Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

It’s very impressive. It seems like the open computing platforms where you have control of your hardware/ os are in real trouble.

I use Mac at work, but Linux at home, if the hardware isn’t competitive....

- Mac has ~10% of the global market for end user machines. It doesn't now, never has, and never will own the market nor does it desire to sell cheap enough machines to do so.

- Given that you can't add ram after the fact and 256GB is anemic the cheapest laptop that is a reasonable choice is $1400.

- The cheapest desktop option is $6000 with an 8 core cpu or 8000 with a 16 core.

- The average end user spends $700 on a computer

- We literally have marketing numbers and a worthless synthetic benchmark.

I think it entirely fair to say that the new macs are liable to be fantastic machines but there is no reason to believe that the advent of apple cpu macs marks the end of open hardware. Were you expecting them to sell their cpus to the makers of the cheap computers most people actually buy?

> Mac has ~10% of the global market for end user machines. It doesn't now, never has, and never will own the market nor does it desire to sell cheap enough machines to do so.

This includes a massive number of corporate desktops which often Apple doesn't really compete with.

> The cheapest desktop option is $6000 with an 8 core cpu or 8000 with a 16 core.

?? The Mac mini is $600 with an M1 which is likely a far faster computer than most $600 Windows desktop computers. Likely significantly faster.

I don't think Apple is going to eat Windows alive, too many businesses have massive piles of Windows apps. I do see the potential Apple to increase market share significantly though.

If that was to pass, wouldn't linux just port itself to the new platform? After all linux supports powerpc and Motorola 68k.

Thanks for putting it into perspective. 3D graphic performance is another variable I didn’t think of.

I wouldn’t expect them to sell their cpus to others.

It’s weird though that they’re so vertically integrated and able to push performance as high as they have. I really enjoy my Linux system so I’m going to keep on doing that.

The average user was spending peanuts on phone before iPhone. They also had 0% market for phones.

> The cheapest desktop option is $6000 with an 8 core cpu or 8000 with a 16 core.

And also with RAM and SSD idiotically soldered in so 2 years later you need to spend another $6000, while a couple weeks ago I spent a grand total of $400 to upgrade my 2TB SSD to 4TB.

They're locked down. You can install anything on it without apples permission.

Like secure boot, just without an off switch

> It’s very impressive. It seems like the open computing platforms where you have control of your hardware/ os are in real trouble.

Not really. The M1 may objectively and factually be a very good CPU, but it comes bundled with the cost of being locked into a machine with a locked bootloader and not being able to boot any other OS than MacOS.

And many people will find such a cost unacceptable.

The RAM and SSD are not soldered in on the Mac Pro, which is the machine I assume they're talking about given the price.

> The average user was spending peanuts on phone before iPhone.

The iPhone was mid-range at launch, $499 versus $730 for a contemporary smartphone like the N95

fyi, RAM is not soldered (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210103) and there are unoccupied PCI slots to install SSDs in (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210408)

I have a hard time believing that the amount of people that care so deeply about loading other OSs as to switch their computing platform of choice is significant. Perhaps more significant for those who are already doing that with either a mac or something else and choose not to switch, likewise for virtualization, but I sure as hell wouldn't switch away from mac for the ostensible benefit of multibooting Windows or Linux, and I'm at least in the subset of people who might.

I hear "hold my beer" moments now. I give it a year max for luser usable jailbreak.

Myself, yes. Most people here, maybe. My friends asking me for advice when buying a new computer, they care about the price, not speed. They assume that anything at 300 or 400 Euro will be good enough for their needs and they're right. Only one of them ever asked me about a Mac but went back to looking at some low end Windows laptop after I gave them the link to the page with the price of the Macs. It's not that all of them cannot afford a Mac, they can't just see what they gain for the extra cost.

This was not what it felt like when it debuted.

Blackberry was the competing “smart” phone [1] and the newest releases were we under half the price of iPhone w the same 2-year discount.

I had the blackberry curve myself at that time and iPhone seemed way high-priced.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2007/07/25/iphone-v-blackberry-side-b...

> The cheapest desktop option is $6000 with an 8 core cpu or 8000 with a 16 core.

No, it is $600 with an 8 core M1 chip, the new mac mini. Also the iMac is arguably a desktop option, even if not really upgradeable.

The way I remember it the iphone-with-2-year-contract price was very similar to the buy-outright price for other phones. Are you definitely comparing the same contracts?

Completely nailed it. I need something with more grunt than the base prices here and apple don’t have a hold on that market because of expense. And they don’t hold the lower end market.

This is still a niche.

The average user was spending a very modest amount to be able to call and send text messages. Little portable multi function computers already cost hundreds of dollars.

Iphone helped clarify what a good interface looked like while prices came down and performance went up positioning themselves well as a product category that was already a thing became mainstream.

Laptops aren't a new category and the majority will continue to buy something other than apple in large part because of the price.

You mean a non portable laptop?

There are gargantuan unseen costs for giving up computing freedom that will not readily apparent at the moment you abandon it. The benefit will be shown as much more than "ostensible". I do hope for both of our sakes that most people are not so fickle to abandon it at first opportunity just because it is not an immediate cost.

What is your point even? The Mac mini isn’t really a desktop because it shares its chip with some of their mobile devices? When and where has that ever been the criterion for desktop PCs?

Guess it depends on the region. Here in Sweden I saw a few N95s and of Sony Ericsson and Nokia feature phones. Not a single Blackberry in sight, before or after.

> I do hope for both of our sakes that most people are not so fickle to abandon it at first opportunity just because it is not an immediate cost.

Generally, people are absolutely terrible at taking long term effects into account. I don't think many people are going to think twice about giving up their computing freedom.

But I think Apple's positioning as premium brand is going to ensure that open hardware keeps existing. And maybe we can even look forward to RISC-V to shake the CPU market up again.

With the prices these machines are going at (1600 for a basic mac air with 500gb and 26 gb ram), i dont see how these macs will be able to push an increase in apples market share.

Your comment is not accurate.

I cannot speak with authority on the topic and based my statement on the statements of several YouTube tech news Channels. It's entirely possible that they're missinformed and it wouldn't be for the first time.

I however cannot find anything that says differently from apple or a source showing how non signed systems can be booted on this chip.

The only thing I could find was apples statement that your system is even more secure now because non signed code won't be run.

Do you have any resources I can read so we can clear up this misunderstanding?

Or are you referencing my auto-correct error which replaced cant with can? If that is the case... I'm sorry for that but it's too late to fix and my intent is (I think) quiet clear considering I said that they're both locked and this lock is without an off switch.

I absolutely agree, but the problem is that there does need to be a compelling immediate term benefit or alternative. While I'd agree with the sibling reply that people often don't consider long terms effects, it's worth considering that immediate effects are more definite.

Any mac user could have seen this transition coming many years ago, and given up their platform of choice then on that prospect, but what good would that have done them? They wouldn't have got to enjoy anything.

Lastly, I do simply see it as a bit of a false dichotomy (or whichever fallacy is more accurate) to suggest that by using a mac that can't run other operating systems, you're giving up computing freedom. If I found it necessary to have a Windows or Linux machine, I'd simply just go get something that probably has better hardware support anyway. Yes conceivably Apple is setting some precedent that other manufacturers could follow, but in the previous example Apple is also just pushing you to buy their products instead.

The bootloader is not locked.

However, good luck writing the full set of drivers for your OS of choice.

I don’t think that’s the expectation they have from this release. This release is about cutting their costs. The next release will be about offering new features to capture more market.

I consider not losing the freedom to run anything I want on the hardware an immediate benefit. I don't need to have a particular use case. I view as detrimental the very action of giving money to someone who wants to decide how I use the hardware I bought.

> Any mac user could have seen this transition coming many years ago, and given up their platform of choice then on that prospect, but what good would that have done them? They wouldn't have got to enjoy anything.

This could easily devolve into a "to Mac or not" type of discussion which I don't want delve into, but I've personally never used a Mac (I have tried it) and I don't feel like I'm missing out because of it. Certainly the freedom to run any software and not be beholden to a large corporate interest is more important to me.

> Yes conceivably Apple is setting some precedent that other manufacturers could follow, but in the previous example Apple is also just pushing you to buy their products instead.

Yes, precedent, but also increased market share if they were to become more popular. One day, an alternative might not exist if we do not vote financially early enough. Therefore, my immediate urge is to say: no, I do not want to participate in this scheme. Make your hardware open or I will not buy it.

But most users were on feature phones at the time. The iPhone 1 was expensive.

> There are gargantuan unseen costs for giving up computing freedom

There is a social experiment about that, running since at least 2007. It's the smartphone and the tablet. I think I don't have to detail it and all of us can assess the benefits and the problems. We could have different views though.

By the way, I wonder if the makers of smartphones hardware and/or software could do all of their work, including the creation of new generations of devices, using the closed systems they sell (rent?). I bet they couldn't, not all of their work, but it's a honest question.

Okay, point taken, but I believe the RAM and SSD are not user-replaceable on the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and iMac, whereas both are user-serviceable on almost every other brand of laptop and all-in-one PC on the market.

From recovery OS you can personalize any blob. The local SEP will sign it for you and iBoot will happily load and jump to it.

That blob may be a Darwin kernel or it may be something else.