Its from Linus´s livestream where he talked with Dave Lee about the M1 and all the media around it.
They agreed that the M1 will defniately be smashed to the ground by something else next year, that the m1 will be obselete then. Can they be right about that? Linus compared it to the Apple Watch which apparently the first version got smashed by the second version by far.
But isnt it always like this? Every year comes a better mac, why are they so "defensive" about that or use it as critisism? Dont all companies do this? Strive to make something better every year?
Linus also ment that people who buy the new macs with the M1 will basically be beta-testers for apple.
Thoughts?
I happen to think they're both wrong and I say that as a soon to be 53 year old, who has watched, personally, the transitions from the 68000 to the 68030 and 040, then to the 603 and 604 then the G3 and G4, the PowerPC G5 and finally the Intel. I called for, quite loudly, the migration to intel at a time when everyone was saying, "Intel inside, Idiot Outside". It was not a popular opinion until Steve Jobs made the same points I was making, which was performance per watt matters.
I think Linux thinks that the m1 is new. It's not. It's the evolution of Apple Silicon going all the way back to the iPhone 4. Will the m1 get smashed? Yes, but not next year nor the year after. The reason is simple. The m1 is already a 5nm chip. So you're not going to see die shrinks coming like that have been. We're already near the end of the die shrink. You may get 3nm next, and then it will crawl to a halt. So what's left? Better, cores, more additions that speed up operations. You'll see modest increases over time just as you've seen modest increases from the iPhone 7 to the 10, 11 and now 12. Does the A14 obliterate the 12x? No. It is better, yes, but does it make the 12x obsolete? Nope.
In each iPhone and iPad Apple has to deal with self-imposed thermo restrictions. And the same is true for the future of the Mac. Apple "wants" to make thinner, more quiet, less heavy Macs. They are not thinking about what they can do with a 128 core water-cooled system. They are thinking about what they can do better, faster, smaller, and quieter.
People like Linus live in a world where they are happy to build a huge box with three fans on a cooling block 30cm long just for the cooling. Look at the G5. Remember those two HUGE heat syncs with the two fans and the separate cooling zones? That was a compromise Apple never wanted to make. They would rather have a smaller, lighter, quieter, machine. They don't wish to be in the hair dryer market.
The next Mac Pro, will be smaller. That's what Apple Silicon does for them. That's what they want. It needs to be simple, more integrated, and thus cheaper to make and more reliable to own.
Remember what got us here. Think of it as a runway at the airport. How much of the runway is left? Think about the balance Apple is trying to create. The next iMac will be lighter, thinner. Less space on your desk. More screen, less bezel. That comes at a cost. They will not build the fastest machine possible. They will build within the self-imposed constraints of their design goals.
Linus would throw that all out and build big heavy water-cooled iron. He misses the point. What he suggests is what Intel did. They just cared about speed. And that ideal held Apple back. It made every PC maker the same. That's not what Apple wants.
