Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Pro Review: This Changes Everything | Hacker News Reader

Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Pro Review: This Changes Everything

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32 pointsoscarwao34 comments

I'm not sure this review gives us anything new. To sum up:

* The comparably priced Dell XPS 17 actually wins in most benchmarks (but the M1 is using Rosetta 2 translation for each of these!)

* The battery life is really amazing.

* The lack of cooling necessary is amazing.

* Software compatibility with ARM through Rosetta 2 is mind-blowing. No one expected it to work this well.

* Don't buy Intel-based Macs any more!

* If you want a high-powered 13" Macbook, this is it.

* If you want larger than 13" or more than 2 Thunderbolt (USB4) ports, hold onto your butts!

Do MacBook Pro 13 and xps17 have the same weight? Doesn’t seem pound to pound.

Comparison with xps13 would make more sense.

As these articles do get tiring with no content in them aside from M1 being fast in charts.

I found this episode more interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMTfPSzrjXs

Several other commenters seem to have missed a detail from the article: in every single one of these tests the software is running natively on both the Dell and Intel Mac and entirely in emulation on the M1.

That said, we already have had plenty of these comparisons done, I don't think there is anything revolutionary here, this is more an article targeted towards people who do a specific task (photography) than tech news in general.

I think a lot of people who have been reflexively buying new MacBook Pros every couple years should do themselves a favor and seriously consider a MacBook Air this time around. It's the same performance most of the time, and for tasks longer than 5 minutes, thermal throttling will only reduce performance by ~20% or so - for many that's still, plenty, plenty fast, when the baseline is a super fast machine. And in return you save some money, save some weight, get rid of the Touchbar, and get the wedge shape that doesn't put an edge right up against your wrists when typing on it the way a Pro does. Unless you really need every ounce of performance, there's a good chance an Air will just be a more enjoyable machine.

And, coming from the other side: recent years has seen the pro offer less and less in terms of ports and user-upgradability (two of the solid reasons to buy a pro in previous years).

Point being: the air and the pro seem be converging to a single point and the air is already there.

The unfortunate catch is only two thunderbolt ports, otherwise agree. I absolutely loathe the Touch Bar, and would pay extra for a pro without one.

I replaced a 2017 MBP with an M1 Air (until the 16" Apple Silicons come out), and agree completely. IMO, the MBA best showcases what this initial M1 rev can do. No fan, completely silent, cool running, thin, light, long battery life and fast. It's pretty amazing really. And, coming from a 2017 MBP, everything is much faster.

For example, a large java app's test suite takes ~7 mins on the 2017 MBP and ~3 mins on the M1 Air. I never thought an MBA could work for me day and day out, but here we are.

>Unless you really need every ounce of performance

Or a screen larger than 13"!

Not that the M1 MacBook Pro is available in larger than 13" either, but I'm holding out until the 16" arrives.

> this changes everything

> As you can see, M1 Mac beats Intel Mac in every Lightroom benchmark across the board

Yeah, by a relatively small amount according to your own charts... It's still impressive, not exactly earth shattering.

Running through emulation and on an entry level first generation machine that is significantly cheaper

I wouldn't call a $2,300 device "entry level".

It is the entry level laptop in the Apple ecosystem, though.

It's a $1300 entry level device with $1000 worth of maxing ram and SSD space.

This statement is vacuous unless you can quantify how much faster non-emulated software will be

The Rosetta 2 translation is very impressive.

The $2600 32GB 2TB Intel-based Macbook Pro 13" is only $300 more than the $2300 16GB 2TB M1-based Macbook Pro 13", though. If you could spec the M1 with 32GB, it would probably cost the same.

As pointed out, if you go with 1TB, you save $400. As per usual, the upgrade prices are (in my opinion) crazy!

… while consuming far less power, while being passively cooled, and while not even running native code!

I think Apple is a huge threat to general purpose computing freedom, and I refuse to use their products. But hats off to their M1!

"I think Apple is a huge threat to general purpose computing freedom"

I don't see how, unless you see literally all proprietary operating systems as such.

Remember, iOS <> MacOS.

I've mentioned this a few times but it does seem to be completely glossed over. Intel has for the most part been stuck on 6 year old 14nm and it's positively ancient compared to TSMC 5nm upon which the M1 is manufactured, it's to all intends and purposes two generations ahead. This is big card Apple got to play.

Intel have managed to squeeze an incredible amount of performance out of their 14nm (+++...) but it's at a cost and that cost was power consumption, they had no other choice with their DOA 10nm (hyperbole for affect :)).

True, though Intel isn't looking like it's going to catch up in the next 5 years, so it seems that it'll be generations behind for the foreseeable future.

Basically the reason why Apple abandoned them.

I'm pretty much anti-Intel because I lost 10 years of my life waiting for CPUs to advance (hyperbole!), and it took a swift kick from AMD to get any traction there.

But I also think it's a little short-sighted to predict the next 5 years based on the past 5 years. Intel's Tiger Lake is remarkably good, albeit limited by production capacity (tops out at 4 cores and not found in many products). As an indication of what Intel is capable of, if they start producing CPUs on better processes (before your 5 year prediction), they are very likely to regain the status of at least competitive.

I'm not basing the prediction on the past 5 years.

Intel themselves have said that they'll do 7nm around 2022-2023 - https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-announces-delay-to-7...

5nm is probably going to be 2024-2025 at this cadence.

And true, Intel's 7nm process might be somewhat equivalent to TSMC's 5nm process as far as performance goes, but at that point in 2022 TSMC will be doing 3nm, according to them.

https://www.imore.com/tsmc-lands-first-3nm-contract-apple-co...

So at the start of 2023, Intel might be at 7nm where TSMC will be at 3nm.

I've always wondered how people on HN are able to spit out detailed answers like this with references and facts with such great ease as part of a back-and-forth conversation. Are you a professional in hardware? Or just an enthusiastic follower?

The various node steps are pretty well defined along with the players.

* For CPU design it's AMD, Intel and ARM players (Apple, Samsung etc)

* For discrete GPU it's really AMD and Nvidia, Intel may be moving into discrete but have traditionally only delivered on within an integrated CPU/GPU package.

* For manufacturing it's Intel, Samsung, TSMC, Global Foundaries.

* And major node steppings at the moment are 14nm, 10nm, 7nm, 5nm, 3nm (there are some less "standard" steppings such as 12nm, 8nm etc. but it's worth noting that these are somewhat marketing monikers at this stage anyway).

And so to find references you can pretty much combine these aspects to come up with the various articles.

I personally love nerding out on chip technology, no major expert just find it interesting to follow.

These reviews are not that informative for me. I’d rather read about how M1 behaves in a certain workflow. For instance, when working on a huge open-source project like VSCode. Or how it behaves when the RAM is under heavy pressure.

Nothing really new in this post, not sure how this still makes the top of hn.

Don't buy the pro, buy the air. The fan is a negative, not a positive, and the case is a lot more handy. Also, real buttons. I was one of the people who liked the touchbar, but I don't miss it at all

> not sure how this still makes the top of hn

Apple

> The fan is a negative, not a positive

I will keep my cooling, thank you very much

Why would you buy this and not the Air? Same max RAM, same CPU, just slightly more battery. The Touch Bar is the only thing and I personally never found it that useful. I guess this has more ports too?

Or am I missing something? If this chip had more cores or was a variant with all 8 performance cores that would be a thing.

The better battery, the touchbar and a fan. The pro will sustain full loads longer. So most people will be better off with the Air, some will prefer the pro.

Why is 13 inch such a popular form factor still now when bigger laptops can be made lightweight and thin as well? Is it because women have smaller hands?

It took a lot of time to convince my girlfriend to finally switch to at least 14 inch, and she loves it (AMD Zen 2, so it's not 5nm tech of course)

Pedestrian conclusions; bad writing. What's not to like about this article?

Let this be the last M1 review that makes it to the top of hn...

So, a completely down-to-the-silicon vertically integrated system with baked in non replaceable RAM has nice performance per watt. Wow.

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