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Five Years of Apple Silicon: M1 to M5 Performance Comparison
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I grabbed a 14" M1 Max mbp shortly after they were announced about 4 years ago, and it's still my main rig.
My company gives me a pretty healthy stipend every 2 years for WFH tech items and I haven't been able to justify using it for a newer mbp, as solid as the m4/m5 improvements seem to be. CPU simply isn't a significant factor for my next upgrade. I'm waiting for things like wifi 7, 5g cellular, notch-less oled display with face-id, design updates, etc before I part ways with my current mbp.
My company gives me a pretty healthy stipend every 2 years for WFH tech items and I haven't been able to justify using it for a newer mbp, as solid as the m4/m5 improvements seem to be. CPU simply isn't a significant factor for my next upgrade. I'm waiting for things like wifi 7, 5g cellular, notch-less oled display with face-id, design updates, etc before I part ways with my current mbp.
That's exactly my plan-- M1 Air to M6(?) Pro, whenever it gets the tandem OLED.
... going to turn on the 80% charge limit, to hopefully get more cycles out of it.
That’s probably a good proxy for the CPU performance improvements overall (i.e. non-GPU). Not bad in just four years.
My M1 Max is my work machine and runs a virtualised windows CAD system buttery smooth. Every year I see the next gen and get tempted but there’s little to no justification. Money well spent.
Happy 5th Birthday Apple Silicon. You have made a welcome and profound impact on the computer industry that many people appreciate currently, keep pushing that envelope Apple.
Depends if you enjoy watching the spinning beach ball I suppose, only time I see it on the M1 max is when something is crashing
I remember being blown away by the M1 Air. I loaded up a timeline on fcp with 8K footage from my Red camera and I could actually play it back. It was min blowing. It started to struggle when editing anything longer than 5 minutes, but still. Then I swapped it for a 14» M1 Pro that I still use to this day
5 years already and it’s felt like a white knuckle racing rollercoaster the entire time. The sheer performance of the M1 and then the continuous stacking boost each year since has been insane. Biggest shakeup to CPUs since the x86-64 hit the scene.
Johny Srouji hopefully is one of the highest compensated execs at Apple. Probably the most valuable contributor in history across all companies (apart perhaps from SteveJ). Apart from one or two keynote video appearances, he and his team labors without any plaudits. Interesting that when Apple built the space ship, he insisted that his group be in a separate building. "Go Johny Go." Imagine Apple with iPhones running Qualcomm, and Macs running Intel. Again, likely the most valuable Apple Exec ever (apart from SteveJ). GJG, NSC
For many things, certainly anything I do. From the table the M5 is a clean twice as fast as the M1, and little more than that for graphics. Too bad they didn't have power consumption listed.
This laptop is storage limited, not CPU limited.
My first laptop was a Powerbook 180c. 4 MB RAM, 160 MB HD. If I remember it was about $4000. How far we've come.
We are literally replacing user M1 systems due to age, and nothing to do with performance.
Moving away from Intel to Arm / A-Series was a huge jump as we all know and I still love the platform. Since then, improvements have returned to be incremental similar to how the AIM alliance PowerPC chips and later Intel. All great stuff, but I do wish Apple had patched things up Nvidia so we could have the option of tapping into that pipeline for some critical applications.
It all sounds impressive!
But my M1 iPad Pro doesnt seem to work up a sweat looking at trip photos or browsing a website.
I still have my 2018 MacBook Pro. Hoping it holds up until the M6.
But my M1 iPad Pro doesnt seem to work up a sweat looking at trip photos or browsing a website.
I still have my 2018 MacBook Pro. Hoping it holds up until the M6.
The Max is the weapon of choice, I wasn't willing to be left wanting when I bought my first apple Silicon. Might be over kill but i love it still. I would love to see a Max vs Max compare with that being said.
I still use my MBA (2021) quite a bit and it still does everything I want it to do. I just really hate this Tahoe Operating System. The icons look sophomoric, the music app is horrible, and it just felt like change for no reason. I tend to like change, but the change needs to be good and this was not good.
Some do, but most don't.
The reality is; the majority of people use their laptops for basic tasks; which a 15 year old laptop can still do decently.
You got lucky. I’ve encountered USB and display/dock compatibility issues with AS
I find it surprising that Apple claims “6x faster cpu/gpu” when the Geekbench benchmarks show about a 2x improvement. Which is still not bad and translates to 20% a year or so (disregarding compounding effects).
I’m still using my M1 iMac for most things, when I’m behind my desk. It seems to be keeping up very well, no need to replace it yet.
I’m still using my M1 iMac for most things, when I’m behind my desk. It seems to be keeping up very well, no need to replace it yet.
Can you open any web pages or install software?My 2012 MBP is doing fine as wellOf course gets hot sometimes and battery is dead but for my needs...
My core 2 duo mini server can’t open web pages. And I can’t install any newer OS because apple’s webpage won’t let me.
My iPad 1st gen runs great except it no longer works with an Apple account because it can’t handle 2 factor authentication and that means you can’t log in anymore AND you can’t logout!!!
What happens if they go smaller or smaller? Can they do the same "distance" in chips from 5nm down to 3nm, vs their next roadmap which looks like only down to 1.4nm? I'm not sure the next few years would be as "exponential" in leaps as M1-> M5. It will max out sooner than later, regarding the speed improvement and power and efficiency.
"Over the next five years, Apple silicon chip technology will continue to evolve. Apple supplier TSMC is already working on 2nm chips that could make an appearance as soon as 2026, offering a 10 to 15 percent speed improvement and a 25 to 30 percent power reduction. 1.4nm chips could follow as soon as 2028 for even more power and efficiency."
"Over the next five years, Apple silicon chip technology will continue to evolve. Apple supplier TSMC is already working on 2nm chips that could make an appearance as soon as 2026, offering a 10 to 15 percent speed improvement and a 25 to 30 percent power reduction. 1.4nm chips could follow as soon as 2028 for even more power and efficiency."
I remember when I got my M1 Pro when it released. The thing blew me away. Especially the battery life!
Yup, still driving the M1 Air myself, too. Works like new.
It's unfortunate that Apple went with the name "Apple silicon" since moving away from silicon as a material may be the next big leap. Silicon Valley would also need to be renamed. 🤣