Silicon Mac users: What do you want from a new device in order to upgrade?

[lepidotós]

Sure there are desktops that offer similar throughput, but how many sockets are we talking about on those machines, and how much power do those sockets consume?

According to Samsung, LPDDR5 consumes 50 mV less than conventional DDR5, 1.05v vs 1.10v. So about a 4.8% difference there. I would calculate that in watts, but I can't seem to find a clear amperage either for the sockets themselves or for the DIMMs, even from Samsung or Micron's own datasheets. I'm sure it's out there, I just didn't see it.
As for socket counts, Gigabyte's MP72-HB0 has 16 slots for two processors; with four channels each CPU that reduces down to a minimum of four DIMMs. IBM's Power Systems S1014 has eight OMI serial memory channels with one DDIMM per memory channel.
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To match the 200 GB/s bandwidth of my M1 Pro, my 14" MBP would need to have a whopping 4 DIMMs of DDR5 which would be very tricky to fit into a relatively light and portable laptop.

With $3T in market cap, I'm certain they can find a solution for that... mostly invented problem. One that doesn't have to be SODIMM, either; JEDEC is doing CAMM after DDR5 6400MT/s, for instance. It's not that hard to stick some LPDDR5 modules on a daughterboard.
Even with SODIMM, a single connector is ~6.1mm thick. Doubling them up would still leave you under the 15.5mm thickness of a 14" MBP, and you could even triple them up vertically if you didn't mind a ghastly... 21.6mm thickness.
As for room on the board, I'm looking at a board right now and it's not exactly crammed if you get my gist.
Or hey, why not use the ECC pins for data transfer lanes? Thin the pins in a bit more to give more room for more, hopefully enough to double the bus from 64 bit to 128?
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The M1 Max would need a full 8!

Yes please. This is also ignoring that these aren't just laptop processors, desktops use them too where size and power aren't as important. Mac Pro especially would benefit from replaceable RAM. But that's off topic for this conversation.
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Yeah, until you make a laptop that is actually power efficient like this one, and then suddenly it does.​

Personally, I would rather take advantage of the power savings in the system architecture and CPU to enable stuff like socketed memory. But I did some more digging and saw a few threads doing a frankly better job explaining the power efficiency of soldered RAM (I wonder if race to idle and factory undervolting, e.g. DDR3L would make up some of the difference, though), so at least now I get the rationale. Not that marcan doesn't bring up a decent point, especially with the multi die chips. I think it's ultimately just different priorities. And RAM is really not my main concern, it's the storage I really don't like being soldered because RAM doesn't die nearly as easily as flash storage, which has a finite lifespan and instnatly dooms any board that it's on to become unrecyclable e-waste. They could so much as just switch out the storage with an m.2 2230 slot and I'd be pretty much satisfied on the repairability aspect.​

 

[dgdosen]

I'd like something as small as the 12" MacBook, as powerful as the latest 3nm process will allow, no (need for) thermal management, 1TB of data and 32GB of ram. OLED too.

 

[Boil]

Faster GPU cores, and more of them, with hardware ray-tracing...

 

[Gudi]

Not... really? M_ is based on A_, but it's not the same thing. Plus, Intel had the economies of scale of amd64 being 98.5% of the PC market prior to 2020, so e.g. i7-1065g7 shows up in more than just Macs, reducing the price of each chip. M_ is just found in Macintosh (and iPad, I guess), which means far less economy of scale... even if that's not quite as much of a problem as it could be, considering.​

Intel could own 100% of the PC market and would still only match iPhone plus iPad in units, not in profit or performance. Also Apple doesn't need to swallow all the research cost twice. 64-bit and multi-core are well understood technologies. Apple only needed to develop them again on ARM. Rosetta 2 and Universal binaries work exactly like during the last silicon transition, the difference is now the direction is going away from Intel, not towards them. The roads are known, only now Apple is driving themselves.

 

[lepidotós]

Also Apple doesn't need to swallow all the research cost twice. 64-bit and multi-core are well understood technologies.

Right, because M1 is literally just A14 with a couple more cores and no other changes, right? And M1 Pro is just A15 with a few extra cores?​

 

[Gudi]

Right, because M1 is literally just A14 with a couple more cores and no other changes, right? And M1 Pro is just A15 with a few extra cores?​

The A7 introduced 64-bit (on ARM) and the A5 introduced dual-core. By the time of the A14, Apple was already the world's leading chip designer for a couple of years in a row. Expanding this lead on legacy PCs was merely a step to the side.

The M-series is just automatic transmission from cars coming back to us old truck guys.
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Nobody needs to do any new research for that. We understand how to build an automatic. Eventually car makers (who run truck manufacturing as a side business) will come around to develop one for a truck. They just couldn't be bothered to put in the effort any earlier, because cars are the prevalent form of transportation.

Analogous the M-series is just something Apple does, it's not an entirely new research project for them.

 

[dmccloud]

It’s all already covered by A-series chip research and development. The iPhone pays for all of it plus $30bn net profit per quarter. Apple could literally give away Macs for free.

While the M-series uses the same cores as the A-Series, it also has a lot of customizations and additions to the SoC that are not part of the A-series designs. Consequently, Apple still has to focus R&D and development budgets specifically towards the M-series above and beyond what goes towards the A-series (e.g., baseline) development. Intel can spread those costs out among the companies it supplies (HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, MSI, Alienware, Asus, Acer, Samsung, etc.), so the cost per unit to cover those R&D related costs are much lower than Apple's costs are as the sole supplier and customer for Apple Silicon.

 

[dmccloud]

Intel could own 100% of the PC market and would still only match iPhone plus iPad in units, not in profit or performance. Also Apple doesn't need to swallow all the research cost twice. 64-bit and multi-core are well understood technologies. Apple only needed to develop them again on ARM. Rosetta 2 and Universal binaries work exactly like during the last silicon transition, the difference is now the direction is going away from Intel, not towards them. The roads are known, only now Apple is driving themselves.

Actually the Rosetta 2 vs. Rosetta 1 comparisons show it's not the same process at all. During the PPC-Intel transition, the original Rosetta translated RISC instructions into x86 in real-time. With Rosetta 2, the compilation is done when the app is launched for the first time, which is why the initial load of an Intel-based app sometimes takes longer while subsequent loads are much faster.

 

[Gudi]

While the M-series uses the same cores as the A-Series, it also has a lot of customizations and additions to the SoC that are not part of the A-series designs. Consequently, Apple still has to focus R&D and development budgets specifically towards the M-series above and beyond what goes towards the A-series (e.g., baseline) development.

Last year Apple shipped circa ~50 million iPads with an M1 or M2. This alone should half the R&D costs of M-series chips for Macs. It doesn't matter how many customers Intel supplies, if one company owns half of the global tablet market. On the other hand, most of Intel's customers buy two-year-old i3 and i5 designs, because they also don't want to eat Intels R&D costs in a PC market which largely runs on best-price competition. If Intel was indeed in a much stronger position, we would see their advantage somewhere. Wouldn't we? 🤷

 

[MrGunny94]

What we are currently missing in Apple Silicon, is the dual monitor support from the MBA models. It's absolutely terrible that we do not have support for this, as many people have dual monitor setups at work and at home.

To me is the only crucial point that still needs to be addressed, and it has to be fixed come M3. Having to step up to the 14" base model for this is just ridiculous.

I know like 15 persons from my circle of friends who bought the 14" base model just because of this

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

My 14 inch M1 Pro is gonna last me a while. I probably won't upgrade until M3 Pro or unless they make a major change to the Macbook Pro like giving it OLED.

 

[MrGunny94]

My 14 inch M1 Pro is gonna last me a while. I probably won't upgrade until M3 Pro or unless they make a major change to the Macbook Pro like giving it OLED.

How's your battery health? Had to replace mine because it was already down to 82%.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

How's your battery health? Had to replace mine because it was already down to 82%.

Mine is still above 90%. Besides 82% is still good.

You got optimized charging on right? If you don't than you're burning cycles

 

[spiderman0616]

Mine is still above 90%. Besides 82% is still good.

You got optimized charging on right? If you don't than you're burning cycles

My 14" M1 Pro is still at 100%. I mostly use it on battery, so optimized charging never really kicks in. I am the only owner of this Mac--bought it new right from the Apple Store. It's almost never shut down and gets used more or less daily.

My 16" M1 Pro is at 93%. It is never unplugged and sits at an almost constant 80% on optimized charging. I am the second owner of this machine though, and am not sure what the usage patterns were with the first owner. I'm also not completely sure it was at 100% out of the box.

I got both these machines at roughly the same time--the 16" came from work and then I loved it so much I bought the 14" to replace my M1 Air about a month later.

 

[norwaypianoman]

Decent prices of 4TB or 8TB disks... for semi-professional and professional use.

 

[MacDaddyPanda]

Well I recently switched over from Windows as Primary computer to Mac. Windows is now my gaming rig only. But I did have an Intel i5 Mac Mini. And now I've upgraded that to the recent M2 Mac Mini. My Primary reasons, Was it runs significantly cooler, uses less energy, and somewhat more stream lined sync between my Iphone and Ipad and Mac Mini. So I use my mini as my main daily driver computer for everday stuff. And the room I have it in can get awfully warm in the summer. So a cooler running computer sort become a higher priority for me. Though when I'm gaming that'll still get too warm. But I'm not gaming constantly so hopefully it helps in that regard. And the performance of the M2 has been pretty stellar. For my use case it's on par or better than my i7 gaming rig for everyday tasks.

 

[dmccloud]

Last year Apple shipped circa ~50 million iPads with an M1 or M2. This alone should half the R&D costs of M-series chips for Macs. It doesn't matter how many customers Intel supplies, if one company owns half of the global tablet market. On the other hand, most of Intel's customers buy two-year-old i3 and i5 designs, because they also don't want to eat Intels R&D costs in a PC market which largely runs on best-price competition. If Intel was indeed in a much stronger position, we would see their advantage somewhere. Wouldn't we? 🤷

You still don't get it. When Apple was using Intel parts, Intel's R&D costs were spread out across dozens of manufacturers and thousands (if not millions) of CPUs. Apple has to shoulder the entire costs of R&D, without the advantage of selling their SoCs to third parties. This means that every product sold by Apple is priced accordingly based on the need to recover those expenses, whether a phone, tablet, Mac, or other device in Apple's catalog. If you look at Intel's share of the overall PC market, you'll see what their strong position actually is.

 

[Gudi]

You still don't get it. […] Apple has to shoulder the entire costs of R&D, without the advantage of selling their SoCs to third parties.

Selling your chips to others is a huge disadvantage, licensing your software to others is a huge disadvantage, supplying components to others is a huge disadvantage. Steve Jobs proved the most profitable business in the entire world is selling directly to 8 billion endusers with no middleman.

 

[bobcomer]

Selling your chips to others is a huge disadvantage, licensing your software to others is a huge disadvantage, supplying components to others is a huge disadvantage.

Sorry, that just doesn't make sense -- it's how a lot of companies survive and make money. Even Apple. (they license software to a whole lot of others, like every Mac user and that's just the OS, there's other software products they license.) They also sell finished product.

Steve Jobs proved the most profitable business in the entire world is selling directly to 8 billion endusers with no middleman.

No middlemen?!!! Heard of Best Buy and a whole bunch of other retailers....

How about what they have to buy from others to make their product, like components, chips, ...

 

[hajime]

New device without QC issues.

 

[Gudi]

Sorry, that just doesn't make sense -- it's how a lot of companies survive and make money. Even Apple.

In an attempt to make more money (and become rich as Microsoft), Apple for a brief period in time tried to license its OS to other companies and allowed them to build officially supported Mac clones. This nearly brought the company to collapse, because it eliminated all reasons to pay a premium for expensive US-made Mac hardware. Upon his return Steve Jobs killed this self-harming business.

No middlemen? Heard of Best Buy and a whole bunch of other retailers...

Never! Why would I have heard about a tiny Minnesota company, which adds nothing to the value of a product and takes a 20% cut? Nobody outside the US is talking about Best Buy. And everybody inside the US is talking about how online retailers like Amazon are killing them with their lower cost structures, larger scale and better logistics. The important point here is that Apple eliminated the need to buy from a retailer. You can go directly to the Apple website or to a physical Apple Store and buy Apple products and services from the source. Apple Stores are by far the most profitable shops by revenue per square meter. They are in the nicest old buildings in the most touristy locations of the world's largest metropolises. They build the brand and improve customer relations, but they also make an awful lot of money on their own.

How about what they have to buy from others to make their product, like components, chips, ...

This is also a huge disadvantage, because with dependence on suppliers like Intel you lose control over innovation, release dates, price points, performance, heat, weight, noise and battery life of your products. And everybody else can build similarly ****** notebooks with the same Intel CPUs. So you've lost your most important unique selling preposition (USP), which makes the customer come to you and not go to the next best Chinese slave manufacturer. M-series chips are not just great for what they are and what they can do. One of their biggest benefits to Apple and their customers alike is that you can only buy them inside a Mac or iPad.

 

[Spindel]

As a M1 Mini owner, ordered on release day back in 2020, I would like to say that the options in the poll reflects poorly on us stationary computer owners.

Also what I want and need from this computer are two different things.

I use the computer mainly for work and a very little bit of gaming.

I work as an engineer and my main work tools are excel, mail, AutoCAD (and in general web browsing, pdf:s and office suite). For all these intents and purposes the M1 Mini is plenty powerful and works better for me than most Windows computers simply because the combination of the hardware and MacOS is much more responsive than Windows. The responsiveness I would pin down mainly on Windows being bad rather en Apple Silicon (Linux is not an option for me in the work space). I can make this comparison since I have a work issued Windows computer, but when working from home I break my company's IT policy and work on my Mac.

So no I don't need anything more for a foreseeable future.

As for what I would want is a little more powerful GPU just for the times I do play (some) games. The M2 Pro Mini has had me really tempted but I decided that it is stupid to upgrade already for this reason alone so I'll hold off a bit longer before upgrading.

 

[Wokis]

Significant improvements on GPU probably. Not just "more cores" but a focus on RT and cool stuff for the Neural Engine.

I also hope for the notch to go away. Apple has gone all-in on the notch being cool-looking and distinctly "them", but it's not nice to have there on a practical level.

 

[jinnyman]

Better GPU performance

 

[floral]

As a M1 Mini owner, ordered on release day back in 2020, I would like to say that the options in the poll reflects poorly on us stationary computer owners.

Also what I want and need from this computer are two different things.

I use the computer mainly for work and a very little bit of gaming.

I work as an engineer and my main work tools are excel, mail, AutoCAD (and in general web browsing, pdf:s and office suite). For all these intents and purposes the M1 Mini is plenty powerful and works better for me than most Windows computers simply because the combination of the hardware and MacOS is much more responsive than Windows. The responsiveness I would pin down mainly on Windows being bad rather en Apple Silicon (Linux is not an option for me in the work space). I can make this comparison since I have a work issued Windows computer, but when working from home I break my company's IT policy and work on my Mac.

So no I don't need anything more for a foreseeable future.

As for what I would want is a little more powerful GPU just for the times I do play (some) games. The M2 Pro Mini has had me really tempted but I decided that it is stupid to upgrade already for this reason alone so I'll hold off a bit longer before upgrading.

I tried to include options that'd be relatable to both desktop and laptop users but apparently this isn't the case and I apologize for that. What would you like to see included in the poll?