jdb8167

dr. x said:

I wonder what VMWare is up to and if they will provide support for M1?

I don’t know if they weren’t invited to early M1 development like Parallels or if they declined but at the release of the M1 they said on Twitter that they were considering doing an M1 port. If they decided to do it, they are still very far behind Parallels at this point.

NYC362 said:

So let's say I have an M1 Mac with Parallels 16.5 and Windows 10 ARM.  Will Windows programs that use the regular Windows 10 for Intel (like Quicken for Windows) work...or do those programs need to be written for Windows for ARM. 

They should work via Microsoft’s emulation/translation to x86-64 or x86. The last I heard you need to use a fast track version of Windows on ARM to get the x86-64 emulation. 

Can it virtualize MacOS Big Sur on a M1? That’s one of the big reasons I run VMs is to isolate parts of my software between work and personal for example. 

tmay said:

elijahg said:

cloudguy said:

dk49 said:

If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence? 

See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.

The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.

A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.

Apple also has the ability to smoothly pivot to another architecture, such as Risk V, if it desires.

While I agree that Apple could pivot to Risc-V if they needed/wanted to, I can't envision any scenario in the next decade where that would be something they would do. I guess the rumors could be wrong and there may be more architecture limitations in their license than supposed but I've heard nothing like that. Apple could stay on Aarch64v8 forever and add their own extensions as needed to keep up with x86, Aarch64, and Risc-V. Since they have good development access to LLVM and other toolchain software, that won't be a limitation either.

Fidonet127 said:

This is a very odd comment considering your previous comment. First mistake is saying everyone was complaining about soldered RAM, etc. then you bash people for liking the M1s. If it doesn’t meet your needs, then wait as you pointed out these are meant to be low end and not replace high end computers for the reasons you point out. These M1s replaced Intel models with similar ram and hard drive specs. I’ve pointed out that if you need 1.5 TB of ram, your workflow will not fit in these M1 Macs. That said, the performance of these M1 Macs are amazing. This isn’t drinking punch, nor because of the Apple brand. For a good deal of people, these M1 Macs are excellent, including me. Yes even professionals are enjoying these Macs. 

Having referb computers doesn’t mean that there were a high amount of returns, just that there was enough returns, soon to provide such Macs. It might be they couldn’t get the configuration soon enough for them, so they bought a lower end model. Only low end configurations were in stores. Our non customized MacBook Pro was able to be picked up the same day, vs my customized Mac Mini had to wait weeks. 

Also, wouldn’t a high number of returns more likely be from people not realizing that they aren’t 100% compatible with the Intel Macs? Things are getting better but they aren’t perfect yet. Some people like the somewhat experimental aspect of the M1 Macs but not everyone has that kind of experience and patience. Early adaptors are a special class. By this time next year, the Apple Silicon ecosystem will be much more advanced and more average users will be happier overall with the ASi Macs.

The soldered RAM is for low power, performance and low memory latency. LPDDR4x is not available in any socketed form. Any DDR socketed RAM is going to use a lot more battery. The soldered SSD is for security but mostly for battery again. Apple has a SSD controller as part of the M1 SoC. This allows them to have an SSD controller at 5 nm. This something no one else has. It is likely that Apple’s integrated NVMe controller is high performance for a very small amount of power.