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

[sideshowuniqueuser]

Well, you are correct in that there has been an impressive boost to battery life.

That aside, I am so underwhelmed. All this time they are supposed to have been developing AS macs, but all they've done is basically rebrand the existing iPad chips, and plop them straight into the existing 13" chassis. There also appears to be a 16GB RAM limit, and a 2 thunderbolt port limit. Again, underwhelming. All the effort appears to simply be in the software to make Big Sur compatible. Very little hardware development, and absolutely zero new industrial design. Completely underwhelming new next big thing. The only impressive thing they've achieved is a massive boost in battery life of low end Macs. Which brings me to the Mac Mini, which doesn't have a battery, so misses the best part, and due to the reduction if max RAM size, is actually a downgrade.

Here's what they could have done, and what I would have done if I was in charge of this $2T company:
- Actually work on a beefed up chip so they could simultaneously release both a low end M1, and a high end M1X (or whatever) that beats the top Intel 16" MBP chip in every way (I mean, that's what they are claiming will happen, so put up or shut up).
- Introduced a 14" chassis
- Introduced a 12" chassis
- Tweaked all of the 12, 14, 16" chassis with, at the very least, minor industrial design tweaks to make them look fresh and new
- Added the new iPhone 12 Pro colours: graphite, pacific blue, gold, silver to make it fresh and new, and matching across the product line just like they did with space grey.
- Reduced the bezels to at least what all the other top laptop manufacturers have, for crying out loud
- Given it a freaking decent camera, my god, how is that joke of a thing still there
- Gone hardcore with passive cooling to reduce the need for a fan to an absolute minimum whilst sustaining high power; in conjunction with super duper quiet fans.

All of that could have easily been done simultaneously. It would have blown everyone away with excitement, and blown the roof off the Apple stock price.

But no, what we have is a dribble from the end of a wet sock, and the stock price hasn't budged.

 

[bobmans]

Why would they call it the M2 processor? Shouldn't there be some letters added to M1 to denote a SoC with a more complex architecture to support higher performance? IMHO you don't want M1 to be low performance, M2 to be desktop, M3 to be workstation.

Yea, there's 2 logical possibilities here imo:
M1, M1X, M1Z
or
M1, M10, M100

Then once they upgrade the chipsets they can go with
M2, M2X, M2Z
or
M2, M20, M200

 

[Sanpete]

All of that could have easily been done simultaneously.

Really? When? Two years from now?

 

[theorist9]

The interesting question is why (from a technological viewpoint) Apple only offered 2 TB ports, 16 GB RAM, and 1 Gb Ethernet on its AS first Macs. The most likely answer is: Based on the chip design, it had no choice. Thus these limitations tell us something interesting about the chip design, and its limitations. I'm sure we'll be hearing more soon about why the M1 couldn't accommodate 4 TB ports, or 10 Gb Ethernet.

The RAM limitation can probably be rationalized now: With the Intel chips used previously, the RAM isn't integrated into the CPU. Thus a single CPU can accommodate variable amounts of RAM. But with the M1, the memory is unified. Thus more memory would require a different version of the chip, and Apple has limited itself to two chip versions (8 GB RAM and 16 GB RAM) rather than four.

[The 7-core GPU option for the Air isn't a different chip version; it's just a lower-binned variant of the 8-core GPU: https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/11/why-is-there-a-comical-difference-in-the-new-macbook-air-specs/ ]

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

Really? When? Two years from now?

Well, maybe the higher powered AS, I have no idea.

But all the other stuff, I mean, what have the industrial design department been doing all year? Nothing?

Or the rest of the hardware department that aren't on the AS chip design? Nothing?

Yeah, everything except the high power AS chip could have been done long ago. It's a $2T company for crying out load, they have unbelievable amounts of resources. They are releasing a brand new evolutionary chapter of Apple, and this.... wet dribbling sock.

 

[clevins]

It was spot on. Sure, some updates to the design would have brought a bigger bang but this was the safe and sensible choice.

So I've been thinking about why they didnt do this and I think it's tied to why they updated the entry MBP and not the others... it was easy from a supply chain perspective. I'd bet that the MBP internals are very close to the same as the Air internals, with the addition of a fan and the larger battery. They both have a single controller, so two ports. This lets Apple produce two models for a small incremental cost...

... but they are designed to fit in current cases. Altering the design almost certainly has ripple effects on how the display is built and attached, hinging, etc. Keeping the design the same minimizes these and means we get these in Q4 of 20... and that means Apple can sell this now.

Also, honestly, the design is fine. Yeah, bezels... but how important is that really?

 

[quatermass]

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.

If you're actually doing 3D work at any level of competence, you'll know that these machines are not for you, you won't order one, and won't be frustrated or have any complaints about their potential inadequacies. So that's a bit of a non-issue.

 

[Ethosik]

Why would they call it the M2 processor? Shouldn't there be some letters added to M1 to denote a SoC with a more complex architecture to support higher performance? IMHO you don't want M1 to be low performance, M2 to be desktop, M3 to be workstation.

What do you mean? You know this is Intel's naming right? i3, i5, i7, i9. Are you suggesting the Apple processors should be M1, M1X, M1XYZ, M1XXXX for Mac Pro? No, M1, M2, M3, M4, ... is easy for people to understand. 4 > 1 so the M4 will be better. Is M1XYZ better than M1XY? Maybe.

 

[Sanpete]

Well, maybe the higher powered AS, I have no idea.

But all the other stuff, I mean, what have the industrial design department been doing all year? Nothing?

Or the rest of the hardware department that aren't on the AS chip design? Nothing?

Yeah, everything except the high power AS chip could have been done long ago. It's a $2T company for crying out load, they have unbelievable amounts of resources. They are releasing a brand new evolutionary chapter of Apple, and this.... wet dribbling sock.

Some of the things on your list would make the product more expensive, heavier, larger, or less sturdy. Those are trade-offs that would show up in your or someone else's list of what they should have done differently.

I don't think they have any more 12" plans. That's too bad, because I think they're cute, but Apple knows what sells. I'd rather see an 18" in the old 17" footprint myself.

I doubt they'll introduce iPhone colors in the Pro laptop or Mini line. Maybe the Air, but I doubt it's a high priority for them or most of their customers.

Active cooling is always at a minimum for Macs, and the fans are as quiet as they can make them.

 

[4sallypat]

I've heard the reason Apple hasn't changed the form factor of the Mini is that a decent percentage of its sales are to server farms, which have invested quite a bit in racks custom-designed for that form factor (e.g., https://www.cultofmac.com/587718/youtube-video-inside-macstadium-mac-mini/)

Given this, what are the implications of the Mini's redesign for Mini server farms? Clearly the increased efficiency and performance are a big deal, but what about reduction in connectivity, i..e., going from 4 TB ports to 2, and the loss of the 10 Gb Ethernet option? Do server farms typically not need/make use of the added ports and the higher Gb speed?

The importance of the loss of the 32/64 GB RAM options should vary by use case (i.e., by the needs of the customer leasing those Minis).

Yes this is true because I work in server IT and we are replacing 25 of the old 2012/2014 Minis with these new M1 for local LAN Apple Caching service.

A new form factor would mess us up big time!

 

[DHagan4755]

You know sure as hell that Apple has the 16" MacBook Pro running Apple silicon in one of its labs as I type this. Someone in Apple that is working on it might actually be reading this thread laughing their ass off at this thread. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has a pretty decent track record & says it's in development.

So we need to wait to see how these new M1 Macs perform in the wild & thankfully that won't be long to find out. If it's true that there's both a performance increase + better battery life in the M1 MacBooks, then that only brings up the low end. Meanwhile I'm excited to see what's next with the 16" MacBook Pro. I'm of the mindset that there could be a few behind-the-scenes things going on that put the brakes on the 16" MacBook Pro for release yesterday.

 

[DHagan4755]

What do you mean? You know this is Intel's naming right? i3, i5, i7, i9. Are you suggesting the Apple processors should be M1, M1X, M1XYZ, M1XXXX for Mac Pro? No, M1, M2, M3, M4, ... is easy for people to understand. 4 > 1 so the M4 will be better. Is M1XYZ better than M1XY? Maybe.

I think M1, H1, X1 (or something along those lines). I don't think the "X" or "Z" added at the end is a good idea for Mac processors.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

Some of the things on your list would make the product more expensive, heavier, larger, or less sturdy. Those are trade-offs that would show up in your or someone else's list of what they should have done differently.

I don't think they have anymore 12" plans. That's too bad, because I think they're cute, but Apple knows what sells. I'd rather see an 18" in the old 17" footprint myself.

I doubt they'll introduce iPhone colors in the Pro laptop or Mini line. Maybe the Air, but I doubt it's a high priority for them or most of their customers.

Cooling is always at a minimum for Macs, and the fans are as quiet as they can make them.

Pros don't need it to be as light and thin as possible, they need it to function fully first, then form second. This has been an ongoing complaint form pros, and Apple actually started to listen, and formed the Pro Workflow Team which brought in pros from various fields and sat with them as they actually worked, and worked with them on fixing the short falls. One of the things that came out of this is that the 16" MBP was THICKER (and of course, heavier). It had better functioning cooling, and the maximum permitted battery size allowed on commercial aircraft. Function, then form. Pro.

You might be right about the 12", who knows. I'd love to see an 18" too. People have different use cases, and I'm sure there would be a market for all of 12,14,16, and 18", all of in both MBA and MBP.

You might be right about the colours. They haven't released the new iPhone colours in the new M1 Macs so far, but they've also put them in the existing old chassis, so maybe it's still to come. They did release both phones and Macs in space grey, and it was a nice touch, so can't see why they wouldn't do it again. I do find it annoying that they killed off the space grey colour in the iPhone 12, and now the only way to match a new Mac and new iPhone is with outdated silver, or gold. Maybe graphite is the new space grey, and there will be Macs in that shade soon.

As previously stated, the flagship 16" MBP had improved cooling, but on the on other hand, the 2020 Intel MBA had the cooling pipe REMOVED, thus the fan span up at the slightest nudge of use, rendering it a horrible experience. One suspects this was a deliberate move to make the now released M1 MBA seem even better than it actually is for thermal performance.

 

[theorist9]

Yes this is true because I work in server IT and we are replacing 25 of the old 2012/2014 Minis with these new M1 for local LAN Apple Caching service.

A new form factor would mess us up big time!

Clearly the loss of 2 TB ports, and of the 10 Gb Ethernet option, isn't an issue for you, otherwise you wouldn't be buying them. But would there be networked configurations in which either of those differences might matter?

I ask as someone who has no idea how Minis would be connected in a server farm. On the face of it, I would expect it to be via Ethernet, in which case 10 Gb/s would be better than 1 Gb/s (assuming the rest of your hardware [switches, etc.]) was designed to accommodate those speeds. However, if you want maximum connection speed, why use 10 Gb Ethernet when you have TB (40Gb/s)? My guess would be that you'd need much more expensive (optical) cabling for long runs with TB, and that TB networking hardware is much more expensive than Ethernet connection but, again, that's just a guess.

 

[KPOM]

The interesting question is why Apple only offered 2 TB ports, 16 GB RAM, and 1 Gb Ethernet on its AS first Macs. The most likely answer is: Based on the chip design, it had no choice. Thus these limitations tell us something interesting about the chip design, and its limitations. I'm sure we'll be hearing more soon about why the M1 couldn't accommodate 4 TB ports, or 10 Gb Ethernet.

The RAM limitation can probably be rationalized now: With the Intel chips used previously, the RAM isn't integrated into the CPU. Thus a single CPU can accommodate variable amounts of RAM. But with the M1, the memory is unified. Thus more memory would require a different version of the chip, and Apple has limited itself to two chip versions (8 GB RAM and 16 GB RAM) rather than four.

[The 7-core GPU option for the Air isn't a different chip version; it's just a lower-binned variant of the 8-core GPU: https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/11/why-is-there-a-comical-difference-in-the-new-macbook-air-specs/ ]

That’s why Apple reiterated yesterday that it’s a 2-year transition. Undoubtedly chips that support 4 Thunderbolt ports, 32GB-64GB of RAM, etc. are in the works, but are not yet ready for production. Apple’s A-series has been ”fast enough” for consumer use for a few years now, so it makes sense that the M1 was designed for Apple’s entry-level Macs. These are volume sellers, and it’s easier for Apple to recoup development costs on a MacBook Air that will sell several million a year, rather than a Mac Pro or high-end iMac that will sell in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

 

[4sallypat]

Clearly the loss of 2 TB ports, and of the 10 Gb Ethernet option, isn't an issue for you, otherwise you wouldn't be buying them. But would there be networked configurations in which either of those differences might matter?

I ask as someone who has no idea how Minis would be connected in a server farm. On the face of it, I would expect it to be via Ethernet, in which case 10 Gb/s would be better than 1 Gb/s (assuming the rest of your hardware [switches, etc.]) was designed to accommodate those speeds. However, if you want maximum connection speed, why use 10 Gb Ethernet when you have TB (40Gb/s)? My guess would be that you'd need much more expensive (optical) cabling for long runs with TB, and that TB networking hardware is much more expensive than Ethernet connection but, again, that's just a guess.

Our Minis for use only as Apple app caching servers at 25 local sites are connected only with power and ethernet. No monitors, KB, Mouse, etc...

So lack of ports are fine.

Our backbone is 10Gbps to the outside world but we provide local user backups and app / iOS / OSX updates from the server eliminating the need for access to the Internet.

We just upgraded wireless by replacing out 950 802.11ac with 802.11ax (WiFi6) to help with multiple client connections.

 

[theorist9]

That’s why Apple reiterated yesterday that it’s a 2-year transition. Undoubtedly chips that support 4 Thunderbolt ports, 32GB-64GB of RAM, etc. are in the works, but are not yet ready for production. Apple’s A-series has been ”fast enough” for consumer use for a few years now, so it makes sense that the M1 was designed for Apple’s entry-level Macs. These are volume sellers, and it’s easier for Apple to recoup development costs on a MacBook Air that will sell several million a year, rather than a Mac Pro or high-end iMac that will sell in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

Oh, I wasn't asking why, from a marketing POV, Apple focused on these entry-level products. That makes perfect sense to me. I meant whether it was the technical design of these chips that prevented them from accommodating 4 TB ports and 10 Gb Ethernet and, if so, why does the design create this limitation (i.e., what technical aspect of the chip design explains this). I've edited my post to make this clearer.

 

[Sanpete]

Pros don't need it to be as light and thin as possible, they need it to function fully first, then form second. This has been an ongoing complaint form pros, and Apple actually started to listen, and formed the Pro Workflow Team which brought in pros from various fields and sat with them as they actually worked, and worked with them on fixing the short falls. One of the things that came out of this is that the 16" MBP was THICKER (and of course, heavier). It had better functioning cooling, and the maximum permitted battery size allowed on commercial aircraft. Function, then form. Pro.

Size and weight do matter to many pros, thus the 13" and continual concern about the size and weight of the 16". What counts as full function is a largely subjective matter, varies according to need and desire. None will do what a big, heavy, noisy gaming laptop will functionally. Tradeoffs. Apple tries to find a sweet spot, but sometimes they miss, and there are always people for whom it's not as sweet in any case.

(I don't suspect Apple intentionally made its MBA less appealing for any reason.)

 

[King Luis]

regarding the chip. they nailed it. hope to be blown away by the performance of the pro's.
regarding the laptop it's self, replacing the 13" with a 14" but keeping the same footprint and doing the same with the 15" to a 16" would be amazing. having anything smaller than 13" would be pointless as the iPad is already around 12".
but i'm excited for the future of MacBooks and can see my wife and i finally upgrading our 2011/2012 MacBook pros. once we see the need to upgrade.

 

[AppliedMicro]

What do you mean? You know this is Intel's naming right? i3, i5, i7, i9. Are you suggesting the Apple processors should be M1, M1X, M1XYZ, M1XXXX for Mac Pro? No, M1, M2, M3, M4, ... is easy for people to understand. 4 > 1 so the M4 will be better. Is M1XYZ better than M1XY? Maybe.

So what would new low-end chip be called, if it gets released after a high-end one.
Let say:
M1 for Air, 13“ MBP and Mac mini, released in 2020
M2 for MacBook Pro 16“ and iMac in 2021
M3 for Mac Pro in 2022
M4 as a 2nd gen entry-level chip... wait! It wouldn’t be more powerful than the M3, would it?

Also, why Apple has never been particularly consistent in their naming over the long term, they have been on their SoC for the iPhone and iPad: Ax with x denoting the generation. And a X or Z suffix to denote „stronger“ variants of that generation.

 

[AppliedMicro]

if so, why does the design create this limitation (i.e., what technical aspect of the chip design explains this)

Most likely nothing really, why should it? They probably have SoC with more ports already running in their labs.

These SoC have been custom-designed for certain use cases - or models of Macs, in this case. They likely just decided that the additional ports weren’t needed one the Air and low-end Mac mini. So omitting the circuitry allowed them to cut die size and cost, improve yields (which, again, cuts costs) etc.

 

[bige12]

i wish i get get a M1 MacBook Pro and compare them since i have a :

MacBook Pro- (13 inch, July 2019, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports)


Processor- 1.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel i5


Memory -8 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3


Graphics- Intel Iris Plus Graphics 645 1536 MB

and its been good and has 1TB of storage

I say Apple should go small first just to see what the demand is like, and give it couple months for there customers to test them out, at least they release 1 high end laptop MacBook Pro

 

[clevins]

Pros don't need it to be as light and thin as possible, they need it to function fully first, then form second.

And these aren't high end 'pro' machines. Honestly what is it that some of you fail to get about that?

Quotes around pro because pro doesn't just mean video, animation VR and eng/scientific but that's what we're really talking about here.

People have different use cases, and I'm sure there would be a market for all of 12,14,16, and 18", all of in both MBA and MBP.

This is the mistake Apple made in the mid-90s, proliferating SKUs with little differentiation. One of the first things Jobs did was to kill a lot of those products so that there was a very clear difference between them.

Are there some people who'd like an 18" MBP? Probably. But they'll be fine with a 16". And the people who want a 16" Air will make the call as to whether power and screen real estate or portability and light weight are more important.

One of the worst things a product company can do is to dice the market into tiny little segments and try to give each a slightly different product. SKU proliferation like that drastically hurts efficiency(they have to forecast and make chassis for them all, screens for them all, etc etc.) and does not really increase market share.

 

[ulyssesric]

Instead of calling Apple "nailed it", I'd say that Apple had done it as a matter of course.

There is no surprise that they'll go for low power device first, because ARM architecture has much advantage in this field. But the problem is: what's next ?

Yes we knew that there are server grade ARM CPUs for very-high end market, but we've never seen any from Apple yet. M1 is what we can forecast by common sense of technology development progress, but they need to prove they can do better than Intel in both design and manufacturing of high-end products.

I'd expect that we're going to see more acquisition in the near future.

 

[Victor Mortimer]

All three options are wrong.

4. Failed it. Should have stayed with Intel or added AMD processors, and dumped this garbage chip.