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Comment by phoobahr | Hacker News Reader

Probably because the announced hardware is clearly entry level. The only model line that gets replaced is the MacBook Air which has been, frankly, cheap-is and underpowered for a long time.

So you have a platform that is (currently) embodied by entry level systems that appear to be noticeably faster than their predecessors. Apple has said publicly that they plan to finish this transition in 2 years. So more models are coming - and they'll have to be more performant again.

It seems pretty clear that the play here runs "Look here's our entry level, it's better than anyone else's entry level and could be comparable to midlevel from anyone else. But after taking crap for being underpowered while waiting for intel to deliver we cn now say that this is the new bar for performance at the entry level in these price brackets."

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It would be interesting to see the comparison to a Ryzen 7 PRO 4750U, you can find that in a ThinkPad P14s for $60 less than the cheapest macbook air (same amount of ram and ssd size) so that seems like a fair comparison

Mostly a sweep in Apple's favour, though multicore is only 20-25% better.

https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?q=4750U https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q...

Assuming that geekbench is reflective of actual perf (I'm not yet convinced) there is also the GPU, and the fact that AMD is sitting on a 20% IPC uplift and is still on 7nm.

So if they release a newer U part in the next few months it will likely best this device even on 7nm. An AMD part with a edram probably wouldn't hurt either.

It seems to me that apple hasn't proven anything yet, only that they are in the game. Lets revisit this conversation in a few years to see if they made the right decision from a technical rather than business perspective.

The business perspective seems clear, they have likely saved considerably on the processor vs paying a ransom to intel.

edit: for the downvoters, google Cezanne, because its likely due in very early 2021 and some of the parts are zen3. So apple has maybe 3 months before another set of 10-15W amd parts drop.

That'll mean an 8c/16t will catch up to a 4+4 core

Apple will have a 8+4 core out soon, and likely much larger after that. Since they're so much more power efficient, they can utilize cores better at any TDP.

Sad to see downvotes on this: it's like there's a set of people hellbent on echoing marketing claims, in ignorance of (what I formerly perceived as basic) chip physics - first one to the next process gets to declare a 20-30% bump, and in the age of TSMC and contract fabs, that's no longer an _actual_ differentiation, the way it was in the 90s.

I'm as sceptical of Apple's marketing claims as anyone but if you're comparing actual performance of laptops that you will be able to buy next week against hypothetical performance of a cpu that may or may not be available next year (or the year after) then the first has a lot more credibility.

PS last I checked AMD was not moving Zen to 5nm until 2022 - so maybe a year plus wait is a differentiation.

Regardless, this competition is great for us consumers! I’m excited to see ARM finally hit its stride and take on the x64 monopoly in general purpose computing.

Apple hardware is far removed from general purpose and is about as propertiarty computing as it comes.

General purpose != free. Totally separate categories.

is a higher score worse? If not it's a sweep in favor of ryzen

https://i.imgur.com/cwpebHk.png

You're making completely the wrong comparison. On the left you have Geekbench 5 scores for the A12Z in the Apple DTK, and on the right you have Geekbench 4 scores for the Ryzen.

The M1 has leaked scores of ~1700 single core and ~7500 multicore on Geekbench 5, versus 1200 and 6000 for the Ryzen 4750U.

how can you tell it's only 6k for the ryzen 4750U on the GB5 tests? there's so many pages and pages of tests I can't sift through all of that to confirm

there is only 6k for 4750U https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?q=4750U

swznd: this is from the page you linked https://i.imgur.com/JgN8o3m.png am I reading this wrong?

not sure why I'm getting downvoted, I clicked around and found a ryzen that benchmarked at 7.5k...didn't go through even half the benchmarks though

Higher scores are better http://support.primatelabs.com/kb/geekbench/interpreting-gee...

It’s just a shame that the screens in the Lenovo AMD devices doesn’t hold a candle to the MacBooks.

in what way? I've got a levono ideapad with ryzen7 4800u that outperforms my macbook pro 2019 16" by a long shot

What screen performance are you referencing? Refresh rate? Pixel density? Color space? Color accuracy? Backlight bleed? Dead/stuck pixels? Nits? Size?

I misread OP, somehow glossed over the "screen" qualifier - thanks for getting me to reread

> It seems pretty clear that the play here runs "Look here's our entry level

Not quite. The play here is, "Look, here is our 98% of sales laptop". That it's entry level is only an incidental factor. 98% of sales volume is at this price point, and so they get the maximum bang for their buck, the maximum impact, by attacking that one first. Not just because it's the slowest or entriest.

Had they started at the fastest possible one, sure it would have grabbed some great headlines. But wouldn't have had the same sales impact. (And it's icing that the slowest part is probably easiest to engineer.)

> Probably because the announced hardware is clearly entry level.

Yes, but why compare it to an entry card that was released 4 years ago instead of an entry card that's been released in the past 12 months? When the 1050 Ti was released, Donald Trump was trailing Hillary Clinton in the polls. Meanwhile, the 1650 (released April 2020, retails ~$150) is significantly faster than the 1050 Ti. (released October 2016, retailed $140 but can't be purchased new anymore)

The 1050 is still a desktop class card. The M1 is in tiny notebooks and the Mac Mini, none of which even have the space or thermals to house such a card.

The main point was that its a 3 generation old desktop card which is obviously not as efficient as the modern mobile devices.

Lets see what a 3000 series nvidia mobile design does on a more recent process before declaring victory.

NVIDIA doesn't make small GPUs very often. The 1050 uses a die that's 135mm^2, and the smallest GeForce die they've introduced since then seems to be 200mm^2. That 135mm^2 may be old, but it's still current within NVIDIA's product lineup, having been rebranded/re-released earlier this year.

The 1050 isn't just a desktop class card. Plenty of laptops have a 1050 inside.

Apple doesn't make anything entry-level. The entry-level is a $150 ChromeBook, it's not "the cheapest that Apple sells".

The Air IS entry level; it's slow, low resolution, has meager io, etc. It just happens to be at a price point that is not entry level.

Depends on how you define “entry level”. The Porsche Cayman is an entry level Porsche, but starts at $60,000.

I don’t know anyone who would call that an entry level car, but any Porsche-phile would.

The new Air is fast and reasonably high resolution with a ~4K resolution screen. But it is Apple’s entry level laptop.

I concede the new air is likely faster than the ancient i3 they used to put in them.

Here are all the differences between the M1 Air and M1 Pro, from [1]:

    Brighter screen (500 nits vs. 400)
    Bigger battery (58 watt-hours vs. 50)
    Fan (increasing thermal headroom)
    Better speakers and microphones
    Touch Bar
    0.2 pounds of weight (3.0 pounds vs. 2.8 — not much)

The SoC is the same (although the entry-level Air gets 7-core GPUs, that’s probably chip binning). The screen is the same (Retina, P3 color gamut), both have 2 USB-C ports, both have a fingerprint reader.

[1]: https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/one_more_thing_the_m1_mac...

> low resolution > 2560 x 1600

Damn, you've got some high standards.

Competition has 4k displays on their thin and lights. They also don't use macOS which has problems running at resolutions other than native or pixel-doubled. The suggested scalings are 1680 by 1050, 1440 by 900, and 1024 by 640. None of those are even fractions of the native resolution so the interface looks blurry and shimmers. Also, all the suggested scalings are very small so there isn't much screen real-estate.

No it's not. It was designed to be extremely light with many compromises to make that happen. Yeah it got outdated, but that doesn't mean it was entry level.

My Xiaomi laptop is entry level and costed 300 euros including shipping from China and taxes

It still does 8 hours on battery after 3 years

Being entry level performances don't matter much, but it's still a good backup

Bonus point: Linux works great on it

For 13 hundred dollars (30% more in Euros) I can buy a pro machine, one that at least will give me the option of using more than 16GB of RAM

The new Apple Silicon looks good and I love that they are finally shipping some decent GPU, but price wise they're still not that cheap

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The downvotes are because I said Xiaomi or for something else?

LG sells a 17 inches, 2.9 lb (same weight of the Air) 16GB of RAM (up to 40) and a discrete GPU (Nvidia GTX 1650) for 1,699

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