wizard69

It really isn't much of a surprise the somebody has gotten QEMU running.   On my MBA I've rebuilt a number of Mac Ports as native ARM apps with no problems.   There are a few show stoppers, for example RUST isn't ready yet and that has a trickle down effect on software using that compiler.   However for the most part I'm rather surprised at just how well some of this stuff is building this early with the ARM based MBA's being available.   As such the machines are looking good for open source even if there is some lag.   The thing that really stands out though is performance of this software/system.   This machine hardly warms up and compiles faster than I'd would have imagined that a fanless device could.   

As for Apples backlog, I don't think it is going away anytime soon.   These laptops are so good I can see them pulling significant sales from the PC space.   It is actually too bad that Apple didn't debut them at the beginning of the year, with covid they would have been sold out all year.   The machines are that good.

Apparently Apple Insider doesn't grasp the concept of low cost.

dws-2 said:

The trouble with Consumer Reports is that they believe adding up all the numbers for a bunch of discrete tests actually tells you how good a product is. They don't have any Apple bias, except that Apple products tend to be more about the experience than the specifications.

Actually the problem here is with forum members that are butt hurt over one data point.   

Say you are about to buy a new truck and start asking people how they did with their recent purchase.   Do you take the comments of one person as an absolute reflection on the dealer and the car manufacture?   Most people wouldnt.  

Some of consumer reports more useful data actually comes from longterm studies such as repair frequencies on cars and msjor appliances.  The reality is you can only uncover so much in product testing of new stuff.  The real value in consummer testing comes from the long term.   A csr that suffers from major breakdowns well before 100,000 miles sjould cause people to reconsider. 

In the end all Consumer Reports does is offer a valid data point.   How one uses that info defines its value.    

GG1 said:

acheron2018 said:

This is probably the most interesting article AI has ever published.  Fascinating. 

And to state the obvious SOMEONE has to pay for all those man-years of research.  The $5K price is not all profit. 

sjworld said:

It’s air cooled. This machine is very much likely to start thermal throttling once it reaches 80C during heavy workloads.

I doubt Apple will reveal the upper limit of thermal capacity of this design, but there must be MUCH design margin after Apple admitted this shortcoming in the previous Mac Pro design.

Can anybody estimate how much of the 1400 Watt power supply can actually be in use with all options and RAM installed?

But a technical deep dive (from Apple) would be fascinating.

Edit: grammar

The issue of power has the potential for along interesting discussion.  It is most interesting because Apple is still using Intel’s chips which soundly lost any power advantage they had to AMD.    So to get the performance they will have (which isn’t industry leading) they effectively will have to deal with a great deal of processor heat.   Then you have the video cards which are again hot.  So in some configurations you will easily see +500 watts for a single CPU chip and a high end GPU card.  Then there is Apples accelerator card which is likely going to be another hot zone.  

Apple needs to grasp the situation.   China simply has turned into a grand example of a hostile country.   They have far too many known programs to literally steal technology and of course the related spying programs.   It is hilarious that nobody at Apple has recognized that the worlds relationship with China is not sustainable.   Beyond that there is likely intelligence that Apple does't know about driving the Tik-Tok ban.

In a nut shell Apple needs to stop making excuses and get out of China ASAP.

rfrmac said:

I don’t know why we keep talking about this. Tim Cook doesn’t like the Mac so he just lets it go.  He thinks that Apple no longer needs to have a Mac.  Take a look at what has happened to the Macs since Steve died. It continues to break my heart. I haven’t bought a Mac in years.  Not because I didn’t want to, there just wasn’t  a new Mac that could justify the cost.  The new iMac just doesn’t do it for my profession.  Would love a couple of mini's for movie servers but I’m not buying that old of technology. 

Believe me I feel your pain!!    No corporation on the planet could afford to ignore a customer base the way Apple has.   What is worse is the bull crap they have been feeding us with respect to these products.   The drizzle about no chips being available when it is pretty clear that intel has made significant advancements with power and performance over the last 4-5 years. just burns Apples credibility.

Like many I was a bit shocked when Apple got rid of the quad core Mini as I was waiting for the next upgrade to get a quad core machine.    I figured no problem they can refactor the machine into something better next years or event the following year with lower power processors.    Nothing came and nothing in a way of a statement from Apple as to when they would correct the line up.   Now it is pathetically obvious that they simply don't give a damn as there have been at least two significant updates to Intels chip line up that could have made a difference in the Mini.    It is frankly disgusting.

mjtomlin said:

tylersdad said:

This still makes no sense at all. There is no reason why Apple can't support their native SDK (Metal) and OpenGL. Microsoft has been doing this for decades with DirectX.

The majority of game developers won't bother with creating Metal versions of their rendering engines. There won't be enough customers to justify it.

Two things...

First, Apple hasn't updated OpenGL for a while now. Probably when they starting pushing Metal. So the OpenGL implementation included with iOS and macOS are fairly old, I think it's at 2.1, while the latest is 4.6. So there really is only a limited amount of "cross platform" compatibility for developers.

Second, the entire industry is moving away from OpenGL. There is now a Khronos project, Vulkan, that is meant to replace OpenGL and OpenGL ES. And there is a version that "runs" on top of Apple's Metal called MoltenVk, so if developers must have cross platform compatibility, then they can move to it, instead of Metal.

It is my understanding that Vulkan and Metal are very similar, possibly developed from the same code base.    Im not a 3D graphics programmer so i can't say from experience from using the 2 APIs.  If true there is very little in the way of shimming required.  

As for OpenGL the problem there is that CAD and engineering software businesses depend upon it and had enough control over the development process to prevent OpenGL modernization.   The gaming industry on the other hand rushed to leave OpenGL behind.    This is almost completely due to performance issues with OpenGL, basically game developers want as much performance as they can get.  

On the otherhand developers of engineering and visulization software are more concerned about stability, correctness and other issues.   I suspect that most of these developers will leave OpenGL behind for Vulkan at some point.   They simply are not in a rush and frankly Vulkan needs to stabilize.   So what im saying here is that i expect Vulkan to be the industry standard moving forward.   That means API translation libraries for Apples Metal for non game related apps.  

foregoneconclusion said:

Rayz2016 said:

An in-house GPU eh?

This is where the bun fight starts. 

I would imagine that the MacBook would continue to use the SoC style GPU just like the iPad. It will be interesting to see what Apple does for higher end hardware like the MBP or iMac line. Will it still be integrated, or will they do a discrete version of the GPU?

I would suspect that most chips will ship with integrated GPU support.   Having a base GPU across all platforms gives Apple considerable advantages.   The only big question in my mind is how they address the Mac Pro.

By the way I can see Apple going the chiplet route like AMD and offering up the GPU as a chiplet that sits along side the processor chiplet.   This could explain some of the conflicting info we are getting.   A chiplet approach would make it very easy to scale the number of ARM processors in a Mac.

GG1 said:

bobolicious said:

'One of the big problem areas for the Mac mini is that it is not possible to upgrade the components inside it at all.'

Indeed a deal breaker for me too. 32GB is my minimum and expected to increase over time. 2011 mini still gets my vote for the most versatile mini ever offered, and still using it to this day. Hmmm 2011. Again.

I can't understand the mac customer downsides to slotted ram and at least one extra internal storage slot, especially considering Apple's supposed environmental zeitgeist? I understand there might be a slight penalty in ram tuning speed and a few extra dollars for slots vs future expansion and upgrades ? I'd ask if a BTO option for an internal Time Machine backup drive might be compelling for even the most retail users, and in keeping with both performance and a minimalist design aesthetic ?

Let the flames begin!

ps. I applaud the return to clear anodized (more aesthetically consistent, durable and biodegradable/recyclable) for what that may be worth...
pps. I'd appreciate too with the extra rear port space a Kensington lock slot - a true case of less being more...?

I'm still using a 2012 Mini with 32GB RAM and was about to get a 2018 Mini, but I held off after seeing the initial M1 reviews. But I think this new Mx family will make us rethink RAM. Perhaps 16GB in Mx is roughly the same as 32GB DDR4, as someone said above.

I'm no chip designer, but I wonder if the industry is moving to the same unified memory or at least memory-on-chip for vastly better performance (like High Bandwidth Memory technology), thus making "external" DDR4 or DDR5 the future dinosaur. The downside is HBM is not upgradable, as far as I understand (I've only seen HBM for GPUs; the Mx may be the first to use HBM for both CPU and GPU).

I hope someone can chime in and add to this or correct me.

First lets clear up one thing 16 GB of RAM is no equivalent to 32 GB.   If you REALLY need that much RAM then you would wait.   However the new Macs do perform much better with limited memory, so 8 GB looks a acceptable to many people.    However if the application really needs more than 8GB of RAM having 16 GB or more does improve things.    The uses cases where this shows up though are with extremely demanding work loads.   It would pay to look at some of the more in depth reviews on line that really stress the machines with heavy video processing chores, the 16 GB machines show much better performance.

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

Not liking the rumor that the RAM is still packaged with the CPU and can't be upgraded. That is going to be a major issue with users that need a lot of RAM for their projects. Apple could mitigate this if they include an extremely fast SSD along the lines of the one in the PS5 that can move 5.5 GB a second. Memory swapping could be a thing again.