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Benchmarks show that the M1 has better performance in only a few areas, and underperforms in others, and that's with Apple controlling literally every aspect of

Benchmarks show that the M1 has better performance in only a few areas, and underperforms in others, and that's with Apple controlling literally every aspect of the hardware and software stack. It's great for an ARM system for a vertically oriented company, but it isn't sufficiently performative to be a significant threat to the competition. And that's before you consider all the non-technical crap Apple has thrown at its customers recently. And of course, the big issue is that in order to use the M1 you must switch your entire stack to Apple. Considering the broad swaths of essential business software that is simply incompatible with Apple OS, that's not going to happen.

seppin 6y ago
In the 1 week + i've had my Macbook Air M1, it's across the board better. This thing is amazing
- gamblor956 6y ago
  Yes, compared to your prior Macbook I'm sure it was a revelation. A programmer friend loves his new M1, but he's also been an Apple user for decades. As a Windows user, testing out my friend's Macbook Air M1 was an underwhelming experience. I've had bigger performance boosts from adding more RAM or switching out HDs to SSDs, and a large part of the M1's performance "gains" can be attributed to the increased RAM on the systems currently featuring the M1.
  - jryle70 6y ago
    How did you compare a Windows system with a Mac to conclude it was "an underwhelming experience"? were they similarly configured and running similar software? > a large part of the M1's performance "gains" can be attributed to the increased RAM on the systems currently featuring the M1. Not sure I understand your point. M1 systems have 8 or 16 GB RAM. There are no increased RAM compared to non-M1 Mac.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      I'll try to find the review in the morning if I remember/care enough, but at least one of the reviews noted that the tested system had more RAM than the slightly older Mac it was being compared to, and that the performance gains between the two systems generally mirrored those found in PCs with differing amounts of RAM.
  - whynotminot 6y ago
    What are you even talking about? RAM is actually one of the few disappointing areas of these machines, capacity wise (though the RAM itself is fast and unified, so there's that). Furthermore, one of the most stunning things about these devices is their long running battery life, which you'd hardly get much experience with in a quick test drive. Bad take is bad.
alwillis 6y ago
Benchmarks show that the M1 has better performance in only a few areas, and underperforms in others, and that's with Apple controlling literally every aspect of the hardware and software stack. I haven't seen a review where it has underperformed any other comparable device. I've seen a lot of talk about how the Threadripper from AMD is faster… duh. Of course a 32- or 64-core processor that costs 2x-3x than a Mac mini and draws 280 watts is faster than an M1. The M1 peaks at 20-24 watts and doesn't even require a fan in the MacBook Air. It's graphic blows away all integrated graphics and is comparable to many discrete GPUs. On CPU benchmarks, it's faster than all but the latest Intel and AMD laptop CPUs, which are in laptops that run hotter, are louder and don't have 18-20 battery life doing real world things. x86 applications generally just work and often run faster on an M1 Mac than they did on Intel Macs. Considering the broad swaths of essential business software that is simply incompatible with Apple OS, that's not going to happen. Depends on what business you're in. If you're in the content creation business, you're good to go [1]. Microsoft Office is already in beta for running natively on M1 and so much other business software is web-based or Electron apps (like Slack) and those work fine. [1]: "Hollywood thinks new Mac mini 'could be huge' for video editors"—https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/11/12/hollywood-thinks-new-mac-mini-could-be-huge-for-video-editors https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/11/12/hollywood-thinks-...
- gamblor956 6y ago
  Depends on what business you're in. If you're in the content creation business, you're good to go [1]. I am definitely going to differ on that. My last job (until this summer) was in Hollywood for a content creation company (live broadcast + streaming) and I worked very heavily with the content creation guys and the digital production team (as a result of working on them for R&D tax credit documentation purposes. That means I not only saw every expense, I also documented the reasons for all of those expenses based on discussions with the teams). We switched off Apple software 4 years ago. They began the transition off Apple hardware 2 years ago. Apple was great for content creation a long time ago, but these days content creators use *nix based systems if they need performance and Windows-based systems if they care about costs. If you suggest using Apple to the content creation guys these days, they'll laugh your ass out of the room and tell you to go back to film school.
alwillis 6y ago
And of course, the big issue is that in order to use the M1 you must switch your entire stack to Apple. Not necessarily; the ARM version of Windows 10 is already running on the M1: https://hothardware.com/news/apple-silicon-m1-mac-windows-10-qemu https://hothardware.com/news/apple-silicon-m1-mac-windows-10...
- adriancr 6y ago
  Your link says otherwise. These would make it completely unusable... I'm not sure what they were even testing... > First of all, there is no video or sound driver, so we were stuck with a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768. The network drivers apparently don't totally register with Windows

Benchmarks show that the M1 has better performance in only a few areas, and underperforms in others, and that's with Apple controlling literally every aspect of the hardware and software stack. It's great for an ARM system for a vertically oriented company, but it isn't sufficiently performative to be a significant threat to the competition. And that's before you consider all the non-technical crap Apple has thrown at its customers recently. And of course, the big issue is that in order to use the M1 you must switch your entire stack to Apple. Considering the broad swaths of essential business software that is simply incompatible with Apple OS, that's not going to happen.

seppin 6y ago

In the 1 week + i've had my Macbook Air M1, it's across the board better. This thing is amazing

gamblor956 6y ago
Yes, compared to your prior Macbook I'm sure it was a revelation. A programmer friend loves his new M1, but he's also been an Apple user for decades. As a Windows user, testing out my friend's Macbook Air M1 was an underwhelming experience. I've had bigger performance boosts from adding more RAM or switching out HDs to SSDs, and a large part of the M1's performance "gains" can be attributed to the increased RAM on the systems currently featuring the M1.
- jryle70 6y ago
  How did you compare a Windows system with a Mac to conclude it was "an underwhelming experience"? were they similarly configured and running similar software? > a large part of the M1's performance "gains" can be attributed to the increased RAM on the systems currently featuring the M1. Not sure I understand your point. M1 systems have 8 or 16 GB RAM. There are no increased RAM compared to non-M1 Mac.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    I'll try to find the review in the morning if I remember/care enough, but at least one of the reviews noted that the tested system had more RAM than the slightly older Mac it was being compared to, and that the performance gains between the two systems generally mirrored those found in PCs with differing amounts of RAM.
- whynotminot 6y ago
  What are you even talking about? RAM is actually one of the few disappointing areas of these machines, capacity wise (though the RAM itself is fast and unified, so there's that). Furthermore, one of the most stunning things about these devices is their long running battery life, which you'd hardly get much experience with in a quick test drive. Bad take is bad.

alwillis 6y ago

Benchmarks show that the M1 has better performance in only a few areas, and underperforms in others, and that's with Apple controlling literally every aspect of the hardware and software stack. I haven't seen a review where it has underperformed any other comparable device. I've seen a lot of talk about how the Threadripper from AMD is faster… duh. Of course a 32- or 64-core processor that costs 2x-3x than a Mac mini and draws 280 watts is faster than an M1. The M1 peaks at 20-24 watts and doesn't even require a fan in the MacBook Air. It's graphic blows away all integrated graphics and is comparable to many discrete GPUs. On CPU benchmarks, it's faster than all but the latest Intel and AMD laptop CPUs, which are in laptops that run hotter, are louder and don't have 18-20 battery life doing real world things. x86 applications generally just work and often run faster on an M1 Mac than they did on Intel Macs. Considering the broad swaths of essential business software that is simply incompatible with Apple OS, that's not going to happen. Depends on what business you're in. If you're in the content creation business, you're good to go [1]. Microsoft Office is already in beta for running natively on M1 and so much other business software is web-based or Electron apps (like Slack) and those work fine. [1]: "Hollywood thinks new Mac mini 'could be huge' for video editors"—https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/11/12/hollywood-thinks-new-mac-mini-could-be-huge-for-video-editors https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/11/12/hollywood-thinks-...

gamblor956 6y ago
Depends on what business you're in. If you're in the content creation business, you're good to go [1]. I am definitely going to differ on that. My last job (until this summer) was in Hollywood for a content creation company (live broadcast + streaming) and I worked very heavily with the content creation guys and the digital production team (as a result of working on them for R&D tax credit documentation purposes. That means I not only saw every expense, I also documented the reasons for all of those expenses based on discussions with the teams). We switched off Apple software 4 years ago. They began the transition off Apple hardware 2 years ago. Apple was great for content creation a long time ago, but these days content creators use *nix based systems if they need performance and Windows-based systems if they care about costs. If you suggest using Apple to the content creation guys these days, they'll laugh your ass out of the room and tell you to go back to film school.

alwillis 6y ago

And of course, the big issue is that in order to use the M1 you must switch your entire stack to Apple. Not necessarily; the ARM version of Windows 10 is already running on the M1: https://hothardware.com/news/apple-silicon-m1-mac-windows-10-qemu https://hothardware.com/news/apple-silicon-m1-mac-windows-10...

adriancr 6y ago
Your link says otherwise. These would make it completely unusable... I'm not sure what they were even testing... > First of all, there is no video or sound driver, so we were stuck with a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768. The network drivers apparently don't totally register with Windows