Regardless of your thoughts on Apple, it’s crazy to think how quickly they’ve managed to jump in performance after switching to their own chips.
When I first heard they were switching from dedicated chip manufacturers, I remember thinking, “oh boy” lol. To say that I had my doubts would be an understatement. But watching all this happen in real time has been wild to behold.
I agree. I’ve just sold my x86 laptop to switch to Mac and M3.
I remember hearing about M1 and thinking how that would tank performance metrics, screw over professional users, other misc doom and gloom. However the real world performance articles started coming out and I shifted my opinion on that really quickly.
The battery life metrics alone are stunning. I’ve come to realize how desensitized I’ve become to lugging around a mobile Xeon processor and how hot it gets (and 5 hour battery if I’m lucky), but it’s a far better idea for me to offload the tasks that do require that architecture and power to a server and have a clean and light laptop. It’s an extreme example but my work laptop, also x86, isn’t really that much better despite being marketed as far more portable.
My M1 lasts damn near all day unless I’m rendering. It chews through tasks about as fast as a full desktop, but it’s a fucking laptop. And it’s dead silent.
A comparable device from intel or AMD is twice as thick, and filled with bloat ware.
It’s not crazy at all, TSMC makes their chips just like TSMC makes your nvidia chips, your AMD chips, and even your Intel GPU chips. Why would it surprise anyone that they can make decent chips for literally any company that pays them to? Honestly Apple would have had to fuck up SEVERELY to have their chips made by TSMC on the 5nm process and NOT perform decently.
apple were designing their own soc in house since the iphone 4, and they were consistently beating their android counterparts for years in both performance and battery life. it was only a matter of time until they started doing the same with their macs and succeed in that segment too.
Regardless of your thoughts on Apple, it’s crazy to think how quickly they’ve managed to jump in performance after switching to their own chips.
When I first heard they were switching from dedicated chip manufacturers, I remember thinking, “oh boy” lol. To say that I had my doubts would be an understatement. But watching all this happen in real time has been wild to behold.
Crazy what you can accomplish with a trillion dollar market cap.
I agree. I’ve just sold my x86 laptop to switch to Mac and M3.
I remember hearing about M1 and thinking how that would tank performance metrics, screw over professional users, other misc doom and gloom. However the real world performance articles started coming out and I shifted my opinion on that really quickly.
The battery life metrics alone are stunning. I’ve come to realize how desensitized I’ve become to lugging around a mobile Xeon processor and how hot it gets (and 5 hour battery if I’m lucky), but it’s a far better idea for me to offload the tasks that do require that architecture and power to a server and have a clean and light laptop. It’s an extreme example but my work laptop, also x86, isn’t really that much better despite being marketed as far more portable.
My M1 lasts damn near all day unless I’m rendering. It chews through tasks about as fast as a full desktop, but it’s a fucking laptop. And it’s dead silent.
A comparable device from intel or AMD is twice as thick, and filled with bloat ware.
It’s not crazy at all, TSMC makes their chips just like TSMC makes your nvidia chips, your AMD chips, and even your Intel GPU chips. Why would it surprise anyone that they can make decent chips for literally any company that pays them to? Honestly Apple would have had to fuck up SEVERELY to have their chips made by TSMC on the 5nm process and NOT perform decently.
TSMC is a manufacturer only, they do not have a role in the design of the chips.
apple were designing their own soc in house since the iphone 4, and they were consistently beating their android counterparts for years in both performance and battery life. it was only a matter of time until they started doing the same with their macs and succeed in that segment too.
The issue was mostly getting the software to be compatible with the different chipset as instructions are totally different.
It’s bizarre to me that they’ve gone full circle in like 10 years. May last PowerBook had a powerPC chip in it.