Thanks Jeff. Very informative.Originally Posted by Jeff Kilgroe
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.
Bit surprised these 1st chips from Apple are punching this hard out of their weight class.
Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA
