I kind of get that feeling. Mainly because of the rumors/leaks all year of MiniLED/thinner bezel Macs being right around the corner for 2021. Then seeing what was shown today. I really got the vibe that these Macs unveiled today are essentially the proof of concept/"we hit our first AS Mac by end of 2020 deadline"/final beta AS Macs before the real ones start coming out in 2020. The ones they put out today aren't bad but they very much are just a first step in what will later be a sprint.
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ARM based MacBook Pro discussion [merged]
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I kind of get that feeling. Mainly because of the rumors/leaks all year of MiniLED/thinner bezel Macs being right around the corner for 2021. Then seeing what was shown today. I really got the vibe that these Macs unveiled today are essentially the proof of concept/"we hit our first AS Mac by end of 2020 deadline"/final beta AS Macs before the real ones start coming out in 2020. The ones they put out today aren't bad but they very much are just a first step in what will later be a sprint.
I don't think the redesign is going to be until later in 2021, but having slept on it, I'm wondering why they didn't just do the MacBook Air as 16GB seems like the right max amount of memory for that laptop.
Only having the 13", 2 port MBP available, with 16GB max RAM seems like a strange one - not least because of the similarity to the Air - as its the Pro laptops which are more likely to be upgraded with more RAM at a minimum.
Edited - I'd genuinely forgotten that the specs of the 2 port MBP are the same as the one its replaced - i.e. max 16GB RAM. I still think its far too similar to the Air to sell much though unless the thermals of the Air are a literal dumpster fire.
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It depends - this upgrade was clearly just the CPU and nearly nothing else (ok, wi-fi 6).
You'll have to personally value how much these things you might care about:
- 4 USB-C / TB4 ports, not 2. Come ON Apple. Four ports needs to be standard.
- a higher core / higher clocked cpu for upper 13" and 16" models
- mini-LED screen
- 32gb of ram optional
- new webcam / face ID
- Thunderbolt 4 ports (or just 4 ports for a higher model)
- possible touch-screen
- who knows what will happen w/ the touchbar
I put them roughly in the order I care about. My mom needs a cheap Macbook Air so the models right now are quite good for her. The major downside is only 2 USB-C ports (umm... power, monitor, mouse? + USB-drive or yubikey?). 2 is beyond stupid, and the bad camera since she is a teacher and uses video conferencing a lot.
My ideal machine would be: 16", 8-core, 32gb ram (might settle on 16gb to save money), mini-LED, 4 ports. Don't care about the rest much.
The M1 performance details that were shared in the announcement were very impressive. Eager to see how it fares in the hands of reviewers using different software in the real world, both on Rosetta and native software as it becomes available. I’m more interested in the performance of the higher end pro machines myself, but the M1 at least serves as a baseline marker for now.
As far as the continued 480p camera complaints, isn’t that a (continued) restriction due to the thinness of the display? Phones and tablets have more thickness to work with. Are there other laptops out there with the same display thinness that have 1080p cameras? If not, the question then is would people prefer 480p or a thicker display?
As far as the continued 480p camera complaints, isn’t that a (continued) restriction due to the thinness of the display? Phones and tablets have more thickness to work with. Are there other laptops out there with the same display thinness that have 1080p cameras? If not, the question then is would people prefer 480p or a thicker display?
While I also prefer 4 ports, it’s possible to do well with 2 ports if one uses a monitor with pass through charging and a Bluetooth mouse. Otherwise, you’d have to use a hub which is inelegant.
My guess there is that while the impressive thing will be that the Air works at all, fanless... and it's a proof of concept for the sort of pared-down platonic ideal of a laptop Apple wants to sell... there's a reason the benchmarks quoted were on the actively cooled MBP chassis instead. I suspect the Air will be quite throttled. So the Air is there for vision, and the MBP is there for benchmarking.
As mentioned before this is the entry level pro they have updated, the high level pro device will be released next year..... they cannot update all of their devices at once.
Pro is not just a fixed point, it is a sliding scale. Some Pro's need 1TB ram, where as other are fine with 16GB. One size doesn't fit all, come back to Apple Silicon next year when the more 'Pro' devices are released, until then I would recommend you to not go for ASi yet.
Then... get something different? I mean, Apple DOES offer laptops with more RAM if a developer so chooses.
I know you are right. Of course, I have a choice. It just hurts to see that I will not be able to justify using a mac any longer.
It’s a bit of a pain, to be sure. Over the years, I’ve helped several folks move away from Apple systems. It certainly takes some time to get comfortable. But, when you get to the point where you feel like you’re “justifying” the Mac, it’s because what they’re producing hasn’t matched your needs for a little while. They’re not going to flip back (folks that waited out the Trashcan Mac Pro, found themselves faced with the Mac Pro). They’ve got a direction and they’re sticking to it and the distance between what you want and what they’ll make is only going to increase.
This is why I just buy refurbished Macs especially from Microcenter for much cheaper. If I can't get a deal I never buy new like I used to.
I'm excited to watch and read the reviews on the AS MBP 13". I had it in my head that my next upgrade was going to be a new iPad Pro, to replace my 2018" 12.9", but the more I think about it, the more the 13" AS MBP makes sense. I'd get the performance, far greater (I hope) battery life, good keyboard and big trackpad. I do like the tablet portability with the iPad Pro, but I've been using it more as my daily driver in laptop form for the past year, and could easily use my iPhone for connectivity, instead of relying on the iPad's cellular connection.
Hopefully the reviews will help clarify what direction I go. My concern with buying a AS MBP now, is not that it is a stepping stone to something better that will come out next year, but more related to the improvements that Apple makes with the iPad Pro. I guess there could be worse things than buying the AS MBP now and then upgrading to a new iPad Pro whenever that launches...
Hopefully the reviews will help clarify what direction I go. My concern with buying a AS MBP now, is not that it is a stepping stone to something better that will come out next year, but more related to the improvements that Apple makes with the iPad Pro. I guess there could be worse things than buying the AS MBP now and then upgrading to a new iPad Pro whenever that launches...
RANT: It's annoying that most retailers that run deals on macbooks only ever have the base models. This means it's incredibly hard to find higher RAM versions on sale, and in this case, the 16gb air.
Getting 8gb of RAM on a laptop in 2020 is just ridiculous. But, given the deals, it's way more expensive.
Example:
- Amazon sale: $849 for an 8gb/256gb
- Apple price: $1199 for a 16gb/256gb
Basically, $350 for 8gb of ram that is worth like $40 (I realize the ARM memory is built into the die, but you get the idea). Apple didn't make either base model of the air with 16gb of RAM, so we are gonna be screwed on price here.
Getting 8gb of RAM on a laptop in 2020 is just ridiculous. But, given the deals, it's way more expensive.
Example:
- Amazon sale: $849 for an 8gb/256gb
- Apple price: $1199 for a 16gb/256gb
Basically, $350 for 8gb of ram that is worth like $40 (I realize the ARM memory is built into the die, but you get the idea). Apple didn't make either base model of the air with 16gb of RAM, so we are gonna be screwed on price here.
In this case that "built into the die" makes all the different and when you think about it this creates a problem - namely how much DRAM can be put into the chip?
If 16 GB is the limit (gb would mean "gram bit" and yes GB is not the same as Gb; the former is 8x as large) then this creates an interesting situation as in how does an M1 (or what ever is in the higher end Macs) handle DRAM outside itself and how much of a performance hit does this cause. Honestly I don't see an Mx with DRAM of 1.5 TB on the CPU for the ARM Mac Pros when they come out.
I guess the problem is that the 16GB option on both machines is again a "build-to-order" item. So with the new machines, you can't just order a 16GB version - you have to order an 8GB Air or Pro and then upgrade the RAM. I know some people are getting 16Gb machines in the next few days, but as usual, it does seem that when you upgrade the RAM, you end up waiting a bit longer for it.
Correct - that's the exact problem. In the past with 13/16" macbook pros you could at least find base models with higher memory, but with the air, and 16gb is now built-to-order, so it will be much harder to find the 15-18% off style sales like we've seen with macmall, hhgregg+google shopping, etc. Frustrating for the Air. Maybe with the higher end 13" and 16" models we can avoid this.
Reminds me of when Apple first went to intel 15 years ago. The first macs had the intel core 2 chips then a year later they came with the core 2 duos with twice the power at the same price point.
I don't think that will be the case. M1 is already on 5mm silicon so it's going to be hard to see big jumps.
I do expect a ton of performance out of the higher core models though (upper tier 13" pro, 16", iMac), probably 8+4 cores, maybe some 6+4 core variants.
The bigger changes will be around the components available in the laptop:
- mini LED screen
- better camera
- 4 USB-C/TB4 ports
- 10Gbps ethernet
- Touch screen (I don't want this at all).
I consider all of those pretty minor except the 4 ports, though. I find even older Macbook screens to be very, very good, and don't really watch movies on them, so mini LED while nice isn't really necessary for me, especially if it ends up being a premium upgrade.
People complain about the lack of change in the chassis design, but how much can laptops really change? It's a screen and keyboard. Touch screen would introduce the weirdest variants, but I don't care for touch at all.
As was pointed out on a youtube video we need to get our hands on it to really see how the M1 manages memory because it is different from a "standard" ARM chip and the x86. All our knowledge of how RAM is utilized come from the x86 has handled it on Mac since the PowerPC change over. That said I do wonder how Apple is going to handle the Mac Pro when they finally get to it - that machine is all about expansion. THough we should see some idea with the higher end iMac Pros.
Some folks will have to reconsider the allocation on a ARM type architecture versus x86. Also, power management is quite differently now, since ARM can better manage power consumption versus Intel. I would generally say that how the M1 uses memory (down to millisecond) will be different. Here's some more research finding to backup the power efficiency and resource load management paper.
There is Mac Support Update - November 16:
"With this week’s patch 9.0.2, we’re adding native Apple Silicon support to World of Warcraft. This means that the WoW 9.0.2 client will run natively on ARM64 architecture, rather than under emulation via Rosetta."
This look promising too (for gaming and such), but could be only exclusive to running M1 and not utilizing Rosetta.
www.tomshardware.com
Apple's M1 SoC Shreds GeForce GTX 1050 Ti in New Graphics Benchmark
Flexing that Apple power