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Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

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Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#471
post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting line of inquiry. In the gaming console world, a similar principle has been explicitly espoused by Sony in the decision to only go with 16GB of RAM (a smaller factor increase than any previous generation) for the Playstation 5, as the speed of its custom SSD architecture should in theory make that 16GB go a lot further than it would have with a more traditional design.

And then PS5 load times are worse than Series X. Whoops.

That's for reasons that I would expect the technical readership of this site to understand.

Please take this shallow retort back to Kotaku.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#472

Completely unconfirmed speculation incoming: There's a solid chance that the logic board is exactly the same on all of the Macs announced today and the only difference is the cooling solution. If you play around with the Apple Store configurator, the specs are all suspiciously similar between every new Mac. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch https://w…

If you look at the power supplies it's 30 vs 60 Watts, definitely interested to see what kind of TDP Apple targets with these machines.

M1 chip page shows that 10 watts is the thermal envelope for the Air

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8GB and 16GB configurations seem more than enough..

For pro users, the fact that 32GB isn’t even an option is pretty surprising

My guess is that the next wave will be Pro.

And they will have significantly upgraded CPU/GPUs to match the memory.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you compare the M1 Air and Pro, the only difference seems to be the addition of the Touchbar, 10% better battery life, and a "studio" speaker/mic on the Pro. https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/ I assume the addition of a fan on the Pro gives it better performance under load, but there doesn't seem to be a hugely compelling reason to not just get the Air.

I think they got it wrong. I would pay money to NOT have the touchbar.

I got one of the MBP with the touchbar this year after holding out for many years (changed jobs so had to change laptop). Man it is so much hard to do the volume changes, and there has so far for me been zero benefit.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#475
post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People running electron apps are likely constrained. Maybe with the ability to run iOS/iPadOS versions we can ditch things like the desktop version of Slack.

You think the iOS version of Slack is native?

Yeah fairly certain it is, despite not feeling that way from a UX perspective.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#477

No 32GB options on any of the models announced today is a shame. Or not I guess as it means I won't be buying anything today M1 looks impressive, hopefully it scales as well to higher TDPs. Pretty much what I expected today with all the low power models getting updated. With no fan I expect the Air will throttle the CPU quickly when using the high performance cores. Calling it an "8-core CPU" is a little cheeky IMHO…

> I am very disappointed to see the design is identical to what we currently have

Lot's of moving parts in a single generation is risky for scheduling and changing CPU architecture is huge enough for a generation change.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#478
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple said that only virtualization will be supported on their ARM chips. Locked through the bootloader (although wouldn't be surprised if exploits are released to load up Linux/Windows)

Ah! You're right! No bootcamp. https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/24/21302213/apple-silicon-ma...

That blows my mind. Microsoft has had an ARM version of Windows for years. I would have thought they would have lept to support Bootcamp on these new Macs. That being said, I bought my MBP with 64GB of RAM to run Windows VM's in Parallels, but I no longer have any need to run any software that runs only under Windows. I think the market for Bootcamp is basically just gaming now, and the new consoles are really eroding the performance reasons for choosing a Windows box for that.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#479
post #288

Max 16GB of RAM on these new machines is really not that great to be honest. The mini supported up to 64GB before.

I'm expecting 16" MBP and iMac to support more along with an M1X chip or something along those lines.

Probably M1Z, like the iPad Pro.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can turn off boot security.

I really hope we will be able to. All the mentions of "security" in the keynote were making me cringe.

You will, they promised it during WWDC. (And it's available on the developer hardware they released.)
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