Shouldn't apple be able to at least utilize the space of bigger machines better with the M1? It seems weird marketing strategy to have the guts be all the same across so many devices.
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Is it weird to you that the M1 is in everything from a 24" AIO to a 10" iPad Air?
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It drastically lowers production costs, so no. And even though they have the same chip, it doesn't mean the thermal constraints between the machines are the same, hence the chips work to different efficiencies.
But the iMac and Mac Studio clearly shows Apple is decreasing chassis sizes across the board, so the next Mac Mini will likely be mini'er, and the MBA more closely look like the Retina Macbook design.
But the iMac and Mac Studio clearly shows Apple is decreasing chassis sizes across the board, so the next Mac Mini will likely be mini'er, and the MBA more closely look like the Retina Macbook design.
It’s just a chip. I use a device for a use-case, I just want it to work. I think it’s great to take advantage of one chip design and do economy of scales. there are going to be billions of M1 in the nature, which might be scary at one point if one 0-day vulnerability is discovered, at some stage.
Yea i'm sure it's great for Apple's manufacturing, but from a user's perspective, it feels like a lot of performance is left on the table when a 10" form factor can adequately cool the same chip.
I think tests have shown it takes a lot to stress the M1 to throttle. For most people it's probably completely unnoticeable.
I've seen benchmarks on the Macbook Air that seem to suggest it's about a 15% decrease in performance on Cinebench once the Air has been running at full load for several minutes. This isn't bad, honestly (especially considering it seems to limit the power consumption to 8 watts or so once this takes place, versus ~15 watts or so unthrottled). For a passively cooled system, this is good enough that it will be more or less completely unnoticeable for most users (on everyday tasks at least) unless there's video rendering or something else of the sort going on.
I'd imagine the iPad air has a similar TDP as the Air once it's being throttled. If so, the performance definitely will be pretty decent for an iPad, and most tasks aren't going to hammer it this hard for several minute straight anyway. We will have to wait for more benchmarks to know for sure.
Still odd to me that they're putting the M1 in an iPad Air, and it makes me think that future iPad Pros are perhaps eventually going to scale beyond a base-level M1. If this turns out to be the case, the throttling will be an interesting question. It'll be harder to power an M1 pro or an M1 Max in an iPad.
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Basically what it comes down to is M1 is fast enough for a desktop, blazingly quick in a laptop, and complete overkill in a tablet, but can be adequately cooled in each one.
The per-unit production costs are probably quite low in such large volumes, which encourages the case for re-use. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it turn up in the Apple TV as well eventually, which is an even smaller form factor than the Mac Mini.
The per-unit production costs are probably quite low in such large volumes, which encourages the case for re-use. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it turn up in the Apple TV as well eventually, which is an even smaller form factor than the Mac Mini.
It’s clearly an incredibly versatile chip, as in each of these use cases you describe it doesn’t seem to lack, even when pushing hard the normal use case for each machine. In fact on the contrary, they tend to beat out machines generally considers more powerful than themselves.
If they used the same chip and it was overkill in the lower models and utter crap in the ‘better’ models I would understand your potential issues. But that’s not even slightly the case.
I’ll even go so far as to say that Apple have finally got their performance priorities right for the first time in years and years, insofar as to say that each machine crushes (generally) the competition in wherever the machines competion level lies.
If they used the same chip and it was overkill in the lower models and utter crap in the ‘better’ models I would understand your potential issues. But that’s not even slightly the case.
I’ll even go so far as to say that Apple have finally got their performance priorities right for the first time in years and years, insofar as to say that each machine crushes (generally) the competition in wherever the machines competion level lies.
The M1 is basically the unreleased A14X, an iPad chip. The "M1" that utilise that space of the Mac's are the M1 Pro and M1 Max.
The guts are not the same, in terms of numbers of cores, memory size and bandwidth, transistor count, etc, and all important geekbench scores.
from an engineering perspective it seems odd ...
from a business perspective it makes total sense.
I quite frankly see M chips showing up in iPhones in the next couple years, it's much more economical, for Apple.
And from that perspective Apple will follow into Intel steps who have for a decade or so used "fusing" to enable/disable functionality on a chip and the same chip can be a i9 or i7 or i5 ...
from a business perspective it makes total sense.
I quite frankly see M chips showing up in iPhones in the next couple years, it's much more economical, for Apple.
And from that perspective Apple will follow into Intel steps who have for a decade or so used "fusing" to enable/disable functionality on a chip and the same chip can be a i9 or i7 or i5 ...
All of this. When you have a fast desktop class chip that's physically small, sips power, and works well even with only passive cooling, might as well toss it in everything and produce just that chip for a bunch of different products to keep the cost down. No need to create a variety of chips for different form factors, as Intel is forced to do due to power consumption and thermals.
The M1 is just too good, it breaks the expectations of what a mobile cpu is... and to me blazes past the good enough for the price I expected to just being fast.
Of course the new faster M1s are better, but the M1 is as powerful as the previous high end iMacs and MBPs.
Except for the GPU, that could always be faster. I kinda wonder why Apple hasn't (or can't) put the regular M1 Pro into the iMac/Mac mini... seems a natural fit for like a $500 upgrade. To give the midrange of the lineup a bit of a boost.
Of course the new faster M1s are better, but the M1 is as powerful as the previous high end iMacs and MBPs.
Except for the GPU, that could always be faster. I kinda wonder why Apple hasn't (or can't) put the regular M1 Pro into the iMac/Mac mini... seems a natural fit for like a $500 upgrade. To give the midrange of the lineup a bit of a boost.
Rene Ritchie made a very good point. Instead of having specialized SoC for different systems, they can just pump out M1s and add them to a handful of different systems which might be helpful during the chip shortage instead of dealing with 5 other variants.
Not really. The M1 is simply a very good baseline and is efficient enough to be used as a very good tablet/laptop chip.
I'd love an M(n) Pro chip in the 24" iMac tho.
I'd love an M(n) Pro chip in the 24" iMac tho.
The iPad can cool the chip because it simply isn't stressing it as much. That being said, I can make the iPad warm up in LR where under the same conditions my MBP is cold to the touch and my MBP uses a higher performance chip.
