Dave2D found the air to be on par with the Pro, at least for tasks that took under ~8.5 minutes. It only really throttled after that point, according to him.
Here's one data point: a WebKit compile took 25min on the Air vs 20min on the Mini/Pro. That 25min is still a bit faster than the Intel 16-inch Pro, which took 27min and waaay faster than Intel 13-inch Pro at 46min.
The crazy thing is that both M1 MacBooks still had 91% battery left after the compile, vs 61% on the 16-inch Pro and 24% on the 13-inch Intel Pro.
Is this a 1-1 comparison? If the ARM compile is compiling to ARM binaries then there might be less work/optimizations since it is a newer architecture. Seems like a test with two variables that changed. Would be interesting to see them both cross-compile to their respective opposite archs.
Maybe not, but A) it's close-- most of the work of compiling is not microarchitecture-level optimizations or emitting code, and B) if you're a developer, even if some of the advantage is being on an architecture that it's easier to emit code for... that's still a benefit you realize.
It's worth noting that cross-compiling is definitely harder in many ways, because you can't always evaluate constant expressions easily at compile-time in the same way your runtime code will, etc, too, and have to jump through hoops.
If everything else is the same, that seems like a solid reason to prefer the ARM architecture even setting aside 1:1 comparisons. Isn't faster compilation and execution the whole point of a faster processor?
This is insane perf/watt. x86 backwards compatibility may have gotten us to where we are, but it's certainly holding it back. Arm is looking great, and maybe it's time for x86 to die.
Honest question. Does the ISA, as a language, really matter? Or is it more a by product of who owns the ISA, eg intel sucks, arm is more liberally licensed.
I used to work at intel, and
no one I knew there thought ISA mattered at all. That’s just a few people though, so I’m curious if people think there’s something better or worse about the different ISAs as a technology in their own right, or if it’s more about the business interests behind them that matters.
It really doesn't. AMD has essentially the same perf/watt coming in a few months. ISA doesn't change anything nowadays because it all gets decoded into a per-CPU specific actual instruction set anyways.
Exactly right. With today's transistor budgets, the x86 ISA decoder/translator is just noise.
This is not the difference between x86 and ARM -- it's the difference between Intel's team and Apple's (also AMD's). You don't see Qualcomm being competitive even though they also use ARM.
This is not correct actually. Simpler ISA often requires bigger instruction caches, but consumes less energy because of simpler decoding logic. VLIW theoretically can be super efficient, because it discards decoding stage altogether.
Zen 3 on laptops. So instead of Zen 2 on 7nm, laptops should get Zen 3 on 5nm, which is both a 10% uArch clock increase, a 15+% IPC increase, and a die shrink.
Basically, laptop chips that should be around 35% faster and use less power.
Why does Intel need to die? Sure they're not exactly the company they used to be, but would it be enough for them to just move away from x86? I'm just thinking I don't want just one or two or three companies doing procs.
Intel stagnated and at the same time started implementing some rather anti-consumer practices. This allowed AMD to take the performance lead off them with their latest generation of products. It’s fantastic that the market for processors is so competitive. I’ve grown to not like Intel very much recently, but I’m glad they’re here. They’ll keep the pressure on for further innovation, so AMD will either need to keep up or be overtaken again. Either of which is a good outcome for consumers.
Absolutely not. We need more competition because the #1 reason we got to this situation is mono culture and a single platform (x86). We need Apple to succeed of creating an alternative ARM based desktop/laptop platform and for more competition we could add in Mips64 from China to the mix. I am really hoping that by 2025 we are going to have 3 major platforms available for end customers, so that there is real competition.
And where are those chips going to be made? The issue with Intel's dominance is it's complete dominance on the supply side as well.
You fail to realize that this isn't like 3D printing, or other low volume manufacturing. You can't just setup a 100nm Si lithography lab in your spare room and churn out RISC-V chips.
In 5 years - realistically we will have a few high performance(non-mobile) ARM chips manufactured at economic scale. Any other type of disruption would require Intel and AMD to fail and relinquish the supply side capacity... or China investing billions into new chipmaking facilities now.(it takes a few years to build that capacity)
China already has 14nm online, and should have 7nm in a year or two, so that means that we will probably see some real RISC-V chips from there soon, if sanctions continue.
So I think that we will have a four way competition between Intel, AMD, Apple, and Chinese RISC-V chips.
That being said, I don't see x86 dying, I think AMD and eventually Intel when they wake up will be competitive.
When you say they "should have 7nm in a year or two," are you just banking on them copying or stealing a European-made EUV machine?
China cannot be competitive at the razor's edge if its semiconductor companies depend on promptly copying/stealing technology that European, Taiwanese, and American companies bring to market.
7nm doesn't require EUV. Intel has 10nm which is equivalent to TSMC 10nm without EUV, altough it's not that great.
SMIC has already produced some 7nm chips without EUV.
As for EUV for the further future, there has been quite a bit of research in that domain for many years in pre-emption of this, and while I think they will be a node or a node and a half behind for a while, they will almost certainly have one ready eventually. Of course, that will be accelerated by stealing data on EUV machines, or maybe buying a used EUV machine from someone and reverse-engineering it.
I don't see X86 dying either, I think it will be dominant in the desktop/laptop segment for a long time. I am not sure why Longsoon uses Mips64 over RISC-V. Is RISC-V generally available and ready for prime times?
I think Longsoon still uses MIPS64 because of institutional knowledge. It's moreso Alibaba and HiSilicon that I think are promising, and they both seem to be getting on the RISC-V train.
That is a great question. I am not familiar with how much the production of these CPUs are dependent on ASML, TSMC etc. I think think China is kind of forced to have its own supply chain after the Obama era ban on Intel chips in Chinese supercomputers.
How much innovation actually comes from China, versus just being stolen by China?
The lithography companies actually have to talk about the measures they take to stop China from stealing their IP on their earnings calls.
China is a manufacturing hub, but its (often government backed) chip companies run low-margin businesses that don't make enough money to invest heavily in R&D. Go look at Apple or Qualcomm's gross margins and compare them to Huawei or Xiaomi.
This really depends. Once-upon-a-time, at least in the UNIX (tm) world, there were a plethora of ISAs, and this was the environment where ideas like Java really made sense. Write once, run anywhere.
Most OSes are still pretty well situated to handle this. Java remains, and is easily cross platform. I can run Java-based proprietary games like Minecraft on my POWER9 desktop, despite no-one involved probably ever considering ppc64le a valid target.
The CLR on Windows is also pretty easily cross-platform, although it won't help legacy x86 PE executables. Apple has solved this for ages on the tooling side, encouraging production of "fat" binaries with many arches since OS X was NeXT, and your .app packages needed to run on x86 + m68k + SPARC + PA-RISC.
Emulators like Rosetta (and qemu's usermode emulation) can fill the gap of legacy executables, while these other technologies can make the end-user experience good. Of course, that's only if a) someone writes your platform's equivalent of Rosetta, and b) developers write crossplatform apps.
So, the answer depends on how cynical or optimistic you are :-)
The experience in Linux distros is that extra arches surface bugs that other arches paper over, leading to higher quality software. For example unaligned memory access is slower on some arches but causes crashes on other ones.
It's time for tick-tock to die and Moore's Law to stop being the guiding light of Intel management.
Instead, they should set up two groups: one to generate new architectures for desktop and server, and another to take the best features of those architectures and make them thermally efficient for use in laptops. The development of these two products should be unconstrained by time, because as we have seen, impossible deadlines delay the possible.
In the past 10 years, most of the chips that amaze me have simply done what was already possible, just with enough thermal efficiency that they can be placed in mobile devices.
Intel dying would be horrible for the world. They have so much institutional knowledge...
Is some of this because of those processor level flaws/exploits where the fixes resulted in disabling some processor commands making them slower and less efficient
With only a completely new/different architecture getting those advances back?
And that backwards compatibility may not even be necessary, given Rosetta's performance. Sure Apple is using lots of tricks, but if Microsoft or any Linux project could get even somewhat close...
Just as testimony, it probably doesn't mean much, but bakcwards compatibility you either have it or you don't, there's no middle ground
Apple is one of the most capitalistic companies out there, they want you to buy new stuff and they'll try everything they can to force users to upgrade sooner or later
The story is this: a friend of mine is a well respected illustrator and he has been a long time Mac user (at least since I remember)
Few days ago he asked me advices about a new laptop and he asked for a PC because "new Mac OS will not work with my Photoshop version"
He owns a license for Photoshop 6, payed for it and has no need to uograde, especially to the new subscription based licensing
MacOS Sierra doesn't even work with Photoshop CS6
The only option he had to keep using something he owned was to switch platform (Adobe allows platform change upon request)
End of story.
Backwards compatibility has no value until you need it.
Uh, I'm guessing you mean CS6 rather than Photoshop 6, the program that came out in 2000.
In any case, Adobe's help page[1] currently reads, "As Creative Suite 6 is no longer sold or supported, platform or language exchanges are not available for it." Since they're certainly not selling or supporting versions older than CS6, it's unlikely your friend is going be able to keep Photoshop CS6 by buying a new PC laptop. (And he sure as hell ain't gonna be able to get a copy of Photoshop 6 to run on Windows 10.)
> Apple is one of the most capitalistic companies out there, they want you to buy new stuff and they'll try everything they can to force users to upgrade sooner or later
That's not wrong, but s/Apple/Adobe and the sentiment is still true. I suppose he'll save money if he gets a cheaper-than-Apple PC laptop, but I don't think he's gonna avoid paying for Creative Cloud.
CS6 runs just fine on Windows 10. Of course it's not supported by Adobe as they were pretty aggressive in canceling CS6 licenses if one mistakenly accepted CC with the same account before in order to put everybody onto their extortion scheme, but I use CS6 as before just fine on PC, not on Mac.
That's why I said "MacOS Sierra can't even run CS6"
Technically in Italy if you bought a license and the manufacturer won't support it anymore, you can use it on another platform even downloading an illegal copy.
As long as you have the original license.
That's the same reason why you can listen to mp3s if you own the original record, you have the right to keep a copy and the right to use it even if the manufacturer stop supporting it, because you bought it in perpetuity when you bought the product
That's why I stay away from the new licenses that give you none of those rights
And that's why backwards compatibility sometimes is what drives people choices
I'll take your word for it, but it kind of changes the picture here. Photoshop 6 was released in 2000. That version wasn't released for OS X. In fact, Photoshop 6 was still compiled for PowerPC CPUs. The thing wasn't even fully "carbonized" until version 7, so it would have had to run in the "Classic" environment -- which hasn't been supported on Macs since OS X 10.4.
Maybe you think it's unreasonable for Apple to not support a program made for an operating system they haven't shipped a new version in 18 years for a CPU they haven't shipped in a computer for 15 years. I'm not sure I agree.
> Technically in Italy if you bought a license and the manufacturer won't support it anymore, you can use it on another platform even downloading an illegal copy.
The legality isn't the issue, the "Photoshop 6 is literally two decades old" is the issue. :) It may be possible to run the Windows version on Windows 10, but I can almost guarantee there will be strange, quirky issues that neither Microsoft nor Adobe will be interested in helping with.
> In fact, Photoshop 6 was still compiled for PowerPC CPUs
It's the license that counts.
> Maybe you think it's unreasonable for Apple to not support a program made for an operating system
No, I don't think that.
Apple doesn't have good backward compatibility, especially compared to Windows.
That is my point.
But of course they are free to not support what they think it's not worth it.
It's not a something against Apple.
> the "Photoshop 6 is literally two decades old" is the issue
True, but why is it a problem?
Does the software need to be new to work?
I think that if something still works after 20 years the authors did a great job.
We need to start thinking of software like infrastructure.
We don't rebuild a bridge after 6 months because a new material or technique has been invented.
Or at least as tools, considering them something that lasts, potentially forever.
Most of the problem we'll be facing in the future will be about digital rot, we'll deal with data that we cannot read in any way.
Apple, Adobe, and their idea of disposable working tools are helping it, nor prevent it.
Of course one cannot support everything forever, Windows lost the ability to run DOS binaries years ago and virtualization can help, the problem is companies like Adobe not selling their licenses anymore.
Recently I had to work on a SOAP client after almost 15 years from the last one.
I remembered there was a good XML editor at the time, that did a good job.
One caveat is that it is Windows only and I run Linux, so I checked on WineHQ and found out that the version 2003 works perfectly.
I go to the software's web site, there is a "download older versions" button, I think "great!" and proceed to the download.
The software installs perfectly on Wine but when I launch it there is no option to start it in trial mode, you have to either use a pre-existing license or ask for a trial one.
I clicked the second and soon after an email warns me that that product is not supported anymore and even if I had a regular license, the servers that check the licenses are not online anymore.
So why put a download button there then?
These are the kind of things that software should avoid at any cost, in my opinion.
They've lost a customer, I would have bought an old license at the price of a new one if I could chck that everything that I needed to do worked as intended, instead I downloaded SopaUI which is inferior, but free and functioning.
In this case, the solution could have been virtualization, but you have to pay for a Windows license as well, which was not necessary in the first place.
In the case of macOS virtualization is not even an option, because you can't legally run it on a VM outside of Apple HW.
For some people, that is a big problem, not because they think Apple is bad, but because they don't care who supplies the infrastructure as long as it works.
There are people installing XP on new HW to keep using their old software.
It is doable, but on macOS you can't count on it, every time they change architecture something gets lost forever.
As I said before, nobody value backward compatibility until they need it.
And when you need it and it works it's much more satisfying than when you need it and you are asked to upgrade or be on your own.
> He owns a license for Photoshop 6, payed for it and has no need to uograde, especially to the new subscription based licensing
Sounds like the friend has a need to upgrade, and that upgrade is going to require new software.
I don’t think this situation is Adobe or Apple’s fault, old stuff stops working at some point.
> I don’t think this situation is Adobe or Apple’s fault, old stuff stops working at some point.
Old stuff stops working due to deliberate design choices made on both Apple and Adobe's parts. Apple deliberately stripped Rosetta and 32-bit support from macOS, and Adobe is deliberately making it nearly impossible to use older versions of the CS suite on their end.
Meanwhile, I can run Photoshop 6 on Windows or WINE, and I can still run binaries that were statically compiled for Linux 20 years ago today.
You can probably run Photoshop 6 under SheepShaver. I can (and have) run DOS programs from the 1990s in DOSBox on my Mac.
I appreciate backwards compatibility, but I'm not convinced drawing lines in the sand every once so often is a terrible idea. Revisiting old software is fun for nostalgic reasons and, sure, there are sometimes edge cases where you have to use something that hasn't been updated in years, but in general I'd rather be using software that exhibits at least minimal signs of being an ongoing concern.
The hardware, which is not the main tool in his craft
He draws by hand on paper and the final preparation on Photoshop is for printing
After almost 10 years he needed a new laptop (things wear out with time and he could not install more RAM) but not a new Photoshop version with a different and more costly license
The need to upgrade software is an artificial one and it's only needed because some platforms don't have a good backwards compatibility
Windows does
For many people the OS doesn't make any difference, as long as they can keep using the tools they already know
There is a limit on the improvements a new software will provide if your workflow is already good as it is and you already paid for the version that works for you
I know many small businesses that still use Office 2003
They can install it on new hardware on new Windows versions, it's simply not possible to do the same on Mac
It's not better or worse, backwards compatibility it's a feature and as any other feature some people value it a lot, some don't care at all
I've used Photoshop CS6 on both Sierra and High Sierra. It's ever-so-slightly more crash-prone than on older OS's, but totally usable.
It launches on Mojave as well, so I'm pretty sure it works, but I haven't personally used it for any length of time. Catalina is what killed it.
IMO, backwards compatibility in OSX/macOS was perfectly decent for a long time. Most software compiled for Intel that wasn't doing something weird continued to chug on, frequently with significant glitches but not to the point where the software was unusable. Then in Catalina Apple just gave up or something.
It's odd isn't it because if they invested a little bit in Catalina and Rosetta they could probably have had a great backwards compatibility story even in a few years time - but it's just not in the DNA I guess.
In Catalina, Apple dropped 32 bit support. And in the same process dropped a lot of Frameworks that had been deprecated for ages. 64 bit software that didn't rely on deprecated Frameworks continue to function
> Mac OS X v10.6.8 or v10.7. Adobe Creative Suite 3, 4, 5, CS5.5, and CS6 applications support Mac OS X v10.8 or v10.9 when installed on Intel-based system
They work, maybe, they are not supported though
It means that if it doesn't work, Adobe won't provide any support
I wouldn't expect Adobe to support CS6 in 2020 on my 10.9 system either. What matters is whether the software works or not—which it does on Mojave, and on Windows 10.
you are not wrong, but Photoshop 5, released in 1998, works on Windows 10 because Microsoft made it possible
CS6 works officially from XP SP3 (2008) to the end of Windows 8 (2015)
It works unofficially on XP pre SP3 (2001) and on windows 10, almost 20 years later and it's guaranteed to work on the LTSC for another 8 years (last LTSC is from 2018)
CS6 on Mac is supported on systems that span from 2011 (OS X 10.6.8) to 2014 (when Yosemite came out)
On May 2020 Adobe updated the release notes on CS6 saying that "If you are running Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 3, Photoshop will run in both 32-bit and 64-bit editions. However, Adobe does not officially support the 64-bit edition and you may run into problems."
So they are still supporting it on Windows XP on their official channels.
Most of the problems with old applications in Windows come from installers using ancient techniques to detect the OS version
Most of recent Adobe software theoretically could also run on older windows versions (8 or 7 for example), but are not supporting old platforms anymore with the new subscription versions and recebtly dropped support for the LTSC versions of Windows 10, so probably keeping the old versions around is a smart move if they work well enough for you
People who bought licenses for old versions should be in their right to use them as long as they can
Which simply is for longer on Windows than on MacOS
> Apple is one of the most capitalistic companies out there, they want you to buy new stuff and they'll try everything they can to force users to upgrade sooner or later
The more charitable view is that by not being wedded to backwards compatibility they can make their ecosystem stronger, faster.
I watched and read multiple reviews and Dave2D seems to be the only one who tried to quantify the throttling to some extent, all the others only had useless statements like "The Pro will probably be able to sustain unthrottled workloads for longer thanks to it's active cooling" - No shit, sherlock. For me the fact that it only throttles after 8-9 minutes (!) of heavy use is going to be the deciding factor that will allow me to go with the Air (and actual physical function keys) over the Pro, so thanks Dave.
I've been wondering if someone could make an active cooling dock for the Mac Book Air. I was even thinking the M1 wattage is low enough that you could have a thermoelectric cooler lowering case temp down to room temp.
I mean if you're desperate to get it to compile in 20 minutes instead of 25 for a particular occasion, you could just grab a bag of peas from the freezer and set the laptop on them.
The touchbar is pretty great if you program it yourself using, e.g., BetterTouchTool. I especially love the clipboard widget - works fantastic with VIM/EVIL.
But 8-9 minutes of full 100% CPU is a relatively rare occurrence for the vast majority of users. Developers might occasionally do that, but it will be very language and project dependent.
Yeah, I think the 45W laptops always run them, even if sometimes very slowly. The smaller laptops have been able to turn them off completely for a while, though, when not very busy.
Having the experience (or, love/hate relationship - so awesomely thin and quiet, so underpowered) with 12" Macbook, one surprise is that throttle time really depends on environment temperature and GPU use.
In a cool room it can last few minutes before throttling, while outside on a warm day it throttles almost instantly.
Also, a thermal budget is shared with GPU, so once you plug-in the external display, or start Sidecar, you run out of thermal headspace pretty much instantly.
That's one data point that's particularly interesting to me. As someone who (normally) travels a great deal, I'd probably go with the Air unless there were real throttling compromises, especially given that I use a different computer for multimedia editing at home.
Wish they re-introduce the discontinued Macbook 12 inch with the same specs as air. It weighed only 970grams vs 1.29 kg for air. In fact air feels bulky compared to other light weight laptops like LG Gram, not to mention the design is outdated. Always wondered why Apple killed the smaller model. Perhaps they want to push the iPad pro so killed off the netbook line. The wannabe traveller inside me keep drooling at 12 inch whenever i see it in someones hands. It feels so light and compact. With new M1 silicon, it's the ideal time to bring it back. I would grab it without any thought.
The 12” MacBook could not be updated to newer Intel chipsets due to thermal issues. The single port was also a limitation. Once Apple upgraded the Air to retina, a large part of the market for the 12” was lost. They were too close to each other and cross-competed except for the super portable use cases which was not large enough.
This model of Air is obviously a transition product with new guts in an old shell. I suspect that as Apple introduce fully redesigned, second generation Apple Silicon products, you might see something that is closer to the 12” MacBook.
I'm also hoping for thinner bezels as the current models' ones are just huge compared to Dell's XPS line for example. It's slowly becoming obvious that the design has barely changed since 2016 or so. The 16" model was a step in the right direction, but it's still not even close to what Dell is delivering.
It'd be amazing if they managed to squeeze a 13" screen into the old 12" form factor - you'd still get great battery life thanks to the M1.
It seems like Apple is capable of it—look at the bezels on a new iPhone or iPad. But it would certainly require a whole new shell, which probably takes a while for Apple to design and ramp up because of all the machining involved.
They should probably release an 11" version of the air, I'm not sure a 12" having the same specs as the Air would be viable.
However the interesting part would be what are they gonna do with their iPad Pro line at this point I don't see a reason for it not to run Big Sur or the Bigger Sur they'll release next year and compete directly with the surface.
What I see Apple doing is the following:
iPhone/iPad non-pro continuing to use A series SoCs and run iOS
iPad Pro migrate to M series SoCs and become what is essentially Apple's Surface Pro
Macbook Air 13" and 11" (possibly drop to a single 12" model) with M series SoCs this essentially will be the Surface Laptop/Book competitor
Macbook Pro's will continue as they are 13" and 16" models, if Apple goes for 11" and 13" MBAs they might move the MBP to 14" and 16".
Without discrete GPUs and essentially no way to "upgrade" the CPU to a higher model I don't really see the MBP 13" being viable in the long term tbh, I think they'll need a model that will differentiate it much more from the MBA and unless Apple starts binning their future M series SoCs much more in line with Intel and AMD I don't see them having too much of a range here for upgrades.
So alternatively I also see them dropping the 13" MBP altogether and having only a 15" or 16" on whilst the Air will occupy the smaller form factors.
Convergence can be overrated. Arguably Apple finally made tablets mainstream because they didn't feel the same need to maintain compatibility with their desktop/laptop line that others did.
But it's hard not to see some sort of convergence between mobile, laptops, and desktops over time.
They are doing convergence now with allowing iOS apps on Macs I can definitely see the iPad Pro line being moved closer to MacOS from a UI perspective, especially since the pen now works on all iPads.
I'm definitely part of the target market (well, depending upon my mood) for a <13" laptop for travel. I've never been able to make an iPad-based workflow work for me. If nothing else I spend too much time with my laptop on my, well, lap and nothing with a removable keyboard works for me.
Based on the data I've seen so far, I'm not sure why they even did a with fan Pro variant. Even if the market for an 11-12" model is smaller I'm not sure why they didn't do that instead. I was sure that was going to be the reason they didn't refresh their 12" Intel system.
> Based on the data I've seen so far, I'm not sure why they even did a with fan Pro variant.
The ‘pro’ variant released was the low-end 13, aka the 2 port, formerly the ‘macbook escape’. The 13” line has been bifurcated since 2016, with this one firmly lower-spec’d and powered.
It’s very likely that the ‘4 port’, or high-end 13” pro will make more use of the active cooling, so it was likely worth it to develop the new laptop with it.
The 12 inch is still my favorite MacBook experience, having owned pretty much every form factor since pre-unibody white plastic. Can't wait to see what they can do in that hyper minimal portable niche with Apple Silicon.
haven't used it, but can feel it. you are making me want it more.. wish Steve was alive, he would have perhaps kept it alive at least for bragging rights as smallest, lightest laptop on planet. Still remember Steve jobs introducing air inside an office envelope.
I’m also surprised they didn’t bring that back with an M1. Here’s to hoping it will be released next year to balance out the higher end 16” pro and whatever others come out next yet.
I had the 12” MacBook for a couple years and the form factor was amazing. I backpacked around the world with it. But it was so underpowered, it was barely useful. I found myself using my phone more and more because it was less frustrating. I would love to see what an M1-powered 12” MacBook could be like!
That would be a great device to also include a touchscreen in a mac for the first time... after all macOS is getting more and more touch-capable UI and got iOS app support. :)
But like you said, likely would eat into the iPad market - on the other side, as long as they don't make it a 2-in-1, the iPad should still have more than enough reason to exist.
So.. if I place it on a slab of ice, it would work the same as Pro?
Tbh, the only reason I didn't even think of buying a pro is because I don't want the touch bar. I might still buy an air if there's no touch bar on the pro, but the decision will be a lot harder.
