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> M1 won't change that, or at least not rapidly. This to me is the interesting spectator sport for M1 (I have no intention of buying Apple hardware) - what are

> M1 won't change that, or at least not rapidly. This to me is the interesting spectator sport for M1 (I have no intention of buying Apple hardware) - what are the competition going to do in response? Based on all the reviews and benchmarks, the new generation of Apple laptops are going to outperform anything AMD/Intel, while having twice the battery life. These are not 'small difference' only of interest to geeks, these are large user visible differences that could make everything non-Apple look inferior. I don't see x64 suddenly getting competitive on this front any time soon, so are the 'traditional' laptop vendors (e.g. Lenovo) going to have to pivot to ARM as well? Possibly segmenting so that 'gaming' or 'workstation' are different market sectors that stay on x86. Even if they do switch there's going to be lag for development, and there's no guarantee that the software landscape will be as set up for it as on Apple. As someone whose purchases are 'second hand thinkpad, install Linux' I'm all for it. If you pick the right distro, Linux has supported ARM well for a while.

deleted 6y ago
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neogodless 6y ago
First, I think the "rapidly" is key here. Momentum / current market share for enterprise and gaming is strongly in the x86 / Windows space. Second, the M1 successors have to cover a lot more use cases first. There are certainly use cases where M1 is winning single core performance, and some for parallelism, and nearly absolutely in efficiency and battery life. There are still plenty of cases where software either only works on Windows, or it's where many users are currently using it, and accustomed to using it. There are other cases where "M1 for x" doesn't exist yet - high-end workstations, for example. We have rumors and expectations for this to come out in over the next two years, and assuming the competition stands still, you might start to see cases where the time savings on heavy computation favors the Apple Silicon options heavily enough to overcome inertia. But I would suggest people look at Intel and AMD in the Windows space for a precedent. AMD multi-core performance has been dominating Intel for about 3 years now... guess who owns the market share? It's still Intel. The momentum definitely takes years to overcome. AMD is at something like 20% of Windows notebook share after about one year of having dominate mobile chips. See this - https://www.pcworld.com/article/3588154/amds-notebook-pc-share-soars-to-an-all-time-high.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/3588154/amds-notebook-pc-sha...
- rsynnott 6y ago
  > Momentum / current market share for enterprise and gaming is strongly in the x86 / Windows space. Sure, but they're not just going to sacrifice the consumer market entirely. The industry as a whole will need to respond. > There are other cases where "M1 for x" doesn't exist yet - high-end workstations, for example. For now. In a year, I wouldn't bet on it. > AMD is at something like 20% of Windows notebook share after about one year of having dominate mobile chips. AMD beat Intel by a little in efficiency over the last year (and for the mainstream laptop market, after a certain point, that's mostly what people care about). M1 is a _dramatic_ jump forward, there. "Here's an AMD and an Intel laptop for 1k each, the AMD one is a bit faster and has slightly better battery life" is a different proposition to "Here's the same AMD laptop from earlier, plus a $1k MacBook Air. The MacBook Air's a bit faster, and has twice the battery life".
  - neogodless 6y ago
    The Ryzen 4000 laptop chips outperform Intel's as much as 45% in benchmarks, while getting 33% better battery life. The M1 is roughly competitive with the Ryzen 4000 chips (depending on variances in TDP, cooling, etc.) but arguably gets as much as double the battery life. No argument that it's an advancement of CPU technology, but I think you might have some magical thinking if you think momentum doesn't matter. It's not like suddenly 100% of buyers look at only benchmarks where the M1 leads, or only at battery life, or only at software that runs on the M1 rather than all the software they use. If users were only looking at CPU benchmarks, AMD would have a lot higher market share, and the same will be said about the M1 after a year as well. Will Apple users replace Intel laptops in record numbers? Probably! But the conversion of Windows users will be slow regardless of hardware.

deleted 6y ago

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neogodless 6y ago

First, I think the "rapidly" is key here. Momentum / current market share for enterprise and gaming is strongly in the x86 / Windows space. Second, the M1 successors have to cover a lot more use cases first. There are certainly use cases where M1 is winning single core performance, and some for parallelism, and nearly absolutely in efficiency and battery life. There are still plenty of cases where software either only works on Windows, or it's where many users are currently using it, and accustomed to using it. There are other cases where "M1 for x" doesn't exist yet - high-end workstations, for example. We have rumors and expectations for this to come out in over the next two years, and assuming the competition stands still, you might start to see cases where the time savings on heavy computation favors the Apple Silicon options heavily enough to overcome inertia. But I would suggest people look at Intel and AMD in the Windows space for a precedent. AMD multi-core performance has been dominating Intel for about 3 years now... guess who owns the market share? It's still Intel. The momentum definitely takes years to overcome. AMD is at something like 20% of Windows notebook share after about one year of having dominate mobile chips. See this - https://www.pcworld.com/article/3588154/amds-notebook-pc-share-soars-to-an-all-time-high.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/3588154/amds-notebook-pc-sha...

rsynnott 6y ago
> Momentum / current market share for enterprise and gaming is strongly in the x86 / Windows space. Sure, but they're not just going to sacrifice the consumer market entirely. The industry as a whole will need to respond. > There are other cases where "M1 for x" doesn't exist yet - high-end workstations, for example. For now. In a year, I wouldn't bet on it. > AMD is at something like 20% of Windows notebook share after about one year of having dominate mobile chips. AMD beat Intel by a little in efficiency over the last year (and for the mainstream laptop market, after a certain point, that's mostly what people care about). M1 is a _dramatic_ jump forward, there. "Here's an AMD and an Intel laptop for 1k each, the AMD one is a bit faster and has slightly better battery life" is a different proposition to "Here's the same AMD laptop from earlier, plus a $1k MacBook Air. The MacBook Air's a bit faster, and has twice the battery life".
- neogodless 6y ago
  The Ryzen 4000 laptop chips outperform Intel's as much as 45% in benchmarks, while getting 33% better battery life. The M1 is roughly competitive with the Ryzen 4000 chips (depending on variances in TDP, cooling, etc.) but arguably gets as much as double the battery life. No argument that it's an advancement of CPU technology, but I think you might have some magical thinking if you think momentum doesn't matter. It's not like suddenly 100% of buyers look at only benchmarks where the M1 leads, or only at battery life, or only at software that runs on the M1 rather than all the software they use. If users were only looking at CPU benchmarks, AMD would have a lot higher market share, and the same will be said about the M1 after a year as well. Will Apple users replace Intel laptops in record numbers? Probably! But the conversion of Windows users will be slow regardless of hardware.