Jeremy Reimer has an amazing 3 part article on the history of the ARM processor. It is excellent and as in depth as all their articles tend to be.
Since all of Apple’s machines except the Intel MacPro are based on ARM this is an important history for any hard core Apple User.
So of course Apple is moving to the M1 processor for all of it’s computers, moving away from intel. This is the 3rd hardware switch Apple has made, from it’s initial motorola processors, to power pc, to the ARM based M1 processors. And while the current M1 is very fast, but not a pro processor, especially with shared graphics and normal ram and a limit of 16 GB of total RAM.
For everyone sticking with Apple this will eventually mean new hardware to move to M1 from Intel, though for a few years at least Apple will continue to support Intel hardware.
The hidden cost though, that is something different, and for a professional editor or motion graphics artist the hidden cost is plugs-ins.
Plug-ins can be an expensive investment, but can really help your workflow and speed things up and let you do things that couldn’t do without them. And the move to M1 will certainly be a paid upgrade, even for those still on Intel hardware. And those plugs in upgrades can cost hundreds, and over the upcoming period there are going to be a lot of upgrades to M1.
And while DaVinci and Final Cut Pro X already run on M1’s and the Premiere Pro Beta runs on M1, to get your old plug-ins to run you have to run them via Rosetta 2, which means running the Intel based versions of the host software to get the plug-ins working. And that is going to mean running the software slower through emulation, and could cause many issues and add more stability issues.
Now of course subscription based plug-ins will have the price included in the subscription, but the lack of more money for the upgrade might mean a lot longer before they upgrade to M1, even if it should mean they should upgrade sooner since you are already paying monthly or yearly for the software.
And yes the fact that our Intel Hardware will last a few more years with upgrades means that the upgrades will happen over a few years, so we can pay it, but for me it is a lot of plug-in upgrades, that will be followed by an expensive hardware upgrade to whatever form Pro M1 Macs take.
And of course their will be the exceptions, companies that treat their customers correctly and will upgrade to the new architecture without charging anything. One such company is RE:Vision Effects, which I got an e-mail from and they are developing M1 versions of the current versions of all their plugs ins. And have already released OpenFx and Twixtor M1 betas for FXPlug versions and RSMB for FXPlug is next.
So one of the things Apple released yesterday, was there new 24” inch iMac in up to 7 colors like the iMac was originally. And this is an impressive and thin Machine, at only 11.5 mm thicks, wow!
And with the impressive performance of the M1 chip and a beautiful 4.5 K 24” display thus will be an impressive machine for many users, though it is obviously not meant for pros, and especially the $1299.00 base Machine which only has 2 thunderbolt/ USB 4 ports and unlike it’s bigger brothers doesn’t include gigabit ethernet on the power block (and a pro machine would have 10 GB ethernet).
The higher end machines for $1499 and $1699 have one more gpu core and 2 usb 3 ports as well as the afore mentioned ethernet, and their magic keyboard includes touch id (which are also color matched to your machine), though one with a numberpad is an extra cost.
And the 16GB unified memory for both CPU snd GPU will be further hampered by the larger display, and lack of cooling fan for pro work.
I really look forward to seeing what the pro variant of the m1 chip is and if it has external graphics support, or even pci support. And any pro iMac will need to be thicker and have a fan, and maybe a bigger display.
Strangely this computer is so thin they couldn’t keep the headphone jack on the back and had to put it on the side, which is certainly easier to use.
I like that you can order one with a vesa mount instead of the included stand, since the stand doesn’t have height control. Maybe an iMac pro could include height control as well, as long as it doesn’t cost as much as the stand for the MacPro HDR display.
And with Final Cut Pro X and DaVinci working well on M1 Macs and Premiere having Beta support the future looks bright for M1 pro users, though it isn’t here yet. And an expensive plug in upgrade cycle to M1 support is certainly in our future.
Still for most users this should be an impressive machine, though why the chin? I know iMacs have had it for a while, but I would rather not have it and have the display edge to edge.
The wait to see the M1 Pro Chips is killing most pro users right now, but hopefully Apple is using the time wisely, and going to really blow us away with what they release.
This machine is really quite impressive, and many users will be very happy with it, but does anyone think it is weird to not have an Apple logo on the chin?
I can’t wait to see one, though with the pandemic that may be a while.
Apple has released it’s first 3 Macs with the M1 chip it is designing itself making for the 2nd processor transition in the history of the mac and the first ARM based Macs, now on the same platform as the ipad and iPhone.
Apple’s stats make it look really fast and the first benchmarks make it a very impressive machine and 3 of the fastest macs apple has every released.
Of course for now it is useless to me as Adobe software does not yet run or at least run well under Rosetta. Still the performance of Final Cut Pro sounds impressive and I love that the latest beta of DaVinci Resolve 17.1 runs on M1 Macs already. And Adobe has a beta of Photoshop out as well.
What scares me is the single thunderbolt channel and only 2 ports and the fact that it can’t run an external graphic card even with it’s thunderbolt port.
And what is even scarier for me is that the M1 shares it’s memory between the graphics card and the onboard memory. So you had better get the 16GB because you are sharing them with the video processing. If this continues you will need to really get more RAM on high end machines (which hopefully won’t top out at 16GB as the current machines do.
Still the processors do have impressive performance already so the higher end version will likely be very impressive.
And it is amazing that basically the MacBook Air is only different in a single GPU core being disabled, and the MacBook Pro and Mini having fans to cool the system down.
I look forward to what the truly pro Apple M1 Machines will look like, but I don’t look forward to the software update cost that will go along with it, and the software that will break and end up going by the wayside.
Apple upgraded the iMac today with new processors, all SSD (say goodbye to Fusion drives), up to 10 core 10th generation intel processors, AMD 5000 series graphics cards, and the option to have a matte finish for $500. They also got rid of the 8 core iMac Pro, making the bottom model 10 cores, to match the cores of the new top 5K. Still look the same, a new look will wait for Apple Silicon.
At Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference, the WWDC yesterday Apple announced that they will be moving all of their processors from Intel to Apple Silicon ARM processors in 2 years.
Rumors of this switch have been going on for years now, since Apple has been creating it’s own ARM processors for iPhones and iPads for the last 20 years. And it makes sense for their laptops for sure, since they use less power, and have better graphics than Intel’s low and mid range processors. It will mean more speed and more battery life for most laptops.
And they have brought back Rosetta which was used in the Power PC to Intel transition and showed it using Maya in their keynote. And Universal 2 will allow developers to compile versions for both Intel and Apple Silicon in a single binary. And they said Adobe is working on the transition already, so some software will certainly work, but what about other pro software, like AVID and DaVinci and all the plug ins.
My question has always been what will it mean for the high end pro market. And their are currently no high end ARM processors that match Xeon processors. And can they even support PCI cards? Hell the Dev box they are letting developers buy doesn’t even have Thunderbolt, which is an Intel technology and that all pros have moved to including me. Will none of my hard drives work on new Mac hardware ever again? That will be a huge fuck you to Pros. Was the new MacPro a hoodwink to bring pros back and then it is the last truly pro machine that Apple every releases? And all it’s vaunted upgradeability is useless because Apple will never release any new hardware for it. If so what a fucking waste. It does look like Intel is open sourcing Thunderbolt, but not having it on the first hardware is scary.
Sure it is possible that Apple plans a MacPro with Apple Silicon, but it seems unlikely, especially since they never mentioned it when they could have. Sure it would stop or slow down current sales, but it would give some assurance.
I mean it took AVID this long to get a version that works for Catalina, and it is basically a re-write that breaks all compatibility with past versions. Hopefully this switch won’t be as drastic, but who the fuck knows?
Will all plug ins need to be re-written, that is very likely, which means years for Apple to catch up again with where it is, and a huge expense as you know most will involve a cost to the end user.
And so if it turns out the high end can’t compete with Intel, and not even AMD graphics cards, Pros will be done with Apple for good. And maybe iPad’s with Keyboards will end up as the high end of macs, as it is likely that more high end software will be more easily ported since it will be on the same silicon.
So once again I come away from a WWDC more scared for Apple’s future than I was before it. Maybe Apple has solutions or maybe they will just be going for the low end portable market and dropping the high end, but that is a question I would love answered.
Sure Intel will remain supported for years, but not forever.