sevenfeet

SpamSandwich said:

Looking over the description page at Apple.com, I looked closer at the volume knob and must wonder out loud what in the world were they thinking when they decided to put that closer to the BACK than the FRONT on top of the headphones? 

The volume knob will be THE MOST USED function of these headphones. And if a person is lying down on a pillow, as shown in their video/ad, the odds that the volume knob will be accidentally moved or triggered have increased hugely. And the physically awkward placement will also make it more difficult to reach in those cases when something very loud suddenly blasts over the headphones.

This is one of those slap yourself on the forehead moments. Form should never override function on something like headphones. 

Here's another head-slapping problem with these, outside of the price as the competition (Bose, Sony) are $200 cheaper.....NO HEADPHONE JACK.

Now I know that Apple has moved away from headphone jacks in most of their products. But one of the key applications for this device is going to be airplanes (when we can all fly again safely). While you may have your iPhone, iPad or Mac with you for entertainment, most airlines have infotainment system screens in the seat back and how do you interface with all of them? A headphone jack.

This had to have been discussed with the design team. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why this was deleted and would be an instant deal killer to get me to abandon my Bose QuietComfort headphones, regardless of whatever cool tech Apple has included with this, or how well they might sound. Also, audiophiles would want a headphone jack to connect to sound systems and bypass the limitations of Bluetooth for an analog experience.

Maybe it's the 10gb Ethernet SKU for the M1 Mac Minis that was recently rumored.

eriamjh said:

Yeah.   I forget about the small iMac.   Been running 27” since 2009 and I would love to see a 30” or bigger.  

I was surprised to see three new Macs announced with the M1.   I remember that the PPC-Intel transition was over quicker than Apple announced.   The first Intel Mac came out in Jan 2006 and I think the last, the Mac Pro, launched in august 2006.   All hardware transitioned in less than 8 months.   

The real “transition” was completed when OSX snow leopard was released in August 2009 and all PPC support was dropped.  So anyone buying a G5 Mac in August 2006 got three years of support.

I don’t see Apple dropping the new Mac Pro for at least 2-3 years from launch, but they might if a crazy Apple Silicon model offers bonkers performance at a higher margin for Apple and if there is developer support. 

  

First, even with a "M1X" model to slot in the higher end MacBook Pro, Mac Mini and maybe iMac models, I see Apple keeping the Intel versions around a little longer for corporate customers who need them.  There are a lot of big companies using Macs as primary laptops for employees and it will take some time for the new ASi machines to be certified for many of them.  And certifying "Big Sur" may be the bigger problem than M1 chips since the new machines can only run Big Sur.  The same goes for the eventual ASi Mac Pro & iMac Pro, whenever that arrives by 2021/2022.  The older Intel version will probably stick around for some months to allow corporate customers who want it last dibs on it before they are retired, despite the fact that whatever Apple comes up with will likely kick the living crap out of the Intel version.

I also think that support for the Intel machines will be a lot longer than what the PPC transition did.  Most Macs these days get OS upgrades out 5-7 years and 8 years for Mac Pros desktops.

It took using a VPN and changing my country to be first Australia and then figuring out that Germany was faster (the US was impossible) but the installer finally downloaded and I now have a copy on my server where I keep every version of Mac OS since System 8.

Most of my Macs in the house are too old to run Big Sur except for two, both MacBook Airs.  My wife's 2013 MacBook Air (i7, 8 GB) and my teenaged daughter's 2020 MacBook Air (i7, 16 GB) purchased this summer for her schoolwork. So the oldest MBa and newest MBa (Intel) supported by Big Sur were my targets.  The 2013 machine was installed first and I was not prepared for the sheer number of reboots (probably 5 or 6) during the install process.....honestly for a bit I thought something might be wrong.  But the install took better part of an hour but ended up completing successfully.  I ended up going to bed on the 2020 MBa's install although it was taking a while too before I dozed off.  It was a successful install when I looked at it this morning.

My wife is up this morning and using her machine.  She uses the machine mainly for browsing, Mail, Word/Excel and of course lately, Zoom. Her initial complaint is that she doesn't like the new Mail app layout.  Also, no apps were flagged as not useable by the installer although I made sure that MS Office 2019, Zoom and other apps were at their latest levels before I started.  This morning, both machines wanted to complete updates for Apple's iWork suite and Garageband, which completed without incident.

All of the other Macs (two 2008 Mac Pros, 2010 Mac Mini, 2008 iMac, 2008 MacBook) are all hacked to run Catalina and most likely will never run Big Sur. The only other Mac in the house that can run Big Sur is my corporate 2017 13" MacBook Pro and I don't control the timetable on when that will happen.....probably not for a few months considering how long it took for Catalina to be certified.

CheeseFreeze said:

k2kw said:

beeble42 said:

I'd like to see actual benchmark results, especially for graphics performance, including against a mac mini with an egpu with a reasonable card in it, like a vega64 or something. Saying the integrated graphics are 6 times faster than the previous intel one is fine, but that isn't a particularly high bar when you're removing any option of more powerful gpu technology which the previous one had. The new integrated gpu is competing (from a performance perspective) against the fastest gpu you could get in an egpu box that was supported by the previous model. I doubt the new model is actually faster than that, but it may well be fast enough to beat a moderate egpu setup, and without the expense, meaning a win for Apple. Or maybe it isn't and people will wait longer to upgrade until performance catches up to what they're leaving behind. Or switch platforms.

Without the eGPU support this feels unfinished.   More like 0.8 version.   And why can’t they have 32 or 64 GB RAM .   Step backwards.   Are they trying for it to be no so successful.

I thought about this as I was also bothered by the 16gb limit. In theory the benefit of an SoC may lead to memory being so fast that the ‘swapping’ in case of no more free memory may not be so much of a problem as before, and therefore less memory could be fine. 

This is just a theory; this is a multitasking platform after all, with multiple apps running fully at the same time (as opposed to iOS/iPadOS where multitasking works differently). Curious about the benchmarks!

I think the 16 GB limit will be an issue for some users. I think the 13" MacBook Pro is the most obvious example of this. But there may be some mitigations for this issue.  1st, unified memory, a really fast SSD and compression/decompression on the SoC may make this easier for some applications.  But users who need more for larger memory tasks will either want to wait or continue to buy the Intel model for the meantime.

As for me, I've been looking to buy a Mac mini to replace my household media server (Plex, iTunes, Roon), which is an ancient 2008 Mac Pro hacked to run Catalina. I cannot take that machine any further and even the current Intel Mac mini will runs rings around it. The ASi Mac Mini is faster still and being a media server, I can probably live with 16 GB of memory (the 2008 Mac Pro is a 16GB machine). Given that it sits in the basement, I don't care about graphics performance.

One thing about all this is I'm wondering how many SKUs are there of the initial M1 chip?  It looks like there are only 2 right now.....a 8 GB chip and a 16 GB chip. The 7 GPU entry level MacBook Air model I'm betting is just a deactivated GPU unit in firmware. Any other differences just depend on the thermal profile depending on if the chip is sitting in an Air (no fan) or the MBP or Mini (fan and bigger fan+AC power respectively). 

Apple moved to PCI 4.0 with this architecture.  That got lost in the shuffle of other news.

As we look toward future models, next stop would be the 16" MBP and the iMacs (non-Pro).  Both of those machines will need higher performance options....either an M1X with options (I hope) up to 64 GB of RAM, comparable SSDs to the Intel versions (8 TB is the top end right now) and even faster graphics to keep up with the AMD options users had.  Like the Mini and 13" MBP, I would expect the Intel versions of both machines would stick around for at least a year for corporate customers or customers will specific certification issues.  One issue will be if the unified SoC memory model will keep the larger iMac from upgradable memory.

Lastly, the iMac Pro and Mac Pro should be the last ones upgraded, next year at this time at the earliest but probably 2022.  I expect something radical from Apple on this one considering the customers who buy these products. They will want the moon and Apple will have to deliver.