News Apple intros the M1 Pro and M1 Max 5nm computer SoCs

If things continue we best hope that macs can play all of the games we are accustomed to.. as with all apple releases we need to take numbers with a grain of salt and a bag of the stuff in the back pocket for good measure too..

I can see why nvidia wanted ARM..

 

Looks like a good bit of kit, the screens seem really nice, that notch though.....I'm sure Apple with their design talent could have done better.

Function Keys and a HDMI port make it much more PC like, good move.

Now just need them to release a tent mode touch air laptop.

 

I have mixed feelings on the notch.
Initial reaction was it's terrible and what were they thinking. But now looking at it, seems like the notch size is around the same as the entire upper bezel on a last-gen MBP16, so it's more screen, not less screen, as it's taller than even 16:10
I don't have any problem with notches on phones, now having used one for a few years. Aside from video content in a pre-specified format, 16:9 video for instance, what's to say that a screen should be an unadulterated rectangle other than convention.

Definitely easier to make work when you own the OS and much of what's in it though.

 

I can excuse it on an Iphone sort of, as you have those constant bars at the top but under display cameras can't come soon enough, it should not on a desktop/laptop, rubbish for media and general work, I am a fullscreen user with autohide taskbars as I want all the Pixels for my software, this notch would grate, the screen has a chin put the lidar stuff in there and a small camera at the top like teh LG gram.

 

57 Billion transistors? Yes, that seems like exactly the sort of product we need in the middle of a chip shortage.

 

Hard to get away from more transistors on 5nm as they are of a couple of fixed sizes and you can only get so much power in and out of the devices so end up having to lay some things out with many more transistors than you would in an old tech design plus use a stack load of dummies between devices to maintain consistency and transitions to other voltage domains etc. never mind what the caches alone use whos bit cells will have a number of transistors, transistor count will just fly up.

still comes out smaller than on another process node though, so long as they have good yields of course it is all good.

 

Getting rid of the touch bar eh... Is this the first time history that Apple have removed a touch screen and replaced it with physical buttons in a like for like swap?

It seems a bit cheap that they didn't replace it with stream deck style display keys, which would be the best of both worlds.

 

I like the things I've seen about the M1 Max, but no way can I justify Apple prices when I can't do a lot of the things I need (when Linux works fully on the M1, that'll be a different matter - I can keep a desktop for games).

But why do people want a camera under the screen? So you can't block it? When Mark Zuckerberg puts a sticker over the camera on his laptop, you can guarantee that the "oh the light is on when the camera is active" is bollocks. I'm not sold on the "notch" but that spot on the screen is usually functional dead space anyway, and all Apple have to do is mandate that programs not use that area for text/buttons/whatever and all the developers will jump.

 

I wasn't suggesting putting the camera in the chin, just the faceid stuff which is the bit that makes the notch big, cameras are small enough they can still fit in the small bezel up top but Apple decided maximum profit, maximum cheapness on that side of things was the way forward, though under display cameras are a thing, as in under the panel active pixels, this could also be done less intrusive than a notch but that would cost loads more for a feature Apple clearly doesn't deem important.

As for that functional dead space as you put it, it sits exactly where half of my main menus sit having a 40/60 split of schematics and design windows, so that alone for me would be a no no, whilst I am a bindkey master for the most part I still have to go hunting for stuff in the dreaded menus. So I'd probably have to custom res it or something and waste the top bits of the screen which would be a shame as the screen is one of the reasons I might consider a switch along with the build quality of apple devices generally.

 

Just DIY this:


This new M1 variants are definitely aimed at pros. Looks like the memory bandwidth is its ace up its sleeves. If traditional desktop x86 can get such bandwidth and be optimised for it, I feel it can be even faster.

I just wish they'd offer similar amount of ports (especially SD card) on a 11 inch 16GB M1 Air model. My 2013 Air is due for an upgrade, it's feeling really slow, only use it to browse and quick Lightroom edits while on holiday (ha, remember those things?)

 

I always had this concept that you could fake it with two cameras, one either side of the screen. Then using geometry/software/AI/magic to take the stereoscopic images and generate a single centrally aimed image.

 

Dell intro'd a chin camera on its laptops a couple of years back and then binned it for the next release, as all it showed was whether you'd blown your nose before the call or not.

I don't really see the issue with top/standalone cams. You just have to bear in mind that the other person also has an offset camera and both remember to look at it now and again. It might be unnatural, as per the video wyx linked (which was indeed a good solution if you were so inclined), but then so is working this way if it's not what you're used to. Luckily, our lot have been doing it for years to collaborate internationally and most of the time, everyone is looking at a shared desktop or presentation anyway and trying to read that. Adaptability is key, but it's hardly exhausting.

This Apple pic suggests there's an option to blacken/disable the top few rows of the display like on some phones. Don't know how many pixels you'd lose as I couldn't find resolution details, but if the screen is larger/bezel smaller anyway per Mister_Tad's suggestion, then maybe you wouldn't be losing much whilst gaining the better quality screen:



Seems the future is a panel made of a superior quality two-way (one-way?) material with the camera behind, possibly even one that syncs its refresh rate with that of the camera so it didn't have to "see through" the desktop, as it would make itself transparent every time the camera shot a frame, although physically denying it access with a cover slide would obviously be a challenge.

 

My windows bar is 40 pixels even on a 4k display I don't want that thing using my real estate as it is dead space, this is mostly because I have other applications that also take their own space I can't control. That notch looks bigger than a windows bar.

A 1080p cam could have fitted in the top without a notch, the notch is there for future stuff that I would imagine could have been below the screen.

The price of the pro you'd think they could do under display, the tech is getting pretty good, Apples R&D budgets should nail this

 

Unless you're running something in full screen mode, you always have dead space in the middle anyway - menu on the left, tray on the right. It's a weird screen resolution that's a little bit taller than 16:10, and I'd bet my hat that the extra tallness exactly equates to the lost pixels from the notch.

That said, I'd still rather go without. But I've also realised maybe I'm no longer a "power user", since my M1 mini does everything I want it to do, how I want it to do it, so if I were to replace my 16" MBP I'd likely do it with an Air.

 

At Apples current development pace, AMD and Intel must be worried

I didn’t think they would scale so fast and hard

Apple also has so much space power envelope to grow into.

Intel and AMD have nothing that can be classed as mobile that can compete with this. Give Apple a year and they will have a mobile product that beats all desktop CPUs

this is what I expected Intel to do all these years with the money they make

make 5-10x performance jumps instead we got 5%

I am probably not a buyer but if it forces Intel and AMD to do something we should all be grateful

that GPU is also insane

 

It would be a real killer if Apple one day said “check out our latest silicon running MacOS and emulating windows, faster than Intel/AMD can run it”