

#470

Post by BillinghamJ »

ksec wrote: post #145
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…

>The M1 doesn't make sense when its in every darn product. Would you feel better if they called it A14X? It is basically the same thing as what Intel is doing. Same Die, different binning, different naming. Same with Core count on AMD, same die, different binning on Cores and Clock Speed. Apple doesn't bother do any of that because well it is complicated for consumers. I call it TDP Computing. You are limited by the…

Apple is doing binning, at least to some extent. e.g. some Macs have only 7 GPU cores rather than 8. Presumably that's done to a greater extent for the iPad Pro
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