Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

If you want to beat Mx, you have to think outside the box, just like how Apple thought outside of x86.

That being said, I do enjoy the shift to ARM as the dominant arch. x86 has far too many decades of cruft behind it. I don't think Apple will take over the ARM space; in fact I think we will see the emergence of new players as ARM isn't as finicky about licensing their tech as Intel is. The only reason Intel even had a competitor (AMD) in the past 20 years is because they licensed x86 to them before it started becoming the de facto choice.

I'm happy to be wrong, but I think you're buying too much into the SV/media fearmongering on a handful of companies whose main business is actually just attention economics.

Nothing gets me thinking about disruption more, than new, faster, cheaper platforms. We’ve had to accept 10% better per generation for way too long.

The other day there was an article here about Swift on the server and it was full of replies from people who would love to use it more but lack of investment from Apple makes it often a poor choice. It's doubtful even Apple is using it much server-side in house.

But, I do agree that there is a lot of jank in software that we write these days. Over the weekend I started writing an application that uses glfx + dear imgui, running on a 360Hz monitor. The lack of latency was incredible. I think it's something that people don't even know is possible, so they don't even attempt to get it. But once you know, everything else feels kind of shitty. This comment box in a web browser just feels ... off.

So I actually think that Mac software will hold the performance edge for a long, long time.

The fact that Apple writes much of their software for iOS and MacOS at the same time means much of it is designed to run on fairly light hardware.

I know we’re all stuck with bloated stuff like Slack and some of us with MS Office, but just go native where you can it reap the benefits of the platform.

Also, Apple’s buggy releases (which is tradition now[0]) didn’t really help.

0. Apple essentially stopped fixing bugs and they just release another buggy OS in a year or so with a new name and changes that break everything.

What's even more crazy is that you cannot buy them. Such price/perf is literally only available to rent from AWS.

I hope Oxide does something about this soon; it is a sort of dangerous situation to have such a competitive advantage only be available via rental from a single (large and anticompetitive) company.

For my Java services so far, no change. Aurora was a button click. ECS is the next thing to tackle.

Bonus! This makes performance review time super easy; you've saved the company thousands of dollars this year, how about a raise?!

For M1, it obviously outperformed competitive.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-grav...

Intel has certainly dominated consumer computer sales over the past decade, and until 4 years ago they were largely still selling the best chips for most consumer use cases (outside of mobile.) Intel had several missteps, but I don't think their dominant position was the only source of their problems, or simply that they thought they didn't have to try. They legitimately had some bad decisions and engineering problems. While the management is now changing, and that might get their engineering ducks in a row, the replacement of Intel with Apple Silicon in Apple's products is not likely to be some kind of "waking up" moment for Intel, in my opinion. Either they'll figure out their problems and somehow get back on an even keel with other chip designers and fabrication, or they won't.

Meanwhile other competitors in x86 and ARM have also have a short-term history of success and failure, again regardless of what Apple is doing. And the timelines for these plans of execution are often measured in the scale of two to three years, and I'm not seeing how Apple successfully designing CPUs would change these roadmaps for competitors.

For everyone involved, particularly those utilizing TSMC, there are benefits over time as processes improve and enable increases in performance and efficiency due to process rather than design, and the increased density will benefit any chip designers that can afford to get on newer processes.

I guess if I'd attempt to summarize, it's not clear who is motivated and able to compete against Apple in ARM design. In other words, is there a clear ARM market outside of iOS/macOS and outside of Android (where chip designers already compete)? And in the Linux/Windows consumer computing space, there's going to be a divide. Those that can accept a transition to macOS and value the incredible efficiency of Apple Silicon will do so. Those that continue buying within their previous ecosystems will continuing comparing the options they have (Intel/AMD), where currently chips are getting better. AMD has been executing very well over four years now, and Intel's latest chips are bringing solid gains in IPC and integrated GPU performance, though they still have process issues to overcome if they wish to catch back up in efficiency, and they may also need to resolve process issues to regain a foothold in HEDT. But even there, where AMD seems pretty clearly superior on most metrics, the shift in market share is slow, and momentum plus capacity give Intel a lot of runway.

The only other consideration is for Windows to transition to ARM, but there's still a bit of a chicken and egg problem there. Will an ARM chip come out with Apple Silicon like performance, despite poor x86 emulation software in Windows when run on ARM? Or will Microsoft create a Rosetta-like translation software that eases the transition? I'm not clear on what will drive either of those to happen.

Right now I've got IDE to SATA adapters in mine, which leaves just enough space to also squeeze 2.5" sata ssd into 3.5" drive caddies.

It's been available for a year: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2020/08/amazon-ek...

The instant turn-on. No fans. Safari alone feels like a completely different beast and a friend and I spent about two hours running through some of the most demanding web sites, side by side against my 2018 15” MBP.

Holy crap. Just...all the subtleties.

I’d actually say it’s easier to notice the immense general speed-up than I notice the difference between a 4min and 2min render time in Final Cut.

Dragging 4K clips around in FCP was infinitely smooth; and it made you immediately be able tell the UI/UX itself was dropping frames and needing to catch up to itself sometimes.

These are things you don’t notice until you’ve tried the M1 for the first time.

It truly is an undeniably insane piece of engineering. They killed it.

The problem is that you effectively have to run macOS to take advantage of it and that's a no-go for a wide variety of people. I don't even care if I can ever run Windows or Linux on an M1 because Apple will make it a pain in the ass to do so. They don't even have a fucking bios UI... Imagine enterprise IT shops rolling Windows out on that garbage? It'll never happen.

And I don't want ARM at all unless the systems built around it are as modular and open as the x86 ecosystem.

Apple’s share of the total PC shipments is closer to 15% now and their share of the laptop market is even higher.

This is perhaps the wrong metric to look at. What % of total profit is Apple capturing? Several years ago the accepted wisdom in phones was that Apple was getting ~30% of the unit volume and 90% of the profit.

The amount of available screen space at 1:1 is refreshing (not as crazy as imagined though), but it makes me realize how grainy "normal" monitors are. In some years 8K TVs might be cheap enough for an upgrade, but on that time scale I can see VR being a serious contender as well (it's really good already).

In the near future 16:9 8ks are going to be standard (too bad it won't be 16:10) but right now you can get a decent triple 4k monitor setup for half of what an 8k monitor costs.

IMO ultra-wide is great for productivity in a situational sense but it sucks for gaming and media consumption. Also getting proper support for ultra-wide to be standard is probably going to take another decade.

I think there's something to be said for each monitor being a separate entity. I think some people will still prefer multiple monitors over ultra-wide even when support for ultra-wide is a solved problem.

My personal setup now is a 28" 4k@60hz, a 32" 1440P@240hz as a primary and a 24" 1440p@144hz. I have my work computer, my desktop, a mac-mini, a switch, and a PS4 running off of them so having separate monitors is ideal for me.

Ultra-wides and super-ultrawides are cool, but IMO they aren't as practical yet.

Example: https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/articles/07toBDd6lpyucCyM0xWrcQv...

Sure but the Air and MBP already support 6k external displays.

They don’t support 2x4K.

Also, with two screens, I can adjust the angle between them to be more or less severe.

I work on mac all day and on my 1440p widescreen I am constantly trying to put stuff so I can use everything I want to at the same time. `[Code|App|Docs]` is so common we ought to be able to split a wide screen 3 ways the way we do a normal 2.

I'd strongly consider getting a 6k monitor, or maybe a 5k2k ultrawide if I didn't already have two my two Dell 27inch 4ks.

I personally prefer the visual break as I find it useful for creating fixed 'work areas': terminals/xterms, browser, mail, etc.

The real issue is not shipping the M1 with LPDDR5 support. We already have tons of Qualcomm phones and even Intel processors shipping with since last year. If Apple had done the same, we wouldn’t be talking about this today.

Returning it still hurts. I was really hoping for something that would take more than 32GB of RAM but am not surprised that it's still going to be later this year. The guts in the new iMac would be perfect for my Mom if they just offered a 27" replacement too.

Oh well. A few more months won't kill me.

The mini can support two external displays. One via thunderbolt at that same 6k and 60Hz and the other a 4k at 60Hz through the HDMI port.

Which is a weird take when you consider the thermal issues that Intel macs were plagued with. It's almost like the chassis was designed with 10w of dissipation in mind which Intel couldn't operate within, but the M1 could easily.

I had assumed that Apple designed for the M1 and then fit Intel chips into those designs.

As to what Apple's choice of marketing name, that's entirely arbitrary. (For what it's worth, my guess is they're ditching "X" suffixes and will designate higher spec variants with other prefix letters e.g. the "P1" chip.)

So Apple will just have to wait to get my money until fall (or whenever they announce the successor to the 27in iMac).

I don't mind upgrading every other year. I just want the upgrades to be meaningful.

If they would have released the new iMac with a bigger panel so there were options for the 27" as well as the former 21" then my mother would be rocking a new iMac next month.

I know they said up to two years for the transition but I want to transition now :)

Still I can’t see Apple only developing one integrated GPU per year unless they somehow figure out how to magically make them somewhat approach Nvidia and AMDs modern chips. What would the ARM Mac Pro use?

It seems that Apple has put in a lot of development resources into getting Octane (and maybe Redshift and other GPU accelerated 3D renderers) to support Metal (to the point where it sounds like there may have been Apple Metal engineers basically working at Otoy to help develop Octane for Metal) and I can’t just imagine that happening just to support the the Apple Silicon GPUs. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see eGPU support announced for ARM Macs at WWDC (and maybe even the iPad Pros that support Thunderbolt. Yeah the idea of plugging your iPad into an eGPU enclosure is funny, but if it’s not to hard to implement, why not?)

True, but previous macs were never really competitive with PC alternatives on the hardware side, since they all used the same chips just with a higher price tag. With M1, that's starting to change, and Apple has the opportunity to attract a much large customer base for Mac than it ever has.

And of course, they're much more interested in gaming nowadays thanks to iOS. Maybe not interested enough to suck up their pride and apologize to Nvidia for giving them the finger, but probably enough to at least stick a beefier GPU into macs.

I could alter my usage patterns and work with less. But people not used to having loads of ram don't know what they're missing out on.

Well those people must have been bullish on Apple Silicon and 'not just' M1. They think its worth skipping over M1 rather than going all in on the 1st gen product which at the time had primitive support for most mainstream software, especially for developers.

Maybe Apple knew that the M1 could not drive more than 1 monitor on the Macbook Air and in fact left that limitation in with a small disclaimer.

Perhaps they will announce this capability in the M2 Macs.

I agree with your nuance.

> The MacBook was fanless in 2015 and, like many other fanless designs using Intel chips, it was slow.

The Surface Book 2/3 and M1 MacBook Air are not slow (hence the point of my comparison)

Was quite a painful wait (as my Macbook 12' got water damage, with the SMC limiting in to 1Ghz).

This could be it tho, but there are probably some desktop TDP chip current gen laptops out there.

I’m responding to a HN commenter who was not just impressed about the power of the M1 but hyperbolically asserts that it is better than everything else yet the next top voted HN comment demonstrates otherwise with a demand for downgraded feature. The tenor of those reactions are opposed and my aim is to reflect the nuance

It's going to take years to run proper Linux on M1 and even more for the ecosystem to catch up to x64_86.

For me it's reasonable to keep using AMD Ryzen 5000 which is faster than M1 on my multithreaded workloads anyway despite using 7nm. Plus it has better GPU, more memory, more storage, more ports and supports multiple monitors.

Sure it is more expensive, but that's just because my segment is geared to pros with higher requirements. Apple currently has no laptop offering on this tier.

I meant "soldered ram next to SoC with cpu and gpu cores", i.e. not DIMMs and 200W PCIe GPU. For a pro chip in a desktop form factor I think DIMMs and PCIe graphics are inevitable, and that's the interesting storyline in the evolution of the M1. We know they'll produce better M1's, but the integration with 3rd party graphics, the choice of DIMM type and so on is interesting.