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M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

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Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#821

Post by lostlogin »

pilsetnieks wrote: post #444
_abox wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah John Gruber has really become a shill over the last few years. His article reads like an Apple keynote transcript, everything is magical and amazing, a marvel and mindbogglingly great. No wonder they throw him so many exclusives ;) Yes M1 is great. But it's a closed system (no booting Linux or Windows at this time) and even under macOS you're having even less access to the system's internals than before. Also, A…

> Yeah John Gruber has really become a shill over the last few years I remember reading sentiments to that effect since 2004. I doubt he's getting paid directly, so he could only be a shill in a very loose sense of the word. He does get paid in review units and access, though. I think he's maybe overly enthusiastic about the good stuff, and skews toward the positive when matters are questionable but he has called out…

> he has called out Apple's corporate malfeasance and pointed out technical shortcomings in the past.

He does this all the time. In his last podcast or two he has complained about Apples’s keyboards, hot laptops, short charger cords, Siri and the Touch Bar. I’m sure there are others but I haven’t gone back.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#822

Post by mercutio2 »

cosmotic wrote: post #458
stemc43 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no docker - no buy.

Docker not working sure was a deal breaker for me. That's the sort of thing I would expect to work out of the box. A huge number of developers use that daily and they seem like a pretty big chunk of Apple's target market for macbook pros.

No. Developers are a tiny, tiny fraction of the market for MacBook Pros.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#823

Post by sliken »

bigbizisverywyz wrote: post #817
ogre_codes wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more about trying to soften the blow on Wall Street. I'm sure Intel had a good idea Apple's chip was going to blow the doors off their offerings.

But I don't really see how this will affect Intel financially in any meaningful way in the short term. They won't provide chips for Apple anymore, but that must have been a relatively small number of units, so no great financial loss to them. And Apple are never going to sell these chips generally, so there's no competition there. In the long term though it may actually benefit Intel (and AMD/NVidia) who might work o…

While Apple's volumes are low, often their parts are mostly the higher end chips. I think just about every i9 laptop mention I've ever seen has been in a MBP 16". So while it's 10-15% of Intel's volumes, I've heard numbers as high as 40% of the profit.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#824

Post by mikepurvis »

5ersi wrote: post #810
throwaway894345 wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but even still how does that affect Intel’s business model? Are they incapable of building ARM chips and selling them the same way as their x86 chips? Seems like the business model is fine but the product will need to change, no?

Sure they can, but at vastly lower profit margins.

Yup, because they'll actually be in competition with all the other ARM licensees, instead of just in a duopoly with AMD.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#825

Post by wpietri »

x0x0 wrote: post #802
wpietri wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a nice feature, sure. But I don't see it as revolutionary. Are there a lot of people suddenly able to live or work differently because of this?

For me, a lack of constantly thinking about the battery is a big deal. I had the same thing happen w/ my phone: mine got large enough a couple years ago that it was a full 2 day battery life. So I could assume it would work all day. Same deal here. I can go (in a !2020 world) to a customer, go from meeting to meeting, etc and it will just work. edit: Also, it feels like we're transitioning from a world in which lapto…

I agree that's an excellent step forward, but again, I'm not seeing it as a revolution. All-day batteries were always available in the Android world, so I don't think there was any revolution there. Similarly, there are plenty of laptops with all-day batteries. That list includes, but is not topped by, both M1 and previous Macs: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/all-day-strong-longest-la...

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#826

Post by feelix »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #104
feelix wrote: post #99

It turns out that the benchmarks for M1 vs latest generation Intel & AMD CPU's are indeed overblown, and it is an incremental improvement more than a great leap forward. The source of the confusion has been the benchmarking software. To saturate one core on an Intel processor you need to run two threads, because that's the way they are designed. So the single thread benchmarks that have been used so far have been usi…

Have you read the comments on that article? That article is not nearly of a smoking gun as the possibly clickbait title. More discussion: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1276532-exclusive-why-apple-...

I didn't until you linked to it, but having read it it still does appear that comparing single thread to single thread is not very accurate. Neither would core to core considering single thread does hold some weight compared to real world workloads.

I guess at the very least CPU benchmarking software should have a "thread to thread" benchmarker alongside a "core to core" benchmarker, or something along those lines.

That would be in the spirit of having benchmarks indicate real world usage

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#827

Post by wpietri »

shawnz wrote: post #795
wpietri wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These all strike me as evolutionary changes. People will be doing about the same things as before. They will do them a bit faster, and not have to plug in as often. I expect revolutionary changes to overturn an existing order. E.g., the Mac was revolutionary. Smartphones were revolutionary. This is a solid and impressive evolutionary change. Kudos to them, of course. But when actual revolutions happen, I would like t…

Smartphones can be just as easily trivialized into being something which lets us "do the same things as before, but faster and with less plugs". I think it is wrong to say there is a clear difference between these kind of changes. We won't really know how "revolutionary" M1 was until we see the landscape of the market in the future, but I think the simple fact of dropping x86 alone is enough to enable some major new…

They cannot in fact be that easily trivialized. You'd welcome to try, though if you think you can demonstrate the point.

If you really believe that non-x86 laptops are what makes for a revolution, then the credit here doesn't belong to Apple. For example: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/6/21050758/lenovo-yoga-5g-sn...

or: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/09/cnn-underscored/galaxy-book-s...

But personally, I'd say that those are an interesting step, but not particularly revolutionary.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#828

Post by x0x0 »

wpietri wrote: post #825
x0x0 wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, a lack of constantly thinking about the battery is a big deal. I had the same thing happen w/ my phone: mine got large enough a couple years ago that it was a full 2 day battery life. So I could assume it would work all day. Same deal here. I can go (in a !2020 world) to a customer, go from meeting to meeting, etc and it will just work. edit: Also, it feels like we're transitioning from a world in which lapto…

I agree that's an excellent step forward, but again, I'm not seeing it as a revolution. All-day batteries were always available in the Android world, so I don't think there was any revolution there. Similarly, there are plenty of laptops with all-day batteries. That list includes, but is not topped by, both M1 and previous Macs: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/all-day-strong-longest-la...

Ah. I found my macs to have all day battery as long as I didn't actually really use it. So it could kind of happen, but only if I paid a lot of attention. I totally recognize this may not make a diff for everyone, but for me, it's moving to assuming the battery lasts all day w/o me managing it. :shrug:

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#829

Post by shawnz »

wpietri wrote: post #827
shawnz wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smartphones can be just as easily trivialized into being something which lets us "do the same things as before, but faster and with less plugs". I think it is wrong to say there is a clear difference between these kind of changes. We won't really know how "revolutionary" M1 was until we see the landscape of the market in the future, but I think the simple fact of dropping x86 alone is enough to enable some major new…

They cannot in fact be that easily trivialized. You'd welcome to try, though if you think you can demonstrate the point. If you really believe that non-x86 laptops are what makes for a revolution, then the credit here doesn't belong to Apple. For example: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/6/21050758/lenovo-yoga-5g-sn... or: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/09/cnn-underscored/galaxy-book-s... But personally, I'd say that tho…

The credit doesn't really belong to Apple for big screen primarily-touch based communication devices either, except that they popularized them.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#830

Post by mthoms »

bigbizisverywyz wrote: post #817
ogre_codes wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more about trying to soften the blow on Wall Street. I'm sure Intel had a good idea Apple's chip was going to blow the doors off their offerings.

But I don't really see how this will affect Intel financially in any meaningful way in the short term. They won't provide chips for Apple anymore, but that must have been a relatively small number of units, so no great financial loss to them. And Apple are never going to sell these chips generally, so there's no competition there. In the long term though it may actually benefit Intel (and AMD/NVidia) who might work o…

That assumes Apple won't be growing its PC market share.

Given the M1's benefits, the ability of Big Sur to run iOS apps, and Apple's marketing prowess, I'd be surprised if they don't double their market share in the next 3 to 4 years.

Then there's the (highly lucrative) server market.

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