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

AMD's Zen 3 (Ryzen 5xxx series) are beating the Apple M1 in single core score: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/singlecore

As another datapoint Ian (of Anandtech) estimated that the M1 would need to be clocked at 3.25Ghz to match Zen 3, and these systems are showing a 3.2Ghz clock: https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/1326516048309460992

OK... but let's say it's 95% there, even. How much power does an M1 draw compared to a 5950X? It's not even funny. And the M1 is running at a lower clock.

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....

> 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.

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.

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.

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.