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Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Review

theverge.com

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Re: Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Review

#51

Post by easton »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #22
qz2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I predict it will disappear from the market within 2 years with no replacement leaving people to limp along on an iMac. Not like it hasn't happened before.

I've been wondering about that. I have a suspicion that the sales volumes don't justify the effort Apple needs to put into a device like that. On the other hand it would be nice to see a slightly more grown up MacMini, something with expansion in mind.

The other side is that if the efficiency and performance of these chips scales up to a big workstation, they could use them in their data centers to get much higher performance without a whole lot of extra power, and then sell whatever chips they don't need as Mac Pros.

Re: Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Review

#52

Post by _23sd »

pembrook wrote: post #37
zepto wrote: post #26

“Apple’s insistence that reaching up to touch a laptop screen is too burdensome is just getting silly, especially when that is not a problem on the iPad and across the universe of Windows laptops, and most especially when these laptops can run iPhone and iPad apps natively.“ In a way Nilay is right - ultimately it makes no sense not to allow touch interaction. However Apple is also right in a different way. If apps a…

Not only is most desktop software not well suited to touch interactions, touchscreens on laptops are also an ergonomic nightmare. Try reaching your hand up to touch your monitor and hold it there for a minute. Now try pretending you’ll do this for an 8 hour workday. It’s a useless feature in search of a use-case.

Older people love touchscreens on laptops and use the feature very heavily (I think my mother touches her Surface Book's screen in laptop mode more than the trackpad). I see it as a nice to have when I'm recommending laptops for others even if I hardly ever use it myself. It doesn't have to be a revolutionary new input style that apps transform to make use of, and I think that's where Apple gets stuck because that's so alien to their design philosophy.

Re: Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Review

#53

Post by ako »

zepto wrote: post #26

“Apple’s insistence that reaching up to touch a laptop screen is too burdensome is just getting silly, especially when that is not a problem on the iPad and across the universe of Windows laptops, and most especially when these laptops can run iPhone and iPad apps natively.“ In a way Nilay is right - ultimately it makes no sense not to allow touch interaction. However Apple is also right in a different way. If apps a…

I have a laptop with touchscreen, hardly ever use it. In most cases it's a mistake that i touch the screen and then it does something i didn't want it to do.

Touchscreens on laptops only make sense to me if you can wrap the screen around completely, and use it like a tablet, like many of the lenovo yoga models allow you to do.

Re: Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Review

#54

Post by zepto »

pembrook wrote: post #37
zepto wrote: post #26

“Apple’s insistence that reaching up to touch a laptop screen is too burdensome is just getting silly, especially when that is not a problem on the iPad and across the universe of Windows laptops, and most especially when these laptops can run iPhone and iPad apps natively.“ In a way Nilay is right - ultimately it makes no sense not to allow touch interaction. However Apple is also right in a different way. If apps a…

Not only is most desktop software not well suited to touch interactions, touchscreens on laptops are also an ergonomic nightmare. Try reaching your hand up to touch your monitor and hold it there for a minute. Now try pretending you’ll do this for an 8 hour workday. It’s a useless feature in search of a use-case.

I agree with everything you just said except this conclusion:

“It’s a useless feature in search of a use-case”

Sometimes it’s going to be easier to pinch to zoom, for example, than do the same thing with a keyboard or mouse.

Touch is no longer an expensive feature to add, so it makes sense to add it for certain use cases.

Also imagine a Mac being used in a kiosk situation where an iPad isn’t big enough.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually get a Mac that is essentially a giant iPad in form factor which can operate in both modes. On a stand to act like a desktop, or on the table, to act as a giant iPad. It would make little sense to disable touch when in upright mode.

Re: Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Review

#55

Post by tonymet »

oatmeal_croc wrote: post #7

Is any web developer planning to get the new Apple Silicon Macs? How's docker support (for ARM and x86 images)? Do the major IDEs work on Rosetta? What's support looking like for languages like GO, Rust now/in the near future?

Docker images are meant to be built once and run everywhere–tested on your dev server, test environment and production.

If you buy an ARM mac, it would be ideal to run ARM instances in the datacenter, but those are uncommon and expensive.

I discourage people from building ARM images and then rebuilding intel images later in the software lifecycle.

Re: Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Review

#56

Post by tonyedgecombe »

easton wrote: post #51
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been wondering about that. I have a suspicion that the sales volumes don't justify the effort Apple needs to put into a device like that. On the other hand it would be nice to see a slightly more grown up MacMini, something with expansion in mind.

The other side is that if the efficiency and performance of these chips scales up to a big workstation, they could use them in their data centers to get much higher performance without a whole lot of extra power, and then sell whatever chips they don't need as Mac Pros.

I don't see that at all, they abandoned Xserve a long time ago.

Re: Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Review

#57

Post by gootdude »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #48
gootdude wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The air is missing the active cooling. The next upgrade that puts apple chip in the 4 port pro would be the ideal version to purchase without a Touch Bar impacting usability and battery life.

The active cooling might not make as big a difference as you think… in The Verge’s benchmarks, literally the only place they saw a significant difference in speed was a multicore benchmark involving 30 solid minutes under full load. https://www.theverge.com/21569603/apple-macbook-air-m1-revie...

The results are excellent and give me hope they will be able to keep the chips from throttling with active cooling under the most stressful loads.

My current work laptop is a the 16 inch 2019 Macbook Pro with 8-Core Intel Core i9 at 2.3 GHz, and using the Intel Power Gadget, the form factor can not achieve the max frequency of 3.6ghz on a single core. I have the machine elevated on a stand with the maximum air flow, even with no external monitors connected, it still throttles.

Re: Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Review

#58

Post by zepto »

EForEndeavour wrote: post #43
wil421 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most users are not asking for touchscreens on their Mac laptops just like no one wants a touchscreen TV.

I'd settle for turning the trackpad into a second display and supporting Apple Pencil input. I'd keep it turned off most of the time, but it would be amazing to be able to flip it on and have it zoom into part of the main display in order to handwrite or draw something now and then.

You can essentially already do that by using an iPad in sidecar mode.

Re: Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Review

#59

Post by gumby »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #22
qz2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I predict it will disappear from the market within 2 years with no replacement leaving people to limp along on an iMac. Not like it hasn't happened before.

I've been wondering about that. I have a suspicion that the sales volumes don't justify the effort Apple needs to put into a device like that. On the other hand it would be nice to see a slightly more grown up MacMini, something with expansion in mind.

I have long believed the Mac Pro is a marketing tool that they could happily sell at a “loss” — Using quotes because the difference could be considered a marketing expense.

Given the price it likely is sold for more than cost; I’m sure the pricing is marketing driven too. It doesn’t just drag the top end of pricing upwards (the classic cheap/middle/extravagant split that drives buyers to the middle) but sends a message. The $1K monitor stand is a good example,

In this theory, it’s important to Apple that something be almost always available in the “Mac Pro” zone, but it’s not important enough that they need to be diligent about it.

They have this same phenomenon with the super-expensive watches (though I believe the $10K models are gone): basically identical to the cheapest one, and “wear out” (stop getting sw updates, no battery replacements, etc) in the same time too.

Re: Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Review

#60

Post by AgloeDreams »

dawnerd wrote: post #20
oatmeal_croc wrote: post #7

Is any web developer planning to get the new Apple Silicon Macs? How's docker support (for ARM and x86 images)? Do the major IDEs work on Rosetta? What's support looking like for languages like GO, Rust now/in the near future?

vscode is getting an arm build by end of month apparently. I use vscode's remote development feature so the m1 macs are actually perfect for me.

There already is an insider build :)
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