E: And multi-core SPEC: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste..., where they're on par with mobile Ryzen.
Apple markets this as a "Pro" device for professional video editing. That's why I believe it is fair to take their word and compare it against my other options for a professional video editing rig. And in that comparison, which Apple has chosen itself, the M1 comes out woefully inadequate at a mere 24% of the performance.
Of course, for a notebook, the M1 is amazing. But I feel irked that Apple and Anandtech pretend that it's competitive with desktop workstations by having such a misleading conclusion about it being on par with Zen3 - which it clearly isn't.
That's ridiculous. Threadripper has 8 to 16 times as many cores, runs on hundreds of watts of power and such a CPU alone costs the same as several Mac Minis. Them claiming you can use it for video editing doesn't mean you can expect that a 1.5 pound notebook will measure up to literally the biggest baddest computer you can buy.
No they don’t. Claiming something is capable of video editing and marketing it as a video editor are two very different things.
The 3 macs introduced this week are apples lowest end devices, 2 of which still have ‘big brother’ intel versions for sale today.
If you’re truly ‘irked’ that the lowest-end, lowest power, first release devices aren’t comparable in performance to the highest end desktop chips, then you’re putting the wrong stuff in your coffee.
No, they don't. Because Apple keeps raising the ceiling on low-end devices like the 13-inch MacBook Pro, in many aspects, it's more performant than a high-end laptop or desktop Mac from just a few years ago.
Please read the best article so far that explains what "Pro" means for Apple—it just means nicer; it doesn't mean for professionals. https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/one_more_thing_the_m1_mac...:
Wait, wait, wait, you might be saying, the MacBook Pro is pro. But as I’ve written numerous times, pro, in Apple’s product-naming parlance, doesn’t always stand for professional. Much of the time it just means better or nicer. The new M1 13-inch MacBook Pro is pro only in the way, say, AirPods Pro are. This has been true for Apple’s entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pros — the models with only two USB ports — ever since the famed MacBook “Escape” was suggested as a stand-in for the then-still-missing retina MacBook Air four years ago.
Not only did Apple Not compared a Laptop CPU against a Workstation CPU, Anandtech didn't pretend it to be competitive with Desktop Workstation.
But I think the broader strategic outlook is: yes, the M1 loses on a few benchmarks, but the fact that it gets ballpark to some monster rig multiple times in price and power - is this not the whole picture of the Clayton Christensen disruption curve?
The other point is - Apple's Logic and Final Cut software are probably optimized for the M1, and they can likely achieve much of the capabilities of the monster AMD rig for a fraction of the cost/power budget.
Oh, neat. What kind of battery life do you get on your AMD 2990WX ultralight laptop?