Earlier quoted context omitted.
Air only has passive cooling; Pro has a fan.
So the Pro should be able to maintain higher clock speeds for longer, is the assumption?
Introducing the next generation of Mac
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Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac
#542I'm interested to see the benchmarks vs. comparable AMD systems. Some of the claims, like 2x performance increase on the MBP are impressive, but intel laptops have been absolutely trounced by AMD 4000-series laptops of late. Also will be interested to see the benchmarks of the integrated GPU vs. discreet GPU performance.
They claim 2 TFlops for their GPU. RTX 3090 features 143 TFlops.
Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac
#543Did I miss something, or are they, once again, not upgrading the camera? The low light performance of the current version is real bad. Since we're all using these cameras way more, I really thought there would a hardware bump. You can only squeeze so much detail out of an under-exposed, noisy image with software.
I'm pretty sure there was a part of the presentation talking about a camera upgrade. But it's not something on my wish list, so I didn't pay attention.
Double-check the recording on Apple's web site. The answer may be there.
Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac
#544Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac
#545I'll be sticking with my 2015 Macbook Pro Retina 13". Great machine, not too thin, heavy enough, no stupid touch screen, usb ports, great keyboard. Everything apple has done since hasn't compared.
Have the same machine, it's starting to chug. Modern web is too heavy for the old dualcore i5, unfortunately.
It's a shame that the web has become this borderline unusable mess. I shouldn't need a quad-core machine with multiple gigabytes of RAM to just read the news online.
Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac
#546I don't understand the pricing of the MacBook Air vs the 13" Pro. The Air ($1249) vs 13" Pro ($1299), you get: - same CPU - same GPU - same Neural chip - same RAM (8gb) - More storage for the Air (512gb vs 256gb with 13" Pro) - You get Touch Bar with 13" Pro So if you don't care about the Touch Bar, you actually get with the Air: - better specs - smaller device footprint - and $50 cheaper. Am I missing something?
Air only has passive cooling; Pro has a fan.
Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac
#547Apple mentioned in the event that these Macs will have hardware verified secure boot. Since I’m not very knowledgeable in this area, can someone explain (or even try to guess) what this would/could mean for running Linux on these? I use Macs way beyond Apple’s support timeframe with OS X/macOS, and Linux is the one that runs on some of the older Macs and provides adequate security and security related software update…
It really depends on whether their secure boot architecture can be disabled (unlikely knowing apple), or allow adding ones own keys (unlikely). Bootcamp probably won't happen since windows does not support the architecture: they'll be pushing people to use VMs.
They might also provide some untrusted path to boot without it being able to access certain secure features. I wish they did this, but also won't keep my breath!
That said, the kernel itself needs to have support for the hardware architecture, and then drivers for all the new hardware they're pushing out. I don't expect this to be soon, though I'd definitely be willing to sponsor anyone willing to work on this.
Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac
#548Did I miss something, or are they, once again, not upgrading the camera? The low light performance of the current version is real bad. Since we're all using these cameras way more, I really thought there would a hardware bump. You can only squeeze so much detail out of an under-exposed, noisy image with software.
No, I don't think you're wrong. Apple has a bizarre product offering which combines an 8 core processor with a 720P camera and 8GB RAM.
My 16GB MBP is constraining sometimes and the next one will, doubtlessly, come with at least 32GB. Until Apple can do that, I won't use an ARM-based Mac as my daily driver.
As for the 8-core, it's 4 beefy ones and 4 low-power ones. Load will shift from one kind to the other according to usage patterns. This is how they achieve that 20-hour battery life.
Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac
#549Straw poll: I need a new development machine, price is not an object but it has to be a Mac. Should I buy this new M1 or go with the Intel 16 inch MBP? My gut says there’s going to be a year or two of cross-compilation nightmares. I do a lot of Docker-based development. Wondering what everyone else thinks?
I sometimes wonder what the overhead of Docker costs on a Mac. The fact that you have to run a whole linux VM, with guest OS, then send data back and forth over that, especially with volume mapping. I'm sure it can be quantified over running linux directly on the same hardware. My machine (MacBook Pro 13-inch, 2018, 2.7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3) often runs screaming hot (with screaming fans…
I wouldn't use Docker on a Mac. The fan goes like crazy the whole time, and the battery life is like an hour or less. Whereas with vagrant and virtualbox the fan stays off and the battery lasts all day.
Re: Introducing the next generation of Mac
#550Super interesting how they kept the touchbar on the Macbook Pro keyboard but not on the Air. As a software developer, I'm going to be more likely to buy an Air just due to the keyboard.
They kept the touch bar but it seems that they added (back) a physical Esc key, isn't that the most criticized missing key? Which other key do you miss now that Esc is back?
While I prefer the physical keys, once you get the TouchBar configured properly (I use MTMR), it's really quite nice. Combined with a physical escape key, it would be ideal.
Considering how the people on HN boast so much about being L337 Haxxorz, I'm surprised they don't see the value in a secondary interactive screen that they can make do anything they want.