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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Mini Mac Pro?

Jeff Kilgroe said:
We’re going to see more variants of the M1 that have additional clock speed options, more RAM, more CPU/GPU cores... These are the first pitch, the initial offering. Honestly, I think the ones who will benefit the most from these new M1 systems at this time are developers who are building universal or Apple SoC native apps who didn’t get the DTK. But the systems are great. If you need a new MB Air, it’s a great time to buy one. If you need a new 13” Pro, hmmm... maybe. It’s a much more powerful system than the Intel based one, but you’re also going to be restricted by software translation and some compatibility concerns until you can get running mostly native apps. I don’t have specific benchmark scores for my MBP 13. And if I did, I couldn’t share just yet. Apple doesn’t want us posting such things until the various tech bloggers and reviewers can do their thing in a few more days as systems arrive. But as we’re seeing with the MB Air benchmarks leaking out on GeekBench and some other such things, it’s no slouch of a system. I’m doing some testing on mine here, but I’m really using it 90% for Xcode and real dev work. The Pro is more powerful than the Air as it’s clocked faster and has a cooling system, the Air is passively cooled.

At this time, I can speak to how powerful it is and that it looks very, very promising. But I just can’t make any direct recommendation as to buying one. I know I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking it on location for any serious video/film/photography project. No doubt in my mind about the hardware being up to the task. This is a software concern at the moment. I’m sure I’ll have a better answer to that in the coming weeks. That said, I’m getting some native apps. Affinity Photo and Designer are now native. MS Office being native is helpful but in no way shows anything about performance. And once I have native versions of Resolve and other things, it will be interesting to see how they run. But running Resolve on a 13” notebook isn’t really how I want to run it. And the 16GB RAM is a non-starter for a lot of uses.

@Enrique - this is a tough one. I think you, and many here, would be best served to wait a bit longer for an updated 16” with Apple SoC and 32+ GB RAM. There will be a lot more native software available by then and a lot of the kinks worked out. I’m not sure how long it will take for those to arrive. I’m betting we’ll see the 16” and iMac offerings early next year.

Of course, if you need it now, you need it. The 16” is a great system. I bought a 16” when it came out. It’s great, I use it almost daily. And it should last me another year or two and I can replace it with a 2nd or maybe 3rd generation Apple SoC system.
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Thanks Jeff. Very informative.
Bit surprised these 1st chips from Apple are punching this hard out of their weight class.

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA
 
Thank you Jeff, I'll ponder over your suggestions, I'm on a tight budget, maybe I'll push the Proxy workflow to its limit until the right time comes
 
Just read this "The M1 13-inch MacBook Pro will outperform the MacBook Air in sustained performance, not because it has a better CPU or GPU, but because it has a fan that allows the high performance cores to run faster for longer stretches. (The M1 Mac Mini has even more thermal headroom, because it’s a bigger enclosure and isn’t battery-powered, and thus is the fastest machine of the three. But because it isn’t battery powered, it seemingly has the fewest advantages over its equivalent Intel predecessor.) "
 
I'm a huge Apple fan but none of this is enough for me to lean towards an M1.
I plan on updating my 6-year-old MBP this Jan and still looking at the 16" 2020 model.
I need something to work now with everything and I'm sure it'll be a year (or less) before we get a 16".
 
Thanks to Jeff (as always) for giving his perspective here. Looking forward to people testing out the Mini and Pro for editing. Guess we will see quite a few review in the coming week.
I'm tempted to get a Mini to try out the M1
 
Enrique Blein said:
Just read this "The M1 13-inch MacBook Pro will outperform the MacBook Air in sustained performance, not because it has a better CPU or GPU, but because it has a fan that allows the high performance cores to run faster for longer stretches. (The M1 Mac Mini has even more thermal headroom, because it’s a bigger enclosure and isn’t battery-powered, and thus is the fastest machine of the three. But because it isn’t battery powered, it seemingly has the fewest advantages over its equivalent Intel predecessor.) "
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Yes, the M1 SoC used for the new Air, MBP and Mini are all the same. The Air is passively cooled and operates at 3.2 GHz. It seems the MBP also runs at 3.2GHz, but can sustain full performance without throttling back since it has the cooling fan system. The Mini has a beefed up fan and cooling pipe and I have not seen actual confirmation, but I think it runs at 3.4GHz. *EDIT* New Mac Mini also runs at 3.2GHz.

I’m not sure what that last sentence in the quoted paragraph is trying to say...?
 
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The benchmarks are rolling out and the review embargo lifts in a few hours.

I pulled an all-nighter on the MBP working in Infinity Designer (native M1 version) connected to a Dell 28" 4K monitor. This system is awesome. I can say with almost complete confidence that I will be replacing my 11 month old 16" with an Apple SoC 16" as soon as one is available with 64GB RAM.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
I pulled an all-nighter on the MBP working in Infinity Designer (native M1 version) connected to a Dell 28" 4K monitor. This system is awesome. I can say with almost complete confidence that I will be replacing my 11 month old 16" with an Apple SoC 16" as soon as one is available with 64GB RAM.
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"Infinity" or "Affinity"? Would be great if the Affinity family was improved as it is a bit sluggish on MacOS.
 
Med D said:
"Infinity" or "Affinity"? Would be great if the Affinity family was improved as it is a bit sluggish on MacOS.
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Affinity Designer. Not sure what happened when I typed that, probably tired... Yes, I tend to use Affinity Designer more on the iPad Pro as it runs way smoother there than on the iMac and I can draw right on the screen. I just with their iPad version had all the features.... Anyway it is much improved and very snappy. Unfortunately no Wacom drivers yet.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
The benchmarks are rolling out and the review embargo lifts in a few hours.

I pulled an all-nighter on the MBP working in Infinity Designer (native M1 version) connected to a Dell 28" 4K monitor. This system is awesome. I can say with almost complete confidence that I will be replacing my 11 month old 16" with an Apple SoC 16" as soon as one is available with 64GB RAM.
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Very interesting thread here Jeff. How does the RAM translate? Is 16GB equivalent to say 32 or 64 from an intel system?
 
James Sielaff said:
Very interesting thread here Jeff. How does the RAM translate? Is 16GB equivalent to say 32 or 64 from an intel system?
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Pretty much the same, RAM is RAM. Apple has streamlined a lot of Mac OS 11 and it’s more efficient than before on Intel, more so on the M1. That said, if you need to load 8GB worth of data into memory for a large data set or for caching for playback during color grading or whatnot, it’s still 8GB of data. So this still makes the 16GB limit on these new systems a problem for some. Just remember, these are their entry-level models. Other parts are starting to show up in Apple’s order banks, there are now logic boards for the Mac Mini that show 10G Ethernet ports and it looks like two of them indicate an SoC offering 32GB RAM. We were told that the M1 was designed to support 32GB, so it looks like we’ll have a few additional models of the Mini, maybe Mac Pro soon. Apple just added a lower cost MacBook Air with their base M1 with 8GB and 7 GPU cores and only 128GB SSD for institutional (corporate and educational) purchasers. This is going to position MB Air in a very favorable position against the higher end Surface products and Chromebooks.

The capabilities and direction are going to be a lot more clear once Apple realeases their updated 16” MBP and iMac.
 
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I wonder if they can fit 16 high performance cores/16 graphics cores/64GB RAM in a single 5nm process SOC? That could be juicy.

Theoretically, with the low TDP of the ASi SOCs, you could do a self contained render farm in a tower (4RU rack mount perhaps) if Apple is interested.

Cheers - #19
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
I wonder if they can fit 16 high performance cores/16 graphics cores/64GB RAM in a single 5nm process SOC? That could be juicy.

Theoretically, with the low TDP of the ASi SOCs, you could do a self contained render farm in a tower (4RU rack mount perhaps) if Apple is interested.

Cheers - #19
Click to expand...

Theoretically, you should be able to attach iPads and iPhones and get another 6~8 cores from each. I mean, presuming they update the connector of those devices to TB3 (or better), rather than... <checks notes>...USB2.0? WTF?
 
If the design & development costs at 5nm is 300-500 million dollars per SoC - could Apple turn a profit if they created a distinct Mac Pro desktop chip in addition to a new chip for their top of the line laptops?

If the memory bandwidth of the M1 (where 4 Icestorm cores already saturate it) - Perhaps what we see is the Air remaining on the M1 at the end of 2021, but that a newer SoC based on TSMC 5NP (slightly faster and lower power) chip that Apple can assemble like 3D (lego) chiplets (using TSMCs 3D Fabric); a 3d sandwich that could meet the demands of Laptop through to Mac Tower - topped with HBM3?

If you were in Microsofts shoes ... would you licence the ARM version of windows to run on Apple hardware?
Perhaps Apple have already stuck a deal with Microsoft, and Federighi's 'bait' was a hint of things to come?
https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/20/windows-can-run-natively-m1-macs-apple-silicon/

AJ
 
Just posted this in the other thread, but this video is far less optimistic...

Took 9.5mins to render a 4k timeline of BMD6k & 4.5k MX footage, compared to 30sec for the same timeline on a PC that only cost ~200 pounds more. Uses an 8gb Mac mini, but given that it's the same as what's in the base Air and the 13" Pro, pretty sure the performance differences would be negligible.

The follow-up video is using 4k Prores instead of braw/r3d, and the render times are still horrendous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHRASXc6BsM

Makes me wonder if it's a settings issue... Like maybe if you connect/output a Mac Mini to a 4k/3840x2160 monitor, it completely over encumbers the GPU (whereas the Air and Pro 13" screens are "only" 2560x1600)?
 
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