23 ms·

M1 Macs Review

212 points by alwillis 6y ago

tobyhinloopen 6y ago
Well done Apple. You’re innovative again on the PC market.
- jooize 6y ago
  “What's a PC?”
  - cuillevel3 6y ago
    Ah, let me tell you the story of the "IBM" compatible PC. "What's an IBM?"
- pjmlp 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s01yqqbpuI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s01yqqbpuI0
  - mcphage 6y ago
    John Hodgman was really great in / for those commercials.
CraigJPerry 6y ago
After 6 years away from being "all in" on Apple, yesterday my base spec MacBook Air M1 arrived. Battery life is the key takeaway for me. Performance is fine but I'm used to a powerful desktop so it's not blowing me away but the battery life definitely is blowing me away. To run things under rosetta there's an arch command: e.g. arch -x86_64 brew install xxx - the arch preference is inherited by sub processes. I'm kind of amazed how well intel binaries run here. I can't tell the difference in usage and it just works, even games like Cuphead from steam seem fine.
- cjrp 6y ago
  If a laptop's performance is on a par with a desktop's, and the fan's aren't going crazy, I'd call that a big win! My 2018 MB Pro has the fans running most of the time, and even then sometimes throttles back the CPU.
  - rimliu 6y ago
    Original comment mentions MB Air, Air has no fans (now that sounds funny :)
    - vishnugupta 6y ago
      Of all the things unveiled during the launch event no-fan thing completely blew me away. That, I was not prepared for! I now wonder, does that mean that MB Air has no moving parts inside it at all?
      - xuki 6y ago
        Yes, like an iPhone or iPad.
        kgwgk 6y ago
        And like the 2015-2019 MacBook.
        rorykoehler 6y ago
        I hope they do this form factor again with the new chips
        ksec 6y ago
        I am thinking may be next year or the year after. The MacBook Pro will get new Design, at 16" and 14". ( I hope instead of going thinner they could stay within the current cooling TDP ) Then the MacBook Air will have a 14" as well, before a 12" MacBook Air is introduced at a lower price range, possibly at $799.
mojzu 6y ago
Although I’m definitely not convinced enough to make the jump yet, those emulation benchmarks are impressive (and seem to also apply somewhat to general use based on another review I read). Running x86 code faster than native equivalents, using an ARM chip, that will probably be consuming significantly less power doing it is something I did not expect to see in gen 1 of this switch.
- mtgx 6y ago
  Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is mainly because Apple does mostly translation, while Windows on Arm is pure emulation. This combined with the fact that Arm-based Windows PCs have mostly used mobile chips not optimized for the desktop use-case and form factor, is why the new Arm-based Macbooks leave any Arm-based Windows PCs in the dust in terms of performance.
  - Siira 6y ago
    I’ve heard Windows emulation is also cached JIT.
  - Tagbert 6y ago
    Also, Apple has tuned the M and A series chips to perform well with Objective-c and Swift as used by iOS and Mac OS. One example is that they made some object operations 5x faster than on Intel chips. This speeds up loops and garbage collection significantly. Those are very common operations. Other vendors are using generic chips that were not tuned for the OS.
    - syspec 6y ago
      MacOS / iOS apps are not garbage collected
      - tambourine_man 6y ago
        Reference counting is a form of garbage collection, although not usually refered to that way.
mikece 6y ago
Speed is still relative. Yes the benchmark numbers for the M1 are impressive, but I am curious to see non-benchmark, real-world workloads compared. I'm reminded of a YouTube video (link below) in which the comparison was made between an $11,000 Mac Pro and a PC kit that also cost $11,000. In this case the PC was rocking a Ryzen chip with 32 (or was it 64?) cores and smoked the Mac Pro on every benchmark. But when comparing comparable workloads, like doing a final render on a large video project using Final Cut Pro on the Mac and Premiere Pro on the PC, the Mac Pro did narrowly edge the PC. So I would be interested in seeing the M1 MBP do side-by-side, real-life workload tests like final-rendering a large video project, compiling a multi-gigabyte XCode project, applying a complex set of filters to an image, etc. Benchmarking is nice to an extent but I think lacks real-world significance in this context. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzT0-t-7-PA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzT0-t-7-PA
- rimliu 6y ago
  Well, see this e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxH3RabNWfE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxH3RabNWfE
  - mikece 6y ago
    Awesome -- that's what I'm looking for... but now I wish there was some explanation as to why a $699 machine is doing things that previously you needed a $4000 machine to do. I look forward to learning more!
    - doublepg23 6y ago
      Anandtech had some theories based on the A14s design. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...
- OberstKrueger 6y ago
  TechCrunch's review includes a compile of WebKit, Final Cut export, as well as some traditional benchmarks. It includes performance and battery impact of the tasks. https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro-is-powerful-but-its-the-battery-life-that-will-blow-you-away/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro...
yhersk0vitz 6y ago
I feel like this may the first time that Macbooks might actually be worth their premium from a purely hardware perspective. Before people jump on this, I mean that for example the previous Intel MB Pro with i5 would cost like $1,500, which is far more than almost any windows laptop running the same specs.
- seqastian 6y ago
  People on the car forum comparing bmw with the same horse power as a fiat will agree with you.
  - gnarbarian 6y ago
    Is the Mac comparable to the bmw because both are nearly impossible to work on and fix when they break?
  - niea_11 6y ago
    I think it's more fair to say comparing a bmw 3 series and a toyota supra. Both are good cars but one is known for its premium finish and quality, and the other for the customization possibilities you can have. :)
    - QuotedForTruth 6y ago
      This is a funny comparison since BMW actually builds the Supra. Its basically a rebranded Z4. https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparison-test/a31004604/2020-bmw-z4-m40i-vs-2020-toyota-gr-supra/ https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparison-test/a310046...
      - niea_11 6y ago
        thanks for the link I didn't know that :D. I'm not a car enthusiast, but the supra is the first car that came to my mind when I read the parent comment because I saw a lot of youtube videos with supras from the 90s (modified and) producing a lot of power. Like this one [1], I think the car in the video is a 1999 model and stock it produces at most 325hp (info from wikipedia). 1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvh2HYIyBAs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvh2HYIyBAs
hart_russell 6y ago
I received an M1 mini 2 days ago. I noticed the Steam client seems to be a bit laggy in UI responsiveness, but besides that I have no complaints. I got it for use as a server, so I was a bit dismayed to hear that M1 Docker support has hit a roadblock, but hopeful that they figure it out soon.
- bnt 6y ago
  I have a maxxed out 16” and Steam is still laggy for me.
  - nsxwolf 6y ago
    It's a big terrible WebKit browser with a whole bunch of crap glued on, it performs about how I'd expect it to.
- TMWNN 6y ago
  >I noticed the Steam client seems to be a bit laggy in UI responsiveness Disabling GPU acceleration may fix this issue.
- djs55 6y ago
  Don't worry, we (at Docker) have been working on Apple Silicon support for a while. The command-line tools work under Rosetta 2 but the local VM inside Desktop will take a little bit longer to port. Just in case you haven't seen it there's some further info on Docker+M1 in the blog post: https://www.docker.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-chips-and-docker/ https://www.docker.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-chips-and-docke...
  - kube-system 6y ago
    > The command-line tools work under Rosetta 2 Does this mean I can `docker run` using a remote (x86_84) docker host in the meantime?
  - hart_russell 6y ago
    Thanks for the reply! I have subscribed to the newsletter and look forward to updates.
ojosilva 6y ago
Here's looking at getting one. But I wonder what's the currently compatibility status of the dev stack: node, git, go, java, nginx, databases (pg, mongo, maria...), editors (macvim, vscode...), iTerm, et al. And the brew family of installs, which was covered as part of yesterday's thread [1]. Macos ships with some interpreters pre-installed as part of BigSur, including Ruby, Python and Perl. And most source distributions should just compile, but my guess is that it will be buggy given the arch + os combination is novel. Firefox (beta) and Chrome/Chromium apparently are available too. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25132217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25132217
- sohooo 6y ago
  There's a detailed issue[1] on the homebrew repo where you can track their progress. The "Major blockers" section lists go, rust, gcc, and others. [1] https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/7857 https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/7857
- zerkten 6y ago
  I think VS Code will get there very quickly given demand and availability on Windows ARM. For nginx etc, many people have moved to Docker or uses Vagrant workflows which may slow them down. Anyone who follows more classic workflows or installs from Brew should be in better shape.
  - Eric_WVGG 6y ago
    I would urge VSCode users to give Panic’s new Nova IDE a look. It’s a real native app, even without an M1 it has a much snappier feel to it. If Docker isn’t ready by the time 16” M1s come around, I’ll probably just resort to cloud instances for a while.
  - jakear 6y ago
    VS Code is targeting an Insiders release for Apple Silicon by end of November. Experimental builds are available now. https://twitter.com/code/status/1326237772860981249?s=20 https://twitter.com/code/status/1326237772860981249?s=20 (on the team)
x87678r 6y ago
I'm blown away with how good they seem to work. I was about to buy a Lenovo x86 laptop on Black Friday but put it on hold. I presumed M1 was going to be like a Surface X. With Ryzen laptop chips slowly arriving too, next year should be a good one.
- kzrdude 6y ago
  What hope do we have that M1-like chips are available soon in regular non-apple notebooks? I guess the chance is zero.
  - x87678r 6y ago
    Not M1, but MS has Windows running on its own ARM chip as well. I presume it'll get a bigger push now. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-pro-x/8QG3BMRHNWHK https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-pro-x/8QG3BMRHNWHK
  - ActorNightly 6y ago
    M1 isn't groundbreaking. RISK has been around for a while, and stuff like SoC with unified memory isn't new. Id say chances are pretty good. While Apple will always have the edge in terms of optimization since they have to only design for specific hardware, the difference won't be massive, and you won't be locked into the ecosystem.
    - mikechen233 6y ago
      Apple's advantage is in the virtuous cycle of big demand and big market for their products. And now they have built up the talent, the process, to build different chips and chips that are very large. M1 is not a small chip, it's complexity is comparable if not more than intel or amd or Nvidia's chips. They also established a sustainable relationship with tsmc. I am sure tsmc have exclusive or volume contracts for apple to be the first adopter to their most dense node. Tsmc allocates a lot more of waffer capacity to apple than other designers. The marginal cost for apple to design and build a large version of m1 is pretty cheap.
    - 6y ago
odshoifsdhfs 6y ago
I got the mbp when on day one but haven't been able to fully test it yet BUT I have been using it (right now) for almost 2 hours reading reddit and whatnot, I went form 100% to 96%. On my current mbp (2019, i9, 16gb) 2 hours would kill 50% of my battery. I don't care if compile time takes 2x. I can take my laptop with me at 8am and come back at 10pm and know I won't need a charger. It is amazing
- Toutouxc 6y ago
  A battery life of 4 hours doesn't sound okay, my 2013 MBP lasts longer (original battery).
  - odshoifsdhfs 6y ago
    I will be honest, I also don't think it is good. It is a company issued one so I won't bother too much with it. I remember when the i9 came out, Apple had some issues with it, so maybe the battery usage is still a problem? But even so, 2 hours of my usage, in pretty much every mbp I owned (and I had a few) always depleted minimum 25% of battery. (maybe the websites I use are more draining that simple static ones?) And we are talking about 4% now with this one. No matter how you dice it, it is still a big difference. quick edit: it has been 2.5 hours right now since I unplugged it. Browsing Reddit and Hacker News, Whatsapp and Slack applications. 5% of the battery has been used!
    - STRML 6y ago
      That's normal. My i9 does the same. It is heavily, heavily reliant on turbo boost for performance and regularly boosts up to 80W (!!!). As soon as the last kinks are ironed out for M1 there's no reason imo to use the Intel Macs ever again.
  - Demiurge 6y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised depending on usage. My Intel MBA 2020 is 4 months old (should have waited ;_;) but CoconutBattery already reports it <90% of design capacity.
  - 6y ago
m0zg 6y ago
Reviews (including this one) all say webcam sucks pretty bad though. Why Apple chose to release a laptop with a subpar webcam in 2020 is a mystery to me. This isn't even hard or expensive. Spend a couple dollars more on that webcam, Apple, don't be so greedy.
- Toutouxc 6y ago
  Can't it be because MacBook lids are absurdly thin? How thick are the lids of comparable machines (the XPS etc.)?
  - jeromegv 6y ago
    Ding ding ding
  - Geee 6y ago
    They should probably add 2 or more cameras there and combine them into a superresolution image. There's lots of space for that. You could do cool 3D effects too.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    Apple has no problem with the camera bump on an iPhone, but won’t do it for the MacBook. I wouldn’t even mind it on the laptop.
  - Miraste 6y ago
    The XPS webcam is also very bad, and the webcam on HP's MacBook competitor (Spectre) is the worst webcam I've ever seen. I've yet to find an ultrabook with a good camera.
- mrweasel 6y ago
  Honestly, because it's good enough for most people. I mean, yes, they could and absolutely should upgrade the webcam, I just don't see it as a major selling point, the existing is "fine".
- superhuzza 6y ago
  Here's an actual sample of the webcam and mic array. https://youtu.be/sV7CLgTMXio?t=344 https://youtu.be/sV7CLgTMXio?t=344 It's aggressively okay. I wouldn't have any issues with this, but it is a bit disappointing, especially considering how important WFH has become recently.
gazelleeatslion 6y ago
> iOS apps on Mac—sometimes Says Full Screen Video works on some apps (MLB) but not HBO. What about other APIs like Filesystem and Notifications? Responsive apps to resize window? Any bigger write ups on this? To me, a single App Store across desktop/tablet/mobile has the most potential for developers from this chip change and it seems generally skipped over by almost all reviews.
- lostgame 6y ago
  I second this. Most, if not all; the reviews I have read so far have been 100% focused on the hardware itself. I honestly had to dig deep to even find the information I wanted about Rosetta emulation performance. For some reason, 80% of the articles out there are about benchmarks, when we're also looking at the single biggest new release of MacOS in arguably nearly 20 years. I get that it's a big hardware transition, but who cares if the software is not up to snuff? Both are equally important. Catalyst is of huge interest to me, too; especially as an iOS developer. Any good articles / links on this, HN? :)
  - gazelleeatslion 6y ago
    Benchmarking if a 4K video takes 15 or 16 seconds to export is cool, but the universal App Store could be revolutionary and a huge money making opportunity for developers. It’s likely why Apple wanted this so bad. The cost savings from Intel is one thing but the additional money earned through apps will be insane.
bitwize 6y ago
More performant than any other laptop in the same form factor, with less heat and less power draw than any other laptop. And it only runs macOS. Apple is, once again, two steps ahead of the entire rest of the industry. This is the future: custom hardware and custom software working together as a unit. (Although for the next few years, I expect PC vendors will just use Snapdragons or Rockchips as a base.)
- TMWNN 6y ago
  >This is the future: custom hardware and custom software working together as a unit. Yes, the M1 is a product of a company with complete control over software and now hardware, including in this case the SOC that combines RAM and CPU. This is unheard of in a mass-marketed personal computer; I'm not sure this has ever happened before. Commodore used the 6502 CPU from subsidiary MOS Technology in its computers from 1977 onward, but I don't think MOS ever produced RAM, and certainly not integrated into the CPU like this. TI used its own CPU in the 99/4A, but not sure if TI ever produced RAM and, again, there was no RAM/CPU integration like M1.
em500 6y ago
Copy-pasted the comment I left at another forum: The the M1 is Zen3 5600X performance in an ultra-portable form factor. Whether that's revolutionary or not particularly noteworthy depends on the individual use case. If you're don't care that much about power/heat/fan-noise, it's neat but not (yet) world shattering. Bit if you live your life on a small laptop, it may well be. According to rumors, we'll see Apple's 8 Firestorm + 4 Icestorm CPU within a quarter or two in the 16-inch MacBook (current M1 is 4 Firestorm + 4 Icestorm, where Firestorm is the high-performance core). That will perform somewhere between a 5800X and 5900X (or some recent 16-core Xeon that nobody remembers the name/number of). Again, revolutionary or meh depends on use case. Linux native is not in the cards but it won't matter, it will work fine virtualized with hardly any performance penalty (for ARM64 linux). If for some reason you insist on native linux, it's time to recognize that Apple hardware is not for you. Personally I run my server workload on servers far away and let other people deal with infra (particularly, power, networking and physical security). But it's probably great for heavy media creators on the go.
- geokon 6y ago
  "Linux native is not in the cards" Sorry I'm not in the loop.. but why is that? Does the hardware somehow preclude it?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - em500 6y ago
    The locked bootloader will only run Apple signed operating systems (a la Chromebook, without the Chromebook Developer mode escape hatch). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23640746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23640746
    - coldtea 6y ago
      Actually that's not the case. This post is misinformed (and 4 months old). There was a breakdown from an official Apple page how to boot alternative systems on an M1.
coldtea 6y ago
I have a 2017 MBP 15". Can't wait to get an M1 Pro, and I don't even care that much for the battery life -- it's all about the better performance on NLE software for me...
- rimliu 6y ago
  Same. Placed my order for the 16GB version. It is about time to replace my 2015 13" MBP. Works, bet gets too slow for DaVinci Resolve and Pixinsight.
Shivetya 6y ago
My question going forward is, how far can they extend the memory within the SOC architecture before the chip becomes too large to make this economical? I am also interested in their gGPU solution but am curious if they will be as diligent with driver updates as Nvidia and AMD are as one reason gaming is so strong on Windows is both providers quickly adjust for new games and issues. While gaming is not an issue to all users the Mac world needs to shake this concept of just get a console or windows gaming machine. There should not be an excuse to have two or machines on separate platforms.
- mikechen233 6y ago
  The memory on m1 is nothing special. It's not part of the m1 die. M1 still have traditional memory controllers. It's just they built the logic die and the memory die in a single package for lower memory power. Increase package size is simple or if you really need big memory, do the traditional memory connection on a pcb. As for gaming, I don't it's a hardware issue. It's software support. Microsoft now also owns a lot of gaming studio for xbox exclusivesz those will never come to the Mac. Also big gaming companies are now working with likes of microsoft, amazon, Google on cloud gaming. That seems like the way forward for making AAA games run everywhere. I doubt these companies will spin up another team to support these games on the Mac platform. It sucks that m1 is actually really good gaming processor.
torginus 6y ago
I just bought a MacBook Air. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this redefines how we think about a laptop. Whereas previously a laptop was something that spent the bulk of its time plugged in, and only capable of short bursts of number-crunching/gaming due to thermal and battery limitations, I can literally get a good few hours of gaming untethered on this machine. And this is a base-level MacBook Air, I imagine the Pros are even better. I've owned a few "gaming" laptops, but until the M1 MBA I haven't had one that run games for more than an hour while on battery power, and even then it sounded like a jet taking off. Software support is another, though Rosetta works surprisingly well, the general lack of Mac support in games combined with the removal of 32-bit support in Catalina mean, you're not exactly spoiled for choice.
- alimbada 6y ago
  What kind of gaming are we talking about?
  - JoshTko 6y ago
    The M1 on Mac Mini has a GPU on par with a 1650 ($150) discrete desktop GPU. It's by far the strongest integrated GPU ever. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested/3 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...
    - JoshTko 6y ago
      On closer inspection the M1 seems to be about 85% of the 1650 and is closer to the RX 560 a $130 discrete GPU
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - officeplant 6y ago
    Blizzard already released ARM64 builds of WoW. More than likely D3 and Starcraft 2 as well. They were already fantastic supporters of the metal API so I imagine it was an easy transition for them.
BooneJS 6y ago
“New Intel chips were often delayed and offered only small improvements over previous generations.” As noted on HN and elsewhere, Intel’s struggle has been in manufacturing. They minimized risk (“got lazy”) when Moore’s Law reigned and their fabs were 1-2 generations ahead of everyone else, but have since squeezed every last architectural drop out of 14nm. Put Tiger Lake on TSMC 5nm and a lot of M1’s lead goes away. The M1 is a damned fine chip and I’d like to own one. But the recent hero worship is a bit awkward to read as Apple is generally following an accepted playbook in the End Times of Moore’s law. 1. Save power by creating accelerated logic blocks without locking yourself out of algorithmic improvements. 2. Execute flawlessly. A chip respin costs 3-4 months and who knows how much money, so you need to go to production with the A0 silicon you powered up. 3. Know your software-only workloads. At best, all mathy code can be shoved down SIMD pipelines for high IPC. At worst, you’re dealing with a bunch of branchy integer code. The M1 has solved for both with vector extensions and a massive reorder buffer and register file. It’s a great chip and Apple got there first. They’ll be rewarded with sales and increased market share, and developers will have one architecture to wrench on for all platforms. You would be right to say that Intel couldn’t make the M1. It’s not because Intel’s fabs are struggling or Apple has found tricks no one else in the world knows about. It’s because Apple controls the entire software stack and therefore knows what they need on the chip. Intel caters to the entire market (one the M1 just noticeably shrunk) with myriad integrators, workloads, and users, and each has different concerns and priorities making accelerated algorithm blocks useless to some and not-fast-enough for others.
- zepto 6y ago
  “ You would be right to say that Intel couldn’t make the M1. It’s not because Intel’s fabs are struggling or Apple has found tricks no one else in the world knows about. It’s because Apple controls the entire software stack and therefore knows what they need on the chip. Intel caters to the entire market (one the M1 just noticeably shrunk) with myriad integrators, workloads, and users, and each has different concerns and priorities making accelerated algorithm blocks useless to some and not-fast-enough for others.” This is an important point. It applies up and down the stack for everything Apple does. The people who suggest breaking up Apple are correct that it would destroy them, by forcing them to use inefficient generic components at every level. If we want competition against Apple, the way to get there is not by hobbling them with the inefficiency of the old paradigm. It’s by the rest of the industry figuring out how to collaborate on delivering similar gains without vertical integration.
laurentdc 6y ago
It's in my cart, I'll place the order as soon as CS:GO launches fine on M1. So far it goes to black screen - other Source games work fine though, so I think it's just a matter of time. I already have a 2017 13" MBP but for some reason (dual channel memory? throttling?) the gaming experience is terrible, worse than a 2012 Mini in Bootcamp. I've wanted a gaming laptop (or better put, a laptop that I can also game on) for years but couldn't stand the crappy quality of ASUS/MSI/Lenovo in sub-2k price range. As I said in another comment, I can't believe it's going to be a MacBook :)
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  Did you try Razer?
mcintyre1994 6y ago
The benchmark that's blown me away most so far: Marco Arment on Accidental Tech Podcast says the new Macbook Air is significantly faster to compile Overcast (a pretty big iOS app) than his 10 core $6000+ iMac Pro with 64GB RAM and a 160W CPU. https://overcast.fm/+R7DWXqqm0/1:08:11 https://overcast.fm/+R7DWXqqm0/1:08:11
- brundolf 6y ago
  I/O-bound, maybe? Could be misleading but still impressive
  - kllrnohj 6y ago
    Compilation tends to benefit heavily from bigger caches & faster memory, yes. It's an area that Zen 2 & 3 have been absolutely fantastic at thanks to their huge caches as well. The iMac Pro's relatively slow 2666MHz RAM can't be saved by the also relatively small (these days) cache in the Xeon-W it uses.
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    Xeon W is 7 years old at this point, and the Apple M1 is a pretty darn good modern chip. Today's desktops are as good as servers from 5 years ago. Today's laptops are as good as desktops 5 years ago. Today's phones are as good as laptops 5 years ago. --------- The Apple M1 makes a leap with a huge L1 cache, very wide execution, at a very low clock rate (2.8 GHz for power-efficiency). But when you pair such a leap with a 7-year technology jump, yeah, things look quite silly.
  - mikkelam 6y ago
    Yeah something is fishy here. Could be the new RAM which is way faster
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  One thing to factor in here is that the MBA isn't cross-compiling. It's a RISC compiler writing RISC code. To be clear though, it doesn't matter in the end if the _result_ is more productivity. But it is worth noting that under the hood, the comparison is not entirely apples to apples.
deleted 6y ago
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rob74 6y ago
I stumbled right over the first sentence of the article: > It slowly became clear that one day Apple’s processors would come for Intel. Yeah, that became clear sometime back in 2005... but what does that have to do with the matter at hand?!
jccalhoun 6y ago
this may be the fastest macbook pro ever but it will also be the slowest arm-based macbook pro ever. While I've never owned a mac, I've been mac-curious for a long time but I think I will wait a couple years before I seriously consider switching. (and with new video cards, and new consoles, there are too many things vying for my money right now anyway)
longnguyen 6y ago
I want M1 MacBook Pro _without_ TouchBar
- Siira 6y ago
  The touchbar can be pretty good if you reprogram it, using, e.g., Bettertouchtool. I now put use it as a combination of information dashboard and system-level control switches (audio volume, internet proxy, my own low-power mode, ...). BTT’s touchbar clipboard manager is also phenomenal.
- Zarel 6y ago
  What's wrong with the M1 MacBook Air?
  - longnguyen 6y ago
    Nothing wrong. But the Pro is slightly better in term of performance[1] (due to the fan I guess). As reviewed by John Gruber[2], looks like it's not really a fan but "active cooling system" - very quiet. It would be perfect for me if there exists a MacBook Pro without TouchBar. Otherwise I guess I will go with the M1 MacBook Air. TouchBar might be useful for others but is beyond useless to me. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro-is-powerful-but-its-the-battery-life-that-will-blow-you-away/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro... [2]: https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/the_m1_macs https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/the_m1_macs
The_rationalist 6y ago
Not a buy for me since they lost Windows bootcamp
bla3 6y ago
I'm really really excited about the new hardware here. Bummer that the software is pretty meh. If macOS was as great as it was in the 10.6 days I'd be the happiest Apple user ever.
nanna 6y ago
A concern in my University department is that some of the FOSS/small scale software we teach on won't work on our students' shiny new M1 Macs. Should we be worried?
- alberth 6y ago
  I'd say the bigger concern is long term, will Apple even ALLOW you to even run non-App store software? E.g. FOSS On iOS they don't. And with this new direction of macOS & ARM, it's not out of the question the same will happen on the desktop. EDIT: why the downvotes? Seriously - what's wrong with what I said ... I'm genuinely curious.
  - officeplant 6y ago
    >why the downvotes? Probably because currently MacOS just has a slightly more nagging version of Window's UAC when it comes to unsigned software. Saying that they will disable it holds about the same amount of weight as saying Microsoft will make Windows Win10 S mode only. Is it possible? Maybe, but neither company is going to shoot themselves in the foot like that in the current market.
- stu2b50 6y ago
  FOSS should be particularly fine, since the code is public, eventually someone will recompile it for ARM (if it's even written in a native language; languages with runtimes will work perfectly fine when the runtime is ported) If not, everything should run through Rosetta 2. Apple did eventually pull the original Rosetta, so who knows how long they will keep the feature, but in the short term I can't imagine it being a problem.
  - jdminhbg 6y ago
    > Apple did eventually pull the original Rosetta, so who knows how long they will keep the feature, but in the short term I can't imagine it being a problem. The original Rosetta was only useful for legacy Mac software though; this one will continue to be useful for new x86 software that gets written. I think it will last a lot longer.
rado 6y ago
This is the revolution we needed in a technology landscape that promotes waste (x86, Electron), however belittled by the haters. It's real and changes everything.
- mikechen233 6y ago
  Why is x86 waste? It was beating everything on the market during the 90s and 2000s no? Its just intel hasn't pushed things forward in 10 years right?
  - rado 6y ago
    Power consumption and inefficiency
  - freehunter 6y ago
    x86 is wasteful in comparison to these M1 chips, not necessarily in comparison to 1990s chips. It wasn't wasteful back then, but today there are faster and more power efficient chips on the market. The longer Intel keeps making 100W designs that are slower than 10W ARM chips, the more wasteful it becomes.
kzrdude 6y ago
Steve Jobs would be proud. I imagine Apple didn't say anything like that, but I really think he would be stoked with this, especially a cooler computer (no fan) and a leg up all competitors.
- proverbialbunny 6y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if he planned this. Lisa Sue said she plans 10 years out in advance regularly, because building up hardware takes that long.
  - ksec 6y ago
    Nah, both Jim Keller and Gerard Williams said Steve wasn't interested. Which was definitely the right call at the time, remember that was in 2010. Now that it happen it is more like a natural progression.
crad 6y ago
Bought my wife the new M1 MBA as a replacement for her 3yo Macbook. She loves it. It's significantly faster for her applications, the keyboard is a return to one she likes, and she's not run into any issues with it thus far. If the Docker issue is resolve, I'll likely jump on a M1 MBP when they're available.
nunez 6y ago
Once Docker works on ARM, I’m gonna make the switch. I was very very close to trading in my 2020 MBP and eating the loss, especially after seeing the insane WebKit compilation times and battery usage. I loathe the Touch Bar and am very excited about having a MBA that doesn’t suck. The only concern I have is this: it is my understanding that the arm7 instruction set differs slightly from vendor. Is that true? I’m thinking of what problems I might run into with shipping apps destined for AWS Gravitron.
- whalesalad 6y ago
  Docker on mac runs in a VM anyway, so I would imagine you're still going to run it in x86 mode.
  - Tagbert 6y ago
    VMs are only expected to run ARM clients. There is no cross-architecture VM support. That might come but it would require something more like software emulation of x86/64 processors which is a bigger tasks.
    - whalesalad 6y ago
      What limitation exists? Just the fact that right now the M1 doesn't do virtualization? At some point full x86 virtualization will need to exist on this platform and when that happens you'll be able to run an x86 virtual machine on your mac to back the underlying Docker engine. This is what is happening right now with Hypervisor.framework on a Mac, for instance. If you develop a lot of ARM for sure run it all in ARM configuration but if you are a dev deploying to the current status quo you would want to continue working with x86 images if possible.
  - nunez 6y ago
    That would be fine since most of my targets will still be amd64 anyway
- mikechen233 6y ago
  Armv8 instructions should be consistent between vendors. Gcc and llvm is very likely to produce standard armv8 code that is portable. At work we use intel chips to compile armv8 linux executables and librarys and run them on broadcom arm chips.
tpush 6y ago
Soooo... If anyone wants the last Intel MacBook Pro with 4 Thunderbolt ports, hit me up :D. I'm really wanting the new Air.
hyperpallium2 6y ago
Instead of selling the M1 to manufacturers, Apple will create additional consumer devices with it, and take over everything. For example, in a few years, a console: Apple will finally enter the game console market, with such a leap in CPU and GPU, that its premium-pricing will be value-for-money. The higher price will be acceptable to consumers, via monthly plans (as for iphones) - it will be locked down, so the App store will be the only way to use it. Technologically, they have great SP, they just need great MP. Same for GPU. They can do it. Games: ARM-based machines are certainly capable - consider the AAA ports to the Switch. They can port again. iPhone GPUs have been more powerful than its 500GFLOPS (undocked) for a while. They also have many games - and developers - on the App store.
jimnotgym 6y ago
It is funny to read the comments full of excitement. To me the M1 thing fills me with dread. To me I just see problems for the IT team. I already know our corporate VPN doesn't run on Big Sur. I have no hope for the monitoring app, or the Antivirus. Apple is such a pain for corporate IT
- EricE 6y ago
  Corporate IT is often an even bigger pain for it's users since things like VPNs are often bought to meet the need of Corporate IT and not the users :p
  - jimnotgym 6y ago
    Yes, popular meme. However I have a bunch of users who suddenly upped and left the office in April and still needed access to in house resources, fileshares, intranet, reporting services. Things we haven't finished moving to the cloud. Perhaps you can tell me how else I should do that overnight without a VPN? Everyone elses job looks so easy doesn't it
    - dkonofalski 6y ago
      We did the same and our VPN worked fine then and works fine now on Big Sur. If anything isn't working for you, then I feel like that's your fault considering that 32-bit apps have been deprecated for years and kexts that were incompatible have been deprecated (and messaged) since at least Catalina. You, and whatever vendor you used, have had multiple years to prepare for the changes in Big Sur that would break this stuff.
- dkonofalski 6y ago
  That seems like a corporate IT failure, not a failure of anything else. We just got an M1 Macbook Pro and nearly half of our machines are already updated to Big Sur and we haven't had any major issues. The only issue has been an old kext from Cisco that can't be approved anymore but it hasn't caused any major issues and Cisco has already let us know that there's an update to that incoming. In my experience, this transition has been way smoother so far (even with the limited input) than our changeover to Windows 10.
jeromenerf 6y ago
This is refreshing to see competition actually deliver better products instead of just cutting costs. The technical innovation has only marginal value for me and I would love the same soc on a rpi like device, for home servers. Time will tell. Now, as a Linux guy, I’ll just wait until innovation turns commodity, having no interest in macOS whatsoever.
- alwillis 6y ago
  Now, as a Linux guy, I’ll just wait until innovation turns commodity, having no interest in macOS whatsoever. You may have a long wait. Apple has been killing Qualcomm and the other ARM licensees in performance for years. Apple shipped the first 64-bit ARM processor at least a year before Qualcomm could do it. It took 10-years of designing their own ARM SoCs to get to the point of being able to produce the M1. Apple showed Debian running in a VM on a prototype 6 months ago, so we know that's coming. There's a decent chance Linux running in a VM (or native Docker when that comes) will be much faster than Linux running on similarly priced Intel/AMD hardware.
  - jeromenerf 6y ago
    > Much faster We can only hope so. I would love to run Linux on my iPad (which is not m1 of course). I would be sad to use macOS though. That’s all early thoughts.
josteink 6y ago
HW sounds good. Now it just needs to run Linux :)
renewiltord 6y ago
So somewhere inside Apple there must have been a Skunkworks project to "put the iPad chip in a laptop" or something right? Someone has to have thought of it. I can't wait to read about the folklore entry for this ten years from now.
ChrisArchitect 6y ago
feel like laptops are way more plugged in and non-mobile than ever now because of the covid pandemic and new world of working from home. Battery life means nothing since we're not moving around every day, and likely won't again in the same way as before. Saw a comment somewhere a few days ago that the M1 isn't really important to the laptop world but the server and phone ends of the spectrum in the bigger picture/longer term.
RubberShoes 6y ago
"The MLB app, always an iOS exemplar, did allow me to play video in full screen and send it to Picture in Picture. More like this, please!" MLB here - we stay as true to native Apple HLS as possible including open-source HLS.js where possible. .tv games are a little more complex but we're big fans of Apple's frameworks

M1 Macs Review

212 points by alwillis 6y ago

tobyhinloopen 6y ago

Well done Apple. You’re innovative again on the PC market.

jooize 6y ago
“What's a PC?”
- cuillevel3 6y ago
  Ah, let me tell you the story of the "IBM" compatible PC. "What's an IBM?"
pjmlp 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s01yqqbpuI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s01yqqbpuI0
- mcphage 6y ago
  John Hodgman was really great in / for those commercials.

CraigJPerry 6y ago

After 6 years away from being "all in" on Apple, yesterday my base spec MacBook Air M1 arrived. Battery life is the key takeaway for me. Performance is fine but I'm used to a powerful desktop so it's not blowing me away but the battery life definitely is blowing me away. To run things under rosetta there's an arch command: e.g. arch -x86_64 brew install xxx - the arch preference is inherited by sub processes. I'm kind of amazed how well intel binaries run here. I can't tell the difference in usage and it just works, even games like Cuphead from steam seem fine.

cjrp 6y ago
If a laptop's performance is on a par with a desktop's, and the fan's aren't going crazy, I'd call that a big win! My 2018 MB Pro has the fans running most of the time, and even then sometimes throttles back the CPU.
- rimliu 6y ago
  Original comment mentions MB Air, Air has no fans (now that sounds funny :)
  - vishnugupta 6y ago
    Of all the things unveiled during the launch event no-fan thing completely blew me away. That, I was not prepared for! I now wonder, does that mean that MB Air has no moving parts inside it at all?
    - xuki 6y ago
      Yes, like an iPhone or iPad.
      - kgwgk 6y ago
        And like the 2015-2019 MacBook.
        rorykoehler 6y ago
        I hope they do this form factor again with the new chips
        ksec 6y ago
        I am thinking may be next year or the year after. The MacBook Pro will get new Design, at 16" and 14". ( I hope instead of going thinner they could stay within the current cooling TDP ) Then the MacBook Air will have a 14" as well, before a 12" MacBook Air is introduced at a lower price range, possibly at $799.

mojzu 6y ago

Although I’m definitely not convinced enough to make the jump yet, those emulation benchmarks are impressive (and seem to also apply somewhat to general use based on another review I read). Running x86 code faster than native equivalents, using an ARM chip, that will probably be consuming significantly less power doing it is something I did not expect to see in gen 1 of this switch.

mtgx 6y ago
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is mainly because Apple does mostly translation, while Windows on Arm is pure emulation. This combined with the fact that Arm-based Windows PCs have mostly used mobile chips not optimized for the desktop use-case and form factor, is why the new Arm-based Macbooks leave any Arm-based Windows PCs in the dust in terms of performance.
- Siira 6y ago
  I’ve heard Windows emulation is also cached JIT.
- Tagbert 6y ago
  Also, Apple has tuned the M and A series chips to perform well with Objective-c and Swift as used by iOS and Mac OS. One example is that they made some object operations 5x faster than on Intel chips. This speeds up loops and garbage collection significantly. Those are very common operations. Other vendors are using generic chips that were not tuned for the OS.
  - syspec 6y ago
    MacOS / iOS apps are not garbage collected
    - tambourine_man 6y ago
      Reference counting is a form of garbage collection, although not usually refered to that way.

mikece 6y ago

Speed is still relative. Yes the benchmark numbers for the M1 are impressive, but I am curious to see non-benchmark, real-world workloads compared. I'm reminded of a YouTube video (link below) in which the comparison was made between an $11,000 Mac Pro and a PC kit that also cost $11,000. In this case the PC was rocking a Ryzen chip with 32 (or was it 64?) cores and smoked the Mac Pro on every benchmark. But when comparing comparable workloads, like doing a final render on a large video project using Final Cut Pro on the Mac and Premiere Pro on the PC, the Mac Pro did narrowly edge the PC. So I would be interested in seeing the M1 MBP do side-by-side, real-life workload tests like final-rendering a large video project, compiling a multi-gigabyte XCode project, applying a complex set of filters to an image, etc. Benchmarking is nice to an extent but I think lacks real-world significance in this context. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzT0-t-7-PA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzT0-t-7-PA

rimliu 6y ago
Well, see this e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxH3RabNWfE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxH3RabNWfE
- mikece 6y ago
  Awesome -- that's what I'm looking for... but now I wish there was some explanation as to why a $699 machine is doing things that previously you needed a $4000 machine to do. I look forward to learning more!
  - doublepg23 6y ago
    Anandtech had some theories based on the A14s design. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...
OberstKrueger 6y ago
TechCrunch's review includes a compile of WebKit, Final Cut export, as well as some traditional benchmarks. It includes performance and battery impact of the tasks. https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro-is-powerful-but-its-the-battery-life-that-will-blow-you-away/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro...

yhersk0vitz 6y ago

I feel like this may the first time that Macbooks might actually be worth their premium from a purely hardware perspective. Before people jump on this, I mean that for example the previous Intel MB Pro with i5 would cost like $1,500, which is far more than almost any windows laptop running the same specs.

seqastian 6y ago
People on the car forum comparing bmw with the same horse power as a fiat will agree with you.
- gnarbarian 6y ago
  Is the Mac comparable to the bmw because both are nearly impossible to work on and fix when they break?
- niea_11 6y ago
  I think it's more fair to say comparing a bmw 3 series and a toyota supra. Both are good cars but one is known for its premium finish and quality, and the other for the customization possibilities you can have. :)
  - QuotedForTruth 6y ago
    This is a funny comparison since BMW actually builds the Supra. Its basically a rebranded Z4. https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparison-test/a31004604/2020-bmw-z4-m40i-vs-2020-toyota-gr-supra/ https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparison-test/a310046...
    - niea_11 6y ago
      thanks for the link I didn't know that :D. I'm not a car enthusiast, but the supra is the first car that came to my mind when I read the parent comment because I saw a lot of youtube videos with supras from the 90s (modified and) producing a lot of power. Like this one [1], I think the car in the video is a 1999 model and stock it produces at most 325hp (info from wikipedia). 1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvh2HYIyBAs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvh2HYIyBAs

hart_russell 6y ago

I received an M1 mini 2 days ago. I noticed the Steam client seems to be a bit laggy in UI responsiveness, but besides that I have no complaints. I got it for use as a server, so I was a bit dismayed to hear that M1 Docker support has hit a roadblock, but hopeful that they figure it out soon.

bnt 6y ago
I have a maxxed out 16” and Steam is still laggy for me.
- nsxwolf 6y ago
  It's a big terrible WebKit browser with a whole bunch of crap glued on, it performs about how I'd expect it to.
TMWNN 6y ago
>I noticed the Steam client seems to be a bit laggy in UI responsiveness Disabling GPU acceleration may fix this issue.
djs55 6y ago
Don't worry, we (at Docker) have been working on Apple Silicon support for a while. The command-line tools work under Rosetta 2 but the local VM inside Desktop will take a little bit longer to port. Just in case you haven't seen it there's some further info on Docker+M1 in the blog post: https://www.docker.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-chips-and-docker/ https://www.docker.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-chips-and-docke...
- kube-system 6y ago
  > The command-line tools work under Rosetta 2 Does this mean I can `docker run` using a remote (x86_84) docker host in the meantime?
- hart_russell 6y ago
  Thanks for the reply! I have subscribed to the newsletter and look forward to updates.

ojosilva 6y ago

Here's looking at getting one. But I wonder what's the currently compatibility status of the dev stack: node, git, go, java, nginx, databases (pg, mongo, maria...), editors (macvim, vscode...), iTerm, et al. And the brew family of installs, which was covered as part of yesterday's thread [1]. Macos ships with some interpreters pre-installed as part of BigSur, including Ruby, Python and Perl. And most source distributions should just compile, but my guess is that it will be buggy given the arch + os combination is novel. Firefox (beta) and Chrome/Chromium apparently are available too. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25132217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25132217

sohooo 6y ago
There's a detailed issue[1] on the homebrew repo where you can track their progress. The "Major blockers" section lists go, rust, gcc, and others. [1] https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/7857 https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/7857
zerkten 6y ago
I think VS Code will get there very quickly given demand and availability on Windows ARM. For nginx etc, many people have moved to Docker or uses Vagrant workflows which may slow them down. Anyone who follows more classic workflows or installs from Brew should be in better shape.
- Eric_WVGG 6y ago
  I would urge VSCode users to give Panic’s new Nova IDE a look. It’s a real native app, even without an M1 it has a much snappier feel to it. If Docker isn’t ready by the time 16” M1s come around, I’ll probably just resort to cloud instances for a while.
- jakear 6y ago
  VS Code is targeting an Insiders release for Apple Silicon by end of November. Experimental builds are available now. https://twitter.com/code/status/1326237772860981249?s=20 https://twitter.com/code/status/1326237772860981249?s=20 (on the team)

x87678r 6y ago

I'm blown away with how good they seem to work. I was about to buy a Lenovo x86 laptop on Black Friday but put it on hold. I presumed M1 was going to be like a Surface X. With Ryzen laptop chips slowly arriving too, next year should be a good one.

kzrdude 6y ago
What hope do we have that M1-like chips are available soon in regular non-apple notebooks? I guess the chance is zero.
- x87678r 6y ago
  Not M1, but MS has Windows running on its own ARM chip as well. I presume it'll get a bigger push now. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-pro-x/8QG3BMRHNWHK https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-pro-x/8QG3BMRHNWHK
- ActorNightly 6y ago
  M1 isn't groundbreaking. RISK has been around for a while, and stuff like SoC with unified memory isn't new. Id say chances are pretty good. While Apple will always have the edge in terms of optimization since they have to only design for specific hardware, the difference won't be massive, and you won't be locked into the ecosystem.
  - mikechen233 6y ago
    Apple's advantage is in the virtuous cycle of big demand and big market for their products. And now they have built up the talent, the process, to build different chips and chips that are very large. M1 is not a small chip, it's complexity is comparable if not more than intel or amd or Nvidia's chips. They also established a sustainable relationship with tsmc. I am sure tsmc have exclusive or volume contracts for apple to be the first adopter to their most dense node. Tsmc allocates a lot more of waffer capacity to apple than other designers. The marginal cost for apple to design and build a large version of m1 is pretty cheap.
  - 6y ago

odshoifsdhfs 6y ago

I got the mbp when on day one but haven't been able to fully test it yet BUT I have been using it (right now) for almost 2 hours reading reddit and whatnot, I went form 100% to 96%. On my current mbp (2019, i9, 16gb) 2 hours would kill 50% of my battery. I don't care if compile time takes 2x. I can take my laptop with me at 8am and come back at 10pm and know I won't need a charger. It is amazing

Toutouxc 6y ago
A battery life of 4 hours doesn't sound okay, my 2013 MBP lasts longer (original battery).
- odshoifsdhfs 6y ago
  I will be honest, I also don't think it is good. It is a company issued one so I won't bother too much with it. I remember when the i9 came out, Apple had some issues with it, so maybe the battery usage is still a problem? But even so, 2 hours of my usage, in pretty much every mbp I owned (and I had a few) always depleted minimum 25% of battery. (maybe the websites I use are more draining that simple static ones?) And we are talking about 4% now with this one. No matter how you dice it, it is still a big difference. quick edit: it has been 2.5 hours right now since I unplugged it. Browsing Reddit and Hacker News, Whatsapp and Slack applications. 5% of the battery has been used!
  - STRML 6y ago
    That's normal. My i9 does the same. It is heavily, heavily reliant on turbo boost for performance and regularly boosts up to 80W (!!!). As soon as the last kinks are ironed out for M1 there's no reason imo to use the Intel Macs ever again.
- Demiurge 6y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised depending on usage. My Intel MBA 2020 is 4 months old (should have waited ;_;) but CoconutBattery already reports it <90% of design capacity.
- 6y ago

m0zg 6y ago

Reviews (including this one) all say webcam sucks pretty bad though. Why Apple chose to release a laptop with a subpar webcam in 2020 is a mystery to me. This isn't even hard or expensive. Spend a couple dollars more on that webcam, Apple, don't be so greedy.

Toutouxc 6y ago
Can't it be because MacBook lids are absurdly thin? How thick are the lids of comparable machines (the XPS etc.)?
- jeromegv 6y ago
  Ding ding ding
- Geee 6y ago
  They should probably add 2 or more cameras there and combine them into a superresolution image. There's lots of space for that. You could do cool 3D effects too.
- jandrese 6y ago
  Apple has no problem with the camera bump on an iPhone, but won’t do it for the MacBook. I wouldn’t even mind it on the laptop.
- Miraste 6y ago
  The XPS webcam is also very bad, and the webcam on HP's MacBook competitor (Spectre) is the worst webcam I've ever seen. I've yet to find an ultrabook with a good camera.
mrweasel 6y ago
Honestly, because it's good enough for most people. I mean, yes, they could and absolutely should upgrade the webcam, I just don't see it as a major selling point, the existing is "fine".
superhuzza 6y ago
Here's an actual sample of the webcam and mic array. https://youtu.be/sV7CLgTMXio?t=344 https://youtu.be/sV7CLgTMXio?t=344 It's aggressively okay. I wouldn't have any issues with this, but it is a bit disappointing, especially considering how important WFH has become recently.

gazelleeatslion 6y ago

> iOS apps on Mac—sometimes Says Full Screen Video works on some apps (MLB) but not HBO. What about other APIs like Filesystem and Notifications? Responsive apps to resize window? Any bigger write ups on this? To me, a single App Store across desktop/tablet/mobile has the most potential for developers from this chip change and it seems generally skipped over by almost all reviews.

lostgame 6y ago
I second this. Most, if not all; the reviews I have read so far have been 100% focused on the hardware itself. I honestly had to dig deep to even find the information I wanted about Rosetta emulation performance. For some reason, 80% of the articles out there are about benchmarks, when we're also looking at the single biggest new release of MacOS in arguably nearly 20 years. I get that it's a big hardware transition, but who cares if the software is not up to snuff? Both are equally important. Catalyst is of huge interest to me, too; especially as an iOS developer. Any good articles / links on this, HN? :)
- gazelleeatslion 6y ago
  Benchmarking if a 4K video takes 15 or 16 seconds to export is cool, but the universal App Store could be revolutionary and a huge money making opportunity for developers. It’s likely why Apple wanted this so bad. The cost savings from Intel is one thing but the additional money earned through apps will be insane.

bitwize 6y ago

More performant than any other laptop in the same form factor, with less heat and less power draw than any other laptop. And it only runs macOS. Apple is, once again, two steps ahead of the entire rest of the industry. This is the future: custom hardware and custom software working together as a unit. (Although for the next few years, I expect PC vendors will just use Snapdragons or Rockchips as a base.)

TMWNN 6y ago
>This is the future: custom hardware and custom software working together as a unit. Yes, the M1 is a product of a company with complete control over software and now hardware, including in this case the SOC that combines RAM and CPU. This is unheard of in a mass-marketed personal computer; I'm not sure this has ever happened before. Commodore used the 6502 CPU from subsidiary MOS Technology in its computers from 1977 onward, but I don't think MOS ever produced RAM, and certainly not integrated into the CPU like this. TI used its own CPU in the 99/4A, but not sure if TI ever produced RAM and, again, there was no RAM/CPU integration like M1.

em500 6y ago

Copy-pasted the comment I left at another forum: The the M1 is Zen3 5600X performance in an ultra-portable form factor. Whether that's revolutionary or not particularly noteworthy depends on the individual use case. If you're don't care that much about power/heat/fan-noise, it's neat but not (yet) world shattering. Bit if you live your life on a small laptop, it may well be. According to rumors, we'll see Apple's 8 Firestorm + 4 Icestorm CPU within a quarter or two in the 16-inch MacBook (current M1 is 4 Firestorm + 4 Icestorm, where Firestorm is the high-performance core). That will perform somewhere between a 5800X and 5900X (or some recent 16-core Xeon that nobody remembers the name/number of). Again, revolutionary or meh depends on use case. Linux native is not in the cards but it won't matter, it will work fine virtualized with hardly any performance penalty (for ARM64 linux). If for some reason you insist on native linux, it's time to recognize that Apple hardware is not for you. Personally I run my server workload on servers far away and let other people deal with infra (particularly, power, networking and physical security). But it's probably great for heavy media creators on the go.

geokon 6y ago
"Linux native is not in the cards" Sorry I'm not in the loop.. but why is that? Does the hardware somehow preclude it?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- em500 6y ago
  The locked bootloader will only run Apple signed operating systems (a la Chromebook, without the Chromebook Developer mode escape hatch). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23640746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23640746
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Actually that's not the case. This post is misinformed (and 4 months old). There was a breakdown from an official Apple page how to boot alternative systems on an M1.

coldtea 6y ago

I have a 2017 MBP 15". Can't wait to get an M1 Pro, and I don't even care that much for the battery life -- it's all about the better performance on NLE software for me...

rimliu 6y ago
Same. Placed my order for the 16GB version. It is about time to replace my 2015 13" MBP. Works, bet gets too slow for DaVinci Resolve and Pixinsight.

Shivetya 6y ago

My question going forward is, how far can they extend the memory within the SOC architecture before the chip becomes too large to make this economical? I am also interested in their gGPU solution but am curious if they will be as diligent with driver updates as Nvidia and AMD are as one reason gaming is so strong on Windows is both providers quickly adjust for new games and issues. While gaming is not an issue to all users the Mac world needs to shake this concept of just get a console or windows gaming machine. There should not be an excuse to have two or machines on separate platforms.

mikechen233 6y ago
The memory on m1 is nothing special. It's not part of the m1 die. M1 still have traditional memory controllers. It's just they built the logic die and the memory die in a single package for lower memory power. Increase package size is simple or if you really need big memory, do the traditional memory connection on a pcb. As for gaming, I don't it's a hardware issue. It's software support. Microsoft now also owns a lot of gaming studio for xbox exclusivesz those will never come to the Mac. Also big gaming companies are now working with likes of microsoft, amazon, Google on cloud gaming. That seems like the way forward for making AAA games run everywhere. I doubt these companies will spin up another team to support these games on the Mac platform. It sucks that m1 is actually really good gaming processor.

torginus 6y ago

I just bought a MacBook Air. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this redefines how we think about a laptop. Whereas previously a laptop was something that spent the bulk of its time plugged in, and only capable of short bursts of number-crunching/gaming due to thermal and battery limitations, I can literally get a good few hours of gaming untethered on this machine. And this is a base-level MacBook Air, I imagine the Pros are even better. I've owned a few "gaming" laptops, but until the M1 MBA I haven't had one that run games for more than an hour while on battery power, and even then it sounded like a jet taking off. Software support is another, though Rosetta works surprisingly well, the general lack of Mac support in games combined with the removal of 32-bit support in Catalina mean, you're not exactly spoiled for choice.

alimbada 6y ago
What kind of gaming are we talking about?
- JoshTko 6y ago
  The M1 on Mac Mini has a GPU on par with a 1650 ($150) discrete desktop GPU. It's by far the strongest integrated GPU ever. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested/3 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...
  - JoshTko 6y ago
    On closer inspection the M1 seems to be about 85% of the 1650 and is closer to the RX 560 a $130 discrete GPU
- deleted 6y ago
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- officeplant 6y ago
  Blizzard already released ARM64 builds of WoW. More than likely D3 and Starcraft 2 as well. They were already fantastic supporters of the metal API so I imagine it was an easy transition for them.

BooneJS 6y ago

“New Intel chips were often delayed and offered only small improvements over previous generations.” As noted on HN and elsewhere, Intel’s struggle has been in manufacturing. They minimized risk (“got lazy”) when Moore’s Law reigned and their fabs were 1-2 generations ahead of everyone else, but have since squeezed every last architectural drop out of 14nm. Put Tiger Lake on TSMC 5nm and a lot of M1’s lead goes away. The M1 is a damned fine chip and I’d like to own one. But the recent hero worship is a bit awkward to read as Apple is generally following an accepted playbook in the End Times of Moore’s law. 1. Save power by creating accelerated logic blocks without locking yourself out of algorithmic improvements. 2. Execute flawlessly. A chip respin costs 3-4 months and who knows how much money, so you need to go to production with the A0 silicon you powered up. 3. Know your software-only workloads. At best, all mathy code can be shoved down SIMD pipelines for high IPC. At worst, you’re dealing with a bunch of branchy integer code. The M1 has solved for both with vector extensions and a massive reorder buffer and register file. It’s a great chip and Apple got there first. They’ll be rewarded with sales and increased market share, and developers will have one architecture to wrench on for all platforms. You would be right to say that Intel couldn’t make the M1. It’s not because Intel’s fabs are struggling or Apple has found tricks no one else in the world knows about. It’s because Apple controls the entire software stack and therefore knows what they need on the chip. Intel caters to the entire market (one the M1 just noticeably shrunk) with myriad integrators, workloads, and users, and each has different concerns and priorities making accelerated algorithm blocks useless to some and not-fast-enough for others.

zepto 6y ago
“ You would be right to say that Intel couldn’t make the M1. It’s not because Intel’s fabs are struggling or Apple has found tricks no one else in the world knows about. It’s because Apple controls the entire software stack and therefore knows what they need on the chip. Intel caters to the entire market (one the M1 just noticeably shrunk) with myriad integrators, workloads, and users, and each has different concerns and priorities making accelerated algorithm blocks useless to some and not-fast-enough for others.” This is an important point. It applies up and down the stack for everything Apple does. The people who suggest breaking up Apple are correct that it would destroy them, by forcing them to use inefficient generic components at every level. If we want competition against Apple, the way to get there is not by hobbling them with the inefficiency of the old paradigm. It’s by the rest of the industry figuring out how to collaborate on delivering similar gains without vertical integration.

laurentdc 6y ago

It's in my cart, I'll place the order as soon as CS:GO launches fine on M1. So far it goes to black screen - other Source games work fine though, so I think it's just a matter of time. I already have a 2017 13" MBP but for some reason (dual channel memory? throttling?) the gaming experience is terrible, worse than a 2012 Mini in Bootcamp. I've wanted a gaming laptop (or better put, a laptop that I can also game on) for years but couldn't stand the crappy quality of ASUS/MSI/Lenovo in sub-2k price range. As I said in another comment, I can't believe it's going to be a MacBook :)

simonebrunozzi 6y ago
Did you try Razer?

mcintyre1994 6y ago

The benchmark that's blown me away most so far: Marco Arment on Accidental Tech Podcast says the new Macbook Air is significantly faster to compile Overcast (a pretty big iOS app) than his 10 core $6000+ iMac Pro with 64GB RAM and a 160W CPU. https://overcast.fm/+R7DWXqqm0/1:08:11 https://overcast.fm/+R7DWXqqm0/1:08:11

brundolf 6y ago
I/O-bound, maybe? Could be misleading but still impressive
- kllrnohj 6y ago
  Compilation tends to benefit heavily from bigger caches & faster memory, yes. It's an area that Zen 2 & 3 have been absolutely fantastic at thanks to their huge caches as well. The iMac Pro's relatively slow 2666MHz RAM can't be saved by the also relatively small (these days) cache in the Xeon-W it uses.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  Xeon W is 7 years old at this point, and the Apple M1 is a pretty darn good modern chip. Today's desktops are as good as servers from 5 years ago. Today's laptops are as good as desktops 5 years ago. Today's phones are as good as laptops 5 years ago. --------- The Apple M1 makes a leap with a huge L1 cache, very wide execution, at a very low clock rate (2.8 GHz for power-efficiency). But when you pair such a leap with a 7-year technology jump, yeah, things look quite silly.
- mikkelam 6y ago
  Yeah something is fishy here. Could be the new RAM which is way faster
FireBeyond 6y ago
One thing to factor in here is that the MBA isn't cross-compiling. It's a RISC compiler writing RISC code. To be clear though, it doesn't matter in the end if the _result_ is more productivity. But it is worth noting that under the hood, the comparison is not entirely apples to apples.

deleted 6y ago

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rob74 6y ago

I stumbled right over the first sentence of the article: > It slowly became clear that one day Apple’s processors would come for Intel. Yeah, that became clear sometime back in 2005... but what does that have to do with the matter at hand?!

jccalhoun 6y ago

this may be the fastest macbook pro ever but it will also be the slowest arm-based macbook pro ever. While I've never owned a mac, I've been mac-curious for a long time but I think I will wait a couple years before I seriously consider switching. (and with new video cards, and new consoles, there are too many things vying for my money right now anyway)

longnguyen 6y ago

I want M1 MacBook Pro _without_ TouchBar

Siira 6y ago
The touchbar can be pretty good if you reprogram it, using, e.g., Bettertouchtool. I now put use it as a combination of information dashboard and system-level control switches (audio volume, internet proxy, my own low-power mode, ...). BTT’s touchbar clipboard manager is also phenomenal.
Zarel 6y ago
What's wrong with the M1 MacBook Air?
- longnguyen 6y ago
  Nothing wrong. But the Pro is slightly better in term of performance[1] (due to the fan I guess). As reviewed by John Gruber[2], looks like it's not really a fan but "active cooling system" - very quiet. It would be perfect for me if there exists a MacBook Pro without TouchBar. Otherwise I guess I will go with the M1 MacBook Air. TouchBar might be useful for others but is beyond useless to me. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro-is-powerful-but-its-the-battery-life-that-will-blow-you-away/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro... [2]: https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/the_m1_macs https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/the_m1_macs

The_rationalist 6y ago

Not a buy for me since they lost Windows bootcamp

bla3 6y ago

I'm really really excited about the new hardware here. Bummer that the software is pretty meh. If macOS was as great as it was in the 10.6 days I'd be the happiest Apple user ever.

nanna 6y ago

A concern in my University department is that some of the FOSS/small scale software we teach on won't work on our students' shiny new M1 Macs. Should we be worried?

alberth 6y ago
I'd say the bigger concern is long term, will Apple even ALLOW you to even run non-App store software? E.g. FOSS On iOS they don't. And with this new direction of macOS & ARM, it's not out of the question the same will happen on the desktop. EDIT: why the downvotes? Seriously - what's wrong with what I said ... I'm genuinely curious.
- officeplant 6y ago
  >why the downvotes? Probably because currently MacOS just has a slightly more nagging version of Window's UAC when it comes to unsigned software. Saying that they will disable it holds about the same amount of weight as saying Microsoft will make Windows Win10 S mode only. Is it possible? Maybe, but neither company is going to shoot themselves in the foot like that in the current market.
stu2b50 6y ago
FOSS should be particularly fine, since the code is public, eventually someone will recompile it for ARM (if it's even written in a native language; languages with runtimes will work perfectly fine when the runtime is ported) If not, everything should run through Rosetta 2. Apple did eventually pull the original Rosetta, so who knows how long they will keep the feature, but in the short term I can't imagine it being a problem.
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  > Apple did eventually pull the original Rosetta, so who knows how long they will keep the feature, but in the short term I can't imagine it being a problem. The original Rosetta was only useful for legacy Mac software though; this one will continue to be useful for new x86 software that gets written. I think it will last a lot longer.

rado 6y ago

This is the revolution we needed in a technology landscape that promotes waste (x86, Electron), however belittled by the haters. It's real and changes everything.

mikechen233 6y ago
Why is x86 waste? It was beating everything on the market during the 90s and 2000s no? Its just intel hasn't pushed things forward in 10 years right?
- rado 6y ago
  Power consumption and inefficiency
- freehunter 6y ago
  x86 is wasteful in comparison to these M1 chips, not necessarily in comparison to 1990s chips. It wasn't wasteful back then, but today there are faster and more power efficient chips on the market. The longer Intel keeps making 100W designs that are slower than 10W ARM chips, the more wasteful it becomes.

kzrdude 6y ago

Steve Jobs would be proud. I imagine Apple didn't say anything like that, but I really think he would be stoked with this, especially a cooler computer (no fan) and a leg up all competitors.

proverbialbunny 6y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if he planned this. Lisa Sue said she plans 10 years out in advance regularly, because building up hardware takes that long.
- ksec 6y ago
  Nah, both Jim Keller and Gerard Williams said Steve wasn't interested. Which was definitely the right call at the time, remember that was in 2010. Now that it happen it is more like a natural progression.

crad 6y ago

Bought my wife the new M1 MBA as a replacement for her 3yo Macbook. She loves it. It's significantly faster for her applications, the keyboard is a return to one she likes, and she's not run into any issues with it thus far. If the Docker issue is resolve, I'll likely jump on a M1 MBP when they're available.

nunez 6y ago

Once Docker works on ARM, I’m gonna make the switch. I was very very close to trading in my 2020 MBP and eating the loss, especially after seeing the insane WebKit compilation times and battery usage. I loathe the Touch Bar and am very excited about having a MBA that doesn’t suck. The only concern I have is this: it is my understanding that the arm7 instruction set differs slightly from vendor. Is that true? I’m thinking of what problems I might run into with shipping apps destined for AWS Gravitron.

whalesalad 6y ago
Docker on mac runs in a VM anyway, so I would imagine you're still going to run it in x86 mode.
- Tagbert 6y ago
  VMs are only expected to run ARM clients. There is no cross-architecture VM support. That might come but it would require something more like software emulation of x86/64 processors which is a bigger tasks.
  - whalesalad 6y ago
    What limitation exists? Just the fact that right now the M1 doesn't do virtualization? At some point full x86 virtualization will need to exist on this platform and when that happens you'll be able to run an x86 virtual machine on your mac to back the underlying Docker engine. This is what is happening right now with Hypervisor.framework on a Mac, for instance. If you develop a lot of ARM for sure run it all in ARM configuration but if you are a dev deploying to the current status quo you would want to continue working with x86 images if possible.
- nunez 6y ago
  That would be fine since most of my targets will still be amd64 anyway
mikechen233 6y ago
Armv8 instructions should be consistent between vendors. Gcc and llvm is very likely to produce standard armv8 code that is portable. At work we use intel chips to compile armv8 linux executables and librarys and run them on broadcom arm chips.

tpush 6y ago

Soooo... If anyone wants the last Intel MacBook Pro with 4 Thunderbolt ports, hit me up :D. I'm really wanting the new Air.

hyperpallium2 6y ago

Instead of selling the M1 to manufacturers, Apple will create additional consumer devices with it, and take over everything. For example, in a few years, a console: Apple will finally enter the game console market, with such a leap in CPU and GPU, that its premium-pricing will be value-for-money. The higher price will be acceptable to consumers, via monthly plans (as for iphones) - it will be locked down, so the App store will be the only way to use it. Technologically, they have great SP, they just need great MP. Same for GPU. They can do it. Games: ARM-based machines are certainly capable - consider the AAA ports to the Switch. They can port again. iPhone GPUs have been more powerful than its 500GFLOPS (undocked) for a while. They also have many games - and developers - on the App store.

jimnotgym 6y ago

It is funny to read the comments full of excitement. To me the M1 thing fills me with dread. To me I just see problems for the IT team. I already know our corporate VPN doesn't run on Big Sur. I have no hope for the monitoring app, or the Antivirus. Apple is such a pain for corporate IT

EricE 6y ago
Corporate IT is often an even bigger pain for it's users since things like VPNs are often bought to meet the need of Corporate IT and not the users :p
- jimnotgym 6y ago
  Yes, popular meme. However I have a bunch of users who suddenly upped and left the office in April and still needed access to in house resources, fileshares, intranet, reporting services. Things we haven't finished moving to the cloud. Perhaps you can tell me how else I should do that overnight without a VPN? Everyone elses job looks so easy doesn't it
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    We did the same and our VPN worked fine then and works fine now on Big Sur. If anything isn't working for you, then I feel like that's your fault considering that 32-bit apps have been deprecated for years and kexts that were incompatible have been deprecated (and messaged) since at least Catalina. You, and whatever vendor you used, have had multiple years to prepare for the changes in Big Sur that would break this stuff.
dkonofalski 6y ago
That seems like a corporate IT failure, not a failure of anything else. We just got an M1 Macbook Pro and nearly half of our machines are already updated to Big Sur and we haven't had any major issues. The only issue has been an old kext from Cisco that can't be approved anymore but it hasn't caused any major issues and Cisco has already let us know that there's an update to that incoming. In my experience, this transition has been way smoother so far (even with the limited input) than our changeover to Windows 10.

jeromenerf 6y ago

This is refreshing to see competition actually deliver better products instead of just cutting costs. The technical innovation has only marginal value for me and I would love the same soc on a rpi like device, for home servers. Time will tell. Now, as a Linux guy, I’ll just wait until innovation turns commodity, having no interest in macOS whatsoever.

alwillis 6y ago
Now, as a Linux guy, I’ll just wait until innovation turns commodity, having no interest in macOS whatsoever. You may have a long wait. Apple has been killing Qualcomm and the other ARM licensees in performance for years. Apple shipped the first 64-bit ARM processor at least a year before Qualcomm could do it. It took 10-years of designing their own ARM SoCs to get to the point of being able to produce the M1. Apple showed Debian running in a VM on a prototype 6 months ago, so we know that's coming. There's a decent chance Linux running in a VM (or native Docker when that comes) will be much faster than Linux running on similarly priced Intel/AMD hardware.
- jeromenerf 6y ago
  > Much faster We can only hope so. I would love to run Linux on my iPad (which is not m1 of course). I would be sad to use macOS though. That’s all early thoughts.

josteink 6y ago

HW sounds good. Now it just needs to run Linux :)

renewiltord 6y ago

So somewhere inside Apple there must have been a Skunkworks project to "put the iPad chip in a laptop" or something right? Someone has to have thought of it. I can't wait to read about the folklore entry for this ten years from now.

ChrisArchitect 6y ago

feel like laptops are way more plugged in and non-mobile than ever now because of the covid pandemic and new world of working from home. Battery life means nothing since we're not moving around every day, and likely won't again in the same way as before. Saw a comment somewhere a few days ago that the M1 isn't really important to the laptop world but the server and phone ends of the spectrum in the bigger picture/longer term.

RubberShoes 6y ago

"The MLB app, always an iOS exemplar, did allow me to play video in full screen and send it to Picture in Picture. More like this, please!" MLB here - we stay as true to native Apple HLS as possible including open-source HLS.js where possible. .tv games are a little more complex but we're big fans of Apple's frameworks