dyonoctis

From what I've understood, going forward win 11 will have strict hardware and drivers requirement, the cpu must have a tpm 2.0 chip, the uefi need to be 100% secure boot etc...the M1 Mac might be so different not only on a hardware level, but also a firmware level, that Microsoft won't bother making optimization for such a low % of potential clients 

If you read his full post, he's saying that developping for MacOs isn't as easy as it sounds, Apple support seems to prioritize big developers, while ignoring smaller dev, so when you have a problem, you're all alone to try and fix it.

"Could I have learned my way around modern macOS and tried to preserve that part of the company? I dunno, maybe eventually. These past few years have spawned an absurd amount of new technologies, many of them absurdly complex - Vulkan alone has been a multi-year learning process and I still barely understand a large portion of the spec. But in Vulkan's case, I wanted to learn to use it. Metal may be nicer to look at in comparison, but beauty is only skin-deep - any multiplatform developer will tell you that Mac drivers still haven't improved despite Metal happening, and reporting bugs to Apple when you're not rich is like pulling teeth with boxing gloves. Contrast that with Linux, where Vulkan is in some places downright appalling, but when we run into driver problems I just post a RenderDoc capture on the Mesa issue tracker and get a response (and sometimes even a commit hash!) usually on the same day." 

sflocal said:

Apple's chip beats out Qualcomm chips?  Wake me up in a few years when Qualcomm actually does something.

This is embarrassing.

I'll have to find it again, but Anandtech explained a few years back why Apple CPU are faster, and why it's going to be hard for Qualcomm to compete. The way that Apple is designing their CPU is really expensive, for them it doesn't matter that much since they are using it in their own smartphone, so they can still enjoy the margin. If Qualcomm ever made a cpu design that's as expensive, the price would skyrocket, and smartphone makers wouldn't want to buy them unless they start making phones that are even more expensive than they are right now.

Competing with Apple isn't just about making a CPU that's as fast, it's actually making a CPU as fast, but cheaper to make.

And the same applies to Laptop/Destkop CPU, the M1 isn't a CPU that's cost efficient to make, Apple did things that would make other cpu makers go bankrupt if they ever tried to copy them. That's the perks of vertical integration. 

sflocal said:

I suspect Microsoft is going to introduce a more baked version of Windows for ARM.  The writing is on the wall.  Chips like the M1 and soon, other competitors will leave the x86 chips behind.  

I really believe that Apple started a new level of technology that doesn’t include Intel or AMD and others will follow.

Well AMD already started to work on an ARM chip in 2016 (the K12 for wich Jim Keller was involved, the same guy who helped with the A4/A5 ) and lately there's this :
https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-could-join-ARM-and-Intel-with-its-own-big-LITTLE-esque-hybrid-CPU-design.485589.0.htm 

so Intel is the only one who doesn't seems to have a plan 

cloudguy said:

Paging DED! The gaming industry needs to step up and support Macs. Before now ignoring Macs made sense for reasons that I don't get into. But now? A $699 Mac Mini is a legit gaming rig!!!

Steam, Origin, Epic ... they all need to use macOS. Don't nearly all the major engines have tools to port games to macOS? If they don't, they need to develop them. It is the job of gaming companies to support the best hardware for the benefit of gamers. Right now the Mac Mini and the MacBook Air represent the best hardware and the best value for gamers. From what I have read, the Mac Mini and MacBook Air give performance roughly equivalent to about a $1400 device that has a recent Intel Core i7, 16 GB of RAM and a 4 GB Nvidia graphics card. 

Gaming industry, you had legit reasons before but now they are gone. Do gamers right by supporting the best hardware and the best value!

Hold up, we are not there yet the macbook air is merely faster than comparable thin laptop, but not faster than a 1400$ gaming laptop who can get a RTX 2070 8gb and certainly not faster than a 1400$ desktop pc. For that price you can get a RTX 3080 10Gb that is a magnitude of order faster than the m1 gpu. At 699$ you can get a pc with a 1660 super that stil faster than the m1.



Right now the m1 is great for casual games, a few AAA games on low/medium setting or e-sport title like overwatch, valorant, fortnite. If apple want to become something viable for gamers, the imac gpu will have to be at least as fast as a RTX 2070 Super, or the soon to be released RTX 3060Ti. A 999$ 21'5 imac with that kind of speed will be a steal.

But remember : gamers who have a desktop pc only for gaming are a particuliar kind of market, because those are people who are keeping their CPU for a long time and switching gpu every two or three years, wich doesn't fit into Apple vision of a personal computer.