New Macs

[tmtomh]

These look killer.

The MacBook Air in particular looks great: faster, no fan, 1.5x battery life, magic keyboard, 256GB SSD on the low-end model, $999/$899EDU.

I normally keep my Macs for at many years - my iMac is from late 2009, my music mini is from 2012 and my server mini is from 2011 - but have an early 2020 Intel MacBook Air and with a $600-$675 estimated trade-in value to Apple, I'm seriously considering the new Air. At a net cost of $300-$400, I think it would be worth it for the increased speed, 1.5x battery life, and lack of a fan. My current Air doesn't need to be plugged in to the charger most days, but on a heavy-use day it does get dicey sometimes late in the day, and it would be nice to be free of that. But the biggest thing for me - and the one flaw of my current Air - is that it gets hot quickly when the GPU is stressed (because the cooling design is good for the CPU but atrocious for the GPU), resulting in the fan cranking up. It doesn't happen often when I'm messing around on the Air while listening to music, but when it does, it's quite irritating - and it happens every time if I'm on a Zoom meeting and anyone shares their screen, super irritating and others can hear the fan sometimes when I'm talking. A single Apple Silicon die with CPU and GPU together, and thermal performance that does not require a fan - that would be nirvana!

 

[Ron Texas]

There are some creative software that are available exclusively on OSX or are better supported/optimized for OSX. That's not my world but I'm sure there others on here (particularly those involved in sound mixing and music production) who prefer or need to use Macs.

For non-professionals, I'd say the reasons (whether I personally agree or not) are: industrial design, Apple ecosystem (i.e., proprietary interoperability with iOS and other Apple products), grew up using Macs and never left, more expensive = more better.

My son is an industrial designer and everything ran on Windows. However, he said the interior design software all runs on Mac. There is a popular art gallery management program which is Mac only. Most expensive design software is subscription now. It's not just Adobe.

IBM uses Mac's because the reduced support costs outweigh the premium price of the hardware.

I've owned both Mac and Win and prefer Windows.

 

[q3cpma]

Wonder how much time it'll take for GNU/Linux and BSD to run on them.

 

[GeorgeWalk]

I just ordered the the M1 Macbook Pro last night 16Gig. I will have to post a review when I get it. One area that concerns me is that I won't be able to run my old Win/Intel VMs on it under VMware Fusion due to the different chip architectures. I will be able to run ARM Linux, however. I do have a tower Win/Intel box that I can run those on when needed.

I wounder what the audio performance will be? I couldn't find an specs on the audio interface.

 

[tmtomh]

I just ordered the the M1 Macbook Pro last night 16Gig. I will have to post a review when I get it. One area that concerns me is that I won't be able to run my old Win/Intel VMs on it under VMware Fusion due to the different chip architectures. I will be able to run ARM Linux, however. I do have a tower Win/Intel box that I can run those on when needed.

I wounder what the audio performance will be? I couldn't find an specs on the audio interface.

Are you sure about that? MacOS Big Sur includes Rosetta2, a seamless translation layer that allows Apple silicon-only apps to run on Intel Macs. And while I know Apple's presentations are always a bit vague and "optimistic" about performance, it seems that the M1 is so far superior to the current Intel chip models in the equivalent Macs that even with the performance penalty of Rosetta translation, most Intel-only apps should run at similar speeds on the new architecture.

 

[Wes]

seamless??

 

[Berwhale]

Are you sure about that? MacOS Big Sur includes Rosetta2, a seamless translation layer that allows Apple silicon-only apps to run on Intel Macs. And while I know Apple's presentations are always a bit vague and "optimistic" about performance, it seems that the M1 is so far superior to the current Intel chip models in the equivalent Macs that even with the performance penalty of Rosetta translation, most Intel-only apps should run at similar speeds on the new architecture.

Apples claims of 'up to 3.5x faster CPU performance' are caveated with this:

1. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based MacBook Air systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with prerelease Final Cut Pro 10.5 using a 55-second clip with 4K Apple ProRes RAW media, at 4096x2160 resolution and 59.94 frames per second, transcoded to Apple ProRes 422. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air.

I'm assuming that the copy of Final Cut Pro running on the M1 has been re-written/compiled for ARM. I think that if you ran the x64 version of Final Cut Pro on the M1 (using Rosetta2), the results would be somewhat different.

 

[Vasr]

Are you sure about that? MacOS Big Sur includes Rosetta2, a seamless translation layer that allows Apple silicon-only apps to run on Intel Macs. .

I think you mean the other way around. Rosetta2 allows Intel apps to run on ARM (Apple Silicon) architecture for the transition since there will not be many native ARM applications on Macs to start with.

But any such emulator has a significant performance penalty and may not allow the kind of direct hardware access some apps need (in particular VM hypervisors).

 

[GeorgeWalk]

I've worked with emulators before. They can have a significant performance hit. I am not sure how VMware will handle this. I looked at their website and didn't see any mention of the M1 chip. I ma reach out to a few people and ask (I used to work at VMware some years ago.)

 

[Berwhale]

I've worked with emulators before. They can have a significant performance hit. I am not sure how VMware will handle this. I looked at their website and didn't see any mention of the M1 chip. I ma reach out to a few people and ask (I used to work at VMware some years ago.)

https://flings.vmware.com/esxi-arm-edition

But...

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hfkdlg

 

[Vasr]

It will be interesting to see if they will allow Windows (arm64 binaries) to run natively on these new Macs. The ability to run both on the Intel Macs has been a requirement for some of its customer base. Parallel or VMware may port their arm64 native hypervisors to run Windows on them unless Apple prevents it by intent.

While Apple calls it M1 for marketing reasons, the underlying CPU is arm64 with the same instruction set. And there is a lot of software already ported to arm64. But Apple may have soft and hard conditions on what can run legally on them.

 

[GeorgeWalk]

For those that are interested, Apple is giving 10% off to veterans today. I just cancelled my order from yesterday and reordered with the the discount.

 

[tmtomh]

I think you mean the other way around. Rosetta2 allows Intel apps to run on ARM (Apple Silicon) architecture for the transition since there will not be many native ARM applications on Macs to start with.

But any such emulator has a significant performance penalty and may not allow the kind of direct hardware access some apps need (in particular VM hypervisors).

D'oh! Yes, sorry, mistyped - I indeed meant to write "allows Intel apps to run on Apple silicon Macs."

I hear your and others' points about the performance penalty, and as noted in my prior comment I also get that Apple's speed comparisons are not to be taken as average use cases. At the same time, the original Rosetta had what I believe was a pretty minor speed hit for non-graphic-intensive PowerPC apps running in emulation on Intel Macs, and the performance bump from the current Intel chips to the M1 - including integrated graphics performance bump - appears to be larger than the speed bump from PowerPC to the first Intel chips back in 2006 or whenever.

I could be wrong of course - but I don't know that there's yet evidence to call Apple's M1 performance claims BS. Rosy, cherry picked, sure - but not necessarily false or uniformly exaggerated. There are metrics out there already, I believe, comparing A14X and so on Apple chips to various Intel chips and they stack up shockingly well.

 

[Vasr]

I am curious about what this might imply to the Hackintosh community going forward. x86 MacOS will be around for a long time and several versions since Apple is still selling Intel Macs. So that will still be available for Hackintoshes for a while.

When MacOS becomes Apple-Silicon only, Hackintoshes will need an emulation layer which is possible but not if reliance on a security chip becomes a necessary condition for running MacOS on future Apple-Silicon.

 

[Vasr]

Personally, I would avoid the first generation hardware of these just as I would avoid first generation AVRs and Pre/Pros. Have been bitten far too many times buying Apple hardware early in their lifetime. The best bang for the buck comes somewhere between 3rd and 5th iterations with the biggest power, memory and other jumps from the early generations.

Since Intel macs and support for them will continue for at least another 3-5 years.

The software base would also have been ported and stabilized by then for native apps.

But if you are one of the Apple fans that upgrade at every generation... and get the latest...

 

[GeorgeWalk]

Not an Apple fanboy. I have a 2012 Macbook Pro and it is time for me to upgrade. Just thought I would give this a try. The chip technology in the M1 looks to be an upgrade to the A14Bionic used in the iPad Air 4. So not completely new technology.

 

[Ron Texas]

Dwight Silverman in his newspaper column made a headline complaint about the 16GB memory limit. I did not think there was that much demand for 32GB, and it could just be bias. He felt it did not matter in the Air. This could probably be changed by substituting different memory chips.

 

[MZKM]

my iMac is from late 2009

Does it still run well? I have an iMac that I bought from ~2010, and while I can get it up and running, it isn’t that fast and overheats easy, the fans kick on and stay on even when on standby, so I just have it off.
My mother has a Mac Mini she bought a few years ago and all she does on it is spreadsheets really, and that too has become unbearably slow, lots of beachball waiting.

That said, I have a 2013 MBP from my work and it holds up.
As for the keyboard, I was using someone’s newish MB with touchbar and I hated the keyboard. So if that is still the current gen (and somehow it was worse before), I don’t know how ai feel about that.

The normal iPad in 32GB for like $300 is a deal that‘s really screaming to me though.
That said, I did just order the new 12 Pro Max, and the tiny increase in screen size over my current 11 Pro Max may hold me over (can’t be spending too much money).

Anyone know if the iPad can run the browser version of Google Sheets with ease? Running it on my iPhone causes crashes (the app is fine, but isn’t fully featured).

 

[GeorgeWalk]

Dwight Silverman in his newspaper column made a headline complaint about the 16GB memory limit. I did not think there was that much demand for 32GB, and it could just be bias. He felt it did not matter in the Air. This could probably be changed by substituting different memory chips.

I am currently using a 2012 Macbook Pro with 8 GB memory and I occasionally have memory related slowdowns. If you have a lot of apps open and browser windows/tabs open they can eat memory fast (Chrome is memory hog).

The memory in the new M1 Macbooks is not upgradable. Unlike previous MBPs (which were also non-upgradable) in which the memory was soldered to the boards, the M1 memory is inside the chip. Getting past 16GB may not be possible given the current state of technology to fabricate these parts.

 

[Ron Texas]

I am currently using a 2012 Macbook Pro with 8 GB memory and I occasionally have memory related slowdowns. If you have a lot of apps open and browser windows/tabs open they can eat memory fast (Chrome is memory hog).

The memory in the new M1 Macbooks is not upgradable. Unlike previous MBPs (which were also non-upgradable) in which the memory was soldered to the boards, the M1 memory is inside the chip. Getting past 16GB may not be possible given the current state of technology to fabricate these parts.

The memory is in the CPU for real? That would be a performance enhancer.