Apple Announces MacBook Pros With M2 Pro and M2 Max Chips (theverge.com) 129
Apple has announced new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros, featuring its latest M2 Pro and Max chips. From a report: The M2 Pro model will launch with a 12-core CPU, up to 19-core GPU, and up to 32GB of unified memory, while the M2 Max includes up to 38 cores of GPU power and support for up to 96GB of unified memory. The new 14-inch MacBook Pro with M2 Pro starts at $1,999, with the 16-inch model starting at $2,499. Both are available to order online today and will start shipping and appearing in Apple stores on January 24th.
Apple says the M2 Pro has double the amount of transistors the M2 shipped with and nearly 20 percent more than the M1 Pro. It also features 200GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, twice what's available on the regular M2. All of this power should result in better performance in apps like Adobe Photoshop and Xcode. Apple claims the MacBook Pro with M2 Pro "is able to process images in Adobe Photoshop up to 40 percent faster than with M1 Pro, and as much as 80 percent faster than MacBook Pro with an Intel Core i9 processor." The M2 Max chip has the same 12-core CPU as the M2 Pro, but much like the M1 Max, it really pushes the GPU power more. Apple claims the M2 Max is up to 30 percent faster than the M1 Max in graphics and can apparently "tackle graphics-intensive projects that competing systems can't even run." Chips aside, the latest MacBook Pro models now include Wi-Fi 6E3 and a "more advanced HDMI" (probably HDMI 2.1) that supports 8K displays up to 60Hz and 4K displays up to 240Hz.
Apple says the M2 Pro has double the amount of transistors the M2 shipped with and nearly 20 percent more than the M1 Pro. It also features 200GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, twice what's available on the regular M2. All of this power should result in better performance in apps like Adobe Photoshop and Xcode. Apple claims the MacBook Pro with M2 Pro "is able to process images in Adobe Photoshop up to 40 percent faster than with M1 Pro, and as much as 80 percent faster than MacBook Pro with an Intel Core i9 processor." The M2 Max chip has the same 12-core CPU as the M2 Pro, but much like the M1 Max, it really pushes the GPU power more. Apple claims the M2 Max is up to 30 percent faster than the M1 Max in graphics and can apparently "tackle graphics-intensive projects that competing systems can't even run." Chips aside, the latest MacBook Pro models now include Wi-Fi 6E3 and a "more advanced HDMI" (probably HDMI 2.1) that supports 8K displays up to 60Hz and 4K displays up to 240Hz.
Photoshop? (Score:4, Interesting)
How long has it been since anybody said, "I wish Photoshop was faster! It's soooo slow!!"
Xcode, too.
Re:Photoshop? (Score:5, Insightful)
Adobe image editing software has a lot of interesting AI functions these days, so someone using Lightroom can say "Make a mask specifically on the hair of this person in this image, then apply that same mask - adapted to each new photo in turn - to the same person,and apply the following edits each time." Do that for 150 50MB raw files and see if you still feel like it was fast, even on a Threadripper or Mac Studio.
If you're sticking with creative software, try editing 10bit 422 video in 8k. Canon and Sony both have $3000 cameras that can take 8k video now, and while it's not generally practical as an output format, it's almost always better to capture the highest quality input possible. 8k video brings anything that isn't purpose built to deal with it to its knees.
I use a Thinkpad X1 Extreme as a portable and a Threadripper 3960 at home to do this stuff, and I use Capture One and Resolve Studio rather than Adobe products, but people making content creation software are at this point building around what Apple computers have in them now, so there's a lot of stuff I'm still waiting to see get better on other platforms.
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"Photoshop's faster!" has been the cry of every PC CPU upgrade for as long as I can remember, since at least . [google.com]
I think it's just knee-jerk now. Something that's dragged out whenever a middle manager's looking for something to say about a new CPU.
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Professionals that work with large images in uncompressed formats - think outdoor advertising - have always complained about Photoshop performance. Or people that do batch image processing of the output of several photographers in a studio that take hundreds of pictures that all need the same treatments applied to them.
And they always will, because they're working with images the size of a billboard or a city bus. Or hundreds of 50+MB RAW images a day. And it's not like Adobe is going to stop add
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Because of the processes used in outdoor advertising, the files involved actually tend to be pretty small. Billboards are surprisingly low resolution, for instance.
But yes, Canon and Sony both have very high resolution full-frame cameras, and there are companies like Fuji, Leica and Hasselblad that get in to medium-format equivalent sensors that can exceed 100MB/raw file.
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How long has it been since anybody said, "I wish Photoshop was faster! It's soooo slow!!"
2 days? I had to batch edit a bunch of images recently. The fact that Photoshop still executes that process single threaded is painful and I sure as hell thought it even if I didn't say it out loud.
I thought it even harder when I noticed I made a mistake and had to start again.
Not Pro (Score:4, Insightful)
Replaceable memory and storage? No? Not Pro then!
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Replaceable memory and storage? No? Not Pro then!
Maybe a decade ago. But for actual Pro Users, probably not even back then.
Hobbyists Upgrade. Pros Buy Appropriately the first time.
Pros just max out systems at the get-go. No time for upgrades after that.
Re: Not Pro (Score:2)
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This fuckin' oh I'm going to put more memory in is poor tier not pro tier.
This oh, I'm going to the Genius Bar to beg for repair services when my laptop fails is consumer tier, not pro tier.
A pro has gotta replace the whole thing.
A pro can get repair parts and fix their device so they can get the data out, or they can transfer the storage device to another machine for the same purpose, both impossible with Apple's "pro" offerings. Consequently they are unsuitable for "pro" use unless all of your data is stored on the network. That's not zero use cases, but it is unfortunate.
The non-replaceable storage is a far bigger p
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This fuckin' oh I'm going to put more memory in is poor tier not pro tier.
This oh, I'm going to the Genius Bar to beg for repair services when my laptop fails is consumer tier, not pro tier.
A pro has gotta replace the whole thing.
A pro can get repair parts and fix their device so they can get the data out, or they can transfer the storage device to another machine for the same purpose, both impossible with Apple's "pro" offerings. Consequently they are unsuitable for "pro" use unless all of your data is stored on the network. That's not zero use cases, but it is unfortunate.
The non-replaceable storage is a far bigger problem than the non-replaceable memory, but both suck
Ever hear of Time Machine? That's how you get your Data to a new machine. Also doubles as a zero config Backup. WORKING Pros often don't have an IT Staff to setup and maintain typical Backup packages.
Ever hear of Thunderbolt Drives? Faster than almost all Network Storage, and As far away as a USB-C Connector. WORKING Pros in the field can't rely on access to Networks.
Pros don't fucking FIX nor UPGRADE. No time for that nonsense.
So, what was your point, again?
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Ever hear of Thunderbolt Drives? Faster than almost all Network Storage, and As far away as a USB-C Connector. WORKING Pros in the field can't rely on access to Networks.
Apparently, you so-called "working pros in the field" can't rely on using your brains much either, if your idea of a "pro" backup is copying data to some external hard drive enclosure.
A professional backup in the proper sense is one where the data is copied to removable media that is totally independent of the mechanism that wrote it. At best, you can mitigate your data COPY to an external hard drive through the use of redundant disk layouts (RAID, etc..) but it will never be a true backup. Once those drive
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Ever hear of Thunderbolt Drives? Faster than almost all Network Storage, and As far away as a USB-C Connector. WORKING Pros in the field can't rely on access to Networks.
Apparently, you so-called "working pros in the field" can't rely on using your brains much either, if your idea of a "pro" backup is copying data to some external hard drive enclosure.
A professional backup in the proper sense is one where the data is copied to removable media that is totally independent of the mechanism that wrote it. At best, you can mitigate your data COPY to an external hard drive through the use of redundant disk layouts (RAID, etc..) but it will never be a true backup. Once those drives die, they get dropped, or something else goes wrong you can bend over and kiss your data goodbye.
Also, I've worked in the field with the so-called "pros" you speak of and you're right about one thing. They don't fix and they don't upgrade. They pick up the phone and call the real pros to come in and do it for them, because most self-proclaimed "pros" wouldn't know the difference between a CPU and a GPU and will cheerfully point to the tower on their desk and say "my hard drive is broken" when they can't log into their computer.
You are an idiot.
I know what a proper, office-scenario backup system looks like. I have setup several over the years. This is not that.
I dare you to find one professional actually working in the field in less than a full-blown movie production unit (or similar) that has a "proper" backup arrangement. They are lucky to be able to have an external drive set up as a simple Time Machine Backup. This is intended to serve until the laptop data can be transferred to a properly backed-up system.
As for your ridiculo
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Ever hear of Time Machine?
Yes, I've heard of it. I only hear about it when my Apple-using friends complain about how it is a festering pile of shit that seldom works, and even when it does, the performance is garbage.
Ever hear of Thunderbolt Drives?
ahahaha "I'm so pro I backup onto a thunderbolt drive" ahaha
This is really how Mac users think, thanks for the demonstration
Idiot.
No one ever talks about backup software when it works; so you never hear from those people.
The TB storage comment was intended to refer to working mass-storage, like what would typically be provided by a networked file server; not backup. Mac Users use typical USB-C drives for that; just like most everybody else.
Stop trying to bend over backward casting everything Apple-Oriented in the most ridiculously-illogical way possible. It just makes you look petty and ignorant.
IOW, it shows your true shortcomi
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The only problem it has is that it's slow. But it's very stable and works well. The "people" you have been talking to is likely your other personalities.
The people I have been talking to have been Apple users from as far back as I was (from the Apple 2 era, anyway, if not literally the very beginning) and are a mix of programmers and photographers. The least of them is twice as smart as you could ever hope to pretend to be.
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Ha yeah super smart people who are too dumb to use the simplest consumer grade backup software ever made.
They're using the tools as directed, and the tools are not doing what they claim to do. By all means, blame the victims. That's what Apple is doing.
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You, obviously anti-Apple for some bizarre reason
It's not bizarre; I was an Apple user for years. That's why I know Apple is terrible — I've been abused by them before.
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There is no "you", coward, you don't get to complain about "me"
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What on earth does availability of backup solutions have to do with replaceable drives?
The answer is nothing.
Backups aren't an answer to drives not being replaceable, and drives being replaceable has absolutely fucking nothing to do with backups.
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To be fair on the data transfer point: Apple has always had a far slicker way to do this than any other computer manufacturer, going all the way back to when they had SCSI on their devices: target disk mode.
Hold down a keyboard combo on one system to put it into target mode, use a (now, thunderbolt; but this has existed with SCSI and FireWire in the past as well) cable to connect to another Mac, and the disk from the first shows up as the world's most expensive thunderbolt SSD on the second. You then copy
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Depends on the nature of the hardware damage, i've actually used it to save a mac with a faulty screen (totally blank, not sure if the screen died or the gpu did), as this isn't needed for target mode.
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You are an amateur imaging what it would be like to be pro.
The picture I'm getting from you is of a coward.
First of all we don't go to the genius bar to ask for repairs because we don't buy consumer grade junk that breaks all the time.
So you're not buying Apple hardware, then.
We buy stuff that is built well and are willing to pay a premium to not have to screw with that.
Fujitsu maybe?
As far as getting data out the data are already out. Anything important gets backed up, loser.
We all like losing the work since the last backup, don't we?
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As much as the AC is being a butt, anybody not running constant backup on critical systems now is playing with fire. Even my personal laptop, with nothing more important on it than my silly manuscripts for my comedy novels and a few journal entries, has Backblaze on it, with incremental backups weekly to a drive that stays in a firesafe. Backblaze is never more than about ten minutes out of date, since it's pretty rare for me to make / add any files that are larger than a few megabytes.
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As much as the AC is being a butt, anybody not running constant backup on critical systems now is playing with fire.
I agree completely. However, one of the characteristics of laptops/notebooks is that they are sometimes used when disconnected, and there is no opportunity to make backups. I wouldn't make the same complaint about a desktop machine (and didn't, in the separate story posted about it to make it look like more is happening than really is.)
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Fair enough with a laptop. Though even my 'unimportant' laptop gets a thumbdrive backup of changes when not connected before shutdown. I can't remember the last time I had no backup for more than one day.
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A laptop that's disconnected still has means to do backups. They're called external drives and even Macs support Time Machine to an external disk for backup purposes.
It won't
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The sign of a true pro? Posting as an AC.
Re: Not Pro (Score:2)
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"...we don't go to the genius bar to ask for repairs because we don't buy consumer grade junk that breaks all the time."
LOL an open admission that Apple sells "consumer grade junk that breaks all the time." Curious to know what differentiates these new machines from that "consumer grade junk".
It is interesting that when Apple so Pro machines that were expandable, that expandability was crucial to those being Pro machines (and not "consumer grade junk").
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> We buy stuff that is built well and are willing to pay a premium to not have to screw with that.
So you're not buying Apple then? I'm confused.
Anyone ever taken a look at Apple's forums? They're riddled with customers whose shit doesn't work because Apple only tests their shit on the most common 80% of use cases and ignores the rest.
Apple fanboys claiming Apple gear is "well built" is priceless. It's cheap junk assembled in China and sold to people who are too stupid to avoid the Apple tax.
And you kn
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My 2020 Air, and 2021 MBP are by *far* my best built laptops.
I mean, they're solid fucking hunks of aluminum. There's no play on anything, anywhere. There's no flex.
Now I'll grant you that shit doesn't really matter one bit to me. Probably the only PC laptop I have that I can look at and say, "wow, this really is a piece of shit", is my LG Flex 14, but the idea that MacBooks are cheap junk is... pretty fucking laughable.
And you know it.
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There's a question of hobbyists, specifically for the high-end Apple stuff.
I use a Threadripper system that has roughly ~$6500 worth of parts in it for my content creation workflow, but that system has grown and changed over years and years to get to what it is right now. There's no way I would go out and buy a top-end $7500 Mac Studio that still wouldn't have nearly the internal storage of my workstation, and my PC technically still has a lot more horsepower in the GPU department as well. Granted, the Mac
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It's all in what you need. A lot of people have wants that are not based on their needs.
What I need for my hobbies is simple. I need a text editor and terminal and the ability to compile software. I could use a netbook and be 95% as effective at my hobby as I am with my m1max macbook pro. I have second hobby which is recording music. I find I can do everything I need with a ipad pro and a focusrite. Sure, I would love to build a workstation to do this, but it's not required. I rarely even use my macbook for
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I can't stand Apple's poor-travel keyboards or its massively oversized trackpads. Apple laptops are off my radar for failing at a basic test of my personal comfort just on that basis, even if I recognize that people who never touch a keyboard for whatever they do on a computer would be very happy with an Apple computer.
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I actually enjoy the apple keyboard and trackpad myself. So much so i bought the full size keyboard with touchID and a magicpad. It's a preference thing and I can understand why others may not like it.
at least the mac pro 7.1 has pci-e slots & sat (Score:2)
at least the mac pro 7.1 has pci-e slots & sata.
Now for the 8.1 they need to have at least one m.2 slot or one pci-e gen 4/5 x4 slot at min.
Pros don't buy top gear, consumers do (Score:5, Interesting)
Pros don't have time to fuck around with that shit. We buy top spec gear and when there is better we buy that. This fuckin' oh I'm going to put more memory in is poor tier not pro tier. By the time you need to do that your fuckin' GPU is out of date, all your connectors are too old, your bus is shitty, speakers sound like ass, etc etc. A pro has gotta replace the whole thing.
Most professionals get top bonuses, not shiny toys. Any pro with a job rarely gets to choose his/her gear. We get what the company can support and maintain. Fortunately, my job supports MacBook Pros and even encourages them due to the amount of UNIX scripting we rely on for DevOps. We'd be running Desktop Linux if MS didn't intentionally cripple the Outlook Web App (some meeting scheduling features could only be done from Outlook). However, the upgrade schedule is set by a dedicated IT dept.
Most pros hold onto their gear much longer than consumers also. As a professional software engineer, I dread getting a new laptop. While everything of importance I've ever produced lives in a remote git repo, or a company-managed cloud, there are a million tweaks and certs lying throughout my machine that accumulate each year. Every time an engineer gets a new laptop, we hear for 1-2 weeks them apologizing because something on their new machine isn't working. Therefore, our top performers often have the oldest laptops. They've been with the company a long time and dread the downtime to configure a new machine. It's more important to them to have a predictably working machine than a shiny new one. You'll often see them in meetings sitting next to an outlet and plugging in a beat-up, filthy grey and yellow legacy MagSafe 2 power-adapter because their 8 year old battery won't last the full meeting.
regarding your comments...no one cares if their speakers sound like ass. If you care, you don't use laptop speakers, but more importantly, speakers haven't evolved in 20 years. My 20 yo laptop sounds just as good as anything today....both sounding like ass. GPUs?...not much use for most professionals. Sure, if you're developing video games, editing videos, etc, GPU support matters...it probably helps if you're plugging in lots of high-res external monitors. Most professional software can't take advantage of a GPU.
For me, I wish Apple had easily replaceable batteries. Our local Apple Store has a LONG wait...several weeks for simple jobs. As a pro, I appreciate how in old Lenovos I could swap batteries easily (haven't looked at ThinkPads for 10 years, so not sure if that's still the case). I dread downtime more than obsolete hardware. If I could just spend an hour and swap a battery, that would be ideal. I have a 6 year old MacBook Pro. I can barely tell it apart from the latest models, performance-wise. Since I mostly use mine with an external keyboard/mouse/monitor, reducing keyboard wear, I could keep using it for many more years...just need a new battery so that when I am on the road, I don't have to plug-in constantly.
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As a pro, I appreciate how in old Lenovos I could swap batteries easily (haven't looked at ThinkPads for 10 years, so not sure if that's still the case)
Still easy last I checked. Pop off the back cover. Remove battery, add new battery. You don't even have to be careful to not lose the back cover screws since they are captive. Their warranty technicians will replace anything on-site including the entire motherboard.
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Most professionals get top bonuses, not shiny toys. Any pro with a job rarely gets to choose his/her gear.
Wow, someone thinks that contractors or self employed people aren't professionals despite them making up a significant portion of workers.
Don't contactors want reliability? (Score:2)
Most professionals get top bonuses, not shiny toys. Any pro with a job rarely gets to choose his/her gear.
Wow, someone thinks that contractors or self employed people aren't professionals despite them making up a significant portion of workers.
I don't know a single one. Haven't since the dot-com bust. That said, I've been fortunate to get high-end jobs. We hire our workers or use major service providers on rare occasion. Most independent contractors are forbidden from brining their own devices onto a network. They're usually provided by a company-controlled laptop so the admins can guarantee security.
There is a low-end market that's eager to hire a smart guy with a laptop who can get the job done. However, the big players don't want this
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> I have a 6 year old MacBook Pro. I can barely tell it apart from the latest models, performance-wise.
You're a Pro and you can't see a performance difference between an i9 MBP and an M1 MBP? It's huge.
But as an alternative just touch both computers and you'll be able to tell by the temperature.
Doesn't matter much for tools or cloud (Score:2)
You're a Pro and you can't see a performance difference between an i9 MBP and an M1 MBP? It's huge.
But as an alternative just touch both computers and you'll be able to tell by the temperature.
I am sure it's nicer, but not enough to make a massive difference in my IDE. My code doesn't compile faster enough on an M1 to actually improve my productivity tangibly...and most of my computationally expensive work is done in a cloud anyway. 10-year-old computers are really good enough. I have one. It's nice. It works. I bought a more expensive top of the line one recently...it's nicer, but doesn't impact me from a bottom-line perspective.
If you can get my company to pay for faster VMs? That w
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>Therefore, our top performers often have the oldest laptops. They've been with the company a long time and dread the downtime to configure a new machine. It's
>more important to them to have a predictably working machine than a shiny new one. You'll often see them in meetings sitting next to an outlet and plugging in a
>beat-up, filthy grey and yellow legacy MagSafe 2 power-adapter because their 8 year old battery won't last the full meeting.
I know that guy! Ok, at my office, it was Thinkpads, but t
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People who want to actually upgrade electronics these days are hobbyists at best, pros just want a tool they can use.
I agree - but I also think Apple deserves a good chunk of the blame for the complete watering down of the term "Pro" when it comes to computing hardware. It's turned into mostly a marketing term, and people feel free to define it in whatever manner they choose.
To the GP's points... while I recently purchased a newer MacBook Pro for myself, the 2015 version I was using at home until recently never felt noticeably slower than the M1 provided by my employer. I'm sure I'd feel differently if I was doing video p
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It's always been a marketing term and nothing more.
The term "professional" actually refers to someone who is getting paid for what they're doing, this only loosely translates to using more expensive tools because someone who is going to perform the same task repeatedly can justify paying a higher price since they get more use from the product. A professional tool isn't necessarily more expensive however and it might lack some of the ease of use features intended for casual users, as a professional is usuall
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When I think of a "professional range" (laptop context) I think of something like Thinkpad's and Latitude's. Where if IT bought from within that range, they could share power supplies, memory modules, etc from one device to another. Where components were available / future proof for many years.
I suppose they are used by professionals (staff who get paid to use them).
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Well Apple are pretty good about sharing power supplies. They used magsafe across the range for many years, and since 2016 everything has been USB-C with magsafe as an option on the newer models too.
Most IT departments never swap individual internal components between devices, if a device is faulty it gets returned to the manufacturer for repair/replacement.
Other manufacturers use all manner of random proprietary power connectors, and they vary between models all the time. The internal components are also s
Question... (Score:2)
> 200GB/s of unified memory bandwidth
Can someone put some perspective on this?
What is a modern mid-range PC's memory bandwidth? Say something like a mid-range i7 with (whatever standard memory it would have)?
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> 200GB/s of unified memory bandwidth
Can someone put some perspective on this?
It's about 3-4x the memory bandwidth of a PC processor with some good fast DDR4, but it's less than 1/2 the memory bandwidth of a high-end GPU (like a RTX 2080) and the system memory has to be shared between CPU and GPU. So it's much better than a PC if you're not using the GPU, but it's much worse than a PC if you are.
Re: Question... (Score:2)
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So are the numbers given for the PC hardware, though.
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Memory that's shared between CPU and GPU is a feature - it means that you don't need to send copies of data from the CPU to the GPU and back, because they can both reference the same RAM, speeding system performance. As a result, data processing that uses GPUs is much faster on Apple Silicon than on PCs with separate CPU and CPU, if it's optimized for Apple Silicon so its not making unnecessary copies but just working in a unified pipeline.
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Memory that's shared between CPU and GPU is a feature
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. It depends on whether you need to involve both CPU and GPU frequently.
it means that you don't need to send copies of data from the CPU to the GPU and back, because they can both reference the same RAM, speeding system performance
PCIE5 x16 has 64GB/sec of memory bandwidth. Unless you're exceeding (or at least approaching) that between CPU and CPU, you're not going to see a benefit. The GPU is also not very powerful, unlike the CPU, which is fairly competitive.
On the other hand, the amount of memory is inadequate for intensive tasks anyway, so you're more likely to be limited by memory size than memory bandwidth. For example, I
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it's less than 1/2 the memory bandwidth of a high-end GPU (like a RTX 2080) and the system memory has to be shared between CPU and GPU.
Worth noting that RTX 2080 would be stuck at 8GB whereas the Mac M-series chips GPU's can have access to most of system memory, so 32Gb or more... that's worth something even if the memory bandwidth is less, plus you don't have to pipe date back and forth from system to GPU.
Re: Question... (Score:2)
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It's worse than a PC with a highend discrete GPU at GPU bound tasks. It has a lot more memory bandwidth than any other integrated GPU, and if you're not making heavy use of the GPU then the CPU has a lot more bandwidth available than competing systems.
Also the 200GB/s is for the M1 pro, the M1 Max, Ultra and M2 models are higher still.
no max chip on the mini and studio still on M1 (Score:2)
no max chip on the mini and studio still on M1.
SO right now an laptop with M2 can have more ram then an desktop system on m2.
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no max chip on the mini and studio still on M1.
SO right now an laptop with M2 can have more ram then an desktop system on m2.
Probably a thermal issue for the mini. Or, more likely, a Product Roadmap consideration.
Afterall, there is (or soon will be) an M2 Mac Studio (and Mac Pro?) for that!
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Same as last year, the higher end models came out later.
SSDs have limited life. They must be replaceable. (Score:2)
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If you have a desktop, even a $125 Arc A380 gives AV1 and HEVC 422 encoding support in Premiere and Resolve Studio. 12th and 13th-gen Intel CPUs with graphics also have that support. If you have both Arc and an iGPU in a desktop, they can both be used at the same time, even.
Apple Silicon and recent high end Snapdragon SoCs also support at least HEVC 422 in hardware, which is a big deal for anybody working with big-boy camera output. I actually record the hdmi output from my camera sensor on my phone sometim
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The SSD is replaceable, just sell the whole machine and get a new one. Then brag online that you sold it for more than you paid for it, the true Apple experience.
Re: SSDs have limited life. They must be replaceab (Score:2)
Re: SSDs have limited life. They must be replaceab (Score:2)
some mac systems have ssd on cards (that need an 2 (Score:2)
some mac systems have ssd on cards (that need an 2th mac to swap)
And apple also locks out some upgrades with the end user tool (now the apple only tool may allow more changes to be done)
Forced (Score:2)
Mac Mini... (Score:2)
I keep a Mac Mini around for the rare bit of iOS work I get interested in doing. It's the third one I've had over the years, but probably the last. When I got it I immediately upgraded the memory, which went perfectly. Now if you want to get the 32GB model, the price jump is crazy, and it has to be selected at purchase.
The draw of the Mini previously was that it was enough to get the job done, but it wasn't too expensive. That's gone. So I'll hold on to that Mini until it fades into obscurity. Thankfully, t
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Interestingly, for most applications the unified RAM performance plus the SSD storage means that OS and apps perform well with quite a bit less RAM than on other machines, because they do less data copying in RAM, and can swap faster when they need to, and are optimized to run in less RAM, and have many operations optimized in specialized silicon (video transcoding, neural nets, etc.). You might want to try out the base M2 Mini to see how it performs for you!
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uh, it runs node.js, vsc, mongodb and mysql, apache+php, and chrome, along with my music player, slack, zoom, vlc, gitx, xcode command-line tools...everything i need to get through the day.
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So all the same stuff you could run on an open system that you could upgrade and repair yourself, then. What do you need a $2000 computer for that? You could run the same software on a Raspberry Pi. (The "xcode command-line tools" are for the most part your generic UNIX development stack, unless you count the Xcode-specific junk that deals with Xcode project files.)
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perhaps. but maybe i don't have time to deal with raspberry pi's and linux systems that change all the configuration files on me after every upgrade. I'm a software developer (mostly web and apps).
If you like playing with your o/s and hardware, go for it. I don't have time for that. It isn't fun. It just gets in my way of my doing what I want and need to do.
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perhaps. but maybe i don't have time to deal with raspberry pi's and linux systems that change all the configuration files on me after every upgrade
This is funny coming from a web app developer.
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uh, it runs node.js, vsc, mongodb and mysql, apache+php, and chrome, along with my music player, slack, zoom, vlc, gitx, xcode command-line tools...everything i need to get through the day.
Because you're a Pro.
Those whining about a lack of brain-wasting Game software are not.
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Some engineering or cad software would be a nice too.
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You might have heard of AutoCad?
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What I find strange is that I use a 32GB M1 Macbook for work and it feels slow as dirt despite having "powerful" hardware. My bias is that all of my personal devices run Linux Mint MATE on slightly less powerful x86 hardware. At least some of it has to do with what I have to do for work, but I'll still get random lockups sometimes just trying to type something to a coworker on Slack etc. When I complained about this there was a suspicion that my particular machine was defective so we did some comparative be
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Re:All that power (Score:4, Interesting)
At least some of it has to do with what I have to do for work, but I'll still get random lockups sometimes just trying to type something to a coworker on Slack etc.
That's just a macOS thing. For whatever reason, macOS will just routinely lock up when you type too fast. It's kind of hilarious, to be honest. You'll be typing away, and you'll end up buffering keystrokes like you're using an ancient terminal on a slow line. This happens in Terminal, this happens in Safari, this happens everywhere.
You can have the CPU monitor open while this is happening and it'll show under 5% CPU usage, and you'll still end up watching your keystrokes slowly make it to wherever you're typing. I haven't timed it, but it's pretty slow, like about one keystroke a second levels of slow.
And it just does that. Randomly. No CPU spike, nothing to explain it. Just random slowdowns for no reason. I've seen this across multiple Macs, it's just a thing macOS does.
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What I find strange is that I use a 32GB M1 Macbook for work and it feels slow as dirt despite having "powerful" hardware.
The hardware is powerful. It's undeniable that OSX does a lot more than NeXTStep did, but NeXTStep was snappier than OSX is today on a 68k chip, and OSX doesn't do that much more. It's a few times more, not a few orders of magnitude more. But that's how much more powerful the hardware is, so the most reasonable conclusion is that Apple did some bad things to OSX.
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What I find strange is that I use a 32GB M1 Macbook for work and it feels slow as dirt despite having "powerful" hardware
They do not feel slow, they are slow. When the M1 Macbook first came out there where lots of oohhs & ahhs about how fast it was. Then later we found out that Apple was using rigged benchmarks. Notice, nobody is talking about how fast the M1/M2 processors are.
Now it is coming out that Apple has optimized the M1/M2 processors, so they are fast on certain flagship apps. But for other apps that need lots of horsepower, like video encoding, the M1/M2 processors are garbage.
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They do not feel slow, they are slow. When the M1 Macbook first came out there where lots of oohhs & ahhs about how fast it was.
What everyone was saying was how "snappy" it was, and I'm not even sure what they were talking about, the speed of the interface, how fast menus appear or something.
But what you've failed to understand is that Apple Silicon was not supposed to be a giant leap forward in performance, it was a lateral move from Intel without losing performance, yet also gaining a lot of energy efficiency. Apple succeeded, and it is impressive.
That said, currently there are no computer hardware manufacturers that can compe
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--- Apple fanboys' dreams, deleted---
Virtually nothing in that post bares any semblance to reality. When the M1/M2 was launched there where plenty of youtube videos talk about how fast they were. Even some bosting it was the end of Intel. A simple search and you can probably still find them. They all went away when the allegations off rigged beanchmarks where being used and NDA where being used to silence critics. Today we know those allegations were true.
Truth is Apples Silicon is not the greatest. What it is, is it middle of the
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. In the ARM Qualcomm has chips that mop the floor with Apple in both performance and power consumption.
lol- what in the holy name of fuck are you talking about?
In the market segments in which they compete, no, QC doesn't have anything that comes within gunshot range of the A16 or M1.
Their best parts (SD 8 Gen 2) use more power, and have around 20% less performance per core.
Simply put- you are full of shit.
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And not a thing to run on it.
The MacOS software library is lacking. Especially when it comes to games.
Pros Write games. Consumers Play games.
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And not a thing to run on it.
The MacOS software library is lacking. Especially when it comes to games.
Pros Write games. Consumers Play games.
How are you going to write a game you cant play?
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And not a thing to run on it.
The MacOS software library is lacking. Especially when it comes to games.
Pros Write games. Consumers Play games.
How are you going to write a game you cant play?
So, you're restricted to only Developing Games at your skill level or below?
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Literally every other vendor charges you more than the bare component cost when upgrading.
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Good for them?
Re: $200 to go from 512 to 1TB SSD storage??? (Score:2)
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Sure, but integrating the RAM on chip gives Apple Silicon much better performance (lower latency) than off-chip RAM. That's the tradeoff. Want that amazing performance, lose some flexibility. Now keep in mind that the large majority of computer sold never upgrade storage or RAM.
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But how many people use an application that would be unusably slow with off-chip ram but usable with integrated RAM? Also you have the downside that the GPU uses that RAM as well. I built my kids systems with Nvidia 3070s and off chip ram and they don't seem to have a problem doing anything. I think most people that buy these devices are reading email and surfing the web.
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one more reason not to develop for iOS
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If you don't have a dire financial career need to run a specific mac-only bit of software, please don't waste your money. There are far better options hardware, and OS-wise, for that amount of money.
From what I am reading here, maybe not.