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Portables (Apple) Desktops (Apple) Apple

Apple Unveils New M1 Apple Silicon-powered MacBook Air, Mac Mini, and MacBook Pro (zdnet.com) 112

Posted by msmash from the new-computers dept.
Apple announced three Macs today that are powered by the company's new M1 chip. They are: MacBook Air: The first Mac that will be powered by the M1 chip is the MacBook Air. According to Apple, the new Air is 3.5x faster with up to 5x graphics performance than the previous generation thanks to the M1 processor. The new MacBook Air doesn't have a fan, so it'll be completely quiet at all times. It has up to 18 hours of total battery life when watching videos or 15 hours when browsing the web. You can get it with up to 2TB of storage and 16GB of memory, with the price still starting at $999.

Mac Mini: Additionally, Apple will release an Apple Silicon-powered Mac Mini. It's the same design Apple used for the DTK, but with the M1 processor. The new Mac Mini starts at $699, a drop in the price of $100, and supports up to a 6K display via USB-C Thunderbolt ports with USB-4 support.

MacBook Pro: Lastly, Apple is updating the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 chip. Again, Apple touted performance gains in the MacBook Pro with 2.8x CPU gains and 5x GPU gains thanks to the M1 in the MacBook Pro. It keeps its cooling system but now gets 17 hours of battery life when browsing the web, or 20 hours when watching video. Apple kept the price of the MacBook Pro at $1,299 starting price.
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Apple Unveils New M1 Apple Silicon-powered MacBook Air, Mac Mini, and MacBook Pro More

Apple Unveils New M1 Apple Silicon-powered MacBook Air, Mac Mini, and MacBook Pro

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  • They only have 16GB of RAM (Score:5, Funny)

    by slk ( 2510 ) on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @03:19PM (#60708722)
    How do they expect me to run Chrome *and* Slack?

  • My aging Mac Mini (I believe it is circa 2013 or so - maybe 2011) became ineligible for updates recently, so I may grab one of the new Mini's just to keep abreast of Mac usage (I'm not really a "Mac person", but I like to keep one around just in case I need to do something on a Mac or try something out to help someone who is asking a question.

    Then again I may wait another year for refurbs to come out. $700 isn't a fortune but is still a bit steep for something I don't intend to actually use as a primary sy

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by nwf ( 25607 )

      I have a 2018 mini, which you can still mostly get. The Apple Silicon minis cut the USB C ports in half, which is really lame. And multicore performance is likely to be exactly the same, so I don't really see the point. The next Apple Silicon mini will likely be much better.

      • But the next will come in 2-3 years

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nwf ( 25607 )

          But the next will come in 2-3 years

          Yep, but you can get an Intel one today.

        • That's nothing considering they once went over four years between updates with the Mac Mini when it was using x86 CPUs. People legitimately thought Apple was going to discontinue it for the longest time. However, three years is probably pushing it now that they control they silicon in their own hardware.

          I would imagine that they'll refresh at most every two years, at least as far as the baseline model goes (the yearly updates might include a new higher-end model with a clock speed bump or additional RAM)

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            That's nothing considering they once went over four years between updates with the Mac Mini when it was using x86 CPUs. People legitimately thought Apple was going to discontinue it for the longest time.

            Apple was going to discontinue it. Sales of both the Mac Pro and Mini are miniscule and it's practically not worth selling.

            That's why Apple doesn't refresh them very often - they're not going to throw a ton of engineering effort at a model that barely sells as much in 3 years as a MacBook something or other

            • That's nothing considering they once went over four years between updates with the Mac Mini when it was using x86 CPUs. People legitimately thought Apple was going to discontinue it for the longest time.

              Apple was going to discontinue it. Sales of both the Mac Pro and Mini are miniscule and it's practically not worth selling.

              That's why Apple doesn't refresh them very often - they're not going to throw a ton of engineering effort at a model that barely sells as much in 3 years as a MacBook something or other would sell in 6 months.

              The only real reason they hang around is well, Tim Cook is a pragmatist and since all the work is already done on them, it's a shame to not continue to sell them if people are still buying it. They just aren't going to put a ton of effort into the next gen model.

              As for why the refresh now, well, the Mini is a low-cost low end platform, so it might sell due to novelty and to get it in the hands of developers to figure out. You'll notice the ARM Macs are all the low end configuration and Intel still is on the higher end systems. Also I'm sure the ARM Macs cost Apple less to produce so more profit on low end systems.

              The only thing that is cheaper in the ASi Mac mini is the CPU/SoC. And that is ignoring all the R&D Costs. Mind you, that is probably the highest-cost component in the BOM on either the x86 or ASi mini; but all the rest of the stuff is still there.

              Same thing with the Air and the MacBook Pro. The overall BOM cost is not that different; especially with the other two, where the display dominates the overall cost, even more than the CPU.

              So, IMHO, dropping the base model by $100 on the mini is probably abou

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by robi5 ( 1261542 )

                most of the r&d is not Mini specific; most M1 dev cost has been sunk, and variable attributable costs on units are next to nonexistent, while they avoid forwarding a chunk of money to intel

                • most of the r&d is not Mini specific; most M1 dev cost has been sunk, and variable attributable costs on units are next to nonexistent, while they avoid forwarding a chunk of money to intel

                  Even if, hypothetically, all that is true, the Production and BOM costs are not that different between the intel and ASi Mac mini.

      • Re:Cool (Score:4, Funny)

        by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @03:41PM (#60708820) Homepage Journal

        Yeah, cutting the USB ports in half makes it really hard to plug stuff into them! I prefer my USB ports to be full size, whether they be A or C.

      • And multicore performance is likely to be exactly the same

        Not sure why you would think that, multi-core performance should be improved quite a bit. If nothing else the M1 Mini has more cores (true that four are performance cores, but Apple is claiming a pretty large performance boost over the current Intel version so I don't see why that would also not be true in multicore use... It can do things with video the old Intel mini would not seem to be able to.

        • I don't see why that would also not be true in multicore use

          Because the M1 only has 4 big cores with no SMT. Intel/AMD have 8 cores / 16 threads CPUs.

          The 4 small cores in the M1 likely offer almost no performance, they are there to save power when the CPU is close to idle. At least, it's been like that for every ARM big.LITTLE design so far. The original designs didn't even bother: you could only run on the big or the little cores but not both at the same time. That was bad for marketing because everybody knows that a 8 cores CPU is better than a 4 cores CPU, isn't

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            Because the M1 only has 4 big cores with no SMT. Intel/AMD have 8 cores / 16 threads CPUs.

            Not on the Mini. Because Apple uses the same motherboard across the line, the i5s have quad core processors, but the i7, because it's the only one with the same footprint, only is a dual core. In fact, the performance difference between the two is minimal and depending on the workload, the quad core i5 might be faster than the dual core i7.

          • I don't see why that would also not be true in multicore use

            Because the M1 only has 4 big cores with no SMT. Intel/AMD have 8 cores / 16 threads CPUs.

            The 4 small cores in the M1 likely offer almost no performance, they are there to save power when the CPU is close to idle. At least, it's been like that for every ARM big.LITTLE design so far. The original designs didn't even bother: you could only run on the big or the little cores but not both at the same time. That was bad for marketing because everybody knows that a 8 cores CPU is better than a 4 cores CPU, isn't it?

            Hey dumbass. Reality check!

            You don't need four Low Power CPU cores to power anything "at idle". It is not just there for checking for network and trackpad events and stupid shit like that. You could do that with a single dinky core. The 4 LP cores are there for email and web browsing and I/O processing. And they are not that weenie.

            And not to mention that this isn't an x86 to x86 comparison. At. All.

          • I remember an old Geek Culture Comic explaining how the PowerPC architecture is Better than Intel Architecture in terms of measuring how long it takes for an Elephant vs a Mouse to eat and excrete material. While the Elephant can excrete more, the lag compared to the mouse which excretes less is much less, and often practical for some applications.

            Shortly after Apple went to Intel, and the Fans never bothered to debate it any more.

            However one issue that still exists is how poor most software written today

        • And multicore performance is likely to be exactly the same

          Not sure why you would think that, multi-core performance should be improved quite a bit. If nothing else the M1 Mini has more cores (true that four are performance cores, but Apple is claiming a pretty large performance boost over the current Intel version so I don't see why that would also not be true in multicore use... It can do things with video the old Intel mini would not seem to be able to.

          Not only video; but graphics performance in general whips all over the Intel crap!

      • The Apple Silicon minis cut the USB C ports in half

        Apple sez: buy a USB hub.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by nwf ( 25607 )

          The Apple Silicon minis cut the USB C ports in half

          Apple sez: buy a USB hub.

          There are no Thunderbolt hubs that I'm aware of that don't suck. USB 3.2 maybe, but you are taking 10 Gbps and making 4 slower ports.

    • ... but I like to keep one around just in case I need to do something on a Mac or try something out to help someone who is asking a question.

      You might want to wait until more non-Apple applications will actually work on these things.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cciRRus ( 889392 )
      I successfully updated my iMac to Catalina, which is only eligbile for High Sierra updates. Check out the Catalina Patcher [dosdude1.com].

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      My aging Mac Mini became ineligible for updates recently,

      What a coincidence!!

    • 2013 is 7 years ago. 2011 is 9 years ago. Which is a good life span for a computer, even today, and we shouldn't be too hard on Apple for not upgrading such an old system...
      That being said, Microsoft seems to be able to support systems that are much-much older with the latest version of Windows 10. Where the minimum specs for that is akin to an 18 year old PC (Granted a high end one back then)

  • I've wondered recently if the jailbreak community is enterprising enough to get Big Sur running on an iPad Pro. It would be really nice to have the option to run the desktop OS on the 12.9" model, given that it now has mouse and keyboard support. It would probably be akin to running Windows 10 on an Atom CPU, which is why Apple will likely never outright support it, but the jailbreak community has ported QEMU and you can "run" Windows on the iPad. Why would you want to? Who cares?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nwf ( 25607 )

      Apple noted Big Sur has hardware-assisted secure booting. It seems unlikely.

  • Apple promised that these new M1 based Macbooks were "Up to 3 times faster!" than comparable Intel processors, but then I remember them doing similar benchmark shenanigans during their PowerPC era. Something tells me that they cherry picked certain benchmarks for Apple optimized applications, and that in other benchmarks (especially games) they're going to fall behind similarly priced Intel products that have a dedicated GPU and video memory.

    But, hey... I've been wrong before. Maybe the reviews will surpris

    • Did they really say "than comparable Intel processors"? Because in that case we're talking 14nm chips (two process nodes behind). That takes away a lot of the "wow" factor. A 7nm Ryzen would already give these things a run for their money, whereas a 5nm would likely comfortably beat them...

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Did they really say "than comparable Intel processors"? Because in that case we're talking 14nm chips (two process nodes behind). That takes away a lot of the "wow" factor. A 7nm Ryzen would already give these things a run for their money, whereas a 5nm would likely comfortably beat them...

        Although the Process Size certainly can limit the maximum clock rate, it mostly affects the thermal/power budgets. Larger Process means larger transistor Gates, which means larger Gate Capacitance, and more di/dt; which as i said, mostly messes with the Power/Thermals.

        As long as you want to feed/cool, and want to pay for the extra die acreage, there isn't an automatic "freebie" speed increase as you go down in Process Size.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by robi5 ( 1261542 )

          Not anymore, it mostly increases the transistor budget they can throw on parallel execution engines like increased core count, GPU cores, "neural" engines and of course, various levels of the memory hierarchy.

    • Re:I'm curious how fast they REALLY are (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @04:53PM (#60709102)

      During the Keynote they said that some games actually run faster on M1 via Rosetta 2 than native on Intel because their GPU is better than Intel's integrated graphics (HD630, I think?).

      Then again, if all you need to beat is Intel's integrated graphics, the bar wasn't set high enough.

      I'd wait for benchmarks, that's for sure.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Halo1 ( 136547 )

      AnandTech has SPEC2006 benchmark [anandtech.com] comparisons of the A14 with the i7-1185G7 and the Ryzen 9 5950X. It holds up quite well there.

      Notes:
      * the A14 is the chip that's in the iPhone 12. The M1 is probably faster, if only because it will have a higher thermal envelope. The M1 also has 4 high performance cores compared to the A14's two.
      * these are single-threaded benchmarks, so those tests are only looking at single core performance (i.e., the 5950X will definitely be much faster than the M1 if you run e.g. a 16 th

      • matching on single threaded benchmarks is cool but perhaps not surprising any more. Single thread performance has been leveling off. The days of doubling every few years are past, hell we've been getting excited at the newest Ryzen with a 20% IPC boost, and that came with not much of a clock boost.

        It seems that chip designers don't really know what to do with all that silicon any more which is why mobile single threaded performance is catching up and desktops are getting more and more cores.

        The question is

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Halo1 ( 136547 )

          matching on single threaded benchmarks is cool but perhaps not surprising any more. Single thread performance has been leveling off. The days of doubling every few years are past, hell we've been getting excited at the newest Ryzen with a 20% IPC boost, and that came with not much of a clock boost.

          Have you looked at the last graph on that page? Apple's single-threaded performance has been consistently increasing significantly faster that x86 over the past five years. They did have quite a bit of catching up to do, of course, and it remains to be seen what will come next. Also keep in mind that this M1 SoC is similar to Intel/AMD's U-series of chips in terms of TDP, compared to whatever a 5950X consumes when running a single-threaded program at full speed.

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Halo1 ( 136547 )

              The graph I pointed to does not care about the OS. Those are pure cpu benchmarks. They're probably using clang/llvm for the x86 versions of those benchmarks, which is not bad at all in terms of optimising for that platform.

        • The new MacBook Air is fanless. If the new M1 chip has thermal problems, they're likely to show up there.

          The new Mac Mini seems to have decent cooling, though.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        There's a reason why PC review sites don't use these kinds of benchmarks. Geekbench is another one. They are basically useless.

        Show us a Cinebench or Premier benchmark. Premier might be okay because export uses the GPU and the rest is mostly storage limited, but Cinebench... Firefox compile time is another good one.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Halo1 ( 136547 )

          I agree that Spec2006 are mostly micro-benchmarks on today's cpus, but calling them basically useless is over the top imo.

          I also have one of the Developer Transition Kits with an A12Z in it and while the NDA forbids me to talk about its performance, my experience of running our own open source compiler on it (and comparing to doing the same on Intel) makes Apple's claims about the M1 quite believable to me.

    • They compare to "comparable in class" which who knows what it means and also use "best selling in class" which might mean the cheapest crap that gets a lot of sales.

  • MacBook Air still can't compete with the Microsoft Surface Pro, which is also fanless, long battery life, and, most importantly, can run everything.

    Why do you still not offer a touchscreen, Apple?

    • A touchscreen on the Mac mini? You're a mad man!

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by NoMoreACs ( 6161580 )

      MacBook Air still can't compete with the Microsoft Surface Pro, which is also fanless, long battery life, and, most importantly, can run everything.

      Why do you still not offer a touchscreen, Apple?

      Really?

      The Surface Pro has USB4?

      Let's run some benchmarks, too...

      The Surface Pro can run macOS; or run iPhone and iPad Apps?

      And unlike MS, Apple doesn't lie about battery life figures.

    • Sure if the only metric of success is a touchscreen.

  • 10 gig network gone from the mini build in?

    also how meny TB bues?

    • 10 gig network gone from the mini build in?

      also how meny TB bues?

      Only two Thunderbolt buses, but is thunderbolt 4, compared with the 2018's mini TB3

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      If they couldn't build in 10 GbE due to technical reasons, then they really should have put in 5 GbE or at the very least 2.5 GbE.

      • maybe they don't really have the pci-e / cpu io for that?
        Do they have an block map?
        Can you max both ports at the same time?

  • Until 2012 the mac mini had replaceable/upgradeable RAM AND SSD.

    The next itearion had soldered RAM and replaceable SSD. Then the 2018 itearion had upgradeable RAM but soldered SSD, now this incarnation has soldered RAM, and the jury is still out about the SSD....

    So...

    • Yeah, we're still using a 2006 Mac mini for a HTPC. Upgraded the CPU (I think it was Core Duo, not even Core 2 Duo) and firmware - thanks to a hack on the net - and then RAM, but I think it only uses 3 of 4GiB.
  • Very disappointed that the 13" Air and Pro don't have touchscreens. I mean why bring iPad apps to it and not have a touchscreen? Crazy! I have a Dell XPS and it has a touchscreen. On the go I use a combo of touchscreen and trackpad and love it. Apple fail right here.

    Another fail is the RAM. "up to 16GB" lol. That's fine for the Air and Mini, but for a "Pro" model where they tout video editing and Lightroom and Photoshop - that's a bit pedestrian for 2021. My XPS13 has 16GB and Lighroom often maxes th

  • OSx hasn't been able to run properly in 8 gig of ram for years and 16g is the bare minimum if you don't have 4k displays. Each copy of the screen buffer uses .4% of the ram and most programs use at least two copies. If you have two screens, double that. A single 6k frame buffer uses up more than 1% of the ram. That is a worse video ram usage than the TRS-Coco.

    The 8g thing can't be much more than a disposable toy with a fast CPU.

    If it had a m.2 slot and standard RAM, I would buy them but I can't justify t

    • Yeah... I am going for NUCs these days, despite being a long time Apple user. The current offerings really seem underwhelming based on past experience with Apple, and if everything I need the machine for can be done in Linux, why bother?

  • I'm typing this on my mid-2012 MBP 15".

    Yes it's got a non-functioning webcam, and the MicroSD card reader doesn't work.
    But it's been upgraded to 16GB and 1TB SSD for a couple of hundred dollars.

    To get equivalent mem/storage would mean forking out AU$4400. And that's a "side"grade, not an upgrade.

    I thought memory / space was supposed to double every 18 months?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Octorian ( 14086 )

      My current laptop is a similar machine, and its still basically in brand-new condition. I typically use laptops as a secondary computer, but regardless its still performing quite well. IMHO, the main motivation to upgrade would simply be that Apple is likely to cut off software update support at some point. (They already have, for machines only slightly older.) Oh, and I also wonder if I need to get an Intel replacement (while they still sell them), simply so all that "not beautifully designed inside the R

  • Wait a minute, so watching a video will use less battery than browsing the Internet?! That speaks a lot about what all crap is happening on the generic pages of the Internet. Maybe we should just make videos of the pages, and then the battery would last longer? Ah well, most online "articles" are videos these days, so it might actually work...

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