#419

Despite my MacBook Pro nightmares with the very 2018 model you speak of, (rant-y post somewhere above about that) I crossed fingers and bought a new 16”.
So far it is a return to the macs of old. Painless migration. A real keyboard again. There were three early crashes but all due to out of date or beta software, and one kernel panic that turned out to be caused by an old damaged USB hub. No trace of the freezes and T2 panics / constant spontaneous restarts that plagued FOUR 2018 units in a row. Still not enough CPU to handle full polyphony on particularly demanding live-played zebraHZ patches if other CPU hoggy plug-ins/processes are running at the same time, but it does better with them than my old Mac Pro or the windows workstations friends have tested those patches on. I’m really surprised how MUCH more oomph this has for audio and video work since the specs aren’t THAT much better than the 2018, and the multiple cores shouldn’t really help in live monitoring situations where one core has to do most of the work.
I do wish it had more than two independent TB3v busses (I do video work with peripherals that eat up that bandwidth quickly), and the lack of ports continues to boggle my mind - but I already have a Caldigit TS3+ so in my case I have the ports I need.

Knock on wood but it feels like I finally have a computer I can (mostly) trust again.

Of course, I may have just lucked out in getting a working unit. I know people who haven’t had the problems with their 2018s that I did, which, after going through four in a row that ranged from completely unusable to “merely” panicking and restarting multiple times a day, seems impossible.

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#420

https://thehouseofmoth.com/louis-rossmanns-macbook-buyers-guide-in-plain-english-and-with-my-take-on-it/

I’m sure some people here are familiar with this youtube channel, great way to learn microsoldering by watching the repair videos

I still use the 2014 15" MBP recommended from this list.

#421

All going to be guesswork at this point, I know but, curious if anyone has thoughts on what might differentiate the newly announced MacBook Air 13 & MacBook Pro 13 (other than Touch Bar and battery capacity), given both product pages list the exact same M1 chip and performance specs? The fan-less Air sounds like it would be a dream for recording purposes.

#422

I’m assuming that the air will throttle performance under high cpu/gpu load much sooner than the pro, but yes, all guesswork at this point. The new air looks really nice, trying to maintain willpower to switch to linux (as I type on a usb-connected keyboard to avoid the piece of garbage keyboard that shipped with the last mbp I bought)

1 Like
#423

There’s going to be a flurry of articles breaking them down and comparing them over the next week or two. You won’t have to wait long.

It’s interesting that they didn’t also drop the new 16-inch MBP—something particular might be planned for it; perhaps it won’t be based on the same M1? It’s also interesting that they put the M1 into the Mac Mini, given it’s not battery-powered.

#424

I’d guess that the 16-inch will have an m1x or something.

it kinda looks like Apple might be binning some m1 processors to the air. the lowest spec air shows 7 gpu cores instead of 8, meaning that those are likely just chips that had a processor fail.

also looks like the m1 can be driven harder with a fan in place, but we’ll have to wait for some benchmarks to see what a big deal that is.

I love that they bothered to upgrade the mac mini, but I do not like that they’re charging 200 fucking dollars for 8 extra gigs of ram. unless I’m misunderstanding the connotations of the integrated memory architecture, that seems ridiculous.

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#425

Well, the M1 as listed maxes out at 16gb ram. The intel macs can go to 32, and given the audience for the 16” pro in particular, I think addressing more memory is a big deal. So I think they might be waiting for an M2 or M1x to address that - which would be a good fit for the 16, the iMac, and so on.

3 Likes
#426

I was hoping for a 16" MBP, as above, looks like that is going to be next year.
i guess the next Mx chip will support more memory, and probably more powerful GPU, so be used for 16" and and perhaps the new iMacs.

but leaves me in an awkward position as need a new mac… been holding out for these.
think i might get a new mac mini, to tide me over (till new MBP, mid 2021?) , and then can replace my aging iMac - I think 16gb will be ok, for that. don’t use a lot of samples and 16gb has been ‘ok’

hmm… means i need to find a nicely priced 4k monitor !?

this is ‘only’ because they used this as the development platform for 3rd party developers… so it was already ready to go.

5 Likes
#427

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-apple_m1-1804

I just looked up the specs - they look very good compared to other Macbooks - price wise it is not a bad deal. I too am thinking to wait for a larger screen resolution on the 13 is 2560-by-1600 but 13" is still a bit small.

1 Like
#428

Isn’t it the same as the apple ram in the previous generation of (Intel) Mini? (Which was not officially user upgradable.) Stockholm syndrome is distorting the looks of ram cost on the M1 mini into looking like a step up! (At least now there’s the appearance of potential performance benefits to their 200$ per 8gb ram tax… :joy:)

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#429

200 bucks for just 8 extra gigs does kinda seem like lazy market segmentation. Shared memory between the cpu, gpu, and neural cores is soooo cool tho. The jetsons and Nintendo switch are like that too. If the eventually 16inch MBP has 32+ gigs of shared RAM that would be awesome. I am thinking about getting the air to tinker with.

#430

Dare I ask if there are any developers on here (maybe @randy) who have already had the chance to test Rosetta2 and can share their experiences?

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#431

Elsewhere I wrote this about porting my own software:

Yes! I’ll be supporting the M1 Macs immediately: first using Apple’s emulation, which I’ve already tested here and found to perform very well. Then in the first quarter of 2021 with a native port to Apple Silicon.

Apple’s Rosetta 2 is an impressive technology! Even in emulation, I expect audio software running on Apple Silicon to perform at least as well as on similar Intel machines.

And when apps and plugins are native, Apple Silicon should provide a greater than 2x performance boost over similar Intel machines. I’m excited to make that happen.

I’m phrasing things somewhat carefully because I’m under NDA re: the dev kit. Anyway any details would not really be relevant because it contains a different processor than the upcoming Mac Mini.

I am excited about the move to Apple Silicon. There are so many layers of bad cruft I have to deal with in my work that have accreted over the years for compatibility. Each layer reduces our ability to make an efficient computer on any given silicon process and IMO the Intel architecture was a major legacy chonk. It requires really good engineering to get rid of any of them and I have high respect for Apple’s work here. This reminds me of when computers still used to get significantly faster, year after year.

re:RAM price, another improvement over past machines is in the unified memory architecture. So the DRAM is directly on the module to support this, it’s roughly twice as fast as the previous generation of memory, and it’s understandable that it wouldn’t be upgradeable.

yeah, my Intel Mac Mini has 2667 MHz DDR4 — the M1 Mac Mini will have LPDDR4X-4266 or LPDDR5-5500. I guess that faster RAM will be for the 16G model.

16 Likes
#432

Does Rosetta 2 also translate audio interface drivers?

#433

I didn’t realize the memory would be that fast. That’s pretty amazing.

#434

Thanks very much for sharing your experiences @randy

Exciting times…also confusing times, but mainly exciting!

#435

It’s been pointed out that the new M1 Macs present identically to the products they replace, and the branding remains the same to emphasize that an M1 Mac is still a Mac, not something new and dubious.

Apple doesn’t offer a roadmap, but here’s a roundup of current scuttlebut on what might happen over the next year or so.

I do see an increasingly painful problem for Apple if the 16" MacBook Pro is getting trounced by the 13" model for months and months.

#436

I ordered the air. I’m excited to see just how unified the memory is. I’m wondering how exotic that might get… If the neural cores can touch the gpus buffers mid frame… Holy cats that would be wild.

2 Likes
#437

14 posts were split to a new topic: Apple and data privacy

#438

I’m pondering a Mini and/or a Macbook Air purchase. I currently have a 9 year old 27" imac that I mostly use for music making and an 8 year old Macbook Air that I use for daily interwebbing.

I’m wondering if I could get away with just a Macbook Air for both duties. Of course I’d have to buy some sort of dock for extra inputs but it’d still be cheaper than buying both machines.

1 Like