Starting today, May 21st, users can get their hands on the all-new powerful M1 iMac, the M1 iPad Pro, and the next generation of Apple TV 4K at Apple Store locations and authorized resellers around the world. Customers who already ordered their new products will begin receiving deliveries Friday.
Samantha Murphy Kelly for CNN Business:
Some PC makers may now be weighing the pros and cons of trying to keep up with the M1. Most rivals, including Samsung, rely on third-party processors from companies such as Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm — options that are manufactured to fit many different computer models. Apple’s tailor-made M1 promises performance far better than competitors.
Apple is in a rare situation. Its design architects know which products are coming down the pipeline and which features, thermal cooling systems and other components its chips will need to support. It’s also not building and selling chips to different companies for countless products, so it doesn’t have the design considerations or trade-offs of building something more generic…
There are rumors Samsung is working on a Windows notebook with Exynos, an ARM-based chip manufactured by Samsung. But unlike Apple, [Jitesh Ubrani, a research manager at market research firm IDC] argues that Samsung “wouldn’t have the chops” to make chips comparable to the M1 without input from Microsoft. Microsoft, meanwhile, is in a particularly tough spot as it has to ensure Windows remains compatible with multiple chip manufacturers and gives users support for legacy apps, he said…
Samsung wouldn’t be alone in shying away from the investment. According to Ben Bajarin, principal analyst at Creative Strategies, “Most companies will not make their own silicon as it is extremely expensive.”
But the cost clearly isn’t stopping Apple.
MacDailyNews Take: “Never” is a really long time, but for the foreseeable future, Apple’s rivals may not be able to catch up to powerful Apple Silicon like the M1, which, if the company keeps their collective eye on the ball, will only advance rapidly from here on out.
When we make changes, it’s for one simple but powerful reason: so we can make much better products. When we look ahead, we envision some amazing new products that transitioning to our custom silicon will enable us to bring to life. — Apple CEO Tim Cook, June 2020
CNN? I guess a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally.
CNN? Nah, our blind squirrel is Acynic, but the difference is that he is a nut.
I love it, your both right.
“What I can’t figure out is why he (Steve Jobs) is even trying (to be the CEO of Apple)? He knows he can’t win.” – Bill Gates, June 1998
I wonder is Bill has any new snappy quotes?
I agree that rivals won’t be able to keep up, but Apple’s share of the total computer market is small. Servers don’t run on M1’s. I make my living in DevOps in the cloud. AWS’s Graviton CPU’s are looking good for those wanting to move on from Intel/AMD in the cloud server space.
On the desktop/laptop side price is very important to most. I do have a Macbook, but for what I do, I don’t need an M1 powered machine. They are really nice, but it’s not necessary for my line of work. A dev on the team said it would compile his code in 1/2 the time. I thought this was great! But then I found out he only compiles a couple times/day and it currently takes 5-10 minutes. Not sure the return on investment is warranted.
If you want a new mac with M1 because they are cool and you want the cool new toy, then buy it. Outside of a few applications I’m not sure the RTI is a justification…..for now. What will happen is software and the OS will grow and do more things, and eventually the new power will become a mainstream need, not a want. For now, my macbook and my Ubuntu laptop that was less than $1,000 have more than enough power for me.
The investment in “Return on Investment” isn’t just initial price. For those of us who aren’t IT professionals, it also includes the cost of technical support, maintainance, and repairs. That is going to be lower for the average user using a Mac rather than Linux.
It also includes the cost of replacement when a Mac lasts much llonger than a commodity laptop. The Mac is certainly more expensive than one of them, but three?
Admittedly, real professional users demand the latest and greatest, so their machines rarely wear out or become obsolescent, but that’s when trade-in value comes in. A year-old Mac is worth something; a year-old cheap laptop running Linux not so much.
By the way, when you are a professional who bills at hundreds of dollars per hour, saving 5-10 minutes several times a day adds up to the extra cost of a Mac in as little as a week. The other 51 weeks represent extra profit.
As impressive as the M1 is, and I do have an M1 MBP, I find it very strange how AMD is going to beat it on the desktop, when it already does…
Really? And how exactly does it beat it?
Speed.
A bit comical how CNN writes as if the M1 arrived today.
The M1 Macs are providing significant leaps in performance at very low wattage – it’s the combination of two metrics, not just looking at one in isolation. Of course there are more powerful chips out there – but they require a lot of power and a lot of cooling which translates to noise and heat.
Apple has yet to show it’s hand of its new silicon in the context of their MacPro where they have a wider envelope to manage heat and power. With the same hardware and cooling mechanism, they could effectively double, triple or quadruple the processing power which has the potential to change the dynamic of high performance towers. More number crunching and rendering jobs become real- or near real-time processes which provides new horizons to explore and create.