[ohgodplsno]

The M1 is fast for a few reasons:

* It uses a fabrication process that noone has gotten their hands on yet. These have always been massive jumps, and giving access to that node to AMD and Intel gets them to similar performance (actually, they already are at similar performance with the same gen).

* You're buying an un-upgradeable SoC. Soldered on everything means fast interconnect, while others have to play ball with standards that allow me to change components whenever I want.

* It's a pretty damn good CPU.

So, out of these three, Apple is responsible for 1/3. Dump an i9 on a SoC with a 3nm process and it'll eat the M1 alive. There's no "fundamental" increase.

[hedgehog]

I'm not sure this is true, looking at say the i7-1260P in the XPS 13 it appears to turn in performance similar to the base M2 and half the battery life. M2 Max is twice as fast as the i7 and still 2x-3x the battery life, though also twice as expensive. I don't see any case that Intel's designs are somehow better than anyone else's let alone enough to "eat alive" any competitor design on equal process.

[seniorivn]

the fab process is their for grabs not by accident, they made the right call to invest in a longterm relationship with tsmc long time ago, so they have dibs on all cutting edge tech.

un-upgradable SoC is a strategic design choice so which is basically part of the third reason which is their responsibility as you pointed out.

So basically their success with m1,m2, etc is a well done implementation of a very ambitious strategy to disrupt the market. I don't see why it should be disputed.

[brookst]

I think you’re saying I shouldn’t be impressed that my M1 machine is much faster than my previous Intel machine, while having 3x the battery life, because Apple cheated or something.

I don’t care. I’m impressed.

[mwint]

Yep. A lot of this thread feels like I’m being gaslit into believing the M1 machines were not the ridiculously huge jumps we all knew they were at the time.

I don’t really care about benchmarks, these things have allowed me to do twice the work with half as much pain. That’s not incremental.

Maybe they’re not great processors and it’s just Apple cheating in software/process-node/whatever. Great! Let me know when other manufacturers figure out how to cheat in software/process-node/whatever and I’ll consider them.

[ohgodplsno]

They're not a ridiculously large jump, not on the overall scale of performance. There's nothing in an M1 that we couldn't do before, or haven't done before. High end SoCs have always had insane performance. However, slap literally any high end CPU of today on a SoC and you get the same results. Apple didn't invent new tech, didn't create performance out of thin air.

However, they did just force you to buy a new $2000 machine next time you want to upgrade in 3 years because it's a single, monolithic block.

>Let me know when other manufacturers figure out how to cheat in software/process-node/whatever and I’ll consider them.

Unfortunately, they all accept to be part of a greater ecosystem that doesn't attempt to fuck you over by being un-upgradable and incompatible with each other, so cheating is out of the way.

[mwint]

> slap literally any high end CPU of today on a SoC and you get the same results.

They should do that!

> they did just force you to buy a new $2000 machine next time you want to upgrade in 3 years because it's a single, monolithic block.

You’re absolutely right. I love my really fast, cold-running, forever-battery monolithic block. I’m very happy to pay ($2000/365/3 = $1.82) per day for it, minus the resale value it’ll still have.

I understand the value of the ideals regarding end-user upgrades, but at the end of the day the tradeoffs just don’t make sense for me.

[Funnyduck99]

i think some people exaggerate their performance gains but the battery life they provide is ridiculous

[drvdevd]

I hope you are correct as I’m all for competition and don’t really care about Architectures. In my own experience it’s the thermals and power use that are the most impressive parts or the M-series.