The M1 MBP is a new class of machine. Rock solid, faster than just about any other laptop, insane battery life, immune to the thermal issues that plagued Intel MBPs. It could probably easily replace that desktop you built with power to spare.
The M1 tends to outclass most laptops (primary in single thread based workloads) but they are well down the ladder of performance in comparison to what is possible to put in a desktop form factor.
The mac studio seems to take a nice bite out of those options as well, but its not a laptop either, and depending on workload its quite likely still loses pretty bad if the desktop is tuned to the workload (aka toss a couple 3090's in, or a threadripper/etc for massively parallel stuff, or faster disks, etc).
People who are stuck in the laptop mindset, seem to forget that desktops have a lot of add in card/etc flexibility for workload tuning. Need a 100Gbit network card, just plug it in, need 2T ram pick a motherboard with support/etc.
Think about what this (somewhat randomly picked) motherboard can do, that you can't get from an apple device.
https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards-Components/Motherboards...
I don't forget what desktops can do I just don't care and would rather be able to work from the couch when I feel like it.
I've built a 5900x with 64GB high speed ram, 2x NVME 4.0 because my 2018 i9 Macbook pro was hot garbage and would crawl when working on a project with a bunch of docker microservices.
I regret this decision now because the new M1 MBP would do everything I need and I wouldn't have to worry about SSH workflows, keeping my PC/internet up while I'm away/traveling, having to work on two separate devices and migrate over all the time, two keyboard layouts (Mac/PC).
I think OP is right that M1 MBP really changed the equation for most "regular" developers, before the M1 MBP my choice was the only sane option because all the laptops available had huge drawbacks (Intel was and is hot garbage, AMD laptops are budget tier/gaming bricks).
What do you think happened when the people with powerful workstations got sent home during covid?
Obviously for some employers the answer was SSH, or taking a workstation home - but for other places (e.g. CAD users), the answer was 'mobile workstation' laptops.
Nobody was getting workstation grade laptops.
(speaking from experience).
I worked for a large studio at the time and anyone who could carry a workstation home could take it.
Eh, YMMV. I have an M1 and an i7-1185g7 based Linux laptop. Honestly, I never use the M1. Side by side, there is no noticeable speed difference for my day to day work. The M1 is more efficient, that's for sure - but my Intel laptop already has "all day" battery life. If I need to spend more than 8 hours working without access to power, the M1 wins - but I never see that situation happening (to me).
The biggest thing that turns me away from the M1 is the lack of Linux support, which I understand is also a personal preference thing. Also the M1 MBP is slightly bulkier despite the same screen size.
But, it does tend to win overwhelmingly in multi threaded.
Also, as someone who owns both, make sure the 5950 is actually turbo'ing correctly. Mine was a real pain to get it up to speed, despite having a seriously overkill water cooler.
In my opinion, the Air is the perfect addition to a heavy Linux/Windows workstation. You get the full spectrum from iOS development to gaming, albeit at the cost of having to babysit two or three operating systems. You can use the Air for meetings or conferences, because everything that's not a game has a macOS version (think Microsoft Teams etc.)
Granted, the hardware is great. Silence, good perf, no heating, amazing battery life. I love this.
The software part has not been that smooth for me:
- I use the python scientific stack, and it's not there yet. This will probably improve in the future, but for now, I'm stuck using rosetta stone and well the perf is not as good as it should be.
- I thought the stability of Mac OS X would amaze me. It did not. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely OK and I did not lose any work. But I have had to 'hard poweroff' the thing quite a few times.
- As a long time debian user, and for what I do (ML, image processing, simulations), linux is just less hassle in my opinion. Homebrew helps, yes, but feels so 'second-class' compared to [your favorite distro] package manager.
I pride myself on knowing words, and I did not know this word. Thanks!
Webster's 1913 Dictionary:
• Dith`yram"bic (?), a. [L. dithyrambicus, Gr. ?: cf. F. dithyrambique.] Pertaining to, or resembling, a dithyramb; wild and boisterous. "Dithyrambic sallies." Longfellow. -- n. A dithyrambic poem; a dithyramb.
• Dith"yramb (?), n. [L. dithyrambus, Gr. ? a kind of lyric poetry in honor of Bacchus; also, a name of Bacchus; of unknown origin: cf. F. dithyrambe.] A kind of lyric poetry in honor of Bacchus, usually sung by a band of revelers to a flute accompaniment; hence, in general, a poem written in a wild irregular strain. Bentley.
> for what I do (ML, image processing, simulations), linux is just less hassle in my opinion
I'm in a similar scenario (genomics, not ML). I pretty much gave up on using any local machine for this work and use my primary computer (desktop or laptop) to connect to my remote Linux servers to do this work. It just isn't worth the hassle to try to keep proper dev environments setup and in sync for work like this. I still use the Mac for other things like email, writing, generating figures, etc... but there are far faster machines for more difficult number crunching.
One of the exceptions here would be something more interactive like video or image editing (which is a workflow the Mac is really well designed for).
In my case, the primary computer is the linux desktop machine and I use the macbook to remotely connect to it when I am not home. Feels a bit weird to use a $2500 laptop as a dumb terminal, but I guess that's the world we live in (and which I am part of).
>worth the hassle to try to keep proper dev environments
In my experience, debian stable + poetry + the occasional container have been great so far. De gustibus...
I could get old RDIMM/LRDIMM sticks (it's not widely known but some X99 boards support it) and a 1660v3 and be up and running with 8 cores at ~4 GHz for basically the cost of RAM, and that would probably be sufficient for my needs. And using RDIMM/LRDIMM would set up a migration path forward to Epyc eventually - Epyc is still Ryzen and still likes fast RAM, but those faster sticks are 3-4x the price per GB, so getting something running now with an upgrade path forward would be fine.
I'm confused, are you doing scientific Python or learning a language?
Not even close. A 5950x will absolutely smoke an M1 max on a multithreaded workload, and if your workload needs more than 64GB ram the difference is even starker.
Even the 2016-2021 MBPs were at best comparable to models of these other brands, never worse. Do you not like fans when you Google Meet? How about fans when you look at your desktop or start your computer?
This is patently false. The butterfly keyboards were a disaster for Apple. Financial reports suggest it may have cost Apple an additional billion dollars per-year in warranty repairs. The M1 machines are nice and Apple seemed to have fixed their reliability issues; but your post is essentially, at best, a cover up.
Yeah, it had issues, but it never had the issues my Lenovo and Dell laptops had - like keys literally falling off, for example. Two keys on one of my Lenovo machines were broken from the factory. The Dell i9 machine had a key that was attached only on one side and they refused to fix it.
The Apple keyboard was weird for a week and then I got used to it without much further issues. Occasionally a grain or something got under a key, compressed air fixed that immediately. After a year one key became squishy and Apple fixed it free of charge within few days.
Dell keyboards are squishy and unreliable and have the same problems with grains Apple butterfly keyboard had - but in 2022. Dell average is much worse than the worst Apple ever got.
It's true my fans turn on a little more with my Thinkpad but I rather have fans over a sluggish Macbook. Plus with my Airpods Pro on, neither the other person or I will notice any fans. (I also won't get fans during a meeting anyway.)
Plus for half of the price of that Macbook, I get a much lighter laptop with 64 GB of RAM and a beefier CPU, plus a touchscreen that I love for the couch.
Then I tried 2 Dells - both of them shit in all ways possible (and I spent more than Macbooks cost!) - battery life bad, noise bad, performance bad, thermals bad, sound bad, keyboard bad, display horrendous (never get shitty 4K OLED from Dell, it hurts your eyes!)... - that's a machine that costs $4k+.
Regarding the CPU... I was not able to use even 50% of its i9 CPU because of thermal throttling. And when it was on "full", it got like 2 hours of battery.
M1 is like from another galaxy. The sound continues to amaze anyone who hears it. People can't take their eyes off the display. It literally does not have fans. It never gets hot. I can work 2 days on one battery charge.
And most importantly - even though I have only a 7-core M1 Air - it outperforms my i7-7770 desktop as well as every laptop I ever had, even the beefy i9 Dell - and it cost less than $1500. It has less RAM (only 16GB), but that's alright, I never had a problem with it (as a JS developer).
Have to do your research either way.
I personally picked my Thinkpad model. I did not get to choose my MacBook model.
- No dust can get in because it's sealed.
- Mechanical parts break more often.
- I often block the vents anyway because I'm sitting in bed or something.
However, it's not all green grass. Non-replacable SSD and RAM is horrible, horrible practice. I root for the competition / right-to-repair advocates to force apple into fixing this. I usually perform a major upgrade on desktops & laptops after ~4 years.
The same goes for SSDs; by building the SSD controller into the CPU, you can get I/O performance that vastly outperforms even PCI NVMe drives.
Over the next few years, it will be the case that the most powerful computer you can buy will be a Mac. The M1 series Macs signal a return to the Amiga days, when thoughtful engineers designed the whole system with integrated hardware and software for speed and responsiveness that cannot be matched or surpassed by the cobbled together PC ecosystem that has dominated for so long.
I don’t think Apple has said why they did it this way in the Studio. I’ve heard three theories.
1. They plan to at some point support upgrading storage.
2. It is so failing SSDs can be replaced instead of having to do a whole logic board swap.
3. It is for easier and cheaper inventory management. It is easier for them to build most of them with the most popular storage configuration or two and then when someone orders a less popular configuration change the SSDs than to build ahead of time and stock the less popular configurations.
...but without money to spare. If the desktop fits his needs there is nothing gained in replacing it with a proprietary and form-factor limited device like an Apple laptop unless he's hog-tied to the Apple world - which does not seem to be the case here.
I use a bunch of devices, some portable, some not. When I need something portable I take, let's say, a T42p running Linux. I'm typing this from a resurrected iMac 27" running Linux which sits next to a Compaq 6910p in a docking station connected to a 24" monitor. The iMac is the newest device at 12 years, that T42p is 17 years old yet it still works fine for most things as long as I can reach the server-under-the-stairs. Sure, that M1 makes for faster media consumption but... that is not what I use these things for. I also foresee a not-so-distant future where that M1 lies in a cupboard due to some malfunction - bad battery being the most likely - which is deemed too expensive to repair while most of those old devices around here still continue to work.
(In all fairness, I have the smallest one, but still.)
Not faster than my > 3 year old linux laptop.
Night and day difference. Seriously.