These Apple M1 chips are out of this world

Forums › Laptops and mobile computers › These Apple M1 chips are out of this world - time to switch?

Batman

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#280307 7-Dec-2020 19:50

I have never touched a Mac because they are so overpriced and restrictive ...

But the new M1 chip might just be a game changer. Double the performance double the battery life ... I don't know man if I need ultraportable with all day battery ... maybe you need one of those!

Anyone on a windows laptop (who has never touched a Mac) think the same?

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#2617766 7-Dec-2020 20:03

Wait for gen 4 and 5 - that seems to be when apple makes the genuinely awesome updates (think iPhone 4 to 5). The M1 is the first gen, the clock speeds aren’t being mentioned and there’s a lot of code to port over. If windows support becomes available that would be great for how I work.

No doubt new connectors will be involved again, because Apple 🙄

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Antoniosk

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#2617771 7-Dec-2020 20:11

How does the M1 change your overpriced and restrictive opinion?

You could argue its even more restrictive now as there's no bootcamp available yet

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#2617782 7-Dec-2020 20:28

I got a Mac mini to try out and so far it’s great.
A few issues with apps that aren’t ported yet so need Rosetta 2 but otherwise no issues.
I do really need a windows device though for my job so it might replace the family iMac instead and I’ll go back to my NUC.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

Batman

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#2617850 7-Dec-2020 22:49

dfnt:

How does the M1 change your overpriced and restrictive opinion?

it doesn't. speed and battery life (hence light build as smaller battery needed) - potentially trumping them.

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#2617851 7-Dec-2020 22:51

antoniosk:

Wait for gen 4 and 5 - that seems to be when apple makes the genuinely awesome updates (think iPhone 4 to 5). The M1 is the first gen, the clock speeds aren’t being mentioned and there’s a lot of code to port over. If windows support becomes available that would be great for how I work.

No doubt new connectors will be involved again, because Apple 🙄

yes these are the exact things holding me back. i can't see how windows 10 works with M1? instructions would be different?

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#2617853 7-Dec-2020 23:00

Windows does work on an M1.
Its just not that simple.
https://twitter.com/_AlexGraf/status/1332081983879569415?s=19

Ramblings from a mysterious lady who's into tech. Warning I may often create zingers.

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#2617866 8-Dec-2020 01:03

antoniosk:

Wait for gen 4 and 5 - that seems to be when apple makes the genuinely awesome updates (think iPhone 4 to 5). The M1 is the first gen, the clock speeds aren’t being mentioned and there’s a lot of code to port over. If windows support becomes available that would be great for how I work.

No doubt new connectors will be involved again, because Apple 🙄

3-4 was a huge move, 4s-5 hmmmm. While yes the M1 is first gen, remember that Apple have been in the silicon game a while now with their iOS devices. I get the impression if you look at clock speed on paper then Intel will beat it every time, but I'm not sure that tells the full story.

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#2617887 8-Dec-2020 07:48

You *can* run Windows 10 on an M1 Mac. Just like many many software providers, Parallels has not completed its implementation of Parallels on ARM, but does have a preview public beta version available. One of my guys has this up and it works pretty well.

there is nothing to stop Microsoft from offering Windows for M1 also - but who knows if they will or not?

The M1’s work fine, there is no reason to wait unless you need dual 4K screen support or a larger than 13-inch laptop screen or more than 2 USBC ports.

The M1 has been benchmarked to exceed the 2020 16-inch MBP in performance.

antoniosk

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#2617895 8-Dec-2020 08:12

BlinkyBill:

You *can* run Windows 10 on an M1 Mac. Just like many many software providers, Parallels has not completed its implementation of Parallels on ARM, but does have a preview public beta version available. One of my guys has this up and it works pretty well.

there is nothing to stop Microsoft from offering Windows for M1 also - but who knows if they will or not?

The M1’s work fine, there is no reason to wait unless you need dual 4K screen support or a larger than 13-inch laptop screen or more than 2 USBC ports.

The M1 has been benchmarked to exceed the 2020 16-inch MBP in performance.

Yep. I've been involved in emulation and virtual machines for a looong time, and its a pretty core tool of the IT industry to make one thing pretend to be another. How well it does that task is the detail, and the parallels team sound pretty good. I also think the 1st gen chip was enough to get to market in volume and look impressive, but the real gains will come in gen 3 chips in 2022 - 16/32 core designs - combined with 18 months of software development and tuning across the board.

How this turns into new device form factors will be fun to watch.

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#2617896 8-Dec-2020 08:14

BlinkyBill:

You *can* run Windows 10 on an M1 Mac. Just like many many software providers, Parallels has not completed its implementation of Parallels on ARM, but does have a preview public beta version available. One of my guys has this up and it works pretty well.

there is nothing to stop Microsoft from offering Windows for M1 also - but who knows if they will or not?

The M1’s work fine, there is no reason to wait unless you need dual 4K screen support or a larger than 13-inch laptop screen or more than 2 USBC ports.

The M1 has been benchmarked to exceed the 2020 16-inch MBP in performance.

Depends on your use case, Docker don't run at the moment which will throw off quite a few devs.

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#2617901 8-Dec-2020 08:42

Docker can be made to run on M1, Docker Desktop doesn’t support M1 as yet, like many many software products. My virtualisation guy has Docker running on M1.

VM on M1 in early stages of usefulness.

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#2617905 8-Dec-2020 08:45

I don't think I'd buy something 2-5X the price with no ports just to run windows on an emulator ;p

If it's 2x the price and it's twice as fast out of the box with native support for things I can learn to use and twice the battery life and half the weight - that would do it.

Currently have a intel laptop that is 15.6" weighing 1700g with 10 hr battery life with its top of the range CPU.

So if we can get to 850g and 20 hrs and twice as fast ...

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#2617911 8-Dec-2020 09:00

My M1 MacBook Air finally arrived yesterday and it's a speedy little beast. Going to make my daily iMac 5K grunt work feel painfully slow in comparison.

After obliterating PCs in the laptop space, I cannot wait to see what Apple can do with their desktop silicon where there's no thought given to battery life.

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#2617929 8-Dec-2020 09:42

Go my MacBook Air M1 the other day as well. Much faster than my 15" MacBook Pro 2018. Also love that there's no fan! No issue with any apps, just waiting for Parallels to release the new version for M1 support.

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#2617936 8-Dec-2020 10:04

Benjip:

After obliterating PCs in the laptop space

While they are fast I wouldnt quite say the "obliterated PCs" - statistics are easy to manipulate to the result you want (especially when Apple are not publishing what benchmarks or systems they used)

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3596814/new-macbook-air-is-not-faster-than-98-percent-of-pc-laptops.html

Having said that as @Batman mentioned there are other compeling factors such as power usage that interest me more that "speed".

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