techconc

zoetmb said:
I disagree regardless of the level of the new Macs performance.  Users lock into hardware brands the way they lock into a political party or religion.  Once they choose to believe something, they stick with it.  And a very large percentage of Wintel users are in offices where users don’t get to choose their own machines and where bulk buys of Dells or whatever are relatively economical. 

Macs are still perceived by many as overpriced and Apple long ago lost its reputation as “it just works”.  

If you think about what most  users do on their computers: email, social media, photo organization and maybe some post processing, and streaming, with a relatively few doing high intensity tasks, the performance granted by the new processors  isn’t needed by most, with the potential exception of better battery life. 

IMO, the new machines might get more people to upgrade their existing Macs sooner, but I don’t think they’re going to attract many converts.

Unfortunately, Mac sales are becoming an ever smaller minority of Apple’s overall business.  

JMO.  

The facts don't support your opinions.  The M1 chip has generated a lot of buzz throughout the industry.  Apple has taken a fresh look at what's possible with PC architecture and has produced results that have not been matched by Intel or AMD.  Apple still needs to demonstrate that they can scale this approach to higher end devices, but there is little doubt that they can. 

As for Mac sales, I suggest you try looking at actual numbers and see how Mac sales have spiked rather dramatically over the past year.

https://sixcolors.com/post/2021/07/apple-posts-81b-quarterly-results-charts/

ppietra said:

that is just your assumption!
There is nothing that stops Apple from having a new architecture ready for both kinds of SoC - they basically did that last year, one month between launches is nothing. It’s not like Apple doesn’t have the resources to develop more than one SoC at the same time, they did it a few times with the X series SoC.
And there is no proof that they actually made a M1X, or thought about using a M1X, it could have been an M2X all along.

The weird part is launching a new Mac CPU that is already outdated by a new iPhone SoC, where some software will have better performance on an iPhone than on a brand new high end MacBook Pro.

Yeah, I agree.  The big question is what's behind the delay with getting the MacBook Pro's to market?  Is it something unrelated like availability of mini-LED screens or is it based on Apple's plans for newer cores.  The A15 is likely to be based on ARMv9.  It's very possible that Apple is waiting for these cores for their higher end machines as well.  If we would have had laptops in June or July, I would have expect an M1x (A14 core) based machine.  Given that we're now expecting something after the A15 is released, I'm thinking it's likely the higher end laptops will be something more like an M2x.  At least it should be at this point.

Marvin said:

M1 is faster than A14:

https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?q=Apple+M1
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?q=a14

No, it's not.  If you'll notice even in the links you provide, the M1 based devices are clocked higher than the A14 mostly because of the form factor they ship in.  The M1 has the same core performance as the A14.  In a laptop or a Mac mini, you can afford to clock it higher as you have a bigger battery and better heat dissipation.  If Apple were to ship an A14 in a Mac mini for example, they could clock that higher as well.

davidw said:

It's not the "scan" that people are worked up about, it's the "search". Apple is searching for certain images on your device, that they don't want on their servers, not just scanning them for your benefit.

What are you talking about?  Apple isn't going around searching all of the files on your device.  It's only when you attempt to upload a picture to iCloud photo that this particular photo will be scanned.  Also, yes, that photo is being scanned against known CSAM material.  Likewise, I find the distinction you are trying to make here to be rather bizarre. 

This would be like if UPS brought a drug sniffing dog into your home, to sniff the parcels that you are about to ship by UPS. Obviously UPS has the right to not want to ship illegal drugs and to search any parcel in their system that might be suspected of containing illegal drugs. But they don't have the right to do the search while the parcels were still in the shipper's home and there was no reason to believe that the shipper was shipping any illegal drugs. Even if the parcels already had the UPS shipping labels on them. They would have to wait until the parcels are in their truck or warehouse, to do the search. Whether they suspect the parcels contained illegal drugs or not.  

In your analogy, UPS isn't bringing a dog into your home randomly sniffing for drugs.  Rather, when you decide that you want to ship a package, you can put your box in a device that scans it and pre-certifies so that it can be shipped and doesn't need to be checked anywhere later in the process (unless your pre-certification found drugs of course).  If people actually think about this for a minute, most would actually prefer the check to happen in the privacy of their home by a trusted process rather than having strangers doing whatever they want to your package after it ships. 

Plus when Spotlight or Photos "scan" your images, it for your benefit, not for Apple's or anyone else's.  

And yet, there are those that can't or won't, see the difference between Apple "scanning" the images on your device for your benefit and Apple "searching" for images on your device for theirs. When Spotlight or Photos scan your images for "dogs", it's not searching for any sign of animal abuse and will report you over to the SPCA if it finds photos that might be evidence of animal abuse. 

Right, Apple has been scanning your images for years.  For your benefit.  You don't have to load your photos into the cloud to have this service either.  That's the definition of privacy.  However, IF YOU CHOOSE to upload your pictures to the cloud, Apple (like EVERY OTHER CLOUD PROVIDER) has the right to make sure you're not sending illegal CSAM images ONTO THEIR CLOUD.  You can either choose to enforce that in a private way by scanning photos locally on your device as you try to upload them... or in an invasive way where the scanning of your photos happens on their cloud.  Either way, the scanning is happen.  When it happens in the cloud, you have no idea what else they are doing with it.  Apple provides multiple levels of audit-ability for their process.  Do other cloud providers provide the same?

lkrupp said:

And as AppleInsider and Apple have stated, images are not scanned on the device. But you choose to believe it’s a lie because...?

No, images are scanned on device.  What's funny is that people are just getting worked up about this now.  Apple has been scanning images on our devices for a long time.  This isn't the CSAM hash type scanning, this is the machine learning scanning I'm talking about.  That's how we can search for generic things like "dog" or "beach" a get a bunch of relevant pictures from our library.  Where is all of the "slippery slope" type of discussions around that?  Seriously, the level of stupid being raised about this topic is mind numbing. 

bluefire1 said:

People are against a lot of horrible things, but Apple, regardless of how laudable the company’s intentions, has no business intercepting anything that’s on my phone. Privacy doesn’t come with a back door. As for what people post on social media-that’s their choice.

People need to stop using terms they don't understand.  This is NOT an example of a backdoor.   Also, nobody is intercepting photos on your phone.  Apple's CSAM scan is scanning your photos JUST BEFORE YOU UPLOAD THEM to Apple's iCloud service.  

Illusive said:

Does anyone here realize THIS means iCloud Photos stay virtually unencrypted, just as they have been since at least 2020? That CSAM thingy was supposed to scan the pics on-device so that they could be uploaded securely to iCloud if they don't violate the policy. 

Just the opposite.  I'm guessing this is a necessary prerequisite for Apple to put in place before it could ever go with end-to-end encryption and still remain compliant with authorities by not holding CSAM material on their cloud. 

muthuk_vanalingam said:

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

Did Apple ever explain in easy to understand language how a human can review the photos if they are encrypted and private? Which is it? Reviewable by humans or encrypted? It can't be both.

Encrypted but with keys held by Apple, so that the images can be decrypted on-demand.

Correct.  Apple doesn't use end-to-end encryption with iCloud photos.  Yet.

ravnorodom said:

harry wild said:

Child Sexual Abuse Material - CSAM would affect to many powerful people in all walks of life!  I will not list the whos who since I may be “Cancelled”. 

iPhone sales will be down drastically from these people (we're talking about worldwide issues here) plus other paranoias. Apple has good intention but their large profits will be eaten.

Complete nonsense.  The only people crying about this are people who don't understand the technology and of course people with a collection of CSAM material I suppose.  What's more, given that Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc. and everyone else with cloud storage is already scanning such photos, where are the paranoid and delusional people going to go?