October 18th Apple Event - Unleashed - Apple Silicon, MacBook Pro upgrades, HomePod mini, AirPods 3rd Generation

[maplepants]

55 minutes ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

Machine learning on a non-cuda gpu? The amount of tracebacks that thing will throw will be extremely annoying. Nvidia has that market almost on a lockdown. Only way I can see apple making waves is by creating and working on an open standard that is better than CUDA or by reverse engineering CUDA and then putting a wrapper.

 

 

The ML functionalities seem extremely exciting and while it won't kill off nvidia+cuda, it is still a very good competitor. Just need to see support mature for it.

I don't think Apple needs to create their own standard. TensorFlow works fine on macOS, and if they wanted to grow in that space they'd probably be better of contributing there than creating their own standard. Since any ML standard that has any hope of becoming half way popular has be able to run in a Linux server with 6 GPUs sitting in a rack somewhere.

 

I agree that the M1 isn't going to replace anyone's specialized ML machines, but people have written interesting stuff about them. Even a review showing it get trounced by a more ML specialized machine, but talking in detail about why it got trounced is interesting to me. Plus the neat part about the M1 isn't that it's some kind of machine learning beast, but rather that the fanless Macbook Air is capable of it at all. 

 

The other thing is that most ML running on any laptop isn't models like TensorFlow, it's various "auto-select" functions in photo and video editors. Improved performance there will matter for a lot of Macbook Pro users. 

[igormp]

11 hours ago, IAmAndre said:

TBF this isn't really Apple's fault. I know for a fact that tech products are crazy expensive in Brazil in general and that's due to the taxes so it's not fair to blame Apple for that. It sucks for Brazilians but the solution is to just book a flight to the US as it might be even cheaper.

Taxes are partly in fault, but it's not the sole cause, most companies do have higher margins here because, due to the wealth gap, who can afford such product will buy one, no matter if has  a higher markup than it should.

 

6 hours ago, maplepants said:

One of the most interesting M1 reviews I saw was this one comparing machine learning performance on the M1 to the then top of the line 16" MBP. 

That's not a quite fair comparison, since the Intel machine only got to use its GPU in a single test, while the M1 had both GPU and NPU acceleration available.

6 hours ago, maplepants said:

traditional Xeon workloads like machine learning

That's mostly done on GPUs, the CPU doesn't matter and some frameworks still don't have full support for all operators under M1, Nvidia really has the ecosystem held tightly to their GPUs

 As for the other tests, such as compile, even the basic M1 already goes really fast due to the fast memory.

 

3 minutes ago, maplepants said:

The other thing is that most ML running on any laptop isn't models like TensorFlow, it's various "auto-select" functions in photo and video editors. Improved performance there will matter for a lot of Macbook Pro users. 

Fair enough, training might be a niche, and will likely be done on a workstation or cloud/remote instance anyway, but being able to do inference fast while sipping almost no juice from your battery is a really big plus, and is something that we are used to see only in smartphones.

[maplepants]

6 hours ago, RejZoR said:

The M1 Max is quite a chungus with 8 big cores and 2 efficiency cores. Which doubles the performance core count of regular M1. Also, the thing with Macs is, they don't need Xeon's approach of "we have many cores/threads". It being a SoC it has a predictable CPU and GPU computational power. Where with Xeon you can pretty much assume it's just CPU and for GPU, it's anyone's guess if it's even there and it can be a GTX 1050Ti or a cluster of NVIDIA Tesla or Radeon Instinct cards. And because OS is tailored specifically for it and so are apps, they'll do tasks that run better on CPU there and run tasks that run better on GPU on GPU. Like there is no point in encoding MP3's with GPU, there is no point handing highly multithreaded tasks to those 8 HP cores if you have a GPU there with predictable feature set and performance to do it.

This is a good point. I think the small variation will impact what developers do in their products too.

 

Right now, you can't buy a Macbook with a bad GPU. The only computers you can buy from Apple with bad GPUs are the Intel Mac Mini and the 21.5" Intel iMac. Even the 27" Intel iMac has no option with a bad integrated GPU, same with the Mac Pro.

 

I feel like this raising of the performance floor is going to unlock options for developers of apps like DaVinci Resolve, Blender, Unreal, Photoshop, etc. Imagine what gaming would look like if the worst performing GPU on Windows 11 was the GTX960. If all developers could assume something like GTX 960 performance out of everybody who might buy their software.

[maplepants]

8 minutes ago, igormp said:

Fair enough, training might be a niche, and will likely be done on a workstation or cloud/remote instance anyway, but being able to do inference fast while sipping almost no juice from your battery is a really big plus, and is something that we are used to see only in smartphones.

A friend of mine works for the national rail service doing predictive maintenance. Nobody in her department would ever really be able train their models on any laptop, and so it's not even something they look for in possible new machines. But with the M1 Max, she says they would actually be able to tweak and get work done. Which is pretty wild, since they basically use their laptops as email/web browser machines with a terminal where they log into the big machines to get work done.

 

For me, the real crazy thing is what this might do to the mid-tier Quadro market. My cousin works as a civil engineer and when he was sent home they gave him his desktop with a Xeon, 32GB RAM, and a mid-tier Quadro. He uses this to run AutoCAD. Some of the engineers in his department have this kind of desktop + a laptop that they can take out to clients. Since AutoCAD already runs on macOS, I could imagine that lots of engineering companies are looking at the M1 Max and excited at the idea of switching their employees over from the beefy desktop + laptop model to a single machine setup.

[jimmy3189]

17 hours ago, BondiBlue said:

dGPU or not, it was still the cheapest 15" MacBook Pro in 2015, and it was still $500 cheaper than the cheapest 16" M1 MacBook Pro today. 

The M1 MacBook Pro 13inch is $1299.....

You are talking nonsense.

Yes if you want a 15" screen it costs more, but the 14" screen is far more comparable to the old 15, and the 16 is comparable to the old 17" due to slimmed bezels and huge huge increase in pixel density.....

[WolframaticAlpha]

12 minutes ago, maplepants said:

A friend of mine works for the national rail service doing predictive maintenance. Nobody in her department would ever really be able train their models on any laptop, and so it's not even something they look for in possible new machines. But with the M1 Max, she says they would actually be able to tweak and get work done. Which is pretty wild, since they basically use their laptops as email/web browser machines with a terminal where they log into the big machines to get work done.

If that is true, then it is awesome. You can literally slash off thousands in aws/gcp bills(we use p3+s3) with the m1 max. They might be a worthwhile investment. 

[maplepants]

2 minutes ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

If that is true, then it is awesome. You can literally slash off thousands in aws/gcp bills(we use p3+s3) with the m1 max. They might be a worthwhile investment. 

It would be a huge game changer for sure. This is part of why I'm so excited to see the reviews and read about these GPU heavy workloads in particular. Imagine having the performance of a decent laptop Quadro and worthwhile battery life. 

 

If it comes as close to Apple's claims as the M1 did to the claims they made back in October 2020, then the laptop Quadro market is in big trouble.

[igormp]

32 minutes ago, maplepants said:

A friend of mine works for the national rail service doing predictive maintenance. Nobody in her department would ever really be able train their models on any laptop, and so it's not even something they look for in possible new machines. But with the M1 Max, she says they would actually be able to tweak and get work done. Which is pretty wild, since they basically use their laptops as email/web browser machines with a terminal where they log into the big machines to get work done.

I can see that being a thing if the model is simple when it comes to operators and units, but quite large as to not easily fit in the vram found in most laptop GPUs. However, even a mid-range quadro should trounce the M1 when it comes to ML, and that's not to say some operators that have no hardware support for the M1 still. Someday, who knows.

 

As for the engineering side of things you mentioned, yeah, that sounds like something that apple could get a hold on.

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

Geekbench is not a very reliable benchmark.

What makes you say that?

[maplepants]

13 minutes ago, igormp said:

I can see that being a thing if the model is simple when it comes to operators and units, but quite large as to not easily fit in the vram found in most laptop GPUs. However, even a mid-range quadro should trounce the M1 when it comes to ML, and that's not to say some operators that have no hardware support for the M1 still. Someday, who knows.

 

As for the engineering side of things you mentioned, yeah, that sounds like something that apple could get a hold on.

The M1 Max has up to 64GB of RAM, that's much more than any laptop quadro I've seen. I don't know how it'll compare in terms of compute, but where VRAM is the issue the M1 Pro & Max are better than any laptop quadro. Still, you're right that one of the big factors will be hardware support. If you need CUDA, you need CUDA. 

 

I'd honestly love to see this be a the start of a big jump in laptop GPUs. This whole M1 story so far has made me very excited for the ARM + NVIDIA deal. The Tegra Xavier has really only been used in self driving cars, but it's a pretty amazing little SoC. It's not hard to imagine NVIDIA coming out with something laptop worthy in the next few years, and then we're in a whole other space when it comes to laptop GPU expectations.

[TheReal1980]

1 hour ago, maplepants said:

A friend of mine works for the national rail service doing predictive maintenance. Nobody in her department would ever really be able train their models on any laptop, and so it's not even something they look for in possible new machines. But with the M1 Max, she says they would actually be able to tweak and get work done. Which is pretty wild, since they basically use their laptops as email/web browser machines with a terminal where they log into the big machines to get work done.

 

For me, the real crazy thing is what this might do to the mid-tier Quadro market. My cousin works as a civil engineer and when he was sent home they gave him his desktop with a Xeon, 32GB RAM, and a mid-tier Quadro. He uses this to run AutoCAD. Some of the engineers in his department have this kind of desktop + a laptop that they can take out to clients. Since AutoCAD already runs on macOS, I could imagine that lots of engineering companies are looking at the M1 Max and excited at the idea of switching their employees over from the beefy desktop + laptop model to a single machine setup.

I use a Lenovo P1 with a Quadro card that I use with Solidworks. I can have it fully charged and it will go from 100% to 80% in about 15min, the experience is horrible.

If Solidworks would work on Mac Apple Silicon I would jump ship so fast...

[BondiBlue]

1 hour ago, jimmy3189 said:

The M1 MacBook Pro 13inch is $1299.....

You are talking nonsense.

Yes if you want a 15" screen it costs more, but the 14" screen is far more comparable to the old 15, and the 16 is comparable to the old 17" due to slimmed bezels and huge huge increase in pixel density.....

I wasn't talking about the 13" or 14" MacBook Pros. I was talking about the largest MBP in 2015 (the 15") and the largest MBP in 2021 (the 16"). The 13" and 14" models have nothing to do with my point. If all you wanted in 2015 was the larger screen then you could get it for $1999. If you want the larger screen today you have to pay $2499. That's it. It's not hard to comprehend. 

[RedRound2]

8 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

I wasn't talking about the 13" or 14" MacBook Pros. I was talking about the largest MBP in 2015 (the 15") and the largest MBP in 2021 (the 16"). The 13" and 14" models have nothing to do with my point. If all you wanted in 2015 was the larger screen then you could get it for $1999. If you want the larger screen today you have to pay $2499. That's it. It's not hard to comprehend. 

All you are actually meaning to tell is that there isn't a low end 15" option available. That's just the reality of Apple's lineup.

But you shouldnt keep comparing 15" notebook that wasnt nearly as powerful as it should be in the time and the newest most powerful notebook today and keep complaining about $500 difference.

 

It's like taking a low end 6.1" phone and comparing it to 6.1" iPhone 13 Pro and saying that theres a $700 difference when there's certainly a whole lot more difference than what the same screen size suggests

[BondiBlue]

2 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

All you are actually meaning to tell is that there isn't a low end 15" option available. That's just the reality of Apple's lineup.

But you shouldnt keep comparing 15" notebook that wasnt nearly as powerful as it should be in the time and the newest most powerful notebook today and keep complaining about $500 difference.

 

It's like taking a low end 6.1" phone and comparing it to 6.1" iPhone 13 Pro and saying that theres a $700 difference when there's certainly a whole lot more difference than what the same screen size suggests

I'm not complaining about the price difference. I'm completely aware of the fact that the low end 2015 15" MacBook Pro is in no way comparable specs-wise to the base model 16" MBP we have today. I've said that over and over. I'm talking about the screen size. If all a person wanted was the large screen, they'd have to pay $500 more today to get the lowest end model with the largest display than they would have paid in 2015. Am I somehow wrong there? It would be nice if Apple made a lower end option again that also had the larger display. 

[maplepants]

17 minutes ago, TheReal1980 said:

I use a Lenovo P1 with a Quadro card that I use with Solidworks. I can have it fully charged and it will go from 100% to 80% in about 15min, the experience is horrible.

If Solidworks would work on Mac Apple Silicon I would jump ship so fast...

This is a great Quadro laptop comparison to make. The P1 is a beast and exactly the kind of machine I'd like to see LTT or someone compare the M1 Pro/Max to. I would guess that the battery life tests wouldn't even be a contest, but performance plugged in vs on battery, and other standard benchmarks would be really interesting.

[Forbidden Wafer]

I think people are focusing too much in price and performance (which were great with M1 and will likely be with the new ones) while applications are more likely what prevents someone from making the move. 

 

If it doesn't run what you need (e.g. games, work tools, etc) it's pretty much useless. If you're going to remote into the cloud/desktop that can run the stuff you need, it's way cheaper to get a random Chromebook.

 

(BTW, the notch still is ugly AF.  They could have crammed the stupid camera into that bezel).

[gjsman]

2 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

If it doesn't run what you need (e.g. games, work tools, etc) it's pretty much useless. 

Well, wait until that stuff they need starts becoming available. Games no, Work Tools - Apple supports a ton. These things aren't made for gaming anyway. 

 

3 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

(BTW, the notch still is ugly AF.  They could have crammed the stupid camera into that bezel).

Subjective - if you've ever used MacOS you know that it being in the persistent menu bar and an expansion of the display is not that big a deal. Also you aren't the designer, so good luck proving they could have.

[Lightwreather]

4 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

(BTW, the notch still is ugly AF.  They could have crammed the stupid camera into that bezel).

Eh, I thought so too immediately after the announcement, but I must admit, It's grown on me

[igormp]

43 minutes ago, TheReal1980 said:

I use a Lenovo P1 with a Quadro card that I use with Solidworks. I can have it fully charged and it will go from 100% to 80% in about 15min, the experience is horrible.

If Solidworks would work on Mac Apple Silicon I would jump ship so fast...

The battery life will be better than this for sure, but my bet is that it'll be way worse than the current M1 models when run at full throttle. It's over 50W running at 100% after all, but should fare way better than a 45W (by intel measurements, we know it's way higher than that) CPU + 100W GPU.

[jimmy3189]

35 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

I wasn't talking about the 13" or 14" MacBook Pros. I was talking about the largest MBP in 2015 (the 15") and the largest MBP in 2021 (the 16"). The 13" and 14" models have nothing to do with my point. If all you wanted in 2015 was the larger screen then you could get it for $1999. If you want the larger screen today you have to pay $2499. That's it. It's not hard to comprehend. 

https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/19/22733406/macbook-pro-13-14-16-inch-m1-max-air-compare-specs

Tell me how much stuff you can fit on a 2015 mbp screen with a resolution of 2880 x 1800 (mbp 2015 15" model), now how about the 2019 16inch model that's surely a pricey upgrade 3072 x 1920. Now what do you think you can fit on a screen with a resolution of 3024 x 1964, would it be about the same? Cause that's the resolution of the 14inch model available for $1999.

Take into account the slimmed down bezels and the user experience of a new 14 is very very similar to a 2015 MBP, probably better when you take into account peak brightness, miniled tech, etc.

 

[BondiBlue]

1 minute ago, jimmy3189 said:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/19/22733406/macbook-pro-13-14-16-inch-m1-max-air-compare-specs

Tell me how much stuff you can fit on a 2015 mbp screen with a resolution of 2880 x 1800 (mbp 2015 15" model), now how about the 2019 16inch model that's surely a pricey upgrade 3072 x 1920. Now what do you think you can fit on a screen with a resolution of 3024 x 1964, would it be about the same? Cause that's the resolution of the 14inch model available for $1999.

Take into account the slimmed down bezels and the user experience of a new 14 is very very similar to a 2015 MBP, probably better when you take into account peak brightness, miniled tech, etc.

Again, I'm talking about physical screen size. The largest available in 2015 was 15". The largest available today is 16". It's clear to me that nobody understands it, so I guess I'm done. 

[gjsman]

1 minute ago, BondiBlue said:

Again, I'm talking about physical screen size. The largest available in 2015 was 15". The largest available today is 16". It's clear to me that nobody understands it, so I guess I'm done. 

Maybe your point that you were arguing about was such a minute detail that, to be frank, not many people care because it's not an obvious or useful point to make. 

[Forbidden Wafer]

6 minutes ago, gjsman said:

Well, wait until that stuff they need starts becoming available. Games no, Work Tools - Apple supports a ton. These things aren't made for gaming anyway. 

Apple supports video and audio production. Software development? Eh, they have Xcode, which is meh at best.
They are not for gaming: just lost a huge chunk of the market of people who spends a lot on notebooks.

 

8 minutes ago, gjsman said:

if you've ever used MacOS you know that it being in the persistent menu bar and an expansion of the display is not that big a deal. 

How do they deal with options that got cut by the notch? Scrolling sideways?

 

9 minutes ago, gjsman said:

Also you aren't the designer, so good luck proving they could have.

LG gram webcam.

[Lightwreather]

1 minute ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

How do they deal with options that got cut by the notch? Scrolling sideways?

THe ones that get split go to the other side from what I've heard

[BondiBlue]

2 minutes ago, gjsman said:

Maybe your point that you were arguing about was such a minute detail that, to be frank, not many people care because it's not an obvious or useful point to make. 

What do you mean? Plenty of people buy the larger MacBook Pro just for the larger screen. They could care less about the internals. But, for some reason, I've had people argue with me that the 2015 15" iGPU MBP isn't a valid comparison to the base model 16" MBP just on screen size alone. I just don't get it. It's really simple. The cheapest option for the largest MBP is now $500 more than it was in 2015. Yes, the new one is more powerful, but that's not the point. I just don't know how to make it any clearer.