My expectation for the #AppleEvent was actually a MacBook Pro without the Touch Bar.
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
#522When they say "[faster than the] latest PC laptop chip", what exactly do they mean? Intel? AMD? EDIT: added [faster than the]
At the bottom of the macbook-{air,pro} page:
> with up to 2.8x faster processing performance than the previous generation [2]
> Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip, as well as production 1.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based 13-inch MacBook Pro systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Open source project built with prerelease Xcode 12.2 with Apple Clang 12.0.0, Ninja 1.10.0.git, and CMake 3.16.5. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#523Earlier quoted context omitted.
The argument has been that lack of credible Arm desktop / laptops has held back Arm in the cloud. If you can't compile on your desktop then it's much harder to develop / test etc. Now you can buy a Mac and use that to develop for AWS Arm etc.
I don't see your cloud infrastructure throwing everything away and wholesale switching platforms just because you bought a new macbook air, though. This is all assuming you're doing anything at all that depends on the ISA and pushing prebuilts of it somewhere. Otherwise it's not like deploying Java, Python, JavaScript, etc... changes at all here.
You've gone from "no impact at all" to "won't throw everything away"
Removing barriers to developers building software on the desktop for the Arm ISA will have an impact on deployment in the cloud. How much - who knows and it's not measurable, but it will.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You CAN configure it to show the old-style mute/down/up with the touch bar, so you are not relegated to the ultra-shitty slider. No replacement for a tactile switch, but at least you are not stuck with the default arrangement.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#525"Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based MacBook Air systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with prerelease Final Cut Pro 10.5 using a 55-second clip with 4K Apple ProRes RAW media, at 4096x2160 resolution and 59.94 frames per second, transcoded to Apple ProRes 42…
Personal opinion, no insider info I think it's a good CPU, but I don't think it'll be a great CPU. Judging by how heavily they leaned on the efficiency, I am pretty sure that it will be just good enough to not be noticeable to most Mac users. Can't wait to see actual benchmarks, these are interesting times.
You skipped the keynote parts where they say faster 2x, 4x, 8x... and they say faster than every other laptop CPU and faster than 98% of laptops/PCs in their class sold last year? They said it several times. But I agree... let's wait for the benchmarks (btw. iPads already overturns nearly all laptop CPUs)
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#526Earlier 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.
Pro has one extra GPU core as well.
Note that it's a 7 core GPU only for the 256GB SSD
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#527Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Exactly this. I tried so hard to like it (since I paid for it), but I have found 0 good uses cases for it.
I would assume that macOS sends at least some basic usage data for the touch bar back to Apple HQ. I wonder how often it is actually used... and I would love the hear the responsible product manager defend it.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
My guess is different clock speeds, also base air has one gpu core less...
And this might be the old production trick where one part of the core fails QA and so they shut it out and make it a cheaper part. The GPU parts might be the tightest silicon and highest rate of failure so this approach reduces waste.
By "trick" you mean the only approach every chip-maker has been following for decades? Literally every single one. It's called binning.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#529I'll be waiting for the 16" MBP which will hopefully have a reasonable RAM option. 16GB is fine for normal MacOS use I suppose, but I'm also curious how this virtualization situation will play out. Having Windows on boot camp and VMWare is a nice thing to have.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#530Does anybody know if it can run Windows?