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You say that now but realize that these M1's are new and don't have the software ready yet. I'm starting to see M1 users complain that their software of choice isn't working because reasons. Like this poor bastard who's trying to run Citra on his M1. I imagine Citra can't be compiled yet for the M1 even though there's an Android ARM port.
Of course it will run faster. It is a more powerful arms SoC then what is in the Surface. I don't care about Apple products and as a company as a whole but their ARM chips are pretty damn good for what they are. I can even acknowledge that as a Apple hater.
Early adopter: some of my existing stuff isn’t working but software is being developed
It's already faster than low-power Intel laptops (around 15W and below), and in some respects faster than higher-powered Intel and AMD chips. This is really adding commentary to the sad state of Windows on ARM.
Unless ARM has any significant advantages over x86, then we won't see Windows on ARM become successful. Even on my RPI3 the only really usable distro is Raspian, and it's advantage is being super cheap.
Fortunately the fastest computer isn't a Mac M1. Very good in it's power class but not the fastest. Even the i7 iMac is much faster in most productivity applications than the M1. That doesn't mean Apple won't make a faster variety of the M1, which could be the M1X. That also doesn't mean that AMD and Intel won't also come back with a more power efficient CPU themselves.
That's fine but I'm specifically talking about the iMac 27" 2020, which is using a Core i9 10 core high performance Intel chip.
Doesn't change the fact that Apple has wasted silicon to gain better x86 performance. It was that much of a priority for Apple.
I'd expect Apple to port all their apps to the M1, but this is not the same as Linux where (most, if not all?) of anyone's apps will get ported over to ARM.
Which screws over the consumer. You're not making this sound good.
How many ARM platforms you see that are like x86 where it's universal and there's no hoops to overcome to install it? Almost all ARM based machines are locked down and prevent anyone from doing anything without the manufacturers permission, with the exception of the Raspberry Pi's. Even porting Linux to the M1 requires a lot of work because Apple hasn't donated any code to support their new hardware. As Linus Torvalds explains.
Not Linux's fault. It's easy on x86 because we forget the x86 we use today is based on IBM's design years ago. Modern x86 machines are still IBM compatible machines. ARM doesn't have any standard to go by and therefore nearly each machine needs it's own special treatment. This is not Linux's fault but the hardware manufacturers fault, including Apple. This is where I hope Nvidia may jump in and standardize ARM. Each ARM machine has unique methods to boot and that's what's holding back ARM right now. You ever try putting a custom rom onto a Android phone? They're custom because everyone has a different method for booting the OS. This goes beyond per manufacturer to even per device.
Yeah, that's kind of my point. Apple's silicon is so good that their $999 ultrabook not just outperforms every PC 13in laptop, but you need to step up to a desktop to find a comparable x86 chip at 5x the power budget and 2x the price.
Microsoft’s back catalog is holding them back and they know it. Just about everybody does, and Apples API updates are handed out well in advance, the Mac mini dev kit went out over a year ago for developers to validate against. The only developers who get burned on updates are usually ones who have already abandoned that program or the people who maintain the “cheap” DJ stuff.
Ryzen is currently the best CPU for laptops and they're outdated compared to the desktop Ryzen 5000 series. Which is why you see so many Ryzen 5600X benchmarks because AMD hasn't updated their mobile chips yet for Zen3. Intel has dropped the ball long ago when it comes to laptop performance which is why they're not even a consideration when it comes to pitting against the M1. For whatever reason AMD is behind in their laptop chips in terms of their own technology. They're not using Zen3 for CPU cores and they're not even using RDNA1 for graphics, let alone RDNA2. When AMD finally updates their mobile APU's then the M1 may fall behind. Also most Ryzen 4700 and 4900 laptops are not $999. You want to compare the M1 then you should look at the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 14". Other than battery life it beats the M1 in almost everything, and that's still outdated in terms of what technology AMD has access to.
The idea is when Linux is working then things like software being ported is not as much of an issue as compared to Mac OSX. For example VLC is not yet ported to the Apple M1 but does work through Rosetta2. If Linux was ported then VLC would have been ported immediately, because that's how Linux do. The large and vast repository system that Linux has makes porting open source applications super easy. Apple depends on developers to port their applications, which they will do because unlike Linux, there's money to be made on Mac.
Apple consumers are usually not the smartest group of people. Who else would buy a $1k machine and become the beta tester?
Eventually they will, but that depends on how many people own a M1. The more people who own a M1 then the more reason developers have to port their apps. Hence why Apple has Rosetta2.
For the most part, open source code will always be maintained if people use it. How many proprietary applications on Mac you see open source?
Developers don't maintain code on Mac or Windows unless there's money to be made. Most likely developers will just make a new version of their software and require you to buy it... again, because that amount of work isn't free. The fact that Rosetta2 exists and works is reason enough for most developers not to care as well.
That’s true to a point, but if your competitors update their code for a native arm solution and you don’t and theirs is faster as a result they will move.
I would argue there is less to Beta test on the latest MacOS platform than there is on latest 20H2 update.
I’ve seen it, it’s why when my Mac users need a new machine I don’t try to sell them on a PC, and my PC users I won’t push to a Mac. They know what they know and they work well in those confines, but I’m not going to push them into environments they don’t because it’s a huge PITA for everybody in the vicinity.
As much as I dislike Windows... no. The difference here isn't just the OS but a backlog of software that may not work or work properly on the M1. On Windows 10 the issues with software are stuff that's like 20 years old, where with the new M1 could be new software as well as old.
Technically it's USB 4 and there's only 2 of them on the Apple M1. Also, USB 4 is USB 3.1 Gen 2 with Thunderbolt 3 support. Thunderbolt 4 is out and on other laptops, which is just a glorified USB-C port. I wouldn't call the MacBook Pro having the best I/O when other laptops have Thunderbolt 4, but considering there's almost no difference in performance it doesn't really matter. It still doesn't make the Macbook Pro m1 the best.
2 on the M1 but the old Intel 2020 16” has the 4, I would expect the same number on the new 16 if not 2 more when they get around to launching it.
Hit the nail on head - fully agreed.
My curent Intel MBP has 4 TB3 ports, and unlike any PC laptop on the market can run an eGPU, external NVME array, 40GBe for scientific equipment, and USB3 hub/10GBe docking station/an entire workstation's worth of peripherals all at full speed per port. I'd say that pretty much dominates the I/O of any PC laptop.
Ok... we are talking about the Apple M1 here right? Cool that you have 4 but Apple seems to have went down to 2 on the new M1 laptops. So it must have not been a big deal to have 4 if Apple is fine with 2.
If you have all that equipment, why would you even be using a laptop?
I get the feeling Apple is going to start segmenting their product lines even further, perhaps adding a Mac Mini Pro or something that will be full-featured out of the box.
You are missing his point.
There seems to be a VLC version for Mac, just not for ARM Mac. Not yet anyway.
The idea here is that Linux is used to the idea that other platforms may actually use it besides x86. There's a reason why VLC has been ported to ARM years ago while ARM Mac still hasn't.
Better yet why not FatELF on Linux? In all seriousness the reason why is probably the same reason why developers don't waste time on things like Fat Binaries. Because closed source application vendors need to jump through some rather ugly hoops to support more than one platform. Hence why Apple also included Rosetta2, because they know they struggle as well. Apple has switched CPU platforms so often that I'm surprised developers still continue to develop on Mac. Probably because Mac has a lot of rich idiots who throw money at Apple.
Realistically no Apple fanboy is going to install Ubuntu onto their M1. Considering that Apple has went the way of Nvidia and supplied no open source support, it'll be a while before the M1 sees Linux running on it. The graphic drivers on Apple hardware has like zero documentation and source code from Apple, and would be an immense undertaking to make a working driver for it. But lets say Apple were to supply this info and we got Linux working on it today, then today as a M1 user you'd have less problems waiting for developers to port their open source apps than Mac OSX. As you said Linux has had ARM support for years. Elementary OS is basically a Mac OSX clone running Ubuntu. Considering that Apple is starting from scratch then maybe Linux as a backbone for Mac OSX would have been better. Microsoft is going to do it eventually for Windows.
