Mixed feelings about the M1

[skaertus]

Max is only used on the phones to denote the largest size and the SoCs to denote the greatest performance, notice how there is no iPad Pro Max, despite those being Tim Cook's products.

There is also the AirPods Max.

 

[darngooddesign]

There is also the AirPods Max.

Yes, but those are physically different in the same way that the iPod, iPod Mini, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, and iPod touch were all different products instead of variations of the same item. Unlike those, the iPhones all look the same so calling the high end iPhone the Pro-Max is better than calling it the "Largest-iPhone-with-the-best-cameras".

It's no different from buying a car with a specifically named trim level.

IMO using names instead of specs is fine, but Apple needs to increase the variety of their names.

 

[robco74]

Back in the days of Spindler and Amelio, there was the LC lineup for eduction, the Quadra line for professionals, and the Performa line for consumers. There was a lot of overlap, with essentially the same product. For example, you had the LC 475, Performa 475, and Quadra 605 that were all essentially the same machine. This continued even after the transition to PPC and the PowerMac branding. Fast forward to Steve's return and there was iMac. It was just iMac. The PowerMac G3 was only sold as that model. Ditto the iBook and PowerBook. There weren't Performa/LC/PowerMac versions of each model. A much simpler product line with far fewer SKUs than what Apple had before.

Sure, we have iPad Air and iPad Pro, but there are tangible differences between the products to differentiate them. It's not just branding. In the past, it was mostly branding, with some tweaks to macOS, mostly around preinstalled apps. To go back to the original naming scheme, Apple would sell iPad Performa to consumers, iPad LC to the education market, and Power iPad to the professional market - but they would all essentially be the same model.

 

[UBS28]

The M1 is really great. It is probably the greatest Apple's achievement under Tim Cook. It shows Tim Cook's mastery of efficiency in the production line. Apple was able to use the economics of scale of iPhone chip production to make a processor for the Mac which exceeds anything Intel could offer.

But, for all this mastery of the production line, there seems to be an indifference or perhaps even apprehension of excessively changing the product themselves.

I mean, when the M1 MacBook Air and Pro came out, my jaw just dropped. It looked exactly the same as previous models, but much faster and with much better battery life. Wow, just think of the possibilities! It was November 2020. It was just a matter of time before Apple could make a very impressive line-up of Macs.

In April 2021, more than five months later, Apple released new M1 products again, now the iMac and the iPad Pro.

The very same M1 was there inside the iMac, exactly as it was five months before. OK, it was still a great processor, although I was disappointed that Apple did not make it faster for a desktop-class computer. The performance gap between desktop Intel and Apple's M1 was not so great. Still, the new 24-inch iMac is very thin and impressive. Apple was off to a good, or at least decent, start.

The iPad Pro puzzled me. For some reason, Apple decided to put an M1 inside. Perhaps to justify the price tag. Great processor, lacking software. Apple will not make software to match the power of the M1 iPad Pro, it will just, as always, leave it to the world of unfulfilled possibilities of independent small developers. Instead of spending some hundreds of millions making software, Apple decided to put 6 billion to produce streaming content (which I cannot see how it can succeed).

It was still OK, though.

In October 2021, Apple released the long-awaited MacBook Pro. It came in two versions, 14 and 16-inch. Bigger screen, miniLED, ProMotion, additional ports, no TouchBar, better sound. More importantly, the M1 Pro and the M1 Max, beefed-up versions of the M1 processor. What else could one possibly want?

Now it is February 2022, and Apple is yet to release the M2. Which may take a little bit of time, provided how recent the M1 Pro and the M1 Max are. More importantly, the release of the M1 Pro and the M1 Max showed some things which somehow shattered my expectations:

The M1 was so fast compared to contemporary Intel processors so Apple could have a headstart. This headstart was so important because the timelines may differ. In November 2020, the M1 absolutely trounced the wide available 10th gen Intel processors. Now the 12th gen Intel processors may still not be quite there, but are much more on par with the M1.

Although the M1 was revolutionary, Apple did not care to change the composition of its MacBook Pro line-up. There is still a small model and a larger one. Apple is not willing to make a third MacBook Pro size, for instance.

When Apple started making its own chips, I thought cellular connectivity in Macs would be a given. I was wrong. I cannot understand why Apple would not provide 5G on the MacBook Pros, but the fact is that it is not available not even as an upgrade.

There are rumours about Apple keeping the MacBook Air and the low-end MacBook Pro as separate lines of products. This makes zero sense for me, and it a testament of Apple's reluctance to change its line-up.

If I were Apple's CEO and had the M1, I would be truly excited about the possibilities and how it could really revolutionize the line-up. Tim Cook did nothing of that. He gave customers what they wanted and was as conservative as possible in respect to the line-up. Perhaps this is the reason why he is the CEO and I am not. But I just think what Steve Jobs would have done if he had the M1.

What you mean the M1 is Apple greatest achievement? It is basically what the A14X from the iPad Pro would have been. That's why the iPad Pro also got the M1 in the end, as there was no point launching the A14X anymore.

 

[skaertus]

I don’t know that there is an intention to keep the product lines simple. Yes, early on Steve Jobs made a big deal about simplifying the Mac product line. That was when Mac sales were a much smaller market and when Apple was financially strapped. As the market for a product grows, you can elect to better meet the varied needs of customers by segmenting that market to match the customers. It is possible to overdue that, but when you get it right, you end up with more sales because of the different models. Right now, the iPad Air and 11” Pro are a little too close in some ways, but they sell at different price points and I can tell you as an 11” Pro user, I would not be satisfied with the Air And the 12.9” Pro is just too damn big. Once Apple puts the M1 in the 11” and upgrades the screen, it will again be enough better than the Air to be a pro segment model.

In the Mac line, the new models fit into a well defined product line. The Air and the 13” MBP are a little awkward since they are legacy machines in a lot of ways. I think once we get past the redesigns, it will make more sense at that lower end.

I am curious now. You mentioned that you are a user of the 11-inch iPad Pro and that the 10.9-inch iPad Air would not satisfy you. That is sort of a first for me. I would like to understand in which ways the 11-inch iPad Pro satisfies you that a 10.9-inch Air could not.

 

[skaertus]

What you mean the M1 is Apple greatest achievement? It is basically what the A14X from the iPad Pro would have been. That's why the iPad Pro also got the M1 in the end, as there was no point launching the A14X anymore.

I meant that Tim Cook's greatest achievement may have been putting the M1 inside the Mac, thereby significantly changing the PC chip market in a way Qualcomm could not.

I can understand why Apple put the M1 inside the iPad Pro. But I also think it should be significantly faster than an A14X would have been (I have not consulted benchmarks for the previous iPad Pro models, so it is a guess).

 

[skaertus]

There is some merit to the disillusionment, but by and large, it's inside baseball. To the average consumer, which is about 90% of people, they don't care. Sure, a snazzy new friendly, modernized design will be alluring to all of us. And it's coming. It's gonna be great. But for crying out loud, there's no need to sulk about the product lineup after transitioning to M1 when you look on the other side of the fence: Dell with its new XPS 13 Plus "touch capacitive function row," lack of headphone jack, or as-of-yet to be determined borderless trackpad; or MSI's MacBook Pro Max-killer...which is over an inch thick, 6lbs, has a 1080p screen, not to mention its battery life or performance while on battery. Do we talk about Samsung's new 14.6" tablet (with a notch!) or S22 phones? So to close this post out, we can get a little bored when we're zoomed into the the day-to-day. When it doubt, zoom out... as they say. Don't sweat the small stuff. It's all small stuff.

I am not saying that Apple is wrong. I am just saying I am a bit disappointed and that I expected more.

Some manufacturers are trying really hard to innovate, but some of the efforts are laughable. Dell XPS 13 Plus is a pitiful attempt to upsell the XPS 13. The lack of a headphone jack in a laptop is just ridiculous. The second screen in ASUS laptops is a gimmick.

Apple itself committed some mistakes in the past. The MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar, for instance, had some design mistakes. The lack of ports did not particularly favor the design but annoyed many customers. The Touch Bar was a mess: it required deviating the eyes from the main screen to reach out to non-fixed commands. Bad design idea.

Under Steve Jobs, Apple brought some innovations to the MacBook line that stood for generations and dictated the trend in the industry. The unibody design, the multi-touch trackpad, the thin-and-light chassis, the removal of the CD/DVD drive, the Retina display...

These were design decisions that implemented simple ideas. "I want a better-built laptop, more solid, with less moving parts". "I want this trackpad to work properly, so I do not have to carry a mouse around". "I want the laptop to be thinner to fit in any bag, and to be lighter to be carried around". "I want a sharper screen, but I do not want characters to be unreadable". They were not solutions in search of problems: they made sense but everybody else other than Apple was so focused on repeating past trends that paid no attention to simple stuff like this.

Steve Jobs was very attentive to this. He wanted products to be simple and had this rare feeling. Tim Cook apparently does not, but he has other virtues. Perhaps all the great simple ideas have already been had and used, and there is nowhere else for laptops to go other than refining what has already been created. Or perhaps nobody else has figured out what else to do to make them even simpler and better. Perhaps it is a good decision that Tim Cook's Apple adopted a conservative approach in the new MacBook Pro did not venture into other fleshy bad design ideas such as the Touch Bar.

 

[JMacHack]

itt: “Apple hasn’t released anything that wowed me like the iPhone, I’m bored and whiny”

 

[Tagbert]

I am curious now. You mentioned that you are a user of the 11-inch iPad Pro and that the 10.9-inch iPad Air would not satisfy you. That is sort of a first for me. I would like to understand in which ways the 11-inch iPad Pro satisfies you that a 10.9-inch Air could not.

11” Pro

• More RAM - Safari tabs less likely to spontaneously reload.
• 120Hz screen - better scrolling and pen tracking
• FaceID is easier and faster to use than TouchID
• Faster processor - I often use apps like Word/Excel and appreciate the performance.
• I like the smart folio keyboard
  

 

[Tagbert]

I hope it does make sense.

I once had both a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and a 13-inch Retina MacBook Air, both with Intel processors. They had similar designs. In this respect, the Air was lighter, and the Pro had a brighter screen. But the real difference was in performance: the Pro blew the Air away, as the processor and the disk were far faster. And there was the TouchBar, of course, but that is now a goner.

So, there was some rationale in differentiating the 13-inch Pro and the Air in the Intel era. One is faster and the other is lighter. The M1 blew these differences away. Now, the 13-inch Pro and the Air have the same performance, the differences being that one is slightly heavier and has a brighter screen. These differences do not justify having two different models, especially in a lean line-up such as Apple's (I suppose not even Dell or Lenovo keep two laptops with such small differences).

It could make sense for Apple (i) merging the Air and the 13-inch Pro into one product or (ii) offering a low-end 14-inch Pro with the M2 and an Air with a thinner design. I still think it would be best if Apple could replace these models for an Air with two sizes (a 14 and a 16-inch). I do not think Apple would do this, but it would be a slightly bolder move and would please many customers who are on the market for larger laptops and do not want or need to spend a small fortune on a high-end über-fast model.

Yes, these two models are certainly high on Apple‘s list of models to redesign.

Remember, both of these models are still using the old design cases. They only got new chips and nothing else. It would be the obvious change to clear up the overlap and create a clear distinction between the consumer line and the pro line.

I would like to see the Air become a MacBook with 13” and 15” variants. There are a lot of people who want a larger screen but don’t want to spend twice as much for a 14/16 Pro that would be overkill for their needs. It’s not clear where or if the 13” Pro would fit in on the Pro line so it might be discontinued.

 

[Krevnik]

These were design decisions that implemented simple ideas. "I want a better-built laptop, more solid, with less moving parts". "I want this trackpad to work properly, so I do not have to carry a mouse around". "I want the laptop to be thinner to fit in any bag, and to be lighter to be carried around". "I want a sharper screen, but I do not want characters to be unreadable". They were not solutions in search of problems: they made sense but everybody else other than Apple was so focused on repeating past trends that paid no attention to simple stuff like this.

I can think of a couple simple things that the 14/16” MBP do that are interesting, but maybe not to a super wide audience:

- I don’t want to have to have an external monitor to do color critical or HDR work.
- I don’t want to have to hook up a TV to get accurate video cadence.

While it’s clear that Apple isn’t on the same level as the professional monitors they claimed to compete against with the XDR, these are still wins for bringing more functionality to independent content creators such as the easy profiles with custom white points, set nit levels, etc. The “ProMotion XDR” screen is a surprisingly big deal to me for the reason that it is a design decision that implemented a simple idea, but a very useful one when playing with video or photography. Something Apple honestly should have been doing earlier with their “Pro” laptops, IMO.

 

[jdb8167]

I can understand why Apple put the M1 inside the iPad Pro. But I also think it should be significantly faster than an A14X would have been (I have not consulted benchmarks for the previous iPad Pro models, so it is a guess).

The M1 is about 2x the A12Z. I benchmarked the A12Z Mac mini that was in the developer kit (don’t tell Apple since the NDA said you couldn’t do that). My M1 MacBook Air is just about twice as fast before it throttles from heat.

 

[ouimetnick]

Steve Jobs' Apple launched the MacBook Air, which was a thin-and-light design that did not fit in any existing category.

It also launched the iPad, a cheaper device that could well cannibalize the Mac.

Tim Cook's Apple plays safe. It does not run the risk of cannibalization. It launches products in existing categories and now and then makes an upscale version (iPad Pro, iPhone Pro, iMac Pro), to make the customer spend more.

I am not saying it is the wrong approach. It is not. Tim Cook's Apple is being incredibly successful. It is just that I personally expected more from the products equipped with such a revolutionary chip.

Tim Cook's Apple also launched Apple Watch and AirPods, two products that did not fit into any existing category either.
The MacBook Air wasn't launched until 2 years after the first Intel Mac shipped. We still have time to go. Also, making the customer spend more is something Jobs did as well. If you wanted certain high end features, you'd have to spring for a higher cost device. If you wanted a MacBook with a backlit keyboard in 2008, you'd have to spring for a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. Now even the cheapest MacBook has it. The entry level iPad is great for many folks, actually the cost of iPad has dropped from $499 to $329. Not everyone needs the features of an iPad Air or iPad Pro.

I think you might be the only one with high expectations. I only expected Apple to switch out Intel's chips for their own, give me better battery life and a cooler operating notebook. I didn't expect any major revolutionary redesigns, just refinement.

Like I said before, the new 14"/16" redesign with M1 Pro & M1 Max is incredible in every way compared to the junky Touch Bar products. What did you have in mind for a MacBook Pro? What did you expect for a new iMac? What do you expect for a MacBook Air? You can only reinvent the wheel so many times before it's not a traditional laptop computer.

Apple is running out of ways to make a flat slab of an iPhone. They had flat corners, rounded corners, back to flat corners.. Unless they make it foldable, you can't change it in a dramatic manner.

 

[ouimetnick]

There is also the AirPods Max.

Weak argument. You don't realize that Job's Apple also had a iPod shuffle, iPod nano, iPod classic, iPod touch? Totally different form factors for people with different preferences. Job's Apple also had desktop computers and portable ones. The iPods all played music, the computers all computed, why so many different things under Jobs?

 

[exoticSpice]

M1's efficiency is still untouchable in that product class but I can't help but feel like they're giving the competition far too much time to catch up when they should be working on extending their lead.

As long as Apple A Series is getting updated every year they will be not be behind

 

[sb in ak]

I think the rather iterative hardware updates make sense. They just moved over to a new chip; they probably don't need to introduce a whole bunch of new quirks as well that come along completely redoing the computer design as a whole, too. That just seems like grounds for a trainwreck. Add to that they are trying to do this all within a global pandemic with component shortages and lots of people working from home and the collaborative challenges that creates.

I'm really enjoying my M1 Pro MBP so far. Battery life is great, the ports are back, no more roasting my sperm count! My one complaint is that Monterey occasionally seems kinda buggy compared to what I am used to-- and it's a bummer to buy a product from a company that doesn't do more to improve working conditions at manufacturing plants. I'm not really expecting any big breakthroughs from Apple at this point. It's a massive company now and that's a big ship to steer. The equipment and OS is mostly a joy to use and doesn't get in the way of what I need them to do.

 

[Malus120]

As long as Apple A Series is getting updated every year they will be not be behind

See, the problem with this kind of thinking is that it makes several major assumptions which may or may not be true:
1. That Apple will always have an overwhelming or at least comfortable lead in both performance and efficiency in the ARM space (this is probably the safest assumption given the last ten years or so but still not guaranteed)
2. That Apple's lead in the ARM space will always translate to a meaningful performance and efficiency lead over X86 based competitors (definitely not guaranteed now that AMD is back in the game and Intel's finally found their competitive footing)
3. That Apple will be willing and able to put their latest uArch (on the latest node) in the Mac at the same time as the iPhone, or at the very least with minimal delay. I think this last one is unfortunately pretty unlikely as long as foundry capacity is limited / at a premium. The M1 (based on the 2020 A14) uArch not being replaced with an M2 (based on the 2021 A15?) uArch until late 2022 is IMHO a concerning sign.

I think #3 in particular could become a big problem for Apple as AMD/Intel ramp up in the coming years. The M1 came out at almost the perfect time. In 2020, AMD had just released its first really good attempt at a laptop CPU in a decade with Zen 2 (before killing it with Zen 3) and Intel's product stack was basically just spinning the wheels and stalling until Alder Lake. Therefore even the MBA could compete favorably with a lot of high end PC laptops on the CPU side. Looking at things in 2021-2022 the story is quite different. The M1 Pro (Max) is a very attractive product as a package but while they were basically the fastest laptop CPUs at launch... Alder Lake took the crown (albeit at hilariously high TDP) just a few months later, and AMD's also looking to surpass the M1 Pro on the CPU side this year.

 

[cmaier]

2. That Apple's lead in the ARM space will always translate to a meaningful performance and efficiency lead over X86 based competitors (definitely not guaranteed now that AMD is back in the game and Intel's finally found their competitive footing)

Since we’re making lists:
1) Apple will always have a lead over x86 so long as x86 continues to allow variable instruction lengths
2) when did Intel find their competitive footing? Certainly not alder lake? Competitive with what? With AMD? Definitely not with M1.