> The early prognosticators thought the M1 was more a proof of concept (shove it into existing designs to get it out there).
Which is a weird take when you consider the thermal issues that Intel macs were plagued with. It's almost like the chassis was designed with 10w of dissipation in mind which Intel couldn't operate within, but the M1 could easily.
I had assumed that Apple designed for the M1 and then fit Intel chips into those designs.
My private conspiracy theory (supported by nothing) is that Intel promised to Apple good 10w processors back in 2014-ish, and Apple designed 2016 MBP based on that promise. And when Intel didn't delivered, they shipped Macs anyway, and either started working on M1 or cleared any doubt about should they continue working on it.
that’s not just your (conspiracy) theory, it’s exactly what happened (something i’ve also noted before). intel screwed apple years ago and apple decided to move on. it just took many years of chip development to get to this point.
Honestly wouldn't be surprised if it came out that they started working (at least theoretically) on Apple Silicon when they transitioned to Intel in the first place and it just took this many years for all the pieces to be ready and lined up.
Not only plausible, I'd say this is the most likely way it played out.
At the time of the Intel transition, Apple had already gone through the process once before with 68k to PPC. It had to be clear to the long-game thinkers at Apple that this cycle would keep repeating itself until Apple found a way to bring that critical part of its platform under its own control. Intel was riding high in 2006, but so had IBM in 1994.
Within two years of the Intel transition, Apple acquired P.A. Semi. The iPhone had barely been out for a year at that point, and still represented a fraction of the company's Mac revenue – and while it looked to us outsiders like the acquisition was all about the iPhone and iPad, in retrospect, a long-term replacement for Intel was almost certainly the endgame all along.
possible, but as outsiders, it's hard to be sure of that sequence of events with those sets of facts, to draw that conclusion definitively. perhaps that was a backup plan that quickly became the primary plan.
but with the 2016 line of macs, it was obvious that apple was expecting faster, smaller, cooler, more power efficient 10nm chips from intel, and intel fell flat on their face delivering. it's not clear how far before that that apple knew intel was flubbing, but 2014 seems a reasonable assumption given product development timelines. as intel's downward trajectory became clearer over the following months, along with the robustly upward trajectory of apple silicon, the transition became realizable, and eventually inevitable.
as an aside, i'm using a beat up 2015 macbook pro and eagerly awaiting the m2 version as its replacement, seeking to skip this whole intel misstep entirely.
I think Apple would have been perfectly happy buying CPUs from Intel as long as Intel kept their end of the bargain up.
After the PowerPC fiasco and IBM leaving Apple high and dry, I have zero doubt that there was a contingency plan always under way before the ink even dried on the PA Semi acquisition, but it wasn't probably a concrete strategy until about the third time in a row Intel left Apple high and dry on a bed of empty promises.
Apple has so much experience with processor transitions they don't have to stay on ARM either. And they have the capital to move somewhere else if it makes enough sense to them. I find it highly unlikely - but if it made sense it would be highly probable :)
Hawks have great eyesight, and are effective predators. It's not a good metaphor for the people who punish anticompetitive behavior. Maybe anti-trust sloths?
I was bit surprised to see M1 in the iMacs. I thought the M1 was going to be a very capable proof of concept. But now we've got it in iMacs, iPads, and Macbooks. So I wouldn't be shocked if they spread it far and wide.
Ya, part of the reason I presumed there would be at least one rev was because there have been reports of system hangs and restarts on some M1 machines.
So I had thought there may be something learned in the mass deployment that would trigger even minor design changes.
Perhaps those are software issues. Or maybe the M1 as a product name should not be taken literally to describe the SoC in the current lineup.
We know the Secure Enclave component appears to have been updated mid-production this past fall for a host of A-series chips.
Perhaps, if light changes were needed Apple would not see them a sufficient to designate a new moniker.
Or perhaps they are but the iMac and (theoretical) apple silicon-based data centers are intending to build consumer confidence in this bold foray.
This is perhaps the real genius of the M1. It's a great chip and all. But when you make it the only choice, people are finding the only choice is more than sufficient. And now Apple only has to produce one piece of silicon for their iMacs, iPad Pro, and Laptops. What a boon for logistics.
The success of the M1 is a boon for Apple, but I'm not sure that only having to produce one CPU to be used across all devices is where the optimization lies, especially considering that Apple is selling the iPhone SE with an older CPU and not simplifying by not selling it.
Just because it's being sold today doesn't mean it's actively manufactured still. They could have stockpiled the older processors or have spare inventory to continue meeting demand
I think that's a bit dramatic. I'm using a 16GB M1 Macbook Pro as my daily driver doing standard, boring professional work (lots of email, tabs open, PDF manipulation, Word, Excel, etc). It performs as well if not better than the 2018 Macbook Pro it replaced with 32 GB of RAM and an i7. And it cost less than that one.
The iMac will perform comparably (probably a bit better due to better thermals). My point is that these are not bad machines and I don't see why you'd steer someone away from them. However, the price is still quite high compared to other manufacturers and options. But that's always been the case.
The M1 isn't what kills x86 (if it ever does completely). ARM kills x86.
Microsoft is working on the ARM transition. ARM has good control of mobile hardware. And Apple will be only selling ARM hardware (in the form of Apple Silicon) in another 12-18 months.
The main feature for me isn't the ARM, it is that the device is passively cooled and still very performant. If that isn't possible with x68, ARM might have a chance perhaps. But 99% of my time is still spend on that platform.
I just wish I could install Linux.... If MS and Apple just provide their locked down environments, it will never be more to me than a neat device and I would still crosscompile instead of binding myself to a manufacturer.
I ran Linux for years on laptops/desktops/servers, doing OLTP software that does millions txns/day. I adopted Linux back when Solaris was the way to go for backends.
But moved to Mac (and OSX) about 8 years ago.
I don't get the "locked down" thing. On my current macs (a 2020 iMac and a 2015 MBP) I run Macports that lets me install pretty much every bit of userland software that I want. I also get the advantages of the MacOS gui environment and the availability of most "user" software.
Yes SIP and the new sandboxes lock down the MacOS part of the system, and things like VPNs (eg Wireguard) need to get a dev cert and distribution from Apple.
But the "lockdown" is very lightweight. There's nothing I can't do on this devices that I used to do on my Linux environments.
If I truly need a "native" Linux, then there are a number of VM and container environments also available.
But there is no technical reason for it being locked down. I don't want to subject myself to more of this, which would be the result if I get dependent on it. Why would I? There are only disadvantages if I don't want to sell software for the ecosystem.
I do some low level system developing and I doubt I would ever switch to MacOS for this. Higher level software? Maybe, but as I said, why give Apple any handle here and these sandboxes don't provide security for me. I will also not get a dev cert from anyone, that is just something that will never happen.
That ARM is on the cusp of finally dethroning x86, is really, for me, amazing me that Intel has kept it dominant for so long (3+ decades).
Partially it's amazing they remained on top, and also partially that they never managed to cannibalize their own success (like Apple and later Microsoft have done).
At this point, I don't think that's entirely clear. Something to do with the way Apple has tightly integrated the SoC parts and the OS's memory management lets them get massively more performance out of much lower-specced machines, and at least from what I've seen, no one has yet managed to truly unravel all that makes this possible.
I'm interested in this because I have a maxed 2018 intel mac mini and loaded it to 64gb of RAM. I want to ditch my eGPU and go to Apple Silicon on the next release.
I wonder if the memory performance should be so surprising. Because haven't people been bemoaning the "low" amount of ram in iPhone / iPad?
iPhone had 4GB on XS, and 11. And only went to 6GB on the Pro models. Yet the performance and benchmarking on these devices has seemed to garner praise with each successive generation.
