I really don't understand why Apple won't give us a choice of chips. It seems pretty clear that while Apple's chips have been better than Intel's offer recently and highly competitive with Intel today, that isn't going to be true for very long and Apples Mx platform won't be competitive with Intel's roadmap even 12 months down the road. Already Apple's laptop offers are severely lacking in innovation, and the insular attitude by Apple with regard to silicon is really turning me off. I'm currently using an old MacBookPro waiting for an Apple laptop offer worth replacing it with . . . and I won't wait forever before I go back to a Windows machine (take a look at Lenovo's lineup if you don't know what I'm talking about).
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Intel Says New Core i9 Processor for Laptops is Faster Than Apple's M1 Max Chip
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Did you see the wattage on the graph? They are claiming more power per watt compared with M1 Max.
Lol, show me a Windows machine with more innovation than the latest MacBook Pro.
If you think Intel's "roadmap" (if they can even keep it on track and meet it) can compete with Apple's Silicon roadmap than you haven't been paying attention to history. If they had shown they have that capability than Apple never would have left Intel in the first place.
The Intel CPU also includes a GPU (and some other platform components such as the PCH). But the SPECrate benchmark doesn't exercise the GPU, so the GPUs in both cases shouldn't have a significant impact on the power consumption.
Ah, HERE’S the thing, though. This chip they just announced and any future chip will never overtake Apple Silicon in Final Cut Pro ProRes workflows. Primarily because Intel has no interest in that and secondarily because Intel doesn’t make Macs. So, the M1 series will be the fastest at macOS, FCP, Logic Pro now and will only be bested by the M2 series.
The M1 likely can't scale to this kind of clock rate, even if Apple wanted to. Perhaps we'll learn more about the limits if the rumored Mac Pro with M-CPU is real.
I think you’ll be well suited to start going back to a Windows machine now. If there’s no Apple laptop replacing it with currently, there’s only going to be more of the same in the future. The time you spend waiting for Apple to not deliver could be spent getting a handle on the current version of Windows and getting used to the different hardware and software offerings.
Three years from now, you’ll either be still waiting to see what Apple does OR
you’ll be enjoying your life using a system that YOU chose to fit your needs better than anything Apple could ever customize.
You’re right in that Apple doesn’t even want to. The ONLY thing the Mac Pro has to be is faster than the current Mac Pro. And, given that the laptop Pro Max is pretty much that already without 5 Ghz means not only do they not want to, they don’t have to.
I don’t care if intel’s processor is better. Where M1 truly shines for me at least is the neural engine, GPU, encoders/decoders. My macs used to be useless when I export my videos since the CPU and GPU are high. Now that these things are mostly off the CPU/GPU, it’s like a second computer in one. I can work on other things now because stuff is taken away from the CPU. It’s an entire package now.
On paper, in some scenarios/benchmarks my 2019 i9 iMac beats my Mac Mini M1. Yet it’s not. Why? Because a lot of stuff now is offloaded from the CPU and GPU. I noticed a dramatic improvement over my iMac. $700 mini beats out my $4,500 iMac.
On paper, in some scenarios/benchmarks my 2019 i9 iMac beats my Mac Mini M1. Yet it’s not. Why? Because a lot of stuff now is offloaded from the CPU and GPU. I noticed a dramatic improvement over my iMac. $700 mini beats out my $4,500 iMac.
Of course they'd do it in the Mac Pro if they could. The current laptop M-CPUs are not suitable for workstations, not just in terms of raw performance, but also amount of RAM, I/O capacity and other factors.
The M-CPUs are derived from phone CPUs that were narrowly optimized for power efficiency. You can't just dial up the clock rate if the chip wasn't designed for that.
Older games in some cases don’t play well with AMD CPU. Micro stutters and random delays (threading so the game and music still runs, it’s just a delay of nothing happening for a few seconds). There is one such game that runs perfectly fine on a cheaper Intel system that’s like a Switch compared to a $3,000 AMD laptop with a 3070. In fact, compatibility in the PC space is what’s keeping me using Intel. In this regard, I agree with the person you quoted that Intel is where the games are.
No, it’s not “if they could”. Intel isn’t doing it “because they can” they’re doing it because, in order to have numbers that compare favorably to AMD’s “they’re forced to” bump up the clock rate and the power consumption.
Increasing power consumption and clock rate is ALWAYS the go to when your underlying design has issues.Times have changed. Microsoft is now fully on board with multi platform. With Dotnet Core (now just .NET 6), Xamarin, MAUI, and I think they are planning SQL on Linux support.
1) why is it clear that Apple’s chips won’t be competitive for very long? Intel still hasn’t caught up, and their new phony graph (which is easily disproven just be correlating the other lines on the graph to third party sources such as Ars Technica) don’t prove otherwise.
2) ”a choice of chips” would mean an incredible outlay of R&D work for Apple.
This is why I love this site. I am not super knowledgeable about infrastructure, architecture, power, etc. I am more of a general user. However, I am a fan of Apple and like to see them do well. I enjoy the competitive banter between fanboys on both sides of the fence, but I really like learning about the details in the process. Many others have contributed, but this post made me smile (not just the "drunk" comment, but rather the slightly different content angle). Thanks, ian87w, and keep the content coming!
AMD is doing the exact same thing. I guess their design also "has issues"?No, it’s not “if they could”. Intel isn’t doing it “because they can” they’re doing it because, in order to have numbers that compare favorably to AMD’s “they’re forced to” bump up the clock rate and the power consumption.
Is that a jab to macs? I don’t think anyone is buying a Mac JUST to game. I got my Mac for work. But I’m glad it can play Factorio and Stardew Valley definitely. So I spent $4,000 on my Mac for work, while off time I can also browse and play games that runs on potatoes.
A choice of chips? So basically Apple (and their software developers) has to maintain two versions of macOS (and apps) indefinitely, plus invest millions into custom CPUs in the M-series and then can't even fully amortize the development costs among what is already a fairly small amount of computers. And also spend money on Intel's profit margins. Why on earth would Apple ever want to do that. Especially because Apple's secret to pulling off these transitions is being 100% committed. That would truly be the worst of both worlds.
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Intel has a long and well-documented history of cherry picking benchmarks, so we're gonna have to wait until people actually get their hands on it to know how it compares.
I can pretty confidently say that I am never buying an x86 machine again, but I'm still interested to see the performance.
It kinda sucks that these $2,000+ MacBook Pros were released with "A14 architecture" after Apple's next-gen architecture (and lithography) had already debuted in other products. I hope that Intel doing a better job than expected (*if you don't give a **** about efficiency, fan noise, battery life, heat, your power bill, etc.) will push Apple to update the Mac lineup aggressively.
I can pretty confidently say that I am never buying an x86 machine again, but I'm still interested to see the performance.
It kinda sucks that these $2,000+ MacBook Pros were released with "A14 architecture" after Apple's next-gen architecture (and lithography) had already debuted in other products. I hope that Intel doing a better job than expected (*if you don't give a **** about efficiency, fan noise, battery life, heat, your power bill, etc.) will push Apple to update the Mac lineup aggressively.
What really seems clear is that Intel won‘t be competitive in the foreseeable future; if ever.
Their architecture cannot compete with Apple‘s (and likely upcoming third party Arm chips); also their manufacturing is inferior to TSMCs.
And that won‘t change anytime soon. Even if Intel miraculously can keep up with its projected roadmap, its not like TSMC is sitting on its buttocks. Given recent developments its more likely that TSMC manages to widen the gap