Anyone else feel that Apple nailed it with the new Apple Silicon machines?

[Shivetya]

Declaring the market as not being the Pro market is kind of silly the way Apple bandies around the Pro label and even gave us the MBP. Sounds like you are making excuses.

I am going to await some real benchmarks and thermal numbers. I do not need a lap burner and I seriously doubt the MBA performs as well as the MBP or Mini let alone as long without throttling

 

[boss.king]

I don't think they nailed it. Not that I think they needed to go for the high-end, but I'm underwhelmed by them bringing out the same 2016 design for the fourth year in a row, even down to the 720p webcam. We'll have to wait for benchmarks to see how they actually perform since Apple told us basically nothing about that, but if the intention was to show users that it's still the same old mac with a new processor - good job, it really is a 2016 laptop in 2020.

 

[PeterJP]

I can understand they want to launch 'entry level' machines first, but most users in that tier in my organisation just want their applications to work. I want to see how the M1 is going to perform with things like Outlook and Excel first. I also have a lot of users who don't really need heavy duty machines but who do quite a bit of video clipping on short videos in HD for social media (in my book, heavy lifting is either long video - 2 hours or more - or 4k). Curious how that will work in emulation. Good to see Photoshop has been announced, but we use Premiere even more. We also have a number of web apps that require Chrome.

So I understand and like the way they've positioned the new machines, but I voted wait & see, clearly.

 

[Zazoh]

no matter how ARM handles memory it doesn't change the fact that some projects just need more memory. Doing 3D work is one of those fields. You can easily fill up 16gigs of memory with high poly counts, sub polygon displacement and big rendering resolutions. These things just gobble up memory. It's just a lot of data that need to be processed.

On top of that memory is now shared between the CPU and GPU which makes things even worse
I've easily had GPU renders taking 12 gigs of GPU memory which means the system now has to work with the 4 gigs left.

And we haven't even covered multitasking and other memory hungry apps like Photoshop or music.
No matter how you cut it 16GB of RAM is not enough in 2020. 10 years ago would be fine. But now no. It's not enough.

I'm usually a pessimist. But with regards to memory, it may be enough for most. Historically Apply supplies to people who don't care on one side and people who care deeply on the other side. The true professionals who really need to push the computing power.

To that end, I do find it odd that they basically gave two devices the same specs and call one pro. But let's face it, that entry level Pro is not for the true professional line. In fact, they didn't even touch those machines yet. This launch was about the core consumer now, as it matures it will be for the professional later.

I suspect, without evidence, the extra RAM which is on the same chip really cuts into performance and or heat and they are still working on that. The consumer is going to care more about quiet and battery life, then they are doing 3d work, as that is a professional use case.

 

[PeterJP]

Definitely the right strategy, but I was hoping for a redesign to show off the new chips. From a business perspective, I get why they wouldn't do this, but I still think it misses a good opportunity to market these machines as the future.

There's a lot of evidence that performing two major changes at the same time is a bad idea. At a certain point in processor design there had been so many problems that Intel explicitely split up processor design and process technology into separate tick-tock steps, with great success. Same thing here: it's a completely new interior, so it's good practice to keep the externals the same.

 

[Daverich4]

As a heavy Photoshop user I won’t be replacing my 2020 Mini with 64 GB of Ram with the new Mini anytime soon.

 

[Ocnetgeek]

I've ordered a M1 Mac Mini, so guess what I answered in the poll

I was on the fence about what to order and ended up with the Mac mini as well. Decided that since the hardware was pretty much the same across the new models the Mini was the cheapest way to try out the new chip1. Can't really complain that with a work discount I was able to get a Mini with 16Gb of Memory and 1Tb Storage with the new M1 for just under $1400 with AppleCare included.

 

[Spindel]

I was on the fence about what to order and ended up with the Mac mini as well. Decided that since the hardware was pretty much the same across the new models the Mini was the cheapest way to try out the new chip1. Can't really complain that with a work discount I was able to get a Mini with 16Gb of Memory and 1Tb Storage with the new M1 for just under $1400 with AppleCare included.

As I said in other threads, the Mini is replacing my late 2013 27" i5 iMac so I'll be blown away performance wise in any case.

(As a side note my 7 year old iMac runs circles around my work provided HP laptop from last year so I'll probably be even more wishing that I could get a Mac for work).

 

[leman]

Half baked? They both increased and battery exponentially.. at the same time!

Half-baked?! I'm not sure people are really grasping what Apple has achieved in an ENTRY-LEVEL chip.

Right? I am really confused about what some people are thinking. We get a $999 entry-level passively cooled laptop that has basically the same peak single-core CPU performance as an $799 CPU from AMD (one that is hailed as the most revolutionary x86 CPU ever made), and people are dissapointed?

 

[Saturn007]

Doing 3D work is one of those fields. You can easily fill up 16gigs of memory with high poly counts, sub polygon displacement and big rendering resolutions. These things just gobble up memory. It's just a lot of data that need to be processed.

No matter how you cut it 16GB of RAM is not enough in 2020. 10 years ago would be fine. But now no. It's not enough.

If you work in 3-D modeling, you need a higher-end laptop or desktop! In other words, something other than one of these new computers.

But as to the rest of us...

Even 8gb has been enough for most users; 16gb is gravy. With the apparent better memory handling of the M1, that should remain true.

Remember that many people, perhaps most, use their computers for basic chores — writing, browsing, email, light spreadsheet work, watching videos, online shopping, visiting MacRumors, etc. They don't need 32gb or even 16gb for that!

 

[UltimateSyn]

Yeah, I agree. I was fairly astonished during the keynote. I'm still having trouble deciding between the Pro and the Air, though. Their slight, gradual upsell strategy through the line often makes it hard to make the decision of when to get off the train.

 

[Omega Mac]

Half-baked?! I'm not sure people are really grasping what Apple has achieved in an ENTRY-LEVEL chip.

Apple 2020 year end is really one more thing. They didn't cringe here.

Suddenly there old lines are new again.

I see it somewhat metaphorically. The hope and dreams that existed back n the 80's if you owned an Amiga are fully realised again with this a technical milestone kind of home coming. Did you know Jobs turned up the Amga chip set, but here we are, Apple now control the whole show.

This is like full circle moment, no one on the market has an Amiga (I understand you might want to call it the Amiga-BBC-Acorn moment since it's RISC) except Apple.

No on has a product like this (that I can think of) let alone produce line like this, that is any way comparable.

I like making predictions and this is one I've held for a few years but see how all the parts are even closer.

Apple is developing it's silicon now across it's entire range, what they learned in the iPhone now comes back to us all, into the watch, now in to the mac.

NEXT

AR/VR, no one will he an M1VR chip or M1AR chip like Apple is most probably working on.

Then they tackle the screen perforamnce/manufacturing limits and push that out of the park because they have the scale.

That's the next one more thing Apples iPhone + watch know how will fold into the = VR next move.

+ devices beyond VR.

Apple chips in machines you build. Robots. Spacehships.

WTF not!?

Apple SPACE....

I dunno if anyone noticed the part forming together was a good old wink and nod to STNG / Starwars ship warping into or out of position, for a big battle scene or escape.

 

[jel888]

During yesterday's announcement, I got fed up reading all the negative comments about what was being released. I for one felt they had exactly the right approach to this.

They've started with entry level machines, so we shouldn't be comparing to high end specs of the Intel options which are still available to order. We need to compare entry level Intel to entry level AS Macs. From my perspective..

• Entry level machines are typically bought on getting acceptable performance for the right price. They are less likely to be the power users. These new machines push battery life to new levels AND give a performance boost, both of which will appeal to this market.
• Whilst quicker Intel chips remain availablle if performance is your thing, you need to pay more dollar and accept a significant battery life drop.
• As the target market is not the Pro user, any compatibility issues with higher end 'pro' software can be worked on for the next 'x' months as things settle down, ready for the next phase of releases.
• Given the performance bump, the MB Air now becomes a feasible 2nd machine for those who can afford it. You have you max spec machine at home, but have the £999 MB Air as your travel machine that is good enough for being on the road.

If they'd gone the performance route first, I can only imagine the negative comments where people say they have good speed, but no App compatibility.

For me, they did it right. They can learn valuable lessons with the lower end machines so that when they get to the high end stuff, there is less pain to be had.

Thoughts?

I felt like we're heading the right direction! And I also felt like, "Boy, Apple hasn't lost inspiration." But then they LISTEN and LEARN. And when companies include their customers opinions, follow the trends , and know how to see beyond the needs to advancing in other areas, and use all of this to make well analysed yet fast actions...we see results like this. I also very well heard what Tim Cook said towards the end, something to the effect of it's only the beginning. He said it in a way to really indicate it's a next wave of macOS (a ML/AI driven one YET with security). That will be a feat!

 

[DNichter]

There's a lot of evidence that performing two major changes at the same time is a bad idea. At a certain point in processor design there had been so many problems that Intel explicitely split up processor design and process technology into separate tick-tock steps, with great success. Same thing here: it's a completely new interior, so it's good practice to keep the externals the same.

Yea, agree with you there. I know it's the right move, I was just hoping for a redesign myself.

 

[jel888]

Not where I live sadly.

In a few more days. Patience padawan (LOL!) Though I feel the same way even though I can't purchase an upgrade now. I just bought my iMAC in 2019 and sustainability wise I can't justify a purchase just for this. My MacBook Air is 2014, but it still works like a charm, seriously, so there so I would change it. Besides, there's one thing that I (probably amongst the few) don't care for with the later MacBook Air versions, no glowing Apple.

 

[leman]

no matter how ARM handles memory it doesn't change the fact that some projects just need more memory. Doing 3D work is one of those fields. You can easily fill up 16gigs of memory with high poly counts, sub polygon displacement and big rendering resolutions. These things just gobble up memory. It's just a lot of data that need to be processed.

On top of that memory is now shared between the CPU and GPU which makes things even worse
I've easily had GPU renders taking 12 gigs of GPU memory which means the system now has to work with the 4 gigs left.

And we haven't even covered multitasking and other memory hungry apps like Photoshop or music.
No matter how you cut it 16GB of RAM is not enough in 2020. 10 years ago would be fine. But now no. It's not enough.

You are not wrong. But you have to understand that these are entry-level machines. They are not meant to do high-complexity pro workouts. You wouldn't do this kind f work on an MacBook Air, would you? So why do you expect the new MacBook Air to do it? Besides, what other laptop in this category you know that has a 32Gb option? Tiger Lake Dell XPS maxes out at 16GB — and it's more expensive and slower than even the MacBook Air. ThinkBook 15 with Tiger Lake is 16GB max — again, more expensive and slower than MBA. I understand that you want a machine more suitable for what you do, but those machines are not out yet. There is no doubt that 32GB and 64GB laptops rivaling the performance of large desktop workstation will be released next year.

The machines announced yesterday will still be great for home and office users and for people who do some creative or professional work but won't need too much RAM. They will be great for students, educators and software developers who work on low to moderate complexity codebases.

 

[BigSplash]

I suspect, without evidence, the extra RAM which is on the same chip really cuts into performance and or heat and they are still working on that. The consumer is going to care more about quiet and battery life, then they are doing 3d work, as that is a professional use case.

I don't have any evidence yet but I do think that you have it backwards. The on-die memory likely improves memory although we don't have much info on how Apple manages shared memory access. The line buffers that drive the off-die connections soak up significant power and add to latency. I think that a big part of Apple's secret sauce is the memory subsystem. On-die/package memory is expensive in terms of real estate and bigger chips mean lower yield and higher cost. The "power" chips with more memory I'm sure are coming "soon". Apple's IC engineers have demonstrated their chops and know what's needed. I'm quiet confident that there is an aggressive development roadmap on the way. The historical performance graph at anandtech shows a scary trend for Apple's competitors.

 

[leman]

I suspect, without evidence, the extra RAM which is on the same chip really cuts into performance and or heat and they are still working on that. The consumer is going to care more about quiet and battery life, then they are doing 3d work, as that is a professional use case.

And there is a simpler explanation: they wanted to do an entry-level consumer chip first and decided at 16GB as a limit for the package because that is literally the limit any other comparable laptop has (while using slower memory). To fir more memory one would need more advanced packaging technologies, most likely with some form of RAM stacking, which is going to cost more. We will see that technology in pricier Macs later.

 

[Mikael H]

They made it so that there was no clear explanation as to why one would go for a 13" Pro with M1 when the higher-end Air with M1 has the same exact specs under the hood (with the only computing power difference seeming to be passive vs. active cooling). If the Air is just as good, but I'm only sacrificing 100 nits of brightness and the Touch Bar, why do I care to go Pro?

They also launched a Mac mini that had fewer Thunderbolt 3 ports than its direct predecessor, lacked the 10GbE upgrade option, and a fourth of the maximum RAM capacitiy of the Intel mini it replaced. That one was a bit of a mess.

Otherwise, I think they targeted the correct machines and if the performance compared to the 8th Gen Intel and 10th Gen Intel Y-series is what they say it is, they are good upgrades. Hell, the Air might actually be usable this time!

The good thing with Air vs Pro with these new machines is that if you don't understand the difference, the Air is probably for you and you won't have a bad experience.

I'm wondering if the Mini means we'll see a "Mini Pro" once there's an SoC ready for it, or if they're nerfing the line outright. Again, this is a really good machine for the money, but if your flow depended on attached drives and 10GbE and a highres screen, this model is simply not for you.

 

[Justin L Franks]

None of the voting options applies to me, as I think they should have started with the lower-end stuff like they did, but definitely not given us what was shown here, unless all they released was the new Air.

The Macbook Pro and Mac Mini now only have 16 GB of RAM as their highest option. The Intel Minis could support four times as much! The Mac Mini lost its 10 gigabit Ethernet option. Half the Thunderbolt ports on the Mini. And all of the M1 Macs can no longer use an external GPU via Thunderbolt.

The lack of these features is only acceptable on the Air. It already could only be configured with 16 GB of RAM. It already had only two Thunderbolt ports. There was no option for built-in 10 gigabet Ethernet. And I highly doubt anyone was using an eGPU with an Air, unless it's just a stupid test to see if it even works.

But with the 13" Macbook Pro and the Mini, it's a completely different story. More RAM is definitely used by people. Having an eGPU to plug in to when at home and/or at work (for the MBP) and always (for the Mini) was what even allowed some people to go with the smaller MBP or the Mini in the first place. And yes, the GPU on the M1 Macs is much more powerful than the integrated graphics on the models they replaced. But the Intel HD 630 graphics would be very hard not to beat. And the M1's GPU, even if it is just as many times faster than the Intel HD 630 it is replacing in those models as Apple is claiming, is nowhere close to the performance of even an entry-level dedicated GPU in an eGPU enclosure.

Apple nailed it with the Air. Much more powerful (especially for the base model, which until yesterday, was still was equipped with only a dual-core Intel CPU). Completely silent fanless design. Instant wake from sleep. These are all very good things for the Air. When anyone in my family asks me what laptop to buy for light work, the new M1 Macbook Air is going to be at the top of the list if it is in their budget. But for people who need the extra oomph of a Macbook Pro or Mac Mini, I don't think the M1-equipped versions are all that compelling. Not with what they had to give up in order to get that chip.

 

[rafark]

Half-baked?! I'm not sure people are really grasping what Apple has achieved in an ENTRY-LEVEL chip.

I’m actually kind of exited to see how good these new Macs perform. But “entry level”, I mean yeah, but these Macs are still $700-1000

 

[leman]

The Macbook Pro and Mac Mini now only have 16 GB of RAM as their highest option. The Intel Minis could support four times as much! The Mac Mini lost its 10 gigabit Ethernet option. Half the Thunderbolt ports on the Mini. And all of the M1 Macs can no longer use an external GPU via Thunderbolt.

They only replaced the entry-level MBP 13" however, so you are not losing anything compared to the previously available model. The "big" 13" with 4 TB3 ports and more RAM is still there and is using the Intel CPU.

As to the Mac mini, I understand the criticism. What they did right now is repositioned the mini as an entry-level desktop, while also lowering the price. Maybe a higher-spec mini will be available later when more powerful M chips are released.

 

[leman]

I’m actually kind of exited to see how good these new Macs perform. But “entry level”, I mean yeah, but these Macs are still $700-1000

That is entry-level for Apple. And it is kind of entry level when you look at the premium laptop segment. I mean, Dell XPS is much more expensive — and significantly slower.

 

[EdT]

Right? I am really confused about what some people are thinking. We get a $999 entry-level passively cooled laptop that has basically the same peak single-core CPU performance as an $799 CPU from AMD (one that is hailed as the most revolutionary x86 CPU ever made), and people are dissapointed?

Ok, I’ve been out of the loop a long time when it comes to comparing laptops but why is comparing a $1000 Air, performance wise, to an $800 x86 and saying the performance specs are nearly the same a win for the M1 processor Air, other than battery life?

I haven’t bought a laptop since 2013.

 

[leman]

Ok, I’ve been out of the loop a long time when it comes to comparing laptops but why is comparing a $1000 Air, performance wise, to an $800 x86 and saying the performance specs are nearly the same a win for the M1 processor Air, other than battery life?

I haven’t bought a laptop since 2013.

The $800 is for the CPU alone — AMD Ryzen 9 5950X. And it's a 100W desktop chip — currently the fastest consumer-level x86 chip on the market.

And just to make sure, please don't misinterpret what I am saying. I do not claim that M1 will outperform the 5950X overall. After all, we are comparing a quad-core low-power CPU to a 16-core desktop behemoth, so I'd expect the Ryzen to be at least twice as fast in sustained multi-core performance. But their single-core performance will be comparable. This is an unprecedented level of performance for such a small entry-level machine.