New apple M1 chips - who's buying?

New apple M1 chips - who's buying?

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Discussion

mikef

4,176 posts

238 months

Thursday 26th January
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mmm-five said:
Or maybe just a pair of slower SSDs in some sort of RAID?
Good call. Could be

troc

3,526 posts

162 months

Friday 27th January
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Apple silicon computers don’t use an SSD as such, the controller aspects of the drive are part of the main cpu so the storage part is merely the storage. This is why you can’t swap drives around - there are two ‘slots’ in a Mac Studio and they are even removable but you can’t put larger ones in.

I think they are essentially nvme type storage but with a special bus - enabled by having the controller in the cpu.

mmm-five

10,607 posts

271 months

Friday 27th January
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troc said:
Apple silicon computers don’t use an SSD as such, the controller aspects of the drive are part of the main cpu so the storage part is merely the storage. This is why you can’t swap drives around - there are two ‘slots’ in a Mac Studio and they are even removable but you can’t put larger ones in.

I think they are essentially nvme type storage but with a special bus - enabled by having the controller in the cpu.
That's why I didn't claim they were M.2 2280 NVMe sticks...as the term 'SSD' or 'Solid-State Drive' is just the generic term for all formats/interfaces wink

troc

3,526 posts

162 months

Friday 27th January
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mmm-five said:
troc said:
Apple silicon computers don’t use an SSD as such, the controller aspects of the drive are part of the main cpu so the storage part is merely the storage. This is why you can’t swap drives around - there are two ‘slots’ in a Mac Studio and they are even removable but you can’t put larger ones in.

I think they are essentially nvme type storage but with a special bus - enabled by having the controller in the cpu.
That's why I didn't claim they were M.2 2280 NVMe sticks...as the term 'SSD' or 'Solid-State Drive' is just the generic term for all formats/interfaces wink
blablahehebiggrin

mmm-five

10,607 posts

271 months

Friday 27th January
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troc said:
blablahehebiggrin
But I agree that it would be much simpler if Apple allowed a little upgrading by using either off-the-shelf components and/or standard interfaces banghead

However, I've been using Mac & Apple machines since the late 80s (with all their proprietary/awkward expansion cards, cables, interfaces, etc.) and I'm still buying them...so they know they've caught a gullible one biggrin

Craikeybaby

9,885 posts

212 months

Friday 27th January
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Some of the performance benefits of the M series is that they are full systems on a chip, rather than various interconnected chips.

Personally, I am happy to take the hit in upgradability, especially now that improvements seem to be slowing down.

untakenname

4,510 posts

179 months

Friday 27th January
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Started using my decade old Mac Pro but then got fed up and unboxed the M2 Mac Mini and started using it again, will use it for a few more days before sending it back once there's some confirmation that the 8/512 M2 Mac Mini does indeed feature dual memory as in real world use it is noticeably slower than the 8/256 M1.

Not sure if if was designed to but it fits near perfectly width and height wise on the old Mac Pro case, I doubt they will go much smaller in form factor with the Mini as people still equate size to power.






mmm-five said:
mikef said:
For what it's worth, here are my Diskmark readings for a Mac Mini M1 256GB/8GB



and MacBook Air M2 1TB/16GB



Different, but both fine for my use cases. The M1 read speeds were pretty impressive though
This is mine (MacStudio Max 512GB/32GB)...but don't forget that a lot of SSDs slow down as they approach capacity...so your M1 Mini above might show different speeds if you were at the same % usage as your M2 Air.

Just did a couple of tests using that benchmark tool on the 256 M2, hopefully someone somewhere has done the same with the 512 base M2 Mac Mini.


Lord Marylebone

17,110 posts

167 months

Friday 27th January
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Craikeybaby said:
Some of the performance benefits of the M series is that they are full systems on a chip, rather than various interconnected chips.

Personally, I am happy to take the hit in upgradability, especially now that improvements seem to be slowing down.
I'm just wondering how much more performance we need in 'consumer' computing in general. As an example, in the world of Sound/Vision/TV, it is generally accepted that 8K is overkill and the human eye cannot perceive any increase in detail beyond that, and we even struggle to see the difference between 4K and 8K unless sat really close to a very large screen. Sound quality and sound reproduction has also peaked with the latest Dolby ATMOS systems supporting up to 64 speakers, for a completely immersive and 3D soundscape. Anything more complex than this would not add anything to the experience and could not be detected by human ears.

So with video editing being one of the highest processing power demands, and we now have laptops such as the MacBook Pro 16 that can cheerfully mix and edit multiple streams of 8K sound and video without breaking a sweat, and it is unlikely that video standards will now progress much beyond 8K, then how much more processing power do we need, at all?

If you can buy an ordinary consumer laptop that can be processing 8K video, whilst streaming something from YouTube in 4K, whilst, letting you check your emails, and do a bit of photo retouching in Photoshop, all at the same time, do we think we have almost peaked?

Clearly demand will never peak for industrial, commercial, research computing, or for companies who do massive amounts of CGI rendering work, and so on, but for the rest of us?

thebraketester

13,494 posts

125 months

Friday 27th January
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Most people can achieve what they need to on an iPad/tablet.

Lord Marylebone

17,110 posts

167 months

Friday 27th January
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thebraketester said:
Most people can achieve what they need to on an iPad/tablet.
They absolutely can.

xeny

3,640 posts

65 months

Friday 27th January
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untakenname said:
Not sure if if was designed to but it fits near perfectly width and height wise on the old Mac Pro case, I doubt they will go much smaller in form factor with the Mini as people still equate size to power.
Aren't they both sized due to a requirement (historical in the case of the mini)for the case being able to hold an optical disk/drive bay?

Bit like the urban legend that the size of the Shuttle's SRBs was dictated by the width of a horse's backside..

Jenny Tailor

1,727 posts

24 months

Saturday 28th January
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I saw a video on Macrumors/ Facebook - Linustech??? etc - where someone took the system board of an m1 mac mini - ( It is tiny ) any put it into the smallest form factor imaginable.

It worked perfectly.

BlueMR2

8,507 posts

189 months

Saturday 28th January
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theboss

6,302 posts

206 months

Thursday 9th February
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A few days into a 16" M2 Max now with 64GB and it's phenomenal. I haven't even pulled the wire out of the box yet, it's still on the factory charge despite installing a bunch of apps and using it on and off.

I've decided to keep my 13" M1 MBP as it's still the ultimate (along with an Air) sofa / lap machine and the battery life will be better, but the big 16" is an absolute workhorse and something I can very comfortably use for work.

ArsE82

20,805 posts

174 months

Friday 10th February
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theboss said:
A few days into a 16" M2 Max now with 64GB and it's phenomenal. I haven't even pulled the wire out of the box yet, it's still on the factory charge despite installing a bunch of apps and using it on and off.
Is that with the 38-core GPU too? That must absolutely fly!

theboss

6,302 posts

206 months

Friday 10th February
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ArsE82 said:
Is that with the 38-core GPU too? That must absolutely fly!
I think so. I haven't done anything graphical with it yet but specced it so it would remain useful for a good few years. My 2013 15" rMBP is still in daily use.

mikef

4,176 posts

238 months

Saturday 18th February
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I recently got my hands on a MacBook Pro M2 14” Pro 16/512 from a client so can compare with my MacBook Air M2 13.3” 16/1024. The Pro is slightly bumped up in terms of ports, display and speakers as well as GPU cores, but to be honest the M2 Air handles everything so well (development work, Photoshop and FCP), is a bit lighter and has better battery life, so that’s what I would recommend unless someone needs two native external monitors

Lord Marylebone

17,110 posts

167 months

Saturday 18th February
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mikef said:
I recently got my hands on a MacBook Pro M2 14” Pro 16/512 from a client so can compare with my MacBook Air M2 13.3” 16/1024. The Pro is slightly bumped up in terms of ports, display and speakers as well as GPU cores, but to be honest the M2 Air handles everything so well (development work, Photoshop and FCP), is a bit lighter and has better battery life, so that’s what I would recommend unless someone needs two native external monitors
No one should let the requirement of 2 external monitors put them off an M1 or M2 Air.

I have an M1 Air and it utilises 2 external monitors perfectly. Open the laptop and use all 3 screens if you need to. All via a Dell D6000 USB-C dock which are as cheap as chips on eBay.

mikef

4,176 posts

238 months

Saturday 18th February
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Where I last worked every desk had the Dell Displaylink docks - they were are a source of constant problems, mainly but not only with Macs. Flakey drivers, forever rebooting Mac, power cycling the docks and monitors and they burned out a number of MacBook Pro USB-C ports

Edited by mikef on Saturday 18th February 16:54

Lord Marylebone

17,110 posts

167 months

Saturday 18th February
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mikef said:
Where I last worked every desk had the Dell Displaylink docks - they were are a source of constant problems, mainly but not only with Macs. Flakey drivers, forever rebooting Mac, power cycling the docs and monitors and they burned out a number of MacBook Pro USB-C ports
That is very strange, as I just haven't found that at all.

I work from home using a D6000 dock, and when in the office it is always a fairly random assortment of Dell or HP USB-A/C docks, all with dual monitors, and I can honestly say that I have never had a single problem. In the 14 months I've had the M1 Air, it has never glitched or failed to work even once with multiple monitors or assorted docks in the office.

If you google it, loads of people recommend the Dell dock for the M1/M2 Air, and almost never have any issues.