LOL, this is the TL;DW (too long; didn't watch) summary:
"The MacBook Pro is objectively faster than the Dell model, but my advice is to buy the slower, crappier Dell."
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What will be the PC response to Apple's M1 ?
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LOL, this is the TL;DW (too long; didn't watch) summary:
"The MacBook Pro is objectively faster than the Dell model, but my advice is to buy the slower, crappier Dell."
Perhaps this is a game of differing expectations? Mac users expect full power unplugged, then get salty about a 10% hit. Wintel laptop users are so used to a power limited state while on battery that they don't care.
Possibly, but I'm specifically referring to the PCMR types that do this. I'm guessing it's more them myopic types for whom as long as their custom built PC doesn't do it then it doesn't exist in that world.
I exchanged the dell xps 17 i got when i read the M1 reviews. I paid $3200 for a laptop that got smoked on the things i care about on a $1k apple macbook air. I held on for a few days, but after i saw rust compiled was at epic speeds. I walked in and returned it. No sense of spending that much for a laptop and get 1/2 the speed.
They're still low in the core count. If they scale up, assuming a low 85% performance increase with each doubling of core count, they've got a massive lead. A 16 core chip would put up ~24,000 in Cinebench. For context, a 10900K scores ~17,300. The hypothetical M1Z I mentioned would probably draw ~50W, compared to 125 from the Intel chip.
That's a commanding lead, even with a conservative scaling estimate.
It's not ARM that makes the M1 what it is. The ARM instruction set is just a very small part of it.
What makes it special is Apple having invested for years now into an integrated solution in both CPU core design, GPU, secure enclaves, ways to work efficiently with less RAM, in machine learning, image processing, etc.
Adding all those together in a thermal constraint fit for an iPhone.
That experience together with Intel's failures lead them a few years ago to alter course for our macs.
We see that result today in the M1 for their entry level machines already and will have to wait for their high-end results a bit longer.
PC makers embracing ARM will not fix anything nor bridge any gap with the mac.
The only thing they could do is find a way to get their hands on an Apple M1, something that Apple would never do, Apple itself is too costly to buy to force them to do, and it would be foolish for Apple to even consider at all no matter how much money they're willing to spend on it.
They could improve performance of an ARM design "quickly" by ramping up the clock, but that means they are stuck with what Intel does the last few years: a thermal nightmare.
So comparing anything DELL, HP, etc. will produce in the next few years to an equivalently priced Mac, will make them look like lemons. No doubt there. The R&D needed to bridge that gap is going to take time and Apple would be foolish to stay put and rest while they are ahead.
So that leaves those wanting a low heat, high speed computer 2 options for the next few years:
- Forget windows, switch to the mac
While corporations will resits for a long while, end users that just consume stuff could do so easily, after all they own iPhones and iPads that work perfectly fine already, thee mac is even more versatile than those are.
For us mac users this would be good: it's the best way to get software makers to pay more attention to mac users.
- hope that there's a company like Parallels or so that brings out an efficient emulator/translator to virtually run x86 windows on M1 hardware.
There could be an effort form MSFT to build windows for M1 macs (virtually and/or native) with the help of Apple. But it'll take time to finish such a project till end-users get results in their hands.
Why would Microsoft need help from Apple: the M1 is filled with hardware that is not (publicly) described in enough detail to program anything on a systems/driver level for. It might be reverse engineered but that's a massive effort in itself and will never yield the same level of trust than if you collaborate with those having designed the hardware.
The same goes for Linux variants and any other OS.
That move would however mean that Microsoft can overcome a hurdle: It would also endanger their relations with the likes of HP, DELL, etc. as their current partners would feel the consequences of it pretty hard.
I'm sure the likes of Intel, Dell, HP, Qualcomm, etc: will find areas where the M1 is a bit less than stellar (or even outright weak), and they'll heavily hype that up, no doubt they will if/when they feel the heat.
But PCworld (not MACworld!) writing stuff like this:
Tested: How badly Windows on Arm compares to the new Mac M1s
We tested how Windows on Arm (Surface Pro X with SQ1 Arm chip) compares to Apple's M1 chip (MacBook Air). The results look bad for Windows on Arm.
www.pcworld.com
Let's hope there's more that switch to the mac, the world would be far better with less of a dominance from windows.
FWIW:
- I'm 100% windows free - worked hard to get the last dependency gone - cancelled my parallels subscription this year
- I've plenty of Intel macs around
- I only have one M1 based mac mini: it's _very_ decent for an entry level machine (and I use MP7,1s as well - so I'm used to very fast machines)
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Apple has a past track record with their phones showing year over year linear speed improvements. (not just per watt - in total). That past record compared to what Intel churns out shows what Apple (with the help of suppliers) is capable of when thermally constrained compared to Intel desktop hardware that oversteps it thermal allowance significantly and even increases it to get an almost insignificant improvement over time.
Comparing both quite literally spells doom for Intel. Unless they have something up their sleeve they'll need years to fix this. If they had anything up their sleeve: they'd have used it already as they are underperforming for way too long already.
Now Microsoft is joining the ARM fray...not good for Intel.
www.theverge.com
Microsoft reportedly designing its own ARM-based chips for servers and Surface PCs
Custom chips will reportedly power Microsoft’s cloud services.
Here's one from Bloomberg:
Microsoft Designing Its Own Chips for Servers, Surface PCs
Microsoft Corp. is working on in-house processor designs for use in server computers that run the company’s cloud services, adding to an industrywide effort to reduce reliance on Intel Corp.’s chip technology.The world’s largest software maker is using Arm Ltd. designs to produce a processor...
www.bloomberg.com
It's worth pointing out that Microsoft is using Arm's own designs rather than designing their own architecture like Apple who is just using the ISA.
Unless they start creating their own designs it is unlikely they will be able to catch up with Apple Silicon in the near to mid-term future.
There's 0 reason to have windows if you want
- Microsoft Office (exists for Mac)
- Skype
- Facebook (it's just a browser you need, there's plenty of those)
- Photo editing (plenty of options from Adobe (monthly fee), Affinity (one time fee), Apple themselves (free)
and much more.
The vast majority of users have no need for Windows beyond that they are "used to it".
In fact they would all do better on a mac after 1 day if they can accept change just a tiny bit.
Where you "need" windows is with:
- Software vendors you're stuck to that only make software for windows
- Internal corporate solution built a long time ago that lock them in on windows and that the companies that use them refuse to see as the boat-anchor it is to them evolving beyond what they were decade or more ago. These things are like what was the mainframe years ago: not an asset for the future, but something very good at preventing you from getting to the future
Using a gaming console for general purpose computing is very unlikely:
- the gaming hardware is typically sold at cost or even at a loss as they expect to recuperate that as you continue to buy software. Allowing you to run general purpose OSes on the hardware would invalidate their business model and change the pricing of the hardware.
- the peripherals like mice, keyboards etc might be added to get the same quality as a mac, but typical livingroom TVs still suck as computer monitors - even if they could fix that - the TV is just too far away for general purpose computing.
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Yeah. As someone who went with the 2019 Mac Pro after trying to make a 2018 Mini my main machine, the M1 mini is already so close to being able to let me go back to more affordable hardware.
Some of my stuff still chugs a bit on the GPU side, but honestly makes me excited that the M1X could be what I’ve been wanting for 2 years now after having to retire the iMac for a headless solution.
There are plenty of enterprise and industrial apps that are still Windows-only. Windows has many use cases beyond desktops. This is part of the reason why there is so much baggage and why there is so much pushback when MS tries to make changes. The only hardware that runs macOS are Macs, not helpful if you need a more customizable solution. Intel actually makes some nice mini-PCs that are even smaller than the mini. Windows also has tools for managing huge deployments, something still not quite matched for macOS.
Personally, I keep Boot Camp around for a few older games, but that's about it. But Windows still has plenty of use cases that the Mac can't quite fill. Linux has potential, if you can stick with an LTS version that is less of a moving target.
Personally, I keep Boot Camp around for a few older games, but that's about it. But Windows still has plenty of use cases that the Mac can't quite fill. Linux has potential, if you can stick with an LTS version that is less of a moving target.
Want to guess what operating system is on the Xbox’s?
Windows 10. They replace a thing called the shell with one for the Xbox. But it’s still Windows 10.
That's obviously an iMac.
Picture is far too much out of focus to see the software running on the mac - and it's likely something very specific as well.
If all that you need is a "blue" border/background for you to be happy: I'm sure there's ways to get that without windows.
An assembly facility is one of those things that are likely to have custom developed software - and i's not so unlikely those who where in charge drank too much of the MSFT cool-aid and built it for windows only. But if they had made it browser based and not tied it onto MSIE - they would be free to run it on any client OS they could pick.
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Who are you expecting to beat them? Surely not intel. The M1 is already faster than their stuff. AMD? Out of the box the M1 is faster than all but two of their parts. And the M1x ( if that’s what Apple calls it) will leap right past them. Who’s left?
It is a production line of Mac Pro's running Windows on iMacs.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/236...o-of-mac-production-line-running-windows.html
Look better.
And yes it is a PCWorld article.
And yes maybe you are right and maybe it can be done without Windows too. (I doubt it, because most engineering/production software runs on Windows). But why being so tribal about it? Isn't it simply about using the right tool for the job instead of getting personal feelings for a brand?. Do you develop the same tribal feelings for your hacksaw or a hammer? Tim seems to understand it and you don't.
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Mary Jo Foley who knows everything about the business side of Microsoft says that they have as many CPU designers as Apple.Now Microsoft is joining the ARM fray...not good for Intel.
Microsoft reportedly designing its own ARM-based chips for servers and Surface PCs
Custom chips will reportedly power Microsoft’s cloud services.
It’s windows. In a corporate setting, you need software that comes with your tools. That is most likely for Windows.,You need an operating system that you can manage and that you staff knows how to work with. That’s also likely Windows. Tim’s not surprised because he knows this.
Microsoft's Surface line is a niche product, and will continue to be, whether Arm, AMD or Intel - they are not going into serious competition with the PC OEMs ...
Far more lucrative for MSFT is the server side, Intel server chips are power hungry and it costs a lot on money to cool a server room - that's what Intel and AMD should be concerned about
they don't need to catch up, their Surface line is a niche, a small percentage of Apple's share of the PC market ... their interest in Arm is the server business ...
Who will manufacture the MS ARM chips? And the MS ARM-based servers?
It could be somewhat awkward for people like HP and Dell having to build servers using chips MS supply (whoever actually manufactures them).
I agree that power usage is a major factor.
Even in a single-server office environment, some clever engineering could produce a server which can keep running, albeit in some special low-power mode, with very modest UPS capacity. E.g. switch off the higher power cores completely. Especially with SSD storage. At present a UPS that can keep an x86 server running through even a pretty short power outage is expensive, fairly big, heavy and often noisy.
PS I also see ARM-based PCs (of whatever sort) being the natural result of people seeing Apple machines and MS ARM-based servers. Why wouldn't people choose ARM over x86 if they have even some of the advantages we are already seeing in M1 machines?