M1 Macs Reviewed

[Bombastinator]

10 minutes ago, NotTheFirstDaniel said:

I don't see it that deeply. Every company in some way or another is trying to screw you over for their profit, so I just go with the product I like the best. No company is your friend TBH, they're all these "bandits".

True as far as it goes.  It becomes a question of method of attack and how personally dangerous it is.  Apple’s attitude seems to be “pay us lots of cash and we will make things that resist attack” Google’s attitude is “we demand to be paid in data not cash, because we can convert data into cash, by selling it to people who feel they can convert that data into even more cash, but you don’t get to choose how much you pay.  We try to keep you from noticing how much data and why people would be willing to pay for it”

 

At least with Apple the cash can be counted.

Edited November 19, 2020 by Bombastinator

[Video Beagle]

56 minutes ago, NotTheFirstDaniel said:

He talked about this on the WAN show. His response was something along the lines of "Apple doesn't like to do business with people they can't control". Hearing that, my first instinct was "You literally could not be more wrong". It literally sounded so whiny and babyish.

....

The actual reason why they don't do business with LTT is because they have done the two deadly sins of instantly losing all connection (or possible connection) with Apple. Those two deadly sins are Jailbreaking and Hackintoshing. ...

 

It's not good for his image, and it's low key ruining other people's images. Those words imply that people that do get review units only say good things about Apple and he's the only reviewer you can trust to give a fair review. It's just simply not true... But maybe I'm just reading too far into it.

 

I don't think it's those. Apple officially doesn't support jailbreaking and hackintoshing, there's always been this undercurrent that they support it and watch it to find new ideas.

 

I think it's the other things you mention. It's about image. Apple doesn't need whiny clickbait tech geeks. They're Apple. Everyone is going to watch them and cover them, so they're going with the professional(MKBD) or that fit the image they want to project (iJustine).

 

I think if they want to up their game and get Apple's attention they need to:

1) Stop with the clickbait Apple titles.  5 different videos last week with them last week.  Often good videos with good (generally) balanced info, but the titles...

2) Stop whining when you're not included in a pre-ship. It's most apparent with Apple, but if you watch videos, there's ones where Intel didn't include them, or other companies.

3) Stop being so defensive when you're called out. And for g-d's sake, don't double down on it.

4) Stop calling the top gay executive in the world by the name the biggest homophobe in the world called him by. I'm sure they find it a gigglefest, and don't think of the connotations, but its noticeable.

5) or to sum up..be more profesional. If you want to be seen as the top of the tech video market, act like it.

[NotTheFirstDaniel]

10 minutes ago, Video Beagle said:

4) Stop calling the top gay executive in the world by the name the biggest homophobe in the world called him by. I'm sure they find it a gigglefest, and don't think of the connotations, but its noticeable.

Tim Cook actually embraced the "Tim Apple" gag, if that's what your talking about.

 

But yes it was a year ago and that joke is old.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Video Beagle said:

 

I don't think it's those. Apple officially doesn't support jailbreaking and hackintoshing, there's always been this undercurrent that they support it and watch it to find new ideas.

 

I think it's the other things you mention. It's about image. Apple doesn't need whiny clickbait tech geeks. They're Apple. Everyone is going to watch them and cover them, so they're going with the professional(MKBD) or that fit the image they want to project (iJustine).

 

I think if they want to up their game and get Apple's attention they need to:

1) Stop with the clickbait Apple titles.  5 different videos last week with them last week.  Often good videos with good (generally) balanced info, but the titles...

2) Stop whining when you're not included in a pre-ship. It's most apparent with Apple, but if you watch videos, there's ones where Intel didn't include them, or other companies.

3) Stop being so defensive when you're called out. And for g-d's sake, don't double down on it.

4) Stop calling the top gay executive in the world by the name the biggest homophobe in the world called him by. I'm sure they find it a gigglefest, and don't think of the connotations, but its noticeable.

5) or to sum up..be more profesional. If you want to be seen as the top of the tech video market, act like it.

Apple has gigantic problems with hackentoshing.  The pear was a hackentosh.  Recently a food service app got the full baleful glare of apple legal merely because their logo happened to be similar.  lThey’ve been fighting it for years.  That’s why it keeps on getting harder to do with every revision.  Hackentoshing is what drove them to the security model that is serving them in such good stead now.  It’s not an original intent it’s a side issue with their problems with hackentoshing. I could see them hating rooting just as much, though very clearly they have no form ground to stand on with that one.   Rooting is part of what keeps their entire business legal.

Edited November 19, 2020 by Bombastinator

[Belgarathian]

Hey, so I heard you like emulation on your M1 so we are emulating windows 32 bit on x64-x86 and then emulating x86 using Rosetta 2 to run on ARM so we can play TF2 on your MBA.

 

 

[saltycaramel]

https://twitter.com/stalman/status/1329316282445905922

 

“it haz no photoshop”, one youtuber who hadn’t done his homework about Rosetta once said    (and supposedly he had had access to the DTK he was about to tear down before getting a call from Apple, could have turned it on and could have tried a couple of x86 apps before giving it back to his source)

[Video Beagle]

1 hour ago, saltycaramel said:

https://twitter.com/stalman/status/1329316282445905922

 

“it haz no photoshop”, one youtuber who hadn’t done his homework about Rosetta once said    (and supposedly he had had access to the DTK he was about to tear down before getting a call from Apple, could have turned it on and could have tried a couple of x86 apps before giving it back to his source)

further down that thread there's mention the beta of the m1 photoshop is available (I'd wonder if such)

 

[Belgarathian]

On 11/18/2020 at 6:54 PM, leadeater said:

Yea not happening, you don't find Mac OS on naval warships responsible for radar and fire control but you do find Windows. So as scary as you think that sounds the much broader and critical roles that Windows serves actually does make a vast difference compared to Mac OS.

 

Ignoring the fact it's much much more difficult than you're making out or think. There is no just cleaning up Windows code base, there is a slow progress that is happening now or starting an entirely new one, there isn't the third option you are wanting as it's simply not feasible.

At least warships are running XP, my old workplace had business critical systems on 3.1 and DOS.

[Brunoyu]

I was a bit skeptical about the benchmarks on Tiger lake, I checked on anandtech, and guess what I found

 

this benchmark 

On 11/17/2020 at 10:18 PM, randomhkkid said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

CPU performance:

  Hide contents

 

 

 
While the page for benchmark on Tiger lake

 

They are just playing dirty aren’t they.

 

why it is hard to admit that Apple did not destroy x86 in everything, they just performed similarly, and even that would be great for a laptop - if they can manage to make everything work.

[saltycaramel]

4 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

further down that thread there's mention the beta of the m1 photoshop is available (I'd wonder if such)

 

 

Sure, my point was that users also had x86-64bit Photoshop at perfectly smooth speed (compare that to the Surface Pro X slow mess) on day1. 

Whereas one Canadian youtuber insisted there was no Photoshop, called these Macs “iPads” for that and made an ass of himself. 

And he upped the ante in his recent unboxing of the Air M1: “in the end, most people are gonna be fine using these as Chromebooks, most people just use the browser all the time”. That may sound like a positive “it’s gonna be fine” comment but it’s actually belittling and misleading, given the abundance of beautifully crafted and fast desktop apps working at day1, be it x86 apps working at smooth speed or ARM apps already available in the tens. 

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, saltycaramel said:

 

Sure, my point was that users also had x86-64bit Photoshop at perfectly smooth speed (compare that to the Surface Pro X slow mess) on day1. 

Whereas one Canadian youtuber insisted there was no Photoshop, called these Macs “iPads” for that and made an ass of himself. 

And he upped the ante in his recent unboxing of the Air M1: “in the end, most people are gonna be fine using these as Chromebooks, most people just use the browser all the time”. That may sound like a positive “it’s gonna be fine” comment but it’s actually belittling and misleading, given the abundance of beautifully crafted and fast desktop apps working at day1, be it x86 apps working at smooth speed or ARM apps already available in the tens. 

Parent: Is my child doing well in school? 

Teacher: Your child is going to be fine. I've had a lot of kids that didn't do well in school but that got stable jobs later in life. 

Parent: what do you mean? Is my child not doing well?! The other teachers said their grades were really good. 

Teacher: Oh no your child is doing more than fine. They are among the best in their class. If they don't have the highest grade in a subject they at least have among the best grades. I'm just saying that you don't really need high grades to do fine in life, which is true! 

[LAwLz]

6 hours ago, Brunoyu said:

I was a bit skeptical about the benchmarks on Tiger lake, I checked on anandtech, and guess what I found

 

this benchmark 

 
While the page for benchmark on Tiger lake

-snip-

 

They are just playing dirty aren’t they.

 

why it is hard to admit that Apple did not destroy x86 in everything, they just performed similarly, and even that would be great for a laptop - if they can manage to make everything work.

What is your point exactly? Do you think Anandtech are faking benchmark scores on x86 chips to make the M1 look better than it is?

You can't compare the results from one review like the Tiger Lake one to another one such as the M1, even for the same chips, unless you are actually careful and look through which benchmarks they ran.

 

If you look at the detailed graph for each individual benchmark you will see that they did not use the same subset of tests for the M1 review as they did in the Tiger Lake review. For example test 548.exchange2_r was not used in the M1 coverage. Probably because they couldn't compile Fortran code against Apple's ARM.

It's not strange that processors gets a lower score if you don't run all the tests in a benchmark. But the thing is that if they could have ran Fortran code on the M1 then it would also have gotten a higher score. So it's still a fair comparison.

[Dabombinable]

7 hours ago, Belgarathian said:

At least warships are running XP, my old workplace had business critical systems on 3.1 and DOS.

Harder to break into Windows 3.1 and DOS casually these days than XP

[Video Beagle]

3 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

 

Sure, my point was that users also had x86-64bit Photoshop at perfectly smooth speed (compare that to the Surface Pro X slow mess) on day1. 

Oh, I wasn't disputing your point at all, just adding information of interest to many that I'd seen when looking at your link.

[Spindel]

Sorry if already posted 

 

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/google-chrome-is-available-as-an-apple-m1-native-app-today/?comments=1

 

[saltycaramel]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Parent: Is my child doing well in school? 

Teacher: Your child is going to be fine. I've had a lot of kids that didn't do well in school but that got stable jobs later in life. 

Parent: what do you mean? Is my child not doing well?! The other teachers said their grades were really good. 

Teacher: Oh no your child is doing more than fine. They are among the best in their class. If they don't have the highest grade in a subject they at least have among the best grades. I'm just saying that you don't really need high grades to do fine in life, which is true! 

 

Or like if one’s GF constantly repeated “in the end, the dimensions of the D don’t matter”. Some people would jump to conclusions about that guy’s situation down there.

That’s what comparing these Macs to Chromebooks does...”in the end, we’re always in the browser anyway”...meanwhile tons of bona fide desktop programs are available at day1...

[Spindel]

 

 

Something something 8 GB of RAM is unusable in 2020

[RedRound2]

12 hours ago, Spindel said:

 

 

Something something 8 GB of RAM is unusable in 2020

Nice

 

People at this point are just finding reasons to hate it. It's as if all Macbook Air and 13" low end Macbook Pro users all need minimum 32GB RAM or their world will implode. 

[Bombastinator]

18 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

Nice

 

People at this point are just finding reasons to hate it. It's as if all Macbook Air and 13" low end Macbook Pro users all need minimum 32GB RAM or their world will implode. 

I don’t think so.  Only a few of em do.  The rest have a habit of listening to those few though, and those few are what define a platform as being capable or not.  I do think if Apple doesn’t at least make a version of what is needed at a competitive price they risk “toy computer” status.   It’s a very slow death but a pretty sure one.  Part of apple’s market is pros, and while some pros can even use an m1 as is, depending what they do, some can’t, also depending on what they do.   I think they need a more pro level chip that their users can stand up and say”we can make more money with this than we can with the other one” because if they can’t Apple blows away from that shop like it was never there.

Edited November 21, 2020 by Bombastinator

[RedRound2]

5 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

I don’t think so.  Only a few of em do.  The rest have a habit of listening to those few though, and those few are what define a platform as being capable or not.  I do think if Apple doesn’t at least make a version of what is needed at a competitive price they risk “toy computer” status.   It’s a very slow death but a pretty sure one.  Part of apple’s market is pros, and while some pros can even use an m1 as is, depending what they do, some can’t, also depending on what they do.   I think they need a more pro level chip that their users can stand up and say”we can make more money with this than we can with the other one” because if they can’t Apple blows away from that shop like it was never there.

None of these devices were for the Pros. It was never marketed for Pros, Just that Pros bought it and tried it regardless. All three devices are targeted towards the masses and I don't think many people require more than 16GB RAM for a while.

 

We all know Apple is going to refresh the higher end modules within a year. If those don't have RAM options to 32/64, I get it (ignoring any aspect of RAM efficiency that is potentially gained out of this architecture - we don't have enough data on this yet).

 

This complaining is equivalent to complaining about the fact that the 13" laptop and a tiny Mac mini doesn't have a dGPU, even though vast majority of people it is intended for doesn't need a dGPU

[leadeater]

15 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

It was never marketed for Pros, Just that Pros bought it and tried it regardless

Think you will find it was, maybe not specifically the new 13" M1 MacBook Pro but..... it literally has Pro in the name. I know I know naming a product Pro does not make it professional but MacBook Pros historically have been targeted to professionals and higher end users.

 

In the past Apple even had MacBook and MacBook Pro, as well as MacBook Air.

 

The problem is more the misunderstanding of what Pro or Professional is, you can be that and not require 16 cores and 32GB/64GB/128GB+ ram. Looking at the difference between the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro now honestly I think Apple should just drop the Pro part of it all together, or bring back MacBook product line and reserve MacBook Pro for bigger more powerful Apple SoC's. However I'd advocate for not using "Pro" at all and use something else.

[saltycaramel]

One interesting story about this particular “Pro” (the 2-port, low end one) is that a couple of years ago there was a faction inside Apple that wanted to kill the Macbook Air for good, and just unify the design of 13” laptops, with the low end 2-port “Pro” becoming the new “Air” in disguise. Not being tapered and sharing the same chassis of the 28W-CPU 4-port Pro, it would keep carrying the “Pro” moniker. 

 

But regular people were in love with the Haswell and the Broadwell 13” Macbook Airs, and they kept buying them, and buying them, and buying them year after year, even as they became vintage CPU-wise and screen-wise. (LTT itself made a video putting this Air against modern laptops and showing it was still a good value proposition) 

 

The people spoke and Apple had to bring back the Air from the dead in 2018. Gotta love that tapered design. (the Pro is in fact thinner than the Air at its fattest part in the back, it’s just that the Air tapers and is a bit lighter)

 

Well, seeing what a beast is today’s fanless M1 Air (even when it throttles down from 3GHz to 2.4GHz, it’s still super fast and faster than most laptops), I’d say it’s a good thing people and college freshmen forced Apple to bring back the Air by stubbornly buying the Broadwell Air for years. 

 

But this was also to explain that the 2-port “Pro” was once meant to be an “Air 2.0”, with 15W CPUs and targeting college freshmen. 

 

I wonder what the line up will look like 2 years  from now, in the 13-14” range. 

The 14” all-new 4-port MBP with a 25-30W M1X next spring is the first piece that needs to fall in place and show the way for the future. 

[Spindel]

44 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Think you will find it was, maybe not specifically the new 13" M1 MacBook Pro but..... it literally has Pro in the name. I know I know naming a product Pro does not make it professional but MacBook Pros historically have been targeted to professionals and higher end users.

 

In the past Apple even had MacBook and MacBook Pro, as well as MacBook Air.

 

The problem is more the misunderstanding of what Pro or Professional is, you can be that and not require 16 cores and 32GB/64GB/128GB+ ram. Looking at the difference between the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro now honestly I think Apple should just drop the Pro part of it all together, or bring back MacBook product line and reserve MacBook Pro for bigger more powerful Apple SoC's. However I'd advocate for not using "Pro" at all and use something else.

It’s kind of tiering that people on tech forums always jump on the ”pro” moniker on products. It’s nothing Apple invented and has been around for ages.

 

Heck long ago when I was a kid we said things like ”WOW Sven, you play like a pro!” when playing football (not the US version). 
 

The ”pro” moniker is used as a superlative in all products. It isn’t and has never been a thing to take literary. The literary interpetation points more to the interpeter having some form of autism.

[RedRound2]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Think you will find it was, maybe not specifically the new 13" M1 MacBook Pro but..... it literally has Pro in the name. I know I know naming a product Pro does not make it professional but MacBook Pros historically have been targeted to professionals and higher end users.

 

In the past Apple even had MacBook and MacBook Pro, as well as MacBook Air.

 

The problem is more the misunderstanding of what Pro or Professional is, you can be that and not require 16 cores and 32GB/64GB/128GB+ ram. Looking at the difference between the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro now honestly I think Apple should just drop the Pro part of it all together, or bring back MacBook product line and reserve MacBook Pro for bigger more powerful Apple SoC's. However I'd advocate for not using "Pro" at all and use something else.

I think everyone who knows Apple's Mac lineup knows that the low end 2-port MacBook Pro isn't really pro. Why they decided to have such a SKU in the first place I'm not sure - apart from I guess bridging the price gap between $999 Air and $1799 high end MacBook Pro.

 

Honestly this lineup of Macs would be the ideal in my opinion

MacBook Air 13" and 15" - light weight tapered design laptops for everyday users ($899 & $1199)

MacBook Pro 14" and 16" - a lot more powerful laptops with active cooling and better chip than the Air ($1499 and $1899)

Maybe a 12" MacBook for those wanting the super tiny form factor (or I guess that would be the iPads now)

 

I think they will be probably keep 13" low end MacBook Pro for one more cycle (the refreshed M1) before dropping it completely in 2 years in favor of more distinct and updated 14" and 16", along with updated 13" Air

[saltycaramel]

Linus in the latest WAN

- fails to understand he just can’t be so self-confident to get up and dictate how Apple should structure a fast paced 45min video, and whether they find more fit to use vague performance per watt graphs (personally I find it an ok way to explain AS Macs given how different the architectures are anyway) or go full tech-youtuber with hard numbers, him failing to understand this or disagreeing about how a company should have used those brief 45 minutes doesn’t make it a “dumpster fire”  

- fails to understand Apple is still in a partnership with Intel and still sells a number of Intel Macs, so they can’t poo-poo on Intel too explicitly with direct comparisons (not even those vague numbers-less graphs mentioned Intel, tellingly)

- pretend to not understand that even if one appreciates the iPad, it is clear to anyone that calling a machine that’s supposed to run full bona fide desktop programs (like full Photoshop, perfectly usable at day1, like he would have probably known if he tried it via Rosetta on the DTK that was briefly available to LMG, but he just hedged on “you don’t wanna find out if this works on your work computer”, maybe wait a week and see if it works? ask your source about the DTK?) an “iPad” is a misleading way to belittle it. An iPad can at the same time be a computer and not be a macOS/Windows PC. Like a car is car but it’s no 16-wheeler truck. In that first reaction video he leaned towards these being cars, and made a huge deal of stuff like the missing 10G NIC. And he hedged on these first gen AS Macs being pretty rough (whereas the actual “generation 0” of these is the A12X in 2018, and even the all-new better Macs with FaceID and miniLED displays next year won’t make these necessarily “rough”, just transition machines with the old design). He was wrong or better, since we were all in the dark, leaning in the wrong direction, for clicks and for appeasing the PCMR apple-skeptic audience, nothing more and nothing less, I say this in a totally “chill” manner since he went “chill the F out”.