Apple Silicon M1 Emulating x86 is Still Faster Than Every Other Mac in Single Core Benchmark

[J Osborne]

With respect, if running Windows applications (which is what we're really talking here, either via VM or BC) was so important, Mac sales would have risen a lot higher with the switch to Intel than they did.

Mac sales did rise quite a bit with the switch to Intel. It is a bit hard to tell how much was due to the ability to in some way run Windows apps and how much was the increased performance.

I do know that my wife finally got a Mac for her work because "it could run windows" and then never ended up needing windows. For years they had been focused mainly on web apps and passing MS office documents around, and thought the web apps wouldn't work on a Mac. Turns out they all did. So MS Office plus Safari was all it took. However without the ability to at least think they could run Windows if they needed to they never tested it (she worked Real Estate at the time, not tech).

I don't think that is entirely uncommon, boot camp is more of a safety blanket to most Mac users then an actual thing they use day to day. It also is absolutely not true for everyone, some people really do have some Windows only stuff in their daily workflow and need to use Boot Camp or something like VMWare/parallels to access it. I know parallels actually has a desktop x86 VM in beta test for the M1, so it will be interesting to see how fast it is or isn't. Hopefully we don't have a return to the bad old days where people that needed a Windows App to run on the Mac had to suffer with 1/10th the performance...

 

[cmaier]

I don't know much about the behind the scenes but I always thought they were slow to milk as much profit as they can with each iteration of their CPU but thank you for explaining the details.

Their problem has been that it took them so long to get their 10nm node working, and they fell way behind TSMC. If all you are doing year after year is fabbing new designs on essentially the same process node, it’s very hard to improve performance, and even harder to improve performance per watt. Their 7nm node doesn’t seem to be ramping up fast enough either.

 

[Jimmy James]

How the heck is Apple so far ahead in performance? It's incredible how much of a lead they have it's like alien technology.

When they started their own chip development not so very long ago the comments were that it wouldn’t amount to much. Certainly, it wouldn’t be competitive. And that context was just in the mobile space.

Never underestimate Apple. This type of performance and efficiency could drive whole new segments to their platform.

 

[Jimmy James]

I'm not a hater. However, the virtualisation is THE dealbreaker for me… And Geekbench is a short-term load, it would be interesting whether the thermal constraints allow sustained load for longer period without significant penalty.

Im also interested in this for the Air but currently looking at the Mac Mini. Seems to be a light load for that chassis.

 

[neomorpheus]

Speaking as someone in an industrial machine control function there are still XP machines on factory floors (hell there are still DOS machines on factory floors) and someone other than me set it up but I can get MS support for the ones I deal with. The computers are literally from that time period but these aren’t used as office or data entry they control servo motors and positioning. And as long as a computer can be repaired or adapted to run XP most of these businesses will keep running them. The total machine can cost several hundred thousand dollars or more. Even paying 10 grand and getting back into production is cheap.

Bumped into a DOS machine myself, a couple of years ago.

They had a database with parts that was simply irreplaceable and it runs on DOS only.

Was lucky to capture the PC and convert it to a VM

When is a situation like what you described, yeah, the legacy support and payments are still worth.

Not everything is a disposable appliance.

 

[cp1160]

I'm not a hater. However, the virtualisation is THE dealbreaker for me… And Geekbench is a short-term load, it would be interesting whether the thermal constraints allow sustained load for longer period without significant penalty.

Not attacking your issue. Asking what virtualization do you run under sustained load for a long period of time of a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro 13 class of system? I run multiple things under virtualization and would not consider many of them sustained load, so I could be thinking wrong. I know with Parallels with Windows 10 running and Photoshop within that my fans run on any Mac laptop I have...but on my Windows laptop too with the big Photoshop work. For the Macs I consider that a fairly serious sustained load.

Is that what you are considering?

 

[theotherphil]

Far more - I ran an entire business just selling already set up Boot Camp installations - a LOT of people are coming over from Windows or want a Windows option on the Mac.

The 1% bootcamp figures was from Apple in one of their WWDC or State of the Union videos this year.

 

[Jimmy James]

Not bad for a base model chip.

Yes, base model mobile chip.

 

[dannys1]

Since we are looking at anecdotal evidence, how many users did your entire business serve every year?

Roughly about 1000.

 

[CWallace]

Mac sales did rise quite a bit with the switch to Intel. It is a bit hard to tell how much was due to the ability to in some way run Windows apps and how much was the increased performance.

I imagine the main reason was the "halo effect" of the iPhone that exposed people to the rest of the Apple ecosystem.

And for the record, I am not arguing that being able to run Windows apps is irrelevant. I do it, myself. But I do not believe it is as critical to the Mac's overall past, current, and future success as I have seen some posts imply/claim, even if it is critical to those poster's success with using a Mac instead of a Windows PC.

 

[dannys1]

Clearly there are some enthusiasts that do it. But IMHO there is no way that anything like 1 in every 100 Mac users uses Boot Camp. I'd be extremely surprised if it's even as high as 1 in 1000.

Generally the opposite of enthusiasts, in my case it was older people who had used Windows and wanted to have access to it - it at least eased them changing over along with VMWare.

On the other side lots and lots of web devs at one point where buying MacBooks and installing Windows on them.

But hey if Apple has the figures and announces them as 1% then I can't argue with that.

 

[Velli]

The number I am really waiting to see is: Running Windows in an emulated state on M1, which Intel i3 model does that compare with? If it’s anywhere close to the chip that would otherwise be in a base model Macbook Air, the Bootcamp crowd can ****. That’s the relevant comparison, not how fast it is next to an i7.

 

[cmaier]

I imagine the main reason was the "halo effect" of the iPhone that exposed people to the rest of the Apple ecosystem.

And for the record, I am not arguing that being able to run Windows apps is irrelevant. I do it, myself. But I do not believe it is as critical to the Mac's overall past, current, and future success as I have seen some posts imply/claim, even if it is critical to those poster's success with using a Mac instead of a Windows PC.

Certainly the ability to run Windows was the safety blanket that got me to buy my first mac back in the leopard days. (Prior to that I had a mac that was given to me when the company i worked for went under, but i never tried to use it for anything)

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Thank you, that's useful, I had missed that.

No problem. And it’s been that way for awhile. As a result, even as Apple’s marketshare continues to hover around 10% or so, half of that marketshare is consistently new users. So, when Apple’s coming up with new features/products, the reason why they don’t seem to be designing things specifically for users that have been around for awhile is because those users are becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of folks that might potentially purchase a new system. (These new users have never removed a keyboard to replace RAM and never unscrewed a backplate to replace a HD and don’t expect to do so.) AND, that’s BEFORE considering that many of the OTHER half also bought their first Macs within the last 5 years.

 

[dannys1]

I'm still on 2011/2012 Mac hardware because of Apple's move towards non-repairability back then.

And I RAGED against that machine until maybe last year.

But even my stubborn jackass self had to concede that the repairability ship had sailed and just wasn't coming back to Apple.

Finally, I came to realize that I love Apple products more than I (STILL) hate the fact that they're sealed, so it's going to be (more) expensive going forward, but at least for me it'll still be worth it (until it isn't).

You say "repairability" but you really mean "can stick more ram in it and a faster hard drive later on to save me money"

I don't understand the obsession with being able to upgrade computers. There's literally no other piece of electrical equipment I own that I can upgrade, many of my single objective pro devices that cost far more than my Apple devices which do 1000 things can't be upgraded. Neither can my £4000 OLED TV, or the PS5, Xbox, Audio Interface, Hi-fi components, £1000 Sennheiser Headphones, my fridge, my freezer, my cooker, my heat pump, I could go on and on. In all those things I have to buy the spec I want at the time of purchase and stick with it. Just because computers could be fiddled with the 80's doesn't mean it's something that should stay forever.

 

[hellopeach]

That's only because the task you mention happens not to be memory-starved even with the relatively small iPad Pro RAM, but this is not true in general.

Trying to do a task with less RAM that it requires would slow it down to a crawl no matter how powerful the CPU is.

yup, it's hard to get memory-starved when you can at most run only two applications simultaneously, isn't it

when I need to run Xcode + VSCode + TextMate + Safari with 10 tabs + iTerm with 5 tabs + Zoom + DataGrip at the same time, even 16G RAM feels too little.

 

[pshufd]

You say "repairability" but you really mean "can stick more ram in it and a faster hard drive later on to save me money"

I don't understand the obsession with being able to upgrade computers. There's literally no other piece of electrical equipment I own that I can upgrade, many of my single objective pro devices that cost far more than my Apple devices which do 1000 things can't be upgraded. Neither can my £4000 OLED TV, or the PS5, Xbox, Audio Interface, Hi-fi components, £1000 Sennheiser Headphones, my fridge, my freezer, my cooker, my heat pump, I could go on and on. In all those things I have to buy the spec I want at the time of purchase and stick with it. Just because computers could be fiddled with the 80's doesn't mean it's something that should stay forever.

The ability to upgrade means that you can buy a small configuration today to keep up-front costs low and then add as your needs change over time. I built a system a few months ago - i7-10700, 64 GB RAM (upgradeable to at least 256 GB), 3 TB SSD and it has fantastic thermals) for $1,700. I can get to 128 GB of RAM by just adding 2 32 GB sticks. Or I can add storage. Or I can replace the motherboard and CPU with a 64-core Threadripper.

The ability to upgrade is like an option. And options have value.

No different from buying a home where you can do upgrades like remodeling, adding a garden, tool shed or an extension.

 

[pshufd]

yup, it's hard to get memory-starved when you can at most run only two applications simultaneously, isn't it

when I need to run Xcode + VSCode + TextMate + Safari with 10 tabs + iTerm with 5 tabs + Zoom + DataGrip at the same time, even 16G RAM feels too little.

Task Manager says I'm using 33.5 GB of RAM right now. Good thing I have 64 GB and room for a lot more.

 

[Jimmy James]

I’m looking at a Mac mini purchase for next year. I wonder if it will get an option for the higher performing chip alongside its release in other configurations. Not that I need it.

 

[J Osborne]

I imagine the main reason was the "halo effect" of the iPhone that exposed people to the rest of the Apple ecosystem.

Could be. I worked at Apple at the time, but not in marketing (I was in CoreOS). No particular numbers were circulated, so nobody really knew what was driving what. Internal talk was about the halo effect and the safety blanket effect of boot camp. There were some vague directions from upper management that even though the number of people using boot camp was fairly low it was very important to keep resources on it. It wasn't clear if they thought it was important because it showed up in so many magazine reviews at the time (ha! remember when magazines were important?), or if it was shown as being very important to people pre-sales (which I would say is "safety blanket").

It has been so long I forgot all about the halo effect though (originally attributed to the iPod).

 

[meme1255]

It does, there fixed it for you.

*x86_64 Win virtualisation. It should be resolved quite soon by Microsoft (Win on ARM with x86_64 emulation), though.

 

[J Osborne]

Why on earth would you buy a 2020 Intel Macbook Air or Pro now?

Memory constraints. I have a workload that is about 5x faster on a 32G MacBook Pro then it is on a 16G MacBook Pro. It is actually my primary work laptop's work load. If I were buying a new laptop for work it would end up being a Intel laptop because the current M1 Macs top out at 16G. I'm not buying a laptop now because with COVID-19 I'm not really leaving my house, and I have an iMac Pro with 96G of RAM (which sadly doesn't run that workload another 5x faster then the 32G laptop, that would be totally awesome).

However I expect that when they replace the 16" MBP with some M1 or M1 variant they will support at least as much RAM as the outgoing Intel version. At that point I'll be firmly in the "time to switch" camp ;-)

For my personal laptop I just like bigger displays then 12". I currently have a 15", and I'm not wild about replacing it with a 12". Likewise for my wife. However my wife's laptop is old and creepy, and if it actually manages to die before the replacements become available I'll end up being in the camp that buys a Intel MBP in 2020 (or 2021). It'll be sad (and cost more then I want to pay for the last generation of Intel MBPs!). So I hope that machine hangs on.

 

[Makosuke]

Apple has the luxury of actually not having many of their desktops used in government, business, and engineering firms. They've also been losing grounds to Microsoft and later Google in education since the 2010s. Any company that gets big enough in these aforementioned four sectors will have to contend with backward compatibility.

Actually, even if Apple were to get seriously increased educational institution penetration starting today I’d be highly skeptical backwards compatibility will be an issue.

Both educational institutions I’m associated with and every one I’m familiar with are all-in on cloud services at this point, so as long as the client can run a web browser and the server can host the apps, backwards compatibility is a non issue. Apple has pretty much given up the server side, so all they need is a decent client machine with a supported web browser.

Government may be a different situation, that’s not an area I’m familiar with.

 

[jonnysods]

very interested as well!

personally I’m looking to see Jonathan Morrison’s take of either of these products in his hands (he does use Logic Pro decently) but I’d love to peak at the Logic Pro forum here to see how real world pros use their software and workflows on these.

once a few confirmations positively I think sales will jump!

universal software is stating to uptick quite significantly. A sincere thank you to these amazing developers!!

Its funny how a release like this makes my mid 2019 MBP seem ancient. Even though its a trusted ally in my work!

 

[Gru]

You say "repairability" but you really mean "can stick more ram in it and a faster hard drive later on to save me money"

I'm using my computers for work. Time is money. When the SSD in my PC breaks, I order a new SSD online and it will be delivered within 3 hours at my door, mostly the time it takes to relax, grab some popcorn and watch a movie on Netflix. I replace it, restore a backup and be good to go within 4 hours max.

If this happens with an iMac, I need to take the huge iMac to my car, drive 10km through the traffic into town to the next Apple store, can't find a parking spot anywhere near, take the heavy iMac 500m to the store while it's raining, go to the Genius Bar, wait until they figured out that indeed the SSD is broken, be told that it will take 3 weeks to repair, go back to my car to find a parking ticket, binge watch Netflix series for 3 weeks while I don't earn money and lose customers, return again to the Genius Bar, get my iMac back, pay 3 times what I paid for my PC repair and got another parking ticket before I spend another hour in traffic jams till I'm back home again and swear to never buy an iMac ever again.