APC – February 2021
English | 116 pages | pdf | 84.62 MB
Inside APC Magazine February 2021
With its internally developed M1 processors powering the new MacBook, Air and Mini, Apple has hit it out of the park on its first swing. That’s something none of us saw coming, and hats off to the team at Cupertino behind this mighty achievement.
When it was announced that Apple would be doing this, and leaving its long-standing chip partner Intel out of the mix moving forward, I think most people expected an Apple chip that was more in line with the sort of ARM-based performance we see in products like the Surface Pro X. That is, relatively low power use, and with Apple hopefully squeezing enough performance out of the basic ARM core design to do regular desktop tasks.
But, no. What we have here is a processor that comes as close as it needs to with raw processing power to go toe to toe against the competition – and especially compared to the Intel processors it ran before this new generation. It thoroughly boots them for battery life, and is as good as the best with its Integrated Graphics Processor.
It’s an extraordinary achievement across three vital fronts – power, performance, and graphics. Of course it’s far from Apple’s first try at processor design, the company has been kicking goals with its A-series since 2013, and has been evolving these annually since then as they power many iPhones, iPods, iPads and the Apple TV very well. In that market Apple has been serving it up to Qualcomm for a very long time.
But none of us expected a laptop and desktop (the Mini is arguably a desktop) processor good enough to seriously challenge equivalently positioned processors from Intel and AMD – and so thoroughly defeat the entire market for power consumption.
Joel’s testing of the trio of initial M1 machines in this issue (starting on page 26) reveals some stunning numbers. APC magazine best-ever battery life performer until now was the Dell Latitude 7400 2-in-1, which managed 14hr 17min. Along comes the M1-powered MacBook Pro, managing to keep its wheels spinning for an unbelievable 21hr and 40 minutes – with the Air not far behind. This is gobsmacking stuff. Over the years – nay, decades – laptop battery performance has crept up ever so gradually, with just minutes added for a new record, usually. And now… this! Wow. Good job, Apple.
Apple is already talking about adding more cores and improving the IPC, so that leaves AMD in a potentially worrying place – or may do in a year or two. Chip development takes years, and AMD has hefty engineering momentum right now.
Still, one must wonder if the appealing aspects of the M1 are enough to make potential PC laptop buyers jump ship and go all-in with macOS. Joel talks about app support in his feature story, and that’s going to be a tougher bridge for ARM-based Apple to cross, but for now, today, if you want a personal computer that can run longer than any other, and has the processing and graphics chops to handle most things, then Apple is the top game in town.
BEN MANSILL
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