There are times I miss Ctein, and this is one.
My first Mac was...well, the first Mac, the 128k Macintosh (as it was called then) of 1984, that Orwellian year. I also had an original ImageWriter, Apple's first dot-matrix printer for the Macintosh. I bailed early on the Macintosh Classic, which was a pricing breakthrough but just too limited for its time. I replaced it with an early Ur-laptop, then called a "portable," the PowerBook 160 of 1992. I loved that thing, and clung to it for too long. Still have it, actually. I worked for years putting magazines together on a super-reliable Quadra 605 (with a black-and-white monitor, no joke). I jumped on board with the original "Blueberry" iMac (a Bondi Blue G3), Steve Jobs' first consumer product after his (Messianic? MacArthurian?) return to Apple in '97. That one ate a CD and wouldn't give it up. I practically had to take a crowbar to it. And so on. All in all, between school, work, and home, I think I've owned or been assigned to work on a total of about 17 Macs over the years. Maybe 18. I've kinda lost count, if I'm honest.
But I'm not a computerphile. Never got into it. Never subscribed to all those Mac magazines back in the '80s and '90s, Macworld, MacUser. Never been an enthusiast. I used computers for creative work but just as tools. Never knew much about it, although I probably know more than I think I do after all these years. In other words, I was pretty much "that guy" the Macintosh was aimed at in the first place.
So I hope the real Mac geeks amongst ye will pitch in and help me out here. I don't have the deep chops to put the new Apple Silicon M1 chip into perspective. I watched the whole Event this time, and some impressive claims are being made—
Packed with an astonishing 16 billion transistors, the new M1 chip integrates the CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, I/O, and so much more onto a single tiny chip. Combined with the new macOS Big Sur, M1 delivers category-smashing speed, mind-bending graphics, and power efficiency and battery life that defy belief.
—But where on the spectrum between truth and marketing hyperbole do those claims fall? I wouldn't know.
Ctein is probably all over it.
Anyway, here are some pre-order links to the new products with the M1 chip:
Late 2020 13.3" MacBook Pro with Retina Display
Late 2020 13.3" MacBook Air with Retina Display
Late 2020 Mac Mini
And here's B&H's Explora Page for the new M1 products if you want to read what they have to say.
Looking into my crystal ball, some future M1 iMac will probably be my next computer. What can I say? At this point it's just tradition.
Mike
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Eolake Stobblehouse: "I find that the most sober, precise, and readable assessments are found on TidBITS.com."
Mike replies: TidBITS suggests that the one to choose might be the M1 MacBook Air, because of the fact that it has no fan and that the two M1 MacBook Pro's might not offer enough of a performance premium. (The two higher-level MacBook Pro's retain their Intel chips, presumably because the M1 chip is limited to 16 GB of RAM, and perhaps because power users are less likely to want to be forced into macOS 11 right away.) Personally I like the fact that the Air finally dumps the unsatisfying butterfly keyboard—never liked that—and brings back the traditional Apple startup chime. Always liked that chime. :-)
Kenneth Tanaka: "I'm a long-time devoted Mac user, although I don't consider myself a 'geek.' But I don't think you really need to be a techie to understand this move. It's all about power and control.
"Yes, I'm certain that Apple's new processor brings advancements to the party. Power management, for example, has been one of the big issues since computers became predominantly batter-powered. The M1 claims to offer benefits here. And since gaming has also become a big priority for customers 3-D graphics processing has also taken a front seat with the new M1 processor.
"But ever since Apple left the PowerPC platform for Intel's platform 10+ years ago the writing seemed engraved on the wall; it would be just a matter of time before Apple would want to completely control (i.e. manufacture) its own CPUs and associated chip sets. To use a weak theoretical automotive analogy, how long would General Motors buy all their engines from Toyota? Since the time of that Intel partnership Apple's value has increased exponentially. They are now the wealthiest and most influential company in human history. So the move into the 'M1' was inevitable, even if it delivered no measurable performance advancements (which is possible).
"From a practical consumer perspective look for some relative bargains in Apple's Intel-based computers early next year as retailers try to clear inventories."
Richard T: "Jason Snell is the former editor of Macworld magazine and for several years now runs his own website at Sixcolors.com—excellent coverage that's also quite accessible. For old-school Mac users like Mike (or those wanting to learn more about Apple history!), Jason has started a great YouTube/article/podcast series called '20 Macs for 2020.' Includes wonderful articles/videos/podcasts. See here for the current list."
"...And to address the original question: yes, these chips appear to be extremely impressive. But note that Apple has announced a two-year transition window, so, as usual for tech products, it pays to wait if you have no pressing need to upgrade. The current M1-series-based lineup is very traditional (essentially identical hardware compared to the Intel equivalents) and future products (e.g. iMacs) may also provide hardware innovations."
Alex Mercado: "It boils down to latency and security—or in more pragmatic words, speed and control.
"The M1 is an integrated circuit (a system on a chip, or SoC) that incorporates much of the necessary components of the computer. Since it is integrated, the data transfer speeds amongst those components are significantly faster than on a traditional motherboard. As an analogy, think of SoC as a Costco, while a motherboard is akin to a shopping mall. You can find almost everything in the Costco rather quickly compared to roving a mall.
"As for security, Apple now controls the microcode the transistors on the SoC use to perform. Apple had to wait for Intel to create patches to address the Meltdown and Spectre threats that affected the CPUs a few years back, which, arguably, left Apple and their users susceptible to security threats.
"The M1 is completely managed by Apple, which significantly limits access to third parties. For comparison, iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad already work this way because Apple controls the A-series SoC in those devices.
"Yes an iDevice can be jailbroken, but its reliability and security are less than optimal for the average non-enthusiast. [Ed. does not understand this sentence. —Ed.]
"The marketing hyperbole for the M-series has much truth to it."
Robert Hudyma: "Be aware that Apple has been moving to control its entire Ecosystem slowly but surely. Saying good-bye to Intel and hello to ARM is part of that strategy.
"Current products are not upgradable or repairable by end-users or independent repair facilities.
"If your current MacBook Pro or Air has a failure, your data on the SSD is essentially not recoverable since it is soldered on the logic board.
"Also, the new macOS Big Sur is not supported on most Apple products older than eight years old so you can no longer keep your Operating System current.
"Another example is the new iPhone 12: individual modules such as the camera or battery are not end-user replaceable since they are serialized to each device and only Apple has the magic wand to make it work again.
"I think the right to repair is important and I am not purchasing any technology that cannot be repaired by me or a qualified technician. Louis Rossman has a popular YouTube channel that focuses on Apple product repairs. He is informative, outspoken and knowledgeable. He is worth a watch."
Mike asks: Cameras and cars too, and etc.? Because 'right to repair' as you call it is getting a lot more rare everywhere in products of all sorts, right? I learned last year that I don't have RtR for my five-year-old clothes washing machine, for example. A broken on-off switch(!) will total the motherboard which will total the whole machine.
Steve C: "Mike—I think, given how close the specs are, the most notable difference between the Air and Pro laptops is that the Air will probably have very similar peak performance to the Pro, but won't be able to sustain it for anywhere near as long without fans.
"@Robert Hudyma—right [to] repair is a concept I haven't thought much about but is really interesting. The usual thinking on the business side is the trade-off between modularity and integration. Integrated product/systems tend toward higher performance (and higher price), modular ones towards low cost. Alongside that, modular designs are inherently more repairable.
"It's the integration between components, their housings, the hardware and software (and now services) that makes Apple products unique. Ecosystem control is a benefit to both the company, and to users who don't value repairability as much as they do convenience and performance.
"The services approach to software, where everything is being updated all the time, that so many people hate is also what allows the company to stay ahead of the field. It prevents them from becoming weighted down by an ever-accumulating legacy of old versions, software interfaces, methods, system quirks, and security issues.
"The down side is that one day your otherwise perfectly fine device / software is no longer supported, and that sucks. The up side is that the company gets to keep pressing forward at speed. They could choose not to (which I expect many people here would love—myself included many days), but the press itself is relentless. Another company will simply take up the torch.
"Microsoft suffered badly under the weight of backward compatibility (between Windows and its many associated applications, drivers, systems) for many, many years. It's not a mistake, but it's a choice that has clear consequences.
"In slower-moving industries / technologies / products (hello white-goods!), integration around key parts is probably very deliberately about creating new purchases through planned failure and obsolescence. But Apple's desire to differentiate their whole multi-product, multi-service user experience such that each product makes the others better, kinda requires integration. I doubt they could wring such high size / performance from their camera system without it."
Steve C: "For anyone who's interested and moderately technically-minded, this piece on Apple's M1 and the A-series chips that lead to it is really impressive. The desire, vision, strategy, organisational focus and multi-year execution needed to run down a goal and outcome like this, in this space, is hard to over-estimate. To give you an idea of scale, the R&D investment that preceded the A-series semiconductor fabrication was in the order of building an aircraft carrier, or a New York City block every quarter."
Steve C: "One final comment on this—I promise—about the limited RAM. I've read in several places now, speculation that the combination of massive advances in the system-on-a-chip latency, and the integrated high-end SSDs make RAM much less of a bottleneck. Modern SSD memory is faster than RAM from only a few years ago. Storage and 'memory' are converging."
Andrew: "Shout out also to Google's Pixel line which has been blazing the computational photography route as well—what those phones achieve with relatively humdrum lenses and sensors shows, as Richard T commented, how much of the heavy-lifting can be done by the software these days. (And this isn't to invoke a Google/Apple, Android/iOS flame war—the best from both is seriously impressive.)
"Personally I loved the brief period just before the software took over from the hardware—fantastically-engineered phones like the 41MP Nokia 1020 and 1-inch-sensored Panasonic CM-1 have (mostly) been outclassed now, but how they went about their imaging business was a lot more on show than today."
Thom Hogan (partial comment): "As I wrote on my site: these are low-end Macs, and they're faster than a lot of high-end Macs. We're all waiting to see just what happens when Apple goes upscale with their chips, because what just happened to the MacBook Air and low-end Mini is pretty spectacular."
[For the full text of Partial Comments, see the full Comments section. —Ed.]
