[intrasight]

Except sadly it is not using M.

My first Mac was a Mac - ie the first Mac. 128k of memory and $1000 (with the student discount!) in 1994. I've had every architecture of Mac since then - except for M. This one might just have inspired me to try a Mac again - if it had an M.

[philistine]

The M-series is just marketing. They're just the A-series with more cores and IO. Apple has one family of CPUs, but they give them different names.

[esskay]

They dont need to use an M series. The chip they are using isn't far off (spec wise) a base M4. It's single threaded performance is damn good.

[intrasight]

I didn't realize that. I thought it was a different architecture - or different enough that the two couldn't run the same binaries. Are they indeed binary compatible?

[sjs382]

You can run iOS apps on an Apple Silicon Mac if the developer doesn't explicitly prevent you.

[menno-sh]

Additionally Apple have been sticking M-series chips in iPads for a while now. They appear to be pretty much interchangeable.

[esskay]

Yeah theres very little difference at this point between the A and M lines, think of the M as just being the more powerful line, but that doesnt make the A line weak, not by any stretch. Both are completely binary compatible at this point.

The A18 Pro single core performance is on-par with the M4 (a smidge lower but barely anything in it), and outperforms the M3.

[jamiek88]

Yes! It’s simply a naming convention.

[trillic]

A18 Pro Geekbench on an iPhone: Single: 3539 Multi-core: 8772 Macbook Air M1 Geekbench: Single: 2347 Multi-core: 8342

[bell-cot]

's/in 1994/in 1984/', perhaps?

[intrasight]

Yes. Thanks.