[HN Gopher] Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for por...
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Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac
computers
Author : runesoerensen
Score : 735 points
Date : 2020-11-10 18:13 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (9to5mac.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (9to5mac.com)
| m_a_g wrote:
| An 8 core processor on a Macbook Air that is also energy
| efficient? That is truly impressive. I never thought I would
| consider using Macbook Airs after all the years of using Macbook
| Pros, but Apple surprises me once again.
| BooneJS wrote:
| 4 high-power and 4 low-power cores.
| jagger27 wrote:
| At 9:15 of the keynote they claim that the "high-efficiency"
| cores are as powerful as the outgoing dual-core MacBook Air's
| cores. Seems pretty good to me.
| cornstalks wrote:
| It's 8-core, but they're 4 performance and 4 low-power cores,
| so it's not your normal 8-core chip. It's more like a
| big.LITTLE chip.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Anyone know how you interact with these cores as a
| developer/user? Say if I'm running some C code with OpenMP
| parallelism, can I bind it to three of the fast cores?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The macOS SDK exposes a processor affinity API that you can
| program against.
|
| There isn't an option like taskset on Linux to pin or move
| tasks among different cores, or like anything that's
| exposed in Linux's sysfs.
| TkTech wrote:
| With ARM, yes, and you can also selectively turn on and off
| cores. For example when travelling with my pinebook pro I
| turn the big cores off to drastically improve battery life.
| However it's up to Apple to expose this functionality, and
| we all know how much control apple wants you to have of the
| computers you "license" from them.
| mouldysammich wrote:
| WRT the pinebook, i didnt know it could do that. can it
| be done at runtime or do you have to change it at boot
| time?
| TkTech wrote:
| They can be onlined or offlined at any time,
|
| To offline a core:
|
| echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuN/online
|
| To online a core:
|
| echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuN/online
|
| Where cpuN is 0-4. Keep in mind there's always one core
| you cannot disable to process interrupts.
| mouldysammich wrote:
| Very cool, thank you.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Binding to specific cores is not exposed to userspace, but
| you can influence which kinds of cores it's likely to be
| run on by setting thread priorities and QoS classes.
| berkut wrote:
| Seems pretty clear they're using big.LITTLE-style low-power and
| high-power cores on the same chip.
|
| No fan however, is impressive....
| soziawa wrote:
| But it can't sustain max performance. That is reserved for
| the MacBook Pro with a fan.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| Such a damn shame they went with ARM and not AMD Ryzen. Mac
| quality has really suffered the past few years, and ARM is just
| the nail in coffin for me.
| pgib wrote:
| I've been using an older 2016 MacBook Pro (1st with TouchBar) and
| was excited about something faster. Given that most people are
| working from home now, and the fact that the new MacBook Pro is
| virtually identical physically to what I got four years ago, I'm
| actually considering just getting the Mac mini to save about CAD
| $1,000. I also have a 12" MacBook which I adore, and so the times
| I do need something portable, it doesn't get more portable than
| that. (And it's surprisingly capable for my dev environment.)
| nimeshneema wrote:
| No mention of processor speeds, just like iOS devices. This is
| the new normal now for Macs.
| chrstphrknwtn wrote:
| If you use it, and it is faster, do you care what the numbers
| are?
| aPoCoMiLogin wrote:
| if you hear "3x times faster" would you like to know the
| baseline or just blindly trust that the metric is correct? if
| you don't care, they would never show the "3x times faster"
| metric at all, but they do for a reason
| nimeshneema wrote:
| Not complaining. Those are exactly my thoughts too.
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| I think it's a much more useful metric. At the very basic
| level, I don't know what 2GHz or 5GHz will mean for my computer
| aside from bigger is better, but anyone _can_ understand "2x
| faster."
|
| Beyond that though, processor speed is increasingly useless as
| a single metric. This thing has eight cores, half high-
| performance and half high-efficiency; GPUs are everywhere and
| doing seemingly everything; and RAM is always important. The
| speed cannot be summarized in Hz, but in standardized tests and
| "The stuff you care about is way faster now."
| izacus wrote:
| Do you really, REALLY think that the marketing pitch is
| measuring what "you care about" and not cherry picking
| conditions where the big colorful "X" number on screen is
| higher?
| yxhuvud wrote:
| Faster at WHAT? It is a world of difference between apps that
| depends on single core performance and tasks that can easily
| be spread out over 8 cores.
| kevindong wrote:
| Processor speeds are not necessarily a good comparator anyway
| given that things like caches and core counts are a thing.
| beezle wrote:
| To first order processor speed is a very good indicator of
| performance when comparing similar core count products.
| kevindong wrote:
| If the CPUs being compared are of similar generations (e.g.
| Intel 10th gen vs. Intel 11th gen, etc.), I agree. But
| trying to compare across distinct generations is a bad
| idea.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I think Apple has done an amazing job of pulling off their own
| silicon. At Sun I got to be involved peripherally in the effort
| that created SPARC and it was way more work than I had suspected.
| So kudos to Apple's design, engineering, and QA teams!
|
| I am also noting that they have killed the "ARM SoC's will never
| match what Intel can do" story line. That always reminded me of
| the "Microcomputers will never be able to do what minicomputers
| can do" story line that everyone except DEC and HP seemed to
| realize wouldn't hold up over time. "Never say never" is a good
| motto in the computer business.
|
| That said, as the integration continues apace re-usability and
| repairablilty reach all time lows. When you consider that you
| could take a 1970's minicomputer, disassemble it to the component
| level, and create an entirely different (and functional) computer
| out of those components, you get a sense of how quaint that
| notion seems these days. I doubt anyone will ever desolder an M1
| chip and put it onto a new board of their own design. And that
| reminds me more of the IBM "die on substrate" modules that they
| started using in mainframes which made them basically nothing
| more than low grade gold ore if they no longer worked as a
| mainframe.
| dang wrote:
| All: there are multiple pages of comments; if you're curious to
| read them, click More at the bottom of the page, or like this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049079&p=2
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049079&p=3
| jonplackett wrote:
| I wonder of they're going to try and pull the same 'no specs'
| thing that they do with the iPhone/iPad.
|
| I think I want to know how much RAM is in my MacBook Pro where I
| don't really care how much is in my iPhone.
|
| edit: Store is LIVE, and has lots of specs!
| jackson1442 wrote:
| They didn't; the pricing page shows exactly how much RAM you're
| paying for.
| wmf wrote:
| They have pretty decent specs in the store, although there's
| nothing about clock frequency or TDP to explain the performance
| difference between the Air and Pro.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| What happens when Apple deprecates support in macOS for these
| machines in 7 somewhat years?
|
| Is there an upgrade path to install Linux on them like you
| currently can with Intel-based Macs? Or are these SoCs like every
| other ARM SoC that requires a custom kernel and bootloader to get
| Linux running on them?
| saagarjha wrote:
| You can turn off boot security.
| ValentineC wrote:
| I really hope we will be able to. All the mentions of
| "security" in the keynote were making me cringe.
| saagarjha wrote:
| You will, they promised it during WWDC. (And it's available
| on the developer hardware they released.)
| heavyset_go wrote:
| A locked bootloader is only part of the issue.
|
| The other part is most ARM SoCs don't have an enumerable bus,
| and thus require customized kernels to run Linux. As a
| result, they almost always require explicit Linux support
| from the vendor.
|
| There are millions of ARM devices out there that will never
| run Linux, or will only ever support an old and outdated fork
| of Linux, and will never have mainline support in the kernel.
|
| Are we going to see that vendor support for Linux from Apple?
| Or will these Macs end up like iPhones and iPads where no one
| will be able to get Linux to support them?
| Tepix wrote:
| Source?
| saagarjha wrote:
| https://developer.apple.com/wwdc20/10686. (Also, this is a
| thing on the DTK.)
| mhh__ wrote:
| You don't get the privilege of controlling your Apple hardware
| for the most part so probably not easily.
| modeless wrote:
| Huh, the form factors for the Macs seem identical. I expected
| them to be thinner or something. Fanless is nice for the Air. But
| I'm really waiting to see what they do on the high end with the
| top MacBook Pro and even Mac Pro. Will we see an Apple discrete
| GPU? I guess we'll have to wait a year or two for that.
| aledalgrande wrote:
| not exactly the same, less ports
| brundolf wrote:
| They just announced a 13" Pro. Same form-factor as before,
| still just the M1 inside. It does have a fan, unlike the Air.
| abrowne wrote:
| Apple seems to usually change one major thing at a time,
| internals or externals/form factor, but rarely both.
| robertoandred wrote:
| They left form factors the same when they switched to Intel.
| I'm sure it helps reassure people that there's a continuity of
| the platform.
| trixie_ wrote:
| So I guess Windows won't run on M1, so none of my Windows
| software/Steam games will work either. Will software developers
| start dropping support for Mac now that they'd need to maintain
| an ARM version as well? It's not clear how long Apple will
| support emulation with Rosetta before cutting it off. What's the
| Linux landscape look like for this chip? It's great that there's
| performance and battery life improvements, but Microsoft said the
| same things about WindowsRT and their move to ARM in 2012, and we
| know how well that turned out.
| gen3 wrote:
| Windows has an arm build, so I wouldn't count it out entirely.
|
| Edit: Never-mind, it looks like they are not porting bootcamp.
| nottorp wrote:
| Even if ARM Windows was supported by Apple, none of the games
| have ARM versions so it wouldn't help.
| izacus wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they'll use the same boot chain as in
| iPhones/iPads where you're not allowed to replace the
| operating system on the device.
| CraftThatBlock wrote:
| Apple said that only virtualization will be supported on
| their ARM chips. Locked through the bootloader (although
| wouldn't be surprised if exploits are released to load up
| Linux/Windows)
| gen3 wrote:
| Ah! You're right! No bootcamp.
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/24/21302213/apple-silicon-
| ma...
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| That blows my mind. Microsoft has had an ARM version of
| Windows for years. I would have thought they would have
| lept to support Bootcamp on these new Macs. That being
| said, I bought my MBP with 64GB of RAM to run Windows
| VM's in Parallels, but I no longer have any need to run
| any software that runs only under Windows. I think the
| market for Bootcamp is basically just gaming now, and the
| new consoles are really eroding the performance reasons
| for choosing a Windows box for that.
| tinodotim wrote:
| > That blows my mind. Microsoft has had an ARM version of
| Windows for years. I would have thought they would have
| lept to support Bootcamp on these new Macs.
|
| Why and for who though? Yes, there is an ARM version of
| windows, but there is pretty much no software for it -
| and most of the Windows ARM software (Office?) likely has
| already iOS versions and will have upcoming Mac ARM
| versions.
|
| I have the feeling that 99%+ of Bootcamp users use it for
| x86 software.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| At WWDC Apple said Bootcamp usage had fallen from 15% of
| users down to 2%.
| hidd wrote:
| Seems there are two variants of the M1 chip in the MacBook Air,
| one with 7 GPU cores and one with 8. Wonder why that is the case.
|
| https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Maybe they only manufacture the 8-core version and bin the ones
| that have defects?
| travis729 wrote:
| Probably to get better yield. If one of the GPU cores has a
| defect, they can still use the die.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning#Semiconductor_...
| justasking123 wrote:
| Hey guys,
|
| Anyone knows if the M1 would be faster for GPU bound work than
| 2020 MacBook Pro 16-inch with AMD Radeon 5600? I just spent over
| $4K and just got it delivered yesterday. Thinking of returning it
| if it does not compare favorably on GPU performance to the new M1
| 13-inch MacBook Pro. Insight/advice?
| linuxhansl wrote:
| Do I need to worry now that a walled-garden company - with all
| its advantages - pulls ahead of open ecosystems?
|
| I only use Linux at home. Will I be doomed to inferior H/W going
| forward?
|
| This is not a rhetorical question or a flame... It's an honest
| question... Is Apple pulling ahead of everybody else and soon
| going to be our only option?
| elicash wrote:
| Your situation won't be worse than what would exist had Apple
| _not_ moved so far ahead of the others. In fact, Apple moving
| ahead only encourages others to up their game. So you 're
| better off, due to Apple, even if you don't buy their machines.
| linuxhansl wrote:
| That's an excellent point, I didn't consider that.
| john_minsk wrote:
| I doubt it. When they talk about performance - they always said
| it in terms of compute/watt. In absolute numbers these CPUs and
| GPUs will still be less performant - just my guess.
|
| On top of it for a foreseeable future I think a lot of
| professional software will stay on x86 architecture simply
| because most of it must be also available on Windows.
| pmart123 wrote:
| I'd agree, but Apple's position with the iPad likely will
| ensure enough professional developer mindshare? Most
| enterprise apps I use typically have a fairly built out
| version for the iPad (and most only support Windows
| otherwise). I agree that developers themselves will likely
| stick with x86 architecture to write code on for the most
| part given that's what servers will run.
| kristianp wrote:
| Don't forget that AMD is still improving its cpus and moving
| ahead of intel .
| ertucetin wrote:
| I bought a new Macbook Pro 13 with i7 chip and 32GB RAM, 3 weeks
| ago. I hope I'm not missing anything...
| azhenley wrote:
| If you didn't see the event, they've put the new chip into the
| new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini that will start
| shipping soon.
| miohtama wrote:
| Next week, to be exact.
| maxioatic wrote:
| November 17, to be exact exact.
| [deleted]
| brundolf wrote:
| * 13" Macbook Pro. No word yet on the 16"
| google234123 wrote:
| wow, 5nm, memory, gpu, and cpu on the same soc. RX 560 has the
| same 2.6 tflops as this gpu on this chip. They say 4x more
| efficient at 10w and 2x more powerful than intel.
| fulafel wrote:
| RX 560 has about 100 GB/s memory bandwidth, how does that
| department stack up?
| The_rationalist wrote:
| A 560 is low end in 2020
| bangonkeyboard wrote:
| https://youtu.be/5AwdkGKmZ0I?t=1660
|
| "Immersive, graphically-intensive titles!"
| woah wrote:
| Will existing programs run on this?
| azhenley wrote:
| Yes, they have an Intel emulator (Rosetta I think they called
| it) and are pushing developers to produce "universal apps".
| randmeerkat wrote:
| Here's more details on Rosetta:
| https://www.theverge.com/21304182/apple-arm-mac-
| rosetta-2-em...
|
| It actually depends on the app and what it's doing. For
| example they said photoshop wouldn't be available on it until
| early 2021.
| wtetzner wrote:
| They said Photoshop won't be available as a universal
| binary until 2021. It wasn't clear if it would run on
| Rosetta 2 in the meantime.
| capableweb wrote:
| "Universal apps" that only run on OSX and Apple's mobile OS I
| presume?
| alwillis wrote:
| Universal apps run on both Apple Silicon (ARM) processors
| and Intel processor-based Macs.
| capableweb wrote:
| Oh, so if I run Windows/Linux on the Intel based Mac I
| can run these Universal apps? Sounds very un-Apple-like
| if true.
|
| If not true, then my original comment seems to still
| stand.
| gord288 wrote:
| No, "Universal" apps in this context means these apps can
| run in Mac OS, either on an Intel Mac or on an Apple
| Silicon (ARM) Mac. Nothing at all to do with iOS, iPadOS,
| Windows or Linux.
| capableweb wrote:
| Isn't that misleading marketing? I know that companies
| can call their new efforts whatever they want, but if
| someone sells a "Universal keyboard" that only works with
| Windows, isn't that just straight up misleading
| marketing?
|
| The only thing that comes close to being "universal apps"
| would be applications that run in a browser.
| bochoh wrote:
| Rosetta 2 is the newest version. The universal apps are just
| an export in XCode from what the presentation made it seem
| like. Developers exclaiming it took 10 minutes to do the
| universal app build.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Universal apps have existed since the transition from
| PowerPC. For most apps it's simply recompiling in Xcode and
| it creates a fat binary with both architectures.
|
| Any apps that rely on specific intel libraries will have a
| bit more work to do.
| bochoh wrote:
| Ah that distinction was not made in the presentation.
| Thanks for this.
| buf wrote:
| Yes, its's backwards compatible, but older programs will not
| take advantages of the chip in larger ways yet.
| RL_Quine wrote:
| No? It's not x86. Compatibility is emulated.
| greenpresident wrote:
| Max 16GB of RAM on these new machines is really not that great to
| be honest. The mini supported up to 64GB before.
| my123 wrote:
| That's it for the M1 crop of machines, higher-powered ones will
| go higher...
| jonplackett wrote:
| And it's unified memory too, shared with the graphics.
| ameen wrote:
| Which makes it worse, Intel Macs look appealing than these.
| Tepix wrote:
| It could even be advantageous
| jonplackett wrote:
| Depends what you need it for I guess, and how much
| differently ARM uses RAM than Intel. Anyone know?
|
| Also how much OS X optimisation can help with that. The
| iPad Pro is a lot faster than most laptops with, what, 6gb
| memory? And iPhones always seem to have a lot less RAM than
| Samsung phones but still run faster.
| saagarjha wrote:
| It's mostly the same, perhaps a little bit less.
| carabiner wrote:
| iPhone has typically had lower specs while outperforming its
| competitors in benchmarks. I think the integration goes a long
| way toward efficiency.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| But Mac OS X isn't iOS. The relative memory usage should be
| the same between an intel Mac and an ARM Mac. Which means for
| power users this is extremely disappointing.
| egsmi wrote:
| That's not obvious at all. The memory hierarchy is very
| different in an Apple SOC compared to a typical PC
| architecture. For example, I don't think there is the
| equivalent of a system level cache in a PC.
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/14892/the-apple-
| iphone-11-pro...
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Power-users generally won't be purchasing the
| lowest/mobilest end for work purposes.
| olyjohn wrote:
| > But Mac OS X isn't iOS.
|
| Not yet. MacOS has been moving towards becoming iOS for a
| long time now. Now with iPad and iPhone apps running
| natively on them, they only need to lock a few more things
| down until it becomes an iPad with a windowed interface.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| 16GB is fine for mobile and low end. I'm a developer and
| struggle to fill that amount of memory, even with VMs running.
|
| I guess they made a cost trade-off for these machines, which
| will not be carried forward to the high-end. Perhaps a new "M2"
| chipset, with discreet RAM and graphics. Next year?
|
| It would be amazing if they could bring ECC for a decent price
| as well, time will tell.
| Polylactic_acid wrote:
| I'm a rails dev and I constantly struggle with 16GB. Once you
| start up rails, background workers, webpack, vs code, MS
| teams, a database, plus your web browser you very quickly run
| out of memory.
| 91edec wrote:
| I bought a Mac mini 2 weeks ago and I was sweating when they
| announced the new Mac mini, not anymore now that its only max
| 16GB. Apple has effectively killed expandable storage and
| memory in all of their line up. No doubt in the future they
| will offer larger memory options when they release the 16"
| Macbook pro. Need 32GB a year later down the road for your
| mini? Just buy a new one!
| [deleted]
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| I'm with you on the sweat factor as I just bought a new iMac
| 5K, but FYI it has a purpose-built expansion slot for RAM
| that surprised and pleased me. I bought it with the least RAM
| possible from Apple and maxed it out via an upgrade I bought
| from Newegg for like 40% of the price.
| pinewurst wrote:
| The current Intel Macbook Pros aren't expandable either,
| though. 16GB is a disappointment for me too.
| luis8 wrote:
| I agree, i was going to order one but 16GB is not enough for
| me. I guess i'll wait until 32 is available.
| jrsj wrote:
| I'm expecting 16" MBP and iMac to support more along with an
| M1X chip or something along those lines.
| akmarinov wrote:
| It'll most likely ship some time in July, so could be an M2
| kushan2020 wrote:
| Probably M1Z, like the iPad Pro.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| This is the first CPU/ SoC and the first SKUs. It's likely
| (almost certain) 32GB options for the 13" MBP will come out
| when the 16" MacBook is launched. I'm not so sure about the Mac
| mini, but considering they are just dropping the same chip on
| all three devices, I suspect the mini will have a higher end
| option as well.
| gmm1990 wrote:
| I know use cases are different but I can't imagine 95% of
| people needing more than 16GB of RAM especially with mac os
| "unified memory". I have intellij, pycharm, firefox, slack and
| a mongodb instance running on my windows laptop and its only
| using 10GB. Who knows how much of that 10GB could be reduced.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| "unified" memory is bad not good. It's agree with GPU.
| whynotminot wrote:
| SSD performance with their integrated IO controller might close
| the gap here, the same way that pretty fast storage on their
| iPhones makes the lack of RAM there not so debilitating.
|
| But yeah, agreed that not having a 32GB option is somewhat
| disappointing.
|
| (sent from my MacBook Pro with 32GB of RAM)
| vmception wrote:
| mmmmm yeah, I will let you all be the guinea pigs here and
| check back next month.
|
| I am very curious about the performance.
|
| If the macbook air is editing 6k videos and scrubbing
| smoothly, I am optimistic.
| whynotminot wrote:
| Heh, I have no intention of being in the initial round of
| beta testing! I explicitly upgraded to an ice lake machine
| this summer in order to get the best Intel Mac while
| waiting for the dust to settle.
|
| But I do believe the dust will settle, and I'm optimistic
| about the future of Apple Silicon.
| mehrdada wrote:
| While a valid workload for a segment, I would be a bit
| skeptical of generalizing the extraordinary video editing
| capability to general purpose computing, as those things
| are facilitated heavily by hardware decoders.
| whynotminot wrote:
| Agreed, but they did mention what sounded like impressive
| code compilation times in the presentation too, which is
| pretty salient for most of us here.
|
| Of course, we'll need to wait for third party
| verification in the end.
| mehrdada wrote:
| Totally--was not diminishing <strike>A14Z</strike>M1 at
| all--just to moderate expectations from the quite
| astonishing video editing capability to "measly" ~2x.
| Even two year old iPad Pro A12X kicks ass on Clang
| benchmarks (see Geekbench), although I am not sure how
| sustained the performance is in that thermal envelope.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| This is an interesting line of inquiry. In the gaming console
| world, a similar principle has been explicitly espoused by
| Sony in the decision to only go with 16GB of RAM (a smaller
| factor increase than any previous generation) for the
| Playstation 5, as the speed of its custom SSD architecture
| should in theory make that 16GB go a lot further than it
| would have with a more traditional design.
| wmf wrote:
| And then PS5 load times are worse than Series X. Whoops.
| lfuller wrote:
| That's when playing backwards-compatible games (PS4 games
| on PS5, and Xbox / 360 / One games on Xbox Series X) as
| Microsoft spent more time optimizing their console to
| play old games. PS5 loads next-gen titles significantly
| faster than the Xbox Series X due to the 2.5x faster SSD.
| ERD0L wrote:
| "significantly faster than the Xbox Series X"
|
| You have every right to support your Sony stocks, but
| blatant lies though ?
| whynotminot wrote:
| That's for reasons that I would expect the technical
| readership of this site to understand.
|
| Please take this shallow retort back to Kotaku.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| PS5 shares memory with the GPU, doesn't it? Which is
| different to just using RAM to load games.
|
| I play modern games with RX 5700XT 8GB video card and 8GB
| RAM machine without issues.... So maybe there's not much
| need for more memory...
| Analemma_ wrote:
| I'll believe that when I see it. For like ten years now
| marketing gremlins have been breathlessly saying "these SSDs
| will be so fast they can replace RAM!" and it's never even
| close.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah this is surprising considering how much they talk about
| how great the processor is for ML, too...
| bnt wrote:
| And it costs an extra EUR224 to go from 8 to 16gb. This is
| ridiculously expensive.
| dschuler wrote:
| Any option in Euros is about 30% more expensive than buying
| the same in the US or Hong Kong (which is pretty crummy, but
| possibly related to taxes and the cost of doing business in
| the EU).
|
| EDIT: I don't mean VAT/sales tax, I've considered sales taxes
| in the comparison, but also exchange rates of $1.18/1EUR. The
| difference is almost exactly 30%. It looks like the cost of
| doing business in the EU is much higher, and/or Apple chooses
| to price their products however they want by region.
| tiernano wrote:
| Most of the US priced don't include tax... Eu prices
| include vat...
| dschuler wrote:
| I did include CA sales tax (in Los Angeles) of 9.5%, vs
| the VAT-inclusive price in France/Germany/Italy, and the
| difference _after_ including those was about 30% higher
| in the EU. Germany was the lowest, probably because they
| temp. reduced their sales tax from 19% to 16%.
|
| I can actually get a round-trip economy flight (pre-COVID
| and now) to LA just to buy a Mac mini, and save about
| $400. It's really.. unfortunate.
| garmaine wrote:
| It's not just sales tax, there's also import taxes no?
| dschuler wrote:
| That's true, I'm comparing local purchase prices with
| currency conversion rates. The rest depends on your
| personal situation and tax jurisdiction.
| garmaine wrote:
| No what I mean is that Apple pays import duties to bring
| the computer into the EU from its point of manufacture.
| This further increases the cost compared with the US or a
| duty-free zone like Hong Kong.
| theodric wrote:
| Pop down to Switzerland. More than USA, less than
| Eurozone, and 7.7% VAT.
| dschuler wrote:
| Oh ok, gotcha. I'm not trying to blame any entity here,
| just pointing out the price difference that's larger than
| the sales tax difference between the EU and CA.
| Interestingly HK prices for iPhones are almost exactly
| California prices (within a couple of dollars) even
| though there is no sales tax in HK - that's probably on
| Apple.
| Udo_Schmitz wrote:
| Not for computers into Germany.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Don't forget VAT. I think US prices don't include taxes as
| it's state dependent.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Maxed out Mac Mini is $1699 pre tax in US and EUR1917 in
| Ireland. That's EUR1558 pre VAT price, or $1838 including
| mandatory 2 year warranty.
|
| $139 is NOT 30% difference.
| dschuler wrote:
| 1917EUR would be about $2262, and $1699 pre-tax would be
| about $1699*1.095=$1860 with tax, or about $402 more
| expensive.
|
| I'm comparing retail pricing in France (with a 2-year EU
| warranty) to business pricing in the US (with a 1-year
| warranty). That comes out to 1949EUR including VAT in
| France, or about $2299 USD, vs $1749 USD including Los
| Angeles/CA sales tax with business pricing.
|
| About 31% more.
| realityking wrote:
| IMHO it's misleading to compare the gross prices due to
| difference tax rates. JAlexoid's comparison is a much
| more honest representation of how much Apple marks up
| prices in Europe. I wouldn't expect Apple - or anyone -
| to eat the 10% sales tax/VAT difference.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's not quite as insulting as their $800 2TB SSD.
| mlindner wrote:
| I mean if it's SLC chip, that can explain the price.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Also if it comes with $600 in cash stuffed inside, that
| would explain the price. But it's neither of those
| things.
| wmf wrote:
| It's not, although it is ridiculously fast. But most
| people don't need ridiculous storage performance; they
| just need the space.
| smileybarry wrote:
| It's not, Apple most likely use TLC 3D NAND. There's no
| definitive source but the only remaining SLC drives being
| made are enterprise (and a few at that), and I think MLC
| is the same by now. (Even Samsung's Pro series moved to
| TLC)
| driverdan wrote:
| The fastest drive available today is the WD SN850:
| https://shop.westerndigital.com/en-us/products/internal-
| driv...
|
| The consumer price for 2TB is $450. $800 is absurd.
| olyjohn wrote:
| This has always been par for the course for computer
| manufacturers. I used to spec out Dell PCs for the school
| I worked at. At the time, retail cost for a 1TB HDD was
| the same price as a 512GB SSD. But Dell was charging
| double for the SSD.
|
| For me personally, I used to buy the lower-end models
| with small HDD and RAM, then upgrade them. But that's no
| longer an option with these machines.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Apple price is always 2x consumer price.
| Tepix wrote:
| You could get the smallest SSD (a laughable 256GB) and then
| add one or two external 10Gbps NVMe M.2 SSDs at very low
| cost and with adequate performance.
| bredren wrote:
| For reference, I have a maxed 2018 mini I've upgraded twice ->
| 32GB then to 64GB.
|
| Amazon price for 2x32gb modules is lower than it ever has been
| as of today ($218.58) [1] and I have had no problem making full
| use of that memory in MacOS. [2]
|
| [1] https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B07ZLCC6J8
|
| [2] https://i.imgur.com/BDWrGw3.png
| bredren wrote:
| A bit more: I also run the blackmagic rx580 egpu to the XDR
| pro display. The system outperforms the current entry Mac Pro
| in geekbench 5.
|
| So I def have eyes on the new mini. My suspicion is the rx580
| will still provide 2x or more graphical power than any of
| these machines.
| aldanor wrote:
| Holy cow, that's true. New 2020 Mini with a 16GB RAM,
| seriously?
| qz2 wrote:
| They're not advertising any 16Gb models on their web site.
| It's all 8Gb. Which you're not going to be able to upgrade.
|
| I'm out
| aldanor wrote:
| You can choose 16Gb for +$200.
| qz2 wrote:
| Ah yes just seen that.
|
| 8Gb of RAM for PS200 they can piss off. I paid PS240 for
| 64Gb of decent stuff in my desktop.
| whynotminot wrote:
| Especially head scratching when you consider that a lot of
| folks still have 2012 Mac minis with 16GB of RAM.
|
| I think 16GB is the bare minimum for a professional machine.
| Apple clears the bar here, but doesn't exceed it.
|
| Maybe next year's machines? As a first product, I think it's
| good enough. And the performance gains elsewhere--if what
| Apple says is true--are actually pretty radically impressive.
| saagarjha wrote:
| It's possible to do development on 8 GB, you just can't use
| Electron apps.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| I'm learning Flutter on my Windows 10 desktop. I have
| Android studio and the emulator open, and Firefox,
| Chromium and Brave opened.
|
| Total 14G of ram. My combined browser ram use is about
| 3G. The flutter project is barely 20 lines of code. The
| PC was started up about 2h ago.
|
| I'd feel much better with 32G on a dev machine (to be
| fair, my .net projects require much less ram than this).
| aldanor wrote:
| I have 1500 tabs open in Firefox, plus CLion, PyCharm, a
| few Jupyter kernels eating 5-15G, a few apps running in
| background - it's often nearing 32G on a 32G 7-year old
| Mac and sometimes goes into swap space. I personally
| won't consider anything less than 128G as a main machine
| at this point (and it's a pity that you can't swap
| upgradable RAM on iMacs for 256G).
| JAlexoid wrote:
| That's a little radical...
|
| People used to tell me that Java development was resource
| consuming... But I somehow manage to build systems with
| 16GB. I didn't even go for 32G on my new laptop.
| whynotminot wrote:
| ...Can I ask why you have 1500 tabs open?
| aldanor wrote:
| Stuff that's easier to keep as open tabs (in a tree
| format via TreeStyleTab) and eventually close those trees
| when they are no longer needed, as opposed to bookmarking
| everything and eventually accumulating a bajillion of
| irrelevant bookmarks. E.g., I'm doing house renovation so
| I might have a good few hundred tabs open just on that
| topic which will eventually get closed.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Tabs being "open" doesn't mean they're loaded into ram.
| vel0city wrote:
| On most browsers you can organize bookmarks in
| folders/tree structures. You could then delete
| folders/trees of bookmarks at a time, eliminating this
| "accumulating a bajillion of irrelevant bookmarks".
| aldanor wrote:
| I know. Been there, done that. To each his own, I guess.
| An open tab is an open tab, if I close it, it's gone
| forever unless I bookmark it which I would very rarely
| do. A bookmark is an inverse, it's going to stay there
| forever unless you clean it up and manually delete it. In
| my experience, a few hundred more open tabs beats ten
| thousand dead bookmarks, and closing tabs is easier than
| cleaning up bookmarks.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Three browsers open is not a requirement for the vast
| majority of folks.
|
| There are probably a number of useless Windows services
| that could be shut down as well.
| onion2k wrote:
| _Three browsers open is not a requirement for the vast
| majority of folks._
|
| Every developer who makes frontend things for the web
| should have a minimum of three browsers (Chrome, Firefox,
| Safari, but maybe others as well) open any time they're
| testing or debugging their code. That's quite a lot of
| developers.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| And 16GB is fine for that.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Atom, Chrome and Firefox on a 2017 8GB 13" MBP - no
| issues in using it for development.
|
| I upgraded it only because my keyboard died.
| whynotminot wrote:
| I guess I mean more that if you're going to buy a brand
| new dev machine in 2020, you shouldn't buy anything with
| less than 16GB of RAM.
|
| You can still be productive right this moment on 8GB of
| RAM (you're proving it!), but the march of time will
| inevitably start to make that amount feel less and less
| tolerable, if it isn't already.
|
| Personally, when I buy a dev machine, I'm generally
| trying to look at the next few years of ownership. Will
| 8GB of RAM cut it in 2023? Doubtful. 16GB? Yeah, a little
| safer. But 32GB would make me feel better.
| whynotminot wrote:
| To be fair, most of us doing dev on our machines probably
| have a Slack client or Mattermost app floating in the
| background.
|
| ...And we might even be doing dev in something like VS
| Code in the first place.
|
| We all like to dunk on Electron, but it's kind of become
| part of the furniture at this point, for better our
| worse.
| saagarjha wrote:
| You can avoid Electron if you try hard enough. I use
| Slack through a native client, for example; before that I
| was using browser tabs.
| whynotminot wrote:
| I'm not stupid dude, I know there are ways to avoid it.
|
| Sometimes they're not worth it. Electron's existence
| itself is proof of "sometimes it's not worth it."
| johncalvinyoung wrote:
| Which native client? Slack for desktop is Electron.
| saagarjha wrote:
| https://shrugs.app/
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Try hard enough, haha. I don't have a single Electron
| app, and yet have never purposely avoided them either.
| thekyle wrote:
| Maybe we could use the iPad version of Slack for better
| efficiency.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Yeah, until Slack throws a fit and decides that desktop
| users don't deserve to use it.
| whynotminot wrote:
| This is really great point, and does highlight a key
| advantage of Apple Silicon going forward. This kind of
| thing will now be an option going forward on Apple's new
| computers, in a way it wasn't before.
| [deleted]
| numpad0 wrote:
| This is super interesting. I personally wouldn't consider a
| 8GB or 16GB laptop this year as _my_ daily driver, but it's
| true that the performance gain from extra RAM beyond 8GB is
| marginal, especially for average audiences and especially
| when their performances are measured only externally.
|
| Like, you might get super frustrated, develop mental health
| issues, not that the corporate cares. Expenditure reduces,
| ROI might even slightly improve, why bother then?
| saagarjha wrote:
| > you might get super frustrated, develop mental health
| issues
|
| Uh, what? Is your comment literally "because I don't have
| enough RAM in my computer my mental health will decline"?
| kkarakk wrote:
| you have to admit when you're in a busy day w/ looming
| deadlines and your machine starts chugging coz it can't
| handle the excel docs/dev work going on it feels like the
| worst thing ever.
|
| the kinda company that can't afford to give you the
| latest stuff is more likely to have those kindsa days all
| the time too so it feels even worse.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Yes, literally?
|
| I'm talking about 4GB DDR4 non-SSD Office machines still
| in production that are borderline crime against humanity.
| acchow wrote:
| My 100 Chrome tabs easily consume 8GB
| modeless wrote:
| Wow, that's actually a pretty big limitation. I guess it's
| tough to do 64 GB with their on-package unified memory.
|
| I wonder if they're working on a version with discrete memory
| and GPU for the high end? They'll need it if they ever want to
| get Intel out of the Mac Pro.
| arrrg wrote:
| They only launched their lower performance machines today.
| Air, mini, two port Pro.
|
| So that's the context to interpret the Ram they offer.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| I suspect/hope they are for the 16" MacBook Pro, which is
| still Intel-based.
| dbbk wrote:
| They must be... there's no chance they're wiping out their
| Intel lineup with machines that max at 16GB of RAM.
| Especially not for the Mac Pro.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| This would seem to point toward a tiered RAM configuration
| that acts somewhat like Apple's old Fusion Drives: On-package
| RAM would be reserved for rapid and frequent read/write,
| while the OS would page to discrete RAM for lower priority.
| Discrete RAM would act as a sort of middle ground between on-
| package RAM and paging to the SSD.
|
| Then again, maybe their in-house SSD controller is so blazing
| fast that the performance gains from this would, for most
| applications, be minimal.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Apple doesn't like writing to their SSDs much, to prevent
| wear-out.
| vmception wrote:
| Let's think about that a little bit. If the RAM is fast and
| the SSD is fast and the virtualization options are limited,
| then this is good enough?
|
| Or, inspire me. Which processes really require occupying and
| allocating bigger blocks of RAM?
|
| I personally don't want to purchase another machine with 16gb
| RAM but that's mainly because I want the option of having a
| powerful Windows guest or two running at the same time. But
| if you take out that possibility, for now, what if the
| paradigm has changed just a tad.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Which processes really require occupying and
| allocating bigger blocks of RAM?
|
| It's not uncommon to work with e.g. 50GB+ databases these
| days.
|
| They don't always _need_ to be in RAM, particularly with
| modern SSD performance, but if you 're using a laptop for
| your day job and you work with largeish data...
| coder543 wrote:
| SSD latency is still several orders of magnitude higher
| than RAM latency. Having similar magnitudes of total
| throughput (bandwidth) isn't enough to make RAM and SSDs
| comparable and thus remove the need for more RAM. Random
| access latency with basically no queue depth is very
| important for total performance. Certainly, SSDs are far
| better at this than hard drives were... but, SSDs still
| serve a different purpose.
|
| Intel's Optane SSDs are based on a completely different
| technology than other SSDs, and their low queue depth
| latency is _significantly_ better than any other SSDs out
| there, but good luck talking Apple into using more Intel
| stuff just when they 're trying to switch away, and even
| then... just having some more real RAM would be better for
| most of these creator/pro workloads.
| Skunkleton wrote:
| I have a project that won't compile on systems with less
| than 32 GiB of RAM, and I refuse to refactor the hideously
| overgrown C++ template magic that landed me here.
| BossingAround wrote:
| I suspect "Apple silicon" will not really be very
| suitable for software engineering.
| akmittal wrote:
| For now, most developers use MacBooks and tools like
| vscode already have apple silicon build.
| estebank wrote:
| Saying that "most developers use MacBooks" requires a
| very different understanding from mine of what the words
| "most" or "developers" mean.
| princekolt wrote:
| Not everyone's codebase is an over-bloated mess
| saagarjha wrote:
| I've been building an over-bloated mess on Apple silicon
| for months now; it's been quite good at it actually.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Their performance claims are the very essence of vague,
| but Apple sure seems certain it _will_ be great for
| software engineering. I 'm curious. I won't be convinced
| until we get some real data, but signs seem to point that
| way. What makes you strongly suspect it _won 't_ be
| great? Build code in Xcode up to 2.8x
| faster. [...] Compile four
| times as much code on a single charge, thanks to the
| game-changing performance per watt of the M1 chip.
|
| source:
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/introducing-the-
| next-...
|
| I have a hunch it will be adequate for single-threaded
| tasks and the real gains will come for multithreaded
| compilation, since its superior thermals should enable it
| to run all cores at full blast for longer periods of time
| without throttling, relative to the intel silicon it
| replaces.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I suspect your suspicion is going to be very wrong.
| aequitas wrote:
| Virtualization and containers. Especially if you want to
| run an Electron based code editor next to it.
| BossingAround wrote:
| Containers on Mac rely on virtualization, don't they
| still? Will the new CPU arch have a native virtualization
| SW? Because if not, I suspect that the virtualization
| layer might break with the translations to and from X86,
| and/or might take pretty significant performance penalty.
|
| A wild unsubstantiated guess of course, at this point (or
| rather, a worry of mine).
| easton wrote:
| Containers on Mac still rely on virtualization, but Apple
| said at WWDC (and showed a demo) of Docker for Mac
| running on Apple Silicon, and of Parallels running a full
| Debian VM. Both were running ARM builds of Linux to run
| properly, and Apple added virtualization extensions to
| the new SoC so it doesn't have to resort to emulation (if
| the software running is ARM and not x86).
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/hypervisor
| francoisLabonte wrote:
| My guess is that they are using up to 2 HBM2 memory stacks
| (from the picture). Each is limited to 8GB . If they were to go
| to HBM2e in M2 they could get up to 2x24GB. The biggest
| advantage of HBM is lower power per bit as the signals are all
| on the package running at a lower frequency.
|
| The memory market is getting fragmented with Nvidia having
| seemed to moved from HBM2 to GDDR6X (Micron being only
| supplier). LPDDR super low power (cell phones) and DDR4/5 for
| rest of market...
| francoisLabonte wrote:
| After more consideration it is much more likely to be LPDDR4X
| just like the recently released A14 chip. It would seem
| unlikely that they would have developed a brand new memory
| interface.
| sroussey wrote:
| Are they using HBM2 memory? I keep waiting for AMD to do that
| in a cpu package.
| pat2man wrote:
| The 13" MacBook Pro has an option to upgrade to 32.
| rickyc091 wrote:
| Intel's MacBook Pro 13" is still available for purchase with
| 32GB upgrade. The M1 is capped at 16GB.
|
| edit: spelling
| mediaman wrote:
| I just checked the store configurator and there is no option
| to upgrade the Pro with M1 to 32, which is consistent with
| the presentation.
| vmception wrote:
| I don't see that.
|
| You might have looked at the 16" one, which did not get
| updated today.
| hrktb wrote:
| The 2 lower machines on the selection page are intel ones,
| and are the only ones with 32Gb option
| greenpresident wrote:
| The M1 MacBook Pro starts with 8GB and has an option for
| 16GB. I was talking about the Mac mini which in the Intel
| version has an option for 64GB (at +$1000 it's not exactly
| cheap).
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Right? "Oh we can't give you a 64GB MBP because Intel can't use
| low power dram yet". Launches Apple Silicon with 16Gb.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| Did you expect they would launch every single configuration
| on day 1?
|
| Apple said the transition is going to take 2 years. This is
| day 1. You can still buy Intel based Macs with 64GB RAM. When
| Apple phases those out and you still can't buy 64GB Macs,
| then you can complain.
|
| What are the chances that happens?
| saagarjha wrote:
| > Launches
|
| They purposefully launched with consumer-level hardware.
| There is no way that the "real" pro machines will not let you
| ratchet all those specs up.
| smitty1110 wrote:
| The choice to do on-package RAM makes it hard. They limited
| themselves to just two dies here, so maybe a real "pro-focused"
| machine can have 32 GB later. I guess those of us that need the
| extra ram will have to wait for Apple to release the M2 with
| DDR5 support and then re-evaluate our options. But for now
| these are a hard no for me.
| Shivetya wrote:
| what is interesting to me is they all use the same chip but
| don't reveal their operating frequency. I am hoping I am just
| overlooking this.
|
| I expect the Pro to run faster as it has a fan to support it
| but how much faster than the Air would it be?
| capableweb wrote:
| Really, 16GB max? I find it very strange how Apple went from
| targeting professionals, seeing the strategy work from the
| ground up for many years, but now somehow want to pivot to
| hobbyists/others instead of professionals.
|
| Could someone try to help me figure out the reasoning behind
| Apple changing the target customer?
| vicnov wrote:
| Probably saturated market. "What got them here, wont get them
| there". They continuously need to show _growth_. As you said,
| the strategy of focusing on Pro users worked. It 's now time
| to focus on not so Pro users... those who don't need matte
| displays, 32gigs, fancy keyboards and much rather use a
| colorful touch bar than another row of buttons.
| qppo wrote:
| My guess is the pros are going to be the tock to the consumer
| tick in the Apple silicon upgrade cycle. It takes months
| before pros are comfortable upgrading MacOS to begin with,
| and it will probably be a year or two before they're
| comfortable that pro software vendors have flushed out their
| bugs on the new architecture.
|
| Basically I'm guessing that no one who wants more than 16GB
| on their professional machine was going to upgrade on this
| cycle anyway. We'll see
| capableweb wrote:
| Since about 2-3 years back, the film professionals I hang
| around with are all starting to dump Apple hardware in
| favor of PC workstations now, as they are tired of paying
| large amounts of money for something that can be had
| cheaper and with less restrictions. Especially when it
| comes to price vs quality for displays and hard drives that
| Apple sells.
|
| I think today's presentation is just confirming what we've
| known for a while, Apple is pivoting away from
| professionals.
| unicornfinder wrote:
| Same thing in the audio engineering world. It's crazy how
| quickly it's pivoted from Mac to PC in such a short
| timeframe.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| While I use it for gaming, I cannot fathom anyone using
| Windows 10 professionally.
| capableweb wrote:
| Not sure what industry you're in (professionally) but at
| least in creative industry it's either Windows or OSX.
| And if you need really powerful hardware, it's either
| Windows or Linux (with custom software), at least that's
| what I'm seeing in my circles.
|
| Although OSX used to be popular with the indie-
| professional scene, it's disappearing quicker than it
| appeared years back.
| egsmi wrote:
| I think it depends a lot on your job. I used to do a lot
| of Cadence Virtuoso work in Windows (now I've moved to
| Linux) but that fact that is was running on Windows only
| mattered once, when I setup the tool. From then on I was
| full screen in the CAD tool and my day to day was
| basically identical to my flow now. I imagine for a lot
| of professionals, like myself, it's the application suite
| that matters, not the OS.
| qppo wrote:
| It is the leading OS for enterprise users by miles
| itake wrote:
| This is their 13" model. Their 15" model is targeted for
| professionals.
| est31 wrote:
| Both have a 16 GB limitation.
| TimothyBJacobs wrote:
| They haven't announced a 15/16inch Apple Silicon Mac yet.
| est31 wrote:
| Oh indeed. Disregard my comment then, I've mixed
| something up.
| symfoniq wrote:
| There isn't a 16" MacBook Pro with Apple Silicon yet.
| jaykru wrote:
| That's not true. The 16-inch model remains Intel and
| supports up to 64GB of memory.
| greenpresident wrote:
| There is no 15" model anymore and the 16" model has not
| been announced with an M1 yet.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > ... 16" model has not been announced with an M1 yet.
|
| That's the point the above poster was making.
|
| This is Apple's first CPU, there is a reason Apple said
| the transition will take 2 years. More powerful CPUs with
| more RAM for the 16" MacBook, the iMac, and the Mac Pro
| lines will be coming later. Some of those CPUs will
| likely be available for the 13" and the Mini.
| amatecha wrote:
| I mean, "Pro" is in the name, I expect Pro-level specs,
| haha :P
| capableweb wrote:
| It was a long time ago MacBook Pro meant "MacBook for
| Professionals", as other makers have now equalized and
| sometimes even passed Apple when it comes to producing
| quality hardware for reasonable cost.
| amatecha wrote:
| Right, but the person I'm responding to says the 15"
| model is for professionals -- I argue the whole line of
| MacBook Pro is "for professionals" :)
| nottorp wrote:
| Nothing they launched now is for "professionals". The RAM
| is a joke.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Apple believes that there are different kinds of
| professionals. An artist that uses a lower-powered
| computer is still a professional, of course, just not a
| software engineer.
| Ducki wrote:
| Also no more 10G ethernet.
| aldanor wrote:
| And no way to buy a previous Mini with 10Gbe/64GB now
| either?... (from Apple)
| rthille wrote:
| Getting one via their refurbished store is an option, if
| you're lucky and they have what you want:
| https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/mac/mac-mini
| ejdyksen wrote:
| At least in the US Store, the Intel Mac Mini is still for
| sale:
|
| https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini/3.0ghz-intel-
| cor...
| [deleted]
| quotemstr wrote:
| And macOS doesn't support Linux-style compressed RAM either, at
| least as far as I know.
|
| [1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-
| guide/blockdev/...
| markdog12 wrote:
| It does compress RAM, although I'm not sure if you mean
| something different here.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/os-x-10-9/17/
| cromka wrote:
| One search away and you can prove yourself wrong. In fact
| they have had it since 10.9.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Cool. I stopped using it in 10.6. Glad macOS has caught up.
| musicale wrote:
| Caught up with the 1990s when RAM and disk compression
| were popular on Macs and PCs.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics
|
| Interestingly enough Stac was apparently co-founded by
| Nvidia/Stanford's Bill Dally. The story of them being
| "sherlocked" by MS-DOS 6.0 and successfully suing
| Microsoft is interesting as well.
| quotemstr wrote:
| That was before the current NS-based OS and so doesn't
| count
| sneak wrote:
| I'm really worried that we have finally reached the point in
| computing where you can buy a machine that is fast/efficient, or
| you can buy a machine that is private.
|
| Apple sends the hash of every binary you execute to Apple in
| current (and presumably future) macOS, and the changes in macOS
| 11 mean that Little Snitch will continue to work for all
| processes, _except OS /system processes_.
|
| This means that it may be impossible to disable the telemetry
| without external filtering hardware.
|
| This situation is extremely troubling to me, because Stallman and
| Doctorow have been predicting just this for about twenty years.
|
| Today, it's here.
|
| I really hope these things can boot OSes other than macOS, or
| that a way to do such can be worked out.
| switch007 wrote:
| My AMD Ryzen running Linux is pretty fast, efficient and
| private. No? Granted, it's rather hard to use in Starbucks,
| being a desktop.
| BucketsMcG wrote:
| I (and my increasingly decrepit 2014 Macbook Pro) was hoping
| these would be compelling, and hoo boy, they are. First time in
| years I've actually _wanted_ a new Macbook, as opposed to
| accepting what they have on offer.
| rafaelturk wrote:
| My expectation for the #AppleEvent was actually a MacBook Pro
| without the Touch Bar.
| r00fus wrote:
| Same price as previous MB Air - $1k. That's a HUGE selling point
| to me. I was ready to see $2k for their newest kit.
|
| They're looking for marketshare gains.
| ziftface wrote:
| I'm curious to know why you expected 2k. With more vertical
| integration, the cost normally goes down. Why would the cost go
| up for apple here?
| r00fus wrote:
| I guess I was expecting a high margin, top-end product,
| typical of Apple.
|
| Some people would have paid more for iOS apps on their Mac.
|
| Given this is an architecture shift, I guess it seems to make
| sense to test it out with a midrange product.
| mrgordon wrote:
| 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.
| jeffbee wrote:
| They are saving the money, but they're just keeping it. You
| save nothing.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Mac Mini saw a price drop.
| akritrime wrote:
| So, all of these new Macs have the same SOC across the board? Or
| will there be slight differences like the Macbook pro will have a
| higher-binned soc or maybe the Mac mini and Macbook air will have
| fewer graphics core?
| marricks wrote:
| If you look on the order page they're all described the same
| but the Air has different option on the GPU side of the chip, 7
| vs 8 cores.
|
| It sounds like that is possibly the only binning they did,
| where one GPU core is disabled? Perhaps the 13" ones can run
| faster & more efficiently or something but they're not saying
| that.
| akritrime wrote:
| That is interesting. Both Mac Mini versions have a 8 core
| GPU. I wonder why they made the distinction for Macbook air.
| ValentineC wrote:
| The cheaper MacBook Air has a 7-core GPU instead of an 8-core
| one.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| My uninformed guess is that those are chips where one of the
| 8 cores failed in testing, but allowing them to be used in
| low-end machines means they won't be scrapped completely.
| Seems incredibly unlikely that they produced a distinct
| 7-core GPU variant just for that machine.
| hanche wrote:
| I wonder if the Air gets the chips with one faulty GPU core?
| They could just disable the faulty one and use the remaining
| seven. </idle-speculation> Edit: Whoops, I see I was not
| alone thinking that thought.
| hackerman_fi wrote:
| Pro has fans unlike air, so it'll probably run faster
| bsharitt wrote:
| The Mac Mini and MacBook Pro have fans where the MacBook Air is
| fanless, so I assume there are some differences in at least
| boost clock and probably core clock too. I wouldn't be
| surprised if we see higher core count M1X chips next for the
| larger MacBook Pros and iMacs, and maybe even the Mac Pro.
| skohan wrote:
| Maybe not the on-paper clock-speed, but likely the effective
| clock due to throttling
| mlindner wrote:
| There's some binning happening as the Macbook Air has a 7 core
| GPU instead of an 8 core one, but that's the only difference it
| looks like. Which would explain why Air has no fans but the MBP
| and Mini have fans.
| kevindong wrote:
| 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://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini
| ogre_codes wrote:
| This makes sense.
|
| Most likely this is why the CPUs are all limited to 16GB. It's
| likely when they unwrap the 16 inch MacBook Pro, it will open
| up more configurations (more RAM in particular!) for the 13"
| MacBook Pro and hopefully the mini.
| hajile wrote:
| RAM limits are pretty easy to explain. 16GB chips cost
| disproportionately more and use more power.
|
| I wonder if they use 2 4GB chips or 1 8GB chip in the low-end
| SKU?
| ogre_codes wrote:
| It's even easier to explain than that. The RAM is
| integrated into the CPU. While there are a few SKUs here,
| Apple only designed and built one CPU with 16GB RAM. The
| CPUs are binned. The CPUs where all RAM passed testing are
| sold as 16GB, the 8GB SKUs had a failure on one bank of
| RAM.
|
| There are no 32 or 64 GB models because Apple isn't making
| a CPU with 32 or 64GB of RAM yet.
| zerkten wrote:
| Going into the event, my thinking was that they'd have two
| aims:
|
| 1. "Wow" the audience given the anticipation without a full
| overhaul of the range. 2. Deliver some solid products that
| enable the transition while being effective for non-
| enthusiasts.
|
| From my viewing they hit both. I expect they'll fill in the
| range next fall with bigger upgrades to the form factor.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| I agree, It almost feels like they are going to have 3 main
| M Series CPUs. This one. One for the iMac and higher end
| MBPs. And perhaps a third for the high end iMac/ Mac Pro.
| grecy wrote:
| I noticed the slides kept saying "Up to" 8 GPU cores.
|
| That left me wondering if there are different variants of the
| M1 with different core counts.
|
| (Note: It always said 8 CPU cores)
| kevindong wrote:
| Looks like there's two variations of the Air: one with 7 GPU
| cores and one with 8 GPU cores.
|
| https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air
| _ph_ wrote:
| According to the tech specs on the Apple site, the Air is
| available with 7 or 8 GPU cores. All other new Macs have 8.
| jagger27 wrote:
| They did the exact same thing with the A12X and the A12Z.
| 7-core vs 8-core GPU is the only real difference between
| them.
| wincy wrote:
| My guess is maybe this is a yields thing for Apple Silicon?
| They use the same chips for Air and Pro, but shut off a
| faulty gpu core that didn't pass QA? Or a temperature thing.
| etempleton wrote:
| According to Apple's website the Macbook Air appears to only
| have 7 active GPU cores. I suspect that chips in the Air may
| be binned separately and may or may not support the higher
| clock speeds even with the active cooling of the Mac Mini and
| Macbook Pro.
| duskwuff wrote:
| 7 on the base model, 8 on the upgrade. You're probably
| correct that this is a binning thing.
| ksec wrote:
| Actually that was what I notice in the video as well. Mac mini
| has huge amount of empty space. And the only difference was the
| cooling unit fitted on top.
| dotBen wrote:
| The MBP now only has 2 USB-C/Thunderbolt ports which would
| support this theory.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| That's the same as previous low-end MBP.
| dotBen wrote:
| that's right but the 'regular' one had 4. I've already seen
| a pro user (in music production) complain about this.
|
| But my point here is that the fact they are both the same
| supports the theory that the logic board is the same on
| both models.
| slayerjain wrote:
| Maybe they'd launch a more expensive 4 USB-C/Thunderbolt
| ports model with their more powerful chip (and upto 64/128GB
| memory) like they did with the earlier MBP13s.
| dwaite wrote:
| The two differences are cooling and that the base Air appears
| to receive binned processors with 7 GPU cores.
| ameen wrote:
| I guess the cooling let's them tweak the CPU clocks
| accordingly? Wonder if we can hack the Mac mini with water
| blocks and squeeze higher clocks. The memory limitation makes
| it a dud though.
| 293984j29384 wrote:
| 8GB and 16GB configurations seem more than enough..
| jonplackett wrote:
| They've also halved the 2 base SSDs to 256/512
|
| I thought with the last update they'd finally seen the
| light and moved to 512/1tb, now we're back with the silly
| 256gb.
|
| If you factor in having to upgrade ram to 16gb and ssd to
| 512 it's only PS100 shy of the old price. Good, but not as
| good as it looked to begin with.
| gre wrote:
| You can get an external M2 USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps)
| enclosure plus 1TB M2 SSD for $130 and a 2TB for $320.
| That makes the 16GB Mac Mini 256GB a decent buy at $970
| imo.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MNFH1PX
| jonplackett wrote:
| For the mini sure, but it's a massive pain having an
| external drive for a laptop. I use one all the time and
| as well as being waaaaay slower even with a good drive, I
| lose it all the time.
| gre wrote:
| That's why I'm waiting to upgrade my laptop.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| For pro users, the fact that 32GB isn't even an option is
| pretty surprising
| threeseed wrote:
| My guess is that the next wave will be Pro.
|
| And they will have significantly upgraded CPU/GPUs to
| match the memory.
| dylan604 wrote:
| But it's right there in the name: 13" MacBook Pro
| stevenisageek wrote:
| The 13" 'pro' has never really been a 'real' pro. They
| were/are always spec'd with less cores than the 15"/16"
| and never had dedicated graphics.
| bydo wrote:
| There are two lines of 13" MacBook Pro, the two-port and
| four-port versions. The two-port always lagged behind the
| four-port, with older CPUs, less RAM, etc. The four-port
| (which has not yet been replaced) is configurable to 32GB
| of RAM.
| threeseed wrote:
| Entry level 13" MacBook Pro is for prosumers.
|
| Think web developers, photographers, bloggers etc.
| pvg wrote:
| Web developers and photographers are the opposite of
| 'prosumers', kind of by definition. Plus, think of the
| size of a full res photo coming out of a high-end phone,
| never mind a DSLR.
| dep_b wrote:
| The DRAM seems to be integrated on the same package as
| the SoC.
| jll29 wrote:
| I'll wait for a 64 GB option. I've already got 16 GB on
| all my older machines, so when buying a new gadget RAM
| and SSD should improve (you feel more RAM more than more
| cores in many usage scenarios).
| saagarjha wrote:
| I don't think today's computers were aimed at those kinds
| of usecases.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| But 16gb is what I had in a computer 10 years ago.
|
| I was just window shopping a new gaming rig, and 32gb is
| affordable (100 bucks), 64gb (200 bucks). Cheap as shit,
| what's the hold up?
| egsmi wrote:
| A little bit up is was shown the memory in M1 is 5.5GHz
| DDR5. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25050625
|
| Can you please provide the link to 64GB DDR5-5500 for
| $200? I'd love to buy some too!
| sroussey wrote:
| The memory is on package, not way out somewhere on the
| logic board. This will increase speed quite a bit, but
| limit physical size of memory modules, and thus amount. I
| think they worked themselves into a corner here until the
| 16" which has a discreet GPU and reconfiguration of the
| package.
| saagarjha wrote:
| A new processor architecture. Wait a couple months and
| you'll probably have the computer you wanted released
| too.
| nostromo wrote:
| Apple has a "missing middle" problem.
|
| They have a ton of fantastic consumer-level computing
| devices, and one ridiculously-priced mega-computer.
|
| But there are many of us that want something in the
| upper-middle: a fast computer that is upgradable, but
| maybe $2k and not $6k (and up).
|
| (The iMac Pro is a dud. People that want a powerful
| desktop generally don't want a non-upgradable all-in-
| one.)
| derefr wrote:
| Apple's solution for upgradability for their _corporate_
| customers, is their leasing program. Rather than swapping
| parts in the Mac, you swap the _Mac itself_ for a more-
| powerful model when needed -- without having to buy /sell
| anything.
| LoSboccacc wrote:
| Apple has missing middle _strategy_
| saagarjha wrote:
| Apple doesn't care about your upgradability concerns on
| the notebook lineup. Once you get past that, it has
| traditionally done fairly well at covering a wide
| spectrum of users from the fanless MacBook to the high-
| powered MacBook Pros.
| athms wrote:
| I have a late-2013 13" MBP with 16GB of memory. Seven
| years later I would expect a 13" MBP to support at least
| 32GB. I can get 13" Windows laptops that support 32GB of
| memory. The Mini is a regression, from 64GB to 16GB of
| memory. The only computer worth a damn is the new MBA.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Wait just a bit and I'm sure your concerns in this area
| will entirely disappear.
| athms wrote:
| They already disappeared, I switched to Windows in 2019.
|
| I use MacStadium for compiling and testing iOS apps. I
| was wondering if the ARM machines would be worth a look,
| but they are disappointing. If I was still using Macs as
| my daily driver, I would buy the new MBA for a personal
| machine.
| _ph_ wrote:
| I had a quad-core Mini with 16GB in 2011. Almost 10 years
| later we should be much further, especially as the Intel
| Mini allows up to 64GB. (Which you probably would use only
| if you upgraded the memory yourself).
| derefr wrote:
| We're not any further in terms of capacity per dollar,
| but we _are_ advancing in terms of speed.
|
| The M1's memory is LPDDR4X-4266 or LPDDR5-5500 (depending
| on the model, I guess?) which is about double the
| frequency of the memory in the Intel Macs.
|
| Apparently, this alone seems to account for a lot of the
| M1's perf wins -- see e.g. the explanation under
| "Geekbench, Single-Core" here: https://www.cpu-
| monkey.com/en/cpu-apple_m1-1804
|
| Bleeding-edge-clocked DRAM is a lot more costly per GB to
| produce than middle-of-the-pack-fast DRAM. (Which is
| weird, given that process shrinks should make things
| cheaper; but there's a DRAM cartel, so maybe they've been
| lazy about process shrinks.)
| dralley wrote:
| Not all types of processes shrink equally well.
|
| Apparently DRAM and NAND do not shrink as well because in
| addition to transistors in both cases you need to store
| some kind of charge in a way that is measurable later on
| - and the less material present, the less charge you are
| able to store, and the harder it is to measure.
| zeristor wrote:
| No virtualisation -> I'm guessing no Docker.
|
| Am I missing something?
|
| Mind you with 16Gb, Docker won't be that useful.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Why do you think there is no virtualisation? Apple showed
| Linux running in a VM during WWDC already.
| innagadadavida wrote:
| From their schematic, the two DRAM modules were directly
| on the SoC - possibly to improve bandwidth etc. So it
| looks like this cannot be upgraded / replaced. That said,
| it might be worth it to look past the specs and just use
| your applications on these machines to see how they
| perform. SSD storage is much faster these days and if the
| new OS has decently optimized paging, performance will be
| decent as well.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| The intel Mac Mini is still available with the same 8GB
| in its base model, but configurable up to 16/32/64. RAM
| is definitely the biggest weakness of these new Macs.
|
| On iOS they can get away with less RAM than the rest of
| the market by killing apps, relaunching them fast, and
| having severely restricted background processes. On Mac
| they won't have that luxury. At least they have fast SSDs
| to help with big pagefiles.
|
| With the heterogeneous memory, your 8GB computer doesn't
| even have its whole 8GB of main system memory.
|
| When the touchbar MBP launched in 2016 people were
| already complaining that it couldn't spec up to 32GB like
| the competition. Four years later, and it's still capped
| at 16GB.
|
| Hopefully they can grow this for next year's models.
| jdeibele wrote:
| And the Intel Mac Mini had user-replaceable RAM. Tired of
| fan noise and slow response, I went from a 4 Thunderbolt
| 2018 MacBook Pro with only 8GB of RAM to a 2018 Mac Mini
| with 32GB of RAM (originally 8GB, bought the RAM from
| Amazon and upgraded it).
|
| The difference was incredible
| pbronez wrote:
| 8GB ram is just soul crushing - even for basic office
| workloads. I need 16GB minimum.
| suyash wrote:
| 16GB limit with the latest MBP M1 13inch seems a big
| downer, I will wait for 16 inch MBP refresh now.
| tiernano wrote:
| Also, lack of 10gbe is a big let down...
| seltzered_ wrote:
| You have to factor in possible memory management
| improvements with the M1 chip, and ability to run iOS
| apps instead:
| https://twitter.com/jckarter/status/1326240072522293248
| _ph_ wrote:
| That is fine with the Air. But for a small desktop
| computer not to support more than 16GB in 2021? Its
| predecessor allowed up to 64GB (and possibly more with
| suitable modules).
| asniper wrote:
| Don't touch Xcode then, it welcomes you to paging hell.
| BossingAround wrote:
| With that fast SSD, do you notice paging in Xcode? Would
| it be worth the extra $300 or however much Apple asks for
| extra 8GB of ram in the US store?
| mgkimsal wrote:
| yes, you notice paging, even with 'fast' SSD.
|
| or perhaps it's not 'paging', and just dumb luck I hit
| and see beachballs on multiple new higher-end macbook
| pros regularly.
| cesaref wrote:
| It's not normally paging, but thermal throttling which
| involves the machine appearing to 'spin' but it's
| actually just the kernel keeping the cycles to itself,
| which typically give you beachballs as a side-effect.
|
| And one tip is to use the right hand side USBC ports for
| charging, not the left hand ones as for some reason or
| other they tend to cause the machine to heat up more...
| mgkimsal wrote:
| the right hand ones are the only ones that can drive
| external monitors. I feel like I'm the only one that has
| this - I had a MBP 2019 - first batch - and I thought I'd
| read that one side was different than the other re:
| power. Power works on both sides, but monitors won't run
| from the left usb-c ports. but it's not documented
| anywhere. :/
| agildehaus wrote:
| Just a thought, but maybe everyone should be appalled at
| that extra $300. And the lack of upgradability on a Pro
| machine, especially.
| OOPMan wrote:
| You're talking to Apple customers. Being gouged is a way
| of life for them.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| 16gb can be limiting for some work flows today, and doesn't
| give you much future proofing (this RAM is permanent,
| right?)
| judge2020 wrote:
| Yes, it's in the SoC (or SiP now).
| ghettoimp wrote:
| How do they get the ram into the SoC? Is it like a
| massive die?
| judge2020 wrote:
| Looks like it:
|
| https://www.apple.com/v/mac/m1/a/images/overview/chip__ff
| fqz...
|
| https://www.apple.com/v/mac/m1/a/images/overview/chip_mem
| ory...
|
| https://www.apple.com/mac/m1/
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| I went to Apple's website right after I finished watching
| the keynote with the intention of buying a new Mac mini ...
| the lack of memory options above 16GB stopped that idea
| dead in its tracks though.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Also no 10G networking option. The combination of those
| feature exclusions makes it a dud for me; I don't want to
| have a $150 TB3 adapter hanging off the back, not when
| previous gen had it built in.
| fjdjsmsm wrote:
| I think it is notable the new mini's colour is light
| silver, rather than the previous dark 'pro' silver.
| Presumably there will be another model a year from now.
| varispeed wrote:
| Wouldn't be surprised if the cooling solution was serialised
| and it had a detection whether the cooling is originally
| programmed for the particular unit like they do now with
| cameras and other peripherals (check iPhone 12 teardown
| videos). I bet that the logic would check the expected
| temperature for given binning and then shut down the system
| if it is too cool or too hot. Apple knows better than the
| users what hardware should work with the unit.
| ljm wrote:
| So, essentially their new Macbook line is a glorified
| iPhone/iPad but with a foldable display (on a hinge)?
|
| Not too far-fetched when you see the direction MacOS is
| headed, UI-wise. And it sounds nice, but if it means that
| repairability suffers then we'll just end up with a whole
| wave of disposable laptops.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > So, essentially their new Macbook line is a glorified
| iPhone/iPad but with a foldable display (on a hinge)?
|
| This isn't some new. Since day 1, the iPhone has always
| been a tiny computer with a forked version of OS X.
|
| > but if it means that repairability suffers then we'll
| just end up with a whole wave of disposable laptops.
|
| Laptops have been largely "Disposable" for some time. In
| the case of the Mac, that generally means the laptop
| lasts for 10-15 years unless there is some catastrophic
| issue. Generally after that long, when a failure happens
| even a moderate repair bill is likely to trigger a new
| purchase.
| merrin1010101 wrote:
| To be fair to apple, people keep their macbooks for years
| and years, keeping them out of landfill longer. They are
| well made and the design doesn't really age. Written on
| my 2015 Macbook pro.
| BatFastard wrote:
| To be fair to the rest of the world, this comment is
| written on a 20 year old PC. It has had some component
| upgrades, but works like a champ after 20 years.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| Apples and oranges. I've never kept a laptop for five
| years.
| Humdeee wrote:
| If you keep replacing failed/failing components or give
| needed upgrades to the system every few years, is it fair
| to call it 'working like a champ for 20 years'?
| ryan_j_naughton wrote:
| I'll take it a step further. Is it fair to even call it
| the same system after 20 years of changes?
|
| Like the Ship of Theseus thought experiment, at what
| point does a thing no longer have sufficient continuity
| to its past to be called the same thing? [1]
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| Definitely not if the metric we care about is keeping
| components out of landfills.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| I don't understand the landfill argument here.
|
| A typical "Upgradable" PC is in a box 10 times the size
| of the mini. If you upgrade the GPU on a PC, you toss out
| an older GPU because it has pretty much zero resale
| value. Typical Apple hardware is used for 10-15 years,
| often passing between multiple owners.
| manojlds wrote:
| That's only applicable to Macbooks made upto 2015.
| selectodude wrote:
| I guess I'll throw my 2016 MBP out then.
| jkestner wrote:
| You probably will before I throw out my 2010 MBP thanks
| to easily replaced parts.
| duhi88 wrote:
| To me it looks more like they swapped the motherboard out
| with their own, keeping the rest of the hardware the
| same.
|
| With RAM and SSD already soldered to the motherboard,
| repairability can't really get much worse than it already
| is.
| [deleted]
| Reason077 wrote:
| With Apple Silicon, the RAM is not even on the
| motherboard. It's integrated into the SoC package!
| varispeed wrote:
| It's not difficult to replace RAM or SSD with the right
| tools (which may be within reach of an enthusiast),
| problem is that you often cannot buy spare chips as
| manufacturers can only sell them to Apple or that they
| are serialised - programmed to work only with that
| particular chip and then the unit has to be reprogrammed
| after the replacement by the manufacturer. I think they
| started doing it after rework tools became affordable for
| broader audience. You can get a trinocular microscope,
| rework station and an oven for under a $1000 these days.
| [deleted]
| Miraste wrote:
| Serialized components should be illegal, frankly.
| kube-system wrote:
| There are good privacy and security reasons that someone
| might _want_ serialized components.
| StillBored wrote:
| Sure, but you add the option to ignore the serialization,
| or options to reset the IDs as part of the firmware or
| OS. That way the machine owner can fix it after jumping
| through some security hoops, rather than requiring an
| authorized repair store.
|
| Mostly because, its doubtful if state level actors (or
| even organized crime) aren't going to pay off an employee
| somewhere to lose the reprogramming device/etc. Meaning
| its only really secure against your average user.
| Miraste wrote:
| I don't believe those reason are more important than open
| access and reducing the environmental impact of planned
| obsolescence, outside of the kind of government agencies
| that are exempt from consumer electronics regulations
| anyway.
| kube-system wrote:
| Surely there is a better (and I'd bet, more effective)
| way to handle environmental regulations than mandating
| specific engineering design patterns within the legal
| code.
|
| Perhaps instead, it might be a better idea to directly
| regulate the actions which cause the environmental
| impact? i.e. the disposal of those items themselves?
|
| Engineers tend to get frustrated with laws that
| micromanage specific design choices, because engineering
| practices change over time. Many of the laws that attempt
| to do so, backfire with unintended consequences.
|
| It is quite possible that your solution might be just
| that -- many industries with high security needs are
| already very concerned with hardware tampering. A common
| current solution for this is "burner" hardware. Given
| this, your proposal may actually pose a risk for
| increased environmental impact.
| baq wrote:
| Illegal, no. Taxed extra.
| Miraste wrote:
| Normally I prefer nudges to bans, but I'm not sure they
| work on giant monopolies. Unless the tax were high enough
| to have no chance of passing, Apple would dodge it or
| write it off as cheaper than being consumer-friendly.
| supernova87a wrote:
| Based on what legal principle should they be illegal?
| Miraste wrote:
| In practice, such a law could look like right-to-repair
| bills such as the one recently passed in Massachusetts,
| which requires auto manufacturers to give independent
| repair stores access to all the tools they themselves
| use. A bill like this for consumer electronics could
| practically ban serialized components, even without
| mentioning them explicitly.
| nicoburns wrote:
| You can get a screwdriver (allowing you to replace RAM
| and SSDs in most laptops, including older macs) for $5.
| There's really no excuse for them to do this all the
| while claiming to be environmentally friendly.
| martimarkov wrote:
| Except the RAM is in the M1 now. Pretty good excuse
| Id'say.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Mmm... it's certainly better than they had before. But
| really they ought to be designing repairable machines. If
| that makes them a little slower then so be it.
| duhi88 wrote:
| My 2007 MBP, yes. I don't think that's true of my 2017
| MBP, nor my 2012 MBA.
|
| It's been years since Apple did away with this stuff, and
| nobody expected them to suddenly allow after-market
| upgrades.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Depends on the model. My 2012 mbp15r uses glue and
| solder, not screws. Maxed out the specs when I got it,
| which is why it's still usable. Would've been delighted
| for it to have been thicker and heavier to support DIY
| upgrades and further improve its longevity while reducing
| its environmental impact, but that wasn't an option.
| Needed the retina screen for my work, bit the bullet.
| Someday maybe there will be a bulletproof user-
| serviceable laptop form factor w a great screen, battery
| life and decent keyboard, that can legally run macOs...
| glad to say my client-issued 2019 mbp16r checks most of
| those boxes. /ramble
| Reason077 wrote:
| For a while, the fan was broken in my 2017 MacBook Pro 13".
| Didn't spin at all. The MacBook never complained (except
| when running the Apple hardware diagnostics). It didn't
| overheat or shut down unexpectedly. It just got a bit
| slower due to more thermal throttling.
|
| I expect it would work the other way, too. Improve the
| cooling and performance under load would improve.
| Dayshine wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlOPPuNv4Ec
|
| This is a video from Linus Tech Tips that demonstrates
| that no matter how much you cool it, they've physically
| prevented the chip from taking advantage of it.
|
| And if it could be fixed with software, they would have
| worked out how, they're into that kinda tweaking.
| kube-system wrote:
| Intel chips, on the other hand, are designed to work with
| a varying degree of thermal situations because they don't
| control the laptop it is put in. In this situation, Apple
| could potentially get more creative with their approach
| to thermals because they control the entire hardware
| stack.
| scep12 wrote:
| This would make sense given the pricing, too.
|
| For example, the $1,249 air is very similar to the $1,299 pro.
| The MBA has a bigger SSD, but the MBP has a bigger battery,
| isn't throttled (i.e. has a fan), and also has the touchbar
| (which may be controversial, but for the sake of comparison,
| remember that it comes with a manufacturing cost).
|
| It seems reasonable that these are priced similarly. Of course,
| the machine I want is the MBP with the bigger SSD and no
| touchbar :)
| mseidl wrote:
| The max ram in all 3 is only 16gb :(
| amatecha wrote:
| The logic board probably isn't the same, but the SoC [probably]
| is identical, and with it a lot of the surrounding
| features/implementation. My own speculation as well of course
| :)
| nrp wrote:
| At Apple's volume and level of system integration, it doesn't
| make sense to do assembly sharing at that level between
| different models. Presumably the SoC package is the same
| between the different products, but binned differently for the
| Air, Pro, and Mini. The actual logic boards would be custom to
| the form factor.
| marta_morena_28 wrote:
| Not just that. At 5nm there will also be yield problems. I.e
| they will put the best yield into high end and the worst
| yield into low end.
| arnarbi wrote:
| That's what "binned differently" means btw.
| dmix wrote:
| Well then that was a good explanation because I didn't
| know that!
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Interesting that commenter knew the process but not the
| terminology.
| Frost1x wrote:
| As someone who works with a lot of interdisciplinary
| teams, I often understand concepts or processes they have
| names for but don't know the names until after they label
| them for me.
|
| Until you use some concept so frequently you need to
| label it to compress information for discussion purposes,
| you often don't have names for them. Chances are if you
| solve or attempt to solve a wide variety problems, you'll
| see patterns and processes that overlap.
| Insanity wrote:
| Reminds me of the Feynman story about knowing something
| vs knowing the name of something :-)
| cgriswald wrote:
| Reminds me of self-taught tech. I'll often know the
| name/acronym, but pronounce it differently in my head
| than the majority of people. Decades ago GUI was "gee you
| eye" in my head but one day I heard it pronounced "gooey"
| and I figured it out but had a brief second of "hwat?" (I
| could also see "guy" or "gwee".) It's, of course, more
| embarrassing when I say it out loud first...
| cellularmitosis wrote:
| Great story :) https://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-
| education
| Insanity wrote:
| Not the one I was thinking of but same point :)
| https://fs.blog/2015/01/richard-feynman-knowing-
| something/
| jcynix wrote:
| Great story, yes. But there's no such thing as a
| "halzenfugel" in German as far as I can tell as a native
| speaker. Even www.duden.de, the official German
| dictionary, doesn't know that word ;-0
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| May just have skimmed GP and missed it.
| cellularmitosis wrote:
| It seems I can't reply to the sibling comment re:Feynman
| (perhaps too many levels deep to reply?), but here is a
| link to the story about his experience with physics
| students in Brazil https://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-
| education
| tobr wrote:
| Isn't that what "binning" means?
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's now how yield works. Yield is the number of
| functioning chips that you pull out of a wafer.
|
| I think what you are trying to refer to is frequency
| binning.
| hajile wrote:
| That's only partially true.
|
| For example, AMD sells 12 and 16 core CPUs. The 12 core
| parts have 2 cores lasered out due to defects. If a
| particular node is low-yield, then it's not super
| uncommon to double-up on some parts of the chip and use
| either the non-defective or best performing one. You'll
| expect to see a combination of lasering and binning to
| adjust yields higher.
|
| That said, TSMC N5 has a very good defect rate according
| to their slides on the subject[0]
|
| [0] https://www.anandtech.com/show/16028/better-yield-
| on-5nm-tha...
| 3JPLW wrote:
| Which is likely why there are some "7 core" GPU M1 chips.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Plus, defects tend to be clustered, which is a pretty
| lucky effect. Multiple defects on a single core don't
| really matter if you are throwing the whole thing away.
| hajile wrote:
| This is undoubtedly why they launched the Mac Mini today.
| They can ramp up a lot more power in that machine without a
| battery and with a larger, active cooler.
|
| I'm much more interested in actual benchmarks. AMD has
| mostly capped their APU performance because DDR4 just can't
| keep the GPU fed (why the last 2 generations of consoles
| went with very wide GDDR5/6). Their solution is obviously
| Infinity Cache where they add a bunch of cache on-die to
| reduce the need to go off-chip. At just 16B transistors,
| Apple obviously didn't do this (at 6 transistors per SRAM
| cell, there's around 3.2B transistors in just 64MB of
| cache).
| [deleted]
| mcot2 wrote:
| One of the slides mentioned that the air is limited to 10watts
| though. I wonder if it does have the same soc but its nerfed
| beyond 10watts.
| izolate wrote:
| The wording in the event supports this. Particularly when
| speaking about the Mini's fan "unlocking" the potential of the
| M1 chip.
| zepto wrote:
| I doubt the logic board is the same. It's just that the M1
| integrates so much.
| rewtraw wrote:
| 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.
| rattray wrote:
| I recently got an Air after using a MBP13.
|
| Aside from the loud fan and slow performance which should be
| fixed in this release, my biggest complaint is that they only
| have the usbc plugs on one side of the laptop.
|
| Really obnoxious when the outlet is in a difficult spot.
|
| Unclear whether the new MBP13 also has this problem...
|
| Edit: the new M1 MBP13 has both usbc ports on the same side.
| No option for 4 (yet). Ugh.
| bydo wrote:
| The two-port and four-port 13" MacBook Pros have been
| separate product lines since their introduction. This new
| A1 MBP only replaces the two-port version. Presumably the
| higher-end one will share an upgraded processor with the
| 16".
| PolCPP wrote:
| My guess is different clock speeds, also base air has one gpu
| core less...
| dotBen wrote:
| 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.
| slavoingilizov wrote:
| By "trick" you mean the only approach every chip-maker
| has been following for decades? Literally every single
| one. It's called binning.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| The gp is using "trick" not with the nefarious
| connotation, but more along the lines of "hack" or
| "clever idea".
| dotBen wrote:
| yeah I guess I should have said 'hack'
| noncoml wrote:
| I think they got it wrong. I would pay money to NOT have the
| touchbar.
| lukifer wrote:
| I intentionally took a performance hit by moving from a Pro
| to an Air almost entirely for this reason (although the low
| power and light weight are pleasant benefits). I'm glad
| that the new Air still has F-keys with Touch ID; but I'm
| flabbergasted that they're _still_ not making the Touchbar
| optional for the Pro series, given how polarizing it 's
| been, and the underwhelming adoption of new Touchbar
| functionality by third-party developers.
| servercobra wrote:
| Honestly, I think it's only polarizing here and among
| some developers.
| lukifer wrote:
| I'd be curious to know what portion of their user base
| for the Pro series are developers. Anecdotally, quite a
| lot of devs seems to use Macs; but I have no idea what
| that fraction is, relative to the rest of their market.
| Aperocky wrote:
| hahaha 2 times Air user, touchbar is a big NO.
| raydev wrote:
| Air doesn't have a fan, so if you want consistent
| performance, you have to buy the touchbar.
| kmonsen wrote:
| 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.
| technimad wrote:
| Did you notice you can hold and slide to change volume?
| You don't need to hit the volume slider where it appears.
| Same with brightness. Totally undiscoverable gesture.
| Thetawaves wrote:
| 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.
| eastendguy wrote:
| 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.
| WhiteNoiz3 wrote:
| My problem with the touchbar is that I tap it
| accidentally while typing all the time. It needs to be
| like another centimeter away from the keys.
| quicklyfrozen wrote:
| Or use the same haptic feedback as the touchpad.
| lloeki wrote:
| Which it can via https://github.com/niw/HapticKey
| jez wrote:
| Not what you're looking for, but I'll mention it anyways
| just in case:
|
| It's possible to set the default touch bar display to
| only ever show the expanded control strip (System
| Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard > Touch Bar shows:
| Expanded Control Strip). In that mode you tap volume up
| and down instead of using a volume slider.
|
| Again, I know you're looking for physical keys (aren't we
| all) but it's better than nothing.
|
| I've been using the MacBook Pro 16 (with a physical esc
| key plus a touch bar) and I think it's a pretty good
| compromise between me who wants physical keys and apple
| who wants to push the touch bar.
|
| The other thing that kept happening to me: I would
| accidentally tap the brightness button when reaching for
| ESC. For that, you can "Customize Control Strip..." and
| remove individual buttons, so that there's a big gap on
| the touch bar near the ESC key so that stray taps near
| ESC don't change the brightness.
| headmelted wrote:
| I realise I'm an outlier here but I actually have grown
| to like the touchbar.
|
| It's often unused, yes, but when I fire up Rider for my
| day job it automatically flicks to the row of function
| keys and back depending on which app has focus and it
| fits quite nicely for me between work and entertainment
| (I like having the video progress bar if I'm watching
| something on the laptop). Maybe I'm just strange but the
| non-tactile function keys didn't really bother me much
| either.
|
| In any case, I could live without it, which is probably
| not a roaring endorsement in any case, but I'd rather
| have it than not.
| w0utert wrote:
| I like it as well, especially in applications like
| CLion/IntelliJ which have tons of keybindings I keep
| forgetting because they are different between Linux and
| macOS. The context-sensitive touch bar is actually very
| useful in these applications for things like rebuilding,
| changing targets, stepping through the debugger etc.
| without having to use the mouse.
|
| There's a lot of things to complain about with Apple
| products, but if you ask me there's been enough touch bar
| bashing by now and people should just get over it. It's
| pretty useful in some situations, and IMO no real
| downsides, especially now that the esc key is a real
| physical key again. Why all the hate?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Especially on the 16 there is no excuse, they could
| really have a function key row _and_ a touch bar :( more
| than enough space for them.
| sushiburps wrote:
| I ordered by 13" touchbar MBP with the UK keyboard
| layout. Adds an extra key to the right of left shift
| (mapped to tilde), letting me remap the key that is
| normally tilde on a US keyboard to ESC.
| bluenose69 wrote:
| I need my ESC, so I'm glad it's there. As for the rest of
| the keys on the top row, I was not in the habit of using
| them except in vim, where I hooked them up to some macros
| I had written. For them, I kind of like the touchbar now,
| because I have the fake keys labelled with sensible
| names. (No more trying to remember that I have to hit F3
| to do such-and-such.)
|
| I've also found the touchbar pretty useful in zoom calls,
| because my zoom client shows keys for common actions.
|
| All in all, I think a physical escape key plus the
| touchbar is a slight win. I would not pay more for it,
| but I have reversed my previous opinion that I'd pay more
| _not_ to have it.
|
| I suspect these new machines are going to be quite nice,
| although I won't buy one for a while since I purchased a
| mbp a few months ago.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Instead of press and hold, it's press, hold, and drag.
| Definitely annoying when it freezes, but when it's
| working it doesn't seem that much different.
| skohan wrote:
| The main difference is that I need to look down at the
| keyboard to operate the touchbar. With the keys I can
| rely on muscle memory.
|
| Also I think every device which makes sound should have a
| physical mute control. The worst is when I want to mute,
| and the touchbar freezes, and I have to go turn the
| volume down with the mouse.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I've been _really_ happy with the following mod for the
| last couple years of TouchBar usage:
|
| https://community.folivora.ai/t/goldenchaos-btt-the-
| complete...
|
| Fully customizable while being much better for muscle
| memory by giving you exactly what you want where you want
| it, gives you icon-shortcuts to script, and still allows
| you to have as much dynamic functionality / information
| as you like. So, for example, mine looks roughly like
| this:
|
| - Fullscreen
|
| - Bck/[play|pause]/Fwd
|
| - CURRENTLY_PLAYING_SONG
|
| - AirDrop
|
| - ConfigMenu
|
| - Emoticons
|
| - (Un)Caffeinate
|
| - (Dis)connectBluetoothHeadphones
|
| - (Dis)connectMicrophone
|
| - (Un)muteVol
|
| - VolDown
|
| - VolUp
|
| - ScreenDim
|
| - ScreenBright
|
| - Date
|
| - Time
|
| - Weather
|
| - Battery%
|
| CURRENTLY_PLAYING_SONG playing shows the album cover,
| song name, and artist, but only shows up if there _IS_
| something playing. Same with AirDrop, which shows up only
| if there 's something that I could AirDrop _to_ , and
| then gives me a set of options of who to AirDrop to. The
| Emoticon menu opens an emoticon submenu on the TouchBar
| with most-recently-used first.
|
| That all fits fine into the main touchbar, with other
| dynamic touchbars available modally (ie, holding CMD
| shows touchable icons of all the stuff in my Dock (my
| Dock is entirely turned off)), CTRL shows LOCK AIRPLAY
| DO_NOT_DISTURB FLUX KEYBOARD_DIM/BRIGHT, etc. ALT shows
| me various window snap locations.
|
| Edit: BetterTouchTool also replaced a bunch of other
| tools for me. Gives you the same kind of tools for
| scripting eg Keyboard macros, Mouse macros, remote-
| control via iPhone/Watch etc with a lot of reasonable
| defaults.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| Same situation, my trusty 2012 rMBP finally gave up the
| ghost and I had to get a new one with this icky touch
| bar. It's useless to me and makes it harder to do
| everything. My main complaint is that I am constantly
| bumping it when I type, leading to unexpected changes in
| volume and brightness.
| ValentineC wrote:
| The touchbar is probably why I'm probably getting the Air
| for my next upgrade, and not a Pro.
| culopatin wrote:
| As someone using a hackintosh considering a real Macbook,
| what's so wrong about it?
| tw04 wrote:
| For me at least (and I'd imagine most of the other folks
| who hate it) - I had the key layout memorized. If I
| wanted to volume up/down/mute I could do it without
| taking my eyes off the screen. With the touchbar ANYTHING
| I wanted to do required me to change my focus to the
| touchbar - for the benefit of...?
|
| I'm sure someone somewhere finds it amazing, but I have
| no time for it.
|
| To me it's no different than volume controls in a car.
| I've been in a cadillac with a touchbar for volume, and a
| new ram truck with a volume knob - there's absolutely no
| room for debate in my opinion. One of these allows me to
| instantly change the volume 100% up or down without
| taking my eyes off the road. The other requires hoping I
| get my finger in just the right spot from muscle memory
| and swipe enough times since there's 0 tactile feedback.
| jes5199 wrote:
| It's just not useful. The context-aware stuff is too
| unpredictable, and I'm never looking at the keyboard
| anyway so I have never learned it. So the touchbar ends
| up being just a replacement for the volume and brightness
| keys, but a slow and non-tactile version of them
| Groxx wrote:
| There are loads of rants out there that are easy to find,
| but personally it's mostly: you can't use it without
| looking at it to make sure the buttons are _what_ you
| think they are (nearly always context-sensitive, often
| surprising when it decides it 's a new context), and
| _where_ you think they are (can 't go by feel, so you
| need to visually re-calibrate constantly). Button size
| and positioning varies widely, and nearly all of them
| have a keyboard shortcut already that doesn't require
| hand movement or eyes (or at worst previously had an
| F-key that never moved).
|
| The main exception being things like controlling a
| progress bar (mouse works fine for me, though it's a neat
| demo), or changing system brightness/volume with a flick
| or drag (which is the one thing I find truly better...
| but I'd happily trade it back for a fn toggle and F
| keys). But that's so rarely _useful_.
| sroussey wrote:
| When I watch non-HN type people use it, they like it.
| They never used Fn keys in the first place.
|
| I just hated the lack of ESC key (which they brought
| back, though my Mac is older). I have no muscle memory
| for any other key in that row.
| drusepth wrote:
| I think the touchbar was my favorite part of my old MBP,
| specifically because of the contextual buttons that are
| always changing.
|
| I'd probably pay a little extra to get one on future non-
| Mac laptops, but not too much extra.
| Groxx wrote:
| Yeah, most people I know almost never use F keys (except
| perhaps F1 for help). They leave it on the media-keys
| mode... which is the same as the touchbar's default
| values, but without needing to know what mode it's in.
|
| With the physical media keys, if they want to mute, it's
| always the same button. Pause music, always the same
| button. They're great in a way that the touchbar
| completely destroys.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| Honestly, I hardly ever used the function keys either. As
| a result the Touch Bar doesn't really bother me -- but
| neither does it seem the slightest bit useful for the
| most part.
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| No haptic feedback, mainly. A lot better with a real
| escape key, but still.
| TomVDB wrote:
| It doesn't provide tactile feedback.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| They do such a good job on the iPhone with this that it
| is quite mystifying why not.
| lloeki wrote:
| Try https://github.com/niw/HapticKey
| cercatrova wrote:
| https://www.haptictouchbar.com/ is a great app I use,
| provides haptic feedback for the touch bar.
| noneeeed wrote:
| For me it hides the things I use all the time (media and
| volume controls) to make room for application specific
| controls that I never use.
|
| If it was more customisable I wouldn't mind it, but the
| apparant inability to force it to show me the things I
| actually want is annoying.
|
| I can imagine there are some people for whom the
| application specific buttons are useful, but for me they
| are not worth it for what they displace.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Check out BetterTouchTool if customization is holding you
| back.
| imjared wrote:
| Not sure if it's helpful for you but you can customize
| the behavior by going to your System Prefs > keyboard
| settings and toggling "Touch bar shows:".
|
| I did this on like day 2 of having my MBP for what sounds
| like the same reason you want to. The setting I have
| turned on is "Expanded control strip" and I never see any
| application-specific controls, only volume, brightness,
| etc.
| fitzrocks wrote:
| FYI you can customize it, and force it to always display
| certain controls.
|
| I had the exact same frustrations as you. Took me 10 mins
| digging into settings to figure it out. Now I have my
| touchbar constantly displaying all of the controls that
| are buttons on the Air (ie a completely over-engineered
| solution to get the same result)
| 0x64 wrote:
| Pro has one extra GPU core as well.
| ktta wrote:
| Note that it's a 7 core GPU only for the 256GB SSD
| Reason077 wrote:
| The base model Air has 7 GPU cores instead of 8, but the
| higher models have all 8 cores. Seems to be +$50 for the
| extra GPU core.
| [deleted]
| slayerjain wrote:
| I think MacBook Air is very compelling, and that's why got
| more screen time. Unless you want to run your system on >60%
| for extended periods of time - MacBook Air should be great.
| forgot-my-pw wrote:
| 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.
| marmaduke wrote:
| 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.
| eivarv wrote:
| There's no more core i7 for Macbook 13
|
| Sure there is - you just have to select one of the Intel-
| models and customize the processor.
| forgot-my-pw wrote:
| You are correct. They hid the option.
| derefr wrote:
| I'm guessing the MBP13 is now a legacy model, being
| refreshed more to satisfy direct-product-line lease
| upgrades for corporate customers, than to satisfy consumer
| demand.
|
| Along with the MBP16 refresh (which will use the "M1X", the
| higher-end chip), we'll probably see the higher-end MBP13s
| refreshed with said chip as well, but rebranded somehow,
| e.g. as the "MacBook Pro 14-inch" or something (as the
| rumors go: same size, but less screen bezel, and so more
| screen.)
|
| And then, next year, you'll see MBP14 and MBP16 refreshes,
| while the MBP13 fades out.
| kemotep wrote:
| These are transitional products so it makes sense. I'm
| looking forward to see the replacement of the iMac Pro
| and Mac Pro. Will be interesting to see what those
| include.
| evacchi wrote:
| it's there, you just have to configure it
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| hajile wrote:
| My Y-series Pixelbook with passive cooling performs as well
| as a U-series laptop from the same generation -- until I
| start a sustained load. At that point, the U series systems
| pull ahead. Actively cooled Y-series systems get pretty close
| in lots of applications only falling short due to half the
| cache.
|
| If you are doing lightweight stuff where the cores don't
| really need to spin up, then they'll probably be about the
| same. Otherwise, you'll be stuck at a much lower base clock.
| weystrom wrote:
| If you look at the power supplies it's 30 vs 60 Watts,
| definitely interested to see what kind of TDP Apple targets
| with these machines.
| liminalsunset wrote:
| They've stated that they target 10W in the Air, the cooling
| system in the Pro is identical to the Intel so probably 28W
| ish, and the Mac Mini specs say maximum 150W continuous
| power, but that probably includes a few tens of watts of USB
| and peripherals.
| davio wrote:
| M1 chip page shows that 10 watts is the thermal envelope for
| the Air
| weystrom wrote:
| So I get the whole performance-per-watt spiel, but if
| they're targeting the same 10W as with Ice Lake
| Y-series[1], it's gonna be hot during continuous workloads
| like screen sharing, since they've seemingly decided to get
| rid of even the "chassis fan" they've had on 2019 Air.
|
| [1] https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/19
| 6596/...
| Sholmesy wrote:
| Worth noting that Intel doesn't actually honor those 10W
| listings, and often boosts above it for significant
| portions of usage.
| longstation wrote:
| Would this basically be APU but with an ARM core?
| sccxy wrote:
| Any ideas how virtualization works?
|
| Can I run Windows VM?
| miohtama wrote:
| Unlikely, or very slowly, because Windows x86 would need CPU
| emulation.
| gruez wrote:
| there's arm64 builds for windows.
| eznzt wrote:
| People generally want to run Windows because of its huge
| software catalogue. That's thrown out of the window if you
| use the arm64 version of Windows. Pun intended.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Microsoft even released a Surface device with an ARM
| processor.
| pat2man wrote:
| Yeah, rosetta will support x86 emulation. Might be slow though.
| 0x0 wrote:
| But that's for macOS binaries. Not for VMs.
| jzymbaluk wrote:
| AFAIK, virtualization will work, but dual booting will not
| work.
| gfiorav wrote:
| I think they Apple said last time that you'd be able to run ARM
| Windows, not x86 as of yet.
| schoolornot wrote:
| This is the result of a decade of intense research and economies
| of scale with their A* architecture in iPhones and iPads. People
| liked to criticize Apple for putting overpowered processors in
| their devices and not having the software to leverage them. The
| day is finally here!
| liminalsunset wrote:
| For those looking for some form of TDP estimate for the M1 in a
| relatively thermally unconstrained form factor:
|
| Apple's web site lists the following for the Mac Mini:
|
| "Maximum continuous power: 150W"
| skohan wrote:
| I'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.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Psst...you want to use "discrete".
| easde wrote:
| Anandtech posted some comparisons of the A14 against Zen 3
| today, which may be an interesting comparison:
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...
|
| Seems like the A14 is within 10-20% of the desktop 5950X in
| single threaded workloads. The M1 will probably close the gap
| with higher clock speeds. AMD will probably still be ahead on
| multithreaded workloads until Apple releases a chip with 8
| high-performance cores.
| skohan wrote:
| Didn't they claim it's the fastest per-thread performance in
| the world?
| slayerjain wrote:
| Pros: * Amazing chips. Probably more faster than both i9 MacBook
| Pro 16 and iMac Pros, and GREAT battery life! * Finally better
| camera and wifi 6 * same price
|
| Cons: * Wont not run all apps in full speed for now (temporary) *
| Memory expansion is expensive and limited to 16GB (temporary)
|
| Most limitations are temporary, I think these are amazing
| products unless you want more than 16GB memory.
| saagarjha wrote:
| You probably want two newlines between those bullet points.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Also looks like it only has 2 plugs
| ksec wrote:
| The M1 is basically what would Apple would call A14X / A14Z if it
| was on iPad Pro.
|
| So they decided to reuse the A14X / M1 across all three products.
| And the only differentiation are their TDP cooling. The MacBook
| Air is 10W TDP, and both Mac Mini and MacBook Pro are likely ~35W
| range.
|
| The did mention MacBook Air's SSD performances is now twice as
| fast, so this isn't exactly an iPad Pro with Keyboard. That is
| great except I suddenly remember the 2019 MacBook Air actually
| had a slower SSD than the 2018 MacBook Air. Where the 2018 do
| Read at 2GB/s, 2019 could only do 1.3GB/s. So even at 2x /
| 2.6GB/s it is still only slightly better than 2018. And
| considering modern day NVME SSD, this is barely good enough.
|
| Pricing kept at $999, and same old ridiculous upgrade pricing of
| RAM and Storage. Although they did lower the Education Pricing to
| $899, a little bit better than previous ~$829. But for MacBook
| Pro, _You are essentially paying $300 more for a Fan and Touch
| Bar_. And _Pro_ still limited to 16GB Memory ( because it is now
| using the LPDDR RAM as used on iPad ).
|
| I guess may be this is exciting for many, but extremely
| underwhelming to me.
|
| A Quote from Steve Jobs:
|
| _"When you have a monopoly market share, the people who can make
| the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and
| they end up running the companies, the product people get driven
| out of the decision making forums. Companies forget what it takes
| to make great products. The product sensibility, the product
| genius that brought them to this monopolistic position is rotted
| out... The people running these companies have no conception of a
| good product versus a bad product. They 've got no conception of
| the craftsmanship that's required to take a good idea and turn it
| into a good product. They really have no feeling in their heart
| about wanting to really help the customers"_
|
| And my small rant and wishes, Dear Tim Cook / Apple, Please Stop
| Saying you LOVE something. There is no need for you to tell me
| that, because if you did love something; We will know. Steve
| never said anything along those lines, but we all know he cares
| way more than any of us could even imagine.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Steve Jobs called things "insanely great". Stop mythologizing
| him.
| greggman3 wrote:
| I was hopeful they'd weigh less. An iPad Pro 12.9 inches weighs
| 1.4lbs. The 13.3 inch MacBook Air M1 is 2.8lbs. I'm sure there
| are reasons but there are companies, LG for instance, that make
| 2 lbs 13.3 inch notebooks and 3 lbs 16 inch notebooks. No I
| don't want an LG but I was hopeful for a 16" Arm Macbook Pro
| that weight 3 lbs. Now I'm pretty confident it will be the same
| as an Intel Macbook Pro 16" at 4.4lbs (heavy enough my
| messenger bag leaves marks on my shoulder and gives me muscle
| pains if I have to lug it around all day) Somehow, getting it
| down to under 3.lbs removes that pain. Maybe because it
| includes the power supply which is also bigger.
|
| To put another way. They could have taken an iPad Pro, expanded
| the screen to 13.3 inches, added a keyboard and put MacOS on it
| instead of iOS and it would be probably 1.8lbs. I don't know
| what the tradeoffs would be but I was excited by that
| possibility. It didn't happen though.
| k0stas wrote:
| > LG for instance, that make 2 lbs 13.3 inch notebooks and 3
| lbs 16 inch notebooks
|
| Those are the Gram series, right? They use a magnesium alloy
| chassis that feels like flimsy plastic. They are light, but
| they feel like a something that's going to imminently break
| compared to Apple's aluminum unibody.
|
| In my view, the Gram trades off too much stiffness and
| chassis robustness for weight to be palatable to a non-niche
| audience.
|
| I thought I was in the niche of users that prized weight over
| all else but I had concerns that a light on-the-go laptop
| that was so flimsy would last. I returned my Gram due to the
| fact that I just couldn't get used to Windows (after using
| Linux and Mac for >10 years) so the build robustness and
| weight ended up being a moot point
| 1123581321 wrote:
| The 12.9" iPad Pro plus Magic Keyboard weighs 3lbs. Subtract
| a little weight for the wrapper and you are basically
| equivalent to an air with screen + keyboard + trackpad.
| dawnerd wrote:
| > But for MacBook Pro, You are essentially paying $300 more for
| a Fan and Touch Bar.
|
| More than that. Better screen. Bigger battery. Better speakers.
| Better mics (although I don't know how much I would buy this
| one as 'studio quality' is silly). A "USB Power Port". The fan
| will make the MBP perform without throttling a lot longer than
| the air.
|
| The price difference is minor for all that IMO.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| I have to agree. While I'm sure the processors themselves are
| great, the anemic RAM and storage provided on base models (8GB
| in 2020, seriously?) is outrageous. Especially considering that
| the M1 chips should be much cheaper for them than the pricy
| intel processors.
| dheera wrote:
| I'm not a Mac user, but what does this mean for virtualization?
| Does it spell the end of Macs being used by developers who need
| to run x86 VMs in them?
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| I'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.
| swat535 wrote:
| FYI boot camp won't be supported, only virtualization for ARMs
| ogre_codes wrote:
| The mini... such a great surprise and so welcome. It doesn't have
| internal expandability, but otherwise, it looks like a fantastic
| affordable desktop option.
| oseityphelysiol wrote:
| I wonder what's the chance of running Linux on these, probably
| slim to non-existant, but they would make an exelent Linux
| machine. I've been waiting for an AMD laptop with
| thunderbolt/USB4 for GPU passthrough for ages. Sadly we're still
| far away from gaming on ARM.
| miohtama wrote:
| Funnily enough, in the Macbook Pro section of the presentation:
|
| "Developers can compile up to 4x code"
| hackerman_fi wrote:
| ...on a single battery
| tourist_on_road wrote:
| ..without a fan
| swiley wrote:
| If the mac is on an arm SoC now why the heck does anyone have to
| tolerate iOS on their phone?
| mikkelam wrote:
| These macs will increase apples desktop/laptop userbase by a huge
| margin. I expect a lot over converts within 2 years.
| romanovcode wrote:
| I don't get it.
|
| If we have same CPU on MacbookAir and MacbookPro - why would I
| get more expensive "Pro"? Can someone explain how is Pro faster
| than Air with same CPU?
|
| Also, the "Windows Guy" bit is a bit lame IMO. I have two
| MacBooks and one custom built PC. The PC is faster than both
| MacBooks combined.
| syspec wrote:
| Discrete GPU
| josephg wrote:
| The 13" MacBook Pro doesn't have a discrete gpu. They're all
| using the integrated gpu of the M1 chip. We have idea how
| well it'll perform in real world benchmarks yet.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Because of all the other components which are different? A
| laptop isn't just a CPU.
| brundolf wrote:
| The article mentions that the new M1 contains the CPU, GPU,
| memory, I/O, etc. in a single chip.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > If you read the article
|
| Accusing people not not reading the article is against the
| rules here.
|
| > CPU, GPU, memory, I/O
|
| Screens, batteries, form-factors.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yep. Like more USB ports....
| modeless wrote:
| It'll be way faster with the fan to cool it.
| IMTDb wrote:
| Better cooling. Faster SSD. Faster and more memory.
| ebg13 wrote:
| > _Can someone explain how is Pro faster than Air with same
| CPU?_
|
| Active cooling.
| klelatti wrote:
| Almost certainly faster clock speeds on the MacBook Pro.
| nlstitch wrote:
| Thermal Throttling ;-) Also the GPU is up to 8 cores so I guess
| some of them will be turned off in the Air.
| hrktb wrote:
| Seems that you'll also need the Pro to get 16Gb of RAM or 1~2To
| SSD
| romanovcode wrote:
| No way, the current Air has 16gb ram.
| _ph_ wrote:
| As one has a fan and the other not, they are probably clocked
| differently and the cooled one might sustain full power
| infinitely. The pro also has a larger battery, better speakers
| and microphones and the touch bar.
| shroom wrote:
| Does it also come without touch bar?
| saagarjha wrote:
| No.
| sliken wrote:
| No, but at least it has an esc key.
| qaq wrote:
| "and the touch bar" that is not exactly a selling point :)
| _ph_ wrote:
| Lets call it a "differentiation point" :)
| romanovcode wrote:
| Yeah, haha. This was the reason I actually got Air instead
| of Pro last year.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| Indeed, I'm considering getting an air specifically because
| it doesn't have the touch bar.
| qaq wrote:
| same here
| symfoniq wrote:
| Me too.
| brigade wrote:
| It's already the case that the Macbook Pro and Air have the
| "same" CPU - 1068NG7 and 1060NG7 are physically the same die,
| but with different power limits.
| jonplackett wrote:
| The price difference is pretty tiny anyway. Fan means it can
| keep that performance up for more than a minute or two.
| faebi wrote:
| How will this affect the prices of their high end models? Will
| the be cheaper?
| ojosilva wrote:
| Apple mentions TensorFlow explicitly in the ongoing presentation
| due to the new 16-core "Neural Engine" embedded in the M1 chip.
| Now that's an angle I did not expect on this release. Sounds
| exciting!
|
| Edit: just to clarify, the Neural Engine itself is not really
| "new":
|
| > The A11 also includes dedicated neural network hardware that
| Apple calls a "Neural Engine". This neural network hardware can
| perform up to 600 billion operations per second and is used for
| Face ID, Animoji and other machine learning tasks.[9] The neural
| engine allows Apple to implement neural network and machine
| learning in a more energy-efficient manner than using either the
| main CPU or the GPU.[14][15] However, third party apps cannot use
| the Neural Engine, leading to similar neural network performance
| to older iPhones.
|
| Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A11#Neural_Engine
| wmf wrote:
| It's kind of sad that AMD spent years to get mediocre
| TensorFlow support and Apple walks in with this. It really
| shows how huge Apple is.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| But they needed to, MacBooks are simply no option if you want
| to train models. I dont expect crazy performance but would be
| great if MacBooks would be an option again for prototyping /
| model development at least
| stefan_ wrote:
| Who mentioned training? Most of these chips are only any
| good for inference. A wonderful symphony with the Apple
| computing mantra, of course.
| pantulis wrote:
| Totally agree.
|
| Besides, can the neural engine be used to speed up other
| tasks?
| vosper wrote:
| Could this also be remedied by Apple supporting Nvidia GPUs
| again? And then you plug in a beefy eGPU?
| danudey wrote:
| In fairness, it's been possible to convert a TensorFlow model
| to a CoreML model for a while, and in April TensorFlow Lite
| added a CoreML delegate to run models on the Neural Engine.
|
| https://blog.tensorflow.org/2020/04/tensorflow-lite-core-
| ml-...
|
| So don't think of it as Apple walked right in with this so
| much as Apple has been shipping the neural engine for years
| and now they're finally making it available on macOS.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I can't see how something that tiny can compete in any
| meaningful way with a giant nVidia type card for training. I'd
| imagine it's more for running models that have been trained
| already, like all the stuff they mentioned with Final Cut.
| SoSoRoCoCo wrote:
| Not all NN models are behometh BERTs, U-Nets or ResNets.
| Person detection, keyword spotting, anomaly detection...
| there are lots of smaller neural nets that can be accelerated
| by a wide range of hardware.
| skohan wrote:
| Yeah I would imagine it's intended for similar use-cases as
| they use for iOS - for instance image/voice/video processing
| using ML models, and maybe for playing around with training,
| but it's not going to compete with a discreet GPU for heavy-
| duty training tasks
| ojosilva wrote:
| For an 18-hour battery life computer (Macbook Air) that now
| doesn't even have a fan, it's for a complete different market
| segment from where nvidia cards dwell.
| mmm_grayons wrote:
| Can anyone who knows about machine learning hardware comment
| on how much faster dedicated hardware is as opposed to, say,
| a vulkan compute shader?
| qayxc wrote:
| That depends entirely on the hardware of both the ML
| accelerator and the GPU in question, as well as model
| architecture, -data and -size.
|
| Unfortunately Apple was very vague when they described the
| method that yielded the claimed "9x faster ML" performance.
|
| They compared the results using an "Action Classification
| Model" (size? data types? dataset- and batch size?) between
| an 8-core i7 and their M1 SoC. It isn't clear whether
| they're referring to training or inference and if it took
| place on the CPU or the SoC's iGPU and no GPU was mentioned
| anywhere either.
|
| So until an independent 3rd party review is available, you
| question cannot be answered. 9x of dedicated hardware over
| a thermally- and power constrained CPU is no surprise,
| though.
|
| Even the notoriously weak previous generation Intel SoCs
| could deliver up to 7.73x improvement when using the iGPU
| [1] with certain models. As you can see in the source, some
| models don't even benefit from GPU acceleration (at least
| as far as Intel's previous gen SoCs are concerned).
|
| In the end, Apple's hardware isn't magic (even if they will
| say otherwise;) and more power will translate into more
| performance so their SoC will be inferior to high-power
| GPUs running compute shaders.
|
| [1] https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/ar
| ticle...
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Isn't it better to rent a cloud with as many GPUs as
| necessary for a time needed to train the model? I don't know
| state of things in ML.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| Not necessarily.
|
| It can be surprisingly cost-effective to invest a few $k in
| a hefty machine(s) with some high-end GPU's to train with
| due to the exceedingly hefty price of cloud GPU compute.
| The money invested up-front in the machine(s) pays itself
| off in (approximately) a couple of months.
|
| The "neural" chips in these machines are for accelerating
| inference. I.e. you already have a trained model, you
| quantise and shrink it, export it to ONNX or whatever
| Apple's CoreML requires, ship it to the client, and then it
| runs extra-fast, with relatively small power draw on the
| client machine due to the dedicated/specialised hardware.
| nelsondev wrote:
| For productionizing/training massive models, yes.
|
| But in the development phase, when you are testing on a
| smaller corpus of data, to make sure your code works, the
| on-laptop dedicated chip could expedite the development
| process.
| PeterisP wrote:
| I agree with the parent poster that it's probably more
| about inference, not training.
|
| If ML developers can assume that consumer machines (at
| least "proper consumer machines, like those made by Apple")
| will have support to do small-scale ML calculations
| efficiently, then that enables including various ML-based
| thingies in random consumer apps.
| nicdc wrote:
| Curious to hear responses to this too..
| villgax wrote:
| They do not have any hardware combination which can actually
| support even modest GPU intensive training sadly, so much
| touting running models instead of training.
| [deleted]
| suyash wrote:
| Yes, need to see more strong evidence that the new MBP's can
| handle large amounts of ML Training using TF or CreateML so we
| don't have to get NVIDIA machines/laptops.
| akhilcacharya wrote:
| Yeah, I was confused at that implication. I don't think these
| are designed for training!
|
| (If they are or can be, I'm interested)
| therealmarv wrote:
| Is this just opinion? Maybe they are designed ALSO for
| training. I wonder if this things can replace nVidia graphic
| cards on training? The neural core has a LARGE area on the
| chip design similar to the GPU area.
| navanchauhan wrote:
| > (If they are or can be, I'm interested)
|
| Exactly. Currently I am training my models using Google Colab
| and then exporting the model to run on my MBP. Would be
| interesting if I could do it locally
|
| Another interesting thing is that ( if this is for training )
| this will become the only accelerated version of Tensorflow
| for macOS as: - No CUDA drivers for latest macOS - AMD ROCHm
| only supports Linux runtime
| mch82 wrote:
| I'm hoping the M1 can be used for prototyping with small
| data sets, then final training on Google Colab with
| complete data sets.
| cma wrote:
| I think this is for inference not learning, even though they
| use the term machine learning. They seem to just mean running
| models based on machine learning approaches.
|
| Tensorflow includes stuff for inference.
| dionisio wrote:
| My thinking was along the same line as yours, but the way
| apple framed it seems to suggest that the M1 accelerates
| model training and not just inference. Here's the actual
| quote "It also makes Mac Mini a great machine for developers,
| scientist and engineers. Utilizing deep learning technologies
| like tensorflow ... which are now accelerated by M1". It
| should be pretty straightforward to test this though:
| installing tensorflow-gpu on a mac mini and seeing the
| result. I suspect, TF's latest branch should also indicate
| which GPUs are supported. Curious to hear more thoughts on
| this.
| rufname wrote:
| Does anybody know if it can run Windows?
| krzyk wrote:
| So there was no AirTags introduced? There were rumors that they
| will release them during the November event
| offtop5 wrote:
| Brought the air at first, was concerned about CPU throttling and
| switched to the Pro.
|
| To be honest I'm a bit skeptical about performance here.
|
| I'm going to assume the Air is under clocked to prevent over
| heating.
|
| Anyway, considering I've had my mac mini for about 8 years, I
| jumped at buying this. Looking forward to getting some 4k !
| jrobn wrote:
| All I care about is the hardware acceleration of video codecs.
|
| If a $1400 M1 powered MacBook Pro can edit and cut 8K Canon RAW
| Light And ALL-I HEVC from the Canon R5, it's very attractive to
| me.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| What is value proposition of Air vs Pro? Touchbar? 18 vs 20 hours
| batter?
| protomyth wrote:
| 16GB max it looks like.
| unionemployee wrote:
| I don't understand this. Does the chip make up for it? Do I
| have to wait until the next generation for 32gb?
| fastball wrote:
| The RAM is in the chip, so presumably they just want to
| iterate a bit first before just throwing RAM at it.
| ninkendo wrote:
| _huge_ own-goal on Apple 's part. It would be literally
| impossible for me to use this machine to do my job. I guess
| I'll have to wait until M2.
|
| Edit: If it wasn't clear, this was _not_ a joke. I develop a
| relatively heavyweight service on the JVM, and between my IDE,
| the code I run, and all the gradle build daemon stuff, I
| regularly use up more than 32GB. Often over 50GB. (Although
| some swap is tolerable, having the majority of my resident set
| being swapped at any given time means things get _very_ slow.)
| 0x0 wrote:
| Is there even a JVM available for darwin-armv8 ?
| ninkendo wrote:
| If there isn't yet, I'd be shocked if there won't be one
| soon.
| saagarjha wrote:
| There is in development, but it recently stopped working
| due to increased codesigning requirements :(
| saagarjha wrote:
| How many Slack instances does your job require?!
| [deleted]
| mmastrac wrote:
| 16GB hasn't been enough for bigger development stacks for a
| while.
| cromka wrote:
| Especially if you need to spin up some VMs and do
| compilation there.
| fulafel wrote:
| "This affords faster performance on Mac computers using M1 versus
| separate CPU, GPU, RAM, and other components"
|
| Are they really saying this vs dGPU?
| jonplackett wrote:
| I'm sure I heard them specifically compared it to other laptops
| with _integrated_ graphics.
| StillBored wrote:
| And very likely the intel integrated graphics in existing
| mac's (aka not Xe). The AMD integrated graphics are easily 3x
| faster in similar product lines in many benchmarks vs the
| intel's. Which means its probably roughly the same as the Amd
| product lines. Large parts of the presentation perf
| improvements are probably GPU related.
|
| Course i'm viewing this with a healthy dose of skepticism,
| having been around in the PPC days when you would think from
| apple's marketing that the PPC based macs were massively
| faster than your average PC. In reality they were ok, but
| rarely even the fastest device across a wide swath of
| benchmarks, mostly sort of middling.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| 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 PS1299, with a 512GB SSD
| option at PS1499. To bump the RAM to 16GB is another PS200(!), so
| PS1699 for 16/512.
|
| The Intel options are PS1799 for 16/512 or PS1999 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 the
| M1 look like it has a much lower starting price. It is cool if
| 16/512 M1 is PS100 cheaper with more power and better battery
| life though. Intel can of course still increase the memory to
| 32GB (for PS400 lol).
|
| The other downside is only 2 ports on the M1 ones, Intel have 4.
| whatanattitude wrote:
| I hate the Touch Bar
| _ph_ wrote:
| The M1 looks very promising, looking forward for real-life
| reviews. The biggest winner might be the Air - going to 4+4 cores
| and longer battery life while dropping the fan sounds like the
| perfect portable laptop. It will be interesting how much
| performance difference the fan in the MB Pro brings. The Mini at
| a lower price point is also great news. When introduced, the Mini
| brought a lot of new users to the mac at 499. While it is still
| far from that, bringing the starting price of the Mini down is
| great, especially with the fast CPU/GPU.
|
| The big letdown are the upgrade prices for RAM and SSD. Even at
| half the prices Apple would make a decent profit. As a
| consequence, the excitement about the affordable entry prices
| quickly vanishes and many people might not get the amount of
| storage they should - or they go somewhere else. At least for the
| Mini, you would probably only upgrade the RAM and buy a TB SSD.
|
| For the Mini and the MB Pro, not having a 32GB option hurts.
| These are machines which should be made for real workloads.
| the_duke wrote:
| I dropped the Apple ecosystem many years ago, but the pricing
| never ceases to intrigue me.
|
| 230EUR for 8GB to 16GB RAM. (and RAM is shared between CPU and
| GPU)
|
| 230EUR for 512 to 1TB SSD.
|
| They sure know how to milk their customers.
|
| So while the starting price seems surprisingly low, an acceptably
| specced 13 pro comes in at 2139EUR. And that's without knowing
| how the GPU will hold up.
|
| The presentation is brilliant marketing though and so much better
| than the competition. As long as you disable your brain for
| claims like "Universal Apps are the fastest and most powerful
| apps you can get!", and never mentioning specifics like the chips
| the benchmark actually compared with or what that game is that
| runs faster under emulation than native.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| End of year 2020, and still you can have a Macbook Pro with 16 GB
| of RAM at most. Why not 32 yet?
| d33lio wrote:
| VERY curious to see if apple silicon will support pytorch or
| other common GPU based ML libraries?
| gmaster1440 wrote:
| Do the M1 computers support Docker Desktop?
| wmf wrote:
| https://github.com/docker/roadmap/issues/142
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| M1 - the gpu performance claim is questionable
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Not really. They already have class leading GPU's in ipad and
| iPhone.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| 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 processing?
| threeseed wrote:
| Software development.
|
| If you have a microservices architecture or are using
| Kubernetes then you will easily need more than 16GB. I have
| 128GB on my desktop purely so that I can have my full platform
| running in the background whilst also doing development.
|
| Also if you're doing data engineering e.g. Spark then you will
| likely want more than 16GB.
| 0x53 wrote:
| I often use more than 16 GB of RAM. Generally, I have 3-4
| Windows 10 VMs running which each take at least 4GB to be
| stable. So if I have 4 running that is all the RAM already.
| sercand wrote:
| Running 3-4 Windows 10 VMs is not a standart Macbook (at
| least not for 13" macbook) workload.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| I was running a Windows VM on my laptop earlier this year
| (before some of the telework issues got worked out). While,
| yes, you need at least 4GB/VM, by the time I had two running
| the issue wasn't RAM. Laptop CPUs just can't keep up with
| that workload IME. Not unless you get, maybe, the latest 16"
| MBP (if restricting ourselves to Apple's hardware).
| ebg13 wrote:
| > _Generally, I have 3-4 Windows 10 VMs running_
|
| What are you doing that needs them all actually running
| simultaneously? Disk-backed VM pause/resume is extremely fast
| when your SSD's sequential read/write performance is measured
| in GBps.
|
| I have a hard time imagining a workflow that actually uses
| multiple systems all at once, so to me what you're saying
| sounds like "Well of course my RAM gets filled if I fill it
| on purpose."
| 0x53 wrote:
| Haha. I will admit that it is sometimes just for
| convenience, but when testing networking code, or writing
| things to interoperate with large system I do really need
| 3-4 VMs running.
| threeseed wrote:
| That's assuming that your SSD is doing nothing else at the
| time that it is pausing/resuming.
|
| Often it is. And so whilst SSDs are fast they still aren't
| fast enough to not slow everything else doing under high
| load.
| unionemployee wrote:
| On my 2015 MBP with 16gb I currently have 20-ish tabs in
| Chrome, Scrivener, GitKraken, Capture One, Slack, WhatsApp,
| Messenger, Books and Xcode open. The only things that's really
| bogged down is Capture One.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Adobe Premiere Pro barely works on 32GB, let alone 16GB.
| Perhaps not "normal people", but it is a Pro device. And bear
| in mind, due to the UMA, that 16GB is shared between GPU and
| CPU.
|
| I have 74GB on my system (10GB of which is GPU) so I can run my
| dev env (Kubernetes, PGSQL, Visual Studio), data science,
| machine learning and do 6K video editing. But then, there's
| also zero chance that I would consider doing this on a laptop.
| grecy wrote:
| > _Adobe Premiere Pro barely works on 32GB, let alone 16GB_
|
| Which is why I use Final Cut Pro. It was a little sluggish
| from time to time on my Air with 8GB of RAM, now on my
| mid-2015 MBP with 16GB of RAM it never stutters or slows
| down. Editing 1080p.
| Sathi wrote:
| Now that the processors are different, there will be cases
| where we will need to run multiple VMs to use Linux or to use
| Windows etc. Then having more RAM will be very helpful.
| randyrand wrote:
| For me its just Chrome. About 100-300 tabs at any given time.
| lagadu wrote:
| I'm not in the market for Apple stuff but if I were, developing
| locally: SQL server drinks all the memory you throw at it and
| then some. Occasionally spinning up a VM.
| sergeykish wrote:
| It would be crippled in several years. Software would always
| consume more -- browser, messaging, calls, games.
|
| I've bought One Plus 3 (6GB RAM) in 2016, still strong.
| Computing power has not changed much, limiting factor is RAM.
| jamil7 wrote:
| People running electron apps are likely constrained. Maybe with
| the ability to run iOS/iPadOS versions we can ditch things like
| the desktop version of Slack.
| nottorp wrote:
| You think the iOS version of Slack is native?
| jamil7 wrote:
| Yeah fairly certain it is, despite not feeling that way
| from a UX perspective.
| nottorp wrote:
| Yeah that's why I was asking, I use it and it doesn't
| feel native :)
| Miraste wrote:
| It is:
|
| https://twitter.com/slackhq/status/931599784137363459?lang=
| e...
| tgv wrote:
| I develop, and make music with rather substantial sample
| libraries, but 16GB is still comfy. 32GB is not worth it, IMO.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I'm totally underwhelmed but maybe if they really are extremely
| fast I'd consider one. I guess we'll have to wait for the pro
| machines next year.
| m0zg wrote:
| And just like that, within a year pretty much all of Apple's
| lineup will become the best available platform for AI inference,
| since each and every one of the new machines will have a TPU.
| jonplackett wrote:
| 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?
| mantap wrote:
| Me and other people who want to run windows VMs.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I guess you'll get a good deal now at least.
| kalleboo wrote:
| After seeing how big a downgrade these machines are over their
| intel counterparts (16 GB max RAM, max 2x thunderbolt, max 1
| external display on the laptops, no 10 GbE on the mini), I'd
| absolutely buy an Intel machine now to tide me over until Apple
| can catch up in a generation or two
| TillE wrote:
| I'm going to be pretty sad if they don't keep releasing Intel
| MBPs, I need to at least be able to run x86 Windows in a VM
| on my laptop.
| Tepix wrote:
| Pretty sure most MBP16 are sold with 16GB RAM
| willseth wrote:
| Anyone who needs more than 16gb memory (me, sadly)!
| Gaelan wrote:
| IIRC, the 16 inch MacBook Pro had a discrete GPU. Maybe that's
| why?
| jonplackett wrote:
| I mean because they're going to bring out another one really
| soon, that will, presumably, be drastically better. I'm
| guessing (hoping) that beefing up the graphics is why the 16
| is coming later.
| twoodfin wrote:
| Rumors were it was just behind the initial rollout (though
| those rumors missed the new Mac mini, AFAIK).
|
| Signs point to another event in January, I'd expect it there
| with a heftier SoC.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Yeah, strangely no-one predicted the mini, despite them
| already making a tonne of them for developers. Bit of a no
| brainer really.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes, but they seemed pretty ambivalent about the mini for a
| long time. Probably easier from a SKU perspective though
| than coming out with new iMac versions. (Even if iMacs
| overall outsell Minis--which I'm guessing they do--
| individual models may not.)
| twoodfin wrote:
| I think they're targeting a more powerful SoC at the
| iMac, or at least they didn't want to announce new iMacs
| without being able to replace the whole range.
| myrandomcomment wrote:
| So there is an interesting trend here in the comments because HN
| is very developer focused. Everyone seems to say "well this does
| not work for my XXX because of RAM, etc." I would say yes, no
| surprises there! With this line up Apple is fine with that,
| because the Air and 13" are not targeted at you. This is the
| laptop for my wife or kids that use it for school, web, some
| music and video, nothing at a professional level. That battery
| life will make both of them very happy.
|
| The reality of this is that it is very likely they focused on
| yield for the chip vs market segment for what they can ship
| today. For the professional user I would very much to expect to
| see follow on products with more RAM and cores in 1Q21 (MacBook
| Pro 16" and iMacs).
| Aperocky wrote:
| I'm a dev and I have the air as my personal, side-project
| computer, and I have already ordered the new one.
|
| I use vim to develop primarily in python/js. So my need for
| performance is super low.
| myrandomcomment wrote:
| I was going to point out something like that but figured I
| would get shouted down. For me, check in to bitbucket and
| Jenkins pulls the build and does it on a rack full of servers
| dedicated for the process...and yes to VIM. :)
|
| One of my colleagues placed an order for the Air about 10
| seconds after you could.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| Will the MBA have a different "M1" chip than the MBP? And the Mac
| Mini? Seems like they're all using the same processor.
| ValentineC wrote:
| I think they're using the same M1 processor, but the cooling
| solutions are different.
|
| The Mac Mini and MacBook Pro will be able to sustain higher
| speeds for longer periods -- this is already the case with the
| Intel versions of them.
| mark-r wrote:
| So Apple will be shipping 5nm chips while Intel is barely able to
| produce 10nm? Must hurt to be Intel right now.
| celeritascelery wrote:
| while it certainly hurts to be Intel right now, be aware that
| the generation notation does not mean what it used to. They
| just mark new generations, not actual transistor size. Intel's
| 10nm is roughly equivalent to TSMC 7mn, and Intel 7nm should be
| equivalent to TSMC 5nm. So yes, Intel is behind, but not as
| much as it might seem.
| readams wrote:
| Reading between the lines of their announcement, it seems that
| they'll do well in performance per watt and battery life, which
| is where ARM is traditionally good. They will not do well in raw
| performance for workstations or workstation-replacement laptops.
| sz4kerto wrote:
| "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 422. Performance tests are
| conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the
| approximate performance of MacBook Air."
|
| This is relevant. This means that the performance increase vs
| Intel is using the extremely throttled 1.2 GHz i7 as the
| baseline.
| belval wrote:
| __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.
| therealmarv wrote:
| 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)
| oblio wrote:
| Based on what Apple says. Is there an independent cross
| platform benchmark which is actually relevant and that says
| the same?
| favorited wrote:
| No, because it hasn't shipped yet.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > 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.
|
| The important part there is "in their class".
|
| I'm sure the Apple silicon will impress in the future, but
| there's a reason they've only switched their lowest power
| laptops to M1 at launch.
|
| The higher end laptops are still being sold with Intel
| CPUs.
| klelatti wrote:
| The reason is almost certainly that its the lowest power
| laptops is where the volume is and because it makes
| absolute sense to go for that part of the market first.
|
| I'm really impressed by what they've done in this part of
| the market - which would have been impossible with Intel
| CPUs.
| m_mueller wrote:
| I think the main reason is discrete GPUs. I'm guessing
| they are currently working on PCI Express for M1. That or
| a much faster GPU on a different version of the SoC.
| 013a wrote:
| That's not what they said during the keynote.
|
| They said the Macbook Air (specifically) is "3x faster
| than the best selling PC laptop in its class" and that
| its "faster than 98% of PC laptops sold in the last
| year".
|
| There was no "in its class" designation on the 98%
| figure. If they're taken at their word, its among every
| PC laptop sold in the past year, period.
|
| Frankly, given what we saw today, and the leaked A14x
| benchmarks a few days ago (which may be this M1 chip or a
| different, lower power chip for the upcoming iPad Pro,
| either way); there is almost no chance that the 16" MBPs
| still being sold with Intel chips will be able to match
| the 13". They probably could have released a 16" model
| today with the M1 and it would still be an upgrade. But,
| they're probably holding back and waiting for a better
| graphics solution in an upcoming M1x-like chip.
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| This probably says more about the volume of low end PCs
| being sold than about the performance of the air.
| 013a wrote:
| If you believe that, then you've either been accidentally
| ignoring Apple's chip R&D over the past three years, or
| intentionally spinning it against them out of some more
| general dislike of the company.
|
| The most powerful Macbook Pro, with a Core i9-9980HK,
| posts a Geekbench 5 of 1096/6869. The A12z in the iPad
| Pro posts a 1120/4648. This is a relatively fair
| comparison because both of these chips were released in
| ~2018-2019; Apple was winning in single-core performance
| at least a year ago, at a lower TDP, with no fan.
|
| The A14, released this year, posts a 1584/4181 @ 6 watts.
| This is, frankly, incomprehensible. The most powerful
| single core mark ever submitted to Geekbench is the
| brand-spanking-new Ryzen 9 5950X; a 1627/15427 @ 105
| watts & $800. Apple is close to matching the best AMD
| has, on a DESKTOP, at 5% the power draw, and with passive
| cooling.
|
| We need to wait for M1 benchmarks, but this is an
| architecture that the PC market needs to be scared of.
| There is no evidence that they aren't capable of scaling
| multicore performance when provided a higher power
| envelope, especially given how freakin low the A14's TDP
| is already. What of the power envelope of the 16" Macbook
| Pro? If they can put 8 cores in the MBA, will they do 16
| in the MBP16? God forbid, 24? Zen 3 is the only other
| architecture that approaches A14 performance, and it
| demands 10x the power to do it.
| imtringued wrote:
| Last time I checked the TDP/frequency curve of Apple's
| chips was unimpressive. If you crank it up to 4Ghz it's
| going to be as "bad" or even worse than a Ryzen CPU in
| terms of power consumption per core. There is no free
| lunch. Mobile chips simply run at a lower frequency and
| ARM SoCs usually have heterogenous cores.
|
| >but this is an architecture that the PC market needs to
| be scared of.
|
| This just means you know nothing about processor
| performance or benchmarks. If it was that easy to
| increase performance by a factor of 3x why hasn't AMD
| done so? Why did they only manage a 20% increase in IPC
| instead of your predicted 200%?
| pja wrote:
| The Ryzen 9 is a 16 (32 hyperthreads) core CPU, the A14
| is a 2 big / 4 little core CPU. Power draw on an integer
| workload per thread seems roughly equivalent.
| hajile wrote:
| Not all geekbench scores are created equal. Comparing ARM
| and x86 scores is an exercise in futility as there are
| simply too many factors to work through. It also doesn't
| include all workload types.
|
| For example, I can say with 100% confidence that M1 has
| nowhere near 32MB of onboard cache. Once it starts
| hitting cache limits, it's performance will drop off a
| cliff as fast cores that can't be fed are just slow
| cores. It's also worth noting that around 30% of the AMD
| power budget is just Infinity Fabric (hypertransport
| 4.0). When things get wide and you have to manage that
| much wider complexity, the resulting control circuitry
| has a big effect on power consumption too.
|
| All that said, I do wonder how much of a part the ISA
| plays here.
| 013a wrote:
| M1 has 16MB of L2 cache; 12MB dedicated to the HP cores
| and 4MB dedicated to the LP cores.
|
| Another important consideration is the on-SOC DRAM. This
| is really incomparable to anything else on the market,
| x86 or ARM, so its hard to say how this will impact
| performance, but it may help alleviate the need for a
| larger cache.
|
| I think its pretty clear that Apple has something special
| here when we're quibbling about the cache and power draw
| per core differences of a 10 watt chip versus a 100 watt
| one; its missing the bigger picture that Apple did this
| _at 10 watts_. They 're so far beyond their own class,
| and the next two above it, that we're frantically trying
| to explain it as anything except alien technology by
| drawing comparisons to chips which require power supplies
| the size of sixteen iPhones. Even if they were just short
| of mobile i9 performance (they're not), this would still
| be a massive feat of engineering worthy of an upgrade.
| manigandham wrote:
| The vast majority of PC laptops sold are cheap low-end
| volume computers.
| klelatti wrote:
| Really good observations - I suspect that the 16" MBPs
| may be in the 2% though.
|
| Plus, given use of Rosetta 2 they probably need 2x or
| more improvement over existing models to be viable for
| existing x86 software. Interesting to speculate what the
| M chip in the 16" will look like - convert efficency
| cores to performance cores?
| 013a wrote:
| My guess is that they'd still keep the efficiency cores
| around, but provide more performance cores. So likely a
| 12 or 16 core processor, with 4 or 6 of those dedicated
| to efficiency cores.
|
| The M1 supposedly has a 10w TDP (at least in the MBA; it
| may be speced higher in the MBP13). If that's the case,
| there's a ton of power envelope headroom to scale to more
| cores, given the i9 9980HK in the current MBP16 is speced
| at 45 watts.
|
| I'm very scared of this architecture once it gets up to
| Mac Pro levels of power envelope. If it doesn't scale,
| then it doesn't scale, but assuming it does this is so
| far beyond Xeon/Zen 3 performance it'd be unfair to even
| compare them.
|
| This is the effect of focusing first on efficiency, not
| raw power. Intel and AMD never did this; its why they
| lost horribly in mobile. Their bread and butter is
| desktops and servers, where it doesn't matter. But, long
| term, it does; higher efficiency means you can pack more
| transistors into the same die without melting them. And
| its far easier to scale a 10 watt chip up to use 50 watts
| than it is to do the opposite.
| imtringued wrote:
| >This is the effect of focusing first on efficiency, not
| raw power. Intel and AMD never did this; its why they
| lost horribly in mobile.
|
| If you want a more efficient processor you can just
| reduce the frequency. You can't do that in the other
| direction. If your processor wasn't designed for 4Ghz+
| then you can't clock it that high, so the real challenge
| is making the highest clocked CPU. AMD and Intel care a
| lot about efficiency and they use efficiency improvements
| to increase clock speeds and add more cores just like
| everyone else. What you are talking about is like
| semiconductor 101. It's so obvious nobody has to talk
| about it.
|
| >Their bread and butter is desktops and servers, where it
| doesn't matter.
|
| Efficiency matters a lot in the server and desktop
| market. Higher efficiency means more cores and a higher
| frequency.
|
| >But, long term, it does; higher efficiency means you can
| pack more transistors into the same die without melting
| them.
|
| No shit? Semiconductor 101??
|
| >And its far easier to scale a 10 watt chip up to use 50
| watts than it is to do the opposite.
|
| You mean... like those 64 core EPYC server processors
| that AMD has been producing for years...? Aren't you
| lacking a little in creativity?
| klelatti wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember the MacBook Pro intro (seems a
| long time ago!) when Steve Jobs said it's all about
| performance per watt.
|
| My only worry about the systems with more cores (Mac Pro
| etc) are about the economics for Apple of making these
| chips in such small volume.
|
| PS Interesting that from Anandtech the M1 has a smaller
| die area than the i5/i7 in the Intel Airs so plenty of
| room for more cores!
| lumberingjack wrote:
| Just awhile ago Apple said the AIR was in a class of it's
| own so....
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Did they say what they meant when they said faster?
|
| I saw some graphs that looked unrealistically smooth with
| two unlabeled axis
| ffhhj wrote:
| Sorry to ask, what is the "Fabric" module in their
| architecture? Also, is the "Neural Engine" some neural network
| specific processor?
| rodgerd wrote:
| The Neural Engine in iPhones is used for things ranging from
| photography enhancement to facial recognition for the unlock
| and Siri.
| klelatti wrote:
| The Pro is quoted as 2.8x the 1.7 GHz i7.
|
| Not Intel's fastest chip but, if these benchmarks are correct,
| that's a big speed bump and the higher end Pro's are to come.
| How fast does it have to be in this thermal envelope to get
| excited about?
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| How many cores does that have, and how many cores does the i7
| have though?
| ctvo wrote:
| Why is this a mystery or rhetorical question? Look on the
| website? It's public:
|
| M1
|
| > Apple M1 chip
|
| > 8-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency
| cores
|
| > 8-core GPU
|
| > 16-core Neural Engine
|
| Intel
|
| > 1.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.5GHz,
| with 128MB of eDRAM
|
| https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-13/specs/
|
| https://www.apple.com/shop/product/G0W42LL/A/refurbished-13
| 3...
|
| Apple's claim:
|
| > With an 8-core CPU and 8-core GPU, M1 on MacBook Pro
| delivers up to 2.8x faster CPU performance1 and up to 5x
| faster graphics2 than the previous generation.
|
| https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch-
| space...
|
| Fine print:
|
| > 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.
|
| > 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 with Intel Iris Plus
| Graphics 645, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD.
| Tested with prerelease Final Cut Pro 10.5 using a 10-second
| project with Apple ProRes 422 video at 3840x2160 resolution
| and 30 frames per second. Performance tests are conducted
| using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate
| performance of MacBook Pro.
| hajile wrote:
| The 2019 MBP 13 supposedly uses an 8th gen, 14nm Intel
| part (14nm is 6 year-old technology).
|
| A more fair comparison would be Tiger Lake (20% IPC
| improvement) on Intel's terrible 10nm process. The most
| fair comparison would be zen 3 on 7nm, but even that is
| still a whole node behind.
| klelatti wrote:
| 4 + 4 vs 4 hyperthreaded I think. Not sure I follow the
| point though.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| The literally benchmarked the _slowest_ 10th Gen i7 CPU on the
| market.
|
| And I got so excited about it...
| akmarinov wrote:
| They also said it's the fastest laptop CPU?
| garmaine wrote:
| "in its class"
| gburdell3 wrote:
| 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.
| chaos_a wrote:
| Intels marketing is more at fault here. i7 cpus range from
| slower 4 core 1.8ghz thin and light cpus to high end
| desktop 8 core 3.5ghz ones.
|
| When the name i7 is mentioned people are more likely to
| think it's one of the high end desktop processors rather
| than the mobile processors.
| fudged71 wrote:
| Also unclear what they even meant when comparing performance to
| the "highest selling PC", I'm not even sure if analysts could
| tell you what the top PC on the market is
| highfrequency wrote:
| Would be interesting to see single-threaded performance
| (/processor speed), I assume this falls way short of the
| advertised "3x faster" number.
|
| Also, only two Thunderbolt ports down from four!
| saagarjha wrote:
| I would expect single-threaded performance to be extremely good
| if this is in line with how Apple typically designs their
| processors. Also, you're comparing it to the wrong computer-
| this is clearly aimed at being a replacement for the 2-port
| MacBook Pro.
| jdkee wrote:
| Anyone care to explain how they got to 5nm so quickly?
| temp667 wrote:
| By shoveling loads of cash at TSMC - does anyone know how much
| - it's got to be millions/billion?
| zepto wrote:
| TSMC
|
| https://www.extremetech.com/computing/315186-apple-books-tsm...
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Simple. They booked 100% of TSMC.
| randmeerkat wrote:
| Juicing apples.
| Covzire wrote:
| It's 7nm with some improved process. Or 10nm with 2
| improvements, or 14nm with 3 improvements, etc.
|
| The process names are completely detached from reality in terms
| of actual transistor feature size. The only thing we can be
| reasonably certain of is that 5nm has some kind of improved
| density over 7nm.
| jonplackett wrote:
| They paid TSMC the most and bought up nearly all their
| capacity.
| varispeed wrote:
| If you can't buy it on Mouser or digi-key then it is another
| attempt at expanding the walled garden. If for some reason you
| CPU dies in your PC you can just buy a new CPU without having to
| replace an entire computer. I bet that it will not be possible
| with Apple product. They are focusing on forcing consumers to buy
| new products instead.
| harha wrote:
| Is there any information on what type of software will run?
|
| Will it run things like R, Julia, Postgres, Docker (which I can
| work with reasonably well on my late 2013 MBP) and will we see
| any of the speed improvements or will some of the packages that
| work fairly well on the Intel-based models just not work?
| Aperocky wrote:
| I'm sure a good amount of things won't work on ARM the first
| time around.
|
| But I also think they'll be fixed quickly. RIP my dependency
| packages...
| kingnothing wrote:
| There's a translation layer, so I'm hopeful everything will
| just work.
| harha wrote:
| At what speed? As far as I understood, all the presented
| performance increases are for optimized apps. I guess this
| is also where Apple sees the primary customer base.
|
| For developers, scientists, etc., it would be interesting
| if it improves any of their typical use-cases - memory is
| one big limitation (I don't necessarily need 32GB on the
| laptop, that's what I use a workstation for, but after
| using my current Macbook for 7 years, I don't want a new
| laptop that feels limited after a few years)
| rurban wrote:
| To put the 3.5x faster CPU into perspective.
|
| I added various machines to my hash benchmarks. My MacAir with an
| i7 CPU is about 2x slower than a desktop CPU or AMD laptop cpu,
| and has about the same speed than my ordinary Cortex A53 phone.
| That's mostly the 2 vs 4 GHz difference.
|
| Their latest A14 Chip is described here
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...
| and it's with its 3Ghz entirely plausible that it is 3x faster
| than the MacAir or my current A53 phone.
|
| https://browser.geekbench.com/ios_devices/ipad-air-4th-gener...
| ericls wrote:
| I don't know if this will be a big success, but if it is, I think
| ARM will take over a large amount of server/cloud market.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| > but if it is, I think ARM will take over a large amount of
| server/cloud market.
|
| Seeing as how Apple has zero presence in the server/cloud
| market, how do you figure? Are you hoping they bring back
| xserve?
|
| Otherwise I don't see how Apple having a custom power-efficient
| chip in a laptop is going to do anything at all in the
| server/cloud market?
| ericls wrote:
| If my dev environment and build pipline is all ARM, I might
| as well get a ARM based server in production if they are
| available at a reasonable price.
| cbryan wrote:
| There are other manufacturers that are building ARM servers
| these days. AWS even went so far as too build their own chip:
| https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/
| klelatti wrote:
| 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.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| 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.
| klelatti wrote:
| 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.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| It's equally plausible, if not more likely, that the
| impact here is just that Apple laptops are no longer
| viable for those developing cloud applications where the
| ISA is relevant.
| klelatti wrote:
| I've just bought an Intel MacBook Pro so I can continue
| to develop for x86 in the cloud!
|
| Both things can be true though.
| ericls wrote:
| That's also possible. But at that point I won't define
| the new chip as successful.
| ericls wrote:
| Not throwing things away. X86 will continue to exist for
| sure. It's just if ARM is popular to developers, the
| barrier that sometimes your code don't run on ARM will
| eventually be removed. After the barrier is removed, some
| advantages of ARM will shine, such as more energy
| efficient, more cores(so when you buy a cloud server you
| are more likely to have dedicated cores, instead of
| vcores).
| kllrnohj wrote:
| > some advantages of ARM will shine, such as more energy
| efficient, more cores
|
| ARM doesn't have any such benefits. The ISA has minimal
| impact on power efficiency, performance, or even core
| counts.
|
| Apple's specific CPU has so far been pretty good, but
| that isn't the result of running ARM nor does it
| translate to other ARM CPUs. The specific CPU
| implementation matters here, not the ISA.
| klelatti wrote:
| Sorry but ARM does have an advantage as a 10 year old ISA
| vs one that still carries the baggage of 40 plus years of
| development. The exact size of that advantage isn't clear
| and may be small vs implementation specific features and
| process differences, but it's still there.
|
| Plus, there have been features of Arm implementations
| that have clearly given them power efficiency advantage
| vs x86, big.LITTLE which is now coming to Mac and up
| until now has not been a feature of x86 implementations.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Will the presence of ARM silicon over Intel mean these macbooks
| will be poorer developer machines?
| ericls wrote:
| Not if servers are also runing ARM
| Closi wrote:
| Depends what you are developing for - if you are developing
| for mobile then by that standard it's significantly better.
|
| If you are developing for web... it depends what you are
| writing and how you are deploying it, but it probably won't
| have much impact dependent on your toolchain.
| asimpletune wrote:
| It's pretty nice that the stats don't list the CPU's clock rate.
| We can finally enter an era of less misleading indicators of
| performance, in the sense of what the overall experience will be.
| That's what really matters.
| jeffbee wrote:
| This press release has the vaguest, most misleading and
| content-free performance claims that have ever been printed.
| saagarjha wrote:
| They're pretty much in line with any Apple press release.
| dingaling wrote:
| They remind me of the old Soviet status reports full of
| unitless claims in order to appease the upper echelons of the
| party. "Solidarity amongst workers has doubled". "Combat
| efficiency has increased by 120%"
| limeblack wrote:
| It states the following.
|
| > the end of Intel inside Apple notebooks and desktops
|
| Is this really a good idea for Desktops? Notice the graph is for
| laptops.
| DominikD wrote:
| So I have to assume that the GPU is another PowerVR offspring?
| saagarjha wrote:
| It's supposedly developed internally, Imagination of course
| claims that they stole their IP. The reality is likely
| somewhere in the middle.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I think this will rock; just not right away.
|
| I'll get one when the M2 has worked things out.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| How uncompetitive will their igpu be?
| saagarjha wrote:
| Perhaps you should wait until people get their hands on it
| before forming an opinion on it...
| [deleted]
| AnonHP wrote:
| All the Macs looked quite impressive! It was well worth waiting
| for these (at least for me). But I was disappointed that the
| maximum RAM is 16GB. I would've preferred a 32GB option for
| better future proofing (especially with web applications needing
| more and more memory).
|
| Edit: Considering the fact that the RAM won't be upgradeable
| (it's part of the SoC), this limitation is a big bummer. What may
| be worse is that all these machines will start with an 8GB RAM
| configuration option at the low end, which isn't going to age
| well at all in 2020.
| [deleted]
| doersino wrote:
| Especially since the Intel-powered 13" MacBook Pro was
| configurable up to 32GB.
| 1-more wrote:
| It's wild to me. I still love my 1st gen MBP Retina and it has
| 16GB memory.
| dschuler wrote:
| Same! Mid-2012 rMBP. Turns out I could upgrade the AirPort
| card with a used one from ebay for $20, as well as the SSD
| (although that was maxed out at 1TB with mSATA). Eight years
| later, it's still a good computer.
| turtlebits wrote:
| These are all targeted towards consumers. My last three
| personal Macs have had 8GB of ram and they were fine.
|
| My work machines on the other hand were all specced with 32GB.
| asimpletune wrote:
| Was that for just mb air or all of them? I missed that part.
| kingnothing wrote:
| 13" Pro is also 16GB.
| acqq wrote:
| Yes:
|
| https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-13/specs/
|
| "Memory 8GB unified memory Configurable to: 16GB"
| cromka wrote:
| All of them, including Mini.
| pat2man wrote:
| 32GB is an option on the pro
| cromka wrote:
| No, it is not. And 16GB is $200 more.
| wtetzner wrote:
| Only the Intel Pro, not the M1 Pro.
| kingnothing wrote:
| No, it isn't.
| BucketsMcG wrote:
| I'll bet you'll get what you're looking for in the 15"/16"
| Macbook Pros when they come along.
| Dunedan wrote:
| > Considering the fact that the RAM won't be upgradeable (it's
| part of the SoC)
|
| While I agree that RAM won't be upgradeable (as it hasn't been
| in all new models the past few years), are you sure that the
| RAM is part of the SoC? I believe what they labelled with
| "DRAM" in the M1 schmatics is very likely the L3 cache instead.
|
| Adding RAM to the SoC would make little sense from a cost and
| yield perspective. I also believe that 16GB of DDR4 memory are
| much larger than the "DRAM" part of the SoC.
| wmf wrote:
| It's on the SoC package not the die, just like in phones.
| Dunedan wrote:
| Thanks for pointing out. My bad.
|
| Here is a picture of the SoC with the 16GB of DDR4 RAM: htt
| ps://www.apple.com/v/mac/m1/a/images/overview/chip__fffqz..
| .
|
| And here is the picture which confused by and tricked me
| into thinking the OP talked about the RAM integrated into
| the CPU (although upon closer inspection that picture also
| seems to cover the whole SoC package): https://www.apple.co
| m/v/mac/m1/a/images/overview/chip_memory...
| kevinherron wrote:
| This all looks very promising but unless a solution for running
| VMs with an x86 OS/apps materializes my 16" MBP might be my last
| :-/
| ghaff wrote:
| While not impossible, I would guess that something like that
| would probably be unusably slow.
| [deleted]
| jbverschoor wrote:
| I'm actually surprised by the price. I thought it'd be more
| expensive. I'd easily had paid another $250 extra for 2 ports on
| the other side, and even some more for 32GB ram. Better camera +
| 14" screen would also be nice. Basically I was expecting to pay
| between 3-3.5k for a new macbook :-)
| [deleted]
| Shivetya wrote:
| I did not see it mentioned but I hope an app comes with Big Sur
| which lets us see which apps will work with Rosetta2 through
| Finder or some sort of report
| gord288 wrote:
| If it's anything like the transition from PowerPC architecture
| to Intel, you'll be able to see this information by selecting
| the app package in the Finder, and invoking the "Get Info"
| window (cmd-I) or palette (option-cmd-I).
| stjo wrote:
| Not a mac user, but at WWDC they showed you could check in your
| task manager / process viewer.
| jpeg_hero wrote:
| i don't understand how you're supposed to develop server-side x86
| code on this machine. isnt this an important market for the mac?
| neurostimulant wrote:
| A few months ago I build a personal linux server and use it via
| ssh and VSCode's remote development feature, which mount the
| server filesystem and do port forwarding so it feels as if it's
| a local machine even while working outside my home network. My
| usual workflow doesn't change at all, and I got the benefit of
| a fast server while using laptop form factor. The new arm
| laptop is probably perfect for this setup, allowing you to
| build for intel arch whenever you need it.
| randyrand wrote:
| rosetta is apparently really fast.
| nikivi wrote:
| Very curious when 16" ARM mac will surpass the latest 2020 Intel
| i9 mac. Hopefully 2021.
| deergomoo wrote:
| I expect this CPU is already faster than the i9 in most
| metrics.
| izacus wrote:
| What are you basing this on?
| Dunedan wrote:
| I honestly expected more. 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.
|
| Comparing the new 13" MacBook Pro with the previous one that's a
| regression in every aspect as the Intel-based ones allow up to
| 32GB RAM and 4TB storage and offer 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports.
| stcredzero wrote:
| _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 powered laptop and a professional
| workstation.
| beezle wrote:
| Lets be honest - Apple has not really expanded its share of
| PC/Laptop market in a long time. Ordinary consumers are not
| going to care about this, especially with the Apple premium
| tacked on. I think combined it runs 10% +/- year to year
| variation.
| Dunedan wrote:
| > My guess is that there's going to be 2 "Pro" variants for a
| high powered laptop and a professional workstation.
|
| My guess is that they'll introduce one other ARM-based chip
| for Macs in 2021, targeted at all remaining Macs (except for
| the Mac Pro). I believe the differences in performance can be
| achieved with a single chip simply by binning and different
| power envelopes.
|
| I expect (or rather I hope) that chip then supports at least
| 64GB of memory, 8TB of NVMe storage and 4 Thunderbolt 4
| ports.
| jmisavage wrote:
| I'm thinking we might see a M1X which might add a couple
| cores to all the compute units in the SoC.
| zamadatix wrote:
| 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.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| It's not a regression if you compare like with like:
| https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/?modelList=MacBookPro-13-M...
| (M1 "two ports" compared with Intel "two ports" and "four
| ports")
|
| I assume there will be a "four ports" Apple Silicon version
| down the road.
| blue_box wrote:
| Apple M1: 192KB I-Cache, 128KB D-Cache, 12MB L2 Cache
|
| AMD Ryzen 9 5950X: 32KB I-Cache, 32KB D-Cache, 8MB L2 Cache
|
| Isn't this difference huge? What am I missing here?
| n_jd wrote:
| The L2 cache on the M1 is the last level cache (LLC), where the
| 5950X has a 64MB L3 cache for LLC. Also I'm not sure we know
| yet how much of the chip is using that L2, it might be more
| than just the four high perf cores.
|
| A closer comparison is probably Intel's 10900K which has a 20MB
| L3.
| monocasa wrote:
| TSMC 5nm versus 7nm. Process advantages win most chip fights.
| [deleted]
| friendlybus wrote:
| The M5 multitronic computer chip will be Apple's first foray into
| automating Apples away from human control... if the original Star
| Trek is an inspiration.
|
| We will find our fears about computing boil down to fearing a
| machine's intelligence that is revealed to be a mirror of it's
| creator's mind. The singular chip is a captured reflection of all
| the minds that went into building it.
|
| The true fear will be the end of low hanging fruit for
| programmers in 20yrs, a return of the mainframe model, where
| ML/AI does all the work and the select few living on an MMR fill
| in the last tasks left. The rest of us left to stare at the
| mirror of Apple's creation as it completes our daily tasks for
| us.
| laurentdc wrote:
| The onboard graphics performance seems to be impressive (1050Ti -
| 1060 range). I wonder if Valve and Epic will start compiling
| games for ARM. This MacBook could be my first gaming laptop, who
| would have thought
| stjo wrote:
| Epic precisely might not.
| jagger27 wrote:
| Unity and Unreal already run on iOS so tons of games built on
| those engines should work well.
| mcraiha wrote:
| I would guess that neither Valve or Epic will do that, it is up
| to game devs to do that. Mac is bad gaming platform, and
| dropping 32 bit x86 support from Mac OS didn't help
| https://www.macgamerhq.com/opinion/32-bit-mac-games/
| grovellogic wrote:
| I think it is clear they dropped 32bit x86 support so it
| would be easier to develop Rosetta 2 (The x86 emulation
| layer). I don't really see why they would drop support
| otherwise.
| yashksagar wrote:
| i'm just glad they still kept the headphone jack
| fabianhjr wrote:
| Could the like be change to Apple's more detailed press release?
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-unleashes-m1/
| [deleted]
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| Can these benchmark scores claiming that the only CPU faster than
| the Apple A14 is the recently released Ryzen 9 3950X?
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...
|
| What's the catch here? Did Apple just blow x86 out of the water?
| mmastrac wrote:
| When they say "[faster than the] latest PC laptop chip", what
| exactly do they mean? Intel? AMD?
|
| EDIT: added [faster than the]
| [deleted]
| sercand wrote:
| 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.
| mmastrac wrote:
| That's.. kind of weak. How many other perf tests did they
| throw away before taking this one because it showed so well?
| I guess we'll see the real-world benchmarks when people get
| their hands on them.
|
| Geekbench is not a _great_ benchmark, but it's common enough
| that we could use it to roughly compare.
| ebg13 wrote:
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-unleashes-m1/ down
| at the bottom says:
|
| "World's fastest CPU core in low-power silicon": Testing
| conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13-inch
| MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip and 16GB of RAM
| measuring peak single thread performance of workloads taken
| from select industry standard benchmarks, commercial
| applications, and open source applications. Comparison made
| against the highest-performing CPUs for notebooks, commercially
| available at the time of testing."
|
| So, "Comparison made against the highest-performing CPUs for
| notebooks, commercially available [one month ago]". I guess
| there could be wiggle room on interpreting "highest-
| performing", but this seems pretty good.
| wmf wrote:
| Probably Tiger Lake-U. I definitely believe M1 is faster.
|
| Apple has a history of pretending things like Nvidia or Ryzen
| don't exist when it suits them so I'm sure there will be gotcha
| benchmarks down the line.
|
| Apple also compared against "best-selling PCs" several times,
| but the best-selling PCs are the cheapest junk so obviously
| Macs will be faster than those.
| rewtraw wrote:
| Presumably, both.
| Zenst wrote:
| Wonder if they could pop one onto a PCIe card for exisiting Mac
| owners to a a copro for a VM.
| pantulis wrote:
| Well... they did that decades ago
|
| http://tim.id.au/laptops/apple/misc/pc_compatibility_card.pd...
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| It would be a nice upgrade for my hackintosh
| mitjak wrote:
| The word "fast" appears 16 times on the page.
| jonplackett wrote:
| One for each CPU. Maybe it's a code...?
| think814 wrote:
| Did I understand correctly that MacBook Pro and Air will share
| the same M1 CPU?
|
| Previous models had a massive delta in CPU performance based on
| using low power (Air, no fan) or medium power (Pro, with dual
| fans) Intel chips
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I think there's still a no fan vs fan distinction so they'll
| still be able to run the Pro more powerful, but it looks like
| it. I half suspect the Air was the one they wanted to release
| and they just didn't want there to be no Pro faster than an Air
| in the lineup.
| paxys wrote:
| Same CPU line, but doesn't mean they will have the same specs.
| Pro will definitely have its cores run faster/hotter.
| ziftface wrote:
| Is there any indication at this point that they'll make that
| clear? It seems kind of strange to buy a computer without
| really knowing what you're buying.
|
| I guess apple didn't officially say what intel processors
| they have in their computers, but at least you could look it
| up and know what you're getting.
| paxys wrote:
| They have also never shared this info for iPhones/iPads, so
| no reason to believe they will do it for Macs going
| forward. But we should be seeing third party benchmarks
| soon enough.
| cmoscoe wrote:
| Yes, but they only replaced the lowest-end 13 inch pro at this
| point, and are still selling the higher-end Intels. The
| performance versions will follow next year.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| I am somewhat skeptical about total performance claims as many
| notebook manufacturers have been moving to ARM for efficiency and
| not total performance.
|
| Current top of the line for notebooks would be the Qualcomm 8cx
| (ARM, 7? Watts) and AMD 4800U (x86-64, 15 Watts TDP) from quick
| search around. Would be interesting to see independent reviewers
| benchmarking those 2 in comparison to Apple's first in-house
| processor.
|
| Here are some spec comparisons for the time being:
|
| - https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-1804-vs-a...
|
| - https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-1804-vs-q...
| pmart123 wrote:
| Perhaps it is due to less data copying and configuring the
| right processor for the job in Apple's benchmarks? Most CPU
| benchmarks wouldn't be testing the performance characteristics
| if the matrix heavy computations were done by the GPU, etc.?
| [deleted]
| alg0rith wrote:
| So... will Homebrew work on it?
| garretraziel wrote:
| I see no reason why it shouldn't. Most of homebrew is ruby
| script (that is architecture-agnostic), most of software
| installed through homebrew can be recompiled.
| saagarjha wrote:
| With a few hiccups, but it's coming along nicely.
| Yabood wrote:
| I was thinking about building a new white box media server, but
| now I'm thinking I should get the mac mini instead.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Wait, they pulled out the FAN?
| slugiscool99 wrote:
| This is the best part
| r00fus wrote:
| Does your iPhone have a fan? It's a supercharged phone chip.
| bklyn11201 wrote:
| For sure this was expected, but the fan was actually pulled out
| in the 12" MacBook 2015 edition (dual-core Intel Core M
| processor).
| https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/176391/which-macbook-
| doesnt-have-any-fans/176393
| justincormack wrote:
| none of the 12" macbooks had fans, and the early Air's didnt,
| but the later ones did.
| abrowne wrote:
| And the latest Intel MBA doesn't have a heat pipe connecting
| the fan to the CPU.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Mac Mini still uses a fan (higher clock ???) but not the
| Macbook Air.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Not exactly revolutionary. I'm typing this on a fanless Intel
| 7th generation "Kaby Lake" laptop where the CPU's TDP is only
| 6W.
| motoboi wrote:
| If you think about it, it has the biggest cooling surface in
| any notebook. It's the aluminium case.
| randyrand wrote:
| which is pressed against my legs =(
| reilly3000 wrote:
| I think the big news for developers is: - iOS apps run on M1
| desktops - x86 apps are supported and sometimes outperforms vs
| Intel.
| dreamer7 wrote:
| The iPhone-like speed of waking up from sleep itself is enough to
| convince many of us to go for the M1 macbooks
| highfrequency wrote:
| How long does it take the current gen of macbooks to wake from
| sleep, ~1 second?
| entropea wrote:
| With two external displays plugged in, 10-15 seconds,
| sometimes more. Without any, 1-2 seconds.
| gabagool wrote:
| I genuinely would love some info or statistics on this. AFAIC
| remember, laptops wake from sleep almost instantly to the
| lock screen. Is it a longer wait if one wakes directly to
| their desktop?
|
| I'm with you in not fully understanding the benefit. Maybe
| this is a technology that is hard to imagine, but is
| difficult to go back from (60hz, Retina displays).
| brundolf wrote:
| I think there's a conceptual difference. Macbooks wake up
| after a brief pause of a second or two; phones act like
| they never went to sleep. There's this perception of
| locking your phone being a zero-cost thing, which isn't
| quite true of putting your laptop to sleep. I assume this
| is the gap they're talking about bridging.
| carstenhag wrote:
| Takes some seconds in my experience. And about 10 in total
| for both of my external displays to be displaying useful
| stuff. Definitely annoying.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| The displays always seem to be the challenge.
|
| With my Mac Pro, as soon as I wake it, I can see the LED on
| my monitors are 'alive', but it still takes that same 10s
| or so to be displaying data.
|
| Also on macOS, if you have an always-on VPN, that can
| absolutely cause wake time challenges.
| jonplackett wrote:
| It's pretty instantaneous already.
| dmitriid wrote:
| They had that in 2007. In 12 years this somehow became a
| selling point.
| wtetzner wrote:
| Because they lost it somewhere along the way.
| mariopt wrote:
| For the first time in a while I'm actually excited to see what is
| possible when the hardware and software are built by the same
| company.
|
| These CPUs aren't meant for professionals but 18 to 20 hours of
| battery without all the heat from Intel CPUs is really nice.
|
| Shame they didn't mention clock speeds
| sam0x17 wrote:
| 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?
| asimpletune wrote:
| Also, mb air has no touch bar, but includes fingerprint scanner.
| I'm sure a lot hackernews will be pleased with that, despite it
| not being in a machine with the pro moniker.
| aledalgrande wrote:
| I was so hoping the Pro might have the same option, but no.
| kayson wrote:
| I'm very curious to see some real benchmarks. I have no doubt
| that they've achieved state of the art efficiency using 5nm, but
| I have a harder time believing that they can outperform the
| highest end of AMD and Intel's mobile offerings by so much
| (especially without active cooling). Their completely unit-less
| graph axes are really something...
| saagarjha wrote:
| Someone will probably Geekbench it by next week.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > (especially without active cooling)
|
| It seems likely the higher end of the performance curves are
| only attainable on the systems with active cooling. Or at least
| only sustainable with active cooling. So the MacBook Air would
| still realize the efficiency gains, but never the peak
| performance on that chart.
| jonplackett wrote:
| They can probably out perform them, but only for a few
| seconds/minutes. That's why they put a fan in the pro.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| Which actually sounds like a good fit for a dev machine,
| where you only compile once in a while, but do not sustain
| high loads
| vmchale wrote:
| My compiles take like 8 minutes at worst.
| jonplackett wrote:
| You'd hit thermal throttling way before 8 minutes I'd
| guess.
|
| A lot of my iPhone app builds are pretty quick though, <
| 1 minute.
| hajile wrote:
| I did a lot of development on a pixelbook. Things were
| mostly fine for development, but compiling took 2-3x as
| long due to throttling.
|
| Our unit tests took around 30 minutes on a fast system
| though and were simply not worth running outside of the
| specific tests I was writing.
| the8472 wrote:
| _looks at 1-hour compile-test runs on a threadripper_ yes,
| of course, great fit.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Seems silly to do that compile/test on a laptop instead
| of a server.
| vmchale wrote:
| Well they're advertising XCode so
| skummetmaelk wrote:
| A mac server?
| kkarakk wrote:
| if you have a server for on demand compiles why would you
| buy a macbook over el cheapo linux machine? besides
| vanity ofc
| McAtNite wrote:
| It's a great option for office work.
|
| Need a day off? Have some errands? Hit the compile
| button.
| ehsankia wrote:
| So if I understand they have the exact same chip in the Air
| as the Pro? Will better thermal make that much of a
| difference? Is there really that big of a reason to get Pro
| over Air at this point?
| jonplackett wrote:
| Better thermal will make a big difference for anything
| where you need high power for a long period. Like editing
| video for example. Anything where you need only shorter
| bursts of power won't make as big of a difference.
|
| But better thermals will probably mean they can run the CPU
| in the Pro at higher base clock speed anyway, so it will
| probably be faster than the air all around - we'll have to
| wait for benchmarks to know for sure though.
| bla3 wrote:
| If they could outperform AMD/Intel today, they would've offered
| 16" MBPs / iMacs / Mac Pros. Today, they have power-efficient
| chips, so they converted their low-end machines, and Mini so
| that companies porting their software can start migrating their
| build farms.
| acchow wrote:
| They probably beat AMD/Intel on perf/power efficiency, which
| is why it makes sense for MBA and 13" MBP.
|
| The smaller machines are also likely held back by cooling
| solutions, so if you have Intel beat on power efficiency in a
| tiny form factor, you can boost your clock speed too.
| lumberingjack wrote:
| We don't even have new Zen 3 mobile chips yet if they are
| anything like the New Desktop parts we just got last week
| then everything Apple just put out is FUBAR.
| reader_mode wrote:
| Considering how AMD also beats intel on power/perf by a
| wide margin and they compared their results against Intel
| CPUs I wouldn't be surprised if their power/performance was
| close to AMD (they do have heterogeneous CPU cores which of
| course is not the case in traditional x86)
| hajile wrote:
| AMD's Smart Memory Access would like to have a word. I'd
| note that in unoptimized games, they're projecting a 5%
| performance boost between their stock overclock and SMA
| (rumors put the overclock at only around 1%).
|
| https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/smart-access-memory
| reader_mode wrote:
| I don't understand what that has to do with
| power/performance ? Did you mean to reply to someone else
| ?
| xondono wrote:
| The thing is that even new Ryzen cores start shining at >20W,
| while ARM SOCs (especially with 5nm) can do very well at these
| low power envelopes.
| grecy wrote:
| Apple's A series chips have been decimating the competition in
| phones for years now, what makes you think they can't do the
| same in this space?
| izacus wrote:
| The fact that, like in most industries, it's easy to catch up
| and very hard to beat once you do. It's very telling that
| Apple didn't compare their M1 with something like AMD Zen3.
| kingnothing wrote:
| They don't use AMD processors in their current products. It
| would have been a meaningless comparison to their
| customers.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Read the fine print at the bottom, the claims they are making
| seem very..... not backed up by their testing. They chip they
| say they beat that makes them the best in the world is the last
| gen mackbook with an i7
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| Their claimed 3x faster is massive even if the baseline is
| low. And they also achieved that vs. the Mac Mini's 3.6GHz
| i3. So I don't think fastest singlethread performance is an
| outlandish claim.
|
| Historically speaking, Apple doesn't underdelivier on their
| claimed numbers. I'm excited to see what they'll do with a
| full desktop power budget.
| CraftThatBlock wrote:
| Which was severely underpowered because the cooling solution
| was knee-capped. This is partly Intel's fault, but they made
| their last-gen so underwhelming that this _had_ to be better
| [deleted]
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| I can't shake the feeling that they try to pull a fast one. For
| example, Mac mini: 3x faster CPU than the old one, and 6x faster
| in graphics. At the same time 5x faster than the "top selling PC
| desktop". What is the top selling PC desktop that it's
| essentially at the level of a 2018 mac mini, or below? Is that
| desktop at the same price level?
|
| Also: People who use graphs without numbers on the axis should be
| shot on sight.
| xsmasher wrote:
| The slide doesn't say it, but the speaker said "in the same
| price range."
| taf2 wrote:
| Amazing when Steve announced the transition to Intel, he also
| mentioned the transition to Mac OS X and how that should set up
| up for at least the next 20 years... That was almost 20 years
| ago... I can see a new OS for Mac soon that maybe brings OSX even
| closer to iOS?
| jjmarinho wrote:
| That's Big Sur. It's actually versioned as Mac OS 11 and brings
| macOS much closer to iOS in terms of feel and looks.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| > Amazing when Steve announced the transition to Intel, he also
| mentioned the transition to Mac OS X and how that should set up
| up for at least the next 20 years... That was almost 20 years
| ago... I can see a new OS for Mac soon that maybe brings OSX
| even closer to iOS?
|
| You're a little confused. Those were two very separate
| transitions. Mac OS X came out in 2001. Intel Macs came out in
| 2006.
| centimeter wrote:
| How many years has the 13" MBP been stuck at 16GB RAM now? 7?
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| People keep saying this but with super fast SSDs and I/O is it
| really necesssry? Especially in a small laptop. You have to
| remember more ram means more power consumption and also a
| longer time to sleep/wake.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| No FaceID, interesting.
|
| I thought they might use FaceID as a "Pro" only feature like they
| do on the iPads but nope, they also released an updated 13"
| MacBook Pro without FaceID.
| satysin wrote:
| No 32GB options on _any_ of the models announced today is a
| shame. Or not I guess as it means I won 't be buying anything
| today
|
| M1 looks impressive, hopefully it scales as well to higher TDPs.
|
| Pretty much what I expected today with all the low power models
| getting updated.
|
| With no fan I expect the Air will throttle the CPU quickly when
| using the high performance cores. Calling it an "8-core CPU" is a
| little cheeky IMHO but I guess everyone does it.
|
| Looking at the config options it seems the CPU/SoC is literally
| the "M1" and that's it. No different speeds like before so
| apparently the _same_ CPU /SoC in the Pro and the Air? I guess
| the fans in the Pro will allow the high performance more headroom
| but still kinda odd. I wonder if that will carry over to the 16"
| MBP next year?
|
| I am _disappointed_ to see the design is _identical_ to what we
| currently have. I was hoping we would see a little refinement
| with thinner screen bezels, perhaps a slightly thicker lid to fit
| in a better web cam (rather than just better "image processing")
| and FaceID.
|
| Overall I am disappointed due to 16GB max RAM and the same old
| design. I guess we will see the bigger machines get updates
| sometimes between March and July 2021.
|
| Also are we calling it the M1 CPU or the M1 SoC?
| arjonagelhout wrote:
| > Also are we calling it the M1 CPU or the M1 SoC?
|
| The M1 Chip: https://www.apple.com/mac/m1/
| skohan wrote:
| > I am very disappointed to see the design is identical to what
| we currently have
|
| Yeah one possible explanation I can think of is that they're
| not 100% confident in how rollout will go, and they want to
| avoid the situation where people in the wild are showing off
| their "brand new macs" which are still going through teething
| issues. There's less chance of souring the brand impression of
| M1 if they blend into the product line better.
|
| Alternatively, maybe they want to sell twice to early adopters:
| once for the new chip, and again in 12-18 months when they
| release a refreshed design.
| batmenace wrote:
| I think it could also be that a lot of people will be
| 'calmed' by the design they're used to when you're trying to
| convince them of a new chip the average consumer might not
| understand
| skohan wrote:
| I don't know about that, I think the confident move would
| have been to release the new chips along with a big design
| update.
|
| As you say, I think the average consumer doesn't understand
| the difference between an Intel chip and an Apple chip, and
| will probably not understand what if anything has changed
| with these new products.
|
| I would say developers would be the group which would be
| most anxious about an architecture change (which is
| probably why this announcement was very technically-
| oriented), and developers on average are probably going to
| understand that design changes and architecture changes
| basically orthogonal, and thus won't be comforted that much
| by a familiar design.
|
| On the other side, average consumers probably aren't all
| that anxious due to the arch change, and _would_ be more
| convinced that something new and exciting was happening if
| it actually _looked_ different.
| hybridtupel wrote:
| Also just two ports on a PRO model. C'mon there is plenty of
| room on both sides. Maybe lets it look elegant but then the
| cable mess will be on the desk, thanks.
| antipaul wrote:
| 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
| xienze wrote:
| > Or not I guess as it means I won't be buying anything today
|
| Honestly, people who don't use their computers as Facebook
| machines or have very specific things they want to do with the
| ML engine should probably stay away from Arm Macs for a couple
| years. There's bound to be plenty of software that doesn't work
| or doesn't work well, Docker will have ~limited usefulness
| until more and more people publish Arm images, etc. Plus I'm
| waiting for the typical Apple move of screwing early adopters
| by announcing that next year's model is 3x as fast, $200
| cheaper, etc.
| 2ion wrote:
| Will Apple to transparent emulation (x86-on-ARM) or just not
| run x86 binaries?
| wffurr wrote:
| Rosetta 2 is a x86_64 to ARM64 translation layer.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_silicon/abo
| u...
|
| Some things still won't run though. Among other issues,
| there's a page size difference (16 kb vs 4 kb) that bit
| Chrome (since fixed): https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/
| issues/detail?id=110219...
| diehunde wrote:
| I didn't watch the event, but if you have an Intel MacBook,
| will everything keep working as it is now? Even when
| upgrading to Big Sur?
| Kognito wrote:
| Yeah, there's no change for Intel Mac owners really. Given
| Apple will still be selling Intel Macs through 2021 and
| likely 2022, I'd expect them to be fully supported through
| something like 2026/7 (though your exact model may vary
| depending on its current age).
| k0stas wrote:
| > No 32GB options on any of the models announced today is a
| shame. Or not I guess as it means I won't be buying anything
| today
|
| I think this was the fastest way to get something out quickly
| and cover as many SKUs as possible.
|
| We'll need to wait for the next/larger SKU models to get out of
| the 16B / 2TB / 2-port limitations. Maybe they should call
| those devices the Macbook Pro Max.
|
| I wonder how many more SKUs will be needed. Obviously they are
| going to minimize them, but will they be able to cover Macbook
| Pro 16", iMac, iMac Pro and Mac Pro with only one (unlikely) or
| two (likely) more SKUs?
| sercand wrote:
| > I am very disappointed to see the design is identical to what
| we currently have
|
| Lot's of moving parts in a single generation is risky for
| scheduling and changing CPU architecture is huge enough for a
| generation change.
| ameen wrote:
| Especially since it's unified memory between the CPU and GPU -
| no wonder they were showing off mobile games on a desktop
| device
| wmf wrote:
| 13" has always had unified memory.
| userbinator wrote:
| ...for portable Mac _non-general-purpose_ computers...
|
| How much are you willing to bet that there will be next to no
| public documentation for this SoC, just like with all the other
| tablet/phone ones out there? This is a scary turn of events - I
| still remember when Apple introduced their x86 transition and
| focused on how you could also run Windows on their "branded PCs",
| and the openness and standardisation was much welcomed... but
| then Apple slowly started to change that, and now they are on
| their way to locking down everything under their control.
| b20000 wrote:
| OK, 8 cores, but big little config, so probably 4x A53 + 4x A72.
| So nothing revolutionary new here IMHO. Where is the 16 core A72
| SoC we all want?
| Xcelerate wrote:
| I've been using my Macbook Pro Retina ever since it was first
| released in 2012 and haven't been impressed enough to upgrade
| since then. It's on its last leg though and this upgrade looks
| exciting for a change. I hope they release the updated 16 inch
| soon. Not thrilled they insist on keeping the touch bar, but
| other than that this seems like they are headed in a good
| direction.
| dschuler wrote:
| The most important feature of an M1-based Mac will likely be OS
| support into the distant future. I'm still using a 2012 rMBP,
| which was the first-gen retina version, and it's held up much
| better than any other computer I've ever bought, partly due to OS
| support into 2020. I imagine Apple will stand behind this new
| generation for a long time as well.
|
| The new M1 SOCs max out at 16GB RAM, which seems like a major
| limitation, but the timing and latency of this integrated RAM is
| probably much better than what you could otherwise achieve.
| Meanwhile, improved SSD performance will probably have a larger
| impact on the whole system. I remember when I bought a 15k RPM
| hard drive ca. 2005 - it was like a new computer. Upgrading the
| slowest part of the storage hierarchy made the largest
| difference.
|
| One slight disappointment in the Mac mini is the removal of two
| USB C / Thunderbolt ports and no option for 10G ethernet vs. the
| Intel model. An odd set of limitations in 2020.
|
| Overall, at the price they're offering the Mac mini (haven't
| really considered the other models for myself), I think it's ok
| to take the plunge.
|
| - Sent from my Dell hackintosh
| BossingAround wrote:
| > Overall, at the price they're offering the Mac mini (haven't
| really considered the other models for myself), I think it's ok
| to take the plunge.
|
| I thought the same. I actually wonder whether the low prices
| aren't due to the App support being extremely limited at this
| point (basically only first party stuff)
| beervirus wrote:
| It sucks that the SSD is (presumably) not upgradeable anymore.
| Apple generally charges a ton for the larger SSD offerings, but
| it used to be that you could just buy a base model and replace
| the thing later.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Use external drives. They're cheaper and way larger.
| beervirus wrote:
| And slower. And one bumped cable away from corrupted data.
|
| No thanks, not for my boot drive.
| dschuler wrote:
| Apple positions itself as being on the side of the consumer,
| and while they never really justified their soldered-down RAM
| (on laptops), one _might_ argue that it reduced failure
| rates. It's interesting that IBM discovered that soldering
| RAM to the individual compute modules in the Blue Gene/L (ca.
| 2004-2007) did improve reliability, in part because they had
| 2^16 modules in one cluster. I don't really buy that argument
| for laptop RAM, and especially not for SSDs, but I'm not sure
| if there's anything that can push back against Apple other
| than plain old competition, which they're trying to distance
| themselves from as much as possible, of course.
| Xni9ne wrote:
| I think you must wait till the work with this devices How you
| know ? we have m1 here and how you know it is not like a series ?
| in iphone we have 6gb of ram at performance of 12 or more apple
| doesn't work at numbers and it is stil supporting more rams on
| intel processors wait and see ehat was apple magic
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