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If you say that Intel MacBook Pro is a different product category from Arm MacBook Pro, then yes, gains are incremental within a product category. The parent i

If you say that Intel MacBook Pro is a different product category from Arm MacBook Pro, then yes, gains are incremental within a product category. The parent is arguing that really, these are the same product category. If you bought, say, a middle-of-the-road MacBook Pro every time a new one was announced, you’d see a huge jump in performance (more than just incremental) when moving from Intel to M1, then a return to incremental improvement from M1 to M2. I’m pretty convinced by them. I think that Apple has done such a good job of compatibility that all MacBook Pros are essentially the same product category. And the M1 performance improvement really was a step change over Intel.

Maursault 4y ago
No, that's not what I am saying. > gains over intel 9 Macbook Pro on the higher end Mac Pro's I'm saying you can't compare a MBP to a Mac Pro, like you tried to do, because that wasn't my claim. My claim is that the first Apple Silicon MBP was only an incremental increase in performance from the last Intel MBP. And I am saying this is true, within specific model lines, for everything Apple ever released. And I don’t have specific knowledge of this, but I would assume it is true for every other computer and platform, that each subsequent generation of model is a little faster than the last, and not twice as fast or even 50% faster.
- klelatti 4y ago
  > My claim is that the first Apple Silicon MBP was only an incremental increase in performance from the last Intel MBP. Do you have anything to support this claim because all the benchmarks I’ve seen say something quite different.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 4y ago
    Yeah, Intel->Apple Silicon was one of the biggest improvements I can remember.
    - Maursault 4y ago
      less than 35% performance increase, in fact.
      - lostlogin 4y ago
        Have you compared the Air? The first Arm versus the last Intel? Base model versus base model. It’s an awful lot more than 35%, particularly in multi core. And it’s quiet and cool. It’s a massive generational leap. https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-air-late-2020 https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-air-late-2020
        Maursault 4y ago
        With the Air, the single core performance increase is just under 35% from the last Intel to the first Apple Silicon. The multicore performance increased nearly 250%, due to more cores in Apple Silicon, but before you get too impressed, this is due to the fact that Air is too small to fit as many Intel cores, and does not translate to a machine that is 2-3 times faster because of the importance of single core performance. No other Mac saw as large a performance increase, and generally it's under 35% increase in single core performance and less than 40% increase in multicore performance, and that's because all the other Mac models are large enough to hold an equal number of Intel cores vs Apple Silicon. Air is just too small, so it's still not a generational leap, it's just that more Apple Silicon cores fit in the Air.
        haswell 4y ago
        You seem to be doing a lot of gymnastics to try to put the chips on a level playing field, but this doesn't make any sense to me at all. They're fundamentally different architectures, so when the Air experiences the jump in performance that it did, you can't just hand wave that away because "well if Intel had smaller and cooler cores, it wouldn't be as big of a difference". On the contrary - this is the entire point. Anecdotally, my 1st gen M1 air is significantly faster at almost every task when compared to my last-gen i9 16" MacBook Pro. It seems your argument is just that some increments are smaller than other increments? It seems the primary point is that the move to M1 was a much larger jump than most jumps. Anyone who has been purchasing Apple hardware over the years experienced this in a very practical sense.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    I don't know what you're looking at, but all in-model benchmarks support my claim, i.e. for any specific particular model compared to it's next generation you will never see an exponential gain in performance, nor even a doubling of performance, but only incremental gains in performance not yet breaching a 35% increase, which going from the 2018 Mac mini to the 2020 Mac mini comes close to, but it isn't just true of the minis, its true of all models.
- threeseed 4y ago
  > My claim is that the first Apple Silicon MBP was only an incremental increase in performance from the last Intel MBP. M1 MacBook Air was 2-3x as fast as previous model. MacBook Pro was closer to 2x. Both with dramatically improved battery life. https://www.tomsguide.com/news/macbook-pro-m1-benchmarks-are-in-and-they-destroy-intel https://www.tomsguide.com/news/macbook-pro-m1-benchmarks-are...
  - Maursault 4y ago
    > M1 MacBook Air was 2-3x as fast as previous model. MacBook Pro was closer to 2x. Incorrect. The Late 2020 M1 MacBook Air has just under a 35% performance increase in single core performance over the Early 2020 i7 MacBook Air, though nearly a 2.5x increase in multicore performance[1] (because it has more cores). That doesn't make it 2-3 times faster as the single core performance is a bottleneck, but its multicore performance increase is certainly impressive, it just means the Air's small formfactor was hamstrung by Intel multicore and got to breath a little in the platform switch with more cores, not that the last Intel models are 2-3 times slower than the first Apple Silicon models. That's absurd. The MBP has much less impressive performance increases in the platform switch compared to Air. Looking at the last and fastest intel MBP, the 13-inch mid-2020, and comparing to the first M1, the 13-inch Late-2020, the performance increased[2] about 30% in single core performance and increased 40% in multicore performance, which is typical of the performance increases between the last Intel and first Apple Silicon selections of most other Mac models. [1] https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/17 https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/17 [2] https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-pro-retina-intel-core-i7-3720qm-2-6-ghz-4-cores https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-pro-retina-intel-...
    - dijit 4y ago
      those benchmarks you linked are not spelling out the same story that you are. M1 vs intel looks to be a 1.5x to 2x improvement on the air in synthetic benchmarks.
      - Maursault 4y ago
        That's not what the numbers say. It's on the order of low dozens of percent improvement, not hundreds of percent.

Maursault 4y ago

No, that's not what I am saying. > gains over intel 9 Macbook Pro on the higher end Mac Pro's I'm saying you can't compare a MBP to a Mac Pro, like you tried to do, because that wasn't my claim. My claim is that the first Apple Silicon MBP was only an incremental increase in performance from the last Intel MBP. And I am saying this is true, within specific model lines, for everything Apple ever released. And I don’t have specific knowledge of this, but I would assume it is true for every other computer and platform, that each subsequent generation of model is a little faster than the last, and not twice as fast or even 50% faster.

klelatti 4y ago
> My claim is that the first Apple Silicon MBP was only an incremental increase in performance from the last Intel MBP. Do you have anything to support this claim because all the benchmarks I’ve seen say something quite different.
- fiddlerwoaroof 4y ago
  Yeah, Intel->Apple Silicon was one of the biggest improvements I can remember.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    less than 35% performance increase, in fact.
    - lostlogin 4y ago
      Have you compared the Air? The first Arm versus the last Intel? Base model versus base model. It’s an awful lot more than 35%, particularly in multi core. And it’s quiet and cool. It’s a massive generational leap. https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-air-late-2020 https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-air-late-2020
      - Maursault 4y ago
        With the Air, the single core performance increase is just under 35% from the last Intel to the first Apple Silicon. The multicore performance increased nearly 250%, due to more cores in Apple Silicon, but before you get too impressed, this is due to the fact that Air is too small to fit as many Intel cores, and does not translate to a machine that is 2-3 times faster because of the importance of single core performance. No other Mac saw as large a performance increase, and generally it's under 35% increase in single core performance and less than 40% increase in multicore performance, and that's because all the other Mac models are large enough to hold an equal number of Intel cores vs Apple Silicon. Air is just too small, so it's still not a generational leap, it's just that more Apple Silicon cores fit in the Air.
        haswell 4y ago
        You seem to be doing a lot of gymnastics to try to put the chips on a level playing field, but this doesn't make any sense to me at all. They're fundamentally different architectures, so when the Air experiences the jump in performance that it did, you can't just hand wave that away because "well if Intel had smaller and cooler cores, it wouldn't be as big of a difference". On the contrary - this is the entire point. Anecdotally, my 1st gen M1 air is significantly faster at almost every task when compared to my last-gen i9 16" MacBook Pro. It seems your argument is just that some increments are smaller than other increments? It seems the primary point is that the move to M1 was a much larger jump than most jumps. Anyone who has been purchasing Apple hardware over the years experienced this in a very practical sense.
- Maursault 4y ago
  I don't know what you're looking at, but all in-model benchmarks support my claim, i.e. for any specific particular model compared to it's next generation you will never see an exponential gain in performance, nor even a doubling of performance, but only incremental gains in performance not yet breaching a 35% increase, which going from the 2018 Mac mini to the 2020 Mac mini comes close to, but it isn't just true of the minis, its true of all models.
threeseed 4y ago
> My claim is that the first Apple Silicon MBP was only an incremental increase in performance from the last Intel MBP. M1 MacBook Air was 2-3x as fast as previous model. MacBook Pro was closer to 2x. Both with dramatically improved battery life. https://www.tomsguide.com/news/macbook-pro-m1-benchmarks-are-in-and-they-destroy-intel https://www.tomsguide.com/news/macbook-pro-m1-benchmarks-are...
- Maursault 4y ago
  > M1 MacBook Air was 2-3x as fast as previous model. MacBook Pro was closer to 2x. Incorrect. The Late 2020 M1 MacBook Air has just under a 35% performance increase in single core performance over the Early 2020 i7 MacBook Air, though nearly a 2.5x increase in multicore performance[1] (because it has more cores). That doesn't make it 2-3 times faster as the single core performance is a bottleneck, but its multicore performance increase is certainly impressive, it just means the Air's small formfactor was hamstrung by Intel multicore and got to breath a little in the platform switch with more cores, not that the last Intel models are 2-3 times slower than the first Apple Silicon models. That's absurd. The MBP has much less impressive performance increases in the platform switch compared to Air. Looking at the last and fastest intel MBP, the 13-inch mid-2020, and comparing to the first M1, the 13-inch Late-2020, the performance increased[2] about 30% in single core performance and increased 40% in multicore performance, which is typical of the performance increases between the last Intel and first Apple Silicon selections of most other Mac models. [1] https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/17 https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/17 [2] https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-pro-retina-intel-core-i7-3720qm-2-6-ghz-4-cores https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-pro-retina-intel-...
  - dijit 4y ago
    those benchmarks you linked are not spelling out the same story that you are. M1 vs intel looks to be a 1.5x to 2x improvement on the air in synthetic benchmarks.
    - Maursault 4y ago
      That's not what the numbers say. It's on the order of low dozens of percent improvement, not hundreds of percent.