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> Apple did something truly revolutionary This is hyperbole. Apple has released a CPU that has very good perf/watt compared to it's current competition. That's

> Apple did something truly revolutionary This is hyperbole. Apple has released a CPU that has very good perf/watt compared to it's current competition. That's it. This isn't revolutionary, it's just another incremental step in CPU improvements. Can we please give Apple praise for competing well in the hardware market without fully drinking the kool aid and parroting their marketing.

wpietri 6y ago
I would like the people downvoting you to explain why they think it's truly revolutionary. I just went back to reread the Tom's Hardware article on the chip, thinking I must have missed something, and I'm not seeing it. Full credit to Apple for incrementally improving their A-series processors over the last decade until they're good enough for laptops. But I'm not seeing that this makes anything fundamentally different. Just compare the A14 with the M1, for example: https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-1804-vs-apple_a14_bionic-1693 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-1804-vs-a...
- coldtea 6y ago
  >I would like the people downvoting you to explain why they think it's truly revolutionary. For one, it's the first PC chip with these kind of thermals and power combo. Second, it brings many new design decisions, from unified memory, to the SoC design, various coprocessors, etc, that have not been available in the form of laptop/desktop PCs. The last of this kind in the mass market would be something like the Amiga, which is still a very different design. Third, it's hella fast and many different things, both given its power draw, but also irrespective of it. Fourth, it makes ARM for PC computing mainstream suddenly, after decades where it was relegated to the mobile and hobbyist/specialist (rapsberry, etc) space. If that's not a revolutionary change, I don't know what you expected. A CPU made from flour with alien technology that's 1000 times faster and uses quantum bits? Yeah, they didn't make that.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    Like the iPhone and iPod, it's a revolutionary entrant from the consumer point of view in terms of user experience. And like the iPhone and iPod, from a technical point of view, it's merely a very competent iteration down a natural evolutionary pathway, in a preexisting product type.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      And like the iPhone and iPod it has very real innovations (in engineering) that people always underplay because "No wireless, less space than a Nomad, lame!", or "we had smartphones before, I had some Ericsson/Nokia/MS gizmo, so what's evolutionary about the iPhone?".
      - Apocryphon 6y ago
        You're right. At the end of the day, they're technically evolutionary, not revolutionary, which was the central conceit of this subthread. And there's nothing wrong with that. Technical evolution can lead to consumer revolutions.
      - shawnz 6y ago
        Ted Nelson: "It's possible to insist that every change is merely a small difference in degree if you do not want to see a change in kind"
    - wpietri 6y ago
      I disagree. The iPhone was revolutionary in that it made smartphones and phone apps accessible to the mass market, unleashing a wave of change in how people live, work, and play. M1 Macs will be used basically like the previous Macs, but somewhat faster and somewhat longer without plugging in. So I don't think this qualifies as a revolutionary change.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - 6y ago
- _jal 6y ago
  I would like people arguing the opposite to define "revolutionary". The combination of the performance increase with the power and thermal efficiency in the first release for a laptop is the sort of improvement we haven't seen in a very long time. > I'm not seeing that this makes anything fundamentally different I guess we'll see. $1000 dollars buys a lot more laptop utility than it did a month ago, and the abrupt availability of a laptop with higher performance with far better battery life than anything else on the market has certainly gotten a lot of people's attention. I'm not buying one[1], but I'm really curious to see the M2. [1] I'm really torn, the atrophy of the Unix side of the OS and the increasing lockdown has frustrated me a lot. But the option of just running MacOS as a hypervisor that happens to run Photoshop may be just fine for me... I'll decide when the current machine dies.
  - wpietri 6y ago
    Sure. To me evolutionary generally means quantitative improvements in expected dimensions. Revolutionary requires overturning some existing order. E.g., the American Revolution replaced the existing government. I'd call the original Mac revolutionary, in that it totally changed how people interacted with computers. Laptops were revolutionary. Smartphones were revolutionary. A new generation of laptop that runs somewhat longer without plugging in is not revolutionary. People will be doing the same things.
- x0x0 6y ago
  all day on-battery real-world heavy usage without significant compromises. In fact, not just without significant compromises, but about as fast as a laptop can go.
  - wpietri 6y ago
    That's a nice feature, sure. But I don't see it as revolutionary. Are there a lot of people suddenly able to live or work differently because of this?
    - x0x0 6y ago
      For me, a lack of constantly thinking about the battery is a big deal. I had the same thing happen w/ my phone: mine got large enough a couple years ago that it was a full 2 day battery life. So I could assume it would work all day. Same deal here. I can go (in a !2020 world) to a customer, go from meeting to meeting, etc and it will just work. edit: Also, it feels like we're transitioning from a world in which laptops are mostly / often used while being plugged in, to a world more like a phone. The default mode of operation is disconnected from a power source.
      - wpietri 6y ago
        I agree that's an excellent step forward, but again, I'm not seeing it as a revolution. All-day batteries were always available in the Android world, so I don't think there was any revolution there. Similarly, there are plenty of laptops with all-day batteries. That list includes, but is not topped by, both M1 and previous Macs: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/all-day-strong-longest-lasting-notebooks https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/all-day-strong-longest-la...
        x0x0 6y ago
        Ah. I found my macs to have all day battery as long as I didn't actually really use it. So it could kind of happen, but only if I paid a lot of attention. I totally recognize this may not make a diff for everyone, but for me, it's moving to assuming the battery lasts all day w/o me managing it. :shrug:
Geminidog 6y ago
It's revolutionary in the sense that apple is the one who did this rather then intel or amd?
sliken 6y ago
Sounds revolutionary to me. The new M1 is faster and MUCH lower power than an i9 based system that would ramp up fans at even the most minor of workloads like say upgrading iterm2 from version n to version n+1. Suddenly $700 mac mini's can do crazy things like edit 4k video and the m1 laptops can handle being plugged in to wall power much less often than the i9 systems. Likely within 12 months there's likely to be systems with twice as many cores bringing unheard of levels of performance to reasonable price points. Keep in mind Intel hasn't shipped something significantly faster than the previous generation in 5 years.

wpietri 6y ago

I would like the people downvoting you to explain why they think it's truly revolutionary. I just went back to reread the Tom's Hardware article on the chip, thinking I must have missed something, and I'm not seeing it. Full credit to Apple for incrementally improving their A-series processors over the last decade until they're good enough for laptops. But I'm not seeing that this makes anything fundamentally different. Just compare the A14 with the M1, for example: https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-1804-vs-apple_a14_bionic-1693 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-1804-vs-a...

coldtea 6y ago
>I would like the people downvoting you to explain why they think it's truly revolutionary. For one, it's the first PC chip with these kind of thermals and power combo. Second, it brings many new design decisions, from unified memory, to the SoC design, various coprocessors, etc, that have not been available in the form of laptop/desktop PCs. The last of this kind in the mass market would be something like the Amiga, which is still a very different design. Third, it's hella fast and many different things, both given its power draw, but also irrespective of it. Fourth, it makes ARM for PC computing mainstream suddenly, after decades where it was relegated to the mobile and hobbyist/specialist (rapsberry, etc) space. If that's not a revolutionary change, I don't know what you expected. A CPU made from flour with alien technology that's 1000 times faster and uses quantum bits? Yeah, they didn't make that.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Like the iPhone and iPod, it's a revolutionary entrant from the consumer point of view in terms of user experience. And like the iPhone and iPod, from a technical point of view, it's merely a very competent iteration down a natural evolutionary pathway, in a preexisting product type.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    And like the iPhone and iPod it has very real innovations (in engineering) that people always underplay because "No wireless, less space than a Nomad, lame!", or "we had smartphones before, I had some Ericsson/Nokia/MS gizmo, so what's evolutionary about the iPhone?".
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      You're right. At the end of the day, they're technically evolutionary, not revolutionary, which was the central conceit of this subthread. And there's nothing wrong with that. Technical evolution can lead to consumer revolutions.
    - shawnz 6y ago
      Ted Nelson: "It's possible to insist that every change is merely a small difference in degree if you do not want to see a change in kind"
  - wpietri 6y ago
    I disagree. The iPhone was revolutionary in that it made smartphones and phone apps accessible to the mass market, unleashing a wave of change in how people live, work, and play. M1 Macs will be used basically like the previous Macs, but somewhat faster and somewhat longer without plugging in. So I don't think this qualifies as a revolutionary change.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - 6y ago
_jal 6y ago
I would like people arguing the opposite to define "revolutionary". The combination of the performance increase with the power and thermal efficiency in the first release for a laptop is the sort of improvement we haven't seen in a very long time. > I'm not seeing that this makes anything fundamentally different I guess we'll see. $1000 dollars buys a lot more laptop utility than it did a month ago, and the abrupt availability of a laptop with higher performance with far better battery life than anything else on the market has certainly gotten a lot of people's attention. I'm not buying one[1], but I'm really curious to see the M2. [1] I'm really torn, the atrophy of the Unix side of the OS and the increasing lockdown has frustrated me a lot. But the option of just running MacOS as a hypervisor that happens to run Photoshop may be just fine for me... I'll decide when the current machine dies.
- wpietri 6y ago
  Sure. To me evolutionary generally means quantitative improvements in expected dimensions. Revolutionary requires overturning some existing order. E.g., the American Revolution replaced the existing government. I'd call the original Mac revolutionary, in that it totally changed how people interacted with computers. Laptops were revolutionary. Smartphones were revolutionary. A new generation of laptop that runs somewhat longer without plugging in is not revolutionary. People will be doing the same things.
x0x0 6y ago
all day on-battery real-world heavy usage without significant compromises. In fact, not just without significant compromises, but about as fast as a laptop can go.
- wpietri 6y ago
  That's a nice feature, sure. But I don't see it as revolutionary. Are there a lot of people suddenly able to live or work differently because of this?
  - x0x0 6y ago
    For me, a lack of constantly thinking about the battery is a big deal. I had the same thing happen w/ my phone: mine got large enough a couple years ago that it was a full 2 day battery life. So I could assume it would work all day. Same deal here. I can go (in a !2020 world) to a customer, go from meeting to meeting, etc and it will just work. edit: Also, it feels like we're transitioning from a world in which laptops are mostly / often used while being plugged in, to a world more like a phone. The default mode of operation is disconnected from a power source.
    - wpietri 6y ago
      I agree that's an excellent step forward, but again, I'm not seeing it as a revolution. All-day batteries were always available in the Android world, so I don't think there was any revolution there. Similarly, there are plenty of laptops with all-day batteries. That list includes, but is not topped by, both M1 and previous Macs: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/all-day-strong-longest-lasting-notebooks https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/all-day-strong-longest-la...
      - x0x0 6y ago
        Ah. I found my macs to have all day battery as long as I didn't actually really use it. So it could kind of happen, but only if I paid a lot of attention. I totally recognize this may not make a diff for everyone, but for me, it's moving to assuming the battery lasts all day w/o me managing it. :shrug:

Geminidog 6y ago

It's revolutionary in the sense that apple is the one who did this rather then intel or amd?

sliken 6y ago

Sounds revolutionary to me. The new M1 is faster and MUCH lower power than an i9 based system that would ramp up fans at even the most minor of workloads like say upgrading iterm2 from version n to version n+1. Suddenly $700 mac mini's can do crazy things like edit 4k video and the m1 laptops can handle being plugged in to wall power much less often than the i9 systems. Likely within 12 months there's likely to be systems with twice as many cores bringing unheard of levels of performance to reasonable price points. Keep in mind Intel hasn't shipped something significantly faster than the previous generation in 5 years.