wait for benchmarks, u will look like a fool, if these are powerful chips
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Anyone else feel that Apple nailed it with the new Apple Silicon machines?
- Thread starter Moakesy
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The new Tiger Lake supposed to have a much better battery life as well - not sure what are the numbers exactly...
The average consumer won’t buy a laptop for 999$, it would buy an entry-mid Intel based laptop for 500-600$ and that would be more than enough.
is the Air much better than it’s competitors that cost 999$ as well?
It’s probably faster and works better (I do think Macs in general are very good computers..) but they are not this giant technological leap as Apple as presents it.
they are presenting it like they did something unbelievable and something of a technological breakthrough - i’m just being a bit more skeptical because they decided the Air was 999$, so we need to compare it to an Intel based 999$.
also, using a comparison against a 8th generation Intel i3 is just being dishonest.
Not to mention that for the first time Intel is behind in the manufacturing process and that also lets them have the edge in terms of Performance per Watt...
I'm waiting until after Jan 1st to get one (you know, Christmas moneys and all) but I'm pretty damn positive about it. I knew it had potential, but seeing the benchmarks is pretty extraordinary. It'll be worth it to me to endure the growing pains of a new architecture, instead of dropping $2200+ on an "old" platform.
But it being as fast and efficient as it is, IS a technological leap. This is just the first version, and the difference is already massive.
I get 50+ tracks with plugins in Logic, on a six year old quad MBP with 16GB of RAM, as well as editing 4K projects in FCP. You're just trolling.
I must add to this (yes I think apple nailed it) that they nailed it from another aspect too.
I've not seen most tech forums this lively for a long time. It is really fun now for once.
It's great to have discussions (flame wars) with people claiming that it sucks because of desktop cpu X (completely forgetting that we are comparing a mobile CPU for apples low end laptops/mac mini with high end desktop CPUs).
I've not seen most tech forums this lively for a long time. It is really fun now for once.
It's great to have discussions (flame wars) with people claiming that it sucks because of desktop cpu X (completely forgetting that we are comparing a mobile CPU for apples low end laptops/mac mini with high end desktop CPUs).
The Air is better than Tiger Lake and AMD Ryzen laptops costing $500 more
It certainly is. It’s a 15watt chip (which can be cooled passively) that has CPU performance of much bigger chips and GPU performance of entry level dedicated GPUs. It is kind of difficult to downplay the significance of this leap if yiu are informed about the state of consumer hardware.
Who prevents you from doing your own comparisons?
It’s the case on every computer, even the ones with dGPUs and dedicated video RAM. The data has to go through the system RAM anyway, and it’s often mirrored to facilitate fast copies.
Besides, M1 has some fancy video RAM compression. Case in point:
They targeted correctly.
Airs, 13 inch Pros, and minis all performed horribly. They were truly the lower end of the Mac ecsystem. So bumping them up with a respectable to massive performance spike was GOOD for those.
I can finally upgrade from my trusty old 2011 (yes, you heard that right) Mac mini...or let it just run Windows 10 exclusively.
Airs, 13 inch Pros, and minis all performed horribly. They were truly the lower end of the Mac ecsystem. So bumping them up with a respectable to massive performance spike was GOOD for those.
I can finally upgrade from my trusty old 2011 (yes, you heard that right) Mac mini...or let it just run Windows 10 exclusively.
I‘m not sure what part of “I work on my Mac every day and never exceeded the 8GB of RAM that’s in the machine“ you didn’t understand.
Not everyone (in fact, most) people who use Macs don’t have or need mega specs, because most people aren‘t using their Macs for 4K video editing, complex 3D modelling etc.
I don’t know how people can say the mini is a downgrade. Ok, i Get the lack of ports and ram limit is a bit disappointing, but on the whole it’s pretty amazing in my book.
did people miss the part in the presentation where they were playing back 8K clips in Resolve (not an Apple app) without dropping frames? This is on the lowest spec’d AS Mac, it just mind boggling. As a camera man (with an 8K camera) I can finally buy a cheap Mac and review shots, do basic editing and colour grading before handing off material
did people miss the part in the presentation where they were playing back 8K clips in Resolve (not an Apple app) without dropping frames? This is on the lowest spec’d AS Mac, it just mind boggling. As a camera man (with an 8K camera) I can finally buy a cheap Mac and review shots, do basic editing and colour grading before handing off material
They didn't nail it for me. I've been holding off upgrading...waiting for the new models....but the limitation of just 1 external monitor is a deal breaker for me. It's a complete non-starter. I suspect that for a lot of graphic professionals this will be the case. It's really surprising to me. I honestly don't understand why anyone would purchase a Pro over an Air at this point....but that kind of leaves the entire community of Pro users left hanging.
Really crappy position to be in at this point. Need to upgrade soon....but definitely would prefer not to upgrade in to an Intel machine. But may have no choice. Grrrr.
TBH looks incredibly promising. I will be waiting for a model with 32 GB of RAM, but at that point im in.
Not sure I follow what you're getting at. This update is for the base models, not the ones most used by graphics pros. (Do you use a base 13"?) The base models may still be perfectly suitable for pros who don't use more than one external monitor. The rest will have to stick with the Intel models until next year when the higher-up models are updated.
Is your Mac falling apart? Why do you have to upgrade now and not within the next year? Then you can probably have the Mac you want
I'm with others who have critiqued this comment. It's a classic example of hyperbole in service of an individual's personal workflow and preferred apps.
I've written books, done major statistical analysis, conducted federal and state project evaluations, worked with large databases and spreadsheets, run full-blown astronomical programs, etc. and all with “only” 8GB.
Things worked speedily, fluidly, and accurately. It was real work, it was “doing something”, and getting paid well for it.
Now, if I had been doing large-scale 3-D modeling, architectural rendering, long movie editing, etc., I likely would have upgraded. But a run-of-the-mill 13” MacBook Air worked like a champ — and one nearly a decade old still does, too!
Especially for a first generation, Apple totally nailed it. And for those naysayers the Intel versions are still available. Everybody has options to get the machines they need.
This is so exciting. The only two times I've been this excited was during the G5 keynote introduction, and then the Intel keynote introduction just a couple years later. This one beats both of them, IMO.
I agree completely with the OP. Going after the lower end machines first makes the most sense. Many of those users only use web browser, and Apple-made apps. I fall mostly in that category. I'm looking at the my current macs (4 various vintage laptops), and I think I'm gong to sell 3 of them, and hold onto only one Intel based machine. I just made my Mac Mini order yesterday, after seeing how good the early benchmarks are. My main use of this Mini will be iMovie for some short videos I edit for my billiard hobby.
I agree completely with the OP. Going after the lower end machines first makes the most sense. Many of those users only use web browser, and Apple-made apps. I fall mostly in that category. I'm looking at the my current macs (4 various vintage laptops), and I think I'm gong to sell 3 of them, and hold onto only one Intel based machine. I just made my Mac Mini order yesterday, after seeing how good the early benchmarks are. My main use of this Mini will be iMovie for some short videos I edit for my billiard hobby.
Apple was comparing performance against the previous generation MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models with the i7.
Also, when comparing PCs at $999, also consider that a $999 Mac comes with a lot of software.
From what i understood they have tested it against prev baseline models - if i'm not mistaken they have said it a few times.
They have a lot of software, but i think Windows came a long way with the software as default (bloats the OS like crazy if u ask me) and nowdays Office is pretty much free (google office suite) so i don't consider that as too much of a diff..
In the fine print on their website, they say they tested the MacBook Air against the 2020 1.2GHz i7 model, and the MacBook Pro against the 2019/2020 1.7 GHz i7 model.
I'm not saying it's not better than Tiger Lake - it is better than Tiger Lake and that's a fact.
The discussion i'm trying to have and argue is that it's not a chip design breakthrough like Apple is claiming for, especially when u take into account the fact that TSMC took the lead in manufacturing technology which gives them the edge they have now finally, exactly like AMD have released a better desktop chip than Intel with their new Ryzen series.
they didn't invent the wheel of chip design and gave us 3X times performance from anything else existing in the market - they did a good progress in chip performance (after a while now it had been quite stuck due to Intel's difficulties in advancing their manufacturing technology...) , and kept the prices low, which for us consumers, is the most important thing.
What is remarkable about Apple chips is that they match the performance of anything else out there at significantly lower power consumption — not 10% or 20% lower (which would already be a noteworthy achievement), but 70% lower. In another words, Apple needs 3-4 times less power than AMD (and about 4-5 times less power than 10nm Intel) to reach the same performance target.
Sure, you might say that this is all because TSMC's advanced process... and it certainly plays a role, but you cannot use the 7nm to 5nm shrink to explain all of A14 performance and energy efficiency, because A13 already was both performant and energy efficient. And A14 is not just a shrink, it significantly increases the cache size and adds additional execution units, making the CPU even wider.
Apple's main technological achievement — as I see it at least — is that they are able to make a relatively "slow" CPU (frequency-wise) that has an unprecedented level of instruction level parallelism. Both Intel and AMD rely on high frequencies to reach high performance. Apple instead relies on out-of-order execution of instructions. It is frankly a bit of a mystery how they do it. The "common wisdom" states that the data dependencies in the code will quickly limit how much instruction you can run in parallel, but somehow Apple broke it. Their CPUs are so superscalar that it puts any other design to shame.
The drawback of their approach of course is that their CPUs are so complex that they cannot run the same high frequencies as x86 CPUs can. What you say is essentially — their chips are not any faster than state of the art Intel or AMD chips, they just can do this with less power. But — and forgive me for using this unoriginal phrase — you are missing the point.
In the last decade, as CPU designers found themselves unable to further increase the speed of their CPUs, they kind of managed to hack the problem by going around it. Multi-core designs became a norm. As many important workloads benefit from multithreading, this allowed the performance gains to continue. But it created a new problem: power-hungry x86 CPUs had to be clocked down significantly in order to prevent multi-core chips from melting, which in turn had negative impact on performance. It was not long time ago when gamers would choose dual-core CPUs before quad-core ones, because the dual-core were running faster clock. This problem was "solved" by turbo boost technology. Now the cores could dynamically switch between power-hungry single core mode and more energy-efficient multi-code mode, making these CPUs very flexible. But turbo boost again brings it's own share of problems (unpredictable performance, user confusion, etc. etc.).
Apple's CPUs kind of break the system. They might not be significantly faster per se. than other high-end CPU designs, but their energy efficiency allows than to stack multiple cores without having to downclock them that much. An Apple A14 CPU core can run at 3.0ghz consuming around 5 watts, while having the performance that equals a Tiger Lake core at 4.5-4.8 ghz. Apple could pack 8 those cores into a 45W CPU literally tomorrow, if they wanted (and in fact, we will see them coming out next summer). When do you think Intel or AMD are going to release an 8-core CPU that can run with each core sustaining 4.5 ghz? Two years? Four years? Will they ever?
And this is the point that you are missing. We already see a quad-core entry-level Apple CPU, running at 10-15W that outperforms an 8-core AMD CPU running at 25W. This is indeed a 2x performance advantage. They could make it a 3x performance advantage by scaling up the number of cores and using higher TDP targets. And of course, they have GPUs that are 2x-3x faster per watt than any competition...