Apple Releases M1-Powered Apple Silicon Macs, macOS Big Sur Releasing This Week

[jo-erlend]

In fact this is not true. People don't need Intel but they also need their architecture to not be a locked down piece of shite.

You're right about that and you would be even more right about that if IBM decided to go into personal computing. They could make a line of computers, maybe giving them a simple name like IBM PC, running POWER and Linux. Anyone with real muscle should be able to make a good commercial consumer OS based on existing components. I think they could do very well.

[andyprough]

They could have had much faster performance on the existing platform just by not using MacOS.

[OneTimeShot]

On the plus side, I believe that Big Sur is adding VP9 and AV1 support....

[birdie]

It should actually be called Apple Releases Absolute Vendor Lock-In Chip with Apple Silicon Macs.

Apple has a long history of doing anti-consumer vendor lock-in practices, but this is their absolute pinnacle. Making a laptop that is perennially locked to running macOS, which is in fact, a locked-in operating system that is unable to even adhere to current standards like Vulkan and OpenGL 4.6 (or OpenCL!).
With these devices, freedom goes away, as we permanently lose the ability to install Linux (or even Windows!).

I am not going to buy any Apple Silicon products, and I hope you do the same.

While I appreciate your opinion Mac books have always worked horribly with any OS other than MacOS. Frankly speaking I see no issue here at all.

I am also not going to buy any Apple Silicon products but for completely different reasons:

• No upgrade path
• No RAM upgrade
• I'm sure these new Mac books will require a special SSD made by/for Apple which will be expensive as hell
• Very difficult and costly to repair, zero third-party spare parts and a very expensive battery replacement
• I absolutely hate the Mac keyboard: a ton of pc105 keyboard shortcuts are not available which makes typing and editing text a horrible experience

However for those who want to get a pristine MacOS X experience and ultimate performance (Intel Tiger Lake and AMD Zen 3 CPUs are nowhere near close in performance as M1) Mac books and Mac Mini are an absolute joy to use (barring costly upgrades and serviceability).

Kudos to Apple for creating such a niche of their own.

The only reason to hate Apple is their walled garden App Store which will probably be the only way to get software for these new Macs. This is where the governments of the world should absolutely intervene and stop this madness. Easy and accessible applications side-loading or/and third-party App Stores will have to be enabled for MacOS.

[birdie]

In ~5 years Apple is going to turn around and say its silicon was unsuccessful because everyone *needs* Intel in this "modern" day and age.

This is not going to happen, period. Why would Apple get back to Intel/AMD/NVIDIA chips when Apple's own hardware is MILES better than what these three vendors offer. A lot faster, a lot more power efficient, offers a level of integration which is just not possible with third-party chips.

There's a small chance Apple will continue using AMD video chips in their workstations but even that is not certain.

[r_a_trip]

For those who want to get a pristine MacOS X experience and ultimate performance (Intel Tiger Lake and AMD Zen 3 CPUs are nowhere near close in performance as M1 runs emulated x86 code faster than Intel/AMD CPUs run it natively, and RDNA2.0/Ampere are just laughable)

Already with the fantastical claims and this crap is barely out. The 90's called, they want their reality distortion field back.

[kpedersen]

This is not going to happen, period. Why would Apple get back to Intel/AMD/NVIDIA chips when Apple's own hardware is MILES better than what these three vendors offer.

Perhaps the most immediate reason is going to be 3rd party software support. Photoshop plugins, Maya plugins, etc. If developers don't play ball because Apple makes the platform too much of a consumer shite-show, they simply will not get the software and the userbase will fall as a result.

This isn't the same thing as PowerPC. The reason why PowerPC was fairly successful with Macs before was because the OS was still fairly unrestricted and developers could easily port between x86 -> ppc. Generally barely any code needed to be changed if using a high level language like C or C++. macOS is much less capable these days due to the monetisation and DRM policies of 2020.

In this day and age, power isn't really king. Otherwise phones would not be so popular.

[edwaleni]

But can you boot ESXi for ARM on it?

Awaiting a lawsuit on graphics IP from Imagination, remember Apple poached all the engineers.

[birdie]

Already with the fantastical claims and this crap is barely out. The 90's called, they want their reality distortion field back.

The A14X chip is already as fast as Zen 3 while being up to five times more power efficient. Consider its power envelope of less than 3W per core vs. Zen 3 cores which consume up to 15W.

My reality is fine.

[birdie]

Perhaps the most immediate reason is going to be 3rd party software support. Photoshop plugins, Maya plugins, etc. If developers don't play ball because Apple makes the platform too much of a consumer shite-show, they simply will not get the software and the userbase will fall as a result.

This isn't the same thing as PowerPC. The reason why PowerPC was fairly successful with Macs before was because the OS was still fairly unrestricted and developers could easily port between x86 -> ppc. Generally barely any code needed to be changed if using a high level language like C or C++. macOS is much less capable these days due to the monetisation and DRM policies of 2020.

In this day and age, power isn't really king. Otherwise phones would not be so popular.

Apple basically owns all the companies which create software for Apple hardware. If you watched the presentation, you'd know that Adobe has already promised to port all their Mac applications to a new arch. Lightroom is already available, Photoshop will be available in January, 2021. Besides Rosetta 2 allows to run native x86 code.