Apple silicon and the M1 took the computing world by storm. But others are catching up-and Apple is hitting the limits of physics. It's time to focus on what Apple does best: hardware.
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Video Summary (this is just for SEO lol): Discover how Apple's M1 revolutionized MacBook performance, transforming from problematic designs to industry-leading innovations. Dive deep into the M3, comparing its capabilities and drawbacks against the celebrated M1 and slightly improved M2. Explore how Apple silicon, such as the M1 and M3, fares against upcoming threats like Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite. Get insights on the future of MacBook, Apple silicon, and the potential shifts with M4 in the fiercely competitive tech landscape.
0:00 Things used to be HOT (in a bad way)
0:39 The M1 changed everything
1:40 ...but changes need to happen again!
2:12 Why has M1/M2/M3 been such a success?
3:28 Let's talk transistor density.
5:27 M2 is hotter than M1-but it's complicated
6:38 Sand, man. Sand is the problem!
8:35 Stop being a nerd. Silicon ain't the problem.
9:18 Competition is coming. Like, now.
11:03 What is this "competition?"
12:00 Apple will still dominate high-end Arm, for now
13:29 The M3 Max is HOT and throttles HARD
14:54 Apple Silicon CAN enable BETTER hardware
15:56 Can't Innovate Anymore My @ss
17:02 It's time to be bold again
For me the biggest problem for apple silicon macs is the complete lack of upgradability and also the criminal pricing of RAM and SSD upgrades
If I'm not mistaken, the video may have suggested Qualcomm's ASIC may allow for user upgradeable storage.
They are gonna have to change that eventually. They’ve had the same upgrade pricing tiers since 2015 which is insane. Their base models are such a great deal but the min spec is so lousy almost everyone should upgrade and by the time you’ve doubled the ram and storage you’re at basically double the price. Sucks lol
A boring trope. No one cares, except a handful of nerds that think they’re smarter than everyone else. Zzzzzzzz
With these new chips coming out from Qualcomm I think it’s will be time for Apple to reconsider their pricing to compete.
@@snazzy I'm honestly surprised that the EU hasn't run riot on that yet. The change is inevitable, as they're going in hard on right to repair to the point that it's a matter of time that the right people notice the problems with the lack of upgradeability.
The 2021 MacBook Pros are aging beautifully, I have no desire to upgrade or feeling of fomo at all
His point lol
Yep. I’m still using an M1 Pro MBP and M1 iMac as my daily drivers. Zero desire to upgrade.
M1 Mini and M1 Air here and still going strong, the Air will need a new battery soon but otherwise it's good
@@thekeeprI would say not really. The point was to work in a Qualcomm ad, they paid him to visit after all, and then make a “call” for bold form factors which was largely pointless, thus the clickbait splash page. I think the Vision Pro is that form factor, which Quinn knows. The really slim Mac is effectively an iPad with key case. The issue there is software not hardware, which Quinn knows. This nets out to a Qualcomm ad and some M chip data that is sorta news and sorta not, depending on if you follow the channel. It’s useful for irregular viewers of Snazzy but meh for the regulars. Wish Quinn well of coursee
I still have a 2019 Intel laptop, but do have a M1 Ultra. After watching the video, I think I would be well served with the 2021 MacBook Pro for travel and couch surfing too.
I'm sticking to x86 via Ryzen 9 computers with 16 cores/32 threads, support for DDR5 128 GBs RAM, and all the hard drives I could ever want.
For a desktop, I agree. But put that in a laptop, you'd have to carry around a car battery to get decent battery life. I'd love the arm option for mobile
@@mikekelly6331 Not actually true a lot of the Ryzen newer AM4 cpu's actually draw less power than their intel equivalents. They just run a little hot. Most of the time.
@@MJSGamingSanctuarycool story bro but nobody even mentioned Intel
As lifelong pc guy , I recently started longterm camping in a beautiful rainforest and Apple is the only way to go , I’ve wasted too much money on badly built pc laptops and to get a comparable build quality pc laptop , I need to pay more than Apple and then get less performance
@@cheekoandthemanI play a fair bit of games on my laptop, so while I’d certainly kill for the efficiency of an Apple Silicon Mac, my use case rules them out wholly.
As soon as Apple began soldering ram and storage to the boards they lost me as a client. Ram prices are borderline criminal.
Agreed
Nowadays even gaming laptops have soldered-in ram.
Apple ram is not soldered to the board. That's the big difference and everything is moving that way in the industry. Ram is ETCHED in the same silicon die that cpu gpu and other modules are. And believe me in future everything would be that way. That sort of tight integration enables huge performace and power savings, something that is absolutely needed...
@@Useruseruser32121don't know what you have been buying but most of the good ones don't have unless you clueless what to buy.
@@veljko100ableit is not upgradable, period 🤷🏻
As someone who has built their own desktop PCs since before a lot of KZhead viewers were born, my biggest anxiety about this transition is whether or not I'll be able to keep building and customizing my own hardware. I don't particularly mind the idea of SoCs, but I really value the modularity of the existing x86 platform. It has saved me boatload of money over the years and lets me get exactly what I care about without paying for what I don't. The thought of being stuck with only a laptop, with all the horrible tradeoffs and e-waste that comes with that is just appalling.
hoping for the same socketed systems that we are used to from intel/amd to come to arm, and just motherboards with a new chipset, maybe no chipset in the case of an SoC they would have great iGPUs and maybe free included ram, while keeping pcie and ddr5 the same or a new standardized ddr-dimm for arm systems apple themselves have proved that pcie at all is possble although no current gpus work with it making a new socket-its nothing new storage is too easy to implement, and its another opportunity for cpu makers to offer some small on board boot drive leaving modular GPU and RAM as the big main questions
I agree with you but I have my PC at home. For games, 3D-printing, hobby programming but also professional heavy programs. For professional stuff on the go my MacBook m1 has been awsome. It just works, syncs easily with my phone etc. It is way more reliable than any pc laptop (and I have had many). Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses both in software and hardware. PC definitely needs to modernize itself on many fronts. But I hope it stays open and adaptable.
GPU is the hero for PC Desktops. The future is more and more GPU focused for everything creator and AI oriented and having a SoC and a GPU will be super powerful. Old Amiga guy here. Amigas were great because they had multiple of chips. If we can figure out the internal i/o of that in a motherboard layout we will all have custom super computers in our future.
@@MarcTelesha The future will be interposers with logic built into them. They can be designed with topologies that enables far better communication than currently between chips. How the architecture overall will be is hard to forecast. Will it be similar to the newest Nvidia AI gpus with CPU and GPU on the same interposer with shared memory? If the performance advantage is high enough that will make upgradeablility of the individial components sacrificable.
Unfortunately, in future everything would move towards even larger integration, so everyhing would need to be as close as possible, on the same die.
It took Apple more than a decade to produce the m1 and people can’t expect the magic reveal every year let alone even every 5 years. Tech moves much slower than the marketing.
I just wish they had the courage to try different form factors.
@@bombombalu like what? What would be a good idea?
@@petarprokopenko645 I would immediately buy a 12-inch MacBook made out of matte plastic with more rounded edges. Even more so if it was a convertible with pencil-support. I'm genuinely tired of aluminum. It's cold and hard and not comfortable at all. I loved my 2006 MacBook....
@@petarprokopenko645 An M1, M2 or even M3 12 inch Macbook would be awesome. I would purchase it on the spot.
It took Jim Keller to make the m1 magic, he's long gone and his legacy is now over.
not only are the ssds unupgradeable, but they’re also unreplaceable, if the ssd chips die, the mac is a brick. i hate that.
link?
Have you ever had a Mac with an SSD that died?
@@miketkong2 dude 😆, it can die easily with swapping.
@@lukasmauer230 what’s swapping? It’s an internal drive.
@@lukasmauer230 no it can't. lmfao. the swapping thing is a meme. its virtually unheard of for modern SSDs to fail due to swap. it almost never happens, only under experimental stress testing. its not a thing anybody should ever worry about with a laptop lol.
What Apple does best? Hardware? Seriously? Louis Rossmann would like a word. What Apple does best is User Experience essentially... their design process starts with things people need to do, then the build the hardware and software around that. Thats why people love their Apple gear so much.
Comparatively speaking it’s true though. Maybe not what Apple does best, but it’s one thing Apple typically does better than the competition.
One mistake: In the beginning of the PowerPC era Mac owners could be bragadocious for the first time. They were faster and more efficient than Intels chips. That advantage faded away later until the switch to Intel was a big step up.
This.... but to be honest... even a 68k was zippy if you tweaked the OS right... That's why I moved away from Mac.. even though Classic OS was at times buggy.. if you knew how to arrange your extensions, it was fast and just did its job... none of this bloated OS with a kiddy interface that dumbs it down.
It's pretty ironic actually. ARM is the spiritual successor to the RISC arch in the PowerPCs.
They were never faster then intel that was a marketing lie. I loved the pre intel Macs Computer pre sysyem 10 days. Apple will eventually fix whatever problems they encounter but some things are by design. Apple computer where never built to be customizable since the Apple II lost to the Mac. If the Woz had his way, Apple computers would have been more like custom pc are today.
@@joelv4495 yes and no as ARM kind of predated PowerPC thanks to Acorns work on the BBC micro and all that.
PowerPC was more efficient (in the beginning). I remember a test were the notebooks were a lot faster than Intel-Notebooks. I don't know about desktops.
I liked the Quinn beardvolution shot.
Came here to say exactly this ✊🏽
The biggest issue is that it's not a pc. Its greatest achievement is that it's not a cromebook. The Acorn pc used Risc chips.....in the 90s. Risc chips are great for using half the power and taking 3 times as long to do the same task.
2:00 clicky clicky
slow decline into becoming a hermit
He wanted simpleton brains to comment about it. You got manipulated.
i just love it that the original M1 chip had a media engine 1.5x faster than the dedicated Afterburner card released a year earlier that apple was still selling for 2000$ at that time.
What you said is what AMD realized. "Wait... if we manufacture this part on the new node but these parts that won't get as much of a performance boost on these parts on the older node, we can save money!"
It's not just saving money, shrinking certain parts (like IO) further just didn't scale to the new nodes... With chiplets, they have very small dies and thus the chances of major errors in them is much lower, resulting in way better yield or feasibility to make them to begin with. Meanwhile the huge-ass IO die gets made on a node which is mature enough to reliably make that size of die. Well, I guess it is saving money in the end after all by making the production yield of their chips not prohibitively bad.
Yeah and then those chips alone idle at ~20W...
@@yarost12 There's Ryzen NUCs that idle under 10W.
Ok, I understand if you don’t offer upgradable ram, a lot of other brands are doing the same, but no upgradable storage? Insane.
With Thunderbolt, superfast external storage with a small portable drive is easy. I have bought a base for many years and use external drives. Even when my 8-year-old iMac HD died many years ago, I ran the OS off an external Firewire drive which ran faster than the old mechanical HD. This is really not a problem in 2024.
@@andyH_England I really want the ability to upgrade internal storage though. The 14" and 16" pro should absolutely have an extra M.2 slot in it that I can drop an SSD into later. Technically they should have up-gradable RAM too but with the way it's integrated into the CPU, it does provide some benefit there so it's a trade-off. But my general take is the Pro versions should have upgradable RAM/Storage and the Air can be soldered to allow a sleeker design (like the 12" Macbook). It really astounds me that they didn't re-release the super thin Macbook with Apple Silicon as the new Macbook Air, and then the laptops they call the Air now should just be a Macbook. It's like whomever is in charge of naming these products is asleep at the wheel.
@@andyH_England external???? gross!
@@andyH_England ,maybe for you, but a lot of us don't want portable dirves hanging off of our small, sleek, highly portable, and light laptops. In 2024 having only 256 GB (the base configuration of a macbook air) feels a bit cramped to me, especially if you want to edit large 4K video files.
I mean external SSD is ok but Not giving m.2 slot for SSD is criminal I mean if I have m.2 SSD from my previous laptop or want to upgrade storage there should be 1 extra free m.2 slot in every laptop (And you can save the planet also if you care)
3:10 there is a fourth point thats also important: Apple has continuously operated on a node/technology advantage. Their lower volume, high average selling price and good relations to TSMC made it possible to always be ahead of AMD or Intel in that regard. This is basically only possible because they sell the complete laptop and can use the higher profit margins to actually buy significant volume from TSMC, while still buying less silicon than AMD or Intel move.
They use their higher profit margins to fill in their bank account. If Apple made slightly less money they could sell a lot more computers, but just like Harley Davidson Apple would rather sell fewer products at much higher profit margins than put an Apple computer into everyone’s house.
They even booked all the early batches of 2nm TSMC silicon already, so other brand needs to wait a bit longer
Also, I think it was a previous video of his (or some other creator) which looked into the actual transistor count (mostly because of Apple's node advantage as you pointed out) vs performance comparison with AMD/Intel chips, and ofc its not all rosy after all!
@@sihamhamda47That’s the thing about being a key founder, you provide all the funds for TSMC to set up and go forward with a new node. It’s because of bug customers like Apple that the industry is moving forward to these new nodes. Also going by the reports many have opted not to design their chip for TSMC N3B as there’s very high costs associated with the node.
You’re so misinformed on the volume. They are the largest user of silicon in the world and also TSMC’s highest volume customer. There are a few little known products called the iPhone, iPad, AirPods, and watches. At one point, Apple accounted for 1/3 of all silicon used in the world in a given year.
You're discounting x86 architecture too much. AMD's 0504 custom APU made for the Steamdeck is an x86 chip which can run most modern PC games with a 15W TDP. In desktop mode it draws only about 8W in typical usage scenarios (disclaimer: I was unable to isolate the APU power draw in desktop mode, so this is the figure that represents total power draw from the battery, with the screen off). Personally, I'd be hyped to see powerful and energy efficient chips like this one in laptops. It has all the compatibility benefits of the x86 architecture and it's pretty efficient. AMD does offer slightly more powerful chips for laptops, but they have roughly double the power draw, which makes them less desirable for people who are on the go a lot.
And Steamdecks APU is pretty old now. There are newer designs APU that are pretty astounding
I think the reason is that the steamdeck is 720p if I am not wrong. We already have processors like that in laptops, but because of things like higher resolution and windows instead of optimised linux distro they seem less powerfull/impresive.
@@matejjustus4573 yup, I agree. But what I'm interested in is a lightweight Linux laptop that can run for many hours on battery, for hassle-free dev work on the go. It just needs to run an IDE, a web browser and, in a pinch, compile some basic modules for testing. If I want to do anything fancy I can delegate the workload to my PC at home. And yes, I very much prefer an x86 machine to natively test my x86 binaries on.
@@hctiBelttiL i have old Thinkpad t480 for my studies, KZhead and programming (clion, pycharm, gitlab) and it lasts without problems. Right now I have 83 and 46 % of battery (two batteries and it reports ~7:30h remaining on balanced power setting.
I have a 14 inches macbook M1 pro and it has aged beautifully. Still runs amazingly well, everything is smooth, everything is flawless, and the machine is silent af.
"Please clap" 😂😂😂
I laughed out loud!
Poor ol’ low energy Jeb lol
I met Jeb once after that comment. He's so ashamed of it because it was never meant to sound so desperate. But at least he can laugh at himself about it. Really nice guy, but not my type of politician.
👏 👏 👏
I am continually amazed at how quickly these "long" videos fly by. You are an elite presenter. Dare i say the best tech product communicator on youtube.
Thanks so much for your kind words!
@@snazzywent by in a blaze 😉
☘️
Truly dude, your funny, entertaining and have a superb outlook on technology and pick interesting topics too. You should have way more subscribers! @@snazzy
@@snazzy you totally missed the point WHY it isn't much faster. the reason is milking the tech that corporations already have. improving too fast drops older cheaper-to-produce products prices too fast. so corporations don't like fast progress which they do only when they forced by sales dropping down. now whith what they have they only compete with themselves, making faster chips will kill m1-m2-m3 products sales. thats the actual reason why your napking math didn't work, everything else is just marketing faitytales from corporations to justify milking the market.
M3 is built on N3, not N3E. N3E is coming in products later this year, has a bit relaxed specs and it's cheaper than N3. Design of the chip takes like 3-4 years (see M1, see Meteor Lake, etc.). If apple only has like small improvement ready, than they probably lost lead and momentum. Scaling will again start with 2nm nodes (N2, 20A, 18A and towards 14A) thanks to several aspects, GAA FET, backside power delivery and later forksheet transistors
Hello, do you still use LTO tapes for storage? If so, are you satisfied?
Took me ages to stumble on why Apple M series machines had such limited external screen support, hugely reducing the previous number. They are using the iPhone display controller instead of a high end laptop one. As a projection artist multi outputs, 3 are really the minimum for the installations I use and that's evidently common on other hardware. My 5 year old midrange Amd based HP supports 5 external outputs (internal touch screen still on, so 6 screens in total) so for arts work it's a dream. Be great if Apple worked out its design limitation.
Makes sense as the M series chips are just a scaled up version of the A series iphone chips. They just threw in more cores, rebranded to M series and called it a day.
I use a displaylink dock to drive triple 4k displays with a macbook air m2 and I'm pretty satisfied with the results.
@@jerryw1608 I'm using built-in display since 2017, but I'm a weird guy that values portability and being able to work any place on earth.
@@jerryw1608 @jerryw1608 that's interesting. Is it the base M2?. Apple's site says just one screen on the base M2 or M3 and you need the highest end M2 chip to do more than just 2. There is an update that lets you run 2 external screens on some MacBook Airs but only if you shut the internal screen off, which is quite 'unique' a solution. The only Apple dealer store in my area also tells me it's just one screen on base models and you have to have bought a higher end M series to get over that limitation.
@@carylittleford8980 DisplayLink is analogous to a 'software defined graphics card'. I've got a M2 Pro MBP, and a few USB C hubs that have display port connectors on them, but have only ever been able to drive 'up to 2' external displays of any resolution at the same time natively. I've got 2x 1080p monitors, and a samsung g9 dqhd screen (5120x1440), but only 2 screens will ever work at the same time, no matter which display connector they're connected to, but if I put both 1080p screens on a dual displayport DisplayLink adapter, and plug that into a USB A socket on one of my dongles, then I can get all 3 monitors (plus the laptop's own screen, so 4 in total) working. This does need the 'DisplayLink Manager' app running to get the DisplayLink adapter to function.
No company can sit at the top forever. But consider that the Snapdragon chip wouldn't be readying for release and mass adoption without Apple's M1. Now the pressure from QualComm and MS will keep price pressure on Apple. Competition is good.
I'm pro x64, but I do like that there's shake0up. I hope Apple silicon gets Intel and AMD to start taming their TDPs (how many Watts they burn)
@@JoeStuffzAlt AMD is pretty good for the processing per watt atm
@@JoeStuffzAltdo you mean x86?
@@JoeStuffzAlt how can you be pro x86? Even intel and AMD would love to switch away from it... there's no good argument for x86 other than that every piece of software out there is basically written for it... an adoption of any other architecture would require either really good emulation/translation... or that every program gets rewritten for that architecture.... the industry decided to go with emulation/translation and if it's at some point good enough to work for the corporate clients there will be mass adoption of it... what the private end user uses is irrelevant and depends entirely on what the manufacturers provide
I agree. It's always great when competition leapfrogs each other. This new chip wouldn't exist without Apple, and the next amazing innovation by Apple will be spurred on by this chip.
First video I have ever saw from this channel, and wow... so well done! and loved the in depth Dive into CPU Design. I know you have 1.15M subs. but you just earned another! Cheers!
The problem is that the M1 made intel actually finally "wake up" and resume actually investing R&D on x86 arquitecture, and AMD followed suit. This brought innovation back into x86 that was basically stuck for years, and this innovation quickly outrun anything that Apple was trying to do with Apple Silicon. The new intel Core Ultra cpus and Ryzen are now more performant and with better efficiency from x86 than Apple Silicon with ARM64. And the x86 is still a better arquitecture for a lot of things. And now that intel and AMD are back in the fighting ring, x86 will just continue to get better at higher-end performance points
Apple R&D and launch cycle for the M1 happened during the same time span that Intel and AMD R&D'd theirs, AMD had already planned on a new socket and Zen4 architecture, Intel was catching up on AMD's lead with chiplets with their efficiency cores, Blue and Red didn't wake up following Moneybags' M1, they just happened to have parallel'd it
Well AMD being able to do anything is special in it of itself. I still rather have AMD in a framework laptop, but I'll take a SD Elite in a Framework if they make one and it is easy to run my Linux stuff on it. Meanwhile, my Samsung Galaxy S24 on Dex works great too.
I agree, let Apple keep their ARM and let some windows laptops have it too because why not. But that does not mean that x86 is obsolete and shouldn’t be improved further.
So... When can we expect a Snapdragon hackintosh ?
I don't think that's possible unfortunately. ARM chips work differently with how the OS needs to be coded specifically for it, or something along those lines
Run Virtualization Framework in VN on Snapdragon, why not ?
@@lucasremI do not think it would be even possible, because of the hard software/hardware binding of apple. Imagine why no one managed to run iOS on android phone.
@@asinglefrenchfry bigger issue would be the SEP secure enclave, I would think as the M-series are ARM chips
Apple Silicon has a ton of custom features not found in any Qualcomm chip. The OS expects to interact with those features.
Apple needs to solve the GPU issue for architects, 3d modelers, cinema production companies etc. The onboard GPU doesn't work the way they suggest and i've had to go to Windows PCs with dedicated GPUs....whereas I used to be able to use Mac products just fine.
What exactly with the Apple GPU is it that does not work as they say ?
@@lllongreen The integrated GPU aspect. When it comes to 3D modeling etc Its no-where as powerful as dedicated GPUs.....not even close. There is no raytracing etc as well. My point about Apple's claims related to their GPU is it doesn't come close to living up to what they suggest in their marketing.
@@JohnnyprcThe M3 Macs DO support 3D Raytracing!
@@MVEProducties Apple worked with Unreal devs to make it kinda work with their software - however, other software titles don't yet work with Apples raytracing - basically, Apple has to get to together with each title and help make it work...its not natively supported in many apps that support raytracing "out of the box" - and even when it is, you can see on the Unreal threads its awful.
I don't know about the later models but I have a M1 Pro 8core Cpu 14coreGpu 16gb ram and the Adobe Aftereffects' performance does not come even close to my old af 7th Gen i5 8gb Gtx 1070ti system. Same for unreal engine. Tried switching all the performance modes within the software but it was a shocking revelation. Luckily, gpu intensive tasks arent my primary concern.
Thank you as always! Appreciate your work. I'm still on a 2020 M1 Air, and having been a "computer" person for years - this thing just won't quit! It just keeps doing the job, never lagged/throttled. It's ridiculous how good it is. 4+ years later, and I'm still waiting for any of the competition to give me something to make me feel like switching back. I can see this M1 lasting for years to come for what we do with it, and its battery life is still fine, more than a single day's casual use.
Try LLM, it will make you get a PC ASAP.
Excellent analysis, a joy watching this video. We'll see how things pan out :) Greetings from Sweden!
Fun fact about the Qualcomm Elite X / Nuvia team. "The founding trio of Bruno, Gulati and Williams were key high-level architects at Apple whose expertise brought fruition to many generations of Apple’s SoCs and CPU microarchitectures. Williams was the chief architect on all of Apple’s CPU designs, including the recent Lightning core in the A13"
But before working in ARM & Texas instruments.
so yeah, put better, nothing to do with apple hype, its just that arm is coming into age. i could do all of this on a raspberry pi 5 years ago for $35 woot.
I disregard 'fun fact' comments and skip them unread, just like yours. :)
@@FVBmovies You're clearly replying. I win.
@@snakeplissken8887 Still didn't read tho. Have fun with your facts.
I do my graphics work on an M1 Macbook Pro and I don’t think I need to upgrade within the next 4 years. We see what’s going on then. I don’t need more compute power, I need good software and efficiency. The plague of modern computing is bad software. Programs that were 1MB in the 90s and ran on a 486 are now 500MB and need a high end cpu.
Don't have to, rendering video length is within 10%, no big deal
optimization became absolute garbage in the last 10 years. Almost no application is optimized nowadays as software devs are able to brute force push the apps because of the huge leap in processing power.
@@jani0077 i 100% agree on this, gaming is a sore example of how much devs stopped caring about optimization and just push products out with barely any QA/QC
Yes, we need to stop turning every app into an Electron Chromium-bundled JS bloatware
@@jani0077 Its why apps on Windows (especially games) are bloated as fuck and make laptops last like an hour or 2 on idle alone.
What about the so called unpatchable security flaw found recently in the M1, M2 and M3 chips? Tell us more about this please
These things are almost never relevant to general users.
The summary of this video is basically that engineering is (un)surprisingly more complicated than Internet expectations suggest.
Your point about fan speed is exactly why I love the M1, especially the 16". This thing is cool and silent no matter how many consecutive hours I work or play games on it.
It truly is remarkable.
@@snazzy I use for ME always an M1 MacBook Air, even when my whole team uses better Mx Macs. For Keynote Pages and 1x a month an short video export... I see no reason for an upgrade in years.
Like my Mac mini M1. It’s on 24/7 and nobody ever heard the thing, no matter what I did on it. Going to my son’s room and hearing the noise there of his windows PC always makes me laugh
What’s it’s temperature and fan speed when you’re playing games, if you don’t mind me asking?
@@syntex9673 None when crapple OS can't play any real games lol.
The 12inch MacBook - fondly called the **MacBook Nothing** - was my ATF of Apple laptops. Its thin-ness and light-ness was insane. I used it primarily for business travel where would be in meetings, so the use case was simply MS Office, MS Teams, Visio, Web Browsing, and corporate email. It was great for all of that, particularly brilliant with the Retina Display. The KB was a bit janky, as I was constantly missing characters as I typed them (pretty fast, probably not enuf pressure) but the KB never failed or had HW issues like for many. I would love to see a MacBook built on that same fan-less and thin platform, and even if just M2 would be very successful IMHO.
That single lonely usb-c port will never not make me wheeze laughing.
*MacBook Adorable*
I owned one and LOVED that thing. I don’t know why Apple doesn’t bring that back. The single port was fine by me. Maybe add a second port and you’re done. It was awesome for business travel. MS office and work emails. More functional than an iPad.
i had one too and i so hoped they would bring it back with one of the M processors. would be an instant buy for me over any of the current airs.
Grabbed a 16" M1 Max 2TB last December and it so beautiful! Did some research prior and seen that the 2s & 3s were swapping out performance cores for efficiency, keys still aren't quite a nice as my now 11+ year old mid-2012 13" but maybe I'm just super used it that for typing on
I've used Macs since 1990, but gotta say nowadays it feels like they only have a handful of macOS developers but hundreds on the iOS team... recently had to downgrade from Sonoma back to Ventura (on 2020 intel MacBook Air) because after the upgrade the CPU was running hot and the fan was constantly on. (Activity monitor not showing anything crazy). There's an apple forum support thread with at least 300 other people who had same problem. After the downgrade (not easy- required full wipe and install even with a Time Machine backup), fan was back to normal. The good news about these Qualcomm chips is maybe there'll be ARM hackintosh macs possible.
ARM is 39 years old. It started with Acorn computers. So it's not an modern ISA and it have been drastically been added to in a similar way to as x86.
Not to mention that the different instruction sets make very little difference on something as powerful as a PC or a smartphone. It's not the ISA, it's the whole chip. The ISA myth has been disproven by the university of wisconsin and by Intel when they used to make chips for Android phones that used x86 architecture
@@anthonycotter1493 ISA used to make a huge difference in the 80's, by the 90's it was down to a few percent. In the 2000's the difference disappeared completely. If ISA was the end all, we would all be using PowerPC right now. A bigger difference will come from a memory controller difference than the ISA.
@@anthonycotter1493 I think it is both and performance per Watt counts, that's the main reason the development of Intel x86 Android phones stopped. But yeah, I am also sure if a brand new modern instruction set would be developed, ARM would be defeated, also on performance per Watt.
Stop making me feel so old 😂
one thing to note tho for when apple transitioned to m1, in the prev gen intel macbook, the heatsink LITERALLY didn't make contact with the die, this was found when LTT tried to improve the cooling with better paste and found that they had to drill out some of the heatsink in order for it to touch the cpu
And in the Early 2020 MacBook Air models, they added that ridiculously underpowered semi-passive heatsink that could only handle about 5-10 Watts before the CPU started to throttle...
I honestly wonder if apple made some of the pre-m1 computers worse on purpose to make m1 look good.
@@ZachariahConnor it sounds like an apple thing to do honestly. I wouldnt be surprised
@@ZachariahConnor Considering that they _do_ have some engineers employed, I can't think of any other explanation for this. But that leaves me with a feeling that they were actually caught by M1 surprise themselves--had they known that the Apple Silicon would be _so_ good, I don't think they'd have gone through the trouble.
So the original team that designed the m1 now works in Qualcomm, so I think Tim Apple will keep overclocking chips to compete.
Hilarious if true
The thing is apple sold well even when they were using intel chips, which were hitting thermal limits fast, so I doubt people buy apple hardware for performance first. I think nothing much will change with apple, they rarely take any risks.
Great video going as deep as I always want these videos to go. Excited to FINALLY get an M1 competitor. I'm a Linux user who has been waiting for 4 years for this!
Age is making Quinn to do his videos from his chair 😀 Love your videos keep the work man!!!
When I see their review of apple vision pro I became fan of this channel and this video is great I am loving this channel videos
Counter suggestion: he's recording enough of them at once that standing is just impractical to do in long bouts. I'm sure it's way more comfortable. Glad he can sit down.
After 30 years as an Apple user, I think my 2021 M1 MacBook Pro Max might be my last Apple computer purchase. I am excited about Framework’s roadmap. My biggest regret: thinking 32 GB of RAM was sufficient for my needs and realizing a swap for the 64 GB would require me to take a huge loss. My servers and PC have 128 GB…I must have been drunk when I configured that MBP. 🤦♂️
I frequently see ARM touted as an efficientcy king, but this is not the biggest contributor at all. The M series has ram soldered right besides the CPU, that decreases energy use significantly. Just look at the efficiency improvements of the AMD chips using 3D V Cache, adding a substantial amount of cache means less memory fetches and memory bus use for the same workload.
Thanks for the detailed breakdown and the glimpse into the future competition.
16:15 I love Quin’s obsession with the 12” MacBook.
It’s unhealthy
@@snazzy I have a similar relationship with the 2009 13” MacBook Pro…
I miss that thing. I remember when the OG 11" MacBook Air came out and I was in love with it. Still am tbh
@@snazzy I'd argue it is the perfect amount of healthy!
@@nateo200 I remember when I saw it first time. I couldn't belive that something so elegant could be produced as working computer
I’m an engineer working on Apple products and I enjoyed this take. Obviously my opinion is my own but I think there are way too many skus of product. It makes way more work for me and as you pointed out, they really aren’t that different.
If you really work for Apple, you should delete this comment before you get in trouble
@@ChrisAljoudiHe is entitled to have his own opinion, or does Apple control minds too? :)
@@SpicysaucedHD openly critiquing your employer is a bad idea in general, and even moreso at Apple where they prioritize and enforce secrecy. In a perfect world things would be different but that’s the truth
@@ChrisAljoudi Self-censoring in the land of the Free cause of corporate interest? Yeah no I wouldnt do that :) Im also sure that the guy knows what he's doing.
Just wow 😂, he never said he worked for Apple. Learn to read@@ChrisAljoudi
This is exactly the video comparison I've been looking for! Thank you for the great explanations. And no I didn't turn it off when it got geeky! haha. I'm still using the 5,1 Mac Pro (Hackenmac) and the 2017 MBP. I've been waiting for the M3 Mac Studio and maybe an M4 MBP to replace my current setup. As a web/graphic designer, video editor and someone getting into Blender modeling for animation and printing, I tend to need a processor that can handle a large volume and I don't really want something that's getting ridiculously hot. After this video I'm not sure if I should wait for that anymore. Should I just go for a top of the line M1 or M2? I know that I'll still see insane performance gains from them considering where I'm at. But it almost sounds like the M3+ chips might not be worth it considering the stagnated form factors.
I always thought of Apple Silicon as a threat to my recently bought AMD Ryzen back in 2019. But I can't deny how interesting the ARM architecture is at this moment... And this is just starting. Having competition is awesome
if people are going to say that the nanometer nomenclature doesn't make sense, don't use it. Call it N5/N3/N2 etc which is the actual product name TSMC uses.
I dread these snapdragon chips being locked down and inaccessible to linux users. The transition to arm would spell trouble for people who want literally any freedom over their hardware whatsoever.
Ashai linux works well, at least it did last time I tried it.
@@ULUnLocoThey could do some verified boot without an option to change that. So maybe Windows only.
That would be very ironic. Moving from proprietory to open source architecture and loosing the option.
@@kushagranayyar3960 what architecture is open source?
Isn't RISC-V an open source ARM, basically?
That was a fantastic review of the Apple M phenomenon. I am grateful for having been brought up to speed on the tech involved in Apple's recent offerings. I still have a real problem with how fast their machines sunset, OS-wise. In a decade, I burned well over $20K on my Mac PRO and MacBook Pro notebooks. Lack lof upgradability is what forced me into hand-building my own development machines. My Ryzen 9 12-core 128GB-RAM with 10TB of Nvme Gen5 SSD is how I get my work done these days. I also just feel more comfortable running Linux than MacOS. I made the transition off Windows and life is better now.
I don't think you should ask or care what people think in the comments given how comprehensive your video essays are. Excellent as usual.
M1 Air is still the best laptop for everyday use
It’s superb, agree.
@@snazzy I'm on my 2nd M1 MacBook Air, base unit. (Love your channel)! 💗
i use base model m1 air for software development work. 2 docker containers, 2 ide's and 3 browsers with about 30 tabs all together and works fine. faster and silent than my work intel 13th gen.
I have one, and I disagree. macOS has had a choppy scrolling bug since 2020. It's very noticeable and annoying for people who are very sensitive to lag/stutters, such as myself. macOS is also far too limited compared to Windows. The Air's screen is okay but has a slow response time, so there's a lot of ghosting on darker backgrounds. It was a €1100+ laptop at launch, at least in the EU. I've seen cheaper Windows laptops with better screens. The M1 Air is a good laptop with fantastic battery life, but that's about it; the rest of the machine is either mid or average at best. It's not as good as you all make it out to be, and I certainly wouldn't have bought one if I had known that it would stutter just as much as a cheap Chromebook.
@@just_joseph157 might be some software you installed... the only time my own Air stutters is when I am editing 16K+ photos in pixelmator with a bunch of other apps open. and even then, the stutter only happens with the stage manager app switch animation. other people i know who have Airs and use them for much lighter workloads than i do, never have stutters happen to them. at least not that i've seen. so you're either lying about having a mac, installed some dubious software, or your unit is defective.
As usual, title makes me think it will be boring video, but the I see your beard, and I start watching, and cannot stop till the end. That's magic. I do not even have any apple device 😅
Great video. One minor detail as a not-apple-fanatic : Asus Zenbook 14" Oled basically already does everything you asked for. Powerful and economic-when-idle CPU? Check. Powerful GPU? Check. Insane battery life? check. Great formfactor, build quality? Check. Thin and light casing? check. (responding to the end of your video where you comment that the non-apple gaming laptops are stuck at 3.5 hours battery life). There's also other 17" laptops such as LG's gram that have decent 4050 videocards, good CPU's, weigh 1.35kg and are a joy to use (Albeit at the expense of some strength in the chassis).
I’m gonna buy a new iPad straight away as my old one is really old. Thanks for the update. M4 sounds amazing. 🎉
A thing that should be mentioned is that it wasn't really an x86 vs ARM issue. Intel basically just got stuck at a bad node size for a long time as they fab inhouse. The Steam deck uses x86, but on a TSMC AMD chip so the tdp is just better.
Ya intel was stuck on 14nm for over 6 years seems to be stuck on 10nm now.
yup. In multicore performance actually Ryzens are almost on par with Apple chips. Its so strange AMD didnt try to add efficiency cores to their processors - it would be game changer.
@heroofjustice3349 AMD gets pretty close to Apple in terms of pref per watt, but only at the high end server stuff, and only if you turn off boosting. 128 cores of pure compute if I recall, that only sips 300W
@@heroofjustice3349They will be. AMD will be releasing a power efficient chip with efficiency cores (regular cores with less cache) by CES next year. So both Qualcomm, AMD and Intel to a lesser extent will offer high performance, high battery life laptops in 2025. Apple's advantage will negligible next year.
@@Demopans5990 Ok I will write again because link was caught by YT and my comment was not posted. So instead I ask you to put 'AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS analysis' in google and check first link from notebookcheck. As you can see your comment is lie. Consumer grade AMD chips for laptops like 7x40u/hs or 6800u are almost as efficient as Apple silicon under load even with worse manufacturing node(6800u). Advantage of Apple Silicon lies in E-Cores. Ryzens have only performance cores and so under low load or idle those chips needs to use more power. Its just wonder of BIG.little architecture - power hungry P-Cores are activated and powered only when there is need for more processing power than E-Cores can handle. However AMD is already planning to introduce their own E-Cores and it should put Ryzen powered laptops very close in all aspects of efficiency(including battery life) to Apple chips.
I have an m1 pro base 16” and an upgraded model m1 imac, both are basically interchangeable for pretty much all tasks including editing 4k 60 timelines in fcpx. The export times are similar enough to not be noticeable, although the pro has more headroom and stays cooler. That being said, the products are so good that I have zero desire to “upgrade” (in some cases down grade with less P cores) via iterative chip releases. I think this is part of what you are saying here, and its a point well taken.
The last thing you forgot was architecture improvements. Changes to a chips cache and layout can create a huge improvement in performance even on the same node.
Allowing the CPUs better access to system memory via more lanes or faster ram also contributes heavily to speed gains.
That's a very comprehensive take on the current state of Apple laptops. Very enjoyable, information packed video. These keep me subbed as I get older and spec dumps and reviews lose their interest. Keep up the great work!
The main hope I have from competition isn’t new MacBook form factors (thought it’d be nice); it’s more realistic (read: cheaper) storage and RAM upgrades. The fact Snapdragon Elite uses NVMe over PCI should prove that Apple’s soldered-on SSDs don’t have any advantage; maybe they’ll use standard connectors, at least in Pro machines.
I agree with you! I also hope Snapdragon Elite X chips won't be hamstrung with non-upgradable RAM and storage. Why does that leave me with the sinking feeling...that that's EXACTLY what Qualcomm will do? Heaven forfend! 🤣🤣
Doesn't apple already support pci-e on their desktop mac pro with arm chips. Also thunderbolt is also over pcie if I'm not wrong. They just chose to hinder any upgrades.
@@jimcabezola3051i think RAM will be soldered due to the current speed and trace length limitation of ddr5, let's hope that new dell standard for ram gets better adoption. but no reason storage needs to be soldered.
@@kushagranayyar3960 Yes, you're right... I'm afraid you're right. The traces to a DIMM would be prohibitively long and slow. But...let's not make a base system contain LESS than 32GB, okay? 🤣🤣
@@kushagranayyar3960 The present Mac Pro's PCIe support is only a baby-step in the right direction, yes. They need to go much further, though.
My man explaining chips in a Castro style 😂
I’m a 3D Motion artist and for the past few years I have been rocking a M1 Max MBP for most of my Adobe type work, but maintaining a high end Intel/Nvidia workstation for 3D/GPU rendering. I would LOVE an beefy M4 Ultra laptop with adequate airflow and a higher TDP. My stupid 13900ks + 3090 Ti has awful power consumption, 4090s were mostly not worth the price tag and would have required a bigger case than my already large one, and keeping up two machines is annoying. And I like having a portable workstation. I would like it if I could add more internal secondary NVMe storage, of course.
Jony Srouji gave a very rare forward looking hint a few months back in an interview, mentioning that with node shrinks slowing down, advanced packaging was the future of advancement. Supply chain research out of Taiwan also said there were higher orders for advanced packaging expected to come from Apple. And then add the last clue where M3 Max didn't have the Ultrafusion bridge to make an Ultra out of 2 of them. I wonder if the M4 line will introduce tiles, allowing different parts to be made on different nodes. Particularly IO and caches haven't been shrinking well and there's benefits to this approach, and also different nodes are better suited to either CPUs or GPUs or low power IO etc.
The benefits there mainly come down to costs, and I dont think Apple is super concerned with that just yet. They can just raise the price and people will pay it. Plus the base M dies are still quite small(~150mm²) so continuing to more or less just glue dies together with their developed interlinks seems to still be good enough for a while. Though it's possible that perhaps for the Max/Ultra designs, they could start thinking about a more chiplet approach sooner.
Is today Fidel Castro's birthday?
Give him a cigar lol
I dunno, let me ask my Humane Ai Pin. I’ll get back to you next week.
@@snazzythey should just connect it to people like the Amazon cashier. 😅
As a Cuban i have to say: is not funny 😢😅
Trudeau celebrates it every year. ¡Papi!
It's refreshing to see an Apple fan, who isn't brainwashed by brand loyalty!
that is not true since there are no brainwashed apple fans. that is a total myth created by haters
The thing about switching to ARM is that it would be and is much easier to do on Linux ... even with minimal support, you can have a full desktop experience running on a phone with a bit of tinkering and a while compiling.
I feel like what you mentioned in the end of the video is like what they’re doing with with vison pro because it has their silicon in it so they’re like taking that risk makes sense
switched to windows laptop with 64gb ram upgrade after using mac m1 8gb
Major fail
@@daytonaukpc9387 Depends on what they want to use it for
M1 MacBook Air is good enough for 90% of users. Incredible snappiness and crazy battery life.
Agreed. We got my high school daughter one of these after the price went down when the M2 Air was released. Fully expect the machine to last her thru college.
my dad has one and its nice
For these users, an iPad Pro/Air would be a better and more portable friendly option… I use my phone and tablet, WAY more than my laptop or desktop.
@@Jacked2theTs I am one of those users and no, iPad would not be "a better and more portable friendly option" since iPad ist locked down on OS Level and highly limited in terms of workflow compared to MBA.
lol no. The M1 MacBook Air is filled with microstutters, due to a 4 year old bug that hasn't been fixed yet. So, there's choppy scroling everywhere. It does have really great battery life, but that's about it
Never seen yiur channel before. But this was an awesome video. Thank you
One of the big problems for Apple is how well their M1 laptops still hold up today. Bought an M1 Max MacBook Pro (64GB RAM, 2TB SSD) in November 2023. At release, it would have cost over £4K ($5K), whereas I paid only £2K ($2.5K) for it. Nothing but positives from me so far. I've seen first-hand how poorly managed thermals can cause a laptop to degrade extremely quickly (cough... Razer), but with how efficient this device is I expect it to last for many years to come.
Darn, it would be so nice if M1+ machines supported egpus for local ML development workflows.
Yeah, pytorch and tensorflow are still very flaky on Apple silicon.
So we're just going to ignore that JLC Reverso on the wrist 🔥🔥
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one that noticed it! 😅
I guess Apple Watch started make him feel cheap
Good spot! Do those things really start at about $7000 USD? Yikes! Any idea what model he's wearing?
...snazzy!
Ngl that fan audio made me start looking around my room going “wheres that fan sound from, my phone doesn’t have a fan and my computer isnt turned on”
Do you also keep a gun next to your ancient printer
I use a MacBook M1 Max for music production. And even with 30-40 tracks in Logic Pro-X. I don’t hear the fan noise. This is a great feature for someone in music production .
I’m offended I’m not a normal person 😅
Welcome to reality buddy. No, 20 years ago isn't the 80's, and yes, snake on a Nokia was the best.
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@@VeritasVortex ¿¿¿
@@BeardyMike ???
@@magnomliman8114 ¿¿¿
For me, the otherwise boring MacBook hardware is ok, I just wish they developed macOS!
@Snazzy Labs Hey man I ran into a bit of an issue after typing in a terminal command I got from one of your other videos, wondering if you might know the fix? in terminal, I typed in % defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0; defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -int 0 ;killall Dock in order to make the dock show/hide faster. I liked it but decided I liked the default transition animation better so decided to set it back to default. I set it to 0.5 as you suggested. What happens now is the mouse pointer will bein the dock area for a few seconds before appearing and the transition animation is gone. It now just appears instantly after 2-3 seconds rather than smoothly coming up from the bottom. Do you know how I could fix this? I restarted the laptop and its still doing it , and the sliding up animation is gone and takes a couple seconds to appear even at 0.1-0.5
if your MBP is running that hot all day long then consider using a Studio or a better spec'd MBP because constant use at that heat is going to impact the lifespan of components of the laptop, and not just the SOC chips themselves, either.
My M1 Max Macbook Pro is still kicking ass as my work laptop
One of the best!
Finally someone pointed out Apple pay-to-win with TSMC for the whole time, and not pixie dust that makes the Apple M-series significantly faster in comparison to others.
That's not at all what was said, though. It's *an* advantage, but far from the only thing making these processors as good as they are.
@snazzy How does one go about acquiring one of those Snapdragon X Elites in the acrylic case?
These are the videos that make snazzy labs a unique channel. Keep going!
They hit thermal wall faster than we were able to forget that intel has this problem too.
It took Intel 40 Years to hit a Thermal wall. It has taken Apple 4 years to hit a thermal wall.
@@granttaylor8179 In what way did it take intel 40 years? For longer than I have been alive processors have needed cooling and been hitting temperatures upwards of 80c.
@@definingslawek4731it was only in 1992 that any form of passive cooling was needed
@@definingslawek4731 It has has only been since the 486DX2-66 of 1992 that any sort of passive cooling was needed on processor. Intel has been making processors for over 50 years. Apple has run into similar issues a lot sooner than Intel did. They cannot keep shrinking the die process as that has been done for the last 50 years and it is reaching the current limits.
@@definingslawek4731 truth
I own an m1 iMac and it sits mostly unused not because of the m1 but because of the awful Mac OS Sonoma.
whats your gripes about the OS?
You can downgrade!
@@exzld Beyond OG OSX and perhaps the next couple of major releases, each release takes a retrograde step in terms of usability. Originally: A lovely, clean, intuitive user experience for daily driving. Administrative features were all in sensible places - where you'd expect them to be. More recent iterations have had changes for the sake of change, made worse by nobbling some administrative features, as well as arbitrarily moving other admin features to random places for no good reason. Perversely, the biggest competition ("Windoze") have been progressively making their offering somewhat easier to administer.
@@baronvonschnellenstein2811 windows easier? no they are making same mistakes for years now
@@baronvonschnellenstein2811agreed. Imo High Sierra was the peak. Everything is downhill from there
I’m with you, the new form factors enabled by good arm chips will be sick! Down the line I could have an actual windows or linux phone with a nice slide out keyboard, one will do it. Add to that the plateau TSMC is bumping up against, reminds me of Intel five years ago.
My iMac i3, i5(?) was getting slow and as soon as the M1 Mini was announced I ordered one with 16 GB of RAM. It's still a brilliant little machine. Even ok for basic gaming. Now that we're on the topic of gaming... With Apple trying to get back into that market I'm pretty sure we can still expect some exciting announcements. From a tech point of view I'm curious of course but right now I don't need more power for anything that I'm doing.
“Napkin” math needs to be on a cocktail napkin from your local bar 😊
The real change will be when SSD reaches the speed of ram to not have to include ram anymore. A true unified memory would be data on ssd that is accessible from cpu/gpu.
That is unlikely to happen as the rate of improvement in RAM speed matches the rate for UFS speeds. Therefore, RAM is always likely to be much faster. I did some maths, and RAM was about 8X faster than NAND last year.
Only way this will ever happen is with improvements in Optane. Which Intel canned
The real change already happens in the server space with the X3D EPYC SKUs. They have 1 GB of L3 cache. L3 cache is two times faster than RAM and closer to the metal as well, since it's part of the CPU die. With that much cache, an EPYC CPU can just copy all the data to L3 instead of relying on RAM.
4:47 there is a 4th option. You can improve the algorithms inside the chip for more performance at the cost of more transistors
I think the correct market economics is what apple is already heading for: A high value ecosystem that we pay for means that we are not pushed to continually upgrade the hardware. this way, apple can continuously make great new hardware but not be to worried about planned obsolescence. iCloud keep us there and happy and ensures that apple doesn't need us to switch once a year. That's why these M1s (which I am typing from) and the subsequent chips are incredible in their own right and last a long time without the need to constantly change.
i am convinced that when widows fully moves to ARM with a chip that is as even powerfull as M2, apple will be screwed.
Windows hasn’t even fully moved to 64-bit, something Apple did about 8+ years ago (I think) so I wouldn’t hold your breath. The M10 will be out by then …
6:51 N3B, not N3E.
I have a 14 inch M3 Max laptop -When I have too many Notion windows open the fan starts up, which was a bit of a shock for me.
Watching this on my M1 MacBook Air. When I got it in 2020 it was faster than my gaming laptop (at least with VS Code) with a battery that lasted longer than my fanless Pixelbook Go. Truly amazing.
I own M1 MBA and MBP. They run beautifully.
cap
The fact that the other brands are catching up with Apple is a good thing... Can`t wait.
Non upgradable or not I would not change my Macbook air for anything, for one thing the sound is phenomenal, as is the battery life.
Do you know if Google is working on a Pixel book with the emerging Snapdragon X Elite?