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We all were complaining about the lack of innovation with iMacs, barely upgraded, MacBooks with its superficial gadget “emoji bar” as the sole innovation (and t

We all were complaining about the lack of innovation with iMacs, barely upgraded, MacBooks with its superficial gadget “emoji bar” as the sole innovation (and the butterfly keyboard), felt insulted with iMac Pro because it feels like “You want better? Here, pay.” It felt like a decade of maintenance, milking the cow. All along, half of the headquarters must have been secretly working on the M1...

skohan 6y ago
When they released the M1 macs without a design change, my initial take was that it was a cowardly move: they didn't want to attach a big design change and risk calling a lot of attention to what might be a flop. But I actually think it was more of a boast: showing exactly how changing only the processor changes everything in a clear A/B test scenario.
- laurent92 6y ago
  It won’t be a flop. It will be a teraflop. More seriously, by the way, do we have comparison between the black iMac Pros and the M1? It would be ironic if iMac Pros were surpassed by the 1/4th-prices M1...
  - kube-system 6y ago
    The M1 wins in single core performance and power consumption, in everything else, the pro wins.
- firecall 6y ago
  There was talk that it was because Apple didnt want to alert Intel as to the massive leap the M1 would be!
  - skohan 6y ago
    How would a design change have clued them in about the performance difference?
    - matwood 6y ago
      If there were rumors of a design that was impossible with an Intel chip, that would have tipped their hand. Keeping mostly the same initial design meant is was easy for Intel to think Apple was just replacing like for like to save some money.
- headmelted 6y ago
  That's not the reason, it was almost certainly due to Rosetta and nothing else. Changing the processor architecture over for the first time was going to be a massive undertaking (I'm sure there are still folks there who have nightmares about universal binaries from '06). They had no way to run a wide public beta of the hardware before releasing, so had to play it as safe as possible. The only sane way to migrate something so fundamental is to change absolutely nothing besides the processor, so that you have a side-by-side comparison between the previous generation and the new one out in the wild to debug problems that come up. If they had added [Face ID / a touchscreen / new mechanics for the keyboard] they'd need to debug whether those changes were causing the bugs rather than the M1 changes. That's why I've fought myself to hold of - I'd expect the next MBP to be a fundamental redesign. I can live without a touchscreen, but please just give me a Face ID laptop Apple.
  - eru 6y ago
    > [...], but please just give me a Face ID laptop Apple. Why is that so much more convenient than eg the fingerprint scanner? (Even entering my password is pretty quick for me.) I haven't use any form of Face ID on any device so far. So I am genuinely curious. I do see the appeal of finger print auth over having to type a password or a code on the phone.
    - skohan 6y ago
      I actually strongly prefer the fingerprint to face-authentication (especially in the age of masks). Face ID is just so much more responsive to things like lighting conditions, and you pretty much have to look directly at your phone, so you can't casually unlock while the phone is sitting on the table while you're at a coffee date or something. I'm always touching my phone/laptop anyway when I want to use it, so I honestly see no advantage to not just using that touch itself to unlock.
      - xodice 6y ago
        FaceID uses infrared, lighting conditions do not matter. You can disable the requiring of looking at the phone and unlocking via FaceID in settings, I regularly unlock my phone without holding it so I am "dead on looking at it". That said, I also prefer TouchID.
- _ph_ 6y ago
  I think it was more motivated by the fact that the first months with the new processor architecture are rough from a software point of view. While Rosetta seems to work great, there are a lot of things which didn't work initially and now slowly come around with more and more native packages appearing. A complete redesign of the machines would have attracted too many customers who would not have been ready for the bumpiness of the software in the first months.
  - skohan 6y ago
    Yeah this is what I thought at first too, but in my experience it was remarkably smooth. Even as a developer, which is probably a worst-case scenario for this type of transition, I have barely had to think about the fact that it's a different arch
    - regularfry 6y ago
      I ran into this. I was making a lot of very conservative noises early on at work about potential risks to our workflows, and I've been waiting and waiting. I had thought making docker images on a different architecture to deployment would bite us, but so far it's the dog that didn't bark. I don't know how in hell they did it, but I'm impressed so far.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  They did the same thing when they switched to Intel. Nearly every model inherited its previous design, with big design changes coming after the product line had transitioned. At the time the general consensus was that they were timid about making big visible changes that might make existing customers feel like their products had changed too much. But now it seems like the norm for Apple to stagger architecture and design changes.
aidos 6y ago
It’s the first Mac in years that’s got me wanting to replace my 2015 MacBook. Does anyone have experience of Pro vs Air as a dev machine. I’m assuming the pro is an around better machine, but that touchbar....
- supermatt 6y ago
  I have the pro. I should have got the air. I dev mobile and web and fans almost never on, so thermal throttling on air would likely be minimal. The Touch Bar is horrible, accidentally hit “back” button all the time.
  - qeternity 6y ago
    We bought one of each on day one for R&D purposes. I absolutely agree. The Air is absolutely the better machine and it’s cheaper. In our benchmarks we actually saw better performance out of the Air most of the time (bursty workloads) and the only thing we could think of was that the bigger heat sink in the Air provides better cooling than in the Pro most of the time, unless you have really long compiles where the fans kick in.
    - jorvi 6y ago
      You can even do a little (reversible) mod to the Air where you add some thermal pads, effectively turning the entire bottom into a giant heatsink. It'll get a little warmer to the touch than before, although not uncomfortably, but the sustained performance gains are definitely worth it.
- theodric 6y ago
  I had a touchbar Pro and I now have an M1 air. I would go for the Air. The touchpad is slightly too big on the Pro and the palm rejection is insufficient, leading to unexpected mouse movements and occasionally unintended selection and mass-overwriting of text. This issue is magnified further with the 15" devices on which the touchpad is comically oversized. The touchbar leads to unintended behaviors like sending half-written emails because you unconsciously brushed against it while entering a number, and only make it more difficult to do basic things like adjust brightness and volume. The Air, on the other hand, is a well-engineered little machine that is just as usable as a 2015 Pro or Air. Pity about the limited ports. You've seen the rumors that the next Air will ship with more ports?

skohan 6y ago

When they released the M1 macs without a design change, my initial take was that it was a cowardly move: they didn't want to attach a big design change and risk calling a lot of attention to what might be a flop. But I actually think it was more of a boast: showing exactly how changing only the processor changes everything in a clear A/B test scenario.

laurent92 6y ago
It won’t be a flop. It will be a teraflop. More seriously, by the way, do we have comparison between the black iMac Pros and the M1? It would be ironic if iMac Pros were surpassed by the 1/4th-prices M1...
- kube-system 6y ago
  The M1 wins in single core performance and power consumption, in everything else, the pro wins.
firecall 6y ago
There was talk that it was because Apple didnt want to alert Intel as to the massive leap the M1 would be!
- skohan 6y ago
  How would a design change have clued them in about the performance difference?
  - matwood 6y ago
    If there were rumors of a design that was impossible with an Intel chip, that would have tipped their hand. Keeping mostly the same initial design meant is was easy for Intel to think Apple was just replacing like for like to save some money.
headmelted 6y ago
That's not the reason, it was almost certainly due to Rosetta and nothing else. Changing the processor architecture over for the first time was going to be a massive undertaking (I'm sure there are still folks there who have nightmares about universal binaries from '06). They had no way to run a wide public beta of the hardware before releasing, so had to play it as safe as possible. The only sane way to migrate something so fundamental is to change absolutely nothing besides the processor, so that you have a side-by-side comparison between the previous generation and the new one out in the wild to debug problems that come up. If they had added [Face ID / a touchscreen / new mechanics for the keyboard] they'd need to debug whether those changes were causing the bugs rather than the M1 changes. That's why I've fought myself to hold of - I'd expect the next MBP to be a fundamental redesign. I can live without a touchscreen, but please just give me a Face ID laptop Apple.
- eru 6y ago
  > [...], but please just give me a Face ID laptop Apple. Why is that so much more convenient than eg the fingerprint scanner? (Even entering my password is pretty quick for me.) I haven't use any form of Face ID on any device so far. So I am genuinely curious. I do see the appeal of finger print auth over having to type a password or a code on the phone.
  - skohan 6y ago
    I actually strongly prefer the fingerprint to face-authentication (especially in the age of masks). Face ID is just so much more responsive to things like lighting conditions, and you pretty much have to look directly at your phone, so you can't casually unlock while the phone is sitting on the table while you're at a coffee date or something. I'm always touching my phone/laptop anyway when I want to use it, so I honestly see no advantage to not just using that touch itself to unlock.
    - xodice 6y ago
      FaceID uses infrared, lighting conditions do not matter. You can disable the requiring of looking at the phone and unlocking via FaceID in settings, I regularly unlock my phone without holding it so I am "dead on looking at it". That said, I also prefer TouchID.
_ph_ 6y ago
I think it was more motivated by the fact that the first months with the new processor architecture are rough from a software point of view. While Rosetta seems to work great, there are a lot of things which didn't work initially and now slowly come around with more and more native packages appearing. A complete redesign of the machines would have attracted too many customers who would not have been ready for the bumpiness of the software in the first months.
- skohan 6y ago
  Yeah this is what I thought at first too, but in my experience it was remarkably smooth. Even as a developer, which is probably a worst-case scenario for this type of transition, I have barely had to think about the fact that it's a different arch
  - regularfry 6y ago
    I ran into this. I was making a lot of very conservative noises early on at work about potential risks to our workflows, and I've been waiting and waiting. I had thought making docker images on a different architecture to deployment would bite us, but so far it's the dog that didn't bark. I don't know how in hell they did it, but I'm impressed so far.
eyelidlessness 6y ago
They did the same thing when they switched to Intel. Nearly every model inherited its previous design, with big design changes coming after the product line had transitioned. At the time the general consensus was that they were timid about making big visible changes that might make existing customers feel like their products had changed too much. But now it seems like the norm for Apple to stagger architecture and design changes.

aidos 6y ago

It’s the first Mac in years that’s got me wanting to replace my 2015 MacBook. Does anyone have experience of Pro vs Air as a dev machine. I’m assuming the pro is an around better machine, but that touchbar....

supermatt 6y ago
I have the pro. I should have got the air. I dev mobile and web and fans almost never on, so thermal throttling on air would likely be minimal. The Touch Bar is horrible, accidentally hit “back” button all the time.
- qeternity 6y ago
  We bought one of each on day one for R&D purposes. I absolutely agree. The Air is absolutely the better machine and it’s cheaper. In our benchmarks we actually saw better performance out of the Air most of the time (bursty workloads) and the only thing we could think of was that the bigger heat sink in the Air provides better cooling than in the Pro most of the time, unless you have really long compiles where the fans kick in.
  - jorvi 6y ago
    You can even do a little (reversible) mod to the Air where you add some thermal pads, effectively turning the entire bottom into a giant heatsink. It'll get a little warmer to the touch than before, although not uncomfortably, but the sustained performance gains are definitely worth it.
theodric 6y ago
I had a touchbar Pro and I now have an M1 air. I would go for the Air. The touchpad is slightly too big on the Pro and the palm rejection is insufficient, leading to unexpected mouse movements and occasionally unintended selection and mass-overwriting of text. This issue is magnified further with the 15" devices on which the touchpad is comically oversized. The touchbar leads to unintended behaviors like sending half-written emails because you unconsciously brushed against it while entering a number, and only make it more difficult to do basic things like adjust brightness and volume. The Air, on the other hand, is a well-engineered little machine that is just as usable as a 2015 Pro or Air. Pity about the limited ports. You've seen the rumors that the next Air will ship with more ports?