If all it takes is money to be a vertically integrated computer manufacturer, then why hasn’t any other company done it thus far ? It takes talent to write an operating system kernel with preemptive multitasking and to design a SOC with cpu, gpu, neural engine, and an integrated thundebolt controller.
You really really didn't need to mention the fact that there is an integrated thunderbolt controller. That's like saying you've made a cold fusion generator with a fancy cupholder installed on the side, the cupholder being insignificant to the scale of the prior listed items.
Why don't more companies do it? Not many compaies are worth a trillion dollars plus.
Also, ever since Apple launched m1, Mac revenue has surged 70 percent. Apple just announced that during its fiscal second quarter that ended March 27, the Mac business reached an all-time quarterly record of $9.1 billion. Yeah overall increased demand for computers during the pandemic might be part of the increase in Mac revenue, but other factors include the insane battery life of m1, how cool the m1 systems run (compared to their intel predecessors), and the performance increase relative to the predecessors of the low-end MacBook Air/Pro and Mac mini. My sister’s m1 MacBook gets over 16 hours of battery life. Customers are getting a better bang for the buck.
You are actually just parroting exactly what TIm Cook said on the conference call but Apple in fact does not provide data that specifically shows the M1 is the reason for the increase:
Apple saw strong growth across its product line. International sales were 67% of total revenue in the fiscal second quarter.
www.zdnet.com
It's stated but the provided data is the same as any other quarter. Of course, Apple will always tout to investors that it's their products when in reality anyone looking at the market or Apple's provided data can see you'd have to be inept to not being selling record numbers right now.
16 hours of battery life is not realistic, reviews have it pined at an average of 10.5, which is certainly achievable for x86 laptops without a discrete GPU.
Mind you it still starts at a $1,000 USD so bang for your buck would only be in comparison to other apple products.
Unlike us enthusiasts, many consumers don’t care about modularity and upgradability. They just want a solution that works well out of the box. And m1 does that well.
All that being said, I’m just admiring the technology in m1 and the audacity to leave x86 behind. I’m not aware of any other intel customer (Dell, HP, Razer, Lenovo, etc) abandoning x86 and delivering their own cpu platform. Apple did, and it’s fascinating to me.
But I wholeheartedly agree that Apple has its quirks and some things I don’t like. Like a lack of modularity, lack of AAA games, forced obsolescence of perfectly working Intel macs, and so on. It’s by no means a perfect company.
That really depends which apps you are running. If you are using a lot of x86 apps, you are looking at an average performance hit of 30%. Given the emulation layer, there's always the chance that an app can take a much larger performance hit at random as well. Apple made the bet that most of it's customers either a) just use basic apps b) won't care about having the best performance in x86 apps anyways. It will take a long time for things to fully transition over and many legacy apps will always be x86. It's fine if you are using the product casually but if you are doing anything serious I would not move over to the platform until extensive vetting is done. I'm not sure I'd call this out of character for Apple, they did remove the headphone jack and DAC from their phones in the name of "progress" so they are willing to take jumps like this because people will buy their products regardless. Then again they did manage to sell people $20 wireless earbuds for $200. As an audiophile myself, the sound output from the Airpods is worse then a $36 pair of Superlux budget cans.
Native x86 getting outclassed by software layer translation of x86 on a RISC SoC. It's not all about the nanometers.
That are some misconceptions about the M1's performance:
https://www.extremetech.com/computi...-measurements-x86-versus-apple-m1-performance
First is that Apple M1 does not in fact outclass X86. Desktop X86 blows the M1 away. AMD laptops in the same price range do as well, with over 30% more multi-threaded performance. The only time the M1 is going to beat an equally price X86 laptop performance wise is if the X86 laptop is either not plugged in or just bad. At $1,000 though you typically can get a decent graphics card in your laptop as well though, something that's going to vastly outperform what the M1 can do. The M1 is a big step up but let's not misrepresent things here. The M1 has amazing performance per watt but it doesn't take the performance crown.
Second is that Apple M1 prefers 1 thread per core while X86 prefers 2 threads per core. Tests need to take this into consideration.
Last is that X86 can utilize advances instructions whereas ARM (like the M1) can only utilize simple instructions. In applications that utilize things like AVX or SSE the X86 processor will almost always be faster. I don't know how Apple is emulating programs that do utilize those features but I imagine the emulator is telling the X86 software to use the code path with those features disabled.
There are many more considerations to comparing X86 vs M1 than simple X86 vs X86. If it fair to use AVX? Is it fair to only use 1 thread per core? Is the code path for the program equally as optimized for both platforms? Ect. That aside, what I do know is that Geekbench is and has always been utter trash and people should stop using it as any meaningful measure of performance.
Show me which gaming laptop that does 10+ hours on battery, and not just leaving it inactive. I am watching video on Youtube and surfing net at the same time, and do be mindful of the battery capacity difference. Whether yo u like it or not, x86 processors generally cannot compete in terms of battery life against an ARM device. The latter is generally weaker in processing power, but I've found nothing that I do that the M1 cannot keep up or do better.
And to correct, I did not buy it because of the advertisement. It was based on reviews that I read/ watched, and my own 2 days of testing that I decided to keep it. I am not a fan of Apple, but the product is good, and so objectively worth keeping/ using. My gaming system is still based on Windows.
It really depends as many X86 devices aren't designed to be run off battery 24/7 whereas ARM device are. There are certainly X86 devices with good battery life. That said, it all isn't 100% down to the hardweare. The software plays a part too and windows doesn't have as many power saving features as most ARM based Operating Systems do. You have to come into this with the acknowledgement that most X86 devices are designed for performance first and foremost. You simply won't find a gaming laptop that'll do 10+ hour at a good performance level, ARM or otherwise. That said, Nvidia and AMD do offer more performance per watt in regards to graphics than Apple's M1.
