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But honestly, does it matter? People buying a threadripper today don't care about it. What matters to them it's the performance, my gf is a 3d artist, she doe

But honestly, does it matter? People buying a threadripper today don't care about it. What matters to them it's the performance, my gf is a 3d artist, she doesn't care if some cpu consumes more or less power than another (when I say she doesn't care I mean she doesn't even know that CPU have very different power requirements), she needs the fastest gear she can buy on her budget. Apple M1s are not it. There are many other that do not care because the hardware stays at the office, where someone else pays the bills and they too don't care because the electricity bill is the last of their problems, fixing it buying more efficient computing devices would mean spending a lot of money in advance to replace at least half of the stock. How many more months of electricity could that money pay? A lot. People buying Apple for its M1 low power consumption are a niche inside a niche. So I think the reasoning stands: Apple M1s are not a real threat for its competitors because the market that really cares about its strengths is smaller than the one that doesn't and Apple will keep to largely miss the second one.

matwood 6y ago
Laptops have outsold desktops every year for the last decade+. The M1, being a mobile friendly chip, is addressing the larger market. People may not care about power usage from the wall, but they do care about battery life. Also, the fact that the M1 is even being mentioned along with a desktop powerhouse like the threadripper says it all. The M1 is the lowest end mobile Apple Silicon. We know higher end mobile chips are coming along with desktop ones. The M1 has put all the chip manufacturers on notice, much the same the way the iPhone did (to the point RIM thought Apple was lying about the iPhone because they thought the device was impossible).
- romanoderoma 6y ago
  Android has oversold Apple 3 to 1 Now if we look at what people are buying and ask ourselves 'are these the people who care about TDP?' the answer is simply 'no' The majority of laptops sold are sub 700, as the previous post said, low budget, low power and in education, markets that Apple has never even considered (except education, but it's mainly college students in USA) Not saying M1 aren't good, but that they won't shake the market as NVidia buying ARM could P.s. M1 is a Zen 3 competitor, threadripper has been mentioned for the exact opposite reason: because that's the state of the art for people looking at performances in personal computing (while in HPC ARM is prominent)
- rgbrenner 6y ago
  It's only being mentioned alongside threadripper because the article went overboard and claimed the M1 "embarrass all other PCs — ... including ... every single machine running Windows or Linux" This is a joke. The M1s performance is no where near the threadripper. Even on per-thread performance, new AMD cpus perform better than the M1... and they have many more cores. The M1 can only win these comparisons when we start adding all kinds of conditions, like power draw, heat, price point, etc. They need to add those conditions to redirect the conversation, because on raw performance threadripper destroys the M1. The article made the mistake of leaving out those conditions to make it seem even more impressive than it is... but hyperbole and fantasy will always sound better than reality. Reality requires those conditions. That doesn't detract from the m1's impressiveness.. but it's foolish to forget that and go off and start making ridiculous claims like the article has done.
  - soylentcola 6y ago
    That was sort of my takeaway as well. I use desktop computers for most of my more demanding work. Laptops are great and (like smartphones, tablets, etc) any improvement in their capabilities is to be welcomed--but there's a difference between a headline that reads "New laptop is the fastest computer ever!" and one that reads "New laptop faster than all previous laptops!" I don't do the most intensive tasks on thin, battery-powered computers for a reason. I try to do those on the box that's always plugged into mains power with heatsinks and fans as needed, plenty of ports to plug things in, and a big monitor. A more performant portable computer is awesome, but until I can spend a similar amount to make my workstation smaller without losing capability, I'll likely keep using it for heavy lifting alongside a cheaper, less powerful laptop or tablet for lighter work or remoting in.
criddell 6y ago
> she needs the fastest gear she can buy on her budget. > Apple M1s are not it. If a person had a $1000 budget, they could by an M1 equipped laptop from Apple. Is there something significantly faster at that price?
- romanoderoma 6y ago
  Or a desktop with 64 GB of RAM and two previous generation GPUs
  - criddell 6y ago
    64 GB? From where? I just looked at Dell and an XPS desktop with 16 GB of RAM starts at $650. You aren't going to be able to add two GPUs and a monitor for $350. At HP you can get to 32 GB for $650 but again you still need to buy GPUs and a monitor.
    - romanoderoma 6y ago
      64GB of ram cost < 300 euros A lot of studios sell their old GPU (as in a generation ago) for cheap If you stay out of vertical integrated supply chains you can buy the best your budget allows If you are saying that you cannot assemble a laptop of the same quality of an Apple one, I agree If you are saying that Apple laptops are what people want because they consume 20 watt full load, I disagree The market of the good enough products is always gonna be larger than 'the best money can buy' Apple will never make 'good enough products' hence they are not competing with the bulk of what is being sold right now It could change in the future, but not in the immediate future IMO
      - egsmi 6y ago
        > 64GB of ram cost < 300 euros Not all RAM is equivalent. If one wants 64GB of the kind of RAM M1 uses, which is very high performance, it will cost more than 300 euros.
        6y ago
snazz 6y ago
People using powerful laptops care about battery life, though. For someone moving from a "workstation"-class laptop, the M1's value is significant.
- nix23 6y ago
  >For someone moving from a "workstation"-class laptop, the M1's value is significant. Em NO, the M1's are not comparable with a workstation class laptops (not cpu wise nor ram...and especially not GPU wise)
cellar_door 6y ago
> People buying Apple for its M1 low power consumption are a niche inside a niche. Got it, watching Netflix in Chrome without the laptop getting hot is "a niche inside a niche" while GPU intensive 3d graphics workflows are mainstream.
- romanoderoma 6y ago
  If not getting hot while watching Netflix is the benchmark, I can show you a 400 euros laptop that can do 9 hours of Netflix on battery (or 7 hours of 1080p 60fps streaming) Don't need no M1 AMD and Nvidia have sold more GPUs than Apple laptops by a large margin
- nix23 6y ago
  >watching Netflix in Chrome without the laptop getting hot is "a niche inside a niche" while GPU intensive 3d graphics workflows are mainstream. Well then i have to say Apple achieved what my 7 year old nexus 5 already could...bravo.
- p1necone 6y ago
  This is doable on practically anything. Talking about being powerful with low heat/power consumption implies heavier workloads than Netflix because otherwise the "powerful" part is irrelevant. Of course I'm sure you can find laptops with terrible cooling design that would get uncomfortably hot watching Netflix, but there's plenty of thin and light laptops available for < $1000 that would do just fine too.
  - macNchz 6y ago
    Even my 5 year old passive-cooling Core m3 12" Macbook streams Netflix for hours on battery without getting hot.

matwood 6y ago

Laptops have outsold desktops every year for the last decade+. The M1, being a mobile friendly chip, is addressing the larger market. People may not care about power usage from the wall, but they do care about battery life. Also, the fact that the M1 is even being mentioned along with a desktop powerhouse like the threadripper says it all. The M1 is the lowest end mobile Apple Silicon. We know higher end mobile chips are coming along with desktop ones. The M1 has put all the chip manufacturers on notice, much the same the way the iPhone did (to the point RIM thought Apple was lying about the iPhone because they thought the device was impossible).

romanoderoma 6y ago
Android has oversold Apple 3 to 1 Now if we look at what people are buying and ask ourselves 'are these the people who care about TDP?' the answer is simply 'no' The majority of laptops sold are sub 700, as the previous post said, low budget, low power and in education, markets that Apple has never even considered (except education, but it's mainly college students in USA) Not saying M1 aren't good, but that they won't shake the market as NVidia buying ARM could P.s. M1 is a Zen 3 competitor, threadripper has been mentioned for the exact opposite reason: because that's the state of the art for people looking at performances in personal computing (while in HPC ARM is prominent)
rgbrenner 6y ago
It's only being mentioned alongside threadripper because the article went overboard and claimed the M1 "embarrass all other PCs — ... including ... every single machine running Windows or Linux" This is a joke. The M1s performance is no where near the threadripper. Even on per-thread performance, new AMD cpus perform better than the M1... and they have many more cores. The M1 can only win these comparisons when we start adding all kinds of conditions, like power draw, heat, price point, etc. They need to add those conditions to redirect the conversation, because on raw performance threadripper destroys the M1. The article made the mistake of leaving out those conditions to make it seem even more impressive than it is... but hyperbole and fantasy will always sound better than reality. Reality requires those conditions. That doesn't detract from the m1's impressiveness.. but it's foolish to forget that and go off and start making ridiculous claims like the article has done.
- soylentcola 6y ago
  That was sort of my takeaway as well. I use desktop computers for most of my more demanding work. Laptops are great and (like smartphones, tablets, etc) any improvement in their capabilities is to be welcomed--but there's a difference between a headline that reads "New laptop is the fastest computer ever!" and one that reads "New laptop faster than all previous laptops!" I don't do the most intensive tasks on thin, battery-powered computers for a reason. I try to do those on the box that's always plugged into mains power with heatsinks and fans as needed, plenty of ports to plug things in, and a big monitor. A more performant portable computer is awesome, but until I can spend a similar amount to make my workstation smaller without losing capability, I'll likely keep using it for heavy lifting alongside a cheaper, less powerful laptop or tablet for lighter work or remoting in.

criddell 6y ago

> she needs the fastest gear she can buy on her budget. > Apple M1s are not it. If a person had a $1000 budget, they could by an M1 equipped laptop from Apple. Is there something significantly faster at that price?

romanoderoma 6y ago
Or a desktop with 64 GB of RAM and two previous generation GPUs
- criddell 6y ago
  64 GB? From where? I just looked at Dell and an XPS desktop with 16 GB of RAM starts at $650. You aren't going to be able to add two GPUs and a monitor for $350. At HP you can get to 32 GB for $650 but again you still need to buy GPUs and a monitor.
  - romanoderoma 6y ago
    64GB of ram cost < 300 euros A lot of studios sell their old GPU (as in a generation ago) for cheap If you stay out of vertical integrated supply chains you can buy the best your budget allows If you are saying that you cannot assemble a laptop of the same quality of an Apple one, I agree If you are saying that Apple laptops are what people want because they consume 20 watt full load, I disagree The market of the good enough products is always gonna be larger than 'the best money can buy' Apple will never make 'good enough products' hence they are not competing with the bulk of what is being sold right now It could change in the future, but not in the immediate future IMO
    - egsmi 6y ago
      > 64GB of ram cost < 300 euros Not all RAM is equivalent. If one wants 64GB of the kind of RAM M1 uses, which is very high performance, it will cost more than 300 euros.
      - 6y ago

snazz 6y ago

People using powerful laptops care about battery life, though. For someone moving from a "workstation"-class laptop, the M1's value is significant.

nix23 6y ago
>For someone moving from a "workstation"-class laptop, the M1's value is significant. Em NO, the M1's are not comparable with a workstation class laptops (not cpu wise nor ram...and especially not GPU wise)

cellar_door 6y ago

> People buying Apple for its M1 low power consumption are a niche inside a niche. Got it, watching Netflix in Chrome without the laptop getting hot is "a niche inside a niche" while GPU intensive 3d graphics workflows are mainstream.

romanoderoma 6y ago
If not getting hot while watching Netflix is the benchmark, I can show you a 400 euros laptop that can do 9 hours of Netflix on battery (or 7 hours of 1080p 60fps streaming) Don't need no M1 AMD and Nvidia have sold more GPUs than Apple laptops by a large margin
nix23 6y ago
>watching Netflix in Chrome without the laptop getting hot is "a niche inside a niche" while GPU intensive 3d graphics workflows are mainstream. Well then i have to say Apple achieved what my 7 year old nexus 5 already could...bravo.
p1necone 6y ago
This is doable on practically anything. Talking about being powerful with low heat/power consumption implies heavier workloads than Netflix because otherwise the "powerful" part is irrelevant. Of course I'm sure you can find laptops with terrible cooling design that would get uncomfortably hot watching Netflix, but there's plenty of thin and light laptops available for < $1000 that would do just fine too.
- macNchz 6y ago
  Even my 5 year old passive-cooling Core m3 12" Macbook streams Netflix for hours on battery without getting hot.