New apple M1 chips - who's buying?

[mmm-five]

SteveKTMer said:

Mine is Macbook Pro 16GB with 2TB SSD, M1 Pro CPU base model. It's so much faster than anything I've ever had from Intel, even my Dell XPS 13 i7 feels very sluggish and slow compared to the Macbook Pro at everyday tasks. I'm not a developer but do have many documents and browser tabs open all the time pus video editing with Final Cut and Resolve. It's never slow.

If I was buying again, I'd probably get the Macbook Air M2 with 24GB memory and a 2TB SSD. The M2 has faster single core performance than any of the M1 CPUs, even the M1 ultra and Max, so it will be faster for general use and there's so much horsepower in reserve that nothing I am doing will really tax it and most of the time developers are editing, which is a very low pressure task. Plus no fan which is nice.

I think you've misunderstood the Apple Silicon architecture a bit.

To put it simply, every M1 core is the same (so same single-core performance), but there are just more of them!

By 'sticking' more than one board together they simply double/quadruple* the number of cores (with variations of performance/efficiency cores) and they double/quadruple the throughput of multi-core processing (not forgetting the work done by more graphics cores, and other specialist cores).

What makes the biggest difference in the responsiveness between an M1 Mini and a M1 Pro or M1 Max, will be all the background processes being able to be offloaded to one of the free efficiency cores (or specialist cores), instead of everything asking to be run on the lower number performance cores.

In summary:

• M1 = 8-core CPU (4 performance @ 3.2GHz / 4 efficiency @ 2.1GHz) + 8-core GPU + 16-core neural engine + media engine
• M1 Pro = 8-10 core CPU (6-8 performance @ 3.2GHz / 2 efficiency @ 2.1GHz) + 14-16-core GPU + 16-core neural engine + media engine
• M1 Max = 10-core CPU (8 performance @ 3.2GHz / 2 efficiency @ 2.1GHz) + 24-32 core GPU + 16-core neural engine + media engine
• M1 Ultra = 20-core CPU (16 performance @ 3.2GHz / 4 efficiency @ 2.1GHz) + 32-64 core GPU + 32-core neural engine + media engine

An M2 single core is slightly faster, but only by as much as the increase in core frequency (so about 11%):

• M2 = 8-core CPU (4 performance @ 3.5GHz / 4 efficiency @ 2.1GHz) + 8-10 core GPU + 16-core neural engine

* no, it's not actually double/quadruple, but this is simpler.

[Blown2CV]

i could probably google this, but are there no such things as M2 ultra, max, and all that guff yet? Not that most people would need that.

[Craikeybaby]

Not yet...

[MikeHo]

768 said:

MikeHo said:

Anyone got an M1 Pro MacBook Pro 14" ?

Thinking of dipping my toe in Apple land, going to be used mainly for software dev work - not Xcode, more generic.

I've got a 14" M1 Max, 32GB RAM. 2TB, which wasn't really enough.

It's generally pretty quick. If you hit any dependencies which have to be compiled for ARM, or worse you have to run x86 binaries, it can slow down dev work a lot.

Not enough????

I guess it depends what you're working on. I won't be doing any building of 100 project solutions in VS fortunately. I'm trying to keep Windows work to a minimum now ..... usually leave it for some other poor sod as when it crops up for me it's often legacy.

Docker is now native so that's a big thing for me.

[thebraketester]

768 said:

MikeHo said:

Anyone got an M1 Pro MacBook Pro 14" ?

Thinking of dipping my toe in Apple land, going to be used mainly for software dev work - not Xcode, more generic.

I've got a 14" M1 Max, 32GB RAM. 2TB, which wasn't really enough.

It's generally pretty quick. If you hit any dependencies which have to be compiled for ARM, or worse you have to run x86 binaries, it can slow down dev work a lot.

Blimey. What were you throwing at it?

[LunarOne]

Craikeybaby said:

Not yet...

It's won't be long. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon, and for the rest of your life...

[MikeHo]

Fisted the kumquat.

I'll see how it goes. 32gb ram just means a bit of a wait for it.

[Blown2CV]

Craikeybaby said:

Not yet...

M2 Pro and Max part of next month's announcement apparently.

[thebraketester]

Not a MacBook but I am astonished how fast the M1 chip is in the iPad Pro… makes my 2015 MBP feel very very slow almost unusable so.

[ArsE82]

Exciting!

Looking forward to Stage Manager, and the Continuity Camera will be great as I use my M1 Air 'docked'. I need to find a monitor-top mount for my phone!

[LeeM135i]

ArsE82 said:

Exciting!

Looking forward to Stage Manager, and the Continuity Camera will be great as I use my M1 Air 'docked'. I need to find a monitor-top mount for my phone!

Let us know if you find a good monitor mount for iPhone continuity camera, I am on the hunt as well but most are for mounting the the MacBook Pro.

[LunarOne]

Blown2CV said:

Craikeybaby said:

Not yet...

M2 Pro and Max part of next month's announcement apparently.

I wish they would hurry up and launch them. My 2008 Mac Pro has finally given up the ghost (screen corrupts and system becomes unresponsive after a few minutes use) so I need to buy a new computer. I'm after a Mac Mini M2 or better still a Mac Studio with an M2 Max/Ultra as I have lots of 4K video to process and I've been waiting until the M2 came out. But I don't want a laptop as I want it to run for years plugged in. A laptop with a battery inside is not something I want to leave plugged in for years.

[rustyuk]

I use a 2013 Macbook Pro for Dev and it's better than my work supplied 2022 Thinkpad that cost 3 times as much.

[LeeM135i]

LunarOne said:

Blown2CV said:

Craikeybaby said:

Not yet...

M2 Pro and Max part of next month's announcement apparently.

I wish they would hurry up and launch them. My 2008 Mac Pro has finally given up the ghost (screen corrupts and system becomes unresponsive after a few minutes use) so I need to buy a new computer. I'm after a Mac Mini M2 or better still a Mac Studio with an M2 Max/Ultra as I have lots of 4K video to process and I've been waiting until the M2 came out. But I don't want a laptop as I want it to run for years plugged in. A laptop with a battery inside is not something I want to leave plugged in for years.

M2 Mac Studio will be next year. I use a M1 MacBook Pro and just unplug it from the power a couple of times a week to let the battery run down. If its left plugged in it will let the battery run down to 80% and hold it there for a while. I unplugged it yesterday and have been using it for about 12 hours and it still has 40% charge left.....

[ArsE82]

LeeM135i said:

ArsE82 said:

Exciting!

Looking forward to Stage Manager, and the Continuity Camera will be great as I use my M1 Air 'docked'. I need to find a monitor-top mount for my phone!

Let us know if you find a good monitor mount for iPhone continuity camera, I am on the hunt as well but most are for mounting the the MacBook Pro.

I've got an arm/clamp mount somewhere so I'm going to dig that out first and see if I can get it in a decent position.

I've just had a play using the iPhone (13 Mini) camera in Facetime and it's really good.

[Durzel]

Blown2CV said:

Craikeybaby said:

Not yet...

M2 Pro and Max part of next month's announcement apparently.

That's what I'm waiting for at this point.

My 2019 MBP warranty runs out next month. From a maximising resell profit point of view - would it make sense to extend it by another year, or leave that up to the new owner (assuming the M2 is announced & delivered next month) to buy it?

[anonymous-user]

ArsE82 said:

Exciting!

Looking forward to Stage Manager, and the Continuity Camera will be great as I use my M1 Air 'docked'. I need to find a monitor-top mount for my phone!

That is interesting. I had not heard about this feature. I use my M1 Air docked and shut all the time as well, but I have to open it for Teams calls and I was wondering if there was a better solution. I guess a webcam permanently attached to to my monitor would be less hassle than putting my iPhone in a holder and linking it every time I want to use Teams. But we will see, this update might be really convenient.

[nebpor]

ArsE82 said:

Exciting!

Looking forward to Stage Manager, and the Continuity Camera will be great as I use my M1 Air 'docked'. I need to find a monitor-top mount for my phone!

I already do this using Camo Studio on my Mac/iPhone - it makes you look like a Hollywood superstar on video calls. Could never go back to the usual webcam

[Craikeybaby]

Lord Marylebone said:

That is interesting. I had not heard about this feature. I use my M1 Air docked and shut all the time as well, but I have to open it for Teams calls and I was wondering if there was a better solution. I guess a webcam permanently attached to to my monitor would be less hassle than putting my iPhone in a holder and linking it every time I want to use Teams. But we will see, this update might be really convenient.

I use a cheap webcam plugged into the USB port on my monitor. It was about £25, which is probably cheaper than whatever is needed to mount an iPhone to a monitor.

[Blown2CV]

Craikeybaby said:

Lord Marylebone said:

That is interesting. I had not heard about this feature. I use my M1 Air docked and shut all the time as well, but I have to open it for Teams calls and I was wondering if there was a better solution. I guess a webcam permanently attached to to my monitor would be less hassle than putting my iPhone in a holder and linking it every time I want to use Teams. But we will see, this update might be really convenient.

I use a cheap webcam plugged into the USB port on my monitor. It was about £25, which is probably cheaper than whatever is needed to mount an iPhone to a monitor.

similar, although mine cost a fair bit. Just about anything is better than the in-built camera, but if you look at the thin space it needs to be crammed into in a macbook lid, you can understand why the standard one is a bit ste.