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New Apple Silicon Macs: MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini

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Some random thoughts/comments:
  • The name M1 implies it's a low-power or mobile-computing version of the macOS CPU.
  • Next year we may see a D1, perhaps, that is designed for higher-power and/or desktop computing.
  • The 2020 Mac mini has only 2 Thunderbolt ports because M1 contains a single Thunderbolt controller. My 2020 13" MacBook Pro (Intel Ice Lake) has two Thunderbolt controllers and hence four Thunderbolt ports.
    • So current M1 is not suitable for more powerful systems with 4 Thunderbolt ports.
  • The following systems currently ship with 4 Thunderbolt ports (i.e. two Thunderbolt controllers):
    • 16" MacBook Pro
    • 13" MacBook Pro (the high end version)
    • Mac Pro
    • Mac mini (Intel-based)
      • Will there be another, higher-end Mac mini with 4 Thunderbolt ports and a 10 GbE option??
  • M1 is therefore limited by at least the following:
    • Maximum of 16 GB RAM (LPDDR4X, I believe)
    • One Thunderbolt controller
    • 4 high-performance cores only
      • Desktop-class and HEDT will need more than 4 high-performance cores
    • 4 high-efficiency cores
      • Desktop-class and HEDT may not need high-efficiency cores; maybe a couple
  • Rumors are circulating about a new Mac Pro that is roughly half the size as the current Mac Pro.
    • Will it have PCIe slots?
    • If so, it will most likely need to support third party GPUs
    • Will Apple's on-board (integrated) GPU be sufficient for high end desktop (HEDT) applications?
 
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Will Apple's on-board (integrated) GPU be sufficient for high end desktop (HEDT) applications?
If the M1 GPU in the 13" MBP can do this in Davinci Resolve right now I think so. Edit an 8K file in Davinci Resolve with no dropped frames. That would sell me right there. They might put a more powerful M chip in the 16" refresh next year. That's the laptop for me.

 
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Silent/quite powerful/long lasting/light - big ticks

Can we do a sweepstake on what we think the real benchmarks will be when these arrive?

Guesses?
 
I honestly think this is a mistake, I have 3 hacks but they all are dual boot because some things are better with windows (e.g. games). if you alienate your ecosystem from 95% of the worlds software market you end up with a glorified iPad that looks lovely but is totally useless for anything remotely user intensive. The quality of apps in the apple App Store is dire, and that will only hurt them more when hackers (I mean developers) get to create apps for a big boys machine.
Apple only have a 5% share of the PC market, I genuinely dont think they will get the traction except for specialised applications, one of the justifications for paying so much for a real Mac is you can run windows as well, take that away and without a serious price drop a Mac loses a lot of its appeal. As for running your limited iPad and phone apps on a Mac, why? I prefer Microsofts idea of you can run your full windows apps on a surface pro...........Apple are looking at it the wrong way round.
Dont get me wrong I love the Mac OS, its a joy to use compared to Windows, stable and safe but if Hacks come to an end I won't be going back to a real Mac without windows support.
Or put another way, if they can next convince MacBook users to go without a keyboard and trackpad and have a touch screen instead they have just sold them a $2K iPad......................
 
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Some random thoughts/comments:
  • The name M1 implies it's a low-power or mobile-computing version of the macOS CPU.
  • Next year we may see a D1, perhaps, that is designed for higher-power and/or desktop computing.
  • The 2020 Mac mini has only 2 Thunderbolt ports because M1 contains a single Thunderbolt controller. My 2020 13" MacBook Pro (Intel Ice Lake) has two Thunderbolt controllers and hence four Thunderbolt ports.
    • So current M1 is not suitable for more powerful systems with 4 Thunderbolt ports.
  • The following systems currently ship with 4 Thunderbolt ports (i.e. two Thunderbolt controllers):
    • 16" MacBook Pro
    • 13" MacBook Pro (the high end version)
    • Mac Pro
    • Mac mini (Intel-based)
      • Will there be another, higher-end Mac mini with 4 Thunderbolt ports and a 10 GbE option??
  • M1 is therefore limited by at least the following:
    • Maximum of 16 GB RAM (LPDDR4X, I believe)
    • One Thunderbolt controller
    • 4 high-performance cores only
      • Desktop-class and HEDT will need more than 4 high-performance cores
    • 4 high-efficiency cores
      • Desktop-class and HEDT may not need high-efficiency cores; maybe a couple
  • Rumors are circulating about a new Mac Pro that is roughly half the size as the current Mac Pro.
    • Will it have PCIe slots?
    • If so, it will most likely need to support third party GPUs
    • Will Apple's on-board (integrated) GPU be sufficient for high end desktop (HEDT) applications?
"M" could also mean "Mac" as well vs mobile. These are 10v chips vs 5v or less so meant for more power on a desktop.
 
What we all need to remember is that these are the lowest end Macs Apple sells. They are first gen Apple Silicon. Expectations are set sky high but these are going to be no where near the performance of what will go into the iMac or iMac Pro and eventually into the Mac Pro. So we should all just be patient and not expect these first gen Macs designed for 11.0 Big Sur to be a quantum leap over X86 based PC laptops and desktops. Apple threw out a lot 3x 4x or even 6x performance increase numbers but wasn't specific as to what they compared them to.

I'm not going to buy one of these yet but may do so when the chassis they go into is also redesigned. If it still looks like an older Intel Mac on the outside you won't be getting the full Mac experience of the next gen macOS 11.0 + Macs. I think there is no chance they'd sell an M chip for iMac installed in the same old 2012-2020 iMac chassis. That would probably have a lot less resale value than a 2021 iMac with a refreshed design. The 2021 refresh will have smaller bezels and get rid of most of the relatively huge iMac chin we currently have.

That would be like the difference between this G5 (Intel) iMac from 2006 and the 2012 redesign.

1605136870766.png
1605136905185.png



In early 2006 was Apple really still calling it the iMac G5 when it had the Intel Core Duo CPU ???
I think some graphic designer screwed up here.
 
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What we all need to remember is that these are the lowest end Macs Apple sells. They are first gen Apple Silicon. Expectations are set sky high but these are going to be no where near the performance of what will go into the iMac or iMac Pro and eventually into the Mac Pro. So we should all just be patient and not expect these first gen Macs designed for 11.0 Big Sur to be a quantaum leap over X86 based PC laptops and desktops. Apple threw out a lot 3x 4x or even 6x performance increase numbers but wasn't specific as to what they compared them to. I'm not going to buy one of these yet but may do so when the chassis they go into is also redesigned. If it still looks like an older Intel Mac on the outside you won't be getting the full Mac experience of the next gen macOS 11.0 + Macs.
Perfectly stated. ^^^---This
 
I find all this Hackintosh doom-and-gloom proclamations to be pretty silly. With a transition to ARM timeline of about 2 years, Apple will continue to sell Intel computers well into 2021 and possibly longer. Let's assume a (short) OS transition of only 4 years -- that means that OSX 11.3 (Seal Beach...you heard it here first!) will still support Intel CPU's. So that brings us to 2024-2025 at least, and that also gives an additional few years beyond that for Hackintosh users who stay on that very functional OS. Considering that there are still so many people running High Sierra today, using an older OS isn't unusual.

Basically I can see Inter and AMD Hackintosh to continue to be a feasible solution for many until 2028 at least.

7-8 years is an eternity for computer technology. Who the hell knows what we will all be using by that time, or what type of CPU's will exist? I predict that slowly-but-surely we'll be moving into total cloud computing, making all of this CPU/GPU talk kinda moot. Who cares how many cores or RAM your computer has when all the processing is happening on some massive server somewhere?
Seal Beach! LOL!! Yeah, we will stick around for a few more years no doubt.
 
"With 2.6 teraflops of throughput, M1 has the world’s fastest integrated graphics in a personal computer."
OK, and this number falls where in the GPU spectrum? The RX 580 spec says "Max Performance Up to 6.2 TFLOPs." My GTX 1050 Ti OC says
GTX 1050 Ti 2.1 TFLOPS

...so the M1's integrated graphics are a little better than my GTX 1050 Ti.
but what the heck is a teraFLOP?

[Edit: Okay, never mind... one trillion floating point operations per second.]
 
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If the M1 performs well even when passively cooled, imagine what it can do if they slap a Noctua on it.
 
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