I'm very curious, what is the popular opinion about new M1 MacBooks?
I read that you can't run docker on them, and Virtual box/ VMware are broken too

It's a Mac, so it's irrelevant.

Nice to see some development of ARM based solutions but it's Apple so no one will be able to use it anyway, so it does not matter in the big picture.

Are they out yet? If not, no one knows what they are.

@electrineer What thing are you referring to "is out
yet"

@Sony-wf-1000xm3 oh, they are already being shipped? Weird that I haven't seen any benchmarks yet.

@electrineer The benchmarks are mostly in reviews and the big tech tubers have not done them till now.
Some videos on them which have some benchmarks :-
https://youtube.com/watch/...

https://youtube.com/watch/...

@iiii "it's Apple so no one will be able to use it anyway"...huh? I get that some people dislike Apple and that's fine, but that statement is legit wtf. I thought we evaluated things by engineering merit here.

A friend bought one and we spent a few hours fiddling with it. It works fine for just about any kind of use apart from heavy gaming or really high end video editing. They're amazing machines depending on the price in your country. Battery life is crazy. Virtualization support is not there yet but it's coming. It chews through pretty much anything you throw at it that can be done in under 16GB of RAM.

ColdFusion TV has done a video which explains why the M1 chip has significance for the tech industry. Basically Intel can't improve their X86 cpus fast enough anymore because it's architecture is so complex that it becomes a show stoper.

What i've seen so far is that the M1 performs really well even for non optimized software.

ColdFusion TV - How Apple just changed the entire Industry.
https://youtu.be/OuF9weSkS68

It seems to be a decent piece of hardware design.

But in my opinion the hype is wrong.

In a nutshell is Apple now on the way to completely seal off their platform.

It's NOT an CPU. It's a SOC.

Big difference.

And as it is a SOC, it means it cannot be repaired / replaced / upgraded I guess.

Apples repair program sucked before... I don't want to imagine what comes next.

I don't want to diminish the effort Apple made - but it's very clear that this means Apple will completely shut the platform door...

X86 won't go away. And ARM has become an alternative for some segments.

But ARM is heavily fragmented - and I think Apple will increase the fragmentation even further.

Keep the zealotry low, please. It's a big step - yes. But it is neither an revolution nor "an all good move".

@IntrusionCM Honestly when I saw it was SOC I thought that they should have dropped the price on it. (Or drastically increased the recycle incentive)

If you make a system where everything or nothing works based on a SOC it should be cheaper IMO. The price needs to be low enough that you can recycle it and get a new one every few years. My friend got a 2015 MacBook and it died in 2017. She was choked that a $1300 machine could die in 2.5 years and she had no way to fix it besides spending $700 for Apple to do an aftermarket replacement.

@RememberMe I mean that their tech is unusable by any other company. It's a closed infrastructure. So their advancement is irrelevant for anyone else, as there's no way of using and improving it.

And mobile Ryzen chips are still better overall than M1 and more compatible with common PC software.

@iiii sure, at what power consumption? I'm looking at this Macbook Air shredding my workstation laptop while being *fanless*. Comparing 10+ W chips to a 10W *max* (it doesn't go anywhere close to that) chip is dubious at best. Until Intel and AMD go for asymmetric processing (which Intel is doing with Lakefield) and 5nm, they're way behind at this.

True on the closed infrastructure, but so are AMD and Intel processors. We don't even know what branch predictor Intel processors use. There's no community development there. The only improvements are in the software, and Apple devices certainly can contribute there. It'll also force new high performance ARM designs (look at Cortex A78).

It would be cool if other manufacturers would want a piece of this cake and start collaborate on the open source RISC-V processor standard.
If the big tech companies would put their weight behind this we'd see exponential improvement in processor tech and performance.

https://venturebeat.com/2019/12/...
RISC-V grows globally as an alternative to Arm and its ... - VentureBeat

I really wonder what the point of this thing even is. They build something for maximum battery runtime, I get this. But the tiny screen sucks without external monitor, and if you have an external monitor, you also have wall power.

Maybe for mobile web browsing? Ok, but then the keyboard gets in the way, and a tablet would be more convenient.

Also, everyone: look it's ARM! It's so low power because the A20 gate in the x86 alone draws 30W in standby!!111

Nobody: yeah it's 5nm at TSMC, which is also why a device with these meagre specs (RAM, SSD) is so expensive that only Apple fans will buy it.

On the upside, their money also helps kickstarting TSMCs 5nm process which AMD can use later for less money and probably better yield.

@Fast-Nop 5nm is a definite advantage, but Apple SoCs were already competitive at 7nm as well. For the power draw, even A12X's performance makes for a compelling product.

I/O is a genuine problem and is because of its origins as a mobile SoC, which doesn't need that much. That's being worked on apparently.

These are just two relatively small devices, the high end stuff with more IO and larger screens is still to come.

I hate to sound like an Apple fanboy because I'm not, they've just done a really good job engineering wise. A lot of their design decisions make complete sense when you look at computer architecture principles and the markets they serve.

@RememberMe Yeah I guess the new Macbook could be a really amazing product if it had a standard M.2 SSD slot, 15.6" screen, and if it were able to run Linux well. But then again, it wouldn't be an Apple product.

Ask Louis Rossman

@Fast-Nop you'll have to wait for new Qualcomm/MediaTek SoCs for that :p
Which is probably going to happen with Cortex A78C designs, which looks pretty kickass. It's an exciting time for comp. arch.

Also TSMC 5nm apparently has great yields, so it's not as big a factor in price uplift as you might think. Huge upfront engineering costs yes, true.

It's weird that the first 5nm commercial chip is a SoC, usually FPGAs bag that because they're huge, regular designs that really push the fab so companies like developing with them.

@Fast-Nop overtaking intels performance in just 6 years.

@heyheni Intel isn't the reference point in the x86 world anymore.

We will see how it pans out.

As Apple is closed platform - it won't play a large role.

Even _if_ x86 lost it's performance crown forever, it doesn't matter - Apple will stick to Apple and Darwin, which is a red flag for many market segments.

Someone else - as in a global player with big resources like AMD / Intel / NVIDIA would need to introduce an open platform with broad OS support.

NVidia bought ARM... Which might become a problem in the future.

There are lots of possibilities here.

The only thing that's evident is that the next 5 years will be interesting. Especially when contracts need to be renewed.

Intel and AMDs legal issues are still not done - after 20 years.

Maybe NVidia does the same with Apple.

Uh you can run 6 screens without performance issues on the M6. 😲
Six Displays on M6 mac mini and MacBook Air
https://youtu.be/Kq_FyjcAULA

@heyheni why are they so locked down to begin with so you need all the dongles? (I guess I know the answer)

@RememberMe there's is no competition on or around Apple platform, while there is competition among Intel and AMD.

The same goes to ARM mobile platform where several companies compete, but not with Apple.

Apple is irrelevant in the big picture.