[Updated] Apple  WWDC 2022 - What was announced and stuff

[rikitikitavi]

Stage Manager looks very bloated... Hopefully it is only the 'casual drag'n'drop' setting that wastes space, and all can be adjusted (the massive side panel, fixed dock)...

 

...or at least Apple won't damage Mission Control usability

 

(iOS) the fixed Spotlight button at the bottom... please go away lol

[BondiBlue]

5 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

Ventura requires a T2 chip.

No it doesn't. None of the 2017 MacBook Pros have the T2 chip yet they support Ventura, and in fact the only 2017 Mac that has the T2 chip is the iMac Pro. 

[Commodus]

29 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

I think the Mac Pro will only be released when Apple will start using TSMC's 3 nm node and when Apple decided to use the ARMv9 instruction set which is important for the Mac Pro and its target audience like data scientists.

It's a distinct possibility. I also think Apple is simply reluctant to replace the Mac Pro until it's confident the target audience won't be clamoring for the old Intel model.

[captain_to_fire]

16 minutes ago, Commodus said:

It's a distinct possibility. I also think Apple is simply reluctant to replace the Mac Pro until it's confident the target audience won't be clamoring for the old Intel model.

Well the 16" MBP with M1 Max was able to outperform a Mac Pro with an after burner card in FCP. Not sure about expansion slots. The Mac Studio is basically a better looking and better performing version of the trash can Mac Pro, so I'm thinking that the AS Mac Pro would probably be as big as an ATX mid tower with a smaller PSU.

[williamcll]

1 hour ago, Commodus said:

Mac Pro wasn't expected at this event; sounds like Apple didn't want to replace the Mac Pro until it had a newer architecture (or just needed more time to nail the upgrade).

 

As it stands, the new MacBook Air is pretty hot. I may need a new laptop soon, and a maxed-out Air might be a better buy for me than a 14-inch Pro (I don't really need a 120Hz screen). I don't need an SD card adapter that badly...

Old model was equally hot, I remembered the one that appeared in a LTT video in the past had a thermo paste swap

[saltycaramel]

50 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

Ventura requires a T2 chip.

 

It requires Kaby Lake or newer, even without T2. 

 

Incidentally KBL is the first gen with 10bit HEVC hw acceleration for videos.

[LAwLz]

The M2 looks like a pretty big step up from the M1. Not sure why people are saying it's "just" an incremental update.

18% higher CPU performance.

35% faster GPU performance.

40% faster NPU.

50% higher memory bandwidth.

Support for more memory.

Upgraded media engine.

 

 

I am mostly disappointed that Apple still does not seem to support AV1.

Also, let's hope the power consumption stays the same (edit: It is at the same power!).

[Obioban]

1 hour ago, Cyrus said:

Still only one external monitor... MacBook Air with M2 chip - Tech Specs - Apple

Officially, yes.

 

Unofficially, 6 on the M1

 

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/24/m1-macs-able-to-run-six-external-displays/

[BondiBlue]

3 minutes ago, Obioban said:

Officially, yes.

 

Unofficially, 6 on the M1

 

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/24/m1-macs-able-to-run-six-external-displays/

Those are powered by external hardware, not the M1 or M2 chip itself, so the limitation is still one external display from the onboard GPU. 

[IAmAndre]

Any idea why the version with the 10-core GPU is configured with 512GB of storage by default although it's possible to spec up the base model with that same SoC and 24GB of RAM. That's actually a solid deal at $1700.

[rikitikitavi]

3 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

Those are powered by external hardware, not the M1 or M2 chip itself, so the limitation is still one external display from the onboard GPU. 

Yes, but it is a dealbreaker to someone needing 2+ externals. So if an extra dock is needed to drive more - it is a solution, not ideal, but still a solution.

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, captain_to_fire said:

slightly larger die than M1

Well wasn't expecting that but I was assuming 3nm, guess I was quite wrong about that lol

 

2 hours ago, captain_to_fire said:

Newer media engine 8K HEVC, H.265 encode/decode

heh well at least I was right about this, I'll take a small win lol

[rikitikitavi]

M2 MBA should have been simply called MacBook!

 

M1 MB Air would be more interesting with a price drop (macMini range) (and would basically become SE model of iPhones).

[leadeater]

33 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

The M2 looks like a pretty big step up from the M1. Not sure why people are saying it's "just" an incremental update.

18% higher CPU performance.

35% faster GPU performance.

40% faster NPU.

50% higher memory bandwidth.

Support for more memory.

Upgraded media engine.

 

 

I am mostly disappointed that Apple still does not seem to support AV1.

Also, let's hope the power consumption stays the same.

I haven't actually watched the presentation yet, is the memory bandwidth from LPDDR5 or more LPDDR4X chips? Assuming LPDDR5, makes more sense to me.

 

Nice info about the NPU, will keep an eye out for that when I get time to watch.

 

Edit:

Nvm that info about the ram is literally posted in this topic now lol

[Blademaster91]

2 hours ago, captain_to_fire said:

Intel Macs with Skylake chips have reached the short end of the stick but hey at least macOS Ventura still supports Kaby Lake unlike Windows 11

Interesting to see Apple cut support for Skylake, also I've installed Windows 11 on laptops with an Intel Skylake cpu, it works fine.

[Commodus]

48 minutes ago, williamcll said:

Old model was equally hot, I remembered the one that appeared in a LTT video in the past had a thermo paste swap

I meant figuratively hot, not literally. And given that my wife's Air can handle quite a bit without getting literally hot... I'm not too worried about the M2.

[Commodus]

53 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

Well the 16" MBP with M1 Max was able to outperform a Mac Pro with an after burner card in FCP. Not sure about expansion slots. The Mac Studio is basically a better looking and better performing version of the trash can Mac Pro, so I'm thinking that the AS Mac Pro would probably be as big as an ATX mid tower with a smaller PSU.

Modularity likely matters more than performance here. Apple needs to either offer the modularity pros expect (PCIe slots, upgradeable RAM) or provide a very good reason why it's no longer necessary. It's going to be tough to convince a heavy-duty workstation user that an ARM Mac Pro with 384GB of RAM (just a spitballing figure) and a built-in GPU will be better than their Intel rig with 1.5TB and four dedicated GPUs, even if all the benchmarks show the ARM machine trouncing its x86 counterpart.

[DildorTheDecent]

1 hour ago, captain_to_fire said:

so I'm thinking that the AS Mac Pro would probably be as big as an ATX mid tower with a smaller PSU.

Inb4 it's two Mac Studio's stacked on top of each other.

 

I think that would be pretty neat. Perhaps even slightly funny too.

[leadeater]

17 minutes ago, DildorTheDecent said:

Inb4 it's two Mac Studio's stacked on top of each other.

 

I think that would be pretty neat. Perhaps even slightly funny too.

Why stop at two?

[Roswell]

25 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Modularity likely matters more than performance here. Apple needs to either offer the modularity pros expect (PCIe slots, upgradeable RAM) or provide a very good reason why it's no longer necessary. It's going to be tough to convince a heavy-duty workstation user that an ARM Mac Pro with 384GB of RAM (just a spitballing figure) and a built-in GPU will be better than their Intel rig with 1.5TB and four dedicated GPUs, even if all the benchmarks show the ARM machine trouncing its x86 counterpart.

I think the hesitation is more so to do with even the M1 Ultra being extremely behind the dedicated GPU options in the Mac Pro. 
 

You’d have to slap like 4 M1 Ultras together to outpace a dual W6900X setup.

[LAwLz]

38 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I haven't actually watched the presentation yet, is the memory bandwidth from LPDDR5 or more LPDDR4X chips? Assuming LPDDR5, makes more sense to me.

 

Nice info about the NPU, will keep an eye out for that when I get time to watch.

 

Edit:

Nvm that info about the ram is literally posted in this topic now lol

If you want a quick TL;DR then here is the summary of everything related to the M2.

 

• 20 billion transistors (up from 16 billion).
• Built on a "second gen 5nm process" (maybe the same as Ryzen 7000?).
• 100GB/s memory (up from ~66GB/s, so ~50% more). The new memory is on a 128bit LPDDR5 interface.
• Up to 24GB of RAM (up from 16GB).
• Same core count and setup as before (4 high performance, 4 low power).
• Same cache as before on the big cores (192KB instruction cache, 128KB data cache), except the shared L2 cache, which is now 16MB (up from 12MB).
• Same cache as before on the little cores (128KB instruction cache, 64KB data cache, 4MB shared L2).
• 18% higher multi-threaded CPU performance at the same power consumption (up to 15 watts).
• 8 or 10 core GPUs (up from 7 or 8 on the M1).
• 25% higher GPU performance at the same power. Up to 35% higher performance at a higher power state.
• Next generation secure enclave and neural engine.
• 40% higher performance on the NPU.
• Media engine now supports encoding and decoding 8K ProRes (the old M1 did not support ProRes, but the Pro, Max and Ultra versions did).
• No new ISA. Still ARMv8.5-A.
• The cores are probably the same as in the A15. So the big cores are called "avalanche" and the small ones are called "blizzard".

[leadeater]

13 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

• Same core count and setup as before (4 high performance, 4 low power).
• Same cache as before on the big cores (192KB instruction cache, 128KB data cache), except the shared L2 cache, which is now 16MB (up from 12MB).
• Same cache as before on the little cores (128KB instruction cache, 64KB data cache, 4MB shared L2).

Are these Avalanche and Blizzard cores? Any idea? Sounds like it, A15 is also N5P and has these cores and the differences between those cores is in the quoted above about the same. Also the mentioned NPU performance increase between A14 and A15 is the same ~40%, sounds like Apple has reused some elements of the latest A series SoC for the M2 similar to how they did with the M1 (with the nice extras of course).

 

Don't know why I was thinking M2 was going to be 3nm when A15 wasn't Ah well didn't really deeply think about it.

 

19 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Still ARMv8.5-A

This is quite telling to me since A14/M1/Firestorm+Icestorm were 8.4 (if wiki is to be believed).

 

20 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

The cores are probably the same as in the A15. So the big cores are called "avalanche" and the small ones are called "blizzard".

Ah damn it should have read to the bottom, fuck it posting above anyway 

[Needfuldoer]

53 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Why stop at two?

Make it a single-board computer that plugs into a special PCIe 5.0 backplane, S100 style. While we're at it, dust off the old Radius Rocket model and you could have a cluster of M2 Macs running in one chassis.

[Imbadatnames]

2 hours ago, captain_to_fire said:

Well the 16" MBP with M1 Max was able to outperform a Mac Pro with an after burner card in FCP. Not sure about expansion slots. The Mac Studio is basically a better looking and better performing version of the trash can Mac Pro, so I'm thinking that the AS Mac Pro would probably be as big as an ATX mid tower with a smaller PSU.

Expandability  and  brute force for the MP is a big point though. Especially for the music crowd. Don’t know how many PCIE lanes the M1 chips can handle. 

[Donut417]

4 hours ago, Cyrus said:

Still only one external monitor... MacBook Air with M2 chip - Tech Specs - Apple

That really kills me. Because after you spent a shit ton on a computer then you have to buy an expensive Dock in order to run more than 1 extra screen. For reference I run dual ultrawides on my Intel MacBook Pro. 

 

 

4 hours ago, captain_to_fire said:

 

Im wondering if I should skip Mac OS 12 all together. I didnt install it because there were issues with the Intel Macs during the beginning.