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Last minute Apple silicon Mac thoughts

Tsepz said:
I am just looking forward to how all this is going to transpire, I had a MacBook Air 2017 model for work and it was great and but it tended to heat up a hell of a lot, I am hoping this will all solve that side of things and greatly improve battery life.
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Huge number of heat complaints in the MacBook Pro forum. The heat issue likely caused problems in other areas too. They might have even had some responsibility for the keyboard problems.
 
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deconstruct60 said:
Thunderbolt requires not only the x4 PCI-e input, but also x4 lane DisplayPort per stream , and x2 USB 2.0 data lines ( per port. So another x4 for a two port Mac laptop. or another x4 for a four port laptop if already have the two simple USB ports provision on the SoC ) .

For a four port laptop that is another (presuming have two USB ports on nonimal SoC) 28 pins out the bottom of the SoC. ( 8 + 16 + 4 ) . More pins/bumps usually leads to larger package sizes. For the Mac enclosures their is room.

The problem is if Apple is trying to "share" with the logic board constraints iPad Pro. If the MBA and MBP 13" are on same exact sam SoC then the package is probably larger than what is going into the iPad Pro. The issue is whether Apple's Scrooge McDuck tendancies doesn't have them looking at the iPad Pro ( or perhaps iPhone) SoC as a "go to" for the "smallest possible logic board" Mac when their tendancies to thinnest/lightest possible kick in.

The MacBook only needed to be incrementally bigger not to squeeze out the TB controller from the port location. Apple made that call. Doggedly sticking with the butterfly keyboard for 4 years pretty much shows where one of their base line motivations are ( Captain Ahab thinness).

Adding PCI-e lanes isn't a moon shot , "hard" problem. That isn't the core problem with some OCD elements of Apple's design tendencies.
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Correct. Not a “hard” problem at all assuming the SoC is Mac specific. Which it will be. There is not going to be any iPad Pro logic board sharing for the production machines. It will be USB4, that’s my bet. 2 of them in the MBA and 4 on the MBP. We’ll find out in about 12 minutes!
 
Can’t believe there was no further leak. Well... at least it’s going to be an interesting keynote for a change
 
pshufd said:
Where's the best place to watch?
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On your Apple TV - minimum 80” screen 😆
73738B59-50C1-455A-BD5C-C414B44652A3.jpeg
 
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Strangedream said:
Was expecting a 16" refresh, but thinking about it it might be even better with some sort of "M1X" inside.
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These M1 13" laptops, M1 Mac mini seems a more logical first step then releasing a 16" with M1 inside only. I suspect Apple wants to really impress us all, on the next round of computers next year. There is still the mention of a Apple GPU rumor.
 
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It's interesting that these M1 SoCs seem to support only two thunderbolt3/usb4 ports. (The 2018 mac mini had 4 thunderbolt3/usb3.1gen2 ports.)
I think they're going to have to support more ports than that eventually. I guess that would require either (a) a beefier SoC, (b) multiple SoCs, or (c) custom i/o chips elsewhere on the mainboard.
 
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Impressed by the new M1 Technology. Not the Air or Pro. No 5G. No Face ID. No 16" MBP.

I hope the exclusion of a 16" MBP means it's going to be an extra-special release next year
 
NJRonbo said:
Impressed by the new M1 Technology. Not the Air or Pro. No 5G. No Face ID. No 16" MBP.

I hope the exclusion of a 16" MBP means it's going to be an extra-special release next year
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I think that you have the "low-end" processors right now and "high-end" processors for iMac, Mac Pro and MacBook Pro 16 next year.
 
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MyopicPaideia said:
Correct. Not a “hard” problem at all assuming the SoC is Mac specific. Which it will be. There is not going to be any iPad Pro logic board sharing for the production machines. It will be USB4, that’s my bet. 2 of them in the MBA and 4 on the MBP. We’ll find out in about 12 minutes!
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Is it Mac specific ?

The Mini and MBP 13" just dropped in the number of supported external monitors. ( can only drive two display like an iPad)
MBP 13" is limited to two ports. (not enough output on SoC to drive two TB controllers )
No 10GbE on the Mini. ( apparently not enough output on SoC to drive a 10GbE controller )
The RAM is integrated into the SoC. ( trying to save space in Mac where no where near iPad Pro like logic board contraints ).



If this turns out to be the same size package as the A14X in the next iPad Pro ....... there is decent chance this is a labeling thing than something specific for the Mac. There really isn't a reason to go backwards on graphics output support and I/O on a Mac is doing something specifically for a Mac.

It does have Mac stuff on the SoC that the iPad Pro probably won't use. But this doesn't appear to be something that is a clearly a large break from the A-series.
 
deconstruct60 said:
Is it Mac specific ?

The Mini and MBP 13" just dropped in the number of supported external monitors. ( can only drive two display like an iPad)
MBP 13" is limited to two ports. (not enough output on SoC to drive two TB controllers )
No 10GbE on the Mini. ( apparently not enough output on SoC to drive a 10GbE controller )
The RAM is integrated into the SoC. ( trying to save space in Mac where no where near iPad Pro like logic board contraints ).



If this turns out to be the same size package as the A14X in the next iPad Pro ....... there is decent chance this is a labeling thing than something specific for the Mac. There really isn't a reason to go backwards on graphics output support and I/O on a Mac is doing something specifically for a Mac.

It does have Mac stuff on the SoC that the iPad Pro probably won't use. But this doesn't appear to be something that is a clearly a large break from the A-series.
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The RAM is on the SoC? How big is this thing? I guess that's why you only have 8 GB and 16 GB options. I assume that throughput is a lot better than the traditional DIMM solution.
 
pshufd said:
The RAM is on the SoC? How big is this thing? I guess that's why you only have 8 GB and 16 GB options. I assume that throughput is a lot better than the traditional DIMM solution.
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It showed up in the video presentation on the M1. The specs look like it is the exact same M1 design across the three systems ( Apple has one tweak on clock speed and just two RAM configs). So a limited range SoC. . Either two RAM chips to get to 8GB or 16GB. The Mac Mini drops from capping out at 64GB down to just 16GB. The chip can only drive two monitors ( so the laptops can only do one. that is actually opposite direction from Intel Xe which finally moved from 3 to 4 ).

Apple culled the solution space smaller so they can win "bigger" in a smaller pond.
 
deconstruct60 said:
It showed up in the video presentation on the M1. The specs look like it is the exact same M1 design across the three systems ( Apple has one tweak on clock speed and just two RAM configs). So a limited range SoC. . Either two RAM chips to get to 8GB or 16GB. The Mac Mini drops from capping out at 64GB down to just 16GB. The chip can only drive two monitors ( so the laptops can only do one. that is actually opposite direction from Intel Xe which finally moved from 3 to 4 ).

Apple culled the solution space smaller so they can win "bigger" in a smaller pond.
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I'm giving some thought to replacing my 2014 MacBook Pro 15 with one of these. But I'd want a bigger configuration. I am considering getting one of these things to port Firefox (I have strange hobbies).
 
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