New Apple M1 range

Teetonetal

RaymondLin said:

guitarmangler said:

I’ve very tempted to get one of the laptops , but will wait for someone to review first. From what I can see, the air and the MacBook Pro are almost the same except that the MacBook has better battery life.
If it runs logic well, I’ll get an air.

MBP generally have a better screen, they used to have better graphic and of course the touch bar.  The speakers too are better on the MBP and also more ports, 4 vs 2.

But this releases closes the gap significantly, however the MBP has a fan and the MBA is silent, which suggests the MBA would be locked at a lower clockspeed or the throttle ceiling would be lower than the MBP.  Which then is the same as you compare it to the Mac Mini.

I would like a Mac Mini to replace my 9 year old iMac, but I also don't want to be a Beta Tester so will definitely wait until reviews and tear down before buying.  For one thing I like to know how easy it is to upgrade the RAM in the Mac Mini.

Hadn't noticed that, but goes news if true. I have never moved from my 2012 mini as I fully maxed it out and it runs well - now just starting to creak, but I can't afford a top of the line apple from the current range to replace it.  Will be nice if there is at least a small upgrade path.

mcsdan

I've placed an order for a mac mini M1 with 16GB RAM and 256SSD.

We run all 2012 mac minis with upgraded RAM (16) and 128GB SSD. I've been aware of Apples intention to move away from Intel for a couple of years so have held on but the 2012 mac minis are showing their age now and 8 years of reliable usage an upgrade is due plus no official support for Big Sur (without dosdue patches ) .  The 16GB RAM on chip limit is a bit worrying but should be sufficient for next 2-3 years. I can claim back the VAT and claim FYA against corporation tax so the price reduces the £899 purchase to around the £600 mark in real terms (20% VAT and 19% FYA Corp Tax)

I'm only doing 1 of these atm to see how it works out before doing the others.

Danny1969

stickyfiddle said:

I'm definitely interested in a new MBP in the next year or so - probably a 13, or new 14 if & when that arrives. But I'm not sure I want to be first in line for such a big change. 

That's very wise, there's generally some issues with every new product but early MBP adapters can get really screwed. The early touchbars with the LCD cable issue affected quite a few of my customers. They were left with no display on MBP's that were less than 4 years old and required complete LCD units as the display cable is integrated into the LCD at the manufacturing stage,  not a changeable part like all the MBP's before. All MBP's and Airs are Display port  internally now not LVDS and the USB C system that controls charging handshaking as well as serial. The T2 chip causes a lot of problems with dropouts when using USB2 audio interfaces. Ok with TB interfaces as far as i know but a bummer is your old USB2 interface is working fine. 
i won't get to see any of this new stuff for 3 years unless it's spill or dropped damage so who knows, these new machines might be great but all the MBP's I've seen since the last Retina around 2016 have been pretty bad design wise. I own a 2007, 2012, 2015 and 2017 and I prefer the 2012 15" model as it's actually faster in real life use. On paper it isn't but the larger body and twin fan design means the SMC is happy for it to run at full pelt constantly. That's rarely the case for the more modern 13" Touchbar models and the Air after a couple of years so take the paper specs with a pinch of salt. 

16Gb seems 2 little for a modern machine, that was a good spec 8 years ago but not now. 

ThePrettyDamned

Looks neat, but 16gb of ram will turn some pros away I think - when photo editing, ram is everything.

I shoot 20mp photos and have a 16gb ram pc and it sometimes gets close - lots of modern cameras shoot larger files and offer uncompressed formats that can really stretch a system.

I know nothing about video editing but them seem confident these machines are up for it. Look nice! 

Funkfingers

Confucius, he say, never buy the first version of any new Apple product.

The rush to market means that there will always be something unfinished or incomplete about it.

My elderly MBP is overdue for replacement. I shall be keeping a keen eye on the new releases but not diving in yet. 

WiresDreamDisasters

One of our devs has one incoming. Will be interesting to see if the CPU usage claims hold up.

Teetonetal

Teetonetal said:

RaymondLin said:

guitarmangler said:

I’ve very tempted to get one of the laptops , but will wait for someone to review first. From what I can see, the air and the MacBook Pro are almost the same except that the MacBook has better battery life.
If it runs logic well, I’ll get an air.

MBP generally have a better screen, they used to have better graphic and of course the touch bar.  The speakers too are better on the MBP and also more ports, 4 vs 2.

But this releases closes the gap significantly, however the MBP has a fan and the MBA is silent, which suggests the MBA would be locked at a lower clockspeed or the throttle ceiling would be lower than the MBP.  Which then is the same as you compare it to the Mac Mini.

I would like a Mac Mini to replace my 9 year old iMac, but I also don't want to be a Beta Tester so will definitely wait until reviews and tear down before buying.  For one thing I like to know how easy it is to upgrade the RAM in the Mac Mini.

Hadn't noticed that, but goes news if true. I have never moved from my 2012 mini as I fully maxed it out and it runs well - now just starting to creak, but I can't afford a top of the line apple from the current range to replace it.  Will be nice if there is at least a small upgrade path.

So it seems the RAM is configurable, but not upgradeable, Boo.

monquixote

Teetonetal said:

Teetonetal said:

RaymondLin said:

guitarmangler said:

I’ve very tempted to get one of the laptops , but will wait for someone to review first. From what I can see, the air and the MacBook Pro are almost the same except that the MacBook has better battery life.
If it runs logic well, I’ll get an air.

MBP generally have a better screen, they used to have better graphic and of course the touch bar.  The speakers too are better on the MBP and also more ports, 4 vs 2.

But this releases closes the gap significantly, however the MBP has a fan and the MBA is silent, which suggests the MBA would be locked at a lower clockspeed or the throttle ceiling would be lower than the MBP.  Which then is the same as you compare it to the Mac Mini.

I would like a Mac Mini to replace my 9 year old iMac, but I also don't want to be a Beta Tester so will definitely wait until reviews and tear down before buying.  For one thing I like to know how easy it is to upgrade the RAM in the Mac Mini.

Hadn't noticed that, but goes news if true. I have never moved from my 2012 mini as I fully maxed it out and it runs well - now just starting to creak, but I can't afford a top of the line apple from the current range to replace it.  Will be nice if there is at least a small upgrade path.

So it seems the RAM is configurable, but not upgradeable, Boo.

If you watch the video the whole thing is on one wafer of silicon.

There literally isn't a RAM chip to replace. 

These macs are going to be essentially an iPad Pro with a keyboard and will have a similar level of upgradability and repairability.

chrisj1602

Luckily for me, I got the latest 2020 MacBook Air back in April... oh. 

RaymondLin

Part of me is glad to have an intel MBP as these can use external GPU, the M1 chip cannot. 

Bridgehouse

For someone who uses a Mac for business purposes and needs it out and about a lot, the battery life figures are jaw dropping. 

For me, that’s worth the entry price alone

John_A

chrisj1602 said:

Luckily for me, I got the latest 2020 MacBook Air back in April... oh. 

Bought a new iMac 2 months ago . It's still a great machine and does everything I want it to.  I say let the dust settle and upgrade in 18 months 

guitarcookie1

Bridgehouse said:

For someone who uses a Mac for business purposes and needs it out and about a lot, the battery life figures are jaw dropping. 

For me, that’s worth the entry price alone

Same here. My 2015 MBP will now only last on its battery for about 1/2 a day. A right pita if I have to visit clients to work.

Danny1969

guitarcookie1 said:

Bridgehouse said:

For someone who uses a Mac for business purposes and needs it out and about a lot, the battery life figures are jaw dropping. 

For me, that’s worth the entry price alone

Same here. My 2015 MBP will now only last on its battery for about 1/2 a day. A right pita if I have to visit clients to work.

Change the battery, if it's a A1502 or similar the battery is around £75 for a quality unit. 

digitalscream

The trouble is, so much of that presentation is fairly far-fetched. Claims of 3x CPU performance are...laughable.

The claim of 3.5x (I think) performance compared with the (unspecified) "best selling Windows laptop" is useless without a base, for obvious reasons.

Then they talk about GPU performance, which is also compared with the low-end onboard graphics of your average business machine, not a machine where the GPU is used for anything other than accelerating the desktop display. And then there's the claim of editing 4 ProRes streams simultaneously, as though that's something impressive. ProRes is a very low-complexity codec, designed specifically to allow that; it's more a test of system bandwidth than anything. If you want to show off the great performance of your chip, you do the same thing with h.265 or similar.

And, of course, they've pulled the ultimate no-right-to-repair trick of putting the RAM on the CPU package, thus building in direct obsolescence. That's fine in a laptop, but the Mini or the soon-to-be-announced iMac/iMac Pro? Nope.

Then factor in the fact that productivity apps like Photoshop and most DAWs won't be available in native form until next year, not to mention plugins etc, and it's a bit of a crapshoot.

EDIT: One interesting question which nobody seems to be able to answer yet is...how will it work if you've got a DAW running native ARM code, using plugins running under Rosetta? There are three questions: 1 - Will it work? 2 - What's performance going to be like? 3 - Will it have an effect on processing latency?

I'm all for the idea of ARM chips taking over the desktop/laptop world - as far as I'm concerned, proper RISC chips like ARM have always been a fundamentally better proposition than x86 and that hasn't changed since the late 80s - but the claims Apple are making here are pure marketing BS, and it's clearly being implemented in a way that's customer-unfriendly.

thecolourbox

If you use it long enough does it become the A1?

crunchman

digitalscream said:

.....  but the claims Apple are making here are pure marketing BS, and it's clearly being implemented in a way that's customer-unfriendly.

What's new?

digitalscream

crunchman said:

digitalscream said:

.....  but the claims Apple are making here are pure marketing BS, and it's clearly being implemented in a way that's customer-unfriendly.

What's new?

True enough. My worry is that it'll actually hold back the uptake of such an idea, rather than make it more possible.

Philtre

monquixote said:

These macs are going to be essentially an iPad Pro with a keyboard and will have a similar level of upgradability and repairability.

Exactly.

And in future iterations will have a similar level of usability and lockdown.

RaymondLin

No more Hackintosh!

(In before someone says "you can hack anything"...sure you can, but not as easily.  In before someone says "we will see!")