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The published benchmarks are mostly "meh" when it comes to anything at the prosumer level and above. The insanely good thermals and 5mm process make M1 a great

The published benchmarks are mostly "meh" when it comes to anything at the prosumer level and above. The insanely good thermals and 5mm process make M1 a great laptop, but middling performance and a lack of expansion only makes it decent mini-desktop for family use. If the rumors of the M1x prove true, that might be the first real pro-level ARM CPU. For pro-level performance, it's roughly matching AMD's three-year-old entry-level Ryzen 7 1700: https://openbenchmarking.org/vs/Processor/Apple%20M1,AMD%20Ryzen%207%201700%20Eight-Core,AMD%20Ryzen%207%202700X%20Eight-Core,AMD%20Ryzen%207%203800XT%208-Core,AMD%20Ryzen%20Threadripper%203990X%2064-Core,AMD%20Ryzen%209%205950X%2016-Core,Intel%20Core%20i9-10980XE https://openbenchmarking.org/vs/Processor/Apple%20M1,AMD%20R...

coldtea 6y ago
>The published benchmarks are mostly "meh" when it comes to anything at the prosumer level and above. Which makes sense, since those are the lower-speced Mac machines (Mini, Air, 13" Pro). At the level at which they compete (similarly speced Intel Mac sold until recently, Surface machines, PC laptops of the same price) they obliterate them. "meh at the prosumer level" for a consumer level machine is kinda like saying that an AMD Threadripper / 64 cores is meh as the mainframe level.
- andrewprock 6y ago
  If the 13" Macbook Pro is not for Professional work, then I guess that makes sense.
  - wffurr 6y ago
    Depends on the profession.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    The Pro in MacBookPro is a brand name, not a product category. It means "it's intented/speced/priced for above the casual home user / casual student". It doesn't mean "it's for cpu/gpu hungry IT/video/rendering/data crunching/etc work". A banker, a VC, an accountant, a small shop owner, a graphic designer, a web UI developer, a dentist, and so on and so forth, are also professionals.
  - mthoms 6y ago
    It makes sense. Just as the iPhone 12 Pro is not for "professional" photography.
wffurr 6y ago
A 10W SoC roughly matching a 65W CPU... That's bonkers. Those benchmarks also aren't differentiating between the fanless MacBook Air, the actively cooled MacBook Pro, or the wall-powered Mac Mini, all of which have different performance characteristics with the same chip.
- andrewprock 6y ago
  What I wrote: "The insanely good thermals and 5mm process make M1 a great laptop"

coldtea 6y ago

>The published benchmarks are mostly "meh" when it comes to anything at the prosumer level and above. Which makes sense, since those are the lower-speced Mac machines (Mini, Air, 13" Pro). At the level at which they compete (similarly speced Intel Mac sold until recently, Surface machines, PC laptops of the same price) they obliterate them. "meh at the prosumer level" for a consumer level machine is kinda like saying that an AMD Threadripper / 64 cores is meh as the mainframe level.

andrewprock 6y ago
If the 13" Macbook Pro is not for Professional work, then I guess that makes sense.
- wffurr 6y ago
  Depends on the profession.
- coldtea 6y ago
  The Pro in MacBookPro is a brand name, not a product category. It means "it's intented/speced/priced for above the casual home user / casual student". It doesn't mean "it's for cpu/gpu hungry IT/video/rendering/data crunching/etc work". A banker, a VC, an accountant, a small shop owner, a graphic designer, a web UI developer, a dentist, and so on and so forth, are also professionals.
- mthoms 6y ago
  It makes sense. Just as the iPhone 12 Pro is not for "professional" photography.

wffurr 6y ago

A 10W SoC roughly matching a 65W CPU... That's bonkers. Those benchmarks also aren't differentiating between the fanless MacBook Air, the actively cooled MacBook Pro, or the wall-powered Mac Mini, all of which have different performance characteristics with the same chip.

andrewprock 6y ago
What I wrote: "The insanely good thermals and 5mm process make M1 a great laptop"