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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

#991

Post by whywhywhywhy »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #293

The 13" Macbook Pro lineup looks pretty weird on their store now, at least in the UK. The M1 with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD is at £1299, with a 512GB SSD option at £1499. To bump the RAM to 16GB is another £200(!), so £1699 for 16/512. The Intel options are £1799 for 16/512 or £1999 for 16/1024. So on the Intel side they seem to have cut out 8/256 options, and then they've re-introduced them for the M1 only - which makes…

>so £1699 for 16/512.

My 2014 13inch MBP has 16GB and 512 storage and I'm almost certain it only cost me £1200 at the time. Back then we considered the storage upgrade expensive because SSD was still considered new tech... Today my desktop machine has a 2TB NVME m2 SSD in it, £285 on Amazon.

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

#992

Post by whywhywhywhy »

jonplackett wrote: post #42

The pricing is pretty impressive. Shame no 16 inch pro though. Surely they need to update that quick because who is going to want a 16 inch intel Mac now?

Impressive is not the word I would use when its £200 for 256GB more storage and another £200 for 8GB more ram

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

#993

Post by mcintyre1994 »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #991
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #293

The 13" Macbook Pro lineup looks pretty weird on their store now, at least in the UK. The M1 with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD is at £1299, with a 512GB SSD option at £1499. To bump the RAM to 16GB is another £200(!), so £1699 for 16/512. The Intel options are £1799 for 16/512 or £1999 for 16/1024. So on the Intel side they seem to have cut out 8/256 options, and then they've re-introduced them for the M1 only - which makes…

>so £1699 for 16/512. My 2014 13inch MBP has 16GB and 512 storage and I'm almost certain it only cost me £1200 at the time. Back then we considered the storage upgrade expensive because SSD was still considered new tech... Today my desktop machine has a 2TB NVME m2 SSD in it, £285 on Amazon.

Yea, my 2015 13" MBP is 16/256 and I'm pretty sure it was close to £1000 with a small student discount. I have no idea when the price went up so much since then or why, but it definitely stops a midrange Pro being a no brainer for me as it was at that time.

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

#994

Post by CapriciousCptl »

Jtsummers wrote: post #218

Out of curiosity, how many people are actually constrained by 16GB of RAM? What applications are you using it for that 16GB vs 32GB is actually a deal breaker for you? Thinking about your average end-users, like most of my family, 8 to 16GB is about all they need for their systems (and if software were better written they'd probably need less). So is this specific work like machine learning? Video and image processin…

I bookmarked this thread and keep coming back to it to see if any situations would apply to me. I’ve been fine with 16gb on Ubuntu with a Dell XPS 13 for VS Code/Python/PostgreSQL for what most people call CRUD work. Android development has been a little painful with both Android Studio and device emulation slowing things down but still workable. Otherwise I’ve had no problem with web app style work on large projects. Honestly I’d prefer 32gb for those things (and to “future proof”) but I need a Mac dev environment for early 2021 and will probably go with the MacBook Pro 16gb unless the reviews or benchmarks on things I actually do look poor.

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

#995

Post by tedd4u »

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 think there’s one more notable difference: the M1 MBP also has a brighter screen at 500 vs 400 nits. Both have P3 gamut and are otherwise the same resolution.

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

#996

Post by nroose »

harrygeez wrote: post #844
0-_-0 wrote: post #767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Anandtech benchmark the A14 (what's in the latest iPhone) is 8% below the Ryzen 5950X. M1 is likely faster than that. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... Quote: "In the overall SPEC2006 chart, the A14 is performing absolutely fantastic, taking the lead in absolute performance only falling short of AMD’s recent Ryzen 5000 series. The fact that Apple is able to achieve this…

this is what that boggles my mind. Like are those benchmarks really comparable? I mean Intel and AMD have been doing this far longer than Apple and it seemed as if Apple just came in and bend the laws of physics that Intel and AMD have been limited by

One factor seems to be the vertical integration. It seems like these days there are a bunch of large companies succeeding by having the users of the hardware involved tightly with the the designers of that hardware. Tesla is definitely doing it. I think Google is doing it with machine learning. And Apple has definitely been doing it with their phones and tablets. The feedback loop is tight, valuable, and beneficial. No need to make big compromises for backward compatibility, either, just update the software.

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

#997

Post by JAlexoid »

gburdell3 wrote: post #688
JAlexoid wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The literally benchmarked the slowest 10th Gen i7 CPU on the market. And I got so excited about it...

Which means that, according to Apple, it's better than the CPUs in the other laptops it's competing against. That slow i7 is typical for thin+light 13" machines. I fail to see how this is a bad thing or even sneaky marketing.

If they targeted exclusively the consumer or media editor market - sure.

But then they throw in code compilation... that's where they stop being honest.

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

#998

Post by manquer »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #980
manquer wrote: post #939

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is literally called Pro if that is not for professionals then what is ? its $1,000+ price tag is pretty steep if exclusively targeted towards consumer market. Also the wife and kids have plenty of alternative devices including the iPad to do basic school, web and multimedia, the value prop for just that market is not convincing enough for me Why would I buy and iPad and MB Pro if they are basically going to do the…

Not to be snarky but if $1000+ is steep then your are not Apples target market. :) They have phones that cost over $1000 so $1000 for a laptop seems to fit. For me, we just went all in on the Apple ecosystem because it is simple and the least invasive privacy wise. I do tech for a living so when I get home the last thing I want to do is debug anything. I think in the last 5 years the number of times my family has ask…

For 1000+ price to be scalable, Apple cannot rely on just consumer market of wealthy people earning 6 figure salaries of people in tech buying for personal use. They need the professional market which is my point. [2]

I have considerably less problems troubleshooting Chromebooks for the technically challenged than I have ever had with macOS or windows combined [1]

[1] TBF Windows has improved, S Mode, seamless upgrades etc have helped its user experience to improve. It is funny that windows is considered the more complex OS, their user friendly practices like strong backward compatibility and focus on GUI based workflows shot them to mainstream in the 90's, times have changed indeed.

[2] They are not going to lose professional user base overnight there will be stickyness, anecdotally I bought the first 2017 touch bar MBP, for 10-15 years Apple had delivered good hardware for me, that is the last Apple I will buy in a while. There is some stickiness in the professional market however the brand loyalty is very limited, if a device does not fit your needs you find one which does . You may feel sad you still need to make money though so you move on.

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

#999

Post by jzbiciak »

ffhhj wrote: post #569
sz4kerto wrote: post #467

"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…

Sorry to ask, what is the "Fabric" module in their architecture? Also, is the "Neural Engine" some neural network specific processor?

Fabric is a common term for describing on-chip interconnects in a system-on-a-chip.

It's all the wires and buffers and pipeline registers and arbiters and decoders and muxes that connect the components together.

It's dominated by wires, typically, which is probably how it came to be known as a fabric. (Wild speculation on my part.) I've been hearing that term for a long time. Maybe 20 years?

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

#1000

Post by mrgordon »

jeffbee wrote: post #331
mrgordon wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was to be expected because they save a lot of money that they were paying to Intel. It was estimated that they could shave something like $100 per computer by switching to an in house chip.

They are saving the money, but they're just keeping it. You save nothing.

That’s not clear. They likely spent about the same total cost on components with $100 more for worthwhile components instead of the Intel tax

We will see when we get a full teardown

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