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You get an M1 with the new iPad Pro as well! I hadn't thought of the situation as the article presents. When shown in that light, it made me pause to reflect. T

You get an M1 with the new iPad Pro as well! I hadn't thought of the situation as the article presents. When shown in that light, it made me pause to reflect. The M1 doesn't make sense when its in every darn product. The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? I will admit that I switched to Thinkpad and Win10 about two years ago when I had to return my butterfly for the 5th time. I am not looking back either. If anything, I am more focused on AMD Ryzen and Nvidia 30 series chips in MSI, Lenovo Legion and Asus offerings. There is nothing I can't do with one of those machines. Going Apple is a backward move for me as I like to program, design in CAD, play steam VR, and run blender sims. Can't do any of those well with Apple hardware.

crooked-v 6y ago
> The M1 doesn't make sense when its in every darn product. The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? They've only replaced the lower tier of Macbooks and iMacs with the current M1 board, which suggests to me that they're working on a variant with more CPU and GPU cores that will go into the higher tiers of those machines.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  I don't think they have the fab capacity to be able to do that. Since M1 products are selling very well, they likely have reallocated fab capacity they had planned for the successor to the M1 back to making the M1. A higher performance M1 would have a bigger die size. It would have a lower yield and get fewer dies per wafer. The same capacity would sell fewer products. Apple probably earns more profits by simply selling more M1s, unless they can reserve substantially more fab capacity.
  - daemoon 6y ago
    > they likely have reallocated fab capacity they had planned for the successor to the M1 back to making the M1 Got any proof or something? This is a bold claim to make.
    - iSnow 6y ago
      Some benchmark sites claim they saw performance reports. Whether they make those up to see more traffic, I cannot tell. If I worked at Apple, I would not tell :) For example https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-apple_m1x-1898 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-apple_m1x-1898 talks about a 12 Core CPU but with only 16GB RAM.
  - kingosticks 6y ago
    > I don't think they have the fab capacity to be able to do that Do you have a source for there being any fab capacity shortage for Apple (or anyone, for that matter) at 5nm? Older nodes are a different story because that's still where most of TSMC's customers are doing their high-volume production.
    - londons_explore 6y ago
      Plenty of people would like to die-shrink their 7nm designs down to 5nm if only capacity existed.
      - kingosticks 6y ago
        I think plenty of people will skip it. Even ignoring the high cost, not everything scales as well with every new node. There're plenty of customers who will have no interest in this node right now and some that will have no interest in it ever. I've not seen anything that suggests capacity shortages at 5nm yet, especially for Apple who've already booked all of 3nm for next-gen.
      - hajile 6y ago
        SRAM scaling from 7nm to 5nm is pitiful. While the CPU transistors see 50-70% increases, the SRAM is only shrinking 20-30%. For chips with massive cache, that isn’t super cost effective (I suspect as a cost saving measure that we’ll see L2/L3 cache moving to a separate chip on a larger process while the rest shrinks down).
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    There’s already signs of multiple “next generation” chips in the works.
kmeisthax 6y ago
Apple differentiates the majority of their products by generation rather than binning. If you buy a low-end iPad, you get an A12; the iPad Air steps you up to an A14; and the iPad Pro gets you an M1. This is less evident on the Macintosh side of the business right now because they're just trying to get M1 silicon into as many product lines as their fab capacity will allow. They don't actually have an M2 (or even M1X) to sell high-end products with yet, which is why they're starting with low-end products first. When they release upgraded chips, they will almost be used to transition the high end models with lower-end product getting it later.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  > Apple differentiates the majority of their products by generation rather than binning. This simplifies things for consumers, but how do you make chips without binning? Are they all just that reliable? Do they all have extra cores? Maybe Intel bins more because they can squeeze out a significantly better price for more core and cache, but Apple's margins are already so high they don't care?
  - DenseComet 6y ago
    It seems like they do binning. For example, the M1 with 7 gpu cores vs 8 gpu cores.
    - morpheuskafka 6y ago
      That struck me as an extremely odd metric to differentiate products by, given its low relevance to non-technical users who don't know what a GPU core even is (except gamers, but they are not buying iMacs). Additionally, most people are going to think adding one more core is hardly worth the price upgrade, and its quite strange to see an odd number of cores.
      - londons_explore 6y ago
        It will have a far greater than 1/8th performance impact. When data structures are power-of-two sizes, having 7 cores instead of 8 could halve performance, since the work gets split into 4 pieces and 3 cores sit idle.
fumar 6y ago
Why doesn't the M1 make sense in a variety of products? I don't follow the logic. It is a processor that can scale to meet the demands of mobile computers including laptops, tablets, and designer desktops (iMac). In each use case it fulfills the its computational role regardless of I/O or even operating system. Based on your own description, you are self-selecting as an enthusiast that prefers gaming-like PCs. Isn't that exactly the sweet spot that Apple doesn't support?
Corrado 6y ago
> The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? I think that's the point. Until now, buying a computer has always been focused on the CPU and RAM stats. If you wanted faster/bigger you had to spend more. With Apple's new strategy you almost don't even care about CPU/RAM stats. They are focusing on providing value in other ways; larger screen, lighter weight, different colors, more ports, etc. I think this is the biggest shift in computers in quite a while and makes it much more akin to purchasing a phone or tablet than specing out a computer.
- daniellarusso 6y ago
  In high school, I worked a retail job for an office supply store, and one of the PC brands we would sell was Packard Bell. We sold many different models with similar specs, and the main feature many of the potential buyers would be concerned with: Will it fit with my current office furniture? We sold both desktops and tower configurations, and the type of desk the computer would be used with was the determining factor in which model to buy.
  - iSnow 6y ago
    And essentially, why not? If I want to work on a machine, I want it to be fast. Not 1.33x of the baseline benchmark CPU when equipped with X GB RAM. Just fast enough it doesn't annoy me. And with today's PCI-E-based SSD's, waiting for data to be written to "disk" is a non-issue, so the system feels much faster.
- ctdonath 6y ago
  Apple’s goal is to eliminate technical specifications from marketing: tech specs are an excuse - make it good enough that few care what those specs are.
  - totalZero 6y ago
    I can't think of a technological product where that mentality applies. Can you? In fact, it seems that the opposite is true; as a product gets better, people care more about the specs. Whether you're buying a Wusthof knife or a luxury car, you want to know what makes the product good enough to justify its price and position in the market.
izacus 6y ago
How's that any different than having a single Intel generation scale all the way from low powered laptop SoCs to 12 core i9s though? After all, the M1s across devices aren't the same either - iMacs have different configuration from iPads, those have different amount of cores and clocks from Airs and MBPs as well. It seems like the difference is only in Apple vs. Intel marketing blurb.
- ipsum2 6y ago
  Power consumption, number of cores, clock speed, etc.
  - izacus 6y ago
    I'm not sure what you're trying to say - M1s are differing in clock speed, number of cores and number of GPU cores across Apple products as well. "M1" is basically equivalent to "Core i" designation from Intel - except that Apple just doesn't tell you about the other part.
    - ipsum2 6y ago
      No? That's the entire point of the article. The only difference is whether you get a 7 core or 8 core GPU. > If you want to buy a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, Apple will sell you an M1. Want a Mac Mini? You get an M1. Interested in the iMac or the new iPad Pro? You get an M1. It’s possible that the M1 CPUs inside the iMac will have different thermal or clock behavior than those inside the systems Apple has already launched, but the company’s decision to eschew clock speed disclosures suggests that these CPUs differ only modestly. > with the M1, is that its custom CPU performance is now so high, at such low power consumption, that the choice of chip inside the system has become irrelevant within a given product generation
      - izacus 6y ago
        Exactly, so what is the point here? How exactly is that different from Intel generations? Why does Apple put different amount of cores and clocks into different products if the choice doesn't matter? It seems like there are performance differences there if they choose to install differently configured SoCs in different devices and even split them by pricing on the iMac. So, please, explain where's this big difference? (With more than a single sentence of your words if possible.)
fogihujy 6y ago
> The M1 doesn't make sense when its in every darn product. The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? Why not? It's basically back to where we were in 1980 when "everything" had a Z80 or 6502 (or both!) in it, and the major differences were in what else was in the system.
- anthk 6y ago
  6809.
solatic 6y ago
> The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? Apple is iPhone-izing (for lack of a better word) the rest of their product lines. If for the last ten years, the market hasn't really cared about the speed of the phone's processor within the same generation, but rather about physical differentiators (e.g. screen size, number of camera lenses, adding facial recognition), and the non-professional market is overwhelmingly characterized by light-usage applications, then why, pray tell, should laptops and desktops be so different?
- tarsinge 6y ago
  > the non-professional market is overwhelmingly characterized by light-usage applications I'm not sure social networks and most modern sites or apps qualifies as light-usage nowadays. Browsing Reddit or Facebook put my pro to its knees. The difference of CPU speed in phones is clearly visible for consumers (but maybe you don't notice it if you only use iPhones, because an SE from 2015 is still fast, but try an Android phone from that period).
  - bashinator 6y ago
    That’s because new Reddit is laden with ads and JS and crap. Try https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com
    - ascagnel_ 6y ago
      Or one of any third-party native iOS apps (Apollo[0] is my preference) that are both faster and feel better than the official app and mobile site. [0] https://apolloapp.io https://apolloapp.io
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - pdimitar 6y ago
        I love Apollo but I am very annoyed that they don't allow side scrolling between posts. I just find that much easier to do and it somehow bothers me when I don't have it.
ksec 6y ago
>The M1 doesn't make sense when its in every darn product. Would you feel better if they called it A14X? It is basically the same thing as what Intel is doing. Same Die, different binning, different naming. Same with Core count on AMD, same die, different binning on Cores and Clock Speed. Apple doesn't bother do any of that because well it is complicated for consumers. I call it TDP Computing. You are limited by the TDP Design of the product. Not the Chip. I am waiting to see Apple absolutely max out their SoC approach for Mac Pro.
- imtringued 6y ago
  >I am waiting to see Apple absolutely max out their SoC approach for Mac Pro. But they already maxed out their SoCs in the benchmarks because Geekbench doesn't care about TDP. The TDP makes a difference in real world performance but not in the benchmarks.
  - ksec 6y ago
    They are only maxed out in Single Thread Performance with its current power designed constrain per Core using current low power node.
- BillinghamJ 6y ago
  Apple is doing binning, at least to some extent. e.g. some Macs have only 7 GPU cores rather than 8. Presumably that's done to a greater extent for the iPad Pro
nashashmi 6y ago
I think what apple may be trying to do is reduce macOS sales and full throttle on iOS sales. It no longer makes sense for a macOS if it is going to have the same chip as iPad Pro.
maliker 6y ago
I agree that the M1 doesn't look good for high performance computing right now or anything with poor ARM support. But strategically, I think Apple is in a good spot. For heavy computation these days, I always remote into another machine. With increased bandwidth and more efficient remote desktop protocols, I even do all my graphics-intensive 3d work remotely now. By focusing on low-power processors, Apple is making the laptop/tablet/phone experience better, and I could see them handling the performance issues via remote compute. It could be a very effective strategy (if it is their strategy).
- simooooo 6y ago
  How do you do the 3D stuff remotely?

crooked-v 6y ago

> The M1 doesn't make sense when its in every darn product. The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? They've only replaced the lower tier of Macbooks and iMacs with the current M1 board, which suggests to me that they're working on a variant with more CPU and GPU cores that will go into the higher tiers of those machines.

londons_explore 6y ago
I don't think they have the fab capacity to be able to do that. Since M1 products are selling very well, they likely have reallocated fab capacity they had planned for the successor to the M1 back to making the M1. A higher performance M1 would have a bigger die size. It would have a lower yield and get fewer dies per wafer. The same capacity would sell fewer products. Apple probably earns more profits by simply selling more M1s, unless they can reserve substantially more fab capacity.
- daemoon 6y ago
  > they likely have reallocated fab capacity they had planned for the successor to the M1 back to making the M1 Got any proof or something? This is a bold claim to make.
  - iSnow 6y ago
    Some benchmark sites claim they saw performance reports. Whether they make those up to see more traffic, I cannot tell. If I worked at Apple, I would not tell :) For example https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-apple_m1x-1898 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-apple_m1x-1898 talks about a 12 Core CPU but with only 16GB RAM.
- kingosticks 6y ago
  > I don't think they have the fab capacity to be able to do that Do you have a source for there being any fab capacity shortage for Apple (or anyone, for that matter) at 5nm? Older nodes are a different story because that's still where most of TSMC's customers are doing their high-volume production.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    Plenty of people would like to die-shrink their 7nm designs down to 5nm if only capacity existed.
    - kingosticks 6y ago
      I think plenty of people will skip it. Even ignoring the high cost, not everything scales as well with every new node. There're plenty of customers who will have no interest in this node right now and some that will have no interest in it ever. I've not seen anything that suggests capacity shortages at 5nm yet, especially for Apple who've already booked all of 3nm for next-gen.
    - hajile 6y ago
      SRAM scaling from 7nm to 5nm is pitiful. While the CPU transistors see 50-70% increases, the SRAM is only shrinking 20-30%. For chips with massive cache, that isn’t super cost effective (I suspect as a cost saving measure that we’ll see L2/L3 cache moving to a separate chip on a larger process while the rest shrinks down).
- saagarjha 6y ago
  There’s already signs of multiple “next generation” chips in the works.

kmeisthax 6y ago

Apple differentiates the majority of their products by generation rather than binning. If you buy a low-end iPad, you get an A12; the iPad Air steps you up to an A14; and the iPad Pro gets you an M1. This is less evident on the Macintosh side of the business right now because they're just trying to get M1 silicon into as many product lines as their fab capacity will allow. They don't actually have an M2 (or even M1X) to sell high-end products with yet, which is why they're starting with low-end products first. When they release upgraded chips, they will almost be used to transition the high end models with lower-end product getting it later.

dehrmann 6y ago
> Apple differentiates the majority of their products by generation rather than binning. This simplifies things for consumers, but how do you make chips without binning? Are they all just that reliable? Do they all have extra cores? Maybe Intel bins more because they can squeeze out a significantly better price for more core and cache, but Apple's margins are already so high they don't care?
- DenseComet 6y ago
  It seems like they do binning. For example, the M1 with 7 gpu cores vs 8 gpu cores.
  - morpheuskafka 6y ago
    That struck me as an extremely odd metric to differentiate products by, given its low relevance to non-technical users who don't know what a GPU core even is (except gamers, but they are not buying iMacs). Additionally, most people are going to think adding one more core is hardly worth the price upgrade, and its quite strange to see an odd number of cores.
    - londons_explore 6y ago
      It will have a far greater than 1/8th performance impact. When data structures are power-of-two sizes, having 7 cores instead of 8 could halve performance, since the work gets split into 4 pieces and 3 cores sit idle.

fumar 6y ago

Why doesn't the M1 make sense in a variety of products? I don't follow the logic. It is a processor that can scale to meet the demands of mobile computers including laptops, tablets, and designer desktops (iMac). In each use case it fulfills the its computational role regardless of I/O or even operating system. Based on your own description, you are self-selecting as an enthusiast that prefers gaming-like PCs. Isn't that exactly the sweet spot that Apple doesn't support?

Corrado 6y ago

> The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? I think that's the point. Until now, buying a computer has always been focused on the CPU and RAM stats. If you wanted faster/bigger you had to spend more. With Apple's new strategy you almost don't even care about CPU/RAM stats. They are focusing on providing value in other ways; larger screen, lighter weight, different colors, more ports, etc. I think this is the biggest shift in computers in quite a while and makes it much more akin to purchasing a phone or tablet than specing out a computer.

daniellarusso 6y ago
In high school, I worked a retail job for an office supply store, and one of the PC brands we would sell was Packard Bell. We sold many different models with similar specs, and the main feature many of the potential buyers would be concerned with: Will it fit with my current office furniture? We sold both desktops and tower configurations, and the type of desk the computer would be used with was the determining factor in which model to buy.
- iSnow 6y ago
  And essentially, why not? If I want to work on a machine, I want it to be fast. Not 1.33x of the baseline benchmark CPU when equipped with X GB RAM. Just fast enough it doesn't annoy me. And with today's PCI-E-based SSD's, waiting for data to be written to "disk" is a non-issue, so the system feels much faster.
ctdonath 6y ago
Apple’s goal is to eliminate technical specifications from marketing: tech specs are an excuse - make it good enough that few care what those specs are.
- totalZero 6y ago
  I can't think of a technological product where that mentality applies. Can you? In fact, it seems that the opposite is true; as a product gets better, people care more about the specs. Whether you're buying a Wusthof knife or a luxury car, you want to know what makes the product good enough to justify its price and position in the market.

izacus 6y ago

How's that any different than having a single Intel generation scale all the way from low powered laptop SoCs to 12 core i9s though? After all, the M1s across devices aren't the same either - iMacs have different configuration from iPads, those have different amount of cores and clocks from Airs and MBPs as well. It seems like the difference is only in Apple vs. Intel marketing blurb.

ipsum2 6y ago
Power consumption, number of cores, clock speed, etc.
- izacus 6y ago
  I'm not sure what you're trying to say - M1s are differing in clock speed, number of cores and number of GPU cores across Apple products as well. "M1" is basically equivalent to "Core i" designation from Intel - except that Apple just doesn't tell you about the other part.
  - ipsum2 6y ago
    No? That's the entire point of the article. The only difference is whether you get a 7 core or 8 core GPU. > If you want to buy a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, Apple will sell you an M1. Want a Mac Mini? You get an M1. Interested in the iMac or the new iPad Pro? You get an M1. It’s possible that the M1 CPUs inside the iMac will have different thermal or clock behavior than those inside the systems Apple has already launched, but the company’s decision to eschew clock speed disclosures suggests that these CPUs differ only modestly. > with the M1, is that its custom CPU performance is now so high, at such low power consumption, that the choice of chip inside the system has become irrelevant within a given product generation
    - izacus 6y ago
      Exactly, so what is the point here? How exactly is that different from Intel generations? Why does Apple put different amount of cores and clocks into different products if the choice doesn't matter? It seems like there are performance differences there if they choose to install differently configured SoCs in different devices and even split them by pricing on the iMac. So, please, explain where's this big difference? (With more than a single sentence of your words if possible.)

fogihujy 6y ago

> The M1 doesn't make sense when its in every darn product. The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? Why not? It's basically back to where we were in 1980 when "everything" had a Z80 or 6502 (or both!) in it, and the major differences were in what else was in the system.

anthk 6y ago
6809.

solatic 6y ago

> The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? Apple is iPhone-izing (for lack of a better word) the rest of their product lines. If for the last ten years, the market hasn't really cared about the speed of the phone's processor within the same generation, but rather about physical differentiators (e.g. screen size, number of camera lenses, adding facial recognition), and the non-professional market is overwhelmingly characterized by light-usage applications, then why, pray tell, should laptops and desktops be so different?

tarsinge 6y ago
> the non-professional market is overwhelmingly characterized by light-usage applications I'm not sure social networks and most modern sites or apps qualifies as light-usage nowadays. Browsing Reddit or Facebook put my pro to its knees. The difference of CPU speed in phones is clearly visible for consumers (but maybe you don't notice it if you only use iPhones, because an SE from 2015 is still fast, but try an Android phone from that period).
- bashinator 6y ago
  That’s because new Reddit is laden with ads and JS and crap. Try https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com
  - ascagnel_ 6y ago
    Or one of any third-party native iOS apps (Apollo[0] is my preference) that are both faster and feel better than the official app and mobile site. [0] https://apolloapp.io https://apolloapp.io
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - pdimitar 6y ago
      I love Apollo but I am very annoyed that they don't allow side scrolling between posts. I just find that much easier to do and it somehow bothers me when I don't have it.

ksec 6y ago

>The M1 doesn't make sense when its in every darn product. Would you feel better if they called it A14X? It is basically the same thing as what Intel is doing. Same Die, different binning, different naming. Same with Core count on AMD, same die, different binning on Cores and Clock Speed. Apple doesn't bother do any of that because well it is complicated for consumers. I call it TDP Computing. You are limited by the TDP Design of the product. Not the Chip. I am waiting to see Apple absolutely max out their SoC approach for Mac Pro.

imtringued 6y ago
>I am waiting to see Apple absolutely max out their SoC approach for Mac Pro. But they already maxed out their SoCs in the benchmarks because Geekbench doesn't care about TDP. The TDP makes a difference in real world performance but not in the benchmarks.
- ksec 6y ago
  They are only maxed out in Single Thread Performance with its current power designed constrain per Core using current low power node.
BillinghamJ 6y ago
Apple is doing binning, at least to some extent. e.g. some Macs have only 7 GPU cores rather than 8. Presumably that's done to a greater extent for the iPad Pro

nashashmi 6y ago

I think what apple may be trying to do is reduce macOS sales and full throttle on iOS sales. It no longer makes sense for a macOS if it is going to have the same chip as iPad Pro.

maliker 6y ago

I agree that the M1 doesn't look good for high performance computing right now or anything with poor ARM support. But strategically, I think Apple is in a good spot. For heavy computation these days, I always remote into another machine. With increased bandwidth and more efficient remote desktop protocols, I even do all my graphics-intensive 3d work remotely now. By focusing on low-power processors, Apple is making the laptop/tablet/phone experience better, and I could see them handling the performance issues via remote compute. It could be a very effective strategy (if it is their strategy).

simooooo 6y ago
How do you do the 3D stuff remotely?