I'm confused by Apple's naming convention of this product. Why are they just calling this a MacBook when it is closer to a MacBook Air? Seems like they would be better off calling this something like a MacBook Air RD (for Retina Display) rather creating confusion as to where it fits in the product mix. I'm saying this understanding full well that they are introducing new technologies for future development of their entire portable product line but IMHO, they are creating confusion around where this fits in the lineup.
Core M isn't awful, it is the result of customer demands and pressure in the industry to put i86 into fanless designs.
If these numbers are to be believed then this chip set is offering about the same performance as an iPad Air 2 at about twice the power. That is actually pretty good for a i86.
Having the same power as the iPad 2 is awful. The performance falls below an i3 processor. That isn't an Apple issue that is an Intel issue but it's still awful. It also doesn't live up to the hype when it comes to battery life. The entire line of mobile processors couldn't even remotely be considered for a Macbook Pro or for that matter most Windows based computers. You also have to take into consideration the onboard GPU.
Having the same power as the iPad 2 is awful. The performance falls below an i3 processor. That isn't an Apple issue that is an Intel issue but it's still awful. It also doesn't live up to the hype when it comes to battery life. The entire line of mobile processors couldn't even remotely be considered for a Macbook Pro or for that matter most Windows based computers. You also have to take into consideration the onboard GPU.
The fact that you believe this has the "same power" as an iPad 2 makes you sound absolutely ridiculous.
I'm confused by Apple's naming convention of this product. Why are they just calling this a MacBook when it is closer to a MacBook Air? Seems like they would be better off calling this something like a MacBook Air RD (for Retina Display) rather creating confusion as to where it fits in the product mix. I'm saying this understanding full well that they are introducing new technologies for future development of their entire portable product line but IMHO, they are creating confusion around where this fits in the lineup.
Because OBVIOUSLY they plan on discontinuing the Air line. I expect them gone by 2016. They're simply there as a stop gap because of pricing dynamics.
The entry 2011 Air scores 3735, the entry 2012 Air scores 4852 so the new Macbook at 4038 is between them. However, the entry 2015 Air only scores 5712.
The 2015 Macbook is 70% of the performance of the 2015 Air or the 2015 Air is 40% faster.
You won't notice that difference at all in everyday usage.
But people do notice. They especially notice if that computer even appears to be slowing down whatever they are working on. I see this all the time at work. It depends upon the person of course but many quickly become frustrated with sluggish machines.
For everyday tasks, 40% performance difference is negligible because everyday tasks barely use 1 core.
On older machines, the hard drives and memory sizes caused more bottlenecks than anything. That's why the iPad hardly ever noticeably slows down - it's designed to work within its memory limits, has no virtual memory/swap and has always used flash storage.
The SSD and the RAM will leave this machine feeling snappy for many work loads. If you are a more demanding user I see this machine failing to deliver.
Demanding workloads will be taxing on the Air too but that means they'll have a reason to upgrade and people who know they have heavy workloads shouldn't buy a low-end laptop.
Skylake is due this year and will offer improvements over Broadwell.
What is the thought on this thing handling "light" gaming.
Not talking about crazy 3d stuff but maybe a few indie games, some Starcraft 2 on low etc.
There are gaming tests on the Asus UX305 and HP Envy, both fanless with Core M:
[VIDEO]
[VIDEO]
It looks capable enough for light gaming. Battlefield 4 was running there at 720p, low and about 25fps but managed that without throttling. I would hold off for Skylake for gaming though.
Having the same power as the iPad 2 is awful. The performance falls below an i3 processor. That isn't an Apple issue that is an Intel issue but it's still awful.
I don't see it that way. You can't compare the machine rationally to a fan cooled machine. The machine can only be judged on its performance against other fanless solutions. That is one reason the comparison to Apples A series is so interesting.
It also doesn't live up to the hype when it comes to battery life. The entire line of mobile processors couldn't even remotely be considered for a Macbook Pro or for that matter most Windows based computers. You also have to take into consideration the onboard GPU.
One of the reasons I suggest to people that they should avoid buying before the machine ships, is that we really don't know how the unit will perform under various workloads. It will be good enough for many certainly but others may find significant fault. GPU performance is one of those big unknowns and is further hampered by Apples poor drivers. The thing here is that if you as a user needs GPU performance you wouldn't be buying such a machine anyways.
Concisely this isn't the machine for everybody and as such people should expect it to be the machine for them. This is one big reason behind my now owning a 13" MBP which by the way delivers many of the positives from this new Mac Book.
The fact that you believe this has the "same power" as an iPad 2 makes you sound absolutely ridiculous.
While I tend to agree with you, for some users an iPad would seem to be more powerful. Also everybody is looking at the CPU performance figures here which on,y tell part of the story. The large blob of RAM and the fast SSD can't be ignored when it comes to delivering a good user experience. I really think that some will be very happy with this machine; the people that in the past upgraded from an Air to a MBP, because the Air was slow, won't be.
While I tend to agree with you, for some users an iPad would seem to be more powerful. Also everybody is looking at the CPU performance figures here which on,y tell part of the story. The large blob of RAM and the fast SSD can't be ignored when it comes to delivering a good user experience.
The geekbench3 benchmark does include some memory intensive tests (Stream), but I'm not sure how they are weighted. The link to the new 12-inch's results seems to be broken, so it is hard to say how it compares on that. Most of the geekbench3 tests are very CPU-heavy or look trivially parallelizable, which is a shame as most of the advances in computer design have been in the cache and memory systems. Even the memory intensive stream tests are very amenable to simple (stride 1) prefetching, so more advanced prefetchers in modern hardware won't really show up.
The fact that you believe this has the "same power" as an iPad 2 makes you sound absolutely ridiculous.
That was comment made by someone else that I quoted. Core M falls just above an i3 just believe an i5 3317u. Actually he made the comment it was about as fast an an iPad Air 2 and based on gaming performance he was just about spot on. The Core M has to rely on faster ram and faster sad drives. Pure processing power on desktop applications is fairly poor for a mobile cpu.
But people do notice. They especially notice if that computer even appears to be slowing down whatever they are working on. I see this all the time at work. It depends upon the person of course but many quickly become frustrated with sluggish machines.
One thing about this discussion that bothers me is that people are looking at this specific benchmark and condemning the machine before even evaluating it personally. The SSD and the RAM will leave this machine feeling snappy for many work loads. If you are a more demanding user I see this machine failing to deliver.
I don't see a lot of workloads that fall between this and the 15" mbp. Typically if you can leverage all available power, there's a pretty significant gap there. I see sluggishness due to ram and disk access far more than cpu bound problems when it comes to lighter tasks.
I don't see a lot of workloads that fall between this and the 15" mbp. Typically if you can leverage all available power, there's a pretty significant gap there. I see sluggishness due to ram and disk access far more than cpu bound problems when it comes to lighter tasks.
agreed, most of us should remember (not that long ago) replacing our 5400rpm drives with 7200rpm, or even better solid sate drives and wow, did that make a difference!
I am interested in a thin, light, and capable machine that can live off of the battery for the entire day.
This machine might be able to deliver so I'll withhold judgment. However, I won't hold my breath as I have yet to see any Intel powered machine deliver that kind of battery life.
Apple should have released this machine with the A9 inside. I would be have dropped cash for the machine in a heartbeat. I know that such a machine would be able to deliver that kind of battery life and would perform consistently without throttling the processor. The A8X processor doesn't slow down even after hours of putting it through the paces.
Besides an A9 powered machine should be much less expensive. I doubt Intel is providing the Core M for $20 a CPU. While I don't have any details of the costs of the A series, costs are estimated to be in this range.
Hence an A series powered machine would cost less, likely perform in the ballpark of the Core M and most importantly, deliver consistent performance with great battery life.
I will have to wait for the iPad pro. I have no interest in this machine. My MacBook Air was supposed to give over 5 hours of battery life. It has never delivered over 2.5 hours and that's with the keyboard lighting turned off and the screen dimmed way down.
My iPad Air 2 has never failed to deliver less than 8 hours. Even when used heavily with the screen set to a reasonable brightness. It's more than fast enough and I wish the chip were put inside a real laptop so that I don't have to carry around the Apple Bluetooth keyboard.
I don't run parallels or VMware on my MacBook Air. I just need a basic computer for my job that let's me go the entire day. The iPad Air 2 is nearly perfect save the external keyboard.
For the market segment this computer is targeted to, the A8X or upcoming A9 would make perfect sense. But maybe Apple knows more than I do. These may sell like hot cakes. I have serious doubts about that however. And it's not like Apple hasn't produced duds before, even with a machine that was blessed by Jobs himself (the old G4 cube).
I myself will pass. I was hoping for something more substantial. Hopefully the iPad pro will come with an integrated keyboard. A trackpad or mouse would also be nice.
Now you know why so many of us would have rather seen an ARM based machine. This especially if the ARM chip was enhanced a bit over A8X
I don't really want to keep repeating myself, but here are the points I would like to summarize:
1. Geekbench 3 does not properly compare x86 and ARMv8.
2. Implementation will have an extreme impact on Core M's performance.
Quote: (from a previous thread)
Regarding Geekbench, ARMv8 has its own instructions for SHA1/SHA2 that are ~4x faster than C++ that is regularly used for ARMv7 and x86 in the benchmarks. This can be looked at as an optimization in favor of ARMv8.
Some examples in Geekbench 3 (data for the A8 comes from jfpoole's Geekbench account. jfpoole is a founder and developer with Geekbench):
Apple A8 (32-bit/ARMv7 mode uses C++):
SHA1 scores: 1324 singe core / 2662 multi core
Apple A8 (64-bit mode uses ARMv8's instruction set):
SHA1 scores: 4542 singe core / 8784 multi core
Intel 5Y71 - ASUS T300 Chi (32-bit mode):
SHA1 scores: 3151 singe core / 5310 multi core
Intel 5Y71 - ASUS T300 Chi (64-bit mode):
SHA1 scores: 3520 singe core / 5822 multi core
I would also suggest you read my other posts as I highlighted the performance of the 5Y71 in the ASUS T300 Chi (fanless tablet), a proper implementation of Core M.
Apple A8x
Single-core: 1808
Multi-core: 4529
Intel 5Y71
Single-core: 2944
Multi-core: 5680
As for other, non-Geekbench benchmarks?
3DMark 11
iPad Air 2 (A8x)
Ice Storm: 21650
Cloud Gate: N/A
Sky Diver: N/A
Fire Strike: N/A
T300 Chi (5Y71)
Ice Storm: 44803
Cloud Gate: 4784
Sky Diver: 2440
Fire Strike: 633
There are many other capabilities, that Intel's Core M offers over Apple's A8X, that are not revealed in these benchmarks (GPU in particular should not be ignored).
Note: The top model of the 2015 MacBook is using a 5Y71 found inside the T300 Chi tablet.
The Core M has a big disadvantage, however. It's the cost of the CPU. Apple's iOS is also optimized to the A series chip. It is doubtful that Intel provides a highly customized CPU to Apple alone. The Core M is a generic chip that anyone can buy. Hence the biometric fingerprint reader which is far more desirable than constantly entering a password into the Intel based machine.
I am sorry, I don't want an Intel powered machine at all. Don't need one. The performance does not justify their increased costs, both in price and in power consumption.
My iMac functions just fine. So does my MacBook Air. I don't need a Core M powered machine. I can wait and I will wait. When Apple finally produces an A series based laptop, I will spend my money. Not until they do will I be purchasing another laptop.
I am interested in a thin, light, and capable machine that can live off of the battery for the entire day.
This machine might be able to deliver so I'll withhold judgment. However, I won't hold my breath as I have yet to see any Intel powered machine deliver that kind of battery life.
Apple should have released this machine with the A9 inside. I would be have dropped cash for the machine in a heartbeat. I know that such a machine would be able to deliver that kind of battery life and would perform consistently without throttling the processor. The A8X processor doesn't slow down even after hours of putting it through the paces.
Besides an A9 powered machine should be much less expensive. I doubt Intel is providing the Core M for $20 a CPU. While I don't have any details of the costs of the A series, costs are estimated to be in this range.
Hence an A series powered machine would cost less, likely perform in the ballpark of the Core M and most importantly, deliver consistent performance with great battery life.
I will have to wait for the iPad pro. I have no interest in this machine. My MacBook Air was supposed to give over 5 hours of battery life. It has never delivered over 2.5 hours and that's with the keyboard lighting turned off and the screen dimmed way down.
My iPad Air 2 has never failed to deliver less than 8 hours. Even when used heavily with the screen set to a reasonable brightness. It's more than fast enough and I wish the chip were put inside a real laptop so that I don't have to carry around the Apple Bluetooth keyboard.
I don't run parallels or VMware on my MacBook Air. I just need a basic computer for my job that let's me go the entire day. The iPad Air 2 is nearly perfect save the external keyboard.
For the market segment this computer is targeted to, the A8X or upcoming A9 would make perfect sense. But maybe Apple knows more than I do. These may sell like hot cakes. I have serious doubts about that however. And it's not like Apple hasn't produced duds before, even with a machine that was blessed by Jobs himself (the old G4 cube).
I myself will pass. I was hoping for something more substantial. Hopefully the iPad pro will come with an integrated keyboard. A trackpad or mouse would also be nice.
You've been unlucky with your Air or have an early version. I'm running an 11" 2014 and it gives a solid seven hours battery life.
agreed, most of us should remember (not that long ago) replacing our 5400rpm drives with 7200rpm, or even better solid sate drives and wow, did that make a difference!
The difference is often exaggerated when you're below an ideal amount of ram. If it has to frequently access a pagefile, the value of that disk speed becomes much more apparent.
Quote:
Originally Posted by herbivore
The Core M has a big disadvantage, however. It's the cost of the CPU. Apple's iOS is also optimized to the A series chip. It is doubtful that Intel provides a highly customized CPU to Apple alone. The Core M is a generic chip that anyone can buy. Hence the biometric fingerprint reader which is far more desirable than constantly entering a password into the Intel based machine.
I am sorry, I don't want an Intel powered machine at all. Don't need one. The performance does not justify their increased costs, both in price and in power consumption.
My iMac functions just fine. So does my MacBook Air. I don't need a Core M powered machine. I can wait and I will wait. When Apple finally produces an A series based laptop, I will spend my money. Not until they do will I be purchasing another laptop.
It's actually more than just the cpu package. Things such as the display have quite a bit of impact on battery life. Power management has to be aggressive in multiple areas to get close to that kind of battery life.
I guess I disagree, although I am a MacBook Pro user myself. Thinner and more colors IS worth more!
Should it surprise anyone that computing is becoming fashion? And is becoming utilitarian?
Back in cave man days you killed a bear and wore its pelt to keep warm. We were in 'cave man days' in terms of computing history not long ago. Obviously, we now wear clothes that are primarily designed to be fashionable. The protective requirement can be met by the most basic materials and techniques at this point. 90% of the effort in the clothes we wear (totally made up statistic) goes into fashion or novel utilitarian design & manufacturing.
Speaking of utilitarian design: Why are there sleeping bags designed for 40°F weather? Such limited usefulness. It's really not much harder or more expensive to pack in some more Thinsulate when the bag is being manufactured. You could have a 15°F bag or a 0°F bag for negligible expense. Well, maybe you are a hiker, and you are going to pack that sleeping bag in your sack. You could bring more food (or beer! or maybe a new MacBook if you don't bring more sleeping bag than you need.
I admire the top performing designs and a good price per Gigathingy just like the next guy, but I also appreciate the novel designs that emphasize different design objectives. And without Apple designing machines like this, we would lose a lot of the most successful design for these novel objectives.
I'm glad Apple designs machines like the new MacBook, even though it isn't the machine for me.
"I'm glad Apple designs machines like the new MacBook, even though it isn't the machine for me."
The geekbench3 benchmark does include some memory intensive tests (Stream), but I'm not sure how they are weighted. The link to the new 12-inch's results seems to be broken, so it is hard to say how it compares on that.
Oh well I'm not going to get too wrapped up in benchmarks. What I find perplexing though is that people are expressing shock over the fact that a low wattage SoC delivers lower performance than a high power chip. Of course it does, the only real question is will it be too slow for the users that buy it. In that regard I'm fairly certain some users will express disappointment just like many Air users moved up to MBP due to the lack of performance.
Most of the geekbench3 tests are very CPU-heavy or look trivially parallelizable, which is a shame as most of the advances in computer design have been in the cache and memory systems. Even the memory intensive stream tests are very amenable to simple (stride 1) prefetching, so more advanced prefetchers in modern hardware won't really show up.
It is a shame really that people just can't wait to see reviews of real hardware. Core M will never be suitable for somebody that really stresses a machine with professional use. Given that I suspect Apple will sell a boat load of these machines and It will only get better when the SkyLake update hits.
Comments
Not talking about crazy 3d stuff but maybe a few indie games, some Starcraft 2 on low etc.
Core M isn't awful, it is the result of customer demands and pressure in the industry to put i86 into fanless designs.
If these numbers are to be believed then this chip set is offering about the same performance as an iPad Air 2 at about twice the power. That is actually pretty good for a i86.
Having the same power as the iPad 2 is awful. The performance falls below an i3 processor. That isn't an Apple issue that is an Intel issue but it's still awful. It also doesn't live up to the hype when it comes to battery life. The entire line of mobile processors couldn't even remotely be considered for a Macbook Pro or for that matter most Windows based computers. You also have to take into consideration the onboard GPU.
Having the same power as the iPad 2 is awful. The performance falls below an i3 processor. That isn't an Apple issue that is an Intel issue but it's still awful. It also doesn't live up to the hype when it comes to battery life. The entire line of mobile processors couldn't even remotely be considered for a Macbook Pro or for that matter most Windows based computers. You also have to take into consideration the onboard GPU.
The fact that you believe this has the "same power" as an iPad 2 makes you sound absolutely ridiculous.
I'm confused by Apple's naming convention of this product. Why are they just calling this a MacBook when it is closer to a MacBook Air? Seems like they would be better off calling this something like a MacBook Air RD (for Retina Display) rather creating confusion as to where it fits in the product mix. I'm saying this understanding full well that they are introducing new technologies for future development of their entire portable product line but IMHO, they are creating confusion around where this fits in the lineup.
Because OBVIOUSLY they plan on discontinuing the Air line. I expect them gone by 2016. They're simply there as a stop gap because of pricing dynamics.
For everyday tasks, 40% performance difference is negligible because everyday tasks barely use 1 core.
On older machines, the hard drives and memory sizes caused more bottlenecks than anything. That's why the iPad hardly ever noticeably slows down - it's designed to work within its memory limits, has no virtual memory/swap and has always used flash storage.
Demanding workloads will be taxing on the Air too but that means they'll have a reason to upgrade and people who know they have heavy workloads shouldn't buy a low-end laptop.
Skylake is due this year and will offer improvements over Broadwell.
There are gaming tests on the Asus UX305 and HP Envy, both fanless with Core M:
[VIDEO]
[VIDEO]
It looks capable enough for light gaming. Battlefield 4 was running there at 720p, low and about 25fps but managed that without throttling. I would hold off for Skylake for gaming though.
One of the reasons I suggest to people that they should avoid buying before the machine ships, is that we really don't know how the unit will perform under various workloads. It will be good enough for many certainly but others may find significant fault. GPU performance is one of those big unknowns and is further hampered by Apples poor drivers. The thing here is that if you as a user needs GPU performance you wouldn't be buying such a machine anyways.
Concisely this isn't the machine for everybody and as such people should expect it to be the machine for them. This is one big reason behind my now owning a 13" MBP which by the way delivers many of the positives from this new Mac Book.
While I tend to agree with you, for some users an iPad would seem to be more powerful. Also everybody is looking at the CPU performance figures here which on,y tell part of the story. The large blob of RAM and the fast SSD can't be ignored when it comes to delivering a good user experience. I really think that some will be very happy with this machine; the people that in the past upgraded from an Air to a MBP, because the Air was slow, won't be.
While I tend to agree with you, for some users an iPad would seem to be more powerful. Also everybody is looking at the CPU performance figures here which on,y tell part of the story. The large blob of RAM and the fast SSD can't be ignored when it comes to delivering a good user experience.
The geekbench3 benchmark does include some memory intensive tests (Stream), but I'm not sure how they are weighted. The link to the new 12-inch's results seems to be broken, so it is hard to say how it compares on that. Most of the geekbench3 tests are very CPU-heavy or look trivially parallelizable, which is a shame as most of the advances in computer design have been in the cache and memory systems. Even the memory intensive stream tests are very amenable to simple (stride 1) prefetching, so more advanced prefetchers in modern hardware won't really show up.
The fact that you believe this has the "same power" as an iPad 2 makes you sound absolutely ridiculous.
That was comment made by someone else that I quoted. Core M falls just above an i3 just believe an i5 3317u. Actually he made the comment it was about as fast an an iPad Air 2 and based on gaming performance he was just about spot on. The Core M has to rely on faster ram and faster sad drives. Pure processing power on desktop applications is fairly poor for a mobile cpu.
But people do notice. They especially notice if that computer even appears to be slowing down whatever they are working on. I see this all the time at work. It depends upon the person of course but many quickly become frustrated with sluggish machines.
One thing about this discussion that bothers me is that people are looking at this specific benchmark and condemning the machine before even evaluating it personally. The SSD and the RAM will leave this machine feeling snappy for many work loads. If you are a more demanding user I see this machine failing to deliver.
I don't see a lot of workloads that fall between this and the 15" mbp. Typically if you can leverage all available power, there's a pretty significant gap there. I see sluggishness due to ram and disk access far more than cpu bound problems when it comes to lighter tasks.
I don't see a lot of workloads that fall between this and the 15" mbp. Typically if you can leverage all available power, there's a pretty significant gap there. I see sluggishness due to ram and disk access far more than cpu bound problems when it comes to lighter tasks.
agreed, most of us should remember (not that long ago) replacing our 5400rpm drives with 7200rpm, or even better solid sate drives and wow, did that make a difference!
This machine might be able to deliver so I'll withhold judgment. However, I won't hold my breath as I have yet to see any Intel powered machine deliver that kind of battery life.
Apple should have released this machine with the A9 inside. I would be have dropped cash for the machine in a heartbeat. I know that such a machine would be able to deliver that kind of battery life and would perform consistently without throttling the processor. The A8X processor doesn't slow down even after hours of putting it through the paces.
Besides an A9 powered machine should be much less expensive. I doubt Intel is providing the Core M for $20 a CPU. While I don't have any details of the costs of the A series, costs are estimated to be in this range.
Hence an A series powered machine would cost less, likely perform in the ballpark of the Core M and most importantly, deliver consistent performance with great battery life.
I will have to wait for the iPad pro. I have no interest in this machine. My MacBook Air was supposed to give over 5 hours of battery life. It has never delivered over 2.5 hours and that's with the keyboard lighting turned off and the screen dimmed way down.
My iPad Air 2 has never failed to deliver less than 8 hours. Even when used heavily with the screen set to a reasonable brightness. It's more than fast enough and I wish the chip were put inside a real laptop so that I don't have to carry around the Apple Bluetooth keyboard.
I don't run parallels or VMware on my MacBook Air. I just need a basic computer for my job that let's me go the entire day. The iPad Air 2 is nearly perfect save the external keyboard.
For the market segment this computer is targeted to, the A8X or upcoming A9 would make perfect sense. But maybe Apple knows more than I do. These may sell like hot cakes. I have serious doubts about that however. And it's not like Apple hasn't produced duds before, even with a machine that was blessed by Jobs himself (the old G4 cube).
I myself will pass. I was hoping for something more substantial. Hopefully the iPad pro will come with an integrated keyboard. A trackpad or mouse would also be nice.
Now you know why so many of us would have rather seen an ARM based machine. This especially if the ARM chip was enhanced a bit over A8X
I don't really want to keep repeating myself, but here are the points I would like to summarize:
1. Geekbench 3 does not properly compare x86 and ARMv8.
2. Implementation will have an extreme impact on Core M's performance.
Some examples in Geekbench 3 (data for the A8 comes from jfpoole's Geekbench account. jfpoole is a founder and developer with Geekbench):
Apple A8 (32-bit/ARMv7 mode uses C++):
SHA1 scores: 1324 singe core / 2662 multi core
Apple A8 (64-bit mode uses ARMv8's instruction set):
SHA1 scores: 4542 singe core / 8784 multi core
Intel 5Y71 - ASUS T300 Chi (32-bit mode):
SHA1 scores: 3151 singe core / 5310 multi core
Intel 5Y71 - ASUS T300 Chi (64-bit mode):
SHA1 scores: 3520 singe core / 5822 multi core
I would also suggest you read my other posts as I highlighted the performance of the 5Y71 in the ASUS T300 Chi (fanless tablet), a proper implementation of Core M.
Apple A8x
Single-core: 1808
Multi-core: 4529
Intel 5Y71
Single-core: 2944
Multi-core: 5680
As for other, non-Geekbench benchmarks?
3DMark 11
iPad Air 2 (A8x)
Ice Storm: 21650
Cloud Gate: N/A
Sky Diver: N/A
Fire Strike: N/A
T300 Chi (5Y71)
Ice Storm: 44803
Cloud Gate: 4784
Sky Diver: 2440
Fire Strike: 633
There are many other capabilities, that Intel's Core M offers over Apple's A8X, that are not revealed in these benchmarks (GPU in particular should not be ignored).
Note: The top model of the 2015 MacBook is using a 5Y71 found inside the T300 Chi tablet.
I am sorry, I don't want an Intel powered machine at all. Don't need one. The performance does not justify their increased costs, both in price and in power consumption.
My iMac functions just fine. So does my MacBook Air. I don't need a Core M powered machine. I can wait and I will wait. When Apple finally produces an A series based laptop, I will spend my money. Not until they do will I be purchasing another laptop.
I am interested in a thin, light, and capable machine that can live off of the battery for the entire day.
This machine might be able to deliver so I'll withhold judgment. However, I won't hold my breath as I have yet to see any Intel powered machine deliver that kind of battery life.
Apple should have released this machine with the A9 inside. I would be have dropped cash for the machine in a heartbeat. I know that such a machine would be able to deliver that kind of battery life and would perform consistently without throttling the processor. The A8X processor doesn't slow down even after hours of putting it through the paces.
Besides an A9 powered machine should be much less expensive. I doubt Intel is providing the Core M for $20 a CPU. While I don't have any details of the costs of the A series, costs are estimated to be in this range.
Hence an A series powered machine would cost less, likely perform in the ballpark of the Core M and most importantly, deliver consistent performance with great battery life.
I will have to wait for the iPad pro. I have no interest in this machine. My MacBook Air was supposed to give over 5 hours of battery life. It has never delivered over 2.5 hours and that's with the keyboard lighting turned off and the screen dimmed way down.
My iPad Air 2 has never failed to deliver less than 8 hours. Even when used heavily with the screen set to a reasonable brightness. It's more than fast enough and I wish the chip were put inside a real laptop so that I don't have to carry around the Apple Bluetooth keyboard.
I don't run parallels or VMware on my MacBook Air. I just need a basic computer for my job that let's me go the entire day. The iPad Air 2 is nearly perfect save the external keyboard.
For the market segment this computer is targeted to, the A8X or upcoming A9 would make perfect sense. But maybe Apple knows more than I do. These may sell like hot cakes. I have serious doubts about that however. And it's not like Apple hasn't produced duds before, even with a machine that was blessed by Jobs himself (the old G4 cube).
I myself will pass. I was hoping for something more substantial. Hopefully the iPad pro will come with an integrated keyboard. A trackpad or mouse would also be nice.
You've been unlucky with your Air or have an early version. I'm running an 11" 2014 and it gives a solid seven hours battery life.
To all those who demand an A9 Mac, have you thought obout the software side of that computer.
Are you going to buy all software new, because with A9 Apple is back to the old PowerPC/Intel problem.
agreed, most of us should remember (not that long ago) replacing our 5400rpm drives with 7200rpm, or even better solid sate drives and wow, did that make a difference!
The difference is often exaggerated when you're below an ideal amount of ram. If it has to frequently access a pagefile, the value of that disk speed becomes much more apparent.
The Core M has a big disadvantage, however. It's the cost of the CPU. Apple's iOS is also optimized to the A series chip. It is doubtful that Intel provides a highly customized CPU to Apple alone. The Core M is a generic chip that anyone can buy. Hence the biometric fingerprint reader which is far more desirable than constantly entering a password into the Intel based machine.
I am sorry, I don't want an Intel powered machine at all. Don't need one. The performance does not justify their increased costs, both in price and in power consumption.
My iMac functions just fine. So does my MacBook Air. I don't need a Core M powered machine. I can wait and I will wait. When Apple finally produces an A series based laptop, I will spend my money. Not until they do will I be purchasing another laptop.
It's actually more than just the cpu package. Things such as the display have quite a bit of impact on battery life. Power management has to be aggressive in multiple areas to get close to that kind of battery life.
I guess I disagree, although I am a MacBook Pro user myself. Thinner and more colors IS worth more!
Should it surprise anyone that computing is becoming fashion? And is becoming utilitarian?
Back in cave man days you killed a bear and wore its pelt to keep warm. We were in 'cave man days' in terms of computing history not long ago. Obviously, we now wear clothes that are primarily designed to be fashionable. The protective requirement can be met by the most basic materials and techniques at this point. 90% of the effort in the clothes we wear (totally made up statistic) goes into fashion or novel utilitarian design & manufacturing.
Speaking of utilitarian design: Why are there sleeping bags designed for 40°F weather? Such limited usefulness. It's really not much harder or more expensive to pack in some more Thinsulate when the bag is being manufactured. You could have a 15°F bag or a 0°F bag for negligible expense. Well, maybe you are a hiker, and you are going to pack that sleeping bag in your sack. You could bring more food (or beer! or maybe a new MacBook
if you don't bring more sleeping bag than you need.
I admire the top performing designs and a good price per Gigathingy just like the next guy, but I also appreciate the novel designs that emphasize different design objectives. And without Apple designing machines like this, we would lose a lot of the most successful design for these novel objectives.
I'm glad Apple designs machines like the new MacBook, even though it isn't the machine for me.
"I'm glad Apple designs machines like the new MacBook, even though it isn't the machine for me."
How true!
It is a shame really that people just can't wait to see reviews of real hardware. Core M will never be suitable for somebody that really stresses a machine with professional use. Given that I suspect Apple will sell a boat load of these machines and It will only get better when the SkyLake update hits.