cloudguy

0. Mx Macs may indeed run Windows natively ... but it will be ARM Windows which even Microsoft acknowledges is largely useless except for (some) first party and web applications. It was why the Surface Duo uses Android instead of Windows. And unless I am wrong Apple has closed the door on emulating Windows themselves. So a solution for x86 and x86-84 Windows applications would need to be via 32 and 64 bit virtualization.

1. On the eGPU front it is not so much the hardware or even protocols. Instead, the APIs are different. When on Intel this wasn't an issue ... the APIs are the same. But with Apple Silicon it is Metal or nothing. While that is GREAT for iOS and Apple Arcade and other stuff developed for Apple using Apple provided tools, other stuff isn't going to be compatible unless third parties do it, and even if that happens Apple won't support it.

Remember my previous rants. Apple never wanted to join the Intel platform and support their hardware and software stuff in the first place. They were PROUD of not doing so in the 80s, 90s and early 00s. They only went to Intel, put iTunes on Windows and things like that because it was necessary to survive. 

Now Apple doesn't need that stuff anymore. Macs are going to sell regardless ... they have a very dedicated customer base especially among creatives and you can't even develop iOS, watchOS etc. apps any other way. So it is going to go back to how it was before. Apple doesn't want you running Windows. They don't want you using GPUs designed for Windows. They want you to rely on their hardware and software and have the opinion that between their first party stuff, the iPad apps coming over plus web and cloud tools, that is more than enough for anyone who wants to make it work. If you cannot or do not want to, it isn't as if Wintel is going anywhere.

Convergence WITH their mobile hardware and apps. Divergence FROM the Windows stuff that they have always hated. And now that Microsoft is doing more stuff with Android and Samsung on Windows 10 and collaborating with Google in even more areas, even more so.

It is going to go back to when Apple people and Windows people were different populations who use computers to do different things, which is the way that it has been for most of these companies histories. The key difference is that thanks to Apple's prowess in mobile, there are far more Apple people than there were in 1983, 1993, 2003 or 2013.

CloudTalkin said:

razorpit said:

Common sense says winner, however with us already having incredibly high school taxes and schools still ask us to supply pencils, crayons, glue sticks, etc., I don't see this moving many of these over the horrible Chromebook's my kids now have.

Yeah, it is hard to argue when looking at school budgets.  A school can purchase 5 MBA's or 15 Chromebooks ($250 avg).  I don't share your opinion about Chromebooks.  Sure, there are some crappy models.  That happens when multiple vendors put out competing products.  There's always going to be someone willing to race to the bottom.  But a good .edu Chromebook can be had for $250-300.  Besides, the type of laptop isn't really that important in the grand scheme imo.  It's the curriculum and teacher that matter most.

It isn't $250. Unless a school system has a bad procurement officer or find themselves in a bind - due to having a bad procurement officer - Chromebooks can be obtained in bulk from special suppliers like CTL and Sector 5 via B2B channels frequently for $150 and at times under $100. Also, while there are many advantages to a Mac or iPad there is one factor you aren't considering. If you want a refresher of that factor, view the infamous "playtime" sequence of Toy Story 3: kids break stuff. So schools will either pay $250 for a "ruggedized" Chromebook that is nearly impossible to break short of driving a minivan over it or $99 for a Chromebook that is easily, cheaply replaceable when broken. Also, if it is broken or lost by the little 10 year old what happens to the data? If it is an iPad or Mac, it is gone. If it is a Chromebook, it is all in the cloud. (You can even configure it to automatically sync the "Downloads" folder, the only local storage, to Google Drive.) So issue a new Chromebook, have the kid sign in again with the same account and it all pops up again in a few minutes. 

Sorry, one can hate Google forever for putting a touchscreen UI with Android as opposed to "doing the right thing", continuing with their Blackberry clone until they went out of business - which would have allowed Microsoft who also had a touchscreen UI to dominate the market in their place which would have gained Apple and its fans what exactly except an even bigger, more powerful and influential Microsoft thanks to its billions in market share and tens of billions in revenue from mobile added to their already crushing market share in PC, cloud and enterprise with the very hostile Ballmer still running it to this day very likely - but Chromebooks are a very good, workable technical and product solution to a real problem that addressed an actual market need. The last data from Canalys stated that it isn't just schools buying Chromebooks anymore either. Small and medium-sized businesses are buying them as well as using the GSuite for their data processing and communications needs i.e. corporate email, videoconferencing, teleconferencing, collaboration, etc. even business telephone numbers and service from Google Voice if you want it. The hardware and the software cost a fraction of what Microsoft charges to provide the same and you don't need to hire - or more accurately contract - an IT staff to manage it. (For example, a $500 Chromebox can serve as videoconferencing hardware. Feel free to imagine what videoconferencing hardware normally costs.)

Basically, claiming that the low end of the market doesn't have legitimate needs and doesn't deserve good products to meet them isn't just classism, but it is bad economics. Just because Apple exercises their perfectly valid right to choose not to meet that need doesn't mean that it is bad when other companies do. Quite the contrary in fact. Feel free to wish that it was someone - anyone - but Google, but in the process go ahead and propose a business model that actually works. Everyone else that has tried to go up against Microsoft in this market - supplying products and services to schools and small enterprises - has failed, Google hasn't and there is a reason for that: they came up with products and a business/revenue model that is actually scalable and viable where others failed to do so.

bobolicious said:

I'll be watching the free https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-office-android-ios-release-notes/ and perhaps libreoffice to break away from proprietary software moving forward... I've had more issues with MS Office than just about any other software, including the orphaning upgrades every few years - I know some swear by it however I simply don't get it...?

LibreOffice is (slightly) worse than Google Docs. So if you are a Microsoft Office power user, it is not an option really. But what about iWork? That is no Microsoft Office obviously but it has to be better than LibreOffice right? (I really wouldn't know as while I have a MacBook, I use mostly Google, Microsoft and "brew cask" Linux products on it and none of the Apple stuff, not even Safari.) 

joguide said:

kpom said:

 DuhSesame said:

I wonder how much difference we’ll see for the Air vs. the Pro.

I assume it’s just the long-term performance.

I agree, but this is still very impressive. Something like Cinebench will be better for judging the difference in sustained CPU tasks. 

This is an industry changing moment.  Base MBA with no fan, just crushed the laptop world as we knew it. 

Huh? Samsung released a $999 fanless Chromebook with an Intel i5 CPU (in Linux mode a great development and otherwise productivity device, and oh yeah is quite good for Linux apps and PWAs too), 2-in-1 design, AMOLED 13' 4K touchscreen with built-in stylus way back in April. The Google Pixelbook is a fanless device with configurations that include an Intel i7 CPU,13' 4K screen and a 16 GB of RAM that was released way back in 2018. (The Pixelbook 2 was delayed to 2021 so that it will have Whitechapel - the SOC jointly designed by Google and Samsung and manufactured by Samsung for smartphones and Chromebooks - instead of a 10th gen Intel CPU in it.) Who cares about ChromeOS? You should as it surpassed macOS in market share this year - and it surpassed MacBooks in market share years ago - and as these devices are going to start featuring much better AMD, Intel and ARM CPUs starting in 2021 due to Google and its various OEMs promoting them as development and productivity devices, it is going to increase. Google in particular is already positioning Chromebooks to replace MacBooks that will no longer be able to virtualize Windows among enterprise companies and has already attracted their first (small) batch of buyers.

But as for right now, there are already plenty of fanless Windows 10 - and I mean real Windows, not Windows on ARM that tries and fails to emulate x86! - laptops out there. Consider the Acer Switch 7: 16 GB of RAM and Intel i7 processor. There are also a couple of Dell XPS fanless laptops and a couple of Asus ones in addition to more Acer ones.

Get this: folks are kicking around the idea that the new Intel Tiger Lake CPUs with integrated Iris XE graphics will allow fanless gaming laptops to become a thing (because Tiger Lake is Intel's low heat/low power design and Iris XE GPU - which is integrated in all Tiger Lake Core i5 and higher chips - is supposed to provide gaming performance on the caliber of the Nvidia MX350).

So seriously, you guys need to pay attention to the wider tech world more. If you are thinking that Apple Silicon is going to result in these magical devices that the rest of the tech world can't comprehend let alone compete with that is going to result in Apple quadrupling or more its market share and influence, prepare to be sadly mistaken. The tech media might not know this - as Apple devices are all that they use and as a result truly cover - but actual consumers do. 

All right. I will eat crow. I have long claimed that there was no way that Apple Silicon would match the Core i7 at launch and would probably be in line with the Core i3 or at best Core i5. I was wrong. I shall go sit in the corner with my dunce cap on now. 

But while on my way to the corner I will protest:

Apple did not reach this performance with the 4 and 6 core iPhone and iPad chips as people were claiming previously. Apple only reached this performance with an octacore chip that was specifically designed for use in personal computers - not mobile devices - that requires more cores, more power and dissipate more heat. We have always known that this was possible, as modern (meaning a ARM Holdings design base and not the Sun Sparc and other early RISC servers that go back to the 1980s) Linux-based ARM workstations and servers have existed since at least 2011 (the year after the A4 was released). Ubuntu has had official ARM releases since 2012, and HP - the venerable Wintel manufacturer - has been selling them to data centers since 2014. 

So I was absolutely right about Apple not being able to build a MacBook Pro or iMac with a 6 core chip that had 128kb/8MB caches (the M1 is octacore with 192kb/12MB caches). As lots of people on this site and elsewhere were indeed claiming that the 4 and 6 core low power/low heat iPhone chips could absolutely be put in a MacBook Pro and work as good or better ... yeah those people were as wrong as I was and even more so. 

Now in the corner of shame I go, sucking my thumb in the process. But you folks who claimed that this would have been possible with the iPhone chips need to go to corners of their own.