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M3 Die Shot suggests display engines take up nearly the same area as P-cores
- Thread starter ArkSingularity
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Thats big assumption.
If I’m onsite with a Customer doing a demo to a projector, I’m more likely to use HDMI for the demo. I have to imagine thats a use case that needs to be considered.
It’s worth mentioning that with the MacBook Air specifically it could be a thermally constrained reason.Only very rarely.
Plus this whole discussion about efficiency may be moot. After all, as you've said, we're just speculating that the internal controller may be more efficient, for the reasons we've been discussing. But the difference might not be significant, in which case the whole question of battery vs. plugged for external displays becomes unimportant (at least so far as the controller is concerned).
I also wonder if the additional GPU power to run an external is more significant than any added demand from the controller.
Ultimately, I think the efficiency discussion was perhaps a distraction (though an interesting one) from the essence of—from what really underlies—what's being argued, which is this: To the extent Apple didn't supply an additional display controller on the Base M chip, was it for inherent product optimization reasons, or for business reasons?
I.e., did they do it because they thought leaving it out would lead to better Base-M products (Base MBP, Air, Base Mini, iMac), or because they wanted to maintain market segmentation between the Base and Pro lines? Or was it both?
[Even though the discussion has focused on the Air, it's really about all the Apple products that use the Base-M chip.]
I don't know the answer. But if we knew an additional 4k controller would be physically large, that would suggest product optimization. If we knew it's physically small, that would suggest business segmentation.
Sure, the M3 Macbook Pro has a fan, but the MacBook Air doesn’t.
Apple wants their laptops to have great battery life, and great performance. Do we know the performance impact would be if they had another Display Controller? Would it drastically impact battery life?
MacBook Airs have been the go to for college students for years. At least when I was in college, you would have to sit close to walls in order to get power.
Uhhh…. Then why have all of my jobs for the past 12 years given me Macs? Not MacBook Airs, but loaded up 15+ MacBook Pro’s typically fully loaded.
You're absolutely right. Sure, IBM began deploying MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros to its employees in 2015, and as of 2019 supported 290,000 Apple devices within its organization—but who on earth would be so foolish as to describe IBM as a "corporation"?
Ridiculous, right? It's a good thing you're sharp enough to know better. You just keep on fighting the good fight, and don't let those naysayers get you down.
IBM Announces Research Showing Mac Enables Greater Productivity and Employee Satisfaction at IBM
Findings affirm that offering choice delivers strategic value in addition to IT efficiency and lower total cost of ownership | Jamf
Thats the funny thing. For what I do (not creative) they give you the choice… Startups, Corporations, Enterprises… Maybe he has worked at small mom and pop shop where they give you the receptionists old computer to him?You're absolutely right. Sure, IBM began deploying MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros to its employees in 2015, and as of 2019 supported 290,000 Apple devices within its organization—but who on earth would be so foolish as to describe IBM as a "corporation"?
Ridiculous, right? It's a good thing you're sharp enough to know better. You just keep on fighting the good fight, and don't let those naysayers get you down.
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IBM Announces Research Showing Mac Enables Greater Productivity and Employee Satisfaction at IBM
Findings affirm that offering choice delivers strategic value in addition to IT efficiency and lower total cost of ownership | Jamfwww.jamf.com
In our office with thousands of employees, about half are using MacBooks. The others are using Windows laptops. That applies to both business people and development teams. Employees are free to chose whichever type they want to work with. We have desks with a single widescreen monitor that you can connect via USB-C for display and power.
The Macs a mix of Intel 13/15” MBPs and Apple Silicon 14/16 MBPs. The people with Intel machines are being encouraged to switch to news AS models. I know some of the people in IT have been lobbying for Macbook Airs for those that want something light. Would work well for any of the business types.
Yea, my company is similar. My work machine is actually still my 2017 Intel MacBook. They were supposed to replace it with a newer one, but they ended up botching that and I conveniently forgot to tell them (I mostly just use my personal Mac, keeps me from having to deal with all of their MDM stuff. They're pretty excessive with it.)
I'm actually kinda glad they haven't caught on because the people who set all of that up didn't do so with the engineering department in mind. They don't even allow us to have root access to the machines without having to jump through a ton of hoops.
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So even in this extremely unusual scenario...you still don't need dual monitor support on the machine. Thanks for that.
Less unusual than you think, but the purpose of this thread isn't to argue.
On-site with a projector but no power? That's a really weird scenario that I doubt anyone will seriously consider.
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You obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
Tell that to Tim Cook who boasts during earnings calls that $100B pharma companies are deploying MacBook Air.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript August 3, 2023 Apple Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $1.26, expectations were $1.19. Operator: Good day, and welcome to the Apple Q3 Fiscal Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s call is being recorded. At this...
Clueless as expected based on your other responses. Maybe even a troll.
71% of laptop-using employees connected their work laptop to at least one monitor at home, according ti research conducted in 2021 by Forrester (paid by Dell). Because it’s a paid study by a monitor vendor, there may be bias skewing that number high, but it still suggests a large number of work laptops frequently connect to monitors. (I haven’t looked up student or home user research yet.)
The critical question of this discussion is if more than 1 external display should be deemed too exclusive. The study above just group 1 and more than 1 into the same category.
And in this thread all it took was one troll question for the discussion to fall back on defending if Macs could be used for corporate deployment, both sides not answering the question:
Do you really need more than 1 external display? If so how many of such users exist, and does this justify "wasting" silicon budget catering just for this % of users? On budget / entry Macs?
And in this thread all it took was one troll question for the discussion to fall back on defending if Macs could be used for corporate deployment, both sides not answering the question:
Do you really need more than 1 external display? If so how many of such users exist, and does this justify "wasting" silicon budget catering just for this % of users? On budget / entry Macs?
I'd argue that there are more users who would use two external monitors than there are who would use two independent thunderbolt controllers on the chip, but it's good that we have the 2x thunderbolt controllers on the base chip for users who need them.
Just because a feature isn't used by everyone doesn't necessarily mean it's a waste to add it. (Granted, I'm not necessarily bashing Apple for NOT adding the extra display controllers either, but I definitely would not consider such a decision to be a waste.)
If the functions are not used by a large enough percentage of users then it is by definition a waste. This should be pretty objective. In a thread like this, that part is debatable only because we don’t have the data to back anything up.
End of the day all it boils down is this: Apple made some decisions be it in design or marketing. I brought this up earlier in this thread as well: things like ray tracing cores and ProRes engines are also clearly unused by majority of entry Mac users, but Apple still added them, probably in hopes of pushing the tech. So Apple has been making conscious decisions all the time with their silicon designs, especially in which target audiences they can afford to compromise. Some times the choices are quite off even. But in the display controllers debate we have now, already a 3rd generation in a row we see no increase. I take it a clear sign that Apple thinks they are making the right choice from the get go.
Eh, I get where you're coming from, but I think it's a use case that more than enough people would use. It's not necessarily that uncommon with today's work-at-home office environments. In a $1000+ price bracket, we're talking about high end devices across the whole lineup. The bar is higher in these price ranges.
That being said, given how large the display engines are (which is the topic of this thread), I also understand why they omitted them. I'm not necessarily faulting them for it (the size of the display engine does help to explain their decisions), but I would not personally consider it a waste for them to add the extra display controller either. Just because 90% of users might not make use of it doesn't mean it's a waste for the 10% who do.
I concur with the proposition where if some feature is too valuable to that 10% of users, Apple should just add it anyway. In fact Apple did that with the SD card slot being back to the 14” 16”.
I have worked with pro cameras for a long time, since very early the top pro bodies already were on CF cards, then XQD, then now moved on to CFexpress which is just a combination of the two. As such no body in our line of work really missed the SD card slot when it was gone in 2016. But there are mid tier cam bodies that still keep relying on SD, then makers like SONY or GroPro they have technological or ergonomic reasons to use just SD as well. Losing the SD slot on the 2016-2020 MBPs gave such a bad press from these users, Apple felt the need strong enough to put it back, despite it being less relevant than ever at this point in time. We can make the case for MagSafe as well, back in 2016 type-C PD charging options was close to non-existent, vs in 2021 you can buy a PD charger from a corner store nowadays. But Apple chose to add that back, mainly due to bad press as well. But more importantly is the people who actually do need them, well, totally need them.
Sometimes I think even in Apple HQ, their design / engineering meetings are just like this thread, points of views clashing with each other, then a series of compromises have to be made towards the end product.
Well, there’s nothing strictly stopping Apple from redesigning a smaller display engine to fit within the existing area. Even if it’s more power hungry.
I’m no engineer, but given the absolutely phenomenal battery life of the M series, Apple could (theoretically) make a tradeoff of a few more watts for the ability to add an extra display.
It’s something I would consider if I were deciding what the product should support.
Oh, I guarantee it, you know what they say about opinions being like certain holes.
There’s always clashing opinions in design that need to be resolved, it’s just a fact of life.
Famously, Scott Forestall and Steve Jobs were advocates of skeumorphism while Jony Ive was the opposite. After Steve died and Scott left, iOS and MacOS moved away from skeumorphism as a result.
Frankly, I would have even been happy just to have some sort of software implementation of something similar to DisplayLink being offered by default (using one display engine to control two displays and splitting them up in software) . Probably wouldn't be very practical for Apple to do it out of the box though, Apple wouldn't want to compromise on any of the details.
At least there are technically third party options available, which sadly might be all we have for a while.
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All Silicon Valley/Bay Area tech companies issue Macs as standard.
LOL the projector is mounted to the ceiling with a cable thats fed through to the table for video signal.
It’s the way most large companies do it.
So there's only a hole in the table for the video cable? What kind of crap conference room are you describing? LOL.
Everybody's been in a room with a projector. They have all some variation of this on the table.
