Apple is astonishingly confident in its new M1 Mac processors

[Karlston]

Apple is astonishingly confident in its new M1 Mac processors

Apple is claiming a trifecta: better performance, better battery life, and your apps will work 

Image: Apple

Apple’s big Mac event delivered three new computers — a new MacBook Air, a new entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, and a new Mac mini. But really, it delivered one thing that those three computers have in common: the M1 chip. That’s the official name for the Arm-based Apple Silicon the company is going to migrate all of its Mac computers over to.

 

Ahead of the event, I listed out ten things to watch for and though Apple didn’t really go as deep as I would like, it did at least strafe all but two of them. We had wall-to-wall coverage at The Verge, and a good place to start is our article detailing the 5 biggest announcements from Apple’s ‘One More Thing’ hardware event.

 

Here’s my takeaway: Apple is astonishingly confident in this chip, these computers, and the software it has developed to ensure they all run well.

 

First, Apple is making battery claims that I would characterize as “bombastic at best” if they were applied to a laptop with an Intel chip inside. With this M1 chip, I have no frame of reference at all except for Apple’s claims — which are substantial.

 

Apple claims 18 hours of video playback on the MacBook Air and 20 hours on the MacBook Pro. Video playback is a bad metric (especially since modern chips are optimized for it), so the real thing to note is those claims are significantly higher than what Apple claimed on their Intel-based predecessors: 6 more on the Air and nearly double on the Pro.

 

But to be blunt, I expected big battery claims from Apple. We already knew it was able to extract more performance per Watt than Intel can and that translates directly to battery life. What I was not expecting is just how bullish the company would be about performance.

 

Since the M1 is based on the Arm architecture, Apple needs an extra software layer to run apps designed for Intel chips — it’s called Rosetta 2. The very idea of emulated x86 apps on an Arm processor gives me hives. The experience of emulated Intel apps inside Arm on Windows is not great. But Apple says that for certain graphically-intensive apps it can get better performance on an app running through Rosetta 2 than it did on an equivalent Intel chip.

 

More than that, after the event I expected to hear warnings about certain apps not working or heavy apps running a little slower when translated through Rosetta 2. Or at least a small lowering of expectations for performance on those apps. When Steve Jobs introduced the original Rosetta back in 2005, the slide behind him said it was “Fast (enough).”

 

This year? No such caveats. Apple is boldly putting forth an “it just works” message on these kinds of apps — which will make up a majority of the third party apps I think most people will be using in the first year or so of this transition.

 

Most of all, the fact that Apple has ceased selling the Intel version of the MacBook Air is what astonishes me. The Air is Apple’s best-selling Mac by far and it is coming off a quarter where Apple made more money on Macs than it ever had before. Rather than hedge its bet, it’s replacing its most popular computer with this new system.

 

I have to admit I made an error in my thinking ahead of the event about the base, 2-port 13-inch MacBook Pro. It wasn’t moving the Pro to the new chip that would signal confidence, it was the Air, Apple’s most popular laptop. My mistake is that I think of it more as an entry-level Pro machine when it’s probably better to conceptualize it as a beefier version of the Air. That’s certainly true with the new M1 version — the only significant performance difference is that the Pro has a fan. Apple continues to sell Intel versions of it, as well.

 

There’s a lot more to say about these systems. The fact that they cap out at 16GB of RAM and two Thunderbolt ports doesn’t faze me, for one thing. Apple is starting at the lower-end of its Mac lineup, so it felt there wasn’t a need for more. I am confident future Apple chips will be able to support more.

 

I’m less sure what the plan will be for graphics. The M1 chip has an integrated GPU, and on Intel machines that usually means sub-par graphics. We’ll need to see what the reviews for these machines say, but again Apple is exuding confidence. Going forward, though, I do wonder whether discrete GPUs are in the cards, especially since Apple is also touting the benefits of sharing RAM across both the CPU and GPU in its integrated system.

 

Those are all interesting questions, but Apple has two years to answer them — that’s how long it says this transition will take. Right now the company is already selling and will soon be shipping these new computers. I can’t wait to see if Apple’s confidence is justified by the performance and battery life of these computers. If it is, the M1 chip will be a huge indictment of Intel, Qualcomm, and even Microsoft — each for different reasons.

 

It’s been a long time since a company has both promised and then delivered a step-change improvement in laptop computers. As of this moment we have a big promise, now let’s see if Apple can deliver.

 

Apple is astonishingly confident in its new M1 Mac processors

 

[zanderthunder]

On 11/14/2020 at 3:18 AM, Karlston said:

Since the M1 is based on the Arm architecture, Apple needs an extra software layer to run apps designed for Intel chips — it’s called Rosetta 2. The very idea of emulated x86 apps on an Arm processor gives me hives. The experience of emulated Intel apps inside Arm on Windows is not great. But Apple says that for certain graphically-intensive apps it can get better performance on an app running through Rosetta 2 than it did on an equivalent Intel chip.

 

More than that, after the event I expected to hear warnings about certain apps not working or heavy apps running a little slower when translated through Rosetta 2. Or at least a small lowering of expectations for performance on those apps.

Apps like Parallels Desktop for example, won't work with Apple Silicon based Macs. Currently, the team of Parallels are working on developing it's program to be compatible with the new chips, but no ETA yet.
https://www.parallels.com/blogs/parallels-desktop-apple-silicon-mac/

Besides, the Rosetta 2 for the Apple Silicon based Macs itself have some limitations as well.

Quote

What Can't Be Translated?

 

Rosetta can translate most Intel-based apps, including apps that contain just-in-time (JIT) compilers. However, Rosetta doesn’t translate the following executables:

• Kernel extensions
• Virtual Machine apps that virtualize x86_64 computer platforms

Rosetta translates all x86_64 instructions, but it doesn’t support the execution of some newer instruction sets and processor features, such as AVX, AVX2, and AVX512 vector instructions. If you include these newer instructions in your code, execute them only after verifying that they are available. For example, to determine if AVX512 vector instructions are available, use the sysctlbyname function to check the hw.optional.avx512f attribute.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_silicon/about_the_rosetta_translation_environment