The M1 Macs | Hacker News Reader

The M1 Macs

daringfireball.net

67 pointsrafaelbrandao10 comments

Well-written piece on what all signs seem to be pointing to as a truly historic move by Apple.

Key quote for me:

"The logic behind Apple’s transition [from PowerPC] to Intel boiled down to an old axiom: If you can’t beat them, join them.

The logic behind Apple’s transition now to Apple Silicon is this: If you can beat them handily, do it."

It's been a while since reception for an Apple product has been this consistently positive (and that's saying quite a lot).

iPhone 12 release was ho-hum to me.

But the M1 Macs are great!

People on HN will likely be quick to point out the bit about Reference Counting and GC. Generally speaking I think these are nitpicking, but given the reach and audience of DaringFireball I do wish he made it a little clearer. You will definitely see some Apple Fans running around on the Internet suggesting Apple doesn't do GC, they do Reference Counting.

The same thing happened with AirPod when he claims AirPod were likely sold at cost [1]

>At $159, I think the margins on AirPods are very low. Maybe even break-even territory.

This had a lot of people believing AirPod are really low margin, but they are not. They are extremely high margin, as with any Audio Product. And It is extremely profitable for Apple for the volume they are selling, where demand has been outpacing Supply for nearly 6 months after the initial AirPod launch.

>The Fan, I presume it has engaged at times when I’ve taxed the system. Again, the Cinebench multi-core CPU benchmark taxes every available CPU core for 10 minutes.

I have yet to see any one actually running Mac Fan Control to test it. But the numbers are in System Report. Generally speaking Macbook, or even iMac dont turn the Fan up until it is 80C+. Steve Jobs hate Fan noise. And this tradition has been kept. So even when they have it installed they dont kick in until very late. In normal circumstance the Fan runs at ~1200 RPM, and is literally unheard-able. Then there were unconfirmed report where 11.01 allows the MacBook Pro and Mac Mini to run closet to 3.2Ghz peak where previously it was closer to 3Ghz, as it was on MacBook Air.

>So what gives? Well, these M1 systems are replacing Intel-based Macs that never had more than 16 GB of RAM.

The memory Apple is using and support; LPDDR4X only allows up to 16GB in Dual Channel config. As it was the case in previous Intel gen laptop, Apple later had to switch to DDR4 memory for 32GB / 64GB MacBook Pro. Apple could upgrade to LPDDR5, which gives them 32GB in Dual Channel Config and 64GB in Quad Channel Config. Or Apple could go with High Bandwidth Memory. The first will be cheaper and lower power, but doesn't quite fit the usage of iMac, the second is expensive and could be expanded towards Desktop usage. It will be interesting to see how this play out next year. ( Rumours, or more like Industry sources from Supply Chain are currently pointing to 14" / 16" Redesigned MacBook Pro mid next year / WWDC )

[1] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/09/29/airpod-survey

I really don't see how they can retain their pricing structure on memory when its a SOC. Surely that jump from 8 to 16g cost nowhere what it did when memory was externa

The cost are pretty much the same in the grand scheme of things. Note the Memory is not "part of the SoC", it is only layered next to it in the same package. ( Or on top if you are using it in a Phone )

They can keep that pricing structure (which is already theft) until a competitor forces their hand not to. So hum, it's going to remain this way, or _get worse_, for quite a while.

The M1 Macs have proven the triumph of custom engineering over commodity hardware -- and of making hardware and software into a cohesive functional unit.

This is absolutely the future of computing -- custom hardware specifically designed to support a particular ecosystem.

It also use to be the past fwiw.

That's true, and it has been long lamented that this was so.

To be fair at least this time the instruction set is (for the most part) shared with other vendors

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