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

9to5mac.com

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

#771

Post by tomaskafka »

rewtraw wrote: post #246
kevindong wrote: post #186

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 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 am curious - my 2017 12" MB is an absolutely awesome machine (fast enough for casual use and light development while absolutely quiet and lightweight), but 30+ degree summer day is enough for it to get so close to it's thermal envelope that it throttles down to cca 1 GHz during normal (browser) use soon.

So, the sustained performance might make quite a difference for pro use.

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

#772

Post by judge2020 »

zamadatix wrote: post #341
stcredzero wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While compute performance and power efficiency seems to be really good, the M1 chip is apparently limited to 16GB RAM, 2TB storage and 2 Thunderbolt/USB4 controllers. In other words, M1 is for the majority of consumers. - power efficiency - 16GB RAM - 2TB storage - 2 Thunderbolt/USB4 That looks like a really good feature set for ordinary consumers. My guess is that there's going to be 2 "Pro" variants for a high powe…

If every model had the 16 GB I'd say it's a really good feature set for ordinary consumers but a new MacBook Pro having 8 GB of shared memory seems quite limiting even just for ordinary browsing. It's a great step but I think the 2nd gen of this is going to be what knocks it out of the park.

Seems like Apple is relying on MacOS's (arguably good) memory compression and fast ssd swap performance to get high margins from the 8gb ram while still not cripping regular users' light workloads.

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

#773

Post by person_of_color »

sam0x17 wrote: post #588

So real question -- is Apple aggressively marketing this as "Apple Silicon" instead of ARM just a marketing gimmick, or have they done something substantive that makes this no longer and/or more special than regular ARM processors?

Well, it IS different to a rebadged Cortex big.LITTLE solution. They use the architecture but reimplement the CPUs themselves. Further, they have a bunch of their own cores on their chip.

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

#774

Post by kossTKR »

tomaskafka wrote: post #771
rewtraw wrote: post #246

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 am curious - my 2017 12" MB is an absolutely awesome machine (fast enough for casual use and light development while absolutely quiet and lightweight), but 30+ degree summer day is enough for it to get so close to it's thermal envelope that it throttles down to cca 1 GHz during normal (browser) use soon. So, the sustained performance might make quite a difference for pro use.

It shouldn't really throttle to 1ghz - it's because Apple puts low quality paste in it, and sometimes because of dust.

My Macbook from 2014, is still excellent but it started throttling to 1ghz with video encoding.

After going to a repair shop and telling them about the problem they put high quality thermal paste in it for about 100 usd and the problem disappeared. Now i get 100% CPU no matter what i throw at it, pretty incredible with a computer from 2014!

Just fyi..

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

#775

Post by ricardobeat »

greenpresident wrote: post #89

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

Not all RAM is used the same, and the SSD is on par with RAM speeds from a decade ago. Probably won't need it. An iPad Pro does magic with only 4GB.

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

#776

Post by dahfizz »

marmaduke wrote: post #682
forgot-my-pw wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused of their new pricing scheme / spec tiers for Macbook Pros. There's no more core i7 for Macbook 13. You have to go to Macbook 16. I'd rather get a Dell XPS or other Core i7/Ryzen 7 ultrabooks. So now, spec-wise, Macbook Air and Macbook Pro are too close.

Specs don’t tell you the thermal story. You can buy an i9 in a thin laptop and feel good about it until it throttles down to 1GHz after 30s. The MBP should be built with better thermals to avoid throttling since you might be running simulations or movie encoding all day. The air should throttle after a certain amount of time.

And prioritize function over form? I think you just want to buy a PC.

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

#778

Post by pat2man »

0x0 wrote: post #183
pat2man wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, rosetta will support x86 emulation. Might be slow though.

But that's for macOS binaries. Not for VMs.

"With the translation technology of Rosetta 2, users will be able to run existing Mac apps that have not yet been updated, including those with plug-ins. Virtualization technology allows users to run Linux"

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-announces-mac-t...

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

#779

Post by wffurr »

hajile wrote: post #722
antipaul wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This MBP refresh replaces the lower-end MBP which also only had 2 ports. This is a small detail that is easy to miss. The "higher-end" MBPs with 4 ports are only availabe with the intel CPUs for now

Those 8 extra PCIe lanes eat a lot of power. It's worth noting that Intel's processor they used in the 2019 MBP 13 had 16 PCIe lanes (I think the chipset added more too), but this chip probably has 10-12 at the absolute most. The "we integrated thunderbolt" bit is also implying an untruth that nobody else does that. Intel did that last year with Ice Lake. AMD will do that next year when they upgrade their IO die.

Are there any other ARM devices with Thunderbolt? I am not aware of any.

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

#780

Post by jfb »

noncoml wrote: post #273
rewtraw wrote: post #246

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.

Honestly, the idea of a soft keyboard is a great one, particularly one as well integrated into the OS as the Touch Bar is. However, while I have a Mac with the Touch Bar, I never ever ever ever use it intentionally, as I spend 90% of my time on the computer using an external keyboard.
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