Today was Apple’s “One More Thing” event. Apple finally unveiled the first Desktop capable SOC, the M1. And damn, does it impress. The scale of performance increases, if they are accurate, just blows everything out of the water. I’ll have to see what other reviewers have to say when they get their hands on the machines, but the future looks bright for the Mac.
MacBook Air 13″
This was an expected announcement, the most logical place to have the M1 first appear. With 3-5x the performance increases, 16GB of RAM, 2TB of SSD storage, and WiFi 6 (a first for the Mac), along with Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4, this wasn’t just an incremental improvement, it was leaps and bounds beyond what is already on the market. I feel that if these new technologies are properly harnessed, there will be no good reason, aside from incompatible hardware, to suggest that someone buy a budget PC Laptop, especially since laptops under $1000 are disposable items anyway, and the MacBook Air, is certainly not a disposable item. I am still hoping that M1, allows Apple to bring back the 11″ MBA, or a new MacBook 10″ or 12″ in the new year.
MacMini
I had not heard anyone other than myself postulate about a MacMini refresh, but I’m glad it came. It does have slightly lower IO than the previous one, but it has active cooling, and a logic board that doesn’t look much larger than a Raspberry Pi. Honestly, the MacMini may be my next Mac, and if the graphics performance is even remotely close to what is being claimed, I can chuck my PC Laptop with 960M, for a MacMini with integrated graphics, and not scream every time I boot up Cities Skylines.
MacBook Pro 13″
Another properly rumored machine, with just one drawback… only two USB type C ports. I thought Apple had learned that users, especially on the Pro, need and want flexibility, and having 4 ports, or at least one port on each side, fulfills that desire. I can only hope that with a spring refresh, a 4-port version becomes available. The 13″ is too small for me, but I can see this being a bright day for everyone.
Big Sur
Finally, a release date. November 12, with the Macs arriving in homes and stores the following week. They touted the technologies in Big Sur, including those to help with the transition to the M1. I look forward to the changes, to what they mean, and to the challenges that Apple always adds to new OS releases, that make my day job, just that bit harder.
Thoughts
Apple is integrating memory into the M1, both for CPU and GPU. 16GB may not be enough for both tasks. It will be interesting to see if they will retain the integrated memory when they release their chips for iMac, MacBook Pro 16″, and Mac Pro. I would almost love to see them use a hybrid model, much like the way CPU Caches work. Maybe these chips will have 8-16GB built in, then support for DDR4 (or newer, if DDR5 is ever finalized), as a Level 2 RAM. Not quite as fast as the integrated memory, but quite capable of helping. I can’t wait to see re-world benchmarks of these new chips, and what they are actually capable of in the real world. Apple mentioned gaming several times, so it would be nice to know that AAA titles are completely capable on these new machines. I’m also waiting to see if we can actually run Windows via Rosetta 2 in any of the VM environments, which if so, may make the new machines capable workhorses for Windows locked productivity and gaming.
Dissappointments
Honestly, I was hoping for some other changes, but with Touch ID coming to the MBA, I’m happy. They never did say if they put in a 1080P camera, just that they will use Machine Learning to improve the images, which is a little suspicious. They did tout that the MBP and MacMini can run the Pro Display XDR at full resolution, but I’m still holding out hope for a cheaper Apple Display at 4K or 5K in the near future. I am disappointed that there are still limited USB type-C ports on the machines, but thinking about it, the M1 may only be capable of driving 2 Thunderbolt/USB4 ports at this point (limited PCIe lanes available), and the M2 (or whatever they call it), hopefully can drive more, which will be a requirement for the Apple Silicon Mac Pro (which will likely be the last product refreshed).
Let’s reserve final judgement until we see some re-world benchmarks, but I’m excited and I hope you are too… if for no other reason than it seems like Apple has some great hopes, and didn’t just drop the gauntlet at Intel’s feet, but also at AMD.