DuhSesame

cgWerks said:

melgross said:
These are by no means cheap chips. As Anandtech just said about these new chips;”Apple invested in silicon.” Meaning that these are large, and expensive. There is no other way to do what these do on chip. ...

Yeah, maybe it is just a matter of expectations. I'm happy to see the performance and the future looks bright. But, the prices are also a bit of a shocker. I think we were lead to believe that Intel was limited on the 'low' end by heat/performance, and then too costly going into Xeons (leading to Mac Pro pricing). I had hoped we'd see the middle filled in a bit once Apple was free with their own architecture and control over it all.

Now, it looks like we're back to the same problem. The affordable machines don't have the performance for the prosumer or independent pro, and the higher-end machines cost even more than they used to. My current setup, a Mac mini i7 w/ eGPU might be a bit slower in terms of CPU power and uses more power, but something similar in Apple's new lineup is over $3500.

I'm hoping maybe a lot of that price is in the screen and unnecessary laptop 'stuff' and await the mini 'Pro', but I'm a bit worried it will be out of my price range for anything useable.

melgross said:
I’m pretty certain that Apple had what they thought were good reasons to take ports away and replace them with different ports. Not all of us may agree with them on that, but they didn’t do it willy nilly. They were likely doing what they had so successfully done in the past, many times, which was forcing a newer technology to replace an older one. This time it was too early. Maybe it will happen in a few more years.

I think maybe it was being a bit overzealous on that front, combined with an industrial design wish for the look of port-uniformity. The problem, as Marco Arment put it one day, is that when some large percentage of your users *need* a dongle to do what they need to do, it is a problem.

And, like I've said since this whole thing started, when I've got a bunch of USB-C devices I can just plug into a machine with a bunch of USB-C ports, I'll be happy with it. But, that day is still a long way off and may never come. The only people who really benefited (and that's questionable) are those who bring their laptop between two locations with 'docks'. (The problem being dock ports aren't oven equal to built in ones.)

I don't need an HDMI or SD card reader on my laptop (should I ever get one again), but a lot of Apple's laptop users use those ports all the time (ex. how many people have to plug into a projector at the office?). It is good to see them back, and having those ports doesn't hurt me at all (if I don't need them).

darkvader said:

Mike Wuerthele said:

KITA said:

GeorgeBMac said:

That's not to fault this review, which is, as always, a good one. 

Agree to disagree I suppose... The article does essentially nothing to "review" either device beyond a light spec sheet comparison.

This is just a straight specs compare, which we get a large volume of requests for. Reviews will follow.

Can the review include a look at hardware compatibility with Mac OS?  This Dell hardware actually sounds REALLY good compared to the Mac, which means a "Will it Hackintosh?" article would be pretty helpful.

(Yes, replaceable RAM and SSD are a MASSIVE plus for many of us, as is the lack of idiotic screen notch, and having an Intel chip is also a nice thing.)

darkvader said:

xyzzy01 said:

Apple isn't shunning Intel chips in a shameless ploy to push its chips

Actually, in most of these cases they clearly are. As an owner of a top of the range 2020 Intel iMac, I'm annoyed. It's far more powerful than the M1 based computers that gets these features, and they still sell it.

1. Facetime calls - blurring the background. This feature is available on older, low end machines on other software like Teams, Zoom, etc. Claiming that only their Apple Silicon chips are able to do this is clearly untrue. If anything, this feature should have been released a long time ago on all machines. That said, while it is annoying and clearly an example of Apple being bad, I don't really care that much: While I do plenty of Teams calls every day - mostly from that iMac - and a couple of Zoom calls a week, I can't remember the last time I used Facetime video.

2. Globe and improved maps. This was available more than a decade ago, on Google Earth. It's not taxing, and it's not special. Granted, the globe feature is just useless and the maps are only for a very, very limited areas (so a non-feature in Norway). And who uses Apple Maps on a computer anyway, rather than on a mobile device? Still, this is also just Apple being mean towards some of their best customers - iMacs, Mac Pros etc.

3. on-device dictation. This could maybe be legitimate. Still, the latest Intel machines have significant ML capabilities - especially those with discrete GPUs - so it sounds kind of fishy that none of them can do it.

4. text-to-speech support for additional languages -- Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish. There's no way that the other languages can be done without Apple Silicon, and these need it. Again, just Apple being petty with their current customers.

5. Apple baked all of the T2 security and performance features directly into the processor and then some. This is what enabled Apple Silicon machines to work with Apple's wireless Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. This is different, in that it requires special hardware. Could Apple have supported this on Intel machines prior to Apple Silicon? Absolutely. They supported TouchID on Intel laptops, and could have added wireless protocols to the T2 and keyboards if they wanted to. Not adding it to iMac / Mac Pro for so many years was probably more caused by neglect of these product lines than wanting to push Apple Silicon, though.

So to sum it up: Apple is clearly holding back features that would work just as well on Intel computers.

On-device dictation in particular is absolutely illegitimate.  The 2012 MacBook Pro I'm using right now has it, because I never downgraded this machine to Mac OS 10.15 - I'm still running 10.14.  In System Preferences > Keyboard > Dictation, there's a checkbox for "Enhanced Dictation" which is on-device dictation.  "Allows offline use and continuous dictation with live feedback."

Apple didn't add on-device dictation capability to M-chips.  Apple broke already working on-device dictation on Intel Macs.

robaba said:

Brandonw said:

swineone said:

"A Mac with Apple Silicon inside isn't just noticeably faster than their Intel counterparts; it's capable of a few other exclusive features too. Here is what an Apple Silicon-based Mac can do that the Intel Macs can't."

"but as Apple can control every facet of these chips, there is currently a subset of Mac features exclusive only to Apple's chipsets."

Let's not kid ourselves. All features listed (even running iOS/iPadOS apps) are well within the realms of the computing power available on Intel-based Macs. Hell, Dragon NaturallySpeaking did on-device dictation what, over 20 years ago? Surely not as well as Siri today, but then again, you can't compare a few-hundred-MHz Pentium Pro or Pentium II to current chips (and even older ones).

It's not a technical issue, but merely a marketing strategy of differentiation to move new product. And Apple is (or at least should be, you never know with governments these days) well within their rights to do so. But don't pretend there's some magical Apple Silicon fairy dust that enables this. It's just good old marketing.

Did they say it was a technical issue or apple silicon "fairy dust"? Nope.  I don't even know why I read comments anymore...it's exhausting.

Ignore is a very good friend of mine.  You should get to know Ignore,  Ignore make the comments much nicer.

MplsP said:

xyzzy01 said:

Apple isn't shunning Intel chips in a shameless ploy to push its chips

Actually, in most of these cases they clearly are. As an owner of a top of the range 2020 Intel iMac, I'm annoyed. It's far more powerful than the M1 based computers that gets these features, and they still sell it.

1. Facetime calls - blurring the background. This feature is available on older, low end machines on other software like Teams, Zoom, etc. Claiming that only their Apple Silicon chips are able to do this is clearly untrue. If anything, this feature should have been released a long time ago on all machines. That said, while it is annoying and clearly an example of Apple being bad, I don't really care that much: While I do plenty of Teams calls every day - mostly from that iMac - and a couple of Zoom calls a week, I can't remember the last time I used Facetime video.

2. Globe and improved maps. This was available more than a decade ago, on Google Earth. It's not taxing, and it's not special. Granted, the globe feature is just useless and the maps are only for a very, very limited areas (so a non-feature in Norway). And who uses Apple Maps on a computer anyway, rather than on a mobile device? Still, this is also just Apple being mean towards some of their best customers - iMacs, Mac Pros etc.

3. on-device dictation. This could maybe be legitimate. Still, the latest Intel machines have significant ML capabilities - especially those with discrete GPUs - so it sounds kind of fishy that none of them can do it.

4. text-to-speech support for additional languages -- Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish. There's no way that the other languages can be done without Apple Silicon, and these need it. Again, just Apple being petty with their current customers.

5. Apple baked all of the T2 security and performance features directly into the processor and then some. This is what enabled Apple Silicon machines to work with Apple's wireless Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. This is different, in that it requires special hardware. Could Apple have supported this on Intel machines prior to Apple Silicon? Absolutely. They supported TouchID on Intel laptops, and could have added wireless protocols to the T2 and keyboards if they wanted to. Not adding it to iMac / Mac Pro for so many years was probably more caused by neglect of these product lines than wanting to push Apple Silicon, though.

So to sum it up: Apple is clearly holding back features that would work just as well on Intel computers.

I agree, the apparent premise of the article, that intel-based computers can’t do these things, is ultimately false. The one thing the M1 computers can do that the intel machines can’t is last more than an hour while doing them. Every time I have to use teams for a meeting try battery drops like a rock, the fans start blasting away and the surface of my MBP gets too hot to touch. Part of that is crappy Microsoft programming, but part of that is the intel processor.