No. But many buyers of the M1 Macs will be using Apple’s built-in software, which IS optimized for the new chips.
People tend to discount just how much software Macs ship with. Many people might not need to buy any additional software.
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Apple Silicon M1 Chip in MacBook Air Outperforms High-End 16-Inch MacBook Pro
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People tend to discount just how much software Macs ship with. Many people might not need to buy any additional software.
Assuming this is accurate: Holy crap!
I have been assuming all along that the per-core performance of the Mac-targeted AS would be very similar to the A14--basically, that we'd be getting an A14X.
I have, therefore, been assuming single-core performance on the order of 1550, and multi-core (for a 4-core, taking into account overhead) around 6000. That alone would have put an A14X with a higher single-core performance than anything Intel makes--right up through top-of-line desktop CPUs--and within striking distance of AMDs very impressive latest, with multi-core performance not far off of the top-of-line, 8-core i9 MBP.
This isn't a stratospheric boost over that, but instead we appear to have single-core performance a few percent higher than even those impressive Ryzen desktop CPUs, and multi-core in the running with Intel's absolute top-of-line 8-core mobile i9-10980HK. In something like one quarter the TDP. Targeted at premium low-end laptops.
That's not exactly surprising, given A-series performance, but it's kind of nuts--you can now buy a MacBook air with better CPU performance than a maxed-out 16" MacBook Pro, because the MBP is stuck on high-end Intel silicon. The MBP has more RAM and better GPU, of course, but its CPU performance is hamstrung by Intel's best.
It seems a little surprising that Apple has outpaced Intel that extremely until you look at the numbers. AMD has also seriously outpaced Intel on desktop recently, and they're a much smaller company. If you look at it, AMD has shipped something like 40 million Zen-based CPUs over the past three years, and while they don't break out CPU vs GPU revenue, their entire business until a few months ago was grossing around $6 billion a year.
We can't say how much Apple has "spent" on its own CPUs, but we can say that between just iPhones and iPads they've shipped around 250 million of their own CPUs per year for a while now. In most quarters Apple makes more net profit from just the Mac than AMD's gross income from CPUs and GPUs combined. For the matter, when AMD started really beefing up its offerings and outpacing Intel, Apple could have bought the company outright with couch change.
Basically, Apple was, even before the M1, shipping vastly more CPUs than AMD was, and has all the money in the world to spend on development if they want, so if AMD can compete successfully with AMD it should come as absolutely no surprise that Apple could do the same and then some.
I have been assuming all along that the per-core performance of the Mac-targeted AS would be very similar to the A14--basically, that we'd be getting an A14X.
I have, therefore, been assuming single-core performance on the order of 1550, and multi-core (for a 4-core, taking into account overhead) around 6000. That alone would have put an A14X with a higher single-core performance than anything Intel makes--right up through top-of-line desktop CPUs--and within striking distance of AMDs very impressive latest, with multi-core performance not far off of the top-of-line, 8-core i9 MBP.
This isn't a stratospheric boost over that, but instead we appear to have single-core performance a few percent higher than even those impressive Ryzen desktop CPUs, and multi-core in the running with Intel's absolute top-of-line 8-core mobile i9-10980HK. In something like one quarter the TDP. Targeted at premium low-end laptops.
That's not exactly surprising, given A-series performance, but it's kind of nuts--you can now buy a MacBook air with better CPU performance than a maxed-out 16" MacBook Pro, because the MBP is stuck on high-end Intel silicon. The MBP has more RAM and better GPU, of course, but its CPU performance is hamstrung by Intel's best.
It seems a little surprising that Apple has outpaced Intel that extremely until you look at the numbers. AMD has also seriously outpaced Intel on desktop recently, and they're a much smaller company. If you look at it, AMD has shipped something like 40 million Zen-based CPUs over the past three years, and while they don't break out CPU vs GPU revenue, their entire business until a few months ago was grossing around $6 billion a year.
We can't say how much Apple has "spent" on its own CPUs, but we can say that between just iPhones and iPads they've shipped around 250 million of their own CPUs per year for a while now. In most quarters Apple makes more net profit from just the Mac than AMD's gross income from CPUs and GPUs combined. For the matter, when AMD started really beefing up its offerings and outpacing Intel, Apple could have bought the company outright with couch change.
Basically, Apple was, even before the M1, shipping vastly more CPUs than AMD was, and has all the money in the world to spend on development if they want, so if AMD can compete successfully with AMD it should come as absolutely no surprise that Apple could do the same and then some.
It’s not clear what you mean by going through Rosetta - Rosetta is a translator, not an emulator. It does a one time translation (with some exceptions due to peculiarities of how code pages work in x86) when an app is installed or first run, but after that it is running native code. If you’re going to think about the performance impact, think of the penalty of Rosetta as being more akin to using a bad compiler (or a compiler with the optimization flags turned off) rather than the penalty that occurs when you use an emulator.
For those of us who don't bother and have never bothered purchasing computers with iGPUs, because we need to run specific gfx intensive apps for our jobs, it matters to us. If it doesn't matter to you, that's awesome. Sorry but, I'm from the older generation, still reminiscing of the days when Apple put the "pro" moniker on one of their machines, it actually meant something.
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Not this particular announcement, but my mom watched the initial MacBook announcement back in 2015 because she was in the market for a new laptop at the time. And news writers (not just the tech press) watch these things. Apple likes to keep its messaging simple.
I agree the graphics processor is not terrible, but I have talked today with a couple people at our Macintosh User group about the new M1 processor machines. Some of them think that they would be getting 1000 horsepower Corvette with a MacBook Pro 13, but it is really a Chevy Malibu sports car model right now. Nothing wrong with a Chevy Malibu, but you are not going to go 200 miles per hour with it. Realist expectations.
Wait a minute! I just ran GeekBench 5 on my 2013 MacPro and got 772 and 4160. We loving joke that I have a trash can MacPro but is it really a trash can now?
Likely Mini has lower silicon binning. No different than how Intel bins their wafer yield/binning into different marketed frequencies.
Thinking I just might return that iPad Air 4 and go MacBook Air instead.
Yeah, it's definitely nice for people who are used to iGPUs, as I said, but given that Apple has now eliminated support for eGPUs, for people who need gfx performance, I am still very worried about the future of gfx on the mac.
For performance? No, probably not. For future app compatibility, iOS apps, and the cost savings it’s worth considering.Sitting here on a newly purchased 2019 MBP 16" and wondering if I should return it and get the MBP 13" now
No catch. Reduced instruction set. That is how the industry should have been going from the beginning. Instead they went to the hardware way and the Intel and AMD instructions stay the same. Now they really look pathetic and they should.
Xeon-E5 are about 8 years old. That is a long time for CPU. Still capable, but old.
I think there will be a higher end chip to support this market. I’d imagine some kind of “P1”. P being performance, M being for mobile. Calling it now.
I bought an Intel iMac this summer. Hmmmm. These Apple silicon chips looks good.
Indeed!!!
Remember Chromebooks ? People can use their laptops running Safari for 80-90% of their needs or use a bunch of traditional apps like Mail/Calendar/Notes/Photos that have been optimized by Apple.
The average Joe is not following this forum
I think these are just... the chips. It's what they have for now.
Not a high end or low end.
They've been working on these for years. No idea what they do to ramp up the higher end computers, or if they wait for the next version of the chip, double these chips, add cores, or what. Apple was in the same position with the first dual cores and they really did let the desktops just underperform for a good year there.
In the fine print Apple explained that many of the comparisons were to the i7 Ice Lake Air and i7 Coffee Lake Pro. Since those are both upgraded models if anything Apple understated the performance gains.
The problem is not only Intel or AMD or Qualcomm, the number of apps (and mission critical apps) running on Windows/x86 is huge, so huge that they cannot just replace the OS with a different architecture in 2 years. Microsoft released Windows on ARM last year with Surface X, a month ago the second version, however the avalanche of existing x86 around the world makes it difficult to just switch. What they are doing is maintaining the two architectures, at some point if 100% of the apps you use are updated to run on ARM you can move to the new architecture. So at least 3 problems:
1. ARM chips. Looks like Qualcomm, Intel and AMD are way behind.
2. Millions of x86 apps that probably won't ever be upgraded to run on ARM.
3. Multiple vendors depend on Windows/x86 until they change to ARM (if they change).
Imagine what would happen if Microsoft says that in 2 years they will ship the last version of Windows x86 and they will only release Windows on ARM for their Surface devices only, using the remaining resources to manufacture CPUs for themselves. 🔥🚒🔥🚒
The way I see it, it looks more like the Mini could be a concurrent to gaming consoles.
That is, if games (and good ones) are coming.
Right now, it's miles from being there.
Apple Arcade is probably the first step, but games seem to be, well, lackluster.
By the way, is Apple Arcade still one player only?
I wanted to buy a entry-level I3 Mini as a go-to bedroom computer, and take Apple Arcade and play some games with my daughter. That is, until I realized you could only hook one controller and it wasn't possible to get a 2 players experience.
The problem is still the same with Apple. In what Enterprise can you manage and secure on a unified platform a MacBook? Zero. It is why Microsoft is still King in the Enterprise and now cloud with Amazon.
As usual their graphics are average and screens as well. They aren’t going to overtake Nvidia and need Samsung for their screens on this and phones. Still garbage for gaming surely...let’s see those benchmarks oh wait the games often don’t run on Macs.
People again getting excited about a processor like their phones and the rest of the package is average. But have fun with photoshop and your social media dreams and editing it is all they got going for them along with college kids and the stupid marketing department minions.
Can’t hardly wait for the researchers to start finding the flaws to exploit.
What?!?!? The latest game consoles support ray tracing, 120Hz at 4K, and 60Hz at 8K, as well as adaptive sync technologies.
Apple said the MacBook Air was faster than 98% of Windows PCs. That’s a simple and powerful message. If these specs are true (no reason to think they aren’t since they are likely being posted by official reviewers) then that claim looks substantiated.