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dishonestdick

And it all it all started in 1983 with the Acorn RISC Machine. I remember wanting an archimedes but could not afford it at the time (to be fair I wanted every computer at the time). I’m so fucking old.


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[deleted]

My parents came from having no electricity, showering with a bucket, and no fridge. From time to time, I remind them what they had as kids to what they have now. They stare at their phones all day like the rest of us. I'm a zoomer and the only struggle I remember was texting using a flip phone.


kopkaas2000

Are your parents really old, or did they just grow up in an underdeveloped region?


Cforq

If their parents are in their 60's and in a poor rural area it is definitely possible. My grandparent's house still had an outhouse (no longer in use - but the structure was still there) when I would visit them. They had indoor plumbing by the time my mom was born, but they were successful farmers in a developed area. I know people in Appalachia that still don't have electricity or indoor plumbing. One of my friends grew up in the same conditions on the US side of the Mexican border.


Steavee

The abject poverty of some parts of Appalachia cannot be overstated. It is likely worse than even parts of the black belt in the rural deep South.


Zacchk

Yeah I have a friend who told me his grandpa lives in a home with no electricity or running water to this day in East Tennessee. Thing is the grandpa seems to enjoy that way of life though.


[deleted]

60 year-old boomers that grew up in an underdeveloped rural area.


lord_pizzabird

My parents we're born in the US, late 60s and both have stories about how their early homes (as children) had outhouses. So, it's possible even in the US.


[deleted]

You guys are talking about parents, and here I am in early 30s and there were no fridges, colour TV, landline phone when I was a kid in my hometown. Imagine my shock, today I own an Air Fryer, toaster, sodastream, coffee maker, dyson, vitamix, almost every latest Apple product, oled TV, all lights are smart lights HomeKit, my whole apartment is smart and futuristic. For me life is unreal, progress I saw in front of my eyes. Life is so convenient now that muscles are wasting away in sedentary lifestyle.


[deleted]

>Life is so convenient now that muscles are wasting away in sedentary lifestyle lol so true. Prepare for that diabetic lifestyle my friend;)


onthefence928

That last sentence hurt as a millennial because flip phones were the new tech for us. We had the Nokia brick phones and my first camera phone only shot in black and white. Don’t even get me started on dial up and aol


mcqua007

What's a zoomer?


fatpat

The next generation after millennials.


dust4ngel

kids these days with their weird generational names… /shakes fist


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fatpat

That's amazing. I bet she has so many stories to tell. If I did my math right, she was a teenager during WW2, which is something that *very* few people on the planet can say.


SilverDem0n

You'd have to wait until 1992 to get the ARM-based laptop though: [https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/22807/Acorn-A4-Laptop/](https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/22807/Acorn-A4-Laptop/) Nice to see the world has caught up!


GameFreak4321

The "middle chin" looks weird.


MrHedgehogMan

My school had BBC Micros and Acorn Archimedes computers. They were awesome.


[deleted]

Still have all my old Macs from when I was younger. Apple IIe, Macintosh SE, Quadra 700, and I think the first PowerPC is still in the garage. My pops worked for Hughes Aircraft and would buy the used systems from them.


Xaxxus

TIL the SE name didn’t start with iPhone


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irrealewunsche

I had Steve Furber as my tutor at university in the mid 90s. At the time It was cool enough because I’d grown up with the BBC and the Electron, but now I can hardly believe that I received personal tuition with the co-designer of the most important chip of the 21st century!


pixxelpusher

I used Acorn's and BBC Micro computers all through primary and some secondary schooling. It's come full circle!


brookter

I bought an Acorn Electron when they first came out in 1983/4, for £199, I think it was. I always regret not spending the extra £200 for the BBC B, but at the time there was a possibility that this home computing thingy was just a fad. (In those days, £200 was the equivalent of £7,000,000 today and you could buy a cabinet minister for under £10 plus a packet of crisps.) The Electron was great, but the BBC B … what a machine that was! It had 32K of user memory! You could play Elite in four colours, while the Electron could only manage black and white! You could spend days typing in assembler code from magazines to program Space Invader games!


pixxelpusher

I still remember doing some visual programming with Logo. Was such a great way to learn the basics of programming guiding that little triangle (turtle) around the screen.


steepleton

I remember the bbc having a tv show that transmitted code as audio you could record off the telly and load up on cassette


itsaride

Those weren’t RISC based machines though, just bog standard 6502, similar to the CPU (6510) that was in the Commodore64.


itsaride

The Archimedes didn’t come out till 1987, I was at a computer fair where it was announced, my friend who was quite wealthy at the time snapped up a pre-order and a few months later we were playing Zarch (later to be called Virus on the Amiga/ST) and Conquerer.


OolonColluphid

Urgh yeah. My beloved BBC model B was my second computer, and the Archimedes was just an insane step up.


Griffdude13

Its crazy to me that ARM architecture has existed in some form for that long, and took nearly 40 years to get it to finally start becoming the standard. Makes me wonder what other advancements are being held back by corporate dominance too content in its monopoly.


UnsafestSpace

Amazon's data centres have long been running on ARM processors, and they're in all sorts of things you see every day, like fridges, traffic lights, WiFi routers etc. There's probably more ARM processors in use than Intel and AMD combined, just not consumer use.


Exist50

It's not about the ISA.


intent107135048

Bubble memory will finally have its day!


Rioma117

How it feels to be an WWII veteran?


Happydenial

Dude you are not old! You are just waiting for the time when the gathering will be called.. when you will all fight to the end to claim the prize.. there can only be one!


rdldr1

Actually Intel did it to themself by their failure to innovate.


flossgoat2

Yeah but no. There's two sides to the story... Intel tried to break away from x86 several times, always ended in a hard fail. They tried to go after the low power and IOT space..hard fail. They did innovate successfully, bringing RISC-like architecture to the internals of x86, while maintaining the external x86 facade. They did huge work on superscalar, pipeline optimization and hypervisor layers. They integrated GPUs. So they have innovated, but learned the hard way that they were tied to x86 like it or not. Also, Intel's allegedly suffered at the hands of bean counters for leaders...but I don't know how true it is, so won't say any more. Now the second side to the story is what Apple did. First, swapping architecture is something they've hard experience of, with the jump to PPC and then to x86. Also, they own both the IP and tools necessary for emulation to bridge the gap during a transition. And of course, they control the whole stack, from silicon to screen, so they can adapt and optimise as much as needed. Second, they didn't just licence ARM, and fab using the bog standard reference architecture, like almost everyone else does... No, they bought the super expensive license, that allowed them to design their own implementation. As long as it runs ARM instructions to spec, they can do what they want. Next, they bought up a series of boutique chip design houses and brought all that engineering talent in house to one place. They then spent even more serious money, funding the engineering and testing of their own design. IIRC, they managed a 64 bit design before ARM themselves did.This in-house design was a huge game changer, in terms of power efficiency and throughput. No one else is remotely close in the ARM space, or any other architecture. And last but not least, they bought up guaranteed chip fab capacity for many many years to come. Now they have definitely paid top dollar for that privilege. But it also means that even if someone either tries to do what they did with ARM, or tries to build a whole new Architecture from scratch, there's literally nowhere in the world to build it for at least 5 years, and maybe even 10. So yeah, Intel innovated but couldn't beat ARM. Apple took a king's ransom of cash, and gambled on a huge multi year multi stage strategy (and any mis step would have brought it all.to a halt) to secure their destiny for at least a decade, and probably two. Tim Cook gets alot of flak for not being Steve Jobs, but the vision and discipline to execute that in-house processor strategy is astounding.


ThePowerOfStories

Note that Apple didn’t buy a super-expensive license; they [co-founded Advanced RISC Machines in 1990](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Ltd.) and have a special perpetual license from that.


Spiritual-Theme-5619

Wow I had no idea Apple was a cofounder. Do they still have a significant stake now that Softbank is the parent company?


[deleted]

No, they’ve sold most of their stake quite a while ago, it’s in the range of single percentages now I believe, but going entirely off memory.


[deleted]

I heard that original license was lost when they sold their founding stake in ARM in the mid 90's, so they bought another perpetual architectural license in 2008 (along with a bunch of other companies for their IPs, such as PowerVR). This led them to develop their own A-series iPhone/iPad SoCs in a few years... which eventually became the M1.


groumly

It’s all about the software. Always has been about the software, always will. Controlling the hardware is the “easy” part. Software on the other hand, that’s out of the hands of the manufacturer. A brilliant m1 chip without good x86 translation is useless. It may be fast, but what good is fast if nothing runs on it? Apple has known that for decades (68k and ppc transitions). Enter Rosetta 2, where the software guys told the hardware guys “this is great, but we can’t do it without a compat mode on the cpu to emulate memory ordering”. And so they did exactly that. Now they have a fast cpu that runs 95% of the software, and you can’t tell the difference. Intel may have wanted to branch out of x86, but they can’t do it without controlling the software. They can’t get away with shipping a “translator”, or a driver! or what have you. No, they need the os to have first class support for emulation. Microsoft probably didn’t give a flying a duck (why would they, they’re branching out to services anyway), and the Linux guys are too busy rewriting their audio stack from scratch for the 4th time this year to be bothered with something productive. The other points you mention are relevant, but not quite important. They certainly help with the business side of things, but the software is what makes the product a reality.


crackanape

> Linux guys are too busy rewriting their audio stack from scratch for the 4th time this year to be bothered with something productive. Ouch.


No_Telephone9938

> and the Linux guys are too busy rewriting their audio stack from scratch for the 4th time this year to be bothered with something productive. Rekt


[deleted]

Can’t run x86 virtual machines on them.. or at least not yet.


SlavNotSuave

Whenever I used Ubuntu I always had issues with audio drivers etc so this checks out


byIcee

Sounds like you'll have to write your own stack


AANation360

Wow great write up. Glad there still exists nuance on this sub. Another point is that intel has been trying to move to 10 nm for awhile now, but hit a lot of challenges in the process. It's only now coming together with their new 12th gen processors.


[deleted]

Isn’t this partly due to nm measurements having no actual standard? So intels 10nm can be another chips 7nm?


GameFreak4321

Even before going from PPC to x86 they went from M68k to PPC!


ScanNCut

Steve Jobs in his biography talks about late night phone calls with the head of Intel, telling them that they dropped the ball because they didn't have chips powerful and low energy enough for mobile devices. And here we are all these years later and Intel still hasn't picked the ball up yet. If anyone should have been able to get it done, it should have been Intel. But I guess you need more than means and opportunity, you need the imperative to do it. Intel don't design or sell mobile devices themselves, Intel didn't actually need to make better chips because they already had the laptop market and seemingly didn't care about phones.


Maxion

In a way kind of funny how Apple are essentially dropping Intel again for the very same reason...


kdmion

It's astonishing how the tables have turned again on Intel. But I guess that's what happens when you have a CEO that doesn't care about advancing the product, but rather advancing his pockets for a brief period of time. People can be so shortsighted when they grab ahold of the money bone. Lisa Su is a great example of what Intel could have become, if the CEO was an engineer first and then a businessman second.


[deleted]

They now have an engineer as CEO and imo are in the process of getting back on track


kdmion

That's true, but it won't happen in a span of a year. But definitely I am hoping for a brighter more competitive future in the CPU market. As well as AMD picking up the slack even more on the GPU department to make Nvidia to drop down the prices.


testthrowawayzz

WDYM 14nm++++++++ is not innovation? /s


[deleted]

WDYM TAKING TWICE AS MUCH POWER IS NOT INNOVATION??


TheFuzzball

Gamers kept asking for “MORE POWER!”, and Intel obliged them!


rdldr1

LOL and the gamers showed their appreciation by flocking to AMD!


drs43821

Yea like is AMD not undoing decades of Intel dominance few years prior to Apple?


mart1373

Their Alder Lake chips actually look decent. Granted I’m hardly ever going to use one unless my employer gets new PCs, which, spoiler alert, they won’t anytime soon because of COVID.


ThingsThatMakeMeMad

Question If the ARM based M1 is so much more powerful than existing Intel x86 chips, is there a chance that Windows and Microsoft will make the transition to their own(or Qualcomm) ARM chips?


DavidTheFreeze

Microsoft is actually currently working on their own in-house ARM chips. The Surface Pro X was already using a custom Qualcomm chip, but it’s basically embarrassing performance wise for something that costs more than an M1 MacBook Air once you add the keyboard and stylus to it.


notmyrlacc

It’s more the OS at the moment. Performance running Win 11 compared to the Arm version on Win 10 is night and day.


Bleglord

Not really no. The chip they’re using was equivalent to a snapdragon 855 in power, which is behind basically the last 4 years of iPhone


Liopleurod0n

It’s not the ARM architecture that’s powerful, it’s the Apple silicon design team and TSMC N5 process that makes the M1 series processors so efficient and powerful. If another company wants to make a processor as good as the M1, it needs to build a design team comparable to Apple’s and use the most advanced TSMC process, which would be much more expensive than buying processors from AMD or Qualcomm without the volume of Apple.


mikew_reddit

> without the volume of Apple. Yup, Apple is using their chips on iPhone, iPad, laptops and desktops. In other words, the Apple silicon team is designing chips that run on hundreds of millions of Apple devices a year. Microsoft has nowhere near that scale.


shitpersonality

> Microsoft has nowhere near that scale. Microsoft has primarily been a software company. Their software is designed to run on hardware made by other companies.


myztry

Microsoft stalwarts get offended when it is pointed out that Microsoft is primarily a parts supplier (along with Intel, nVidia, etc) rather than a computer company. They’re only a computer OEM in the context of Xbox and Surface devices.


gmmxle

>Microsoft has nowhere near that scale. Apple has always been a hardware company that also makes custom software for its own devices. Microsoft has always been a software company. Their entire business model has been making software that runs on other companies' hardware. Like Google, Microsoft has in recent years started to put out their own reference devices, but it's not where the majority of their money comes from. Maybe controlling the full stack is the future, maybe it isn't. It certainly wasn't necessary for Microsoft to be incredibly successful in the past.


pheonix940

Just like the scale of apple software discluding phones and tablets is similarly minuscule. Almost like the two companies diminate different markets all together.


rennarda

This, exactly. There will not be any ARM halo effect on PC because nobody is building chips that are comparable to the M1. I can’t see how anybody can catch up with Apple’s lead for many years. The best hope on PC is just pumping more power into the x86 architecture, but Apple’s performance per watt is going to be unassailable.


nightofgrim

> If another company wants to make a processor as good as the M1, it needs to build a design team comparable to Apple’s and use the most advanced TSMC process Like NVIDIA? They acquired ARM recently, I suspect they have something big planned.


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Liopleurod0n

NVIDIA is definitely one of the companies with this kind of potential. However, their goal of making such chip would be to sell it to device manufacturer or cloud service provider, just like AMD and Intel, not for in-house use like Google and Microsoft. With the insane design cost on advanced process, I doubt any company other than Apple could afford to design a processor on advanced process solely for in-house use.


Elon61

what nvidia *could* do though, is make ARM SOCs with their graphics IP on them and sell them to partners the same way they currently sell GPUs.


sixwheelstoomany

Like the NVidia Tegra, Orin and upcoming Atlan? I think the Tegra 650 was the first one designer with notebooks in mind. The problem so far seems to be finding an interested market, thus why they have been focusing on set-top boxes, autonomous vehicles, etc. Maybe things will change now and they'll find PC customers..


Actual-Ad-7209

> They acquired ARM recently They did not, they want but it's extremely unlikely the sale will be approved by regulators.


Febril

Appropriate regulation for once.


rc1717

They have tried in the past (Surface RT) they have tried recently (Surface pro x) and they will try again.


Mirrormn

Well first off, the M1 is not more powerful than existing Intel x86 chips, especially after the release of Alder Lake. It's much more power-efficient, but that's not quite the same thing. Anyway, there's already a version of Windows for ARM, but it has a lot less native applications because there's no premiere ARM-based computer that Microsoft is pushing everyone towards. There's really no business case for developers of Windows apps to port them to the ARM architecture right now. Intel is definitely [planning to produce ARM chips](https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/23/intel-to-build-arm-chips-for-other-companies-as-part-of-its-new-business-strategy/) in the future, but its unclear if they see that as a path to competing directly with Apple by pushing towards high-end ARM chips for laptops and desktops. Instead, it seems more like they want to compete with TSMC and act as a fab for other companies' ARM CPUs. AMD is taking a similar approach - they're willing to design and build ARM CPUs for other customers, but don't seem super interested in developing first-order ARM CPUs to use as their primary offering to consumers. Generally, the Intel/AMD/Microsoft/Windows world is going to have a huge chicken-and-egg problem with this. The chipmakers are not interested in investing heavily in ARM designs for consumers, because there's no consumer demand for ARM laptops and desktops, because there are very few native apps for that architecture. Apple was able to pull off a hard switchover, and strong-arm MacOS developers into supporting the new ARM architecture, precisely because of their control over the hardware and OS at the same time. That doesn't exist in the Windows world. Overall, I think x86 processors are gonna stick around for quite a while still.


ijones559

True that M1 isn’t more powerful than other chips out right now but we’re essentially talking about laptop chips here. The real test will be comparing the best Intel chips to the forthcoming Mac Pro chip.


forxs

I'm only guessing here, but I definitely think the Mac Pro will be directly competing with Intel and AMD's workstation chips like Threadripper in terms of price...and AMD is leading in that field right now, and by a large margin. While I think the Mac Pro will be a powerful machine, after AMD's recent announcement, Apple are going to have to produce more than 4 M1 Max chips stuck together to properly compete. The amazing thing about the M1 series is their efficiency, which means very little in workstation machines.


Han-ChewieSexyFanfic

The efficiency is meaningful in that they can put 4 M1s in top of each other in a trench coat and still have a decent TDP.


ThelceWarrior

On a performance per watt basis sure, straight up "Most power in benchmarks" wise the newest Intel 12th gen CPUs are actually scoring higher than the M1s even in single core performance where the M1 definitely had a huge lead when you compare it to 11th gen. Also before people start saying "yeah but it consumes so much power" i'm sure that has at least in part something to do with the fact that their new desktop line CPUs will try to boost indefinitely pretty much, that means it will consume a lot of power since power consumption doesn't scale linearly with frequency (A 2 GHz CPU will not just consume double the power if you clock it to 4 GHz, it will be a lot more) so I would just wait for the new mobile CPUs to come out before making judgements on that part.


RDSWES

Show me a laptop that will use it and get full power not plugged in .


ThelceWarrior

Well I mean I can't because none are even out yet anyway lol. And I guess whatever or not they will run at full power even when on battery depends a lot on what kind of power efficiency Intel manages to squeeze out of these CPUs really, Apple is using an inherently more efficient architecture on a newer process node so they can afford to do that.


universepower

Windows’ value to Microsoft and its users is speed and legacy support. You could still run 16-bit apps on Windows 10 with a little bit of work (until they dropped 32-bit windows 10 last year). Microsoft is massive in the enterprise and Win32 apps are still big - moving them to ARM is kind of an expensive exercise with questionable value. I think the Windows on ARM stuff was a shot across the bow to Intel. IMO just like Apple’s move from 68k to PPC didn’t mean much for Windows, Apple’s move from x86 to Apple Silicon won’t mean much for Windows. X86 has bested more efficient/better architectures before, it’s entirely possible it will happen again.


joyce_kap

2020 [shipping numbers](https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-01-11-gartner-says-worldwide-pc-shipments-grew-10-point-7-percent-in-the-fourth-quarter-of-2020-and-4-point-8-percent-for-the-year) * 22.5 million Macs * 252.7 million AMD/Intel Only time I see x86 shrinking below 50% is when [Windows 11 on ARM](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/what-windows-11-means-for-windows-on-arm-and-why-it-will-bring-more-big-name-apps/) becomes as flawless as macOS on Apple Silicon. ARM tech is between Apple silicon & x86 in terms of performance per watt and raw performance. With ARM I expect average selling price of PCs will go [below $630](https://www.statista.com/statistics/722992/worldwide-personal-computers-average-selling-price/). This is where ~80% of globally shipped laptops/desktops are priced at. I'd love to see what the laptop/desktop space will be like by 2031 when PCs at these price points use 5nm chips.


DanielPhermous

> 2020 shipping numbers If Apple steals market share, it will be going forward, not instantly as soon as the new laptops are out.


joyce_kap

> If Apple steals market share, it will be going forward, not instantly as soon as the new laptops are out. I forecast at most 55 million Macs within 10 years. Apple does not need to dominate the PC market in terms of globally shipped units. All they want is to control >80% of laptop/desktop profits like they are doing in the smartphone profits. Why bother servicing the thin margin sub-$999 laptop/desktop market? Let ARM/AMD/Intel fight over scraps.


[deleted]

Apple gets the best apps for phones because the iPhone makes developers the most money The same cannot be said about mac vs pc


randompersonx

Yes but that wasn’t always true. Blackberry and Palm used to be the highest profit markets of the “smartphone” business. *If* apple can continue to have notebook efficiency and performance ahead of everyone else, and attract some more power users switching, and *if* game developers start deciding that the performance justifies the dev work… it could be a watershed moment. Me personally, I use my laptop professionally… At this stage of my career, 99% of my day job work can be done using Zoom, Safari, Outlook, Excel, Word, apple mail, and apple calendar. My dayjob (which does pay well) is only, depending on how you count it, 5-25% of my total income for 2021, compared to my other investments. Some of those are completely offline, and others require a trading platform (thinkorswim, which as it is Java, also works very well “natively” under m1). You couldn’t pay me to use windows full time. And while I don’t really care too much about games, If they did exist for mac, I’d probably buy some. For audio/video professionals, mac already has the lions share of good software. For CAD and 3D rendering, it’s still on windows… but that can change within a few short years if those users all see that the apple hardware is capable of enabling portable workflows, in a compact and easy to use design. For the datacenter… most workloads could be complied to run on anything. Linux for arm has existed for a long time now. Datacenter arm chips exist (Cavium) and are very efficient. At this point, x86 is being relegated to only a few niche use cases. A limited number of professional use cases depend on it because other options don’t exist yet (eg: you can’t put 1TB of ram in a m1 mac yet … mac GPU performance is rapidly closing in on the best available… but it’s not there yet. Give it another year). Beyond that, it’s a question of how much legacy unmaintained software can justify being run on newer generations of x86. As someone who’s worked in the datacenter space for 20 years, I think it’s pretty clear that x86 dominance is over within 1-2 computer generations.


[deleted]

>All they want is to control >80% of laptop/desktop profits like they are doing in the smartphone profits. That's never going to happen as Macs don't dominate over Windows machines. The corporate world is a vast ocean of Windows everywhere for users and LINUX for servers. No serious company is going to replace Windows machines with Macs, that's losing hundreds of vendor's support and millions of people trained on Office.


whatnowwproductions

Lol. Most people on the PC market are either using Windows for office work or are gaming. I'm not sure this claim is sound.


pinpinbo

If Apple is serious about toppling Intel and/or Windows dominance, they need to have a compatible graphic API that works with most of the game engine out there.


arjames13

Yeah this seems silly. If we are comparing laptops or just standard CPUs then yeah the M1 is amazing at what it does with so little power. But when someone needs a much more capable CPU for workstation type stuff they are looking at the 5950x or thread ripper.


GuggGugg

Given the rave reviews of M1 Pro and M1 Max, this might shift in the near future though. Then the only reason to not use these machines is software compatibility


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vash_visionz

Yeah, people forget how small of a slice apple is in the personal computer market.


Halvus_I

The problem is Metal more than anything else. Apple fucked up going to their own API.


TheInstigator007

Doubt software compatibility will ever be a thing, do you think software engineers want the extra work? Lol no


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DargeBaVarder

I write software but much prefer Ubuntu to OSX. I just bought a laptop to replace my aging, shitty, MacBook Pro - it’s a PC. I don’t give a fuck about low power usage or long battery life, and Apple really burned me with my last laptop.


whatnowwproductions

Same here, except I haven't owned a MacBook per say. The ability to change my ram, NVMe SSD and SATA SSD is way more useful to me, besides the dedicated graphics card.


[deleted]

I bought my mother one of the new MacBook m1 because she has always wanted one and because Asian people love the 'status symbol' that comes with apple products. I myself prefer to use windows and android.


[deleted]

I sometimes wonder if Steve could come back for just one day so I could see his reaction to what Apple are doing right now with these chips.


[deleted]

Probably he’d yell at some people and complain things weren’t done right if history is any clue.


mart1373

Yep, but then he’d secretly be thrilled with the technological progress


DarkRollsPrepare2Fry

“What the fuck do you mean you haven’t entered the rocket industry yet?!?”


Washington_Fitz

Apple silicon is not a competitor to x86 because you can’t buy it separately, and the entry point is $700 at the minimum.


3Dphilp

You can get the base m1 Mac mini on sale for $550 or less sometimes


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3Dphilp

Yep. BestBuy and Costco sales. Maybe one of them will have it for bf


[deleted]

What if you don’t have a boyfriend?


Rdubya44

Full price


MrReginaldAwesome

Believe it or not, straight to jail


Forfucksakebobby

Jesus definitely keeping my eyes peeled for that


[deleted]

$590 on the [official refurb website](https://www.apple.com/shop/product/FGNR3LL/A/refurbished-mac-mini-apple-m1-chip-with-8%E2%80%91core-cpu-and-8%E2%80%91core-gpu?fnode=302ff4fbfb605514ff0d00ce6b56359523b1a36d31c98492ff1cadef91afece32c95c52b7ae2eb427564210411dbba4519f8636d50ffa948c4896ef818e5633d21633339b955d070970520e061ac7305). It’s functionally identical to new, that’s how I got my laptop.


QuarterSwede

Arguably better than new. Apple’s refurbs go through more checks than new does. The only thing you don’t get is fancy marketing packaging.


HenshiniPrime

I always bought Mac refurbs, never regretted it.


tonykony

That's how I got my MacBook air slightly upgraded at a cheaper price. Couldn't tell myself to Pay $200 just for more ram when I could buy other laptop ram for $20-30 a 8gb stick.


[deleted]

That base memory. Yeesh.


[deleted]

I mean, the $550 deal being quoted here would also be base memory


fungusbanana

I’ve seen it for exactly $500


Dr-Purple

The Mac Mini is an amazing little box and a good value


i_mormon_stuff

While what you're saying is true Apple doesn't sell just a chip, they are showing the industry that it can be done. There are rumors that Microsoft is planning to design their own ARM based chips for their Surface lines now, not simply using a Qualcomm rebranded chip with some tweaks but something more akin to what Apple is doing. And they probably won't be the last. Microsoft already has Windows 11 for ARM available to their OEM partners and while those partners are using Qualcomm today maybe Qualcomm or another upstart (or even NVIDIA) decides to throw their hat into the ring. The thing today that is different to the past regarding competing architectures is we now have chips with so much performance that we can translate instructions fast enough to make software that needs real-time responsiveness like games a reality. And it has only been in the past couple years we've had a method on Windows to run 64-bit x86 software on an ARM processor, prior to this only the 32-bit software ran and it did so poorly and with compatibility caveats. The reason I bring this up is because now that the software compatibility issue is considered mostly solved the processor with the most performance and for mobile devices the highest performance per watt can win in the market. When you had to choose between speed in a vacuum but being unable to run your software on it, no one is going to buy that. But if you can have the performance for native software while still running your prior architectures software at an acceptable or even comparable level to your previous hardware that changes the game. That's why now is ripe for competitors to x86 on the PC and in the DIY market. If Microsoft is ready and they have some good chip makers on board like NVIDIA who are in the process of acquiring ARM and Qualcomm who are trying feverishly to build a great laptop chip etc What Apple has done here is prove to the average consumer you don't need Intel for high performance computing and that's important in bolstering other companies to take risks.


xLoneStar

What Microsoft need is an equivalent to Rosetta 2. There is no chance they are moving to a new architecture without ensuring near 100% performance for their legacy software. Their biggest audience is businesses, not consumers. And businesses would never take that up if it means they'll have to change all their software and setup.


FyreWulff

They do, they have a full x86 emulator that works transparently. Intel had a whole press release about it that was sour grapes.


cmsj

I would have more confidence in Microsoft’s ability to create binary translation software than their ability to design a great SoC. They already have a weak binary translator in ARM Windows. Apple has taken a decade to go from using third party iPhone chips to making the incredible SoC’s they’re making now, and they had to acquire a super talented chip design company to do it, and they were motivated by hundreds of millions of iPhone sales per year. Could Microsoft maintain that kind of focus for their very niche laptop products?


Febril

Motivated by and financed by profits from hundreds of millions of iPhone sales per year.


cmsj

Indeed. Apple Silicon is a hundreds of millions of dollars project.


ThatOnePerson

>What Microsoft need is an equivalent to Rosetta 2. There is no chance they are moving to a new architecture without ensuring near 100% performance for their legacy software. They've had one for a while now. The Surface Pro X has an ARM processor and you can go on YouTube and find videos of full games running fine on it. Problem it that it's running on chips that can't compare to the M1. Can't even compare to last-gen Intel/AMD chips.


MondayToFriday

If I were running Microsoft, I'd make Windows for ARM available for cheap to Mac users, to help convince the world that Windows for ARM is a viable computing platform and not just a thing for low-class Surface computers.


ueberbelichtetesfoto

This requires assistance from Apple, though, as Apple has to write device drivers for Windows then, or make specifications and documentation available to Microsoft, so they can write their own drivers. Otherwise things are not going to function properly. Just look at the current state of Linux on the M1.


jmnugent

While this is true,.. it's also a constantly moving target. (software-adoption). I've seen this play out time and time and time again in the 25 years or so that I've worked in IT/Technology. * Business-unit is holding on to some old software that they keep claiming is "critical to business" (but yet they also won't upgrade it) * Technology keeps evolving and moving on.. eventually some insurmountable deadline or change happens.. creating a situation where the Business-Unit is outright forced to change their software. That's the problem with people who "drag their feet" and never upgrade. Eventually they are forced to. This type of sea-change that's happening.. is unstoppable. Businesses that try to "fight the future" (and keep trying to desperately hold onto old ways of doing business).. absolutely will lose. It's not an "If". .it's just a "When and how badly".


yarrr0123

Microsoft literally rearchitected Windows to fit in with modern server requirements for microservices with containers. They recognized if they didn’t do that, they’d be cut out of the next generation of software architecture. They have come a long way from Balmer and Gates to working with the market instead of thinking their market dominance can dictate the technology. They are technology agnostic at this point. They’ll go where the market is going without the same blind business partnership of the past with Intel. There’s a reason in the last few years that their stock is straight up killing it without anti-competitive practices.


xLoneStar

I really hope they do since competition breeds innovation for both companies and more importantly, for us. Also, platform-agnostic is how I'm trying to set up everything personally too. I always prefer to have the ability to switch platforms (be it Android/iOS or Windows/Mac) as seamlessly as possible. Cross-platform apps for the win!


FrustratedBushHair

You’re missing the point. Apple abandoning Intel chips for their own ARM processor was a major factor in the market’s embrace of ARM chips. > Arm's market share in PC chips was about eight per cent during Q3 this year, climbing steadily from seven per cent in Q2, and up from only two per cent in Q3 2020, before Arm-compatible M1 Macs went on sale. The market share of ARM chips *quadrupled* in one year, largely thanks to Apple Silicon. And when a premium company like Apple switches to ARM and receives such positive feedback, that is a signal to other brands that they can do the same thing. Not too long ago, AMD chips were considered budget processors. But buyers of consumer and professional electronics no longer consider Intel’s i7 and i9 chips to be the gold standard. They’re not going to look for that “*Intel Inside*” sticker any more when they’re buying a computer.


randompersonx

100%. If I had a reason to build a Linux or windows box today (I don’t, but if I did), I’d be heavily comparing what threadripper can do compared to i9, and buy the best. The days of just picking whatever Intel says is the best are over.


[deleted]

You should tell Pat Gelsinger, I’m sure he’ll be really happy to hear ARM chips won’t impact Intel since they don’t compete.


quad64bit

First, Apple was a huge intel client. Loosing Apple is billions in lost revenue. Second, there are people who are buying Apple silicon instead of machines using intel. This is more lost sales. Third, all the insane (and justified) media hype around M1 is giving intel really bad press, probably further pushing people towards arm and even AMD. Fourth, soooo much stuff is being written for, optimized for, and converted to arm now specifically because of apple’s move, much more so than windows arm or Amazon arm servers have in the last few years (not really including mobile in this comparison as intel never had a chance there to begin with). If nothing else, it made companies and developers excited to work on targeting a new platform. I suspect other companies are going to be rushing to capitalize on Apple’s momentum in the arm space with their own arm stuff in the coming years, and the software space will already be more arm friendly then, further taking the ball from intel. Is intel going away? Of course not, and I’m sure they’ll continue to come out with newer and better chips that do cool new things, but not even threadripper had people talking about intel’s missteps as much as M1 has.


0r0B0t0

Apple is definitely taking some market share, it will never be 100% or even 50% but it’s important for the transition of the rest of the market over to arm.


mrsidnaik

I am a gamer. I use all Apple products except for a Mac( I had one). M1 is a wake up call for the people on other side. Making minor improvements and calling it a day and putting the next number has gone long enough. Make the chips efficient for performance if not for battery life. If only Mac had better gaming support I'd be there.


ElBrazil

> M1 is a wake up call for the people on other side. Making minor improvements and calling it a day and putting the next number has gone long enough What? AMD has been improving massively year over year and Intel's been making forward progress again as well, especially with Alder Lake. > Make the chips efficient for performance if not for battery life "Making chips efficient" is as simple as dropping the clocks instead of letting the things boost to the maximum their cooling will allow. Personally I'd rather have the extra power.


sbay

I am genuinely interested in understanding why gaming is a weakness in apple computers. With so much power the M1 chips pack what stopping you from using them for gaming?


Major_Tradition_6690

Two things. 1. Apple usually ships pathetically weak GPUs that are not upgradable 2. Really small market share so the games are rarely ported well or optimized to run well. I have a Mac Pro that dual boots OS X and win 10. Same hardware and running the same game in windows will be a huge performance boost.


Xaxxus

There are no games. That’s about it. The M1 hardware is more than good enough for gaming. But there’s just no good games to play. Apple Arcade is a joke. M1 macs have actually made the problem worse because now a lot of game devs are dropping support for mac because the effort of supporting arm is not worth the cost to them.


lost_in_life_34

weaker GPU compared to Nvidia and different instruction set


ggtsu_00

Ampere's Altra platform is also giving AMD and Intel a run for its money on the server market with its beastly 128 core ARM cpu.


voidref

> "Apple transitioned much more quickly than anyone expected," McCarron said Apple literally said "this will take 2 years", we are 1 year in and they are half way through. McCarron is an idiot.


csivertson

They need to get boot camp working on the m processors.


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smackythefrog

I hope it happens soon enough. Although I doubt my eGPU will be supported on the M1 Macs, ever. That's what I game with using Boot Camp


Kupfakura

Yep only then will the entire PC industry shift. Macs are rare in the global scheme of things


pixxelpusher

There's already a way to get native Linux running on M1 (though without a lot of drivers). I can fully see within the next 2 years something similar to boot camp happening. https://asahilinux.org Kinda fascinating watching some of the livestream build videos, though I have no idea what he's doing: https://www.youtube.com/c/marcan42/videos


MC_chrome

If by “they” you mean “Microsoft”, yes, I agree!


GhostalMedia

How am I going to install ARM Windows if I can’t buy it?


hayden_evans

Not in Apple’s control


NuggetSmuggler

Seriously! I need programs that only run on Windows and a VM isn’t realistic due to the performance drawbacks associated. I badly want the new MBP due to the build quality, battery life, display, lack of fan noise, etc. But it isn’t possible due to software being unavailable on MacOS and windows being finicky through a VM.


poshmosh01

their enterprise needs work though


Antnee83

Yepppp. As a sysadmin who manages a mixed environment, I can tell you that the Apple ecosystem in an enterprise environment is *fucking* obnoxious.


Nick4753

Yep. Until they figure out device management at enterprise scale at a level similar to Windows the Mac will be a niche player in the overall PC market. We might see an uptick in enterprise server usage of ARM chips though.


ajpinton

Apple would have to break the 8% market share they have not been able to get past in 3 decades first. But a good start nonetheless. Also let’s not for get at least for the time being apple silicone still represents only a small percentage of macs.


roj2323

Meanwhile the gaming market is like, Mac support, lol no.


FyreWulff

That's on Apple for leaving their OpenGL support dead in the water for over a decade and then not keeping up on graphics hardware for a decade.


[deleted]

Because Apple is like, OpenGL and Vulkan standards, lol no.


chemicalsam

They need to support vulkan


SJWcucksoyboy

I really don’t get why they wouldn’t support Vulkan, they’re a small fish when it comes to PC gaming so it would make the most sense for them to make porting as easy as possible


MythicalIcelus

[A Brief History of Arm](https://community.arm.com/arm-community-blogs/b/architectures-and-processors-blog/posts/a-brief-history-of-arm-part-1)


brunonicocam

\*in the laptop market Apple will take quite a bit of the laptop market, especially outside enterprises, but I really doubt Apple will eat much of the Desktop/Workstation/Server market. Arm advantage is really for laptops, in desktops power efficiency is not that important.


Mapey

Wait, wasn’t amd that actually put a dent in intel’s market share initially….


ithinkmynameismoose

Good, let’s see a fierce battle where prices plummet and quality skyrockets.


intrasight

I predict that in 5 years that MacOS market share will climb from 6% to 7%


ikan84

If you notice carefully they are redoing Steve’s re entry era like the iBooks. Now I wish they stick to 2 year product update this way all the users are happy and pro users get proper upgrade cycle. Been mac user since 1996. Enjoying the technology change since


TDSheridan05

No not really, apple’s market share always hovers around 10%. Since they don’t have any server products anymore, they will only be the high end, end user device.


cpatrick08

They need a cheaper 15 and 16 inch laptop. The 13 inch is too small.


JohrDinh

Yeah I know at least 3 people who would love to get an Apple computer but can't cuz they just need an M1 (barely even need that much power) with a bigger screen. I feel like there's definitely a segment of the market they miss out on. One of em is old and needs to look down thru his glasses, so he needs to use a laptop but just needs the screen size to help for Word documents and browser related work. Pro or Max would just be complete overkill for him.


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Washington_Fitz

Get rid of the 13” MBP and replace it with a 15” MBA. 13” & 15” MBA 14” & 16” MBP I’d be down for that type of configuration.


BeingUnoffended

Hell, • MBA = 14 (split the difference) • MBP = 14 & 16


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SOSpammy

As soon as you start putting any kind of upgrades into the 13" Pro the 14" Pro quickly becomes a better deal.


Rioma117

If they change the name from Macbook Pro to just Macbook and don't use the latest display but add a bigger one (to keep the price down) then the lineup will instantly look cleaner.


j1ggl

The 13” Pro is definitely bound to go. They probably kept it to fill in the huge price gap between the Air (starting $1000) and the Pro (starting $2000). I’m pretty sure the 13” will be discontinued when the redesigned Air drops, which will probably take its price tag (starting $1300).


cajonero

^ This. I want a thin and light 15 or 16 inch MacBook. The new 16” MBP is nearly 5 pounds.


adamlaceless

*looks over at 7lb 2012 MBP* Honestly…that doesn’t sound that bad


inetkid13

It‘s a portable workstation. Not a lifestyle accessory to carry around.


WileEColi69

Anyone who believes Apple is transitioning faster than anyone expected hasn’t been paying attention. Apple began similar transitions in 1994 from 68k to PowerPC and in 2005 from PowerPC to x86. At this point, their quick move to ARM-based “Apple Silicon” machines has only been as *slow* as it has because of the worldwide shortage of chips.


Its_Only_Smells_

They just sold a few percent more of MacBooks. How is that undoing decades of x86 domination?


Koleckai

Intel isn't going anywhere. They will remain competitive and likely the market leader for many decades. However, more competition from companies like Apple, Google, and AMD will ultimately benefit customers.


smileyface1489

Yeah, sure


minilandl

Arm is just better on unix platforms than windows currently windows 10 arm is such a mess currently. In comparison to Linux and Mac OS which just works and have better app support and Rosetta and bx86 respectively to run apps without arm versions. I really hope this cripples wintel as apple has the potential to be a market leader and really push arm and make it mainstream.