No matter whether you're a fan of ARM, amd64, or something else, this helps everyone. The leaps that Intel, AMD and NVIDIA will have to take to even just stay in the same range as Apple will help everyone. Competition is good!
Beyond that, the M1 directly replaced an Intel chip, and that Intel’s CEO has already said he wants to win back Apple’s business (as unlikely as that seems).
Not MacBook Pro, but MacBook Air.
The MacBook Air starts at $999. And if anyone has been paying a little more attention one may discover MBA discount is unusually high compared to previous Intel MBA. Education MBA M1 are going at $899 and in some cases $799. The lowest retail discount on MBA goes down to $800 on Amazon.
Basically because the BOM cost advantage and margin on M1 MBA are higher. At this price M1 MBA are selling as fast as they could make them. And Apple could afford to lower the official price of MBA M1 to $899 once newer M2 MBA ( or MacBook ) are out. Compared to the PC industry, not only do they not have anything as fast, as good experience, their BOM cost are also higher due to Intel or AMD chip pricing.
I think once the transition has settled, Apple will announce their 120M Mac active Mac user next year.
While I made this predictions of BOM cost advantage way back in 2014, this actually makes me rather sad because PC has nothing left to fight the Mac. They have nothing on the roadmap. And Apple is no longer the same company as they were in 2014.
The minimum configuration anyone ought to buy in 2021 comes in at $1400 for 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage or $1600 if you want to bump it up to 1TB. Meanwhile the average PC is bought for between $600 and $700 meaning half of people actually pay less even than that.
Here is an example of a typical PC one can find at Walmart where an average user buys their tires, green beans, and their computers.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-2021-New-Touchscreen-laptop-i3...
It comes with 16GB of RAM and 512GB storage for $649 or 1TB for $719. I do not herein assert that it is an equivalent machine its not. However it is a very typical PC.
Here is another with 16GB of RAM but only 256GB of storage but its also only $449 and you wont have to close some applications before opening others partying like its 1998 with your windows CE portable machine.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Gateway-15-6-FHD-Ultra-Slim-Noteb...
Yes its a gateway. Gives you a warm fuzzy right.
The point is for the majority of PC laptop buyers the M1 macs even the economical models aren't competitors anymore than a Tesla is really competing for the same buyer as KIA even though the goods are absolutely in the same category. PC's are a largely a huge mass of very cheap machines with a minority that compete directly with apple.
https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computers-Accessories/zg...
#1, #2, and #5 are MacBook Airs. The only Windows PC in the top 50 is #39, and has 4GB RAM, and 128GB SSD.
Although I really don't think that power users would always be better served with a 16GB RAM Walmart marketplace specials. RAM and storage space are important data points, but the types of machines made specifically for bargain-basement prices often sacrifice other important design features -- particularly anything qualitative.
I have family that was recently screwed by one of these marketplace sellers. They bought one of these marketplace laptop with great specs, later to find out that it didn't ship with those specs from the manufacturer, the marketplace seller modified it with crap parts and relisted it. Now it has parts not subject to the manufacturer warranty and the performance of those parts is really bad.
And that is at current MacBook Air price. There is no reason why a Macbook Air cant be $799, the same price as iPad Pro from a BOM cost prospective with same margin other than market positioning and segmentation.
And most consumer dont actually care about spec. They want a computer that works. ( Actually most dont want one, they just have to buy one for different sort of reason ).
It does not in any fashion show that short term sales suggest that people who who used to buy 200-600 average PCs are now spending 1000 on macbooks. Macs biggest opportunity rests in flipping people who buy machines in the same price range from PC to Mac. It puts substantial pressure on OEMs to improve their premium lines and yet they don't have a great margin so it looks like there is nowhere to go but up in price.
But, premium PCs aren’t useless if they only have 8GB RAM and 256GB SSDs, though. There are people who enjoy premium computers who have basic resource needs. Not all of them are developers or video editors.
If I only had 8GB changing from game to browser and back would require swapping NOW let alone further along the expected 6 year average lifespan. I think its safe to say that the trend has been that cheaper plentiful ram leads to applications that are more wasteful of it and that this trend is likely to continue.
The difference in costs between a 8GB and 16GB model is probably less than $20 bucks its not replaceable or up gradable so you can tell yourself that the M1 Macs start at less than 1000 even though the 999 model is a dog and kick them an extra $200 for the $20 upgrade.
This is called price bracketing. You are being manipulated and nickel and dimed by a multi multi billion dollar outfit.
I know it's not always apparent when immersed in highly technical communities, but there are a significant number of people who use their computers very casually. Not people who sit at a computer for hours, but people who open their computer to go to a website. Plenty of entirely computer literate people simply don't use tabs unless they click on a link that is `target="_blank"`
MacBook air goes +$200 when you go 16GB from 8GB. And more when you move to 512GB disk from 256GB. These two are bare minimums for a laptop bought today I would say.
So just because Apple shows $1000 for MacBook Air start price that’s underpowered even for today doesn’t make it a good purchase.
And make no mistake - the 16GB (assuming you upgraded, of course right when you purchased) soon will start being less before long. Apple won’t let you do anything about it, except of course allowing you to buy the next MacBook Air.
So I think you’re overstating the importance of 16gb and 512gb for the average consumer.
I dont think HN will ever understand anything about consumer market. Computing or not.
The prices are completely in line with other professional laptops such as dell xps line.
Either by hiring those very sought out CPU engineers, sharing processes and components, etc.
Even if you cannot order OEM Apple Silicon chips it doesn't mean it won't directly change the whole industry. There is a significant percentage of people who are in the market for good laptops and that's enough market for companies like Intel to imitate Apple and strive to achieve their impressive benchmarks.
The great deal about ARM devices is not that they are "RISC". It's that they are open (as opposed to x86) and ARM does half of the work for you when you design the chips.
If Apple is really careful they will maintain their lead but if not I give it 5 years maximum till they are outmatched
You also save a lot of time and power not having to move data between memory pools by having fast access to the unified memory.
It seems that there’s no one thing that achieves the efficiency numbers we’re seeing. It’s excellent execution across the entire design.
The biggest difference is that Apple owns the entire device and software stack. Everyone else is walled to a certain degree. To me, the distinction doesn’t exist.
> The line on Apple Silicon Macs is when the alternate kernel image is booted, while SEP firmware remains closed - which is quite similar to the line on standard PCs, where the UEFI firmware boots the OS loader, while the ME/PSP firmware remains closed. In fact, mainstream x86 platforms are arguably more intrusive because the proprietary UEFI firmware is allowed to steal the main CPU from the OS at any time via SMM interrupts, which is not the case on Apple Silicon Macs.