This is going to be interesting…
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Will be interesting to see the market reaction over rest of week.
AAPL was up a little over 3% today, so some insider chit-chat out to analysts may have already priced this in.
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It’ll probably be a big step from when they went powerpc to intel x86. The issue I see is they’re segmenting the even more niche Mac market, but they have a huge iOS device market so it’s understandable. They’re still one of the most profitable companies ever, so I’m sure it won’t hurt them.
Problem was, the PPC had MUCH more efficient performance in that Intel took more clock ticks to do the same operations due to the x86 legacy it had to support. Apple went Intel because Motorola couldn’t guarantee future incremental speed gains over the long haul with the processors they manufactured, and at the time clock speed was everything in adverts - it was all that joe consumer could grasp for comparisons. Motorola was signalling they didn’t want to continue development on PPC and their other PPC partner, IBM, was flailing as a company and trying to close out their desktop hardware business. Writing was on the wall for that path so AAPL started compiling OSX with other processors to be sure.
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8 core ARM processor, and it is a screamer. It’s cool to see ARM grow out of ucomp low end devices, through phones, and now up to desktops. I think Apple will acquit themselves well, as they usually do.
pic is an ARM Cortex M4
Will they pull it off? Sure, lots of people will buy it. Something like the MacBook Air would be great for my retired parents. I think a lot of people who want a computer for basic tasks and don’t give a shit beyond that would love it.
The marketing is extraordinarily misleading and it’s objectively a slow computer. I suspect the processor they’re comparing it to is the previous MacBook Air processor which is one of the worst processors you could possibly buy even when it was brand new. Despite the “Pro” names they’ve turned their back on professional users. Nobody needs a machine with a maximum of 16GB of memory and integrated graphics. The M1 is a joke for anything beyond basic tasks.
Their future “Pro” offerings will be a joke too but they’ll pitch it like it’s a supercomputer. It’s what they did with the half-assed Mac Pro in 2013 and 2019. This is the last nail in the coffin for Apple being taken seriously as a computer manufacturer in my opinion. Anyone still developing professional applications probably won’t continue to support macOS (scientific, engineering, visualization, etc.).
In general I think competition is good so I’m glad someone is trying to use ARM for mainstream computing besides phones. I just wish it wasn’t in such a sleazy anti-consumer way that Apple has become known for.
See that circle in the left/west corner of the chip? That’s the patented Apple M1 Integrated Quantum Ring ™. It provided quantum tunnel access that enhances overall user experience to the AAPL-th degree!
Apple will never be the bleeding edge of speed or performance, but competitors who beat them are usually upstarts who appear and vanish quickly.
There is a synergy between Human-OS-Machine. Apple/Adobe swallowed an entire industry I was in, by focusing on “the experience” (and stealing a lot of our tech). This hasn’t been so easy for Apple in the next-gen 3/4-D rendering, and of course server farming. Dell acquired Alienware to address their top end workstation deficiency, and they aren’t bad, but to my knowledge they can’t stack 8 NVidia cards on multiple i9 CPUs. As for server farms/clouds, I don’t think any big box brand will ever top that performance list, its always a “cook” in big houses.
I was skeptical of the performance too but this article made me rethink that. Tldr, the A14 from the iPhone has single thread performance better than Intel and only just behind zen 3, so it’s certainly conceivable that the higher TDP Macbook Air version could take that performance crown.
Kind of insane to me that Intel might soon be third in CPU performance in the laptop market. If you’d have said that 5 years ago I don’t think anyone would’ve believed you.
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Thanks for sharing the article. The single core performance is better than I would’ve thought. That’s good because it creates credible competition in at least one area. It’s still sleazy Apple style though like memory soldered on the motherboard. Grumble, grumble… 
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Speaking of sleazy Apple stuff. Holy shit.
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To be pedantic, I believe the ram in the M1 is integrated on the SoC itself, not a separate chip on the main board.
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My next laptop will be Linux or I may go all in on Qubes if I can find compatible hardware I like.
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First time I can remember hearing of this…thanks for mentioning!
lololol…“A reasonably secure operating system”
Also something about “if you’re willing to put in the effort it’s secure”.
Isn’t the same true for Win10?
If this is slow, what then would then be a fast computer I could buy for the same price? Thanks.
What’s the use case? Dependent on a specific operating system or open? Screen size requirements? Display requirements?
There’s so many variables as to what makes a computer better than another for a given person, at a specific price point.
I think what Luke was saying here is that a lot of people are bought into the ecosystem already, and for them when they don’t need anything fancy it will do just fine. However for the price point it’s silly for someone looking for more performance in general without factoring in the ecosystem or aesthetics.
Thanks. I’m just asking for a gut feel, not for anyone to put work into it. My applications are fairly light. Maybe the M1 would be overkill. Now I use an 8 year old Mac mini. Yes, It’s slow because it has little memory (2G). Maybe I should just upgrade the memory first.
Let’s use the Mac mini for example. With 16GB of RAM and 2TB of storage it’s $1,699.00 plus taxes. Keep in mind this doesn’t come with a keyboard or mouse (which are an extra $248.00 from Apple). It comes with a power cable and that’s it. The cheapest display Apple sells for it is $699.95 and it’s a 24" 4K display. That’s a total of $2,865.32 which is far from the $699.00 making headlines. The machine at the entry level price has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. That’s not a practical computer and people who buy that model will end up buying hundreds of dollars worth of external storage (and probably a new computer in a couple of years with more RAM since they can’t upgrade it).
What else could you get for the money? From HP you can get an Omen 30L with a Core i7-10700K (8 cores), 32GB of RAM, 2TB NVMe, RTX 3080 GPU, and an Envy 27" 4K display (also IPS panel type like the LG from Apple). Similar if not better CPU performance, double the RAM, bigger display with the same panel type and resolution, and way higher performance GPU that’s not even in the same ballpark. Plus everything is upgradable and you can choose what OS you run on it. With taxes this is $2,835.05 which is a bit cheaper. It comes with the typical HP keyboard and optical mouse. To recap…
- 8 cores (4 fast + 4 slow) vs 8 cores (8 fast)
- 16GB RAM non-upgradable vs 32GB RAM upgradable to 128GB
- Integrated GPU that’s non-upgradable vs dedicated RTX 3080 with 10GB of VRAM
- Not upgradable at all vs upgradable in every possible way
The only reason to get the Mac mini is reliance on the Apple ecosystem (like Final Cut Pro). An argument could be made for space and power constraints but there are non-Apple options that are competitive there too. For any other scenario it’s a no-brainer to go with the HP (or any of the other practically unlimited options from hundreds of vendors). The HP would be practical for at least 5 years and easily longer with upgrades. I’d be surprised if the Mac mini was still relevant in any meaningful way in 5 years with only 16GB of RAM. If you want to get into building a machine then the comparison gets hilariously lopsided.
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The entry level Mac mini might a good fit then. Especially if you’re getting by with 2GB of RAM in 2020.
That would help a lot. Especially with modern websites which use way more RAM than they did when that computer was new. Ironically you wouldn’t be able to do this with the new Mac mini. 
Edit: Just looked up the 2012 model. It’s upgradable to 16GB of RAM. The irony here is staggering.
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