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You’ve seen zero benchmarks, but you already know the claims are BS?
I think this Apple chip will be fit for it's purpose.
I've avoided Mac hardware all my life, but I was in the room when Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone at WWDC 2007 and knew it was objectively a big deal; and seeing the announcements today it also feels like a major turning point -despite the protests of entrenched x86ers and PC gamers that think scoffing at it does anything.
Like it or not, the paradigm is shifting, these are only the beginning. I'll continue to run x86 for the foreseeable future, but I know change when I see it - and I'm not exactly a genius, it just happens to be hitting all of us right over the head.
Yeah. I think there's a lot of talking past each other here. This new chip could both be fast at the stuff it's designed to be fast[1] at--like juanrga likes to keep highlighting benchmarks it's good at--but not nearly as good at other stuff (still waiting for an estimate or even a wild-ass guess on how fast it can do a big compile, but I guess I'm not going to get one until someone who's not fluffing the M1 tries it out.
[1] and that's perfectly fine. But it's not the whole story. Personally I don't have any particular use for a CPU that's really fast only at stuff I don't do. YMMV.
For what the Mini's are generally used for that is plenty.
Sometimes things don't pass the smell test.
Things in the CPU industry are typically evolutionary and predictable. There might be small surprises here or there, but major leaps out of nowhere essentially don't happen.
So, their 2x and 3x claims don't pass the smell test, unless - as has been previously mentioned - they are comparing them to extremely low end budget machines (whatever happened to dollar to dollar comparisons?)
Either that, or they are touring areas where these SoC's have hardware acceleration for one or two small things, benching the hell out of that, while ignoring overall performance.
I think this Apple chip will be fit for it's purpose. that purpose being passsble general desktop performance with a few tricks up it's sleeve to accelerate codex encoding and photoshop filters to the point where it is usable. They wouldn't be launching it if it weren't. And this is fine and exactöy what some people buy their laptops for.
It's not about to take on any real computers any time soon though.
Heck, my 8 year old Latitude with an Ivy Bridge i5-3320M is perfectly responsive in basic desktop apps. Just add some ASIC hardware accelerators to that, and you have the same thing, just a bit bulkier and lacking in Apple "magic".
Yes and no, but look at what PC's you could buy in that price range, and compare it to the mac mini. Then ask yourself, which would you rather troubleshoot with your mother/grandmother?
In the end, this is why I am not interested.Apple has always wanted end to end control over not just the UI experience but also the hardware experience. That of course can lead to some interesting products. I liken it quite a bit to the way that consoles are currently being designed, although the integrated RAM could act like a giant cache instead of more traditional RAM. I would be interested to see how that would perform in other more desktop oriented CPUs regardless of manufacture.
We can infer a few things though. This is based on the A14 which is a known quantity. We can extrapolate based on that a rough performance increase. I'm betting that a lot of their performance claims are related to memory speeds, and in reference to their own past products.
The tight integration of OS to hardware is hard to deny. Apple has shown that with their iPhone line. Clearly this is something that PCs and other mobiles will trail in.
That is it, Apples are great if you fit in their mold.
I know far to many Apple fans IRL that think they can do everything and anything, but won't even sit at a PC to test their bias. Yet I always have to sit at their Apple to see just how great it is.
The current Firestorm core, constrained in a A14 phone, is able to outperform the fastest Intel core and is only pennies behind a top Zen3 core in single thread performance
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The cores in the M1 will run circles around any x86 core. Moreover the Apple design is ultraefficient. The A14 is below 5W, whereas the R9 5950X goes up to 49W in 1T.
thats the face all the networks/sysadmin guys around me are making too....
I don’t think Apple cares at all for the ”spec game”.
I mean sure they are happy to charge you (an arm and a leg) for more RAM or a bigger SSD, but they play that game on their own terms.
If you look at phones, they don’t really talk about how much memory they have, but they definately get by with a lot less then Android. They don’t really talk about the size of the battery, rather they focus on batterylife. They happily equip all phones from the cheapest to the most expensive with the same processor. They don’t usually focus onclockspeed / cores etc over generations, but rather on what end user functionality the changes will bring.
In general this scheme actually works really well. If you are a manufacturer stuck in a competition of specs, you have little reason to optimise. For Apple, making the system more efficient means they can put a smaller battery and keep battery life the same. They have an incentive to think end to end.
That’s like saying it isn’t so much about AMD as it is x86 for the new Ryzen CPUs.
Some of you guys seem to bend over backwards to take a jab at Apple and downplay anything they do.
And one they could easily do, which would show good results if the chip was truly a number crunching powerhouse, would be x264. It's open source, there's already ARM code, which they could further optimize if they wanted, and it is one of those that scales very well with CPU power so is a good quasi-synthetic kind of benchmark. It is also really common on desktop benchmarking sites. Every time a new CPU comes out, x264 gets run on it by all the review sites so there's lots of comparison data.Explain to me how the desire for actual verifiable benchmark numbers equates to a "jab" against Apple? If it turns out that the the "M1 is faster than the chips in 98 percent of PC laptops sold in the past year" then I will be happy to congratulate them on a job well done. Marketing means nothing. Bring on the benchmarks.
And one they could easily do, which would show good results if the chip was truly a number crunching powerhouse, would be x264. It's open source, there's already ARM code, which they could further optimize if they wanted, and it is one of those that scales very well with CPU power so is a good quasi-synthetic kind of benchmark. It is also really common on desktop benchmarking sites. Every time a new CPU comes out, x264 gets run on it by all the review sites so there's lots of comparison data.
However, that is nowhere to be seen. Maybe it just hasn't been done yet, and maybe it'll be just staggering how good it is... but of course it leaves people to wonder and to say "Well let's see some numbers!"
As somebody who routinely works with Windows, Linux, and Mac. I can safely say that the Macs are much easier to troubleshoot because the users can't really touch anything and Apple keeps their ecosystem pretty locked down and clean. The biggest annoyance there for me is when my users do their OS updates but forget their App updates which break their dependencies and they call me in a panic because Adobe or FinalCut won't launch. But outside things like that they are very hands-off machines, I would say over a 5-year lifecycle they tend to be my lowest cost devices once I have to factor in management time, repairs, and technician time, and software licensing. Windows comes in second with Linux being my most costly of the systems because when they go bad they go really bad there is no "yeah lets just unckeck this" option there. Honestly Mac OS is the blend of Windows and Linux most people have been asking for, it just has a high cost of entry, but in terms of mass deployments the only systems that are faster and cheaper to deploy in large numbers are the Chromebooks and that is because Google's admin tools there are awesome. Jamf for the Apple stuff also works great but like all Apple partners they tend to only be told about the iOS changes a few days in advance so if I get any users who are too eager for the new features it tends to be an issue. I'm hoping to get Intune configured this winter so I can better manage the Windows stuff and that should bring my Win10 machines more in line wth the Apples for TCO.Honestly, I'll troubleshoot any PC with anyone over any Mac any day.
Mac's have this reputation for being user friendly. That may have been the case - comparatively - back in tbe 80's and 90's, but when I had to set up an configure my fiance's 2013 era 27" iMac I was tearing my hair out I was so frustrated with the thing.
As somebody who routinely works with Windows, Linux, and Mac. I can safely say that the Macs are much easier to troubleshoot because the users can't really touch anything and Apple keeps their ecosystem pretty locked down and clean. The biggest annoyance there for me is when my users do their OS updates but forget their App updates which break their dependencies and they call me in a panic because Adobe or FinalCut won't launch. But outside things like that they are very hands-off machines, I would say over a 5-year lifecycle they tend to be my lowest cost devices once I have to factor in management time, repairs, and technician time, and software licensing. Windows comes in second with Linux being my most costly of the systems because when they go bad they go really bad there is no "yeah lets just unckeck this" option there. Honestly Mac OS is the blend of Windows and Linux most people have been asking for, it just has a high cost of entry, but in terms of mass deployments the only systems that are faster and cheaper to deploy in large numbers are the Chromebooks and that is because Google's admin tools there are awesome. Jamf for the Apple stuff also works great but like all Apple partners they tend to only be told about the iOS changes a few days in advance so if I get any users who are too eager for the new features it tends to be an issue. I'm hoping to get Intune configured this winter so I can better manage the Windows stuff and that should bring my Win10 machines more in line wth the Apples for TCO.
Multiply x100 or x1000 or more.. that's Enterprise.I've never managed an enterprise environment, so I can't speak to the shit that the lowest common denominator may screw up.
Just getting her 2013 iMac to remember the NAS network shares and their credentials took a goddamn exorcism.
Windows "just worked". Linux was a little bit more complicated, but easy for me because i'm used to it and had fought those battles before.
Yeah...... Apple and most NAS's are the Devil, and even when they are working the file menus for them are just. Bleh. The Buffalo ones have been pretty solid for us, but I have all that going back to a Sharepoint server now and that has been pretty bulletproof to date. You know once you get past all the Sharepoint, let's say Nicities.... But I am loving the mac Mini 2018's they have been little tanks, granted they are just being used as caching servers for all the iPads' but getting those in place has cut down on so much BS it's amazing.I've never managed an enterprise environment, so I can't speak to the shit that the lowest common denominator may screw up.
Maybe I'm just lucky, but people in my house don't seem to screw much up.
My "user friendliness" frustrations have been with stuff that is just painful or frustrating to get working the way you expect out of the box.
Just getting her 2013 iMac to remember the NAS network shares and their credentials took a goddamn exorcism.
Windows "just worked". Linux was a little bit more complicated, but easy for me because I'm used to it and had fought those battles before.
I have no more recent experience than ~2013 though, because after that damn iMac died I swore to never let another Apple product on my network ever again.
Yeah...... Apple and most NAS's are the Devil, and even when they are working the file menus for them are just. Bleh. The Buffalo ones have been pretty solid for us, but I have all that going back to a Sharepoint server now and that has been pretty bulletproof to date. You know once you get past all the Sharepoint, let's say Nicities.... But I am loving the mac Mini 2018's they have been little tanks, granted they are just being used as caching servers for all the iPads' but getting those in place has cut down on so much BS it's amazing.
Like every other Apple device that has been released lol$699 for that mini? They must be making a massive profit on those devices
I totally get your point on this and to some extent agree.
I do think it is silly of Apple to do this however. 8gb of ram - even if the OS/Apps/Everything are 25-30% more efficient just isnt going to perform the same as 16gb of real ram. By increasing the base cost a little and giving much more reasonable pricing for more RAM/Storage I would see the computers as more attractive in terms of price/performance.
For someone who wants a nice computer for web browsing, email, light school work these look like nice systems (provided older code works well) the moment you need to do some real work I dont think the system is going to do so well.
I would not get that with 8GB even for my kids. Personally I can’t get by at work without 32.
But I assume going above 16 would require moving from 2 memory banks to 4, and that likely requires more engineering. Obviously they’ll be working on that. For Mac Pro’s they’ll need to go way higher and they surely already know it’s doable.
I run several VMs at the same time every day and I chew through RAM like nothing. Also exporting/editing huge video files eats up a lot of RAM as well. It's entirely dependent on your workflow. If I had 8 GB I couldn't work. 16GB is a bare minimum.Curious. What do you do at work?
I've been working from home since March. Ever since my work machine started to refuse connecting to the work VPN, I've been working on my old 2012 era Dell Latitude E6430s. It has a dual core (with HT) Ivy Brige i5-3320m and 8GB of DDR3 RAM.
I have never once noticed it slow down from lack of RAM.
As I am sitting here editing a document change, Task Manager is telling me I am using 39% of the RAM.
Granted, my professional work is not very taxing on a computer. It consists mainly of Office 365, a web browser for some web apps, Minitab and an occasional light jaunt in SolidWorks, but that's about it.
I see the reasoning for 16GB if buying an unupgradeable machine today. You have to have future compatibility. 32GB however seems a bit superflous.
(I mean, I have 64GB in my Threadripper, but that's not for work )
I run several VMs at the same time every day and I chew through RAM like nothing. Also exporting/editing huge video files eats up a lot of RAM as well. It's entirely dependent on your workflow. If I had 8 GB I couldn't work. 16GB is a bare minimum.
To be fair though the Mac Mini platform as a whole would be 100% ineffective for your workflow. Even when they did offer 32gb of ram and had an upgradable HDD the CPU and power limitations on the platform and the form factor would leave you completely incapable of doing any of that.I run several VMs at the same time every day and I chew through RAM like nothing. Also exporting/editing huge video files eats up a lot of RAM as well. It's entirely dependent on your workflow. If I had 8 GB I couldn't work. 16GB is a bare minimum.
Well that depends on how powerful the M1 chips ends up being. Not that I would use an M1 chip Mac anyway since Macs are going back to the days of virtualized Windows instead of being able to run it natively and that's just going to be awful, unless Microsoft has something in the works for Apple Silicon.To be fair though the Mac Mini platform as a whole would be 100% ineffective for your workflow. Even when they did offer 32gb of ram and had an upgradable HDD the CPU and power limitations on the platform and the form factor would leave you completely incapable of doing any of that.
For most people I recommend the Mac Mini’s to, they want a computer for their living room or a small office. It’s mostly for email, light photo editing, making things like greeting cards and Calendars, most of the time it’s just a Facebook/Pintrist machine that connects to a decent inkjet printer. I mean really they could be getting by with an iPad if it weren’t for the small screens. For a lot of artsy things or simple media tasks Apple has most of that built in with their typical Apple quality on a PC they are more or less featured but usually more expensive. But they are small and quiet and if you just want it to live under your TV in the living room with a wireless keyboard and mouse/touch pad. Then they are a hard one to beat at that price point.
Well even if they were super powerful attempting to run multiple simultaneous VM's with only 4 cores is hard, VM's do not like assigning more virtual cores than there are logical ones, some versions of VM ware will let you do it but sweet Jesus is it painful for everything involved.Well that depends on how powerful the M1 chips ends up being. Not that I would use an M1 chip Mac anyway since Macs are going back to the days of virtualized Windows instead of being able to run it natively and that's just going to be awful, unless Microsoft has something in the works for Apple Silicon.
Anyone know how well Boot Camp works on the M1 machines?
yeah, Boot camp is ..... annoying who has the time to save their work shutdown, restart in the new OS and start their workflow all over. Too annoying, if it's for work I will recommend Parallels every time, the break in the workflow from Boot Camp is far greater than most people give it credit for.It is not supported on these new systems at all.
not sure what you would boot camp it to anyways, though. Ubuntu on ARM maybe? Can you even buy standalone licensing for windows ARM?
better to think of it as a juiced up iPad running macOS. It likely won’t ever support running another OS.
yeah, Boot camp is ..... annoying who has the time to save their work shutdown, restart in the new OS and start their workflow all over. Too annoying, if it's for work I will recommend Parallels every time, the break in the workflow from Boot Camp is far greater than most people give it credit for.
Honestly, I'll troubleshoot any PC with anyone over any Mac any day.
Mac's have this reputation for being user friendly. That may have been the case - comparatively - back in tbe 80's and 90's, but when I had to set up an configure my fiance's 2013 era 27" iMac I was tearing my hair out I was so frustrated with the thing.
I would not get that with 8GB even for my kids. Personally I can’t get by at work without 32.
But I assume going above 16 would require moving from 2 memory banks to 4, and that likely requires more engineering. Obviously they’ll be working on that. For Mac Pro’s they’ll need to go way higher and they surely already know it’s doable.