5 ms·

It is indeed revolutionary, because it is at the heart of the first widely popular fully-functional powerful general-purpose ARM-based laptop ever being produce

It is indeed revolutionary, because it is at the heart of the first widely popular fully-functional powerful general-purpose ARM-based laptop ever being produced on a massive, industrial scale. If that's not being revolutionary, I don't know what is.

latch 5y ago
> If that's not being revolutionary, I don't know what is. Then you might want to look up the definition. A revolution is "radical" and makes "fundamental changes in the socioeconomic situation". Life after the printing press / steam engine / transistor fundamentally changed. Even if tomorrow, all x86 chips were replaced with ARM chips, what radical and fundamental changes to society would take place?
ChrisLTD 5y ago
I love my M1 Air, but ultimately it's a moderately faster version of what I had before. The real benefit, so far, is that I have a fanless machine with the same kind of power as the previous pro level machines. Otherwise, it hasn't exactly changed what the computer is on a fundamental level.
- cglace 5y ago
  The fact that I can forget my power cord and not care is a game changer.
duped 5y ago
Even if that were true, it would still just be an incremental improvement. We've been mass marketing laptops for decades. Switching to a different architecture while a big engineering task isn't revolutionary. But it's not true. ARM based Chromebooks have been on the market for years already and cornered educational markets and had massive consumer success overseas.
The_Colonel 5y ago
> If that's not being revolutionary, I don't know what is. Nothing changes in the way people use their computers. It's a performance leap, but there have been many such in the past. Back when PCs and laptops got 2 cores instead of 1, "real" multitasking was finally possible and performance doubled almost overnight. That was IMHO a bigger leap than M1, but I don't hear people calling Core 2 Duo and Athlon X2 "revolutionary".
- EricE 5y ago
  It's not just a performance leap. The whole machine feels a hell of a lot more responsive. Or tight. Or like it's reading your mind - it's hard to describe. It's just snappier, and it's not a subtle difference either. It also delivers incredible battery life, and runs a lot cooler so you don't have annoying fans or face throttling as much, if at all, under load. No more cases hot enough to burn skin. If you think you understand the M1 just by looking at benchmarks or reviews, you are sadly mistaken. Use one of these machines for a couple of days and you will more than likely not want to give it up. Heck there are developers ditching their iMac Pro's in favor of M1 Mac Mini's for everything but long compiles. When Apple releases desktop versions of their SOC things should get stupid spicy. And I'm very much looking forward to it.
ajross 5y ago
> first widely popular fully-functional powerful general-purpose ARM-based laptop ever being produced on a massive, industrial scale. I submit if you need to qualify your use of the word "laptop" with fully eight adjectives or adjectival phrases to avoid ambiguity with pre-existing products, that it's probably not "revolutionary" by definition. The M1 is a good CPU. It's incrementally better than the Intel CPUs used in earlier versions of the same product. It is very notable in that it was produced in-house and not purchased from Intel. And that says important things about the business climate in which Apple finds itself. But that's not the same thing as "revolutionary" in a technological sense. It does what competing chips do, somewhat better.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  > The M1 is a good CPU. It's incrementally better than the Intel CPUs used in earlier versions of the same product. I suppose everything can be called incrementally better by some viewpoint but calling it incrementally better than the Intel CPUs used in earlier versions is wild to me. I specifically switched to my first ever Apple product because of how revolutionary the generational step was compared to what we've been getting on x86 laptops year to year and no equivalent x86 laptops of the year came close. Not only is it comparable to my overclocked desktop in tasks from 1-4 cores it does so without kicking on fans and the battery life is astounding while it does it. It even runs emulated x86 software faster than the native x86 version of the same year.
  - okamiueru 5y ago
    Here is what I find confusing. When people say the M1 is revolutionary, it really seems to suggest that the playing field is "available CPUs on the market". But, then some mean it to be "no, just compared to old CPUs in the previous generation of the same product".
    - EricE 5y ago
      It trounces the majority of either of those - which something a revolutionary product would do. It's not until you get to the highest end desktop CPUs from Intel or AMD that you see competition with the M1 on a per core basis. Keeping in mind this is Apple's lowest end, low power, mobile part. It wipes out all but the highest end desktop processors - not just on a core basis, but even a multicore basis - agin for all but the highest end. Nope, I don't think revolutionary is hyperbole at all. It also makes me wring my hands with glee thinking about what a part designed for the desktop where higher power and cooling are readily available. Where adding more cores makes a lot of sense. How big of a gap is there going to be with that SOC? The prospects of new hardware are once again exciting. CPUs have been stagnant for a LONG time now. I was simultaneously relieved and disappointed to learn my i7-7700K was still not that far off from the latest CPUs - hardware unboxed had a great video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAX1lh985do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAX1lh985do At best - on average a 30FPS between my lowly 7700K and the highest end parts? Yeah, newer parts have more cores - but most games are not well optimized for multiple cores. On one had I'm relieved - no need to spend money on upgrades since it just isn't worth it. On the other hand - it isn't worth it to upgrade! And what nerd doesn't like having the latest tech? So yeah, it's nice to have someone pushing the boundaries and something to be truly excited about. Also stark contrasts like this tends to light a fire under others, if nothing else. Rising tides raising all boats and all that...

latch 5y ago

> If that's not being revolutionary, I don't know what is. Then you might want to look up the definition. A revolution is "radical" and makes "fundamental changes in the socioeconomic situation". Life after the printing press / steam engine / transistor fundamentally changed. Even if tomorrow, all x86 chips were replaced with ARM chips, what radical and fundamental changes to society would take place?

ChrisLTD 5y ago

I love my M1 Air, but ultimately it's a moderately faster version of what I had before. The real benefit, so far, is that I have a fanless machine with the same kind of power as the previous pro level machines. Otherwise, it hasn't exactly changed what the computer is on a fundamental level.

cglace 5y ago
The fact that I can forget my power cord and not care is a game changer.

duped 5y ago

Even if that were true, it would still just be an incremental improvement. We've been mass marketing laptops for decades. Switching to a different architecture while a big engineering task isn't revolutionary. But it's not true. ARM based Chromebooks have been on the market for years already and cornered educational markets and had massive consumer success overseas.

The_Colonel 5y ago

> If that's not being revolutionary, I don't know what is. Nothing changes in the way people use their computers. It's a performance leap, but there have been many such in the past. Back when PCs and laptops got 2 cores instead of 1, "real" multitasking was finally possible and performance doubled almost overnight. That was IMHO a bigger leap than M1, but I don't hear people calling Core 2 Duo and Athlon X2 "revolutionary".

EricE 5y ago
It's not just a performance leap. The whole machine feels a hell of a lot more responsive. Or tight. Or like it's reading your mind - it's hard to describe. It's just snappier, and it's not a subtle difference either. It also delivers incredible battery life, and runs a lot cooler so you don't have annoying fans or face throttling as much, if at all, under load. No more cases hot enough to burn skin. If you think you understand the M1 just by looking at benchmarks or reviews, you are sadly mistaken. Use one of these machines for a couple of days and you will more than likely not want to give it up. Heck there are developers ditching their iMac Pro's in favor of M1 Mac Mini's for everything but long compiles. When Apple releases desktop versions of their SOC things should get stupid spicy. And I'm very much looking forward to it.

ajross 5y ago

> first widely popular fully-functional powerful general-purpose ARM-based laptop ever being produced on a massive, industrial scale. I submit if you need to qualify your use of the word "laptop" with fully eight adjectives or adjectival phrases to avoid ambiguity with pre-existing products, that it's probably not "revolutionary" by definition. The M1 is a good CPU. It's incrementally better than the Intel CPUs used in earlier versions of the same product. It is very notable in that it was produced in-house and not purchased from Intel. And that says important things about the business climate in which Apple finds itself. But that's not the same thing as "revolutionary" in a technological sense. It does what competing chips do, somewhat better.

zamadatix 5y ago
> The M1 is a good CPU. It's incrementally better than the Intel CPUs used in earlier versions of the same product. I suppose everything can be called incrementally better by some viewpoint but calling it incrementally better than the Intel CPUs used in earlier versions is wild to me. I specifically switched to my first ever Apple product because of how revolutionary the generational step was compared to what we've been getting on x86 laptops year to year and no equivalent x86 laptops of the year came close. Not only is it comparable to my overclocked desktop in tasks from 1-4 cores it does so without kicking on fans and the battery life is astounding while it does it. It even runs emulated x86 software faster than the native x86 version of the same year.
- okamiueru 5y ago
  Here is what I find confusing. When people say the M1 is revolutionary, it really seems to suggest that the playing field is "available CPUs on the market". But, then some mean it to be "no, just compared to old CPUs in the previous generation of the same product".
  - EricE 5y ago
    It trounces the majority of either of those - which something a revolutionary product would do. It's not until you get to the highest end desktop CPUs from Intel or AMD that you see competition with the M1 on a per core basis. Keeping in mind this is Apple's lowest end, low power, mobile part. It wipes out all but the highest end desktop processors - not just on a core basis, but even a multicore basis - agin for all but the highest end. Nope, I don't think revolutionary is hyperbole at all. It also makes me wring my hands with glee thinking about what a part designed for the desktop where higher power and cooling are readily available. Where adding more cores makes a lot of sense. How big of a gap is there going to be with that SOC? The prospects of new hardware are once again exciting. CPUs have been stagnant for a LONG time now. I was simultaneously relieved and disappointed to learn my i7-7700K was still not that far off from the latest CPUs - hardware unboxed had a great video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAX1lh985do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAX1lh985do At best - on average a 30FPS between my lowly 7700K and the highest end parts? Yeah, newer parts have more cores - but most games are not well optimized for multiple cores. On one had I'm relieved - no need to spend money on upgrades since it just isn't worth it. On the other hand - it isn't worth it to upgrade! And what nerd doesn't like having the latest tech? So yeah, it's nice to have someone pushing the boundaries and something to be truly excited about. Also stark contrasts like this tends to light a fire under others, if nothing else. Rising tides raising all boats and all that...