Apple Mac – Intel outside?

Apple crushes the competition.

• Even accounting for the “Apple fanboy” element of the tech press, the new M1-powered Macs are delivering pretty much everything that Apple promised meaning that Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and Microsoft have a huge amount of ground to make-up.
• For Intel and AMD, this challenge is the most serious as Apple has conclusively proved that Arm-based processors are credible options for the entire portable computing segment.
• For Qualcomm and Microsoft, they must be wondering how Apple has done a much better job at making the transition to Arm and what they can do to catch up.
• The first reviews of the new Mac Book Air and MacBook Pro are in and across the board, everyone is very surprised at just how well Apple has managed to improve both battery life and performance in a single system.
• This all comes down to the new M1 chip which is based on Arm’s big.LITTLE architecture and has the system memory integrated onboard.
• The first thing most people have done is to run the standard performance benchmarks and the results are startling.
  • First, processing: After an update of the software for the new silicon architecture Geekbench measured the M1 at around 1750 for single-core and around 7600 for multi-core.
  • The single-core score is higher than any Intel-based Mac that Apple has ever made including the hugely expensive Mac Pro released at the end of 2019.
  • The single-core score is relevant because it is a better measure of performance because one can endlessly improve performance by having more cores running in parallel.
  • This is observed in the multi-core score where it comfortably beats the Intel i9 8-core processor used in the 2019 MacBook Pro but is way down the pecking order compared to 28-core Intel behemoths.
  • Second, graphics: The M1 is using onboard graphics and so the right comparison here is to Intel’s own onboard graphics that are used on the older 2019 MacBooks.
  • Here, the M1 obliterates the competition with an OpenCL score of 18898 compared to Intel at 8344 and Metal at 21829 compared to Intel at 10218.
• Apple is offering a new level performance in its class but what about battery life?
• Here, the numbers are also very impressive with reviewers almost being able to replicate Apple’s claims in terms of battery life.
• This was both in terms of tests compared to the Intel equivalent and in the more anecdotal tests of simply using the machine on a daily basis for a week or so.
• So the performance and battery life are excellent but this amounts to nothing unless the software provides a great user experience.
• Here, Apple has again largely destroyed the competition which will have both Qualcomm and Microsoft huddled in dark rooms wondering what they missed with the Surface Pro X.
• A very few apps are already optimised for Apple’s M1 silicon and these obviously run very well.
• iPhone and iPad apps will also run and here the experience is very mixed and some developers have opted not to allow their apps to run on the new Macs.
• The rest rely on emulation (Rosetta 2) where an Intel app is loaded and translated into the Arm instruction set to be executed on the M1.
• Historically, this has not worked very well as the jerky and slow experience with Photoshop on the Surface Pro X demonstrates.
• However, Rosetta 2 is demonstrably a big step ahead as the performance of Photoshop and a series of games running on it was perfectly usable.
• In practice, this means that the software experience is superb for M1-optimised apps and good enough for those that are still written for Intel.
• This means that for most use cases there is no reason not to buy the M1-enabled Macs over the Intel Macs other than a few issues.
• These are:
  • First, Webcam: the webcam on both of the new Macs are 720p and produce a very poor image for video conference calls.
  • In an era where most Mac users will be working from home, this is a very poor decision and a big reason not to make the jump just yet.
  • Second, Pro users: Despite the fact that most apps will work fine with Rosetta 2, there have been some glitches and for those that depend on a specific workflow for their livelihood, there is risk in making the switch now.
  • Third, iPhone and iPad apps: The experience here is very mixed meaning that unless the developer has explicitly updated the app to run on the Mac, performance will be very unpredictable.
• It is worth noting that these new Macs are Apple first attempt at this and that the second-generation versions are likely to correct many of the smaller issues.
• Furthermore, with the success that these are likely to have given the performance and battery life, developers will have a growing incentive to optimise their Mac apps for the M1.
• I expect that new versions of the MX chip will have many more cores allowing Apple to migrate its entire line-up to its own silicon over time.
• A key issue is how much of these improvements are due to the silicon process as the M1 is made using 5nm TSMC while Intel is still on 14nm, which is 2 generations behind.
• Hence, when Intel finally makes it to the equivalent process, the question is how much of this performance difference will drop away?
• The short answer is that no-one knows but I suspect that it will be a significant proportion of it.
• The bottom line on the reviews is that Apple has blown away to the competition but on the software, it is important to bear in mind that these are the first generation and have many of the typical software bugs and issues that one would expect.
• Consequently, unless the competition can pull its finger out very quickly, users are going to begin wondering why they are buying Intel-powered devices and historical Windows users may even consider making the jump.
• For my perspective, as long as Office runs as well on macOS as it does on Windows (a big ask), this is something I would consider when it comes time to replace my Surface Book 2.
• This is assuming that the performance gap remains when Intel processors on the same semiconductor process node become available.
• The real loser here is Intel which is being significantly outperformed by a resurgent AMD on its home turf of x86 as well as by an emphatic demonstration that Arm is now a viable option for the entire portable computing segment.
• I have been tempted to buy Intel at $44 but this makes me wonder whether Intel is cheap for a reason.