# Macs to use ARM chips instead of intel



## gsilbers

Bloomberg: Apple to announce its first ARM Mac chips at WWDC, as it starts transition away from Intel


Apple is reportedly going to announce its transition from Intel to ARM chips for its line of Macs at WWDC, according to Bloomberg. The event kicks off on June 22nd (hosted virtually this year), and is the usual venue where Apple announces its big platform shifts. This year, we are expecting the...




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Apple is reportedly going to announce its transition from Intel to ARM chips for its line of Macs at WWDC, according to Bloomberg. The event kicks off on June 22nd (hosted virtually this year), and is the usual venue where Apple announces its big platform shifts. This year, we are expecting the unveiling of iOS 14, macOS 10.16, watchOS 7 and more.


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## gsilbers

It’s been rumored for a while but seems to be finally going the be announced at the end of the month.


My guess is that it will be used on the MacBook Air first. 

And hopefully developers don’t hace to redo every fukin plugin again like in the universal binary days... really don’t wanna go through that again


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## funnybear

This is going to be a bloodbath for developers as the instruction set on an ARM chip is a totally different ballgame compared to an x86 architecture such as Intel or AMD.

For apps that mainly use abstracted low level SDKs that Apple provides that is not an issue (say productivity apps etc.) but for DSP and real time stuff such as DAWs and VSTis this will require huge engineering effort to port over.

Glad I live in the PC world!


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## TGV

This is the end...


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## gsilbers

funnybear said:


> This is going to be a bloodbath for developers as the instruction set on an ARM chip is a totally different ballgame compared to an x86 architecture such as Intel or AMD.
> 
> For apps that mainly use abstracted low level SDKs that Apple provides that is not an issue (say productivity apps etc.) but for DSP and real time stuff such as DAWs and VSTis this will require huge engineering effort to port over.
> 
> Glad I live in the PC world!



Hopefully they’ll announce how developers do this between versions or porting stuff over in a simple way.
They know there is a lot of small developers out there playing the yearly fee.


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## Cinebient

Great for iOS developers maybe and also there is already enough ported stuff from Fabfilter, Eventide, Staffpad, some really good orchestral sounds and synths are already as good as on mac/windows.
Some apps are even better than things i have on my mac.
Also things costs much less there. If Apple bring Logic to ARM i would happy make the switch. Some apps already performs better as on my mac, so ARM might even better for real-time audio apps. 
The only thing i really miss on ARM/iOS is a big DAW like Logic. Everything else is already there for me.


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## Shad0wLandsUK

funnybear said:


> This is going to be a bloodbath for developers as the instruction set on an ARM chip is a totally different ballgame compared to an x86 architecture such as Intel or AMD.
> 
> For apps that mainly use abstracted low level SDKs that Apple provides that is not an issue (say productivity apps etc.) but for DSP and real time stuff such as DAWs and VSTis this will require huge engineering effort to port over.
> 
> Glad I live in the PC world!


From what I understand about this world (Windows - IT Systems Admin/Applications Support and a little Linux here)

I notice that there are lots of applications, platforms and systems coming out that are able to run ARM on either emulation or through the x86_x64 framework... so I think Apple would have learned their lesson from PowerPC (yes everyone raise your hand)!

So, I believe there is greater support for transition and migration here, in terms of coding and platform development? Correct me if I am wrong... after all I am not a developer


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## Technostica

You also need driver support for your hardware.


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## gsilbers

Technostica said:


> You also need driver support for your hardware.



yep... there goes my virus ti. Even Catalina has not been updated.


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## gh0stwrit3r

I'm quite a noob on this subject. So hopefully someone could me some clarity about the chips 

Currently I'm looking forward to upgrade to a new iMac. Rumors are that the new line-up will be announced and shipped soon, but I guess still with an Intel (10th gen I hope). I'm eyeing on that iMac for quite a while, but is it a good buy knowing Apple will take a jump towards using its own chips.

Is this something to be concerned about?


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## gtrwll

gh0stwrit3r said:


> I'm quite a noob on this subject. So hopefully someone could me some clarity about the chips
> 
> ...
> 
> Is this something to be concerned about?



I think a comparison would be that someone changes the engine from a car working with gasoline to an engine working with diesel. It’s gonna take some work to rework some of the parts to work in the new system (clarification: I’m not a car mechanic )

It’s a different architecture than what they’ve used before, so I would be very, very surprised if there would be no problems along the way.


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## gsilbers

gh0stwrit3r said:


> I'm quite a noob on this subject. So hopefully someone could me some clarity about the chips
> 
> Currently I'm looking forward to upgrade to a new iMac. Rumors are that the new line-up will be announced and shipped soon, but I guess still with an Intel (10th gen I hope). I'm eyeing on that iMac for quite a while, but is it a good buy knowing Apple will take a jump towards using its own chips.
> 
> Is this something to be concerned about?




Maybe wait until the end of june to see the announcements. maybe new imacs will come out. 

apple already went through a chip change with universal binary. from powerpc (made by ibm) to intel. so if you look into that history maybe it can help. 

im sure apple learned from this so they are takign into account poeple that bought and will buy mac pro dekstops that last 10 years or more. 

my guess is that it will be used on macbook airs and lower tier more portable /laptops since thats the main point of Arm chips. trying to compete with chromebooks and such.


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## gsilbers

im betting the future of apple is ipadOS. its seems to be a good balance between mac os and ios.

but eventually will change to AppleOS on powefull ARM chips and this way documents, apps etc will be cross compatible and developers can just do one app for every device. 
and also apple will not fall under the apple to apples comparison using the same intel chips. 

ill check this post in 8years and see if it went that way


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## nolotrippen

gh0stwrit3r said:


> I'm quite a noob on this subject. So hopefully someone could me some clarity about the chips
> Is this something to be concerned about?



I'm guessing you're not such a noob that you don't have a DAW and plugins that are already working under Intel and OSX. I had to buy a new iMac last year and there were no hiccups except Catalina which I avoided. So, what will be the hiccups be under a new processor and getting developers up to speed? It could be a real pain and take a while and you're sitting there without a new Mac!

My two bits, buy the best machine you can now and use for years to come.


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## Ivan M.

funnybear said:


> This is going to be a bloodbath for developers



that's common  



funnybear said:


> instruction set



That's probably not a big deal, as 99.99% stuff is done above assembler. There's also a so called accelerate framework with optimized math and routines.



funnybear said:


> DSP and real time stuff such as DAWs and VSTis



That's where apple's audio frameworks are used, and where the real pain is, as documentation is almost non existent


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## Shad0wLandsUK

Ivan M. said:


> that's common
> 
> 
> 
> That's probably not a big deal, as 99.99% stuff is done above assembler. There's also a so called accelerate framework with optimized math and routines.
> 
> 
> 
> That's where apple's audio frameworks are used, and where the real pain is, as documentation is almost non existent


And people say that I am a big ol' geek... I guess they don't know ---> this guy


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## gsilbers

More info

it’swill be on all macs!!!!



Apple plans to announce ARM transition for all Macs at WWDC 2020 – Ars Technica


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## Nick Batzdorf

gh0stwrit3r said:


> Is this something to be concerned about?



It does sound like they're coming out with a new iMac in the somewhat near future.

I believe it this time.

What confuses me is all the talk here a few weeks ago about how Apple couldn't possibly be coming out with a machine that supersedes the $50,000 Mac Pro, that ARM processors aren't as powerful, etc.


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## Nick Batzdorf

TGV said:


> This is the end...



The end is nigh.

But... they did switch processors twice before, from Motorola 68K to PowerPC to Intel. We all lived to tell.


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## funnybear

Ivan M. said:


> That's probably not a big deal, as 99.99% stuff is done above assembler. There's also a so called accelerate framework with optimized math and routines.



Instruction sets are unique to each CPU architecture and when you code in C++ or other high level languages (C++ is the most common for DSP work) your code is written against an available instruction set that your C++ compiler has access to and your code is optimized for.

AVX, SSE and MMX are some of the more common instruction sets used in DSP coding (they are all unique to the x86 architecture).

Note that architectures having "different" sets is not saying that they are "better" compared to other CPU architectures. It is not a question *if* you can port something but rather *with how much effort* (assuming that the new target CPU architecture offers you enough computational headroom with or without an alternative instruction set).

For example NI's Massive X VSTi requires a CPU that supports the AVX instruction set. So if NI will port the plugin, they will need to check if Apple's new ARM based chips provide an alternative instruction set to replicate the AVX based code and if not, will only be able to port the plugin if the chip has enough headroom using non-optimised code.


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## gsilbers

Nick Batzdorf said:


> The end is nigh.
> 
> But... they did switch processors twice before, from Motorola 68K to PowerPC to Intel. We all lived to tell.



People going through a product cycle like the old Mac Pro or older imac and even new Max minis I doesn’t seem that bad to wait.
But someone who just spent $4.500 for the MacBook Pro or upwards of 12,000 for the new Mac Pro is something quite enraging to know the planned obsolescence is so short. Even if you could use the new Mac Pro for 8 years. We all know apple will start to figure out ways to make the user buy a new computer via software yards sticks...
And a new cpu is a big one


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## Technostica

Nick Batzdorf said:


> What confuses me is all the talk here a few weeks ago about how Apple couldn't possibly be coming out with a machine that supersedes the $50,000 Mac Pro, that ARM processors aren't as powerful, etc.


The irony being that the Mac Pro's Intel chips were already being trounced by AMD's offerings on its release; the bar wasn't even that high.

There are already ARM based server chips that are fairly high end and pressure is slowly mounting for Intel & AMD at the data centre level.
I can't see why Apple can't build an ARM workstation chip to compete.
The issue for me was more a matter of how much it costs to do so and whether they have the volume of sales at that performance level to make it worthwhile in terms of their profit margins.

It will make things very interesting if they move from Intel to ARM all in one go from top to bottom.
I wasn't expecting that.


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## vitocorleone123

I'd be worried if I was buying a new Mac, unless maybe a big part of Catalina was getting ready for ARM. More OS changes could be needed/fixed once there's ARM in production - that hopefully wouldn't harm people with Macs with Intel. Unstable times for Apple buyers. I'd personally build a Windows PC over a Mac with ARM for the first run, or at least the first year, as any kinks are worked out if I required a new computer. Otherwise I'd simply put it off.


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## gsilbers

vitocorleone123 said:


> I'd be worried if I was buying a new Mac, unless maybe a big part of Catalina was getting ready for ARM. More OS changes could be needed/fixed once there's ARM in production - that hopefully wouldn't harm people with Macs with Intel. Unstable times for Apple buyers. I'd personally build a Windows PC over a Mac with ARM for the first run, or at least the first year, as any kinks are worked out if I required a new computer. Otherwise I'd simply put it off.



That’s a good point. If I see that Catalina or future OS X will work with both for a long time then cool... but if I see a hint that the hardware won’t support new OS X then I’m returning my new MacBook Pro 16inch.


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## Ashermusic

As when Apple switched from Motorola to Intel, I predict a world of hurt for a year or so, followed by acceptance. 

"Resistance is futile."-The Borg


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## Tim_Wells




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## gsilbers

Technostica said:


> The irony being that the Mac Pro's Intel chips were already being trounced by AMD's offerings on its release; the bar wasn't even that high.
> 
> There are already ARM based server chips that are fairly high end and pressure is slowly mounting for Intel & AMD at the data centre level.
> I can't see why Apple can't build an ARM workstation chip to compete.
> The issue for me was more a matter of how much it costs to do so and whether they have the volume of sales at that performance level to make it worthwhile in terms of their profit margins.
> 
> It will make things very interesting if they move from Intel to ARM all in one go from top to bottom.
> I wasn't expecting that.




I thought Apple would of bought amd back when the stock was so low.
Since iPhone os their main driver arm design seems to work better.

the lastarticle I posted did mention the transition will be for all macs.
And since we lived the PowerPC transición not of us know what that means. Specially those with a G5 being used as decoration


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## Sarah Mancuso

I would be very worried if I had invested in a new Mac Pro a few months ago. Though this impending switch has been whispered about for long enough that I think people should've known better.

I've seen people on here talk about getting 8 or more years of life out of their previous Mac Pro and expecting the same lifespan from their new one. With this architecture switch on the horizon, that is very unlikely.

After Apple switched from PPC to x86 architecture in 2006, it did not take very long for PPC Macs to become expensive paperweights. By 2009, they had released the first x86-only version of macOS, 10.6 Snow Leopard. Third-party developers followed suit in dropping PPC support. By 2010, Adobe had released the first x86-only update of Photoshop, and from what I recall, Adobe was later than many other developers to hop on that train. By 2011, the final PPC version of macOS (10.5 Leopard) stopped being supported by Apple at all, but it was a wasteland of software support long before then.

(Also, remember that Logic is developed by Apple themselves nowadays, so it will probably go ARM-only around the same time that the OS itself does.)

I'd hope that Apple will offer some sort of upgrade path for recent Mac Pro buyers to get an ARM processor installed in their 2020 Mac Pro towers, but I wouldn't hold my breath for it.


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## Dewdman42

If Apple does this in a manner similar as they did for the transition to intel then my next computer will most likely be windows.

i love OS X as an operating system but I really do not like Apple as a company and this is why. They create never ending kaos for their developers and users by constantly changing the playing field.

time to learn cubase once and for all


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## gsilbers

Sarah Mancuso said:


> I would be very worried if I had invested in a new Mac Pro a few months ago.





macbook here... but yeah... i think a lot of us just started to get very worried. 

the ARM chips was rumored but in the portable... sort of chromebook style.. not a PRO machine being sold to profesionals who expected 10 years of solid peroformance. 

im just looking for a hint at the conference that developers can just do a simple update and that code wil be used for both platforms forever. so 10-15 years from now plugins will work. doubt...big dout of course


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## Dewdman42

I got burned pretty bad by the ppc to intel change I bought one of the last ppc computers and it became very painful within a couple years. I hope Apple will handle it better this time but they have zero track record of ever handling backwards compatibility well. So yea right about now I see dark clouds and frustrating times on the horizon. Thank god my cheesegrater still works splendidly and this time around there is actually a much bigger collection of software running on intel OS X then there was on ppc. So we can just leave our intel macs working for years to come, won’t be able to use the latest logicpro at some point but other then that they will continue to be very operational for years to come despite the carnage Apple will be inflicting. Hell we can even run Windows on the cheesegrater if we want, so I am sure I am fine for at least a few more years but I do feel sorry for anyone that bought that new macpro. Macbookpro users, well the shelf life of Apple laptops is barely five years so frankly I think you will get enough life out of those before you have to buy an arm mbp. The higher end macs, well I feel for you. That was me years ago with a last gen ppc mac. The only difference is that this time there is already a lot of great software running on intel and so you can still opt to keep the intel and just miss whatever latest software features that at some point will only be available on arm.


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## Zero&One

If it's not a headphone jack, it's a another type of cable/charger, or some other random thing users were already happy with. Weird company, they make it very difficult to defend them on forums.


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## CT

Yeah, you know what... I don't have any stake in the Mac/PC thing beyond how much of a pain in the ass they make things for me. It's becoming harder and harder to feel that the Apple way is the lesser pain in the ass.


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## vitocorleone123

Backward compatibility is expensive. Apple has set the standard for doing as little of that as possible to maximize profits - yet somehow still be adored, or at least the chosen platform.


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## Hadrondrift

Presumably the end of Hackintoshs, btw.


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## vitocorleone123

Hadrondrift said:


> Presumably the end of Hackintoshs, btw.



control + dependency = profit


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## method1

Hadrondrift said:


> Presumably the end of Hackintoshs, btw.



haha part of me was thinking that this is solely about ending the hackintosh scene. /tinfoilhat


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## David Kudell

I'd be nervous if Apple didn't just update the Trash can with a proper Mac Pro, but they just came out with that beast. There would have been no reason for them to dedicate those resources to creating a new Mac Pro just to abandon pro users 6 months later.

This move is all about the consumer market, and they do need to do it. Apple can't sit around and let the likes of Google and Microsoft come out with better laptops with multi-day battery life and just stick around with Intel chips forever. The reason why Apple is innovative is because they do push the market forward in these areas, they don't just sit around. They're not Dell or HP. 

I guess the question is what will their commitment be to the Mac Pro and iMac Pro, and I just don't see them abandoning that market anytime. Yes, it was dicey there in the waning years of the trash can, but they seem to be taking it seriously again. The ones who are going to bear a bit of the brunt are going to be software developers who have to code for two different CPU types. I can see it being a problem with things like audio plugins, where things won't work between an ARM laptop and an Intel iMac due to software not being available for one or the other. Until Apple reveals their plans, there's no use worrying about it.


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## Dewdman42

^^^ this. Apple makes a lot more money from iPhones and iPads and app store and Apple Music and now Apple TV, then all macintosh computers combined. On top of that, I think they prioritize a consumer mindset, they would rather make the ultimate consumer friendly kinds of computers like you see in computer section of Best Buy. ARM is perfect for that. To me this means that high end pro computing is either completely over for Apple or they will continue to deliver and support Intel solutions, including a decade or more of ongoing mac towers.

As usual, we can only speculate now and honestly nobody has a crystal ball. Just have to wait and see, but me personally if i were considering a new mac purchase right now for power computing, I'd be leery until we see how this shakes out.


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## Symfoniq

I just bought a Mac Pro, knowing the ARM transition would happen, and I'm still not worried. It's going to take a few years for Apple and third-party developers to complete this transition.

If I get three or four years of use out of my Mac Pro, I'll consider it money well spent. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake, as I'm usually ready for an upgrade anyway.


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## Dewdman42

I think you will get that much out of it. 3 years for sure, the 4th year you might end up not being able to update to the latest software features. but meh...so what.


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## Nick Batzdorf

Too much kvetching in this thread.


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## Nick Batzdorf

^ That's my kvetch.


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## sherief83

I Get the feeling that in reality, Apple won't touch professional Desktop for maybe 3 to 4 more years.

I don't believe the ARM processors are fully developed yet for the pro line. They'd need something ridiculous to handle a high load from all sorts of physical inputs and outputs on the Mac pro line (i.E pcix 4.0, thunderbolt, etc, usb 3, etc)

The only ARM we know of now can handle one silly iphone input...ok maybe it'll handle USBC with these new macbooks...

It'll end up being an announcement for consumer macbooks and maybe...a low end imac or mac mini.

They'll spend a good few years with that line to get the developers to Port their product in and also probably continue with intel (or switch to AMD this WWDC if they want too)with the pro line until they have an ARM processor that will actually out perform the current Xeon.

In the end, as many of you said, it'll be a painful transition but ultimately, it will come down to the current Software developers and whats in their best interest...Right now, a massive amount of X86 intel based macs will still be on the market. so they won't have a choice but to do BOTH for now.


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## David Kudell

Dewdman42 said:


> I think you will get that much out of it. 3 years for sure, the 4th year you might end up not being able to update to the latest software features. but meh...so what.


My trash can from 7 years ago still gets all the updates. I think time flies faster than we realize.


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## Sarah Mancuso

David Kudell said:


> My trash can from 7 years ago still gets all the updates. I think time flies faster than we realize.


There hasn't been a change in processor architecture in those 7 years, though. A new PPC-based Mac bought in 2005 had a drastically shorter useful lifespan than a new x86-based Mac bought in 2006. There's no reason to believe this time will be different.


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## Dewdman42

David Kudell said:


> My trash can from 7 years ago still gets all the updates. I think time flies faster than we realize.



I'm not sure what your point is. If you had bought a PPC mac right before they changed to Intel, then that is fair comparison to what is likely to happen next. Anyway i was responding to someone else who specifically said they only need to get 3-4 years out of their new mac pro in order to justify and be happy with the purchase..I was simply saying..they should get that. Time will tell whether the latest intel macs make it 7 more years. I feel the cheese grater's and Trash cans are still the best option right now unless you are going to potentially be happy with buying again in 3-4 years, but let's see what happens, there is a lot we don't know yet.. just past experience...I can tell you that PPC I bought back in the day did not last 5 years.


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## Ben

I'm not an Apple user at all (except for testing purposes), but this sounds not great. Sure, most applications will just run fine, as they do on the windows ARM version. Many of the modern apps are simple and not demanding, even phones can do incredible stuff.
But the architecture of ARM is so different compared to x86 that they risk a lot with this change in the pro/prosumer market. ARM is optimized for energy-savings but not for pure brute force power like x86. And the ARM compilers are also mainly optimized for energy savings instead of performance.
Microsoft tried the same thing with WindowsRT and failed, now Apple tries the same, but they can get away with it because of the iOS app ecosystem imo.
It will be interesting to see if Apple will port over their pro apps like Logic and Final Cut, and how they will perform compared to the x86 variants...


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## babylonwaves

Symfoniq said:


> I just bought a Mac Pro, knowing the ARM transition would happen, and I'm still not worried. It's going to take a few years for Apple and third-party developers to complete this transition.
> 
> If I get three or four years of use out of my Mac Pro, I'll consider it money well spent. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake, as I'm usually ready for an upgrade anyway.


thanks for saying that. and to the _pros_ in this thread. when you look back to the times when hardware studios were king, you've payed the equivalent of half a mac pro for a reverb or effect processor. your mixing console was more expensive than the biggest mac pro you could buy. if you can get 4 years out of a computer which replaces most of that, you should consider yourself lucky. because the rates we get today are essentially the same.

you know, things change and I'm happy that for that. otherwise we would still pay $3000 for a PCM70 because here was no choice. Now we complain that the lexicon PCM bundle for $599 is to expensive and wait for the next 50% offer. so give change some space


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## Dewdman42

Studios and other larger pros will have no problem coughing up 5k or even 10k every couple of years. Many of us do not fit that position... I certainly cannot justify spending that much on a music computer, that often, and it won't be happening. My tools will necessarily change. I do not think Apple really puts that much into thinking about the high end use anymore, but ESPECIALLY they miss the target on this mid tier group, people like me that need a high power computer but don't have a studio that can easily justify dropping 5-10k every couple of years at the drop of a hat for the latest hardware. 

They are just going to the opposite ends of the spectrum leaving an even bigger empty hole in the middle for this mid tier group. A super expensive mac pro with future unknown, and a move towards consumer oriented stuff at the other extreme which is simply not good enough for what we talk about and do here.

I think the high end pros that can justify spending that much money that often, good for you, no problem, but there is still a risk for you if Apple completely kills off much market share from the mid tier group by what they are doing, then the Apple prosumer universe will shrivel up and die, which will ultimately effect some of you guys too. So good luck with that.


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## David Kudell

Dewdman42 said:


> I'm not sure what your point is. If you had bought a PPC mac right before they changed to Intel, then that is fair comparison to what is likely to happen next. Anyway i was responding to someone else who specifically said they only need to get 3-4 years out of their new mac pro in order to justify and be happy with the purchase..I was simply saying..they should get that. Time will tell whether the latest intel macs make it 7 more years. I feel the cheese grater's and Trash cans are still the best option right now unless you are going to potentially be happy with buying again in 3-4 years, but let's see what happens, there is a lot we don't know yet.. just past experience...I can tell you that PPC I bought back in the day did not last 5 years.


Certainly it’s worth looking at the PPC to Intel history, although that’s not an apples-to-apples (no pun intended) comparison. Those two chips were both desktop-class chips that were of relatively similar performance. Whereas this is about taking a mobile chip and bringing them to MacBooks to satisfy the consumer market, not replace the performance of a 24 core Intel Mac Pro.


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## wayne_rowley

Apple will have no trouble supporting but x86 and ARM simultaneously for as long as they feel the need. Mac OS already supports the idea of Universal Binary (one program compiled for two chips simultaneously). The did it for Power PC and Intel, they can do it for Intel and Arm.

But if you are worried whether ARM chips can cut it against x86... don’t! ARM originally stood for Acorn RISC Machines ( was then changed to advanced ). They are a different architecture - RISC vs. CISC, but they are not cut-down, lower power or somehow crippled processors - far from it. They have been around for decades. If you had an Acorn Archimedes or RISC PC in the late 80s or early 90s it was powered by a desktop class ARM processor! Ran rings around the PCs of their day, with a 32 bit multi-tasking GUI OS when Microsoft were messing around with MS DOS. The the ARM processors in iPads already out-perform the Intel processors in a MacBook Pro.

As for software migration, in many cases a recompilation will do it. You can bet that Apple already have Mac OS running on ARM already, and may well have a compile of Logic as well.

Interesting times ahead!

Wayne


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## Dewdman42

David Kudell said:


> Certainly it’s worth looking at the PPC to Intel history, although that’s not an apples-to-apples (no pun intended) comparison. Those two chips were both desktop-class chips that were of relatively similar performance. Whereas this is about taking a mobile chip and bringing them to MacBooks to satisfy the consumer market, not replace the performance of a 24 core Intel Mac Pro.



I hope you are right, but hte article we are discussing now from the top of this thread, implies more than that.



> Apple is reportedly going to announce its transition from Intel to ARM chips for its line of Macs at WWDC, according to Bloomberg.



We will find out more June 22.

I do not agree at all with anyone that tries to claim here that ARM can keep up with Intel for the kind of stuff we do. You are in fantasy land. But carry on...


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## Ben

@wayne_rowley This was a long time ago and is no longer true imo. A lot has changed and x86 has gone another way then ARM.
And the problems are not going away by just recompiling...


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## wayne_rowley

Dewdman42 said:


> I do not agree at all with anyone that tries to claim here that ARM can keep up with Intel for the kind of stuff we do. You are in fantasy land. But carry on...



It isn’t fantasy, it’s history. 

Sibelius... originally written for RISC OS running on ARM.


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## Ben

wayne_rowley said:


> It isn’t fantasy, it’s history.
> 
> Sibelius... originally written for RISC OS running on ARM.


History is the correct term. That's almost 30 years ago, or in Computer time it was the end of the Computer Stone Age.


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## wayne_rowley

Ben said:


> @wayne_rowley This was a long time ago and is no longer true imo. A lot has changed and x86 has gone another way then ARM.
> And the problems are not going away by just recompiling...



They‘ve gone down the road to meltdown, their current architecture is reaching thermal and performance limits. AMD are doing better for sure.

ARM is a different architecture but not inferior in any way. RISC PCs failed because of marketing, not because of technical inferiority (they were superior to the PCs of the day, but Bill Gates got his deal with IBM and the rest is history).

ARM chips since then have been mobile because that is where the market has been for them, not because that is all they are good for!


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## Ben

That's not what I learned during my Computer Science studies...
I have not said that ARM is inferior; it's simply not optimized for pure performance but rather for energy efficiency.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Ben said:


> That's not what I learned during my Computer Science studies...
> I have not said that ARM is infirior; it's simply not optimized for pure performance but rather for energy efficiency.



Then that's what God created VE Pro for - slave computers that are designed for pure performance.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Hey, any clairvoyants here know whether this is the time to sell AAPL stock? One year ago it was at 192, today it's at 352.

It's shot up at warp speed and has to re-enter the atmosphere at some point.


----------



## Dewdman42

When Apple starts selling electric cars you will become a millionaire


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

A millionaire in real life or just on paper?


----------



## Dewdman42

when your stock hits one million dollars....SELL!


----------



## babylonwaves

Dewdman42 said:


> I do not think Apple really puts that much into thinking about the high end use anymore, but ESPECIALLY they miss the target on this mid tier group, people like me that need a high power computer but don't have a studio that can easily justify dropping 5-10k every couple of years at the drop of a hat for the latest hardware.


the 3k$-5k$ were comfortable for a hight end mac. that's for sure. and the new MP is more expensive, I get that. so, buy a PC. Use Cubase, or S1 or whatever. you can make great music that way. or wait and see what's next for the aapl.


----------



## wayne_rowley

Ben said:


> That's not what I learned during my Computer Science studies...
> I have not said that ARM is inferior; it's simply not optimized for pure performance but rather for energy efficiency.



Why does the low power energy efficient ARM processor of the iPad Pro outperform the Intel 10th gen processors in the MacBook Air?

It’s not all about the power draw.

Yes, they are both ‘mobile class’ processors, but if Apple produce a desktop class ARM variant..?

Ultimately time will tell, and I reckon it will be a few years before ARM replaces Intel on the desktop Macs - they will start with the laptops.


----------



## method1

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Hey, any clairvoyants here know whether this is the time to sell AAPL stock? One year ago it was at 192, today it's at 352.
> 
> It's shot up at warp speed and has to re-enter the atmosphere at some point.



Not just AAPL, the ndaq has made all times highs 3 days in a row! Trading is a RISC-y business right now.


----------



## Ben

wayne_rowley said:


> Why does the low power energy efficient ARM processor of the iPad Pro outperform the Intel 10th gen processors in the MacBook Air?


Because the thermal design of the MacBook Air 2020 is crap and the CPU has to throttle down when it reaches 100 °C.


----------



## Technostica

Ben said:


> But the architecture of ARM is so different compared to x86 that they risk a lot with this change in the pro/prosumer market. ARM is optimized for energy-savings but not for pure brute force power like x86. And the ARM compilers are also mainly optimized for energy savings instead of performance.



ARM have multiple designs including ones aimed at high performance computing which is why you see them in some high core count data centre chips.
Some of these support PCIe 4.0, 8 channel RAM, 96 cores, 4 way SMT, dual sockets etc.
That’s ahead of what Intel have.

Apple and a few others have a full architecture license from ARM so they can tweak the designs as they see fit. That’s why Apple’s SOCs are so far ahead of generic ARM mobile SOCs designs. 
Others make custom SOCs for mobile devices but with less success and some are pulling out; it’s not cheap. 
This is similar to what AMD do in that they licence the x86 ISA from Intel and build a custom architecture design for it. It still uses the same ISA so software is compatible. It’s actually a cross licensing deal but it’s mainly Intel’s IP.

Most of the phone/tablets SOCs do use the generic ARM designs which are cheaper to design and produce.
But ARM have recently announced a divergence from having a single architecture to cover all mobile SOCs. So they will still have one based on power efficiency and small die size but also another which is aimed at pure performance, so closer to what Apple do with their custom designs.

When you consider that one of the main limiting factors is performance per watt and that ARM’s ISA is supposedly ahead of Intel in this regard, being a more modern design, many argue that Intel have the disadvantage at the ISA level, not ARM.
The next 5 years should make this clear via data centre usage. Amazon are already on their second generation of custom ARM chips which they use for cloud hosting etc.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

method1 said:


> Not just AAPL, the ndaq has made all times highs 3 days in a row! Trading is a RISC-y business right now.



We don't trade, we bought it maybe 15 years ago and have just held it.


----------



## Ben

All these custom designed ARM chips are designed for a special purpose, not general purpose like x86.
I'm sure Apple will design these to be snappy and responsive for most users, but to me it looks like they just drop the power-user support for their notebooks. And most people here are audio-power-users.


----------



## method1

Nick Batzdorf said:


> We don't trade, we bought it maybe 15 years ago and have just held it.



Congrats 
I think its still going up (with the rest of the tech stocks)


----------



## wayne_rowley

Ben said:


> All these custom designed ARM chips are designed for a special purpose, not general purpose like x86.
> I'm sure Apple will design these to be snappy and responsive for most users, but to me it looks like they just drop the power-user support for their notebooks. And most people here are audio-power-users.



Nope. They are just processors crunching numbers. 

Just done a bit of research following on from Technostica’s post. These server class ARM processors are outperforming Intel Xeons!

Apple may want full control over the platform thata true. But I think Intel are holding them back!


----------



## Technostica

Ben said:


> All these custom designed ARM chips are designed for a special purpose, not general purpose like x86.


They use the same ISA so they are general purpose.
They can add extensions if they like but so do Intel with SSE, AVX etc.


----------



## babylonwaves

Ben said:


> I'm sure Apple will design these to be snappy and responsive for most users, but to me it looks like they just drop the power-user support for their notebooks. And most people here are audio-power-users.


the x86 desktop/workstation market has come to a performance increase standstill. so we'll have to see.


----------



## Technostica

wayne_rowley said:


> Just done a bit of research following on from Technostica’s post. These server class ARM processors are outperforming Intel Xeons!


A bit technical for most here I imagine but this is a good resource for ARM stuff that isn't too detailed:




__





AnandTech | Search Results for







www.anandtech.com


----------



## Technostica

babylonwaves said:


> the x86 desktop/workstation market has come to a performance increase standstill. so we'll have to see.


You've missed out on the recent AMD chips from the last 2 or 3 years as they've pushed the envelope more in a year than Intel managed in 5.
x86/64 is fine, it's Intel that are struggling.


----------



## babylonwaves

Technostica said:


> You've missed out on the recent AMD chips from the last 2 or 3 years as they've pushed the envelope more in a year than Intel managed in 5.
> x86/64 is fine, it's Intel that are struggling.


fair play. i was talking about macs.


----------



## wayne_rowley

Technostica said:


> A bit technical for most here I imagine but this is a good resource for ARM stuff that isn't too detailed:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> __
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> AnandTech | Search Results for
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.anandtech.com



96 core processor, 384 threads running at 3Ghz all cores! Sweet!!

imagine a couple of those powering your a Mac Pros.


----------



## gsilbers

i thought arm was based on having all components together so its not a "Chip" cpu only thing like we are used to w intel/amd


----------



## dgburns

Hot damn, I suddenly don’t know what to do. Stay Mac or ?


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

dgburns said:


> Hot damn, I suddenly don’t know what to do. Stay Mac or ?



Why would Apple being *rumored* to be shifting their next generation of computers to new chips influence that?

And if and when they do, when in history has any company moved its entire line of computers to lower-powered ones?



wayne_rowley said:


> 96 core processor, 384 threads running at 3Ghz all cores! Sweet!!
> 
> imagine a couple of those powering your a Mac Pros.



I'd rather imagine the drugs I can buy with the money I save not buying that machine.


----------



## Mike Greene

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I'd rather imagine the drugs I can buy with the money I save not buying that machine.


Come on, Nick, there could be impressionable kids reading this forum, so please respect forum policy. Specifically that on VI-Control, it is never okay to suggest "not buying" new hardware or software!


----------



## José Herring

wayne_rowley said:


> 96 core processor, 384 threads running at 3Ghz all cores! Sweet!!
> 
> imagine a couple of those powering your a Mac Pros.


Yet a beefy Omni patch will spike core number 37 and there will be pandemonium on the forums as to why their 96 core brand new $30,000 Mac Pro still has drop outs.


----------



## dgburns

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Why would Apple being *rumored* to be shifting their next generation of computers to new chips influence that?
> 
> And if and when they do, when in history has any company moved its entire line of computers to lower-powered ones?



It appears to be more then rumor. And with that new direction, the new mac pro appears will undergo a cpu change sooner rather than later. This brings unknowns, mostly how long the Intel models will be supported. That is a big pill to swallow if you take the leap now, as I was planning on doing, and buy a 2019 mac pro today.

I find the new mac is expensive for what you get. I can chalk it up, and I do appreciate the comfort of an OS that I’ve grown to know. But I wonder if I’m better off waiting, or just ending it with Mac here and get a win10 build for daw use. It would be less costly, and I can’t wonder if alot of software is better ported to Win10 then OSX right now.

Apple just feels like it’s not a solid play right now.

( now if they came out and stated they will support Intel for a determined amount of time, that would help me make a decision to keep supporting them )


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

dgburns said:


> Apple just feels like it’s not a solid play right now.



Perennial truism about pretty much every digital equipment purchase since the '80s.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

dgburns said:


> That is a big pill to swallow if you take the leap now, as I was planning on doing, and buy a 2019 mac pro today.



Ah, the Mac Pro. Yes, that's not a machine for someone who has to worry about the treasury, especially right now.

I agree, although Macs have always held their value very well and there's little reason to think that one will be an exception - with the caveat that it's more money than all those drugs Mike insists I buy gear instead of, which could limit the market for it three years from now or whenever you get bored with it.

My comment was really about your abandoning the platform. Having worked on Macs all day long since the Mac Plus, I personally have no interest in that, regardless of which chips they use. My current machine is already frozen on Mojave anyway.


----------



## NYC Composer

Bought the 5k 27inch iMac i9 8 core in December, about to upgrade to 128 GB RAM just ‘cause I can. Total cost with RAM, $3500. I’ll get at least 5 years from it, but I plan on 10. My 2008 Mac Pro gave me 11 years and still works. If I need to I’ll hook it up via VEP along with my 2012 Mac Mini. Somehow I think I’ll still be able to make music with all that in 2030.


----------



## Cinebient

I heard some developers said ARM chips are better as X86 for real-time audio tasks. Not sure if that is true. But i also think a multi-core ARM based on a A14X whatever runs circles around these crap i9 in a macbook. Maybe i am wrong.
But if i compare it with the same tools i have on my mac and iOS device it is all about optimizing software and here ARM wins mostly and it will be the future.
If an active cooled multi-core ARM chip could be inside a macbook pro i bet it runs circles around these crap i9. Single core performance is already way better there and i see that in reality when comparing similar or the same tools on my macbook and iOS devices. Multi-core processing is where it lacks on iOS yet but i guess it is juts a matter of time.
I think it will take much longer for desktops but if you are mobile and mainly working with a notebook ARM is the future. Even iPads might outperform most notebooks already but the software is lacking still. An ARM driven mac could solve that maybe. Otherwise i would rather switch to a complete iOS device setup instead of going to windows. If i would use a desktop it would be different maybe.
Again i think if developers which does no iOS apps yet or not able or want to invest in ARM architecture will miss out the next generation. Otherwise iOS developers are the new stars of mac audio apps soon.
For some reason i doubt that things like Kontakt or Reaktor which carries so much old code would ever do the switch and so i already think about alternatives and i am sure someone will deliver.
My favorite thing would be still an mac/iOS hybrid since the apps are so cheap and of same quality as desktop tools these days (but even much better optimized already).
So maybe developers which avoid any ARM/iOS ports yet are might leaving mac and going windows only which means they are out for me in the future for sure.
Maybe its all just bullshit


----------



## charlieclouser

Dewdman42 said:


> when your stock hits one million dollars....SELL!



$5,000 invested in AAPL back in the late 1990's is worth more than $1,000,000 as of today.

The $5,000 Quadra 950 from that era? Not so much.


----------



## Technostica

gsilbers said:


> i thought arm was based on having all components together so its not a "Chip" cpu only thing like we are used to w intel/amd


Even Intel/AMD laptop/desktop chips have moved a long way to become a true SOC; System on a Chip.
They can have integrated: graphics, USB/memory/PCIe/Ethernet controllers etc.
Intel just disclosed details of a laptop chip with integrated RAM even.
That's a multi-chip module but still a single package.

Multi-chip designs are becoming more important as for example you can mix different fabrication nodes which can be essential.
For workstation and server chips, having a massive monolithic single chip design has issues in terms of cost due to yields.
AMD now put up to 9 chips in total on their workstation/server/HEDT chips.


----------



## Ivan M.

Dewdman42 said:


> When Apple starts selling electric cars you will become a millionaire


"this time, next year"


----------



## gsilbers

Technostica said:


> Even Intel/AMD laptop/desktop chips have moved a long way to become a true SOC; System on a Chip.
> They can have integrated: graphics, USB/memory/PCIe/Ethernet controllers etc.
> Intel just disclosed details of a laptop chip with integrated RAM even.
> That's a multi-chip module but still a single package.
> 
> Multi-chip designs are becoming more important as for example you can mix different fabrication nodes which can be essential.
> For workstation and server chips, having a massive monolithic single chip design has issues in terms of cost due to yields.
> AMD now put up to 9 chips in total on their workstation/server/HEDT chips.




system on q chip... that’s the term I forgot.

Apple is making w some random Taiwanese company... if amd was doing it it’s wierd Apple didn’t use amd. 
im guessing they want to have morecontrol and not have thechip be used on windows based machines.


----------



## Symfoniq

gsilbers said:


> system on q chip... that’s the term I forgot.
> 
> Apple is making w some random Taiwanese company... if amd was doing it it’s wierd Apple didn’t use amd.
> im guessing they want to have morecontrol and not have thechip be used on windows based machines.



TSMC is the world's largest semiconductor fabricator. Not exactly "some random Taiwanese company."


----------



## gsilbers

Symfoniq said:


> TSMC is the world's largest semiconductor fabricator. Not exactly "some random Taiwanese company."


Oops 
I thought it was small.. at least comapared to intel/amd... 
haven’t heard as much on them


----------



## Symfoniq

gsilbers said:


> Oops
> I thought it was small.. at least comapared to intel/amd...
> haven’t heard as much on them



No worries.

Like Apple, AMD is a TSMC customer. Intel has its own fabs, but their process sophistication currently lags TSMC, which is a big part of why AMD is putting the hurt on Intel right now.


----------



## babylonwaves

Cinebient said:


> I heard some developers said ARM chips are better as X86 for real-time audio tasks.


it's the OS that qualifies a hardware for realtime purposes. not so much the hardware design (unless we talk about a really primitive design).


----------



## dgburns

I will have a convo with an actual Apple Business rep. I expressed my concern about Intel support going forward if one were to buy a new Mac Pro. I will be interested to hear what they have to say about Intel support. Let’s face it, no dev will be happy to go to Arm from just recovering from Catalina.


----------



## gsilbers

dgburns said:


> I will have a convo with an actual Apple Business rep. I expressed my concern about Intel support going forward if one were to buy a new Mac Pro. I will be interested to hear what they have to say about Intel support. Let’s face it, no dev will be happy to go to Arm from just recovering from Catalina.



yeah catalina was awful for everyone in the audio world.


----------



## gsilbers

so new imac will come out june 22. theyll look exactly like ipad pro. theyllhave intel cpu. 

so that at least is a positive sign. 

i do still imagining tim cook , being more of a ceo guy who is at a board meeting trying to figure out how to get more money out of macs and getting to the logical conclusion of lowering the planned obsolocense like the iphones... which was very recent i learned they do it like leasing a car and thats why its shedule at the same time every year. so people can get the newer model but keep paying for it. basically a glorified subscirption.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

gsilbers said:


> so new imac will come out june 22. theyll look exactly like ipad pro. theyllhave intel cpu.



Do you have a link, Guillermo?


----------



## Eloy

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Do you have a link, Guillermo?


Rumor.....









Apple may be close to launching an updated iMac with an all-new design that looks a lot like the iPad Pro


Apple may soon release a new iMac with its first major design update in years, according to a prominent gadget leaker.




www.businessinsider.com


----------



## gsilbers

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Do you have a link, Guillermo?











Rumor: Redesigned iMac to be announced at WWDC with thin bezels, AMD Navi GPUs and T2 chip


Apple may be about to refresh the iMac’s external design after more than eight years. According to leaker Sonny Dickson, a new iMac is set to arrive later this month as part of Apple’s WWDC announcements. The new iMac would feature slim bezels, resembling the Apple Pro Display XDR in appearance...




www.google.com


----------



## Cinebient

gsilbers said:


> yeah catalina was awful for everyone in the audio world.


But developers which got past Catalina might be already close to there if and when a switch come.
Also some developers will be very happy actually.
Also developers which might use things like JUCE also will have less trouble.
We will see.....


----------



## gsilbers

Cinebient said:


> But developers which got past Catalina might be already close to there if and when a switch come.
> Also some developers will be very happy actually.
> Also developers which might use things like JUCE also will have less trouble.
> We will see.....



I’ve read different sides of this. Some about how Apple will have a way of coding one app and working on both platforms and others about how hard it really is to port over to an arm platform


----------



## Technostica

Apple have a big advantage here compared with previous ISA transitions.
This time they have over a decade of experience of working with both ISAs in production systems prior to any transition.
Admittedly they are using different operating systems with each ISA.
But all the work they have done with interoperability between the two platforms will have helped and it’s not as if they have rushed into this.
I really hope they do this.


----------



## wayne_rowley

Technostica said:


> Admittedly they are using different operating systems with each ISA.



Let‘s not forget iOS is derived from Mac OS. They have a lot in common.

Wayne


----------



## gsilbers

Technostica said:


> Apple have a big advantage here compared with previous ISA transitions.
> This time they have over a decade of experience of working with both ISAs in production systems prior to any transition.
> Admittedly they are using different operating systems with each ISA.
> But all the work they have done with interoperability between the two platforms will have helped and it’s not as if they have rushed into this.
> I really hope they do this.




well, the new ipad os got me surprise since it seemed very mac os like and the future where this is heading. one appleOS for all. but yeah.. seems catalina had something to do with it.. or at least theyve been thiking this transitino for a while. 

so that june22 conference is a must see for sure.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

gsilbers said:


> Rumor: Redesigned iMac to be announced at WWDC with thin bezels, AMD Navi GPUs and T2 chip
> 
> 
> Apple may be about to refresh the iMac’s external design after more than eight years. According to leaker Sonny Dickson, a new iMac is set to arrive later this month as part of Apple’s WWDC announcements. The new iMac would feature slim bezels, resembling the Apple Pro Display XDR in appearance...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.google.com



"As Apple transitioned to products like the iPhone X and the 2018 iPad Pro, the iMac’s ungainly black bezels and metallic chin looked dated."

Oy.


----------



## Ric4001

Does this ARM transition mean that we won’t be able to boot our Macs into Windows as we do now? Some of the posts here mention a Windows ARM version, but I’m guessing that version lacks driver development from interface manufacturers and overall Windows 10 compatability, so it would be pointless to boot into Windows ARM.


----------



## Denkii

Ahh. Gotta love apple.
They really do understand to sell stuff that nobody who knows what they are doing wants at a price tag that's way too high.
Have fun 

Guess they couldn't cope with the smashing success that was the surface X.


If you're running out of ideas, just try to sell your mobile gear as computer substitutes and make your computers more like mobile hardware.
There you go: a new market no one really asked for.


----------



## dgburns

gsilbers said:


> so new imac will come out june 22. theyll look exactly like ipad pro. theyllhave intel cpu.
> 
> so that at least is a positive sign.
> 
> i do still imagining tim cook , being more of a ceo guy who is at a board meeting trying to figure out how to get more money out of macs and getting to the logical conclusion of lowering the planned obsolocense like the iphones... which was very recent i learned they do it like leasing a car and thats why its shedule at the same time every year. so people can get the newer model but keep paying for it. basically a glorified subscirption.



It’s not a sign of anything that they are still using Intel in an imac, because that cpu can’t be changed ( I imagine ) so it is a disposable box with an EOL like most ipads and iphones. Unless I am blown away by what Apple actually say to me on monday in our phone call, it might be lights out for me and them.
One thing that might turn my head is either a preplanned trade-in to arm based mac pro, or the ability to switch out cpu as an option. Not holding out any hope of that however.
Pricing pc options while holding my nose.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Denkii said:


> Guess they couldn't cope with the smashing success that was the surface X.
> 
> 
> If you're running out of ideas, just try to sell your mobile gear as computer substitutes and make your computers more like mobile hardware.
> There you go: a new market no one really asked for.



Troll!

The Surface sucks big walrus dingus compared to iPads and especially the 11" MacBook Air, both of which were first and better.

We have a Surface. It's fine for amateur wankers with tiny penises who don't know how to use Macs like real men and women.

HAH!

Take THAT 110 MPH spin serve to the backhand!


----------



## Nick Batzdorf




----------



## Alex Fraser

Ric4001 said:


> Does this ARM transition mean that we won’t be able to boot our Macs into Windows as we do now? Some of the posts here mention a Windows ARM version, but I’m guessing that version lacks driver development from interface manufacturers and overall Windows 10 compatability, so it would be pointless to boot into Windows ARM.


The word on the grapevine is that yes, bootcamp etc will be dead and buried.

Apparently it's a numbers thing. Back at the Power PC > Intel switch, windows compatibility for folk who needed to work across platforms was a big draw for Apple. In modern times, it's far less relevant (we're all on the cloud or mobile) and the user numbers using Bootcamp etc are supposedly tiny.

Anyway, it's rumour. The specialist Apple press are doubling down on the idea that this is going to be a complete switch, all models, and we'll get the details at WWDC.


----------



## Alex Fraser

Ben said:


> Because the thermal design of the MacBook Air 2020 is crap and the CPU has to throttle down when it reaches 100 °C.


That’s by design. The Air isn’t designed for sustained performance. Just a quick cpu ramp when opening apps etc. That market wants a thin laptop above all else.


----------



## marius_dm

Ben said:


> Because the thermal design of the MacBook Air 2020 is crap and the CPU has to throttle down when it reaches 100 °C.





Alex Fraser said:


> That’s by design. The Air isn’t designed for sustained performance. Just a quick cpu ramp when opening apps etc. That market wants a thin laptop above all else.



I’ll argue that the MacBook Pro has the same issue. Nobody asked for such a thin MBP, yet here we are.


----------



## Alex Fraser

marius_dm said:


> I’ll argue that the MacBook Pro has the same issue. Nobody asked for such a thin MBP, yet here we are.


It does have the same issue - especially when it comes to cooling. The fans are loud on full chat, I can vouch for that.

But...I'd make the point that I find myself repeatedly making on this forum - Apple's current designs work just fine for the vast majority of music makers out there. I work in Logic daily (MBP) and for productions which aren't balls out orchestral ones (i.e the ones everybody outside the forum writes) there's no fan noise, no throttling. Nothing.

I've no idea if Apple can produce an ARM Mac Pro to match the current Intel one, but I'm 100% sure that Apple can design an ARM Mac which will power the music making of the majority.


----------



## telecode101

..


----------



## Ben

telecode101 said:


> these thiner and thinner designs mean the MB is becoming a device you can't use for music and DAWs.


At least with our current technology.
It's amusing (at least for me) to read that the MB with the i7 outperformes the i9 after a short period because they have the same thermal design that is bearly good enough for the i5.


----------



## marius_dm

What I find slightly amusing is all the internet outrage when somebody reports CPU throttling every time there is a new MBP refresh. Everyone seems so surprised that Apple didn’t beat physics to manage to keep a power hungry i9 cpu cool inside a poorly-ventilated 0.6in thick enclosure.


----------



## Alex Fraser

Ben said:


> At least with our current technology.
> It's amusing (at least for me) to read that the MB with the i7 outperformes the i9 after a short period because they have the same thermal design that is bearly good enough for the i5.


Which is why I bought the i5.. 

Thing is, no-one really wants a thick laptop covered with vents, especially Apple customers. The whole laptop endeavour is a compromise between cpu power and working in bed in your PJs. I'll never try to argue that laptops are appropriate for users who value power above all else.

I'm hoping that ARM brings us Apple laptops with comparable power as today's intel ones, with much better temps, cooling etc.


----------



## Ben

Alex Fraser said:


> I'm hoping that ARM brings us Apple laptops with comparable power as today's intel ones, with much better temps, cooling etc.


Would be cool if this works as you hope (pun not intended); but I want to cry thinking about another platform that will need testing, testing and platform specific troubleshooting...


----------



## Alex Fraser

Ben said:


> Would be cool if this works as you hope (pun not intended); but I want to cry thinking about another platform that will need testing, testing and platform specific troubleshooting...


Yeah, I feel for you guys. Apple aren't making things easy for you.

I'm betting this transition will be the most difficult for audio folk, actually. All those third party plugins, wrappers, integrated hardware, drivers. Eek.


----------



## Ben H

Ben said:


> Would be cool if this works as you hope (pun not intended); but I want to cry thinking about another platform that will need testing, testing and platform specific troubleshooting...



OR

You could just drop Mac support and go PC only...


----------



## marius_dm

Ben H said:


> OR
> 
> You could just ditch Mac support and go PC only...



Yeah, pull a reverse Apogee ha. That'll be the day


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Alex Fraser said:


> Yeah, I feel for you guys. Apple aren't making things easy for you.
> 
> I'm betting this transition will be the most difficult for audio folk, actually. All those third party plugins, wrappers, integrated hardware, drivers. Eek.



They're not going to come and take away our Intel Macs. I'm not worried.


----------



## telecode101

..


----------



## Zero&One

telecode101 said:


> yeah, but your Intel Mac will become obsolete investment. Just like a PPC Mac is obsolete. Also, as OS X updates move forward, certain internal integral libraries like gcc and python will render packages and installers inoperable and you will be SOL.



If I never upgraded again, my current hardware/software will probably do me until I die.

The only thing that stresses my system is the constant barrage of software updates... my music certainly doesn't


----------



## Anders Wall

Sarah Mancuso said:


> After Apple switched from PPC to x86 architecture in 2006, it did not take very long for PPC Macs to become expensive paperweights. By 2009, they had released the first x86-only version of macOS, 10.6 Snow Leopard. Third-party developers followed suit in dropping PPC support. By 2010, Adobe had released the first x86-only update of Photoshop, and from what I recall, Adobe was later than many other developers to hop on that train. By 2011, the final PPC version of macOS (10.5 Leopard) stopped being supported by Apple at all, but it was a wasteland of software support long before then.


I had a PPC G5 as my main rig until 2015 (might be late '14, it's a blur) running a HD3 system.
Sure there where a lot new features and updates I couldn't install/use, but it was up and running 24/7 without a hiccup.
So hopefully there's still a few years for those with new machines.

Best,
Anders


----------



## Anders Wall

telecode101 said:


> yeah, but your Intel Mac will become obsolete investment. Just like a PPC Mac is obsolete. Also, as OS X updates move forward, certain internal integral libraries like gcc and python will render packages and installers inoperable and you will be SOL.


Sold the G5 for a few happy meals, traded the HD card for a HDX card (with a small fortune in between).
The Pentium PC's I've had during the same period have been sent to the junkyard without a single dime in return. Hopefully there's more than hamburgers in the Intels when the Arm hits.

Best,
Anders
(to be clear I got money not food when I sold the G5, it was meant as a "funny" metaphor)


----------



## telecode101

..


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

telecode101 said:


> yeah, but your Intel Mac will become obsolete investment. Just like a PPC Mac is obsolete. Also, as OS X updates move forward, certain internal integral libraries like gcc and python will render packages and installers inoperable and you will be SOL.



Then I'll buy an ARM Mac to run what it needs to run. My upgraded 2009 Intel Mac will still continue to work.


----------



## Zero&One

telecode101 said:


> thats that i thought when i got 2gb of RAM



I've got 48GB in my 2009 Mac. Maybe things moved on since you bought that 2 GB stick?
So my new one should last a while


----------



## gsilbers

we yab at Apple for Mac stuff.
Seeing what makes them money it’s easy to see apple trying new things w the mac.
Even the Apple Watch and tv makes them more money :/ that got me by surprise on the stock info.

Still I’ll be pretty pissed if I see in June 22 even the remote possibility my new MacBook Pro eventually obsolete.


----------



## telecode101

..


----------



## Zero&One

telecode101 said:


> yeah. don't count on it. you will be surprised. many of us that have been around a while who were gamers and had gaming systems at the time used to think, "what in the world would you ever need more that 1024mb of ram for?" ;0)



I remember my AMD Athlon pc having 256mb to run The Ripper. Luxury times compared to Spectrum days.
Nothing much has changed in this decade though, my old Mac is testament to that.
I can live without dark mode 2.0 when 2030 comes 😀


----------



## Alex Fraser

I guess it depends on what role your Mac has. Audio computer only? You can run it until the end of time or until you have a hardware failure that isn't fixable.

If you're going to use it for other work and iCloud services though, you at least need to be in the same decade as the new shiny. I have old Apple hardware stored that'll boot up just fine, but will fail to connect to anything useful online.


----------



## robcs

telecode101 said:


> yeah. don't count on it. you will be surprised. many of us that have been around a while who were gamers and had gaming systems at the time used to think, "what in the world would you ever need more that 1024mb of ram for?" ;0)



LMAO! Try 8 *kB*! And before that, I think my brother's UK101 had a whopping 1kb


----------



## dgburns

Ok talked to an Apple business guy today. He says it’s unlikely there will be a new mac pro for 5 years. They plan support for about 5 years then two as ’vintage’ (?) support. So my napkin math says that IF that comes to pass, you buy one today and you have about 4 years as the current model plus maybe another 5 of support. If that’s the case, I can live with that as 9 odd years.

Trouble is, I don’t know if I can believe that because I think ‘this time it’s different’. He says the macbooks on down cycle through new models faster, and I tend to agree with that statement.

So here’s the thing, you refresh all but your top end machines, so now you have most on the new Arm, and some on Intel. So how does that work? I say not very well. And I think Apple probably think the same thing. If I was Apple, I’d say, let’s go all the way, across the board, change the whole lineup to Arm and that way we only have to deal with making the entire line work on the one platform. And that way we will make a patch for the old Intel stuff as we move forward.
I think Arm must be an ok chip, they are using them in Eventide’s H9000. What worries me is third party adoption, and the transition period of either wonky patched software and drivers, or simply non existant support from alot of stuff that will simply ‘go away’ and not make the transition. Some dev’s will take a hard look at the Mac side and wonder if the input costs will support the time and effort to port over, against the projected income.
Thing is, this will affect everyone who has a Mac now, not just those considering a new one. This is a point in time where Intel Macs are already in the rearview. 
I tried using Cubase, and found so many things I missed from LPX that it made me reconsider how bad it might be to step up to a new mac pro and get the performance gains and support for atleast 7-10 years of service as we launch to an uncertain future? tough decisions. 

LPX on PC would feel really good just about now.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

dgburns said:


> So here’s the thing, you refresh all but your top end machines, so now you have most on the new Arm, and some on Intel. So how does that work? I say not very well.



Why, David? I don't follow.


----------



## Alex Fraser

I fully expect Apple will be crystal clear about keeping support for Intel Macs. They need to keep selling them during the transition to ARM, right?


----------



## Symfoniq

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Why, David? I don't follow.



Me neither. Apple has done “fat” binaries before.


----------



## dgburns

Symfoniq said:


> Me neither. Apple has done “fat” binaries before.



@Nick Batzdorf 

If you guys can explain better how Apple can keep Intel on the top end machines alive while using Arm on everything else, I’d appreciate the insight.


----------



## telecode101

..


----------



## Symfoniq

dgburns said:


> @Nick Batzdorf
> 
> If you guys can explain better how Apple can keep Intel on the top end machines alive while using Arm on everything else, I’d appreciate the insight.



Since there is no official announcement yet, we are all speculating, but if history is any guide, Apple will navigate this transition in such a way that both architectures are viable for a time.

Apple has changed architectures twice in its history (68k -> PowerPC, PowerPC -> Intel), and each time they created emulation layers and developer tools to make those transitions easier. "Fat" binaries is a reference to universal binary applications that could be compiled for both PowerPC and Intel. After downloading a universal binary, it didn't matter whether you ran it on PowerPC or Intel: You got native performance, because it was native code.

Since they've done it before, it wouldn't be surprising if Apple has some nifty tricks up their sleeves to make it fairly straightforward to compile many Xcode projects to ARM, and create fat binaries containing both Intel- and ARM-native executables.

It will be interesting to see next week how Apple plans to do this. But they've done it more times, and more successfully, than anyone else.


----------



## Alex Fraser

telecode101 said:


> I am no expert, but my guess is *if* this does come to be, Apple are clearly stating they are in the hardware market for iphone users and casual computing users and are out of the high computing power users. Music pros and hobbyists will start to migrate to a PC.


I guess it depends like you say, on the strategy. If the switch is happening perhaps Apple will make it clear that it's a slow burn, multi-year process, with ARM Macs in the form of consumer hardware and Intel sticking around for a while at the upper end. To me, that seems the most likely scenario. It would allow Apple to move forward whilst keeping sales steady.

I went from a G5 to MacBook (Power PC to Intel) and I don't recall it was all that rough.


----------



## Zero&One

@telecode101 
For gaming I'm still with PC. I'd rather use my Nintendo Switch than the Mac if I was really stuck.
I don't think it's because it can't... I just think the PC has that market well and truly cornered. 

I'd hate to see the price of an Apple games console! Be 6K and a lifespan of 2 years. You couldn't even finish the Tomb Raider series without upgrading during it


----------



## telecode101

..


----------



## SupremeFist

telecode101 said:


> I am no expert, but my guess is *if* this does come to be, Apple are clearly stating they are in the hardware market for iphone users and casual computing users and are out of the high computing power users. Music pros and hobbyists will start to migrate to a PC.



I don't think so: Mac might now be a small proportion of Apple revenues, but there's significant overall brand value in having a "hero product" like the Mac Pro around (and clearly they're serious about chasing the high-end video market with it).


----------



## Symfoniq

telecode101 said:


> I don't know. and I have no idea how their numbers are but it all smells to me that apple sell a lot of macbook airs to consumers that have very rudimentary computing needs. this just cements that they are in that market and this will allows them to perfect, streamline, and sell more macbook airs at a larger profit. it's looking like graphic designers and audio pros are not their market anymore. (I may be wrong. who knows.)



Apple released a new Mac Pro six months ago.

The recent updates to Logic Pro X are almost overwhelming in their scope and depth.

I don't think Apple not wanting to be wed to Intel anymore = Apple dropping the professional market.


----------



## Alex Fraser

No Pro Macs or Pro Apps = who's going to create the content for Apple's services? Also developers who create iOS apps need Macs with a bit of oomph.

It's one gigantic, symbiotic product stack. I'm not remotely worried about Apple "abandoning the pros" just yet.


----------



## robcs

Here’s ZDNet’s take on it - definitely “don’t panic!”









If Apple announces a move to Arm, should you still buy a new Intel-based iMac?


If Apple is announcing a new processor architecture that will obsolete current Macs, should you still buy a current-model Mac, which is shipping with that soon-to-be-obsolete architecture? We help you decide.




www.zdnet.com


----------



## SupremeFist

I just bought Applecare for my new mini so I'm pretty confident they won't EOL it within 3 years.


----------



## Dewdman42

Alex Fraser said:


> I fully expect Apple will be crystal clear about keeping support for Intel Macs. They need to keep selling them during the transition to ARM, right?



I think Apple does have to support the 2019 MP until at least 2024 or else there will be bloody hell to pay, so yes...I think we can expect they are going to attempt to do that. 

However.. They attempted to do that with the PPC by basically bringing in Rosetta, which was a major PITA for everyone, especially for all the third party developers...which brought about a much faster transition through THEIR behavior then necessarily by Apple.


----------



## Dewdman42

Symfoniq said:


> Since they've done it before, it wouldn't be surprising if Apple has some nifty tricks up their sleeves to make it fairly straightforward to compile many Xcode projects to ARM, and create fat binaries containing both Intel- and ARM-native executables.



For sure they will do that. If its anything like Rosetta, then it will mean that older Intel software will run on an ARM machine, using some kind of Rosetta-like emulation. Meaning the intel-compiled software will not run as well on ARM unless it is compiled specifically for it. What about AVX, for example? That is not the only thing. As Ben has talked about already, there are optimizations that have been made, especially in the audio world, and it will be difficult to work all that out, many third parties will be effected by having to support both architectures during this transition period.

In theory, the older software shipped by third parties will still have the intel-compiled binaries and will run just as well on the the older machines. Now whether Apple will support OSX 10.16 or 17 on Intel machines is another question..

But who has a crystal ball right? Maybe they are going to announce a longer term plan to shift everything to ARM over the next 10 years but the next five will still be based on an operating system that installs either the Intel or ARM version depending on which hardware you buy. After that it will depend largely on what software you are trying to run. To me that is much more likely. Linux comes in both Intel and ARM variations right now, OSX at its core is not far off from that. There can be complications from having two independent operating systems, one based on ARM and one based on Intel, but its not impossible.

A close comparison is my Netgear Readynas NAS device, which has one operating system, but they ship some cheaper boxes based on ARM and some higher performance models based on Intel. I happen to own the intel ones, because I want the performance. The operating systems look identical in use, they have a simple web based interface or command line, and they are linux under the covers...one running on ARM and one running on Intel, but everything works the same...

Except....

You can't install binaries for ARM and have it run on Intel, and visa versa. The third parties have to provide separate binaries...

Do you honestly think Steinberg or many other third parties are going to want to have to deal with compiling their software to two completely different architectures? They have had a hard enough time just keeping the OSX version up to snuff with the windows version over the years. Yes, this change will cause untold chaos among third party developers and ultimately THEY will be the ones that drive people to choose to migrate to ARM, IMHO. Some of them will make valiant efforts, but in the end, users will do what they have to do to get working on their music and keep things working and at some point this will cause a shift to ARM the leaves intel users behind.. Some of them might be able to "officially" keep going with their intel boxes but many will be forced to abandon their $10k MB prematurely in my opinion. 

Or.. maybe Apple will handle the situation better then last time...but I kind of doubt it. It will come down to third parties driving people away from Intel, which then at some point third parties will stop supporting Intel and the intel boxes will become dinosaurs. That's what happened during PPC->Intel transition also.


----------



## Dewdman42

another factor. What do you think the trade-in value of a 2019 MP will be in 5 years when Apple is nearly transitioned all the way to ARM? It will literally become a paper weight.


----------



## Vik

Dewdman42 said:


> What do you think the trade-in value of a 2019 MP will be in 5 years when Apple is nearly transitioned all the way to ARM?


What if it will be possible to use ARM chips in that MP as well?


----------



## Dewdman42

Extremely unlikely. I would say impossible, but I don't have enough information to rule it out absolutely 100%. 99.9999999% not going to be possible.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

telecode101 said:


> I am no expert, but my guess is *if* this does come to be, Apple are clearly stating they are in the hardware market for iphone users and casual computing users and are out of the high computing power users. Music pros and hobbyists will start to migrate to a PC.



No.


----------



## Vik

Dewdman42 said:


> Extremely unlikely. I would say impossible, but I don't have enough information to rule it out absolutely 100%. 99.9999999% not going to be possible.


I wouldn't know – but they must have planned this ARM thing for years – which would make it kind of strange to release a high end Mac and somehow present it as future proof and not have made it compatible with their next generation of Mac chips.








Apple modular Mac Pro launch coming in 2019, new engineering group formed to guarantee future of hardware | AppleInsider


A redesigned modular Mac Pro — teased in April 2017 for professionals that want to upgrade faster — won't ship until 2019, Apple declared on Thursday.




appleinsider.com





*"...Apple modular Mac Pro launch coming in 2019, new engineering group formed to guarantee future of hardware"*

*Here's another one:
“I don’t think that the timeline has fundamentally changed,” says Ternus. “I think this is very much a situation where we want to measure twice and cut once, and we want to make sure we’re building a really well thought-out platform for what our pro customers are doing today. But also with an eye towards what they’re going to be doing in the future, as well. And so to do that right, that’s what we’re focusing on.”








Apple’s 2019 Mac Pro will be shaped by workflows – TechCrunch


A year ago, I visited the Apple campus in Cupertino to figure out where the hell the new Mac Pro was. I joined a round-table discussion with Apple SVPs and a handful of reporters to get the skinny on what was taking so long. The answer, it turns out, was that Apple had decided to […]




techcrunch.com




*


----------



## Dewdman42

We shall see Vik. They will try to do a transition like they did for PPC. But PPC->Intel didn't go well for some people, particularly those that bought the last PPC machine at the top of its game. I happened to be one of those people and felt particularly screwed a few years later. 

But we shall see.


----------



## Vik

Well, I have no idea, really. But to spend all that time/planning to make the 2019 Mac Pro, and then launch the future of their Mac hardware the next year - with zero compatibility – would be rather... silly.


----------



## SupremeFist

Dewdman42 said:


> We shall see Vik. They will try to do a transition like they did for PPC. But PPC->Intel didn't go well for some people, particularly those that bought the last PPC machine at the top of its game. I happened to be one of those people and felt particularly screwed a few years later.
> 
> But we shall see.


I bought a top-end G5 in 2004 and scored a corporate ad with it in 2015. Still worked!


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

telecode101 said:


> it all smells to me that apple sell a lot of macbook airs to consumers that have very rudimentary computing needs. this just cements that they are in that market and this will allows them to perfect, streamline, and sell more macbook airs at a larger profit. it's looking like graphic designers and audio pros are not their market anymore. (I may be wrong. who knows.)



First, my 11" MacBook Air may be the best Mac of the 20 or so I've owned. I don't use it in the studio, I use it for general computer things - email, web, chat, Zoom fitness classes, word processing, etc. It's the same weight and size as an iPad, only it's a real computer.

Do those machines have a higher profit margin? I don't know, but I sure like not having to travel with a heavy laptop on my back. And Apple also makes more powerful machines for those of us who need them.

Why does Apple bother with their pro apps, and with a machine that five people - three of whom are on this forum - will buy?

Prestige! If they were going to abandon "pro" users - all of whom buy iPhones, iPads, and (the reason for my raving above) MacBook Airs as well - they would have done so long ago. These are loss leaders.

There is so much hand-wringing in this thread over a transition to new chips! Software becomes incompatible even with the same ones over time anyway!

Now, people about to invest in an expensive Mac right now do have a legitimate worry. But come on, let's keep some perspective.


----------



## Symfoniq

I think Apple can walk and chew gum at the same time. The Mac is a $25 billion/year business in 2020. In 2006, it was about $7 billion. I expect ARM and x86 will co-exist for at least a few years, and perhaps for longer than PowerPC and Intel did. Apple has the resources to figure this out and make it work.

When you consider that (a) Apple just released an all-new Mac Pro running on Intel, (b) Apple continues to update its other professional Intel Macs (a new graphics option was released yesterday for the MacBook Pro), and (c) support for custom AMD x86 silicon has shown up in macOS betas, it doesn't add up to me that any ARM announcement next week will have major ramifications for Intel Macs in the short term.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Symfoniq said:


> The Mac is a $25 billion/year business in 2020.



And their selling far more iPhones than that doesn't make *$25 billion* a paltry sum!

(It's always seemed funny to me when people say the entire pro audio industry is tiny. Okay, but it also supports thousands of families!)


----------



## Vik

Symfoniq said:


> AMD x86 silicon has shown up in macOS betas


You mean this stuff?








Apple May Start Selling Macs With AMD CPUs


Has AMD finally wooed Apple into using its processors?




www.tomshardware.com


----------



## Dewdman42

From Apple's perspective they will always be asking themselves if they can make more money by prioritizing consumer level ARM devices then they might lose in the pro market through difficulties introduced. It does not mean they won't introduce difficulties, they can easily justify a 10 or 15 billion dollar dip in pro level sales if it that equates to 30B of increase in their consumer ARM area....or based on sales such as Apple Music or Apple TV which will all come from prioritizing ARM over Intel.

Really these arguments are tiring folks. You have people that will believe in Apple like a religion, always have and always will, and you have people that have been burned by Apple, and will always be a bit cynical. We are not going to prove anything here...glad everyone can vent their emotions, but we just have to wait and see...but me personally...there is no possible way, zilch, that I will buy a new MP intel machine until I see what they do in the next couple years.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> From Apple's perspective they will always be asking themselves if they can make more money by prioritizing consumer level ARM devices then they might lose in the pro market through difficulties introduced



That seems like a false choice to me, and from my armchair not the one they're facing.

There are a lot of things to worry about in the world right now. Apple's switch to ARM is not at the top of my list.


----------



## Dewdman42

Glad to hear you're not worried about it. Like me, you plan to stay on your cheesegrater for just a while yet, so not reason to worry now.

The perspective I put forth is not a false choice, its simple capitalism and is exactly what Apple is doing every single day. They owe nothing less to their stock holders. They have a lot more money to make in new directions. They can't be everything to everyone, compromises always have to be made in the name of profitability. 

They were once the best platform for pro level media use. It is very much left to be seen what will happen to that environment in the coming years. I know you want to have faith and believe in your beloved Apple company for the rest of your life, but like all big corporations they are following the money trail..nothing else. It is very much left to be seen what is going to happen with their pro level support in the next coming years. I do not trust any corporation in this world to do anything other then follow the path to the most money...and Apple is discovering way more money in streaming services and hand held devices. Relying on them to continue producing the kinds of desktop computers we have grown to love for the past decades is most definitely not a given.

Let's hope they do because I do dread having to use MS Windows. But it is very much left to be seen what will happen.


----------



## mscp

Dewdman42 said:


> Let's hope they do because I do dread having to use MS Windows. But it is very much left to be seen what will happen.



What's your worry about Windows 10?


----------



## Zero&One

The best part is, end users have the final say in the success of such a move.

As Jigsaw said “Make your choice”


----------



## Dewdman42

If I have to I will make it work fine. I have windows 10 on one computer now, it's fine. It will be great and I will make it work if Apple forces me to. But despite Apple's practices as a company, I do love a lot working with OSX...and I loathe working with certain things in MS windows. You are free to love windows 10 if that's your thing I will make no criticism, but I happen to love OSX. I was a UNIX developer for 20 years, maybe that's part of why I prefer OSX over windows. 

I feel windows is a cluster-f__k in certain ways and UNIX is just so damn much better. I hate the windows registry. With a passion. HATE. I could go on. 

OSX is truly a beautiful operating system. It will be very sad to me if Apple scratches it and turns it into iOS+ on slimmed down ARM devices. They'll make a lot of money, but you and I will lose an excellent computing platform. That's how I see it. 

But if i have to I will certainly make Windows 10 work just fine...no argument. Today we can make music effectively on either platform. Windows may require a little more thought put into exactly which hardware to combine together and a few practices to avoid window registry hell, backup strategies, and some stuff like that; but the platform will work fine... I will miss LogicPro though.


----------



## Alex Fraser

I dunno. 
Apple’s Pro Apps and hardware must be a tiny fraction of total income. If they were going to jettison them, they would have done so already. 

A great many things that fuel Apple’s services industry are made on Macs. Music, movies, apps. These machines that we love so much are only really part of a bigger picture.


----------



## Dewdman42

There ya go. Keep on believin'

I seriously do hope you are right!


----------



## mscp

Dewdman42 said:


> If I have to I will make it work fine. I have windows 10 on one computer now, it's fine. It will be great and I will make it work if Apple forces me to. But despite Apple's practices as a company, I do love a lot working with OSX...and I loathe working with certain things in MS windows. You are free to love windows 10 if that's your thing I will make no criticism, but I happen to love OSX. I was a UNIX developer for 20 years, maybe that's part of why I prefer OSX over windows.
> 
> I feel windows is a cluster-f__k in certain ways and UNIX is just so damn much better. I hate the windows registry. With a passion. HATE. I could go on.
> 
> OSX is truly a beautiful operating system. It will be very sad to me if Apple scratches it and turns it into iOS+ on slimmed down ARM devices. They'll make a lot of money, but you and I will lose an excellent computing platform. That's how I see it.
> 
> But if i have to I will certainly make Windows 10 work just fine...no argument. Today we can make music effectively on either platform. Windows may require a little more thought put into exactly which hardware to combine together and a few practices to avoid window registry hell, backup strategies, and some stuff like that; but the platform will work fine... I will miss LogicPro though.



Wow. We certainly live in different worlds. I love Windows, and I had been a Mac user since the 80's until circa 2015 when they decided to constantly nag me (long story).

I do hope Apple thrives though. I'm a switcher, so who knows?


----------



## Dewdman42

I know some people love windows, I have never loved it, not for one minute, always been annoyed by it. I have made it work for professional reasons for many years. When i was a UNIX dev for 20 years we also had to build on windows. Our home computers back in the day had to be windows in order to be compatible with the office network. So by default I have had to use windows machines for many many years, more years on that then OSX without question. Never once did windows OS stop annoying me and never did I ever say that I love it. I made it work and it can work with effort, but its always a lot more effort then OSX has been and gotten in my way far more then OSX ever did. OSX opened doors, windows was always some kind of hack-around-a-thon.... 

I have buddy that grew to enjoy Windows when he was developing a VB based product in the early 90's. He tried to love MacOs at some point because his beloved wife is a rabid religious Apple-loving zealot... so he tried, He would get extremely frustrated over a couple of simple little problems that could have been solved if he spent more then 2 hours trying to figure it out...I guess he was under the assumption that OSX should work the way windows does so he was just annoyed constantly by OSX. Simple things like...why he couldn't get his printer to work...or why the menu bar is at the top of the screen instead of the top of the app window...bla bla. I guess people have their preferences...and that is fine, if you love it use it. I'm just saying, in the many years I've been using various operating systems, at no time did I ever say "wow, i really love ms windows". I did have that experience with UNIX and later with OSX. so many times. So yes...for me....having to switch back to windows will definitely be a downgrade. But... I can make it work like I always have in the past if I have to. Just going to have to wait and see what Apple is going to do.

If we're lucky, they have some new state of the art ARM technology in their inner labs that will blow everyone away and be the ultimate computing platform...but as of now I see no actual evidence of that being the case other then hopeful thinking from people that love the Mac platform and trust Apple implicitly.


----------



## Alex Fraser

Dewdman42 said:


> There ya go. Keep on believin'
> 
> I seriously do hope you are right!


Me too!

You may be right, but I can't see it in the near to medium term, I won't be worrying about Apple abandoning pro users in what's left of my working life anyway. In no universe would Apple allow their gigantic apps and services devision to be propped up entirely by Windows. They'll be an Apple development hardware platform for media and apps, even if it doesn't resemble what we have today.

Mac Pros? Maybe not. But something that can churn out code and music? Sure.


----------



## mscp

Dewdman42 said:


> I know some people love windows, I have never loved it, not for one minute, always been annoyed by it. I have made it work for professional reasons for many years. When i was a UNIX dev for 20 years we also had to build on windows. Our home computers back in the day had to be windows in order to be compatible with the office network. So by default I have had to use windows machines for many many years, more years on that then OSX without question. Never once did windows OS stop annoying me and never did I ever say that I love it. I made it work and it can work with effort, but its always a lot more effort then OSX has been and gotten in my way far more then OSX ever did. OSX opened doors, windows was always some kind of hack-around-a-thon....
> 
> I have buddy that grew to enjoy Windows when he was developing a VB based product in the early 90's. He tried to love MacOs at some point because his beloved wife is a rabid religious Apple-loving zealot... so he tried, He would get extremely frustrated over a couple of simple little problems that could have been solved if he spent more then 2 hours trying to figure it out...I guess he was under the assumption that OSX should work the way windows does so he was just annoyed constantly by OSX. Simple things like...why he couldn't get his printer to work...or why the menu bar is at the top of the screen instead of the top of the app window...bla bla. I guess people have their preferences...and that is fine, if you love it use it. I'm just saying, in the many years I've been using various operating systems, at no time did I ever say "wow, i really love ms windows". I did have that experience with UNIX and later with OSX. so many times. So yes...for me....having to switch back to windows will definitely be a downgrade. But... I can make it work like I always have in the past if I have to. Just going to have to wait and see what Apple is going to do.
> 
> If we're lucky, they have some new state of the art ARM technology in their inner labs that will blow everyone away and be the ultimate computing platform...but as of now I see no actual evidence of that being the case other then hopeful thinking from people that love the Mac platform and trust Apple implicitly.



I use both, and have been a Mac-only user since Lisa. The way I see it is that MacOS has become a pretty expensive downgrade to me (if it makes any sense) with all the bloat they've been chucking in MacOS for the last few years as well as their underperforming hardware (as ironic as it may sound).

The way I see Windows is something that people would always tell me horror stories about (and perhaps rightfully so). But with the way Apple has been conducting business, I've decided to own one PC. Based on the numerous horror stories from the past, I was a little scared tbh. It turns out everything works flawlessly, the updates are solid, things simply work. So now I wonder: was I really lucky with my build? I didn't research AT all. I just bought expensive components that "screamed" quality. Assembling was a breeze. Installing Windows was a breeze. Maybe it's one of those "beginner's luck" type thing. Who knows?

I might go back to MacOS in the future...but I'm very displeased at Apple's overall consistency.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> The perspective I put forth is not a false choice



We're going around in circles, but I don't see their decision to switch chips as costing them pro users to gain more civilian customers. I see no evidence that they're going to stop courting and supporting both.

On the contrary, they just came out with a monster update to Logic, followed by a maintenance release right on its heels.


----------



## Saxer

The PPC to Intel switch isn‘t really comparable. At that time even the newest computer was too slow and everyone was waiting for the next version to come out. The G5 was the first computer that could handle in the box producing on a low level. The standard computer change happened every two years back then and with every new model the speed was doubled.

Audio is easily handled meanwhile. A lot of people are still using 10 year old machines for professional work. So there is no reason to follow a switch before everything works fine as long as you have a computer that fills the current needs. I even think now is the best time to get a MacPro and use it until the storm is gone.


----------



## Cinebient

I see it not as the end of mac like some says but rather a newborn.
ARM is the future. At least i would bet on it right now.
Also i do not think they would leave the pro machines until they do not have a more powerful ARM machine to offer. 
In some days we might know a bit more....or not. 
I mean i work just very mobile and so i do not use/need a desktop and for me it is more a race between iOS and macOS (or they finally merge them one day). 
These mobile machines getting really powerful now and in the next years. So if iPadOS mature and i could get the tools i am still missing there i have no problem to leave macOS. Some things there works already better like no piracy and so no need of fancy copy protections, use as much licenses as you have devices bound to your account, everything managed trough one account, often same tools for much less money etc.
But then it lacks still a lot tools i would want and of course iPadOs is still a crippled mobile OS but macOS is sometimes just bloat if i want to create music.
Fact is i would not buy any intel mac anymore if they really announce a coming switch to ARM on mac.
So the winner would be if developers port their tools to ARM (and like i said i have bad feelings with tools like Kontakt which are important for me as well) or if iOS developers or mac/windows developers which already works with ARM bring their tools to iOS.
When Apple would announce a full Logic for iOS i would already migrate a lot music work to iOS since it almost is there for me. Of course it is no way for most of the professionals here.
In a worst case freeze your machine and OS and be happy for another decade.


----------



## Thundercat

Zero&One said:


> If it's not a headphone jack, it's a another type of cable/charger, or some other random thing users were already happy with. Weird company, they make it very difficult to defend them on forums.


Yeah - losing the genius mag-safe power cord!? WTF!!!


----------



## chimuelo

It’s crap like this that made me dump Software DAWs for hardware.

Akai MPC Live is so refreshing after using Logic Silver, Cubase SX and more recently Reaper.

I’ve come full circle from the Yamaha QX-1/Roland MC500-mkII, to software and now back to hardware.

I unscrambled 25 years of imperfect ever changing software, to hardware that really inspires a new sense of creativity.

Love my software instruments but a touch screen hardware sequencer with limited RAM forces you into a smarter workflow.

What now, 8/16 and 24 core CPU’s, then what? 36/48 and 64 core CPU’s and we never have enough power?

Like Jaco said to the Guitar Mag reviewer when asked why don’t you have a 6 string Bass......”If you can’t get the work done on 4 strings, the other 2 won’t help much.”


----------



## jcrosby

Cinebient said:


> When Apple would announce a full Logic for iOS i would already migrate a lot music work to iOS since it almost is there for me. Of course it is no way for most of the professionals here.
> In a worst case freeze your machine and OS and be happy for another decade.


No thank you. Scoring to picture from an ipad? Oh sure, that sounds like a great idea.  This is the kind of cultism that encourages Apple to continue to handicap its own users.

See: Evangelism Marketing


----------



## Cinebient

jcrosby said:


> No thank you. Scoring to picture from an ipad? Oh sure, that sounds like a great idea.  This is the kind of cultism that encourages Apple to continue to handicap its own users.
> 
> See: Evangelism Marketing



Like i said, it might no option for the pro here but as a prosumer (at best) and since i do not make a living and just have fun it is a great option for me. 
I never ever use a desktop or large screens so it is of course a different workflow.
Has nothing to do with apple fanboyrism or such since i am not a fan at all but it is simply as it provides me now almost the same tools i personally need for much less and even some very unique ones with a better way to interact with live playing since i almost never touch any midi notes to edit.
At the end it is simple, i go where the most interesting tools are and when i compare some 100GB libraries and 200 dollar synths, they are not better than some tiny apps these days if you know how to use them or for a certain task.
The biggest difference is mainly the workflow you have to adopt.
Maybe i also get tired of the same sounding 100 string libraries which does not sound better than something like Staffpad which needs much less space and feels more like "future".
Of course that can change any day since it is still a new and fresh platform and i got bored with my mac bloat. 
Again i never expect most users here would and should consider it since they make a living from it.
But as already said the paying hobbyist and prosumer might indeed more the Apple market.
If a full X-code would exist not only on mac a lot more would maybe already left it.
At the end there is so much choice and nothing really to scare about. We have more tools than ever for any people from beginners to masters. Even hardware synths costs less than software some years ago


----------



## Alex Fraser

Threads like this crack me up.
A lot of the Apple criticism comes from folks who have one foot in Hackintosh or PC land and are working through the cognitive dissonance that comes with the move.

You should stay here with us in the Apple cult. They now give us doughnuts every Tuesday morning and we have a new song we sing to the elders.


----------



## gsilbers

Next week will be announcement.

my guess it’s new intel mac and support for a while. 
and a universal binary sort of thing.
It’s the first time announcing the arm chip and whatever coding background being implemented.
And some sort of project catalyst for mac where it’s building both apps for both platforms.
And guessing by so many angry Catalina upgrade developers, and buyers of mac pros, I’m sure Apple will make it the transition long enough.
Still.... not happy there will be planned obsolescence on my new MacBook pro


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

chimuelo said:


> Love my software instruments but a touch screen hardware sequencer with limited RAM forces you into a smarter workflow.



I don't know whether it's smarter for me, but it did push me in different directions.

As I've posted before, my first sequencer was a Yamaha QX-21. You could only edit to the bar, so I recorded everything in 1/1.

After a few weeks I stopped hearing everything in symmetrical meters - the stuff I came up with was free-flowing.


----------



## chimuelo

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I don't know whether it's smarter for me, but it did push me in different directions.
> 
> As I've posted before, my first sequencer was a Yamaha QX-21. You could only edit to the bar, so I recorded everything in 1/1.
> 
> After a few weeks I stopped hearing everything in symmetrical meters - the stuff I came up with was free-flowing.



Those were the very first days of sequencing. I did a gig for 8 years because of a StarSearch Judge actually thought I was playing all the parts. I tried explaining to him the FX/Mixing/Bass and occasional string or horn parts were pre programmed, don’t think he cared.

I bet you would like how the MPC Family has moved along.
The beauty of their upgrades is they’re all for additional hardware and now external DAW of their own which you can then send to the MPC for stand alone operation.

If they added more RAM in a future model they’d sell thousands again.

Cheerz Nicki Batz.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

chimuelo said:


> I bet you would like how the MPC Family has moved along.



Yeah, a good friend of mine was talking about his yesterday.


----------



## Dewdman42

make sure and read all the user comments too.


----------



## gsilbers

tomorrow....


----------



## gsilbers

__





Redirect Notice






www.google.com


----------



## jcrosby

gsilbers said:


> __
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Redirect Notice
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.google.com


Sure seems to contradict the theory that Apple will start gradually, and only with _consumer_ machines like the MB Air.


----------



## Alex Fraser

Perhaps they want to demonstrate the potential power of the ARM designs. Would send a different message to “only suitable for low power consumer stuff.”

Only a matter of hours now.


----------



## gsilbers

I’m guessing intel and Apple stock will have a wild ride today.
intel might be better off w/o apple as a client.


----------



## gsilbers

No matter what transition method they used I still think it’s going to be history repeating itself. PowerPC vs intel and before.
We all know the mac g5 didn’t make it past a few good years, but the Mac Pro 2008 and 2009 is still being used wildly in this community.

and I bought a new MacBook and it seems Apple purposely decided to leave enough time to promote it, have reviews etc and pass the return policy date So people won’t return their new lineup.
or so it looks.

we’llsee in a few hours


----------



## Tim_Wells

Apple will stop using Intel chips in all Macs by 2021, top analyst says


Apple is planning to launch a new 13.3-inch MacBook Pro and a new iMac that run on Apple's own Arm-based processors instead of Intel chips, TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said in a note over the weekend.




www.cnbc.com





“We expect that ARM Mac models outperform Intel Mac models by over 50%-100%,” Kuo said in the note.

Edit: Sorry. Guess this article is similar to the previous one posted by gsilbers. I just hadn't seen the "all Macs by 2021" nor the outperformance claims.


----------



## Vik

Symfoniq said:


> I don't think Apple not wanting to be wed to Intel anymore = Apple dropping the professional market.


They surely won't drop the pro market: If the first ARM Mac is a Mac Book Pro it's very unlikely that they haven't been porting Logic over to ARM, or have done that already. Don't forget that GarabeBand has been running on ARM chips for quite some time .


----------



## Symfoniq

Vik said:


> They surely won't drop the pro market: If the first ARM Mac is a Mac Book Pro it's very unlikely that they haven't will be porting Logic over to ARM, or have done that already. Don't forget that GarabeBand has been running on ARM chips for quite some time .



Agreed. I suspect that Logic is already running on ARM.

Apple had a working build of Mac OS X running on Intel for _years_ before the PowerPC to Intel transition was announced.


----------



## gsilbers

For me it seems it’ll be an event on how little Apple can piss off people. Or less amount of people. On both the developer side and customer side.

developers in the pro side might see a huge downside to have to code in arm (or whatever new thing)... and on top of that then have to compete w apps that cost $2.99 in the same marketplace.
It’s a huge difference in price between the iPhone App Store vs the Mac App Store. Apple sees better money on the small app side since more people don’t mind paying $1000 on 20,0000 apps.
instead of $400 for one app. Regardless of the app.

on the customer side... well... we where all very existed in the new Mac pro and many bought new macs.. and suddenly see the writing in the wall.
but new customers might see a better value on new machines w better battery life and power vs windows laptops


sometimes the rumors are half truth.
Maybe the MacBook is more like an iPad Pro w keyboard and running iPad os... hopefully.


----------



## gsilbers

it started. seeing it live...

ios 14... 


showing some features that have been in android since forever...


----------



## Cinebient

gsilbers said:


> it started. seeing it live...
> 
> ios 14...
> 
> 
> showing some features that have been in android since forever...


Yes, but wake me up if Android get core audio.


----------



## gsilbers

now the iphone can be a car key. and no need to have car keys. 
AND share the car key with someone via messages. 

and messages now does the whatsupp thing or similar.


----------



## gsilbers

iPad OS:

something about pencil and airpodds.... suddenly feeling how little macs matter to apple...


----------



## gsilbers

now apple has that spatial audio like waves nx. even w dolby atmos. .. 


that might be important for us one day...


----------



## gsilbers

apple watch now helps you wash your hands...


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

gsilbers said:


> suddenly feeling how little macs matter to apple...



They're saving the cliffhangers for last.

Oops. I just peed my pants from the excitement over having different iPhone icons.


----------



## gsilbers

New apple tv show... "Foundation"

looks good. did i read it right? cristophere nolan tv show?


----------



## gsilbers

here we goooo... mac


----------



## gsilbers

MAC OS BIG SUR


----------



## gsilbers

i spaced out... 

something to do with widgets?! 

new dock and mail... 

boring...


----------



## gsilbers

at least its a new OS.. and not a wierd ARM thing


----------



## gsilbers

the corporate tool man that seems from a "better off ted" commercial mentioned soething about a new thing that apple is keeping secret... but showing the destination... which is big sur!? ! or something like that?
did anyone catch that?


----------



## gsilbers

oki, im happrier they are promoting the mac OS apps etc... feeling better about my new macbook... 
but it hasnt ended .. :/


----------



## Alex Fraser

If you're not a fan of the IOS-ification of Macs, look away now.. 😉


----------



## gsilbers

here goo....


----------



## gsilbers

historic day :/


----------



## gsilbers

Yep... apple cpu ARM


----------



## Cinebient

Here we go.....


----------



## gsilbers

and starting up.. the ebay page.... 


starting the post to sell my new macbook... pro.... 

waiting....


----------



## gsilbers

Logic and and final cut can work on new ARM chips (apple silicon)


----------



## Cinebient

Logic already ported


----------



## gsilbers

UNIVERSALBINARY 2


----------



## gsilbers

damn it...


----------



## Dewdman42

So far this is all pretty predictable. Most of the demos he is doing are graphics related...ie..built in metal and stuff like that. I suspect the new ARM chips are going to handle desktop surfing very very well.. because of integrated features like that. The real test will be logicPro benchmarks when they come out in the future. I for one will be interested to see what happens when ARM cranks up all the cores if it starts to scale itself back through power management or something like that. 

So far, they are certainly doing a nice job of selling the platform. its clear this will be the future for Apple across the board on all macs. I do feel sorry for anyone that bought that 2019 MP.


----------



## gsilbers

Rosetta 2... to use apple older apps on new macs w silicon arm (no new macs yet)


----------



## Dewdman42

OMG he had to say it.. Rosetta comes back.... now I really feel sorry for people


----------



## Dewdman42

They are definitely doing some innovative things and most likely this ARM platform will be pretty awesome in five years from now. I think the next few years are going to be painful for some people though.


----------



## gsilbers

iPhone apps now play on macs.. big sur


----------



## Cinebient

Its the future. Sure they will outpetform intel in any way pretty soon.


----------



## gsilbers

tim cooks new macs didnt convince me... "years to come" 

is that 2 years? 4 years? of intel based support?


----------



## Dewdman42

Yea get to work developers!


----------



## gsilbers

Are those New Mac minis? 

intel based?


----------



## Dewdman42

The developer minis are ARM. They are a system that developers can use to convert their apps from Intel to ARM so that they don't have to run on Rosetta. The push will be to get all 3rd party devs to convert their apps to the universal2 format shipping with both intel and ARM binaries.


----------



## gsilbers

did all intel macs now become obsolete ?

i woudnt want to buy a new mac now...

that wasnt reassuring at all


----------



## Dewdman42

He made some comment about them still having a couple intel machines in the pipeline, which I wasn't paying close attention to, but I think his point is...this is not an overnight transition


----------



## mscp

Will Apple become relatively cheaper now that they‘ve dropped Intel? Will real performance match or exceed the current PC offers with their new ARM CPUs? Will 'Big Sur' be significantly better than 'Catalina'? If YES to all, then, bring it! If NO, I'll be happy to continue using Windows.


----------



## Dewdman42

Therein lies the rub. The transition will be painful. Higher performance needs will buy the last couple intel boxes that come out, which will continue to perform as long as developers continue to ship intel or univ2 binaries of their software. OSX will continue to be supported on intel for the foreseeable future for those. That is a noted improvement compared to the PPC->Intel transition 

However, what I think is that in the future devs will stop supporting intel due to development costs and at some point, intel owners will be left behind.

So i would be hesitant about spending a lot on a intel box right now myself. And yet...ARM is still kind of conceptual, especially for high performance...its the direction they are going to go, but its not going to be an overnight transition...too early to jump to ARM too just yet...


----------



## gsilbers

Dewdman42 said:


> He made some comment about them still having a couple intel machines in the pipeline, which I wasn't paying close attention to, but I think his point is...this is not an overnight transition



it was the same with the g5. the intel ones kept their value a lot lot more.


----------



## Andrew Aversa

It doesn't really matter if Logic runs. What matters is how well common plugins like Kontakt will run in it, if at all. Good luck getting 95% of plugin developers to convert their code to ARM.


----------



## Symfoniq

Dewdman42 said:


> So far, they are certainly doing a nice job of selling the platform. its clear this will be the future for Apple across the board on all macs. I do feel sorry for anyone that bought that 2019 MP.



Thanks, but I'm good. Three to five years is all I _need_ to get out of mine.

An argument could be made that now is the best time to buy an Intel Mac, because the next few years could be a bit rocky. I don't think ARM is going to be viable for most professional users on Day 1, and maybe not in Year 1.


----------



## gsilbers

Phil81 said:


> Will Apple become relatively cheaper now that they‘ve dropped Intel? Will real performance match or exceed the current PC offers with their new ARM CPUs? Will 'Big Sur' be significantly better than 'Catalina'? If YES to all, then, bring it! If NO, I'll be happy to continue using Windows.



per some articles ive read.. no the price will remain aboutt he same. 

the difference now its that you wont be able to compare apples to apples like now that windows and mac have the same intel chip and being priced way differently. or if mac uses xeon vs windows using i9. 
youll have to rely on benchmarks and other things.


----------



## Dewdman42

I agree the next few years will be rocky in general. At first it will be rocky for ARM owners, but then later on intel users will be left behind and will be rocky for them. There is no perfect path, but honestly...Apple seems to be doing an admirable job of attempting this transition, so we shall see.


----------



## gsilbers

zircon_st said:


> It doesn't really matter if Logic runs. What matters is how well common plugins like Kontakt will run in it, if at all. Good luck getting 95% of plugin developers to convert their code to ARM.



they kept saying Xcode is just a couple of days transition for developers.... 

they said that a LOT.... 

i wonder if that means plugins and developers for kontakt or plugins etc.


----------



## Cinebient

Also interesting how developers will handle the market then. Especially those which alraedy have much cheaper AUv3 iOS versions. So why should i pay now 10 times more?
Oh i see some bad times coming to mainly mac/win developers and vice versa maybe some great chances for iOS only developers now. 
Logic seems already ready and there are already so much good synths and FX for iOS.
All i need now would be Kontakt (but that can change too) and some FX plug-ins i cannot get there. 
This will be interesting.


----------



## gsilbers

Cinebient said:


> Also interesting how developers will handle the market then. Especially those which alraedy have much cheaper AUv3 iOS versions. So why should i pay now 10 times more?
> Oh i see some bad times coming to mainly mac/win developers and vice versa maybe some great chances for iOS only developers now.
> Logic seems already ready and there are already so much good synths and FX for iOS.
> All i need now would be Kontakt (but that can change too) and some FX plug-ins i cannot get there.
> This will be interesting.



i was thinkign the same. why would anyone now buy a $50 iamge editor for mac if the ios version is 2 bucks a month or something like that.

or maybe ios apps will go up in price? i mean... almost all fukin apps are subscurption based...


----------



## Dewdman42

There is a lot that will take some time. I, for one, use a lot of little utilities that originated on unix and were ported to mac and installed with home-brew, etc.. I expect to all of those things have to have problems with rosetta and not be converted to ARM until years go by. for example.

High performance and highly optimized apps such as VePro will have challenges that will not be solved in a couple days. what about plugins using AVX, for example....

Yea, some apps may simply compile for ARM in a few minutes, done. Simple apps. Normal typical desktop type stuff, that will be the case.


----------



## Cinebient

zircon_st said:


> It doesn't really matter if Logic runs. What matters is how well common plugins like Kontakt will run in it, if at all. Good luck getting 95% of plugin developers to convert their code to ARM.



Indeed but it is simple as i think if the old dinosaurs cannot deliver, someone will.


----------



## Alex Fraser

Yep, the real hurt for us is going to be third party stuff. Fortunately, all I _really_ need is Kontakt and Spitfire players to be converted and I can do work on ARM.

Over to you, NI.


----------



## Dewdman42

well you're still presuming that ARM is going to handle 100 tracks of mix down and cpu hungry low latency instrument plugins, I will believe it when I see it. I think the GUI fluff will be prettier and transparent as ever with ARM....but the raw CPU grinding and system performance through memory, SSD, etc...is very much left to be seen.


----------



## gsilbers

Dewdman42 said:


> well you're still presuming that ARM is going to handle 100 tracks of mix down and cpu hungry low latency instrument plugins, I will believe it when I see it. I think the GUI fluff will be prettier and transparent as ever with ARM....but the raw CPU grinding and system performance through memory, SSD, etc...is very much left to be seen.



the russian dude was playing a pretty intensive game (thomb rider?) using virtualization software on a new mac with arm.... 

seems pretty fast already.... 

my guess its the multi core performance might not be there yet since iphone and ipad didnt really benefit that much w multi core? 
dunno..


----------



## gsilbers

Alex Fraser said:


> Yep, the real hurt for us is going to be third party stuff. Fortunately, all I _really_ need is Kontakt and Spitfire players to be converted and I can do work on ARM.
> 
> Over to you, NI.



oh man.. that right... every big deloper want off to their new sampler app. im guessing the guys at east west might be fuming about now. since it took forever to do v6 and had so many issues. 
anyways... small developers might just say meh.. fukit


----------



## Alex Fraser

Dewdman42 said:


> well you're still presuming that ARM is going to handle 100 tracks of mix down and cpu hungry low latency instrument plugins, I will believe it when I see it. I think the GUI fluff will be prettier and transparent as ever with ARM....but the raw CPU grinding and system performance through memory, SSD, etc...is very much left to be seen.


Apple quoted as moving the entire line within 2 years. Presumably that means the MacPro. Pretty bold statement to make, on Apple's part. I'm assuming they've got a very good idea of the total performance they can work towards. Else they'll be a lot of red faces..


----------



## Dewdman42

gsilbers said:


> the russian dude was playing a pretty intensive game (thomb rider?) using virtualization software on a new mac with arm....
> 
> seems pretty fast already....
> 
> my guess its the multi core performance might not be there yet since iphone and ipad didnt really benefit that much w multi core?
> dunno..



That demo highlights how the Apple ARM chips have metal and specific features built into the chip to support things like graphics, security, etc.. as included in OSX.. A game can get high frame rates, etc..because of the graphics capabilities. But that should NOT be miscontrued to mean the machine is cranking the CPU the way we do in DAW work. As I said...desktop GUI and graphics I suspect will be impressive on Arm and in the not too distant future, OSX will be taking advantage of that and intel boxes will not be keeping up.....graphically. But the raw cpu churning and system throughput is yet to be seen.


----------



## Cinebient

Dewdman42 said:


> well you're still presuming that ARM is going to handle 100 tracks of mix down and cpu hungry low latency instrument plugins, I will believe it when I see it. I think the GUI fluff will be prettier and transparent as ever with ARM....but the raw CPU grinding and system performance through memory, SSD, etc...is very much left to be seen.



It already does well on iPads on a single core. 
Some of the same tools runs better there already. 
Of course i could be wrong but i think more it runs much better, especially if they scale up the A-chips. In the demo they just used the same as in the current iPads.
Of course we will see when the first ARM mac runs Logic. 
But even if it will take some time i am pretty sure intel is NOT the way to go for really optimized software with the hardware. 
So if they really scale the iPad performance up into macbooks and macs i believe we see much better performance (at least for really native coded apps).
Of course i could be wrong.
One thing for sure. I will not go to windows and i also would not buy any intel based mac anymore and use my current one as long as possible.


----------



## Dewdman42

we shall see mate.


----------



## Dewdman42

Cinebient said:


> One thing for sure. I will not go to windows and i also would not buy any intel based mac anymore and use my current one as long as possible.



That is my take. Most likely my next mac will be ARM in 5 years. But we shall see, a lot has to happen between now and then.


----------



## seclusion3

As I’ve done before, if I do a bootable backup and transfer to a new machine. He talked about installing for Rosetta etc. So we need to reinstall everything or do they open. I know some 3rd party would need the serial #'s re input. Going to be interesting.
I'd love to see what the CPU is. 
exciting. 
And no rush, there will be a few years updates


----------



## gsilbers

Dewdman42 said:


> That demo highlights how the Apple ARM chips have metal and specific features built into the chip to support things like graphics, security, etc.. as included in OSX.. A game can get high frame rates, etc..because of the graphics capabilities. But that should NOT be miscontrued to mean the machine is cranking the CPU the way we do in DAW work. As I said...desktop GUI and graphics I suspect will be impressive on Arm and in the not too distant future, OSX will be taking advantage of that and intel boxes will not be keeping up.....graphically. But the raw cpu churning and system throughput is yet to be seen.


i wonder if that will affect benchmark tests since all its components will be working together better while the pc counterpart will have different cpu and gpu.


based on some benchmarks using the ipad pro , it seems to be as fast as some i7 pcs.... notebook of course









New iPad Pro Benchmarked: This Blows Away Windows PCs


The A12X Bionic chip inside the new 2018 iPad Pro outperforms even Core i7-powered laptops.




www.tomsguide.com






mac pros seems to rely on xeon based cpu which is ideal for multi thread..


so maybe in the near future, macbooks will be as fast as normal laptops where a lot of poeple already produce music.
and mac pros will stay intel for a while for that multi thread cpu and be able to load huge templates


----------



## Dewdman42

we shall see. I would think Apple has their sites set on matching or beating total system performance, but all I'm saying is...we don't know until we see it. There are many articles on the net talking bout how ARM, until now, simply cannot compete with raw system performance of Intel. The priorities of ARM are more about cost and heat/power. Maybe Apple will do it. Maybe. We shall see. 

I'm just saying, those demos do not demonstrate that they have already done so...they highlight on the graphics..which is to be expected. since they are making the chips they can build in T2 or graphics acceleration or whatever other fancy Apple security crap they want to build in, hopefully optimizing many things like that. The average user will experience what feels like a snappier machine. However, that does not equate to total system performance...and we will just have to wait and see some benchmarks in the future as they become available.

DAW's are actually a very performance intensive application. In order to get low latency, they are taxed to the max of what computers can do...and in a way that adding many cores, as we have observed, doesn't always improve things. Really...DAW users are all trying to use the fastest computers that reasonable money can buy, for exactly that reason and highly optimizing their machines. In no way shape or form has ARM proven to be an improvement over Intel for that kind of thing. Maybe Apple will do that as we roll forward, we shall see. My own crystal ball expects to see that kind of performance get a little worse for a while under the new ARM...but perhaps "good enough" that people will just accept the limitations.

iPadPro comparisons are ridiculous. People using iPadPro are using much less resource intensive applications then a typical DAW session. Yes the iPadPro may be great for mousing around staffpad or playing a game using graphics acceleration, or playing a single instrument app of some kind. its pretty cool what can be done on a touch device that way, but those applications pale in comparison to the raw CPU and system performance required for DAW work. 

All i can say is we shall see....


----------



## Cinebient

It might be a no-go for some developers but i find the apps tore way more user friendly, more easy to handle, more licenses (on each machine) and also maybe the best copy protection for developers. Not sure how that translate to the mac apps store and of course there is the 30% cut but for some developers it is a good way (at least they told me) and they willing to pay that price. 
Of course this is no option for bigger companies and i bet these will have the hardest time to port things. 
I know a crippled OS and workflow is the last thing people want but often the current mac workflow, overpriced plug-ins, bloat and 100 different copy protections, install, deinstall....etc.
Sometimes i just hate that all and all i want is making music.
Often it feels all so dated and GUIs look like from the 90´s. 
It all can get just better with a new more deeply integrated platform for soft- and hardware.
Yes, it will take some time and i am not in a hurry but i will stop already buying plug-ins from developers i see no future and anything with intel written on it. 
It all can change of course. 
N.I. better start today :D


----------



## wayne_rowley

Time will tell. I think the new platform _could _be great. But music software and hardware developers have enough trouble with each year’s OS update let alone a new platform as well. And Apple‘s release quality for software seems to be gradually degrading (he writes, as auto corrupt on this iPad tries to re-write my words in the wrong way).

i think they will get there in the end. But my 2018 Mac Mini is doing well enough at the moment, certainly well enough to see me through the transition (I hope). Then I can decide what is next.

Wayne


----------



## marius_dm

I’d say bring it on. I’m only using macOS on MBP, which was always “thermally challenged”. If the switch to ARM improves that I’m all for it and I can’t wait to see the first arm based machines in the fall. I might even sign up for the developer starter kit to play around with the a12z based mini.


----------



## samphony

zircon_st said:


> It doesn't really matter if Logic runs. What matters is how well common plugins like Kontakt will run in it, if at all. Good luck getting 95% of plugin developers to convert their code to ARM.


If I’m not mistaken the AU v3 specs introduced 2 years ago should get them started.


----------



## Cinebient

Dewdman42 said:


> we shall see. I would think Apple has their sites set on matching or beating total system performance, but all I'm saying is...we don't know until we see it. There are many articles on the net talking bout how ARM, until now, simply cannot compete with raw system performance of Intel. The priorities of ARM are more about cost and heat/power. Maybe Apple will do it. Maybe. We shall see.
> 
> I'm just saying, those demos do not demonstrate that they have already done so...they highlight on the graphics..which is to be expected. since they are making the chips they can build in T2 or graphics acceleration or whatever other fancy Apple security crap they want to build in, hopefully optimizing many things like that. The average user will experience what feels like a snappier machine. However, that does not equate to total system performance...and we will just have to wait and see some benchmarks in the future as they become available.
> 
> DAW's are actually a very performance intensive application. In order to get low latency, they are taxed to the max of what computers can do...and in a way that adding many cores, as we have observed, doesn't always improve things. Really...DAW users are all trying to use the fastest computers that reasonable money can buy, for exactly that reason and highly optimizing their machines. In no way shape or form has ARM proven to be an improvement over Intel for that kind of thing. Maybe Apple will do that as we roll forward, we shall see. My own crystal ball expects to see that kind of performance get a little worse for a while under the new ARM...but perhaps "good enough" that people will just accept the limitations.
> 
> iPadPro comparisons are ridiculous. People using iPadPro are using much less resource intensive applications then a typical DAW session. Yes the iPadPro may be great for mousing around staffpad or playing a game using graphics acceleration, or playing a single instrument app of some kind. its pretty cool what can be done on a touch device that way, but those applications pale in comparison to the raw CPU and system performance required for DAW work.
> 
> All i can say is we shall see....



But you know there are already DAWs on iOS and i saw people doing amazing things and running 30-50 instances of synths, FX, or super complex modular patches with a buffer of 64 samples ....and this on a single core.
And i heard some developers saying ARM is actually better for real-time audio but i am not sure if that is true.
RAM is more the limitation there and anyway the lack of huge sample libraries. But at least the 12-Z bionic within the developer kit has 16GB while the one in the iPad has just 6GB.
On desktop and notebooks half the performance seems anyway wasted to to bloated OS and bad optimized software. Old code, bad GUIs are no fun at all too.


----------



## gsilbers

samphony said:


> If I’m not mistaken the AU v3 specs introduced 2 years ago should get them started.



it be nice to know the developers point of view. i do have seen a few apps with auv3 but seems most are not. i feel the whole point of making them iPad apps wasnt a big hit in this community? maybe?


----------



## Dewdman42

Cinebient said:


> But you know there are already DAWs on iOS and i saw people doing amazing things and running 30-50 instances of synths, FX, or super complex modular patches with a buffer of 64 samples ....and this on a single core.
> And i heard some developers saying ARM is actually better for real-time audio but i am not sure if that is true.
> RAM is more the limitation there and anyway the lack of huge sample libraries. But at least the 12-Z bionic within the developer kit has 16GB while the one in the iPad has just 6GB.
> On desktop and notebooks half the performance seems anyway wasted to to bloated OS and bad optimized software. Old code, bad GUIs are no fun at all too.



Yea sure, let me see you run VePro + LogicPro + a few hundred plugins and a template with 500 tracks, etc. Sorry, nobody is doing anything close to that on iPadPro. The comparison is absurd. iPadPro cannot compete against top mac performance even close.


----------



## typewriter

I guess I will use some time for creating VEPRO (PC) templates and use the future Macs just for driving LOGIC with VEPRO. Maybe a Macbook will do that job. While I understand the decision of Apple fom a business perspective I have to say that as a customer I hate to go through this crap (after PowerPC) for the second time. Life is too short for this.


----------



## gh0stwrit3r

Maybe a stupid question, but I simply don’t understand it all. Does the new native Logic Pro app runs on an Intel based Mac too? I was eyeing on a new iMac (hopefully with a 10gen chip, 10 cores), but is that a good buy knowing what we know now?


----------



## ridgero

gh0stwrit3r said:


> Maybe a stupid question, but I simply don’t understand it all. Does the new native Logic Pro app runs on an Intel based Mac too? I was eyeing on a new iMac (hopefully with a 10gen chip, 10 cores), but is that a good buy knowing what we know now?



Yes, and it will for many years.


----------



## wayne_rowley

gh0stwrit3r said:


> Maybe a stupid question, but I simply don’t understand it all. Does the new native Logic Pro app runs on an Intel based Mac too? I was eyeing on a new iMac (hopefully with a 10gen chip, 10 cores), but is that a good buy knowing what we know now?



Yes, it will work on an Intel Mac as well. And new versions will continue to as long as Apple release them as Universal binaries. I’d give it 5 years. Beyond that I suspect new versions will be ARM only. But what you have won’t stop working.


----------



## Alex Fraser

Can't believe I missed it, but it's officially Mac OS 11. No longer X.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Guess what? We would have had to update all our software if we needed to stay on the bleedin' edge by the time these things come out anyway.

This is still not at the top of my list of things to worry about.

Meanwhile, I see being able to run iOS apps as a positive, not the lowest common denominator people are worried about.


----------



## BassClef

Looking to upgrade my 6 year old iMac27. I hope an announcement is coming soon on what to expect in that product line.


----------



## jcrosby

Dewdman42 said:


> However, what I think is that in the future devs will stop supporting intel due to development costs and at some point, intel owners will be left behind.


Exactly the concern I've had all along. It's not whether developers can transition, it's how long will those developers continue to support intel-based mac users? At some point many plugin developers will probably have to drop intel mac support. This is the fine print they omit.

Is Logic ported? Sure. If you use only Logic plugins and instruments? Painless... If you use 3rd party plugins, (which everyone here does), there's no way to currently know what this actually means, but it's safe to assume it means a shorter shelf life for many plugins on intel macs. Smaller developers just don't have the resources to bug fix two mac platforms simultaneously. Not to mention that many big names are still small teams... FabFilter, Soundtoys, the list goes on...

And while Logic is apparently ported, again, no indication how ARM performance translates to handling 100+ Instruments and plugins from various developers running inside a Logic session. As pointed out it's one thing showing graphics apps that utilize metal, it's another showing a real-life logic session. Which they didn't, so I remain skeptical.

Overall the single biggest/most obvious take away for me is that it's all about merging the mac and ios. The other takeaway I see is that it's the focus is on consuming content vs creating it. Logic received all of one sentence, final cut was more or less a footnote, (but at least go some screen time, where Logic did not.)


----------



## Cinebient

Dewdman42 said:


> Yea sure, let me see you run VePro + LogicPro + a few hundred plugins and a template with 500 tracks, etc. Sorry, nobody is doing anything close to that on iPadPro. The comparison is absurd. iPadPro cannot compete against top mac performance even close.



I never said that it will run that. A future macPro with ARM might do.
But for non-professionals like me which just need a semi-powerful notebook, it is already quite there. And as we all know the dumb prosumers (like me) are one of the biggest market.
People done amazing things with much less a decade ago.
Of course you are right that especially for large templates it is no option and this will take some years. In the meantime other start with the next generation into the future 
I get tired of hearing Kontakt having too much old code and most 5 dollar apps having a million times better GUI and workflow. I see a better future in new apps/plug-in/tools coming up in the near future. Sure, these powerful complex apps are missing yet but they will come.


----------



## gsilbers

BassClef said:


> Looking to upgrade my 6 year old iMac27. I hope an announcement is coming soon on what to expect in that product line.



they said end of the year in the video somewhere. 
theyll have both new ARM chips and also new intel macs.


----------



## Virtuoso

I wonder how well the chips scale?

So far they've been used in phones and tablets where the priority is low power draw and heat. It will be interesting to see how fast they can go with proper cooling.

And how much memory they can address. The phones and tablets are only 3-4GB, the Dev Kit has 16GB. I wonder what the upper limit is?


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Virtuoso said:


> I wonder what the upper limit is?



Definitely 64-bit memory access (which means there's no practical limit).


----------



## gordinho

For those of you worried about scalability of ARM processors, here is a lengthy analysis comprising of different workloads in single thread and multi-thread duties on amazon servers. Unless you are punishing the L2 cache, the performance is amazing. Urs (from U-he) mentioned on kvr that he is not worried about porting his code, namely SIMD optimization on x86. Of course, that company is able to commercially produce plugins also for linux so they have a codebase and developers already in a truly multi-platform mindset as opposed to two branches (osx and win).


----------



## yiph2

Was going to buy the 16 inch MBP, should I wait? I'm just a bit concerned on the software side of things...


----------



## Geoff Grace

yiph2 said:


> Was going to buy the 16 inch MBP, should I wait? I'm just a bit concerned on the software side of things...


I would stick with Intel, unless you can wait at least couple of years. I don't think that early ARM Macs will be as future-proof as later models. Certainly my 2008 Mac Pro (bought after my G5 died, during the transition to Intel) isn't as configurable today as is even a 2009 Mac Pro. It will also take awhile for developers to port their software to the new platform.

Best,

Geoff


----------



## rnb_2

I think we can anticipate the first ARM Macs will be those with only integrated graphics currently - MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, Mac mini, maybe an iMac config - where Apple's CPU will be competitive and their GPU should be vastly superior to Intel's. Anything with a discrete GPU - most iMac configs (the low end could migrate sooner), 16-inch MacBook Pro, Mac Pro - will be later to switch over. They're touting unified memory, which implies integrated GPUs sharing memory with the system, so how they'll address the higher-end market is still unknown - there is no way to build anything like a high-end, multi-GPU Mac Pro with an integrated GPU that shares memory with the CPU.

At the very least, there will be new Intel iMacs released this year, possibly in the next few weeks, with a fairly major redesign for the first time in forever. The fate of the iMac Pro remains unknown, as the new iMac is rumored to move to SSD-only storage and something like the cooling system from the iMac Pro, so maybe the iMac Pro just becomes the top-end iMac?

I bought my 2018 i7 Mac mini anticipating that it would be my last Intel Mac. The only real question is which ports are included in the first ARM Macs - I need Thunderbolt for my current storage, and the Dev Kit mini only has USB-A and USB-C (2 of each). Assuming that they do include Thunderbolt in consumer systems, I could see myself buying an ARM mini fairly quickly if the Apple GPU allows me to migrate my current eGPU setup to another Mac. The integrated Intel GPU in the 2018 mini is pretty weak, so I needed the eGPU for photo and video work, but I'm pretty confident that Apple's initial GPU offering will be more than sufficient.

Should be an interesting few years, no doubt.


----------



## Dewdman42

4 big problems Apple’s ARM-based Macs will need to solve


ARM Macs could rock the boat for professional creator applications, gaming, AR and more




www.tomsguide.com


----------



## TGV

gordinho said:


> For those of you worried about scalability of ARM processors


Isn't that an entirely different processor, designed by and for Amazon?


----------



## wayne_rowley

rnb_2 said:


> I bought my 2018 i7 Mac mini anticipating that it would be my last Intel Mac. The only real question is which ports are included in the first ARM Macs - I need Thunderbolt for my current storage, and the Dev Kit mini only has USB-A and USB-C (2 of each). Assuming that they do include Thunderbolt in consumer systems, I could see myself buying an ARM mini fairly quickly if the Apple GPU allows me to migrate my current eGPU setup to another Mac. The integrated Intel GPU in the 2018 mini is pretty weak, so I needed the eGPU for photo and video work, but I'm pretty confident that Apple's initial GPU offering will be more than sufficient.
> 
> Should be an interesting few years, no doubt.



The Thunderbolt question is interesting - there is a lot I’m sure Apple did not tell us. They demoed Big Sur on an ARM system, but that system was connected to an Apple Pro 6K display - and they run on Thunderbolt! Somehow I don’t think they were using these test Mac Mini systems!


----------



## ridgero

As a Logic user I‘m pretty exited for this transition.

This is HUGE!!! It is the first developer to use exactly the same architecture on Desktop & Mobile. This opens infinity possibilities for the future.

I guess a small ARM based iMac is around the corner


----------



## ridgero

wayne_rowley said:


> The Thunderbolt question is interesting - there is a lot I’m sure Apple did not tell us. They demoed Big Sur on an ARM system, but that system was connected to an Apple Pro 6K display - and they run on Thunderbolt! Somehow I don’t think they were using these test Mac Mini systems!



No need to worry, Thunderbolt is basically USB 4 and thats an royalty free standard.


----------



## vitocorleone123

I'm incredibly skeptical. Given that this is Apple, I foresee lower-than-Intel prices for the first year or two so they can make their point, then they'll creep back up to where they were, or beyond. More than anything, Apple is about selling everything they can for as much as they can, and finding new ways to milk the buyer and convince them it's for their own good (what new dongles will be required next?). No thanks. Apple can stay in the support role - an iPad or iPhone with some MIDI generation or control- in this house.


----------



## gordinho

vitocorleone123 said:


> I'm incredibly skeptical. Given that this is Apple, I foresee lower-than-Intel prices for the first year or two so they can make their point, then they'll creep back up to where they were, or beyond. More than anything, Apple is about selling everything they can for as much as they can, and finding new ways to milk the buyer and convince them it's for their own good (what new dongles will be required next?). No thanks. Apple can stay in the support role - an iPad or iPhone with some MIDI generation or control- in this house.



I think it's a natural trade off between very tightly vertically integrated solution vs using an approach like intel/amd and using windows or linux. There are benefits to each solution, the question is how much the market is willing to pay for this integration. Mac laptops are clearly more expensive than any other solutions by PC providers but how many 2012 laptops from anyone else could I realistically be using that hadn't fallen apart ? There is a high quality to mac products that only becomes apparent after many years. Sure my laptop shows its age yet I can still use it for work and audio duties after almost 8 years... that is something few experience with non-apple products. My ancient ipad is still going strong too...


----------



## vitocorleone123

“Sure my laptop shows its age yet I can still use it for work and audio duties after almost 8 years... that is something few experience with non-apple products.”

Not true at all, but I’ll leave it at that. 

It is true that, by controlling everything, Apple can push reliability - but they also seem to make compromises on hardware design that “uses up” any gains in order to, well, simply make things thinner. Hopefully going to arm will help Apple get that out of their system in a few more years. But I somehow doubt it!


----------



## Tim_Wells

gordinho said:


> There is a high quality to mac products that only becomes apparent after many years. Sure my laptop shows its age yet I can still use it for work and audio duties after almost 8 years... that is something few experience with non-apple products.


That's not at all true in my experience. As we speak, I'm sitting here doing all my projects on a Windows PC I built in 2012 for less than $1,000 and it's working very well. I plan to upgrade sometime in the year or so... but nothing is forcing me to.


----------



## gordinho

Tim_Wells said:


> That's not at all true in my experience. As we speak, I'm sitting here doing all my projects on a Windows PC I built in 2012 for less than $1,000 and it's working very well. I plan to upgrade sometime in the year or so... but nothing is forcing me to.


I was thinking in particular of laptops that get much more abused from being lugged around everywhere. (I also built a pc for linux, it just makes sense..) I am sure many will have a different experience, it's all good!  Interestingly, consumer reports does seem to have the same idea when it comes to laptops. 

I'm not an apple fanboy, I don't even use an iphone. Just have found that there is something great about high end apple laptops that are a joy to use. I have yet to find a decent trackpad on a pc, but I haven't tried many recent ones, maybe they are better now. But ok, back to topic on ARM...


----------



## marius_dm

vitocorleone123 said:


> I'm incredibly skeptical. Given that this is Apple, I foresee lower-than-Intel prices for the first year or two so they can make their point, then they'll creep back up to where they were, or beyond. More than anything, Apple is about selling everything they can for as much as they can, and finding new ways to milk the buyer and convince them it's for their own good (what new dongles will be required next?). No thanks. Apple can stay in the support role - an iPad or iPhone with some MIDI generation or control- in this house.


Personally i don’t think they will lower their prices. What they save from avoiding Intel’s markup they’ll invest in R&D for their cpu architecture division.


----------



## Buz

I'm just happy if it increases the pressure on Intel. Between this and the success of AMD we should see a blazing x86 market next year.


----------



## Tim_Wells

Buz said:


> I'm just happy if it increases the pressure on Intel. Between this and the success of AMD we should see a blazing x86 market next year.


That's a good point and is probably what will happen. Even more pressure on CPU makers to provide more for less.


----------



## gordinho

marius_dm said:


> Personally i don’t think they will lower their prices. What they save from avoiding Intel’s markup they’ll invest in R&D for their cpu architecture division.


Yes, I don't see prices going lower if they deliver performance. If they can provide an entry level armbook with double battery life and able to shuffle around 4k video like nobody's business no one will mind paying the same price. Power users are a minority even though we are the loudest!


----------



## wayne_rowley

Buz said:


> I'm just happy if it increases the pressure on Intel. Between this and the success of AMD we should see a blazing x86 market next year.



I suspect it will take Intel longer than a year to get themselves out of the thermal-design corner they have backed in to!

I think other PC manufacturers will be watching Apple very closely over the next couple of years. If the new platform _is_ as good as Apple claim it will be in respect of power, heat and performance, than I can see many other PC manufacturers following suite. Where Apple lead, many others follow...

Wayne


----------



## Dewdman42

Mac prices won’t go down. Apple Is going to eliminate forever the hackintosh community though. And they will continue to tightly integrate mobile and desktop products.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

ridgero said:


> No need to worry, Thunderbolt is basically USB 4 and thats an royalty free standard.



Actually I think it's USB 3.2, but I forget. It is supposed to work over a USB-C connector.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> Mac prices won’t go down. Apple Is going to eliminate forever the hackintosh community though. And they will continue to tightly integrate mobile and desktop products.



However, I doubt they give a FF about Hackintosh. Today the company is worth $1.605 TRILLION DOLLARS (read with Dr. Evil finger).


----------



## Technostica

ridgero said:


> No need to worry, Thunderbolt is basically USB 4 and thats an royalty free standard.





Nick Batzdorf said:


> Actually I think it's USB 3.2, but I forget. It is supposed to work over a USB-C connector.


USB 4.0 is I believe a super-set of TB3, so it is better in some ways.
The issue with USB nowadays is that some of the features are optional, so you have to look carefully to see what a particular port on a particular device supports.
With TB3 I think you tend to get it all with the only issue being power delivery maybe!


----------



## method1

ARM-based Japanese supercomputer is now the fastest in the world:









ARM-based Japanese supercomputer is now the fastest in the world


Fugaku is being used in COVID-19 research




www.theverge.com





ARM is so hot right now


----------



## Sarah Mancuso

Nick Batzdorf said:


> However, I doubt they give a FF about Hackintosh. Today the company is worth $1.605 TRILLION DOLLARS (read with Dr. Evil finger).


Yeah, I don't think hackintosh is something they care about at all. They could have killed hackintosh years ago by requiring the T2 chip to boot macOS, but they continued putting out new Macs with no T2 chip as late as 2019.

What is a shame, though, is that they don't offer anything anymore for the kind of Mac users who resorted to building hackintoshes. If you just need something around an i9 or i7 and can't justify spending upwards of $6000 on a Mac Pro, there are no expandable Mac tower options for you, and the all-in-one machines Apple offers have become less upgradeable than ever before.

I'm probably going to be reluctantly switching to Windows in a few years when software support for my i9 Mac inevitably dries up.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Sarah Mancuso said:


> I'm probably going to be reluctantly switching to Windows



Not me.


----------



## Dewdman42

Nick Batzdorf said:


> However, I doubt they give a FF about Hackintosh. Today the company is worth $1.605 TRILLION DOLLARS (read with Dr. Evil finger).



this could very well be true that hackintoshing has never been a real revenue loss to them, and I am most definitely not saying that hackintoshing is the primary motive behind them changing to ARM. I am just saying...with the change to CPU's which THEY are have having manufactured precisely to their own specs, using built in hardware-based features which they have ultimate control over...will result in the final nail in the coffin which will end forever hackintoshing. 

Hackintoshing was an Intel thing and was largely only possible because of the fact that the hardware was using the same BIOS as PC's, and running on the same hardware. This is all going to change drastically in the next five years...and plus Apple is building in all kinds of security features that will make OS11 much more secure...more secure from virus too and other threats, there will be benefits for users...but they will also be able to completely lock out hackintoshing if they choose. 

They are, however building in to both hardware and OS11, technologies which facilitate VM uses. That is how they demo'd Linux running on the mac...using a VM basically. That is how people will continue to use macs for a long time to run unix web dev kits and stuff like that. No idea how that will perform, but is how it will be done for quite a few years. However, the inverse of that...running OS11 itself on a non-ARM processor...well... some hackintosh people would have to create a VM that emulates the ARM chip...completely...and able to get past any security features that Apple builds in which might prevent that from even being possible. Hackintoshing is over! There will be some of it for the next 5 years, but after that, it will be dead and gone.

Remember the old days with PPC and before. If you wanted to run MacOS, you had to buy a mac. period. That will be the case in 5 years too..


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Technostica said:


> USB 4.0 is I believe a super-set of TB3, so it is better in some ways.
> The issue with USB nowadays is that some of the features are optional, so you have to look carefully to see what a particular port on a particular device supports.
> With TB3 I think you tend to get it all with the only issue being power delivery maybe!



In short, a clustershag.


----------



## Dewdman42

Sarah Mancuso said:


> What is a shame, though, is that they don't offer anything anymore for the kind of Mac users who resorted to building hackintoshes. If you just need something around an i9 or i7 and can't justify spending upwards of $6000 on a Mac Pro, there are no expandable Mac tower options for you, and the all-in-one machines Apple offers have become less upgradeable than ever before.



That is the rub. That is why I built a hackintosh once and eventually bought a used cheese grater when it was more affordable as a used and hotrodded machine it happened to create a small window of opportunity where a highly upgraded cheesegrater was finally the perfect answer to the above question....how to get the kind if machine I could previously build as a hackintosh. The cheesegrater was actually that, especially after they became affordable on the refurb market with hot rodded after market CPU's. That is why I'm still using mine and will continue to do so for quite a while.

However, i see it like you here... overall, Apple has NOT provided the perfect kind of hardware solution for us as a rule, it has been the rare exception to the rule that something has squeaked through. Rather they have repeatedly provided square pegs for a round hole. They provide stuff that can be made to work...but never as well as what could be built in a hackintosh for a fraction the price. Apple tends to build stuff that will appeal to typical lower end consumers. This has been the case for a long time. Either that or every once in a while they will kick out something like the MP and say "see, so you can't say we don't care about performance users, here is a beast for you". But always expensive. 

Anyway... with hackintoshing going away as an option, we will have that much less of an option, but never know, they might kick out some kind of power tower that rocks the world and gives us what we need to keep running MacOS. I am still going to hope for that.



> I'm probably going to be reluctantly switching to Windows in a few years when software support for my i9 Mac inevitably dries up.



sadly, me too. But I think we have 5 years before we need to even worry about it.


----------



## Rory

AnandTech has a good piece on the transition: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15875/apple-lays-out-plans-to-transition-macs-from-x86-to-apple-socs

Jonathan Morrison is one of the first people on YouTube out of the gate. He uploaded this video in the last couple of hours, and he has a good grasp of the history. Interesting to see footage of Steve Jobs announcing the move to Intel back in 2005. Discussion about ARM starts at 01:10:


----------



## Dewdman42

I found this article interesting too:









4 big problems Apple’s ARM-based Macs will need to solve


ARM Macs could rock the boat for professional creator applications, gaming, AR and more




www.tomsguide.com


----------



## Rory

This is the list of Macs that Big Sur will support. I'm installing it on a 2014 Mac mini tonight:


2015 and later MacBook
2013 and later MacBook Air
2013 and later MacBook Pro
2014 and later Mac mini
2014 and later iMac
2017 and later iMac Pro
2013 and later Mac Pro


----------



## gh0stwrit3r

Rory said:


> This is the list of Macs that Big Sur will support. I'm installing it on a 2014 Mac mini tonight:
> 
> 
> 2015 and later MacBook
> 2013 and later MacBook Air
> 2013 and later MacBook Pro
> 2014 and later Mac mini
> 2014 and later iMac
> 2017 and later iMac Pro
> 2013 and later Mac Pro


Then I'm out of play with my 2013 rattling fan noisy iMac :(


----------



## Rory

Dewdman42 said:


> I found this article interesting too:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 4 big problems Apple’s ARM-based Macs will need to solve
> 
> 
> ARM Macs could rock the boat for professional creator applications, gaming, AR and more
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.tomsguide.com



That article was written before yesterday's keynote address and is based on speculation. Personally, I'm more interested in articles that are written after the report that Cook gave yesterday on the status of the transition (e.g. work with Adobe, Microsoft, readiness of Apple apps like Final Cut and Logic) and the plan going forward.


----------



## Dewdman42

I notice they are leaving trashcan on the list. I suspect people will make the cheesegrater (and your iMac) run fine with Big Sur also...as long as everything is still shipping with intel binaries (or unviversal2). I think you should be fine... you might have to use a DosDude patch...


----------



## Dewdman42

Rory said:


> That article was written before yesterday's keynote address and is based on speculation. Personally, I'm more interested in articles that are written after the report that Cook gave yesterday on the status of the transition and the plan going forward.



Not its not speculation at all, its a simple explanation of the challenges that 3rd party developers will face, yesterday's announcement changes nothing about that.


----------



## Rory

Dewdman42 said:


> Not its not speculation at all, its a simple explanation of the challenges that 3rd party developers will face, yesterday's announcement changes nothing about that.



I guess we have a different understanding of the word speculation. I certainly agree with this statement from the article:

"We expect to learn a lot about Apple's plans for ARM-based Macs at Monday's WWDC 2020 conference."

The rest of the article, to quote the author, is about "possible risks of Apple's ARM future", those "possible" risks being enumerated by a single developer in an interview, without the writer or the developer knowing a single thing that Cook said


----------



## Dewdman42

I guess we do, since the article spells out basic development challenges, which were not changed one iota yesterday. Perhaps it may be hard to understand for a non-developer.

You can put your head in the sand and pretend those challenges don't exist...that's up to you..but the challenges do exist and that is why the ARM transition will be very challenging for some people. 

It underscores exactly the kinds of challenges that happened during the transition to Intel...it was almost exactly the same situation...in so much that 3rd party developers were unable to use Apple development tools since the vast majority of them need to target windows also. 

Most 3rd party developers are not using Apple's Swift language, nor even the full capabilities of the Xcode development environment. They are using 3rd party frameworks, or their own home-cooked frameworks, in order to target their products for both Windows and OSX. There have been many challenges for them to solve while attempting to do that over the past 10-20 years. Some of those challenges are actually still not solved perfectly, but mainly many devs have come to a place where they can mostly code once and build twice, to get their product on both mac and windows.

however with ARM, that changes everything. In some cases, developers of cross platform products will have HUMONGOUS mountains to climb. Apple tried to make it seem yesterday like it will just take devs a few days to rebuild ion Xcode. but that will only be the case for apple-only developers that never cared about windows and basically use the Xcode universe completely according to Apple's vision of how everyone should code apps. That's why LogicPro and Final Cut have been easily ported, and other Apple-only products should also port easily. But cross platform products that are developers for Mac/Windows....it will not be easy. 

The PPC->Intel transition was perhaps even EASIER then this one because in that case at least the end target was Intel, a common architecture. So yes, devs still had to manage two completely different API's using common frameworks, etc...particularly for GUI work, but underlying code still ended up in Intel...so CPU optimizations, etc...much more easily done in a common way for both Mac and Windows.

In this case, the end result is a completely new artitecuture...ARM. So cross platform developers are now being handed a completely new thing to build to. And they are going to face immense challenges...worse then PPC->Intel because the end result is the other direction...away from a common underlying CPU architecture. 

And on top of that...Apple is really only providing solutions for developers that are up to their eyeballs already using Apple's Xcode Apple-only development environment. If they were using other frameworks, as most devs have been, for targeting mac and windows....then they will have very huge mountains to climb in the next few years.

The article outlines other problems and challenges of recent years including games on mac/windows, etc.. Perhaps try reading it again Rory...


----------



## Rory

Dewdman42 said:


> I guess we do, since the article spells out basic development challenges, which were not changed one iota yesterday. Perhaps it may be hard to understand for a non-developer.
> 
> You can put your head in the sand and pretend those challenges don't exist...that's up to you..but the challenges do exist and that is why the ARM transition will be very challenging for some people.
> 
> It underscores exactly the kinds of challenges that happened during the transition to Intel...it was almost exactly the same situation...in so much that 3rd party developers were unable to use Apple development tools since the vast majority of them need to target windows also.
> 
> Most 3rd party developers are not using Apple's Swift language, nor even the full capabilities of the Xcode development environment. They are using 3rd party frameworks, or their own home-cooked frameworks, in order to target their products for both Windows and OSX. There have been many challenges for them to solve while attempting to do that over the past 10-20 years. Some of those challenges are actually still not solved perfectly, but mainly many devs have come to a place where they can mostly code once and build twice, to get their product on both mac and windows.
> 
> however with ARM, that changes everything. In some cases, developers of cross platform products will have HUMONGOUS mountains to climb. Apple tried to make it seem yesterday like it will just take devs a few days to rebuild ion Xcode. but that will only be the case for apple-only developers that never cared about windows and basically use the Xcode universe completely according to Apple's vision of how everyone should code apps. That's why LogicPro and Final Cut have been easily ported, and other Apple-only products should also port easily. But cross platform products that are developers for Mac/Windows....it will not be easy.
> 
> The PPC->Intel transition was perhaps even EASIER then this one because in that case at least the end target was Intel, a common architecture. So yes, devs still had to manage two completely different API's using common frameworks, etc...particularly for GUI work, but underlying code still ended up in Intel...so CPU optimizations, etc...much more easily done in a common way for both Mac and Windows.
> 
> In this case, the end result is a completely new artitecuture...ARM. So cross platform developers are now being handed a completely new thing to build to. And they are going to face immense challenges...worse then PPC->Intel because the end result is the other direction...away from a common underlying CPU architecture.
> 
> And on top of that...Apple is really only providing solutions for developers that are up to their eyeballs already using Apple's Xcode Apple-only development environment. If they were using other frameworks, as most devs have been, for targeting mac and windows....then they will have very huge mountains to climb in the next few years.
> 
> The article outlines other problems and challenges of recent years including games on mac/windows, etc.. Perhaps try reading it again Rory...



Hey, if you want to get your information from a Tom's Guide story written before the keynote, based on a phone interview with a single developer, parts of it based on sheer speculation about the market for Apple computers, go for it.

Personally, I'm more interested in what people like AnandTech's Ryan Smith have to say post keynote.


----------



## Dewdman42

I pay attention to everything. To imply that I only get my information from Tom's Guide is absurd. its just one interesting story. If you want to ignore it, that is your choice.


----------



## Vik

For me, the move to ARM is IMO the best move Apple has done for a long time, right up there with buying eMagic, Next, Schazam and PA Semi. They needed ARM chips to be able to run iOs apps anyway, and since Garageband has been around on iOs for a decade or so – and since ARM based Macs can run iOs apps, the whole Apple universe will soon be based on the same hardware, and maybe one even could say that the new Macs are iOs based, but with all the functionality from MacOs.

This mean that code for both Macs and iOs devices would be to write one app and not two, with all this implies. Tiny devices have a lot of power these days, meaning that one soon can go to some remote place with only and iPhone, buy or rent a local monitor, and continue/edit/play the same Logic file that you saved on your Mac at home. Its going to be as close to one app/one OS/one kind of hardware we get.

It's also brilliant to develop iOs on consumer devices first, and launch it for the pro market after many years of development. As they said, they'll never merge MacOS and iOs – instead they have moved it all over to the kind of hardware and operating system they have developed for phones and iPhones: ARM/iOs. That's just brilliant, especially since the fastest computer out there now is an ARM based computer.








ARM-based Japanese supercomputer is now the fastest in the world


Fugaku is being used in COVID-19 research




www.theverge.com





Soon we'll have 12 core ARM Macs. But for some time, the Intel based Macs may be a better choice. 

From:








Apple will reportedly use 12-core 5nm ARM processor in a 2021 Mac


A song of Icestorm and Firestorm.




www.theverge.com





"Back in 2018, Apple reportedly developed a prototype Mac chip based on that year’s iPad Pro A12X processor. The success of this prototype is thought to have given the company the confidence to target a transition as early as 2020."


----------



## jcrosby

vitocorleone123 said:


> I'm incredibly skeptical. Given that this is Apple, I foresee lower-than-Intel prices for the first year or two so they can make their point, then they'll creep back up to where they were, or beyond. More than anything, Apple is about selling everything they can for as much as they can, and finding new ways to milk the buyer and convince them it's for their own good (what new dongles will be required next?). No thanks. Apple can stay in the support role - an iPad or iPhone with some MIDI generation or control- in this house.


Me as well... There's no logical reason at all to assume ARM would suddenly change the pricing behavior of a trillion dollar company who has an incredibly long history of enormous markup. Not to mention Apple historically selling some of the most expensive consumer/prosumer machines available on the market.

What else supports this? decades of Insanely expensive peripherals, the last decade being the most excessive, offering ridiculous markup on things like Thunderbolt cables at $40, USB-Lightning adapters for $30, etc; all of which cost Apple pennies on the dollar, and are manufactured in the same factories where equal products are sold by other companies for 1/3 of the cost.

If anything ARM lets them maintain high prices while widening the profit margin. People thinking otherwise are frankly ignoring what should be obvious.

Finally ARM will give Apple the power to lock down any and all service of their machines strictly to Apple and ASPs. The T2 chip's already data recovery impossible, ARM will nail the coffin shut because Apple's the only one with the keys. AppleCare is a HUGE piece of Apple's _Services_ market, which has become one of their biggest money makers. IMO this is what the transition to ARM is really all about.,

It's the same strategy automobile manufacturers took by locking independent garages out from access to automotive-computer _service codes_.


----------



## jcrosby

Tim_Wells said:


> That's not at all true in my experience. As we speak, I'm sitting here doing all my projects on a Windows PC I built in 2012 for less than $1,000 and it's working very well. I plan to upgrade sometime in the year or so... but nothing is forcing me to.


That's part of the mythology Apple's built up around itself. _Apple products cost more because they last longer_.... Meanwhile I have a developer buddy who ranan ancient pentium machine for at least 12 years. (He ran Reason on it for the last few years ) It didn't fail on him, he passed it on to someone because it eventually couldn't keep up..

The main reason PC's have developed this reputation is because certain types of PC users are obsessed with bleeding edge performance. (Gamers being the most obvious example..) The reality is that most machines can last at least a decade but as software evolves to take advantage of newer features like AVX older machines start to _feel_ long in the tooth. People move on to keep up.

Meanwhile I've had 3 out of 5 MacBooks completely fail on me which indicates the opposite of _built to last_. My Mac Pro? Sure, it's got some years on it and I love it for it, but any desktop with great cooling will last a hell of a lot longer than a machine that boils in its own solder because the manufacturer's obsessed with a wafer thin 'form factor'.


----------



## jcrosby

Sarah Mancuso said:


> Yeah, I don't think hackintosh is something they care about at all. They could have killed hackintosh years ago by requiring the T2 chip to boot macOS, but they continued putting out new Macs with no T2 chip as late as 2019.
> 
> What is a shame, though, is that they don't offer anything anymore for the kind of Mac users who resorted to building hackintoshes. If you just need something around an i9 or i7 and can't justify spending upwards of $6000 on a Mac Pro, there are no expandable Mac tower options for you, and the all-in-one machines Apple offers have become less upgradeable than ever before.
> 
> I'm probably going to be reluctantly switching to Windows in a few years when software support for my i9 Mac inevitably dries up.



Sure seems that way... Plus I think the motivation for ARM is way more straight forward, especially from a $$ perspective.

The amount of people that run hackintoshes is so small, and so niche, I'd be surprised if Apple's net loss would be more than a couple days of computer sales. (Out of decades). Apple doesn't sweat hackintoshing.

The proof in the pudding being how quickly Apple curbed ios jailbreaking, and the public statements Apple made about the risk of jailbreaking. Meanwhile Apple haven't sent a single signal that killing the hackintosh is even on a priority list. If anything they realize that a lot of developers run them as an alternative to virtualization.

And the more obvious factor that Apple users who've never dipped their toe in the hackintosh pool fail to realize is hackintosh users tend to be current mac owners. Contrary to popular (mis)belief hackintoshing is not the hot new thing all the kids are doing, they're typically mac users either filling options Apple doesn't offer, or frankly Apple's priced out of its own market.

Does ARM have the convenient benefit of potentially killing it? Sure. But in the grand scheme of things Apple see MUCH more money in ARM by locking out all 3rd party servicing of macs. This is the substantially bigger financial motive, and one supported by the money Apple brings in with its 'service' market. They perfected it with the iPhone, and now bring it to the mac.


----------



## Rory

I've just installed Big Sur on a 2014 Mac mini. This is going to be fun. Also, possibly the last Mac operating system that will support 2014 minis.


----------



## InLight-Tone

I'm personally excited for the whole move. I'm on a quad core, 64 GB Ram Hackintosh at the moment and thinking of upgrading it to 8 cores to ride out the gap till the Arm machines hit the ground.

I'm personally late to the Apple party, but the whole integration between their devices and the Unix core has won me over, love it. 

Always hated Windows for some reason but stayed there cause it's cheap to build your own machine, but whenever I have to do some IT work for my wife's laptop, I cringe...


----------



## Rory

If you have a non-critical Mac around and want to give Big Sur a go, here's how you do it, courtesy MacOS Daily: https://osxdaily.com/2020/06/23/macos-big-sur-beta-download/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+osxdaily+(OS+X+Daily)

I've been running MacOS developer beta since Mountain Lion (2012), and have never once had problem. Apple doesn't release betas until they're well advanced, which is why the public beta will be available next month.


----------



## colony nofi

Dewdman42 said:


> I notice they are leaving trashcan on the list. I suspect people will make the cheesegrater (and your iMac) run fine with Big Sur also...as long as everything is still shipping with intel binaries (or unviversal2). I think you should be fine... you might have to use a DosDude patch...


The trashcan isn't surprising at all. Remember that it was still sold new less than 12 months ago. I would suspect they will keep allowing software updates for it for at least 4 more years - EU law would require it!


----------



## Rory

colony nofi said:


> The trashcan isn't surprising at all. Remember that it was still sold new less than 12 months ago. I would suspect they will keep allowing software updates for it for at least 4 more years - EU law would require it!



This is Apple's list of the Macs that Big Sur will support. Some of these models are seven years old:

MacBook models from early 2015 or later
MacBook Air models from 2013 or later
MacBook Pro models from 2013 or later
Mac mini models from 2014 or later
iMac models from 2014 or later
iMac Pro (all models)
Mac Pro models from 2013 or later


----------



## jononotbono

Nick Batzdorf said:


> First, my 11" MacBook Air may be the best Mac of the 20 or so I've owned. I don't use it in the studio, I use it for general computer things - email, web, chat, Zoom fitness classes, word processing, etc. It's the same weight and size as an iPad, only it's a real computer.
> 
> Do those machines have a higher profit margin? I don't know, but I sure like not having to travel with a heavy laptop on my back. And Apple also makes more powerful machines for those of us who need them.
> 
> Why does Apple bother with their pro apps, and with a machine that five people - three of whom are on this forum - will buy?
> 
> Prestige! If they were going to abandon "pro" users - all of whom buy iPhones, iPads, and (the reason for my raving above) MacBook Airs as well - they would have done so long ago. These are loss leaders.
> 
> There is so much hand-wringing in this thread over a transition to new chips! Software becomes incompatible even with the same ones over time anyway!
> 
> Now, people about to invest in an expensive Mac right now do have a legitimate worry. But come on, let's keep some perspective.



The person I work with just ordered a 28core and a 16core. I get the pleasure(?) of installing everything on them when they arrive soon.

His response to ARM... I need new computers now. Who cares about ARM? 😂


----------



## colony nofi

Rory said:


> This is Apple's list of the Macs that Big Sur will support. Some of these models are seven years old:
> 
> MacBook models from early 2015 or later
> MacBook Air models from 2013 or later
> MacBook Pro models from 2013 or later
> Mac mini models from 2014 or later
> iMac models from 2014 or later
> iMac Pro (all models)
> Mac Pro models from 2013 or later


Sorry - I don't follow...


----------



## Rory

colony nofi said:


> Sorry - I don't follow...



There isn't anything to follow. It's just factual information on how far back Apple's new operating system will go in terms of support, and it's consistent with what Apple has done in the past.


----------



## tmhuud

jononotbono said:


> The person I work with just ordered a 28core and a 16core. I get the pleasure(?) of installing everything on them when they arrive soon.
> 
> His response to ARM... I need new computers now. Who cares about ARM? 😂



Exactly.


----------



## rnb_2

However you want to look at it, this move was inevitable, and has been for several years.

First, Intel thought that (what would become) the Atom processor would be in the original iPad, but Apple leveraged their purchase of PA-Semi to roll out their first in-house silicon for the iPhone 4/iPad. Intel then had the option of fabbing Apple's ARM chips, but didn't want to become a fab for hire, so that went to Samsung, then TSMC.

As Apple was gaining experience in making their own processors, Intel kept stumbling, with year after year of missing ship dates and failing to shrink their process, which led to generations of laptops that either shipped late or ran hotter than intended because of Intel's inability to get reliably below 14nm, or both.

Apple now makes, watt for watt, the best processors in the world, and is very confident that, unconstrained by the battery/heat dissipation limits of the mobile market, they can really show off their chops. Microsoft can see the writing on the wall and is moving incrementally toward ARM, but once MacBooks that are both faster and more energy-efficient than any x86 machine start hitting the market, their hand will be forced, and all developers will have to start migrating their code base to ARM.

I don't expect any major price cuts from Apple - they are who they are - but I would expect to see some very exciting stuff from them in the next few years, things that will set the path of the computing market for the next decade, much like the MacBook Air created the "ultrabook" market that has defined PC form factors for most of the past decade. Whatever you may think of them, Apple has the ability to look at the market, see the things that are ripe for change but that nobody else really has the freedom to do (because the rest of the market runs on such slim margins), and push it in a direction they're interested in more than any other manufacturer - that will be even more true when they control every part of the Mac.

I'll have a few Intel machines around for a few years, I'm sure (I have Macs from 2012-2018 now), so I'm not worried about being able to run legacy code. I'm not really a laptop guy, so I'm not sure how quickly an ARM Mac that interests me will arrive - given the form factor of the Developer Transition Kit, an ARM Mac mini might be coming sooner than later, though I'm sure it will be very different internally from the DTK. If such a machine arrives and can run my photo/video software (which is mostly Apple and Adobe, so signs are currently pretty positive) better than my current setup, my 2018 mini could become a much more dedicated music machine and replace the 2012 iMac that is currently filling that role.


----------



## gsilbers

Rory said:


> This is Apple's list of the Macs that Big Sur will support. Some of these models are seven years old:
> 
> MacBook models from early 2015 or later
> MacBook Air models from 2013 or later
> MacBook Pro models from 2013 or later
> Mac mini models from 2014 or later
> iMac models from 2014 or later
> iMac Pro (all models)
> Mac Pro models from 2013 or later



So older macpros with MEtal GPU cards also not going to work? 

i thought these new OS where more efficient...


----------



## Dewdman42

cheesegrater were deprecated with Catalina already. You can run a cheesegrater (with Metal) using Catlina by using DosDude patch and I've tested it, it works fine. I choose to remain on Mojave mostly for stability and 32bit compatibility. But I suspect Big Sur will also be made to run on cheese graters perfectly fine also.


----------



## gsilbers

rnb_2 said:


> However you want to look at it, this move was inevitable, and has been for several years.
> 
> First, Intel thought that (what would become) the Atom processor would be in the original iPad, but Apple leveraged their purchase of PA-Semi to roll out their first in-house silicon for the iPhone 4/iPad. Intel then had the option of fabbing Apple's ARM chips, but didn't want to become a fab for hire, so that went to Samsung, then TSMC.
> 
> As Apple was gaining experience in making their own processors, Intel kept stumbling, with year after year of missing ship dates and failing to shrink their process, which led to generations of laptops that either shipped late or ran hotter than intended because of Intel's inability to get reliably below 14nm, or both.
> 
> Apple now makes, watt for watt, the best processors in the world, and is very confident that, unconstrained by the battery/heat dissipation limits of the mobile market, they can really show off their chops. Microsoft can see the writing on the wall and is moving incrementally toward ARM, but once MacBooks that are both faster and more energy-efficient than any x86 machine start hitting the market, their hand will be forced, and all developers will have to start migrating their code base to ARM.
> 
> I don't expect any major price cuts from Apple - they are who they are - but I would expect to see some very exciting stuff from them in the next few years, things that will set the path of the computing market for the next decade, much like the MacBook Air created the "ultrabook" market that has defined PC form factors for most of the past decade. Whatever you may think of them, Apple has the ability to look at the market, see the things that are ripe for change but that nobody else really has the freedom to do (because the rest of the market runs on such slim margins), and push it in a direction they're interested in more than any other manufacturer - that will be even more true when they control every part of the Mac.
> 
> I'll have a few Intel machines around for a few years, I'm sure (I have Macs from 2012-2018 now), so I'm not worried about being able to run legacy code. I'm not really a laptop guy, so I'm not sure how quickly an ARM Mac that interests me will arrive - given the form factor of the Developer Transition Kit, an ARM Mac mini might be coming sooner than later, though I'm sure it will be very different internally from the DTK. If such a machine arrives and can run my photo/video software (which is mostly Apple and Adobe, so signs are currently pretty positive) better than my current setup, my 2018 mini could become a much more dedicated music machine and replace the 2012 iMac that is currently filling that role.




the big mystery is how they mentioned everything apple going to transition to ARM.. using universal binary... 

yet tim says theyll support intel macs for years to come and have new mac models w intel. 

does that mean apple hasnt able to get ARM cpus that run as fast as intel on desktops? or want to start w macbook airs to see how it goes etc. 


hopefully apple can clarify a bit more about their pro lineup.. which they JUST released this year. a whole new mac pro system that had been on the works for years and years


----------



## gsilbers

Dewdman42 said:


> cheesegrater were deprecated with Catalina already. You can run a cheesegrater (with Metal) using Catlina by using DosDude patch and I've tested it, it works fine. I choose to remain on Mojave mostly for stability and 32bit compatibility. But I suspect Big Sur will also be made to run on cheese graters perfectly fine also.



they def made it hard to jump through so many hoops so you have to upgrade. 

ill see what comes out in dec and start looking at the desktop options in the ARM side to have a leg up for a few years...

i just got the macbook 16in but not sure if im keeping it. the fan noise is quite something.


----------



## Dewdman42

well.. My suggestion is use what ya got until you really can't use it anymore. I think our older intel stuff is still going to be relevant for quite a while and everyone is just blathering on here, myself included, about what they think is going to happen...nobody knows... but I still recommend against buying an expensive new mac right now until we know more...unless you are in a position to justify the cost with a few years of service and not be bothered if it turns out to be not as long lived as you hoped.

The fact that Apple is still yet going to release some Intel macs to me makes it pretty clear they are years away from having a high performance ARM mac...and even though they realize all the transition challenges going from Intel to ARM, they still feel a need to put out a few more intel boxes which eventually are going to be a hassle to support when everything else has moved on to ARM. Yes, they will make sure OS11 is going to run on Intel for quite a while, no worries there. Its really the 3rd party apps that I have a concern about, but not yet...3-5 years out is when it might get weird. That will just depend on how soon Apple cranks out some high performance ARM macs. The minute they do that, Intel OS11 will die pretty quickly. But personally I think they are years away from that too... so....


----------



## Dewdman42

gsilbers said:


> the big mystery is how they mentioned everything apple going to transition to ARM.. using universal binary...



just one clarification about universal binary and rosetta. Universal binary is not really that big of a deal. To put it into perspective what it is... Its just a way of shipping out two binaries in one package. Usually when you buy a product that runs on both OSX and Windows, for example, you are told to download either the OSX version or the Windows version. the same might ordinarily be true between Intel and ARM. You'd go to the download page of your favorite product and you'd see two links, one built as Intel or one built as ARM and you choose the right one to run on your system.

The developer has to build two binaries. One for intel and one for ARM.

On OSX, an application is actually a so called "bundle". Its actually a special kind of folder and inside that folder are all kinds of various files, including the actual executable binary that will run on the system. The Universal format is simply a way for developers to package both the Intel and ARM binary into that bundle so that they don't need to have two links on their download page to download the right one for you. You just download the universal bundle and the OS will dynamically make sure to use the correct binary between the two at runtime.

Developers still have to build two binaries...this just makes it a little cleaner for them to ship it as a single thing and users don't even have to know which binary is being used at runtime.

So the net effect is that as Developers start building both Intel and ARM binaries, they will deliver them in this format. 

Rosetta is included to make up for developers that do not choose or are unable to expand their development to include ARM binaries at all. With Rosetta an ARM mac will be able to launch and run an Intel binary. I have no idea whether that will work for plugins by the way. But anyway, in the that mode a VM is used with compromised performance, but at least a newer mac will be able to continue using software which has not yet been ported to a true ARM binary.

It is very unlikely that Intel macs will be able to run applications built only for ARM, but hopefully people will build their ARM products using the universal format (building both ARM and Intel) once they make the leap to ARM, hopefully they will continue to build and ship Intel...though at some point some of them will undoubtedly stop building Intel binaries. Intel macs will not have a reverse-rosetta that could hypothetically run the ARM binary on the intel box.


----------



## Vik

Dewdman42 said:


> The fact that Apple is still yet going to release some Intel macs to me makes it pretty clear they are years away from having a high performance ARM mac...and even though they realize all the transition challenges going from Intel to ARM, they still feel a need to put out a few more intel boxes which eventually are going to be a hassle to support when everything else has moved on to ARM. Y


They (Apple) are quite open about not being ready to beat Intel's highest end CPUs yet, and that's why it's called a transition and not a switch. Apple acquired PA SEMI in already 2008. PA SEMI had 150 employees back then, so Apple have had these people (plus probably more) work, for 12 years, on a solution for a problem most Apple customers didn't even see coming.

Of course, most companies wouldn't be able to acquire a company worth almost $300 million - but it seems to me that Apple did everything right this time.


----------



## rnb_2

gsilbers said:


> the big mystery is how they mentioned everything apple going to transition to ARM.. using universal binary...
> 
> yet tim says theyll support intel macs for years to come and have new mac models w intel.
> 
> does that mean apple hasnt able to get ARM cpus that run as fast as intel on desktops? or want to start w macbook airs to see how it goes etc.
> 
> 
> hopefully apple can clarify a bit more about their pro lineup.. which they JUST released this year. a whole new mac pro system that had been on the works for years and years



Saying they'll support Intel for years is just good business, just as it was with the PowerPC to Intel transition - they'll support Intel until there is something better for every segment of their market, and a bit longer. I would guess 4-5 years, which should be enough time for many, if not most, users to get back into the market in a normal cycle.

Macs with integrated graphics (MacBook Air, 13" MacBook Pro, Mac mini) are the easiest to switch over and show improvement across the board, so that's where they'll start. The a12z in the iPad Pro is already much faster in CPU performance than the 2020 MacBook Air, a bit faster than the high-end 2020 13" MacBook Pro, and about on par with the i5 2018 Mac mini, and all would show dramatically improved GPU performance - the processor(s) they actually ship in those machines should be better in every way than the a12z, as they will not be constrained as much by battery life or thermals as they are in iPhones/iPads.

I would expect that the only new Intel-based Macs we will see will be iMacs - a major redesign is likely coming very soon, and will be Intel. I think we've seen the last Intel-based MacBooks, with the possible exception of a speed bump for the 16" next year and a speed bump for the Mac Pro if Intel releases suitable processors before the ARM replacement is ready (unlikely, but possible). It's entirely possible that the new iMac was supposed to ship before the ARM announcement, but was held up by Intel and/or coronavirus production issues - no new PowerPC Macs were released after the first Intel Macs shipped, but there were new PowerPC Macs released between the Intel announcement and release (roughly 7 months, so a bit longer than the anticipated announcement to first shipping machine time for ARM).

All that said, only the path to replacing the integrated GPU Macs seems clear right now - anything beyond that is speculation. Replacing a high end iMac/16" MacBook Pro/Mac Pro with ARM will involve overcoming some fairly major obstacles in ways that we can't really predict. I believe that Apple is very confident in their ability to do so within the 2-year transition timeframe, but the *how* will remain unknown for some time. That's what makes this fun (if anxiety-producing on another level)!


----------



## Andrew Aversa

It remains to be seen if their ARM performance can come anywhere close to AMD or Intel's desktop performance. Their clock speeds are lower and core counts currently top off at 8 for iPad Pro. The very latest, most powerful iPad Pro has a single core Geekbench score of 1118 and multicore of 4625.





__





iPad Pro 12.9-inch (4th generation) Benchmarks - Geekbench Browser






 browser.geekbench.com





Intel's 9900k has a single-core score of 1336 and a multi-core score of 8797 with the same core count. AMD's beastly 3950x hits 1295 for single-core and 14159 for multicore. Once you get into HEDT stuff, especially Threadripper, there is basically no comparison at all. 

I can see why Apple chips could compete when you need something that only sips power, but for high-end desktop stuff I don't see any evidence yet that they could scale to meet those needs.


----------



## Dewdman42

I'm sure Apple is hoping to get there, but i agree...its going to be a while until we can have a true ARM power tower on the mac.


----------



## Sarah Mancuso

Dewdman42 said:


> With Rosetta an ARM mac will be able to launch and run an Intel binary. I have no idea whether that will work for plugins by the way.


According to Apple's developer info about Rosetta, if your host DAW is running in native ARM mode, the plugins you're using also have to all be ARM. If you need to run x64 plugins, you need to run your DAW in Rosetta mode and take the performance hit from it. They're not supporting any way of running x64 and ARM plugins simultaneously from the same host. Apple also says that Rosetta doesn't support emulating newer x64 instruction sets like AVX, which means certain plugins like Massive X won't be able to run under Rosetta.

I suspect this is going to lead to a few years of people relying on gross-hack workarounds like wrapper ARM plugins that run x86 plugins in a completely separate process.

Source: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_silicon/about_the_rosetta_translation_environment

I'm suddenly feeling like I'm in a pretty good position with my 2019 hackintosh, as software support for it is likely to last long enough for the initial ARM compatibility bloodbath to have subsided. At that point I'll be able to make a more informed decision about sticking with Mac or switching OSes in another four or five years, and not have to worry too much about Apple's transitional growing pains in the meantime.


----------



## Symfoniq

Geekbench 5 scores are directly comparable across platforms (i.e. they are all calibrated such that a score of 1,000 is equivalent to an Intel Core i3-8100). This is really useful when comparing the performance of Intel CPUs and Apple CPUs.

For example, the A12Z CPU in the 4th-generation iPad Pro has a single-core score of 1,118, while the Xeon W-3245 in my 16-core Mac Pro scores 1,128. In other words, in single-core performance, they are virtually identical.

However, the A12Z "only" has 31% of the multi-core performance of the 16-core Mac Pro, and 24% of the multi-core performance of the 28-core Mac Pro. There are also the issues of PCIe lane bandwidth and Thunderbolt support (likely to be resolved by USB4), among others, which Apple must address to release a truly workstation-class CPU.

I have no doubt such a CPU is coming, but for Apple, the low-hanging fruit is at the bottom of the Mac lineup, not the top.


----------



## jcrosby

Sarah Mancuso said:


> According to Apple's developer info about Rosetta, if your host DAW is running in native ARM mode, the plugins you're using also have to all be ARM. If you need to run x64 plugins, you need to run your DAW in Rosetta mode and take the performance hit from it. They're not supporting any way of running x64 and ARM plugins simultaneously from the same host. Apple also says that Rosetta doesn't support emulating newer x64 instruction sets like AVX, which means certain plugins like Massive X won't be able to run under Rosetta.
> 
> I suspect this is going to lead to a few years of people relying on gross-hack workarounds like wrapper ARM plugins that run x86 plugins in a completely separate process.
> 
> Source: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_silicon/about_the_rosetta_translation_environment
> 
> I'm suddenly feeling like I'm in a pretty good position with my 2019 hackintosh, as software support for it is likely to last long enough for the initial ARM compatibility bloodbath to have subsided. At that point I'll be able to make a more informed decision about sticking with Mac or switching OSes in another four or five years, and not have to worry too much about Apple's transitional growing pains in the meantime.


Interesting, and good to know. I'm also feeling quite glad I dove into the hackintosh pool when I did becuase it's going to be a messy few years for mac DAW users. This is likely to cost a lot of users extra money in the form of upgrade costs, even longer compatibility delays on top of the usual OS delay, etc. Seems pretty clear it's going to be a bumpy ride...


----------



## gsilbers

jcrosby said:


> becuase it's going to be a messy few years for mac DAW users. This is likely to cost a lot of users extra money in the form of upgrade costs, even longer compatibility delays on top of the usual OS delay, etc. Seems pretty clear it's going to be a bumpy ride...




For us who went through the powerpc transition, roseeta and universal binary... and 32bit vs 64bit and wrappers... etc...

yep.. im foreseeing some scenario where many of us will either loose hardware or plugins in a shorter time that we are accustom. older sessions not opening. wierd workarounds. the average joe have no idea about whats what in OS terms vs apps. and just large overall confusion.


----------



## jcrosby

gsilbers said:


> yep.. im foreseeing some scenario where many of us will either loose hardware or plugins in a shorter time that we are accustom. older sessions not opening. wierd workarounds. the average joe have no idea about whats what in OS terms vs apps. and just large overall confusion.


The hardware issues a great point. That's where the loss of one single driver no longer supported by the manufacturer can get quite expensive, not to mention is one hell of a headache... Add software to the mix and it could wind up being quite a pricy transition in addition to the cost of a new machine.


----------



## Dewdman42

I think it ultimately will be but the good news is that we are a few years away form that yet.


----------



## AlexRuger

Feeling better than ever that I recently decided to build a new PC DAW. 

I’ve landed at a place where I’ve just accepted that I’ll need to use Windows and macOS equally forever. A PC makes a great DAW, both for backwards compatibility and gradual upgrades (and, you know, being able to change an OS drive that isn’t soldered on because I can’t afford a Mac Pro). It’s nice to know that, for whatever faults (IMO greatly exaggerated) that the x86_64 platform might have, it’s stable and predictable. It’s slow to evolve to a fault, perhaps, but I for one prefer that. The back end of the bleeding edge is still stupid powerful nowadays.

Personally I also do enough game audio work that working on a PC sometimes is just a foregone conclusion.

macOS is forever my favorite OS, and I’m incredibly excited about Apple’s direction, but for music work I’m finding it’s best served as a Pro Tools machine and that’s about it (PT on Windows is an embarrassment). At least for now. Apple is moving fast and making big changes and it’s gonna be stormy for a while. Better to ride it out from the Windows shores and keep a Mac on hand that can do what I need and nothing more. For me, that’s Pro Tools and Video Slave (though I hear that’s coming to Windows at some point soon too). 

I’ll always need to use Pro Tools, and the Apple ecosystem is incredible both for general life stuff and as a tech geek (for instance, the breath of life from iPadOS is incredible cool in a “I’m watching the future of personal computing arrive and evolve in front of my very eyes” sort of way 

So, as always, the right tool for the job.

I have an informed hope that we might finally get a mid-tower from Apple, though. They’re clearly eyeing making macOS a better gaming platform, and perhaps they’ll finally feel ready to take on the Windows-on-x86_64-in-a-tower “mini Mac Pro” that we’ve all been asking for once their ARM processors and AR/VR tech are ready (probably in concert with Apple Glass). And that sort of computer is exactly what I want from Apple — Xeon and ECC memory is overkill for me and pretty much any composer. 

Exciting times and maybe it’ll make sense to come back to my favorite OS to run Cubase at some point. But unless I win the lottery and can afford a Mac Pro with the specs I need, it ain’t happening any time soon.


----------



## gsilbers

jcrosby said:


> The hardware issues a great point. That's where the loss of one single driver no longer supported by the manufacturer can get quite expensive, not to mention is one hell of a headache... Add software to the mix and it could wind up being quite a pricy transition in addition to the cost of a new machine.



my guess is that apple is trying to get users in a 2-3 year hardware life cycle and have them be leasing the laptops/macmins... and maybe 5-7 years for the more powerful macpro and imacs.


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## dgburns

Given some recent information that was shared to me, it seems I feel like I may just get 10 years out of a new mac pro, so I’m going to be fine with that.

let the fun begin


----------



## chimuelo

One possibilty..









Ex-Intel engineer says "abnormally bad" Skylake QA prompted Apple switch to ARM


It's been a good week for Arm: Apple finally announced it is transitioning the Mac to Arm-based silicon, bringing the computers in line with iPads and iPhones,...




www.techspot.com


----------



## Alex Fraser

AlexRuger said:


> I have an informed hope that we might finally get a mid-tower from Apple, though.


Ooo, pray tell?

You're right about the iPad OS looking like the future. Last month I set up my mother-in-laws new iPad and was blown away with the speed and general "this is the future-ness" of the device. A week later, I took delivery of a new MbP and whilst it's a lovely machine, it seems like the end of a previous era of computing as the fan spins up (yet again) because the news site I'm browsing insists on opening 5 videos at once.

On Windows: I haven't used it since XP when I made the switch to Mac, pre OSX days. I'm not even sure I'd know my way around it and I'm so deep in the Apple ecosystem at this point, it's too late for me. Save yourselves.

With my selfish "I'm all right jack" cap on, I should be fine over the Big Switch. My workflow relies heavily on Logic and third party is pretty much only Kontakt and Spitfire at this point. Most of the apps I use outside music are made by Mac only developers (see, I'm a purist) and so they'll be hot on the switch.

I do however feel sorry for those who need a whole bunch of cross-platform stuff.


----------



## wayne_rowley

Dewdman42 said:


> I'm sure Apple is hoping to get there, but i agree...its going to be a while until we can have a true ARM power tower on the mac.



I think they will have it within 2 years. Server/workstation grade ARM chips are already a reality. They must be *much* further along than they revealed at the WWDC.

Wayne


----------



## Alex Fraser

wayne_rowley said:


> I think they will have it within 2 years. Server/workstation grade ARM chips are already a reality. They must be *much* further along than they revealed at the WWDC.
> 
> Wayne


I agree. Even if in 2 years, the top line Mac Pro doesn't have _quite_ the power of the Intel equivalent, they'll be enough CPU "juice" available that Apple will be able to make and market _some flavour_ of pro ARM Apple Silicon based machine.

In a recent interview, Craig Federighi made it clear that the Apple Dev machine isn't a good example of what a shipping ARM Mac would look like, only something to get developers going.

Whilst I'll happily state I've nowhere near the technical knowledge of some of our learned members, IMO Apple's 2 year stated plan strongly implies they know exactly where they're going with this and they're pretty far along the process already. Tim Cook isn't one for rolling the dice.


----------



## Raphioli

gsilbers said:


> yet tim says theyll support intel macs for years to come and have new mac models w intel.
> 
> does that mean apple hasnt able to get ARM cpus that run as fast as intel on desktops? or want to start w macbook airs to see how it goes etc.



I simply think them saying "supporting intel Macs for years to come" is just because they've just sold an extremely expensive 2019 Mac Pro.
If they stopped supporting Intel Macs, it means Apple added 2019 Mac Pros in their obsolete list,
which is not what they would want to do.

I'm sure lots of companies/prosumers bought them. If Apple stops supporting Intel Macs within a few years, they would have lots of angry customers. Customers who are willing to purchase expensive top of the line Apple products (2019 Mac Pro fully decked).
Apple definitely does not want that.


----------



## Raphioli

wayne_rowley said:


> I think they will have it within 2 years. Server/workstation grade ARM chips are already a reality. They must be *much* further along than they revealed at the WWDC.
> 
> Wayne



Someone posted an article about the worlds fastest supercomputer using ARMs, so definitely a reality.
I personally am afraid of going through the transition though...
Luckily, I have been trying out Windows as my main DAW PC for over a year, and I'm liking it.
Although, for everyday usage, like web browsing, emails, its still MacOS all the way. It just feel right to me xD


----------



## chimuelo

If App£€ were to design custom OS’s, like one for Logic/EXS we’d be so much happier and not need 24 cores, etc.
Ive been wanting EXS forever but find other ways to get by.
Be nice to have such optimized solutions.


----------



## AlexRuger

$10 says Apple licenses Windows on ARM perpetually so as to sell a “Windows” app on the App Store, essentially a pre-configured VM a la how you can “download Linux” from the Microsoft Store (but this time with a GUI).

I bet most people who used Bootcamp in the past didn’t actually need it to be native. Anecdotally, it seems it was usually used in order to run some Windows-only business software. For these people, virtualization will not only be fine, it will be preferred.


----------



## gsilbers

Raphioli said:


> I simply think them saying "supporting intel Macs for years to come" is just because they've just sold an extremely expensive 2019 Mac Pro.
> If they stopped supporting Intel Macs, it means Apple added 2019 Mac Pros in their obsolete list,
> which is not what they would want to do.
> 
> I'm sure lots of companies/prosumers bought them. If Apple stops supporting Intel Macs within a few years, they would have lots of angry customers. Customers who are willing to purchase expensive top of the line Apple products (2019 Mac Pro fully decked).
> Apple definitely does not want that.



obvoisly Apple is not going to say tough luck u people that spent 10k we are moving on. 
but for us who had a g5 and now Have A Mac Pro 5,1 know this story alltoo well and know how it will play out.
With the new mac pros being ok for enough time for people to see new macs and forget about buying new mac pros and then one day one of the mac updates not working w the mac pros but still usable for a bit longer until plugins and softwares don’t support said Mac OS.


----------



## gsilbers

AlexRuger said:


> $10 says Apple licenses Windows on ARM perpetually so as to sell a “Windows” app on the App Store, essentially a pre-configured VM a la how you can “download Linux” from the Microsoft Store (but this time with a GUI).
> 
> I bet most people who used Bootcamp in the past didn’t actually need it to be native. Anecdotally, it seems it was usually used in order to run some Windows-only business software. For these people, virtualization will not only be fine, it will be preferred.



theres windows10x that seems to be for that sort purposes ... at least to run on arm and or tablets. But yeah I’m seeing something like that so bizguys can run enterprise biz softwares in windows. 
either way... sounds like it’ll be a wild ride in the coming years


----------



## X-Bassist

Sounds like it's a waiting game. Until apple stops turning the entire cart over and gives OS time to stabilize it's not worth looking into, which may make the used 6.1 Mac Pros more valuable for now. They are going cheap now that a new Mac Pro has been released. 

But we all know no-one besides a production company with a decent workload should spend 10k+ on a Mac Pro, right? Unless you can pay it off quickly, it would be a waste. Either way you'd have to plan on tossing it in 3-5 years, which is sad. But I suppose all the rest of us would have to change in that timeframe as well, or freeze our system, plugins, software... that might get me to 2027. :D


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

chimuelo said:


> If App£€ were to design custom OS’s, like one for Logic/EXS we’d be so much happier and not need 24 cores, etc.
> Ive been wanting EXS forever but find other ways to get by.
> Be nice to have such optimized solutions.



That may well be what the new chips do.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

gsilbers said:


> obvoisly Apple is not going to say tough luck u people that spent 10k we are moving on



People who spend $10K - and much more for the 2019 Mac Pro - don't seem to care about that.


----------



## Dewdman42

AlexRuger said:


> $10 says Apple licenses Windows on ARM perpetually so as to sell a “Windows” app on the App Store, essentially a pre-configured VM a la how you can “download Linux” from the Microsoft Store (but this time with a GUI).
> 
> I bet most people who used Bootcamp in the past didn’t actually need it to be native. Anecdotally, it seems it was usually used in order to run some Windows-only business software. For these people, virtualization will not only be fine, it will be preferred.



This is very true. I think relatively few messed around with bootcamp. I never did. I have VMware installed on my Mac with Windows10 and never use that anymore either. I originally did 10 years ago only because I needed to use some business apps that were only working right on windows. Aside from that I always found something in native OSX I could use instead of going through the trouble of turning on VMware fusion. I even messed around with wine for a while (which will be gone with the ARM's) and I did use that quite a lot more for a while because I was able to run some win32 audio plugins that way....but even that eventually faded off....just more hassle then it was worth 99% of the time.

I don't think anyone will miss bootcamp at all. I don't think many people will miss wine, some will. Its nice that Apple is going to build virtualization into BigSur so that actually you won't even need to use a third party product for running the VM, so that's cool and for those people that just HAVE to use the windows version of Excel, you'll be covered.

I will say though.. I am very happy about the fact that even when I retire my cheesegrater for good, I am going to be able to use bootcamp, install the latest version of Windows and keep using it yet for many years to come in come kind of capacity. Won't be able to do that with future deprecated ARM macs. They will ultimately become land fill.


----------



## robgb

I probably should have read though this entire thread, but I'm lazy. I'm curious what the rationale is for changing chips. Seems to me their computers work just fine as is. Is it meant to eventually lock out even more people from their ecosystem and make it "our way or the highway?" I seriously don't see the benefit in this change.


----------



## Dewdman42

There are theories on the net, google it. Some feel Intel has been dropping the ball lately. But I personally think Apple is making the move not only because they are unhappy with Intel but rather because they want to move in new directions that they will ultimately profit from. The ARM platform has worked out very well for them with mobile devices...so...I think they are just taking that to the macs now.

Because they are having custom chips designed and made just for them, they can build in stuff to the chip that supports directly features in MacOS that they want to provide, potentially for less money and probably in devices that use less power.


----------



## robgb

Dewdman42 said:


> because they want to move in new directions that they will ultimately profit from.


So I'm probably right. They want to make their computers more proprietary than they already are and force more (or who knows, maybe less) people into the Apple ecosystem.

Well, at least I know my iMac will be around for several more years. After that we'll see how this ARM thing shakes out.


----------



## Vik

robgb said:


> I probably should have read though this entire thread, but I'm lazy. I'm curious what the rationale is for changing chips. Seems to me their computers work just fine as is. Is it meant to eventually lock out even more people from their ecosystem and make it "our way or the highway?" I seriously don't see the benefit in this change.


If all their products run on the same chips, you can run your favourite DAW on your phone, run your phone apps on your computer and also use the plunges you have bought on all your devices. IMO it would be a big mistake to not go that route, because sooner or later even your most portable devices would be able to run quite CPU and memory intensive sessions. 
This will also save developer time. Fewer products to quality control and beta test. Reduce the Hackintosh market, which Apple otherwise can't td much with. Making Apple less dependent of Intel. Maybe increase the performance and reduce the price. Hopefully increase security. 
In the future, if you have 2-3 ARM devices from Apple, you could probably also use one of them as a 'master' and two the others as 'DSP cards'.


----------



## robgb

Vik said:


> Maybe increase the performance and reduce the price.


ROFTL. Sorry. This made me laugh.


----------



## Vik

robgb said:


> ROFTL. Sorry. This made me laugh.


Good for you.  
Compared with Apple forever having to buy chips from Intel - I wouldn't be surprised if Macs (etc) will be faster sooner than if they would rely on Intel chips. Also, if Intel don't need to get paid for the chips Apple sell (inside their devices), maybe they can reduce the price. Or the could keep the price high and increase their profit, at least short term.


----------



## robgb

Vik said:


> Good for you.
> Compared with Apple forever having to buy chips from Intel - I wouldn't be surprised if Macs (etc) will be faster sooner than if they would rely on Intel chips. Also, if Intel don't need to get paid for the chips Apple sell (inside their devices), maybe they can reduce the price. Or the could keep the price high and increase their profit, at least short term.


I think it's naive to believe that Apple will ever lower their prices. They charge a premium for everything, and it has nothing to do with the price of Intel chips.


----------



## Vik

Sure, they charge a lot. Maybe they won't lower their prices, but maybe they will increase them less (by using their won chips) than if they would have to keep generating profit both for themselves and for Intel with their products. And maybe I'm wrong. Nevertheless, needing to write apps for two different kind of chips has always seemed like a bad idea to me, and the same goes for having to buy component from their competition (when avoidable). 


Dewdman42 said:


> Because they are having custom chips designed and made just for them, they can build in stuff to the chip that supports directly features in MacOS that they want to provide, potentially for less money and probably in devices that use less power.


Yes, and let me quote you: we shall see.


----------



## Buz

Vik said:


> If all their products run on the same chips, you can run your favourite DAW on your phone, run your phone apps on your computer and also use the plunges you have bought on all your devices.


I've heard this for a long time, but the killer APP that you would actually care about running on your desktop has never been forthcoming. A computer that uses 20x as much power will be 20x as powerful, so it seems people are always more interested in utilising the technology rather than marvelling about how their phone can almost do what their computer did a decade ago.

I get that it's great for simplicity, but are these hypothetical phone-compatible products actually going to be competitive in the market?


----------



## Dewdman42

Apple (and all other companies) will charge as much as people are willing to spend. Not a penny less. If they can find a way to lower their cost, they might make more profit, they might lower prices to be more competitive. (shrug).. so what? 

I predict Apple is going to put out a lot of $1000 devices in various shapes and sizes...none of which will perform well compared to iMac and MP. They will be able to put out lower priced consumer products...which realistically is all the power that most users actually need. 

Eventually maybe they will have some kind of high performance ARM mac, but that is really theoretical right now and years away. Apple has already stated they are going to still be shipping some Intel macs for a while yet. 

For my part, I am a bit interested and excited to see what Apple will do with ARM...could be a game changer...maybe...or might not...we just have to wait and see. I happen to think that CPU's in general across all makes and models have hit a bit of an upper ceiling in terms of what they can do, without a complete technology change which we don't have yet. They have tried to cram more cores and other enhancements to wring a bit more peripheral performance out of them or improve graphics and other things like that...while the basic data crunching of the CPU has kind of hit a ceiling for some time now, IMHO. That's why cheese graters are basically still fully relevant today more than 10 years later. Its really not like the 90's where the speed of CPU's were literally doubling like every year and you pretty much had to buy a new one to barely keep up with the updates in MS Office.

I personally do not think ARM is any different, they have the same ceiling, but Apple can build in a lot more of those features related to graphics, security, etc. stuff that will enable them to interconnect phones with computers at a very tight hardware level. The average user will have an improved experience dealing with the typical kinds of things they like to do, with a very smooth desktop experience that is fine tuned to deliver that luxury ride. But the basic computational abilities of the CPU are not going to be seeing any big improvements, and in my view they will be doing well if they can even crank out an ARM mac that can compute as well as their current top end Intel line. I think most likely that will have to involve really big core counts, like 56 core ARM processors or something like that... which may be possible on ARM due to lower power, etc..so we'll see...could be interesting... But really...we are years away from seeing that kind of stuff in my view and for the next few years anyway, most users on this forum are well advised to keep going with intel macs... after that we shall see.


----------



## Malieus

...This is the Endgame.

Goodbye, Intel Macs...I guess it's time to get started on building a PC.


----------



## Dewdman42

or that... switch (shrug). I'm staying on my cheesegrater until 2024 at least.


----------



## Vik

Dewdman42 said:


> Apple (and all other companies) will charge as much as people are willing to spend.


Or they'll charge as much as they can based on the total profit it generates. Sometimes not increasing the price (or lowering it) means more profit, or a better position in the market, or both. Apple could have charged eg. $50 or more for Logic the 10.1, 10.2 etc updates, but they didn't.


----------



## Dewdman42

all companies are in business to make a profit and there is a certain amount of profit they need to make in order to justify their existence. Typically if they are making more profit then that, then the money goes back into attempting to grow the company for potential future profit. All the bean counters have this down to a science really, so they know how much money they need to take from investors or financing, etc. Then in order to make that profit they need to make a product or service that people are willing to pay for, and they are competing against other companies for the same business, so they will all be trying to lower they prices and/or improving their product in order to compete. This is capitalism 101..nothing new here. Its not a conspiracy to gouge people for whatever they can get away with. They are always trying to make the most profit they can, but due to the competitive marketplace, they are usually unable to make as much profit as they would like to make. They are always driven by market forces to find ways to lower the cost in order to lower the price or in order to have room to improve the product for the same cost.

When costs come down for any reason, such as a less expensive CPU it will ultimately be better for consumers because that will enable Apple to make themselves more competitive in some way, either by building something nicer for the money or providing lower cost products. It may not seem like that, but that is market force at work and ultimately we the consumer will benefit the most from some certain part costing less in the production, while Apple will simply just be keeping up with the market with roughly the same profit margins as always in the long run in order to do so.


----------



## AlexRuger

Dewdman42 said:


> I don't think anyone will miss bootcamp at all. I don't think many people will miss wine, some will. Its nice that Apple is going to build virtualization into Big Sur so that actually you won't even need to use a third party product for running the VM, so that's cool and for those people that just HAVE to use the windows version of Excel, you'll be covered.



Not seeing how Wine factors into this? That’s for running Windows apps on Linux, primarily...I know it can run on macOS but that seems to be more of a rare use case.

But yeah, I Boot Camp’d my cheesegrater and never loved it. Driver support was a bit wonky and I never felt I was reaching the same potential of the hardware on the Windows side as in OS X. Personally I won’t miss it — I’ve come to really appreciate just letting Macs be Macs, PC’s being PC’s, and when I want Linux, choosing either a VM or bare metal depending on the needs at the moment. Good riddance to both Hackintosh and Boot Camp, IMO.


----------



## Dewdman42

In the past I have used wine to run the windows version of Reaper on my mac and host win32 plugins in it. Together with some JackASIO wizardry...worked pretty well with IAC to basically use a win23 plugin together with LogicPro...., but honestly not worth the hassle; easier to just find ways to do it directly in OSX or forget about it. 

There are quite a few simple win32 programs that will run under Wine on the mac just fine...and generally they will run better and with less hassle then using virtualization or bootcamp. Highly recommend it when the program you are wanting to run will actually run under it, which is not always the case.

A lot of people never used wine or try it because its a bit techy sometimes to set it up. There are somewhat easy ways to do it, but it gets technical fast, so I think most people just don't really know about it or what is possible, but for some things it works really well actually. The nice thing about Wine is that you are running a win32 program natively on the intel processor without any VM involved, so it runs at full speed. the downside is that sometimes programs use features that aren't supported by wine, so its hit or miss. Big complicated programs are unlikely to work. 

Reaper worked fine though with hardly any effort.


----------



## Dewdman42

some may find this video interesting and informative:


----------



## chimuelo

Nick Batzdorf said:


> That may well be what the new chips do.



They really should. I know nothing other than what I hear and my new HX-3.5 (FPGA) Organ Module just buries my 4 different Hammond B3 software instruments.

It even replaced my Neo Ventilator pedal which was considered the best Leslie 122 Simulation available.

The FPGA Chip had so much power left over they included a sample playback engine of just regular GM sounds, and now they’ve added new types of percussion, 3 extra harmonic drawbars, a Hammond B3 on steroids, but can do ELP, Boston, DeepPurple, Steppenwolf, Uriah Heep, Booker T., Jimmy Smith, etc.

It’s amazing how great sounding the last few years of Strymon Pedals sound too with the SHARC DSP Chips.

An Intel i7 blows away any of these chips, but my guess is the OS is just a bunch of goo.

This dog can hunt...


----------



## Dewdman42

First benchmarks surface for Apple's ARM-based Developer Transition Kit


Apple developers have started receiving their Developer Transition Kit hardware, which Apple is distributing to developers to help them get their apps ready for the upcoming range of Apple Silicon Macs, which will replace Intel CPUs with Apple-designed ARM CPUs. Despite the confidentiality...




9to5mac.com


----------



## Technostica

In 2012 Microsoft released Windows 8 which ran on x86 PCs, ARM PCs (natively) and ARM Phones.
It was too little too soon; ahead of its time.
ARM chips weren't quite there yet.
The Phone O/S was fine but never had the app support to be sustainable.


----------



## wayne_rowley

Dewdman42 said:


> First benchmarks surface for Apple's ARM-based Developer Transition Kit
> 
> 
> Apple developers have started receiving their Developer Transition Kit hardware, which Apple is distributing to developers to help them get their apps ready for the upcoming range of Apple Silicon Macs, which will replace Intel CPUs with Apple-designed ARM CPUs. Despite the confidentiality...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 9to5mac.com



Yes. Interesting but not very revealing. The benchmarking is via Rosetta 2 (beta), not on the native code, and only taps 4 of the 8 cores. When Apple moved from Power PC to Intel the developer transition kits had Pentium 4s in.


----------



## rnb_2

Technostica said:


> In 2012 Microsoft released Windows 8 which ran on x86 PCs, ARM PCs (natively) and ARM Phones.
> It was too little too soon; ahead of its time.
> ARM chips weren't quite there yet.
> The Phone O/S was fine but never had the app support to be sustainable.



Part of this is just the downside of Windows' user base and corresponding need to maintain compatibility - in order for Microsoft to actually make a big change, they have to convince a substantial portion of both their users and developers to go along with it, and they haven't historically been able to do that. Microsoft can say "we're going to revolutionize computing by doing (x)!", but if only a tiny portion of the users and developers get on board, the initiative just dies.


----------



## Dewdman42

wayne_rowley said:


> Yes. Interesting but not very revealing. The benchmarking is via Rosetta 2 (beta), not on the native code, and only taps 4 of the 8 cores. When Apple moved from Power PC to Intel the developer transition kits had Pentium 4s in.



well it does reveal how "well" your intel software is going to run under Rosetta on that particular box.  Ie... not very well.

As stated in the article there are numerous factors, not just that one, which will be different when real ARM macs ship. Just passing along the info which some might find interesting.


----------



## chimuelo

Send one to Scan Audio, otherwise it’s hard to tell what audio tests reveal.
But mid 800’s on single core scores is interesting.


----------



## LamaRose

Apple has no plans to abandon those in the music industry... composers are a whole other story. 

Hip-hop/Rap are the real players/consumers for Logic & Apple. I can easily see the next iPad Pro incorporating a new, enhanced version of Logic which will be both bane and boon to both musicians and would-be musicians. The new iPads are pretty impressive in many ways: 









iPad Pro


The new iPad Pro has the M1 chip, 12.9-inch Liquid Retina XDR display, 11-inch Liquid Retina display, 5G support, and new camera with Center Stage.



www.apple.com





I see laptops and desktops falling off the map, and sadly, beyond the pay grade for most. I suspect N.I. and some of the other major players are preparing as we speak.

Doesn't mean orchestrated music will fall off the map... but most here have seen/heard what's now possible with just a few keystrokes in many modern libraries. So, I wouldn't fear the loss of the Magic keyboard as much as the loss of the keyboard controller.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

LamaRose said:


> I see laptops and desktops falling off the map, and sadly, beyond the pay grade for most



They may be beyond the pay grade, but this seems like a curious time to be declaring the Mac over.

There are over 100 million Macs in use, or were as of a couple of years ago. If they want to dump the business, I'd be happy to take it over and I won't charge them much.


----------



## gsilbers

LamaRose said:


> Apple has no plans to abandon those in the music industry... composers are a whole other story.
> 
> Hip-hop/Rap are the real players/consumers for Logic & Apple. I can easily see the next iPad Pro incorporating a new, enhanced version of Logic which will be both bane and boon to both musicians and would-be musicians. The new iPads are pretty impressive in many ways:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> iPad Pro
> 
> 
> The new iPad Pro has the M1 chip, 12.9-inch Liquid Retina XDR display, 11-inch Liquid Retina display, 5G support, and new camera with Center Stage.
> 
> 
> 
> www.apple.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I see laptops and desktops falling off the map, and sadly, beyond the pay grade for most. I suspect N.I. and some of the other major players are preparing as we speak.
> 
> Doesn't mean orchestrated music will fall off the map... but most here have seen/heard what's now possible with just a few keystrokes in many modern libraries. So, I wouldn't fear the loss of the Magic keyboard as much as the loss of the keyboard controller.



I kind of agree.
I do think Apple is trying to move the hiphop crowd to arm based iPad and MacBooks.
Mainly because apple sees more potential of those hiphop producers buying a $2 app from the app store than a $29-100 from plugin boutique.

Macs are a smaller part of the ecosystem... like 12% I think. 
and iPhones and iPad a lot more.

That big issue w Catalina and security was mainly a ploy to get all apps be more reliant on the Apple store and slow the potential of apps being bought and downloaded from random websites.

which means high end plugins and apps are in trouble because now moog sells that iOS synth pretty cheap, sounds good and makes no sense buying the Arturia versión at $100+.


----------



## LamaRose

gsilbers said:


> which means high end plugins and apps are in trouble because now moog sells that iOS synth pretty cheap, sounds good and makes no sense buying the Arturia versión at $100+.



I've broached this topic before... basically that developers should be focusing more on lower cost/high volume sales vs. high cost/lower volume. But the name "Henry Ford" usually brings "boos" from the crowd. Boutique/niche libraries will always have their place - not everyone wants a high-end shamisen lib - but the days of $150 piano or violin libs bringing in a solid margin are over.


----------



## LamaRose

Nick Batzdorf said:


> They may be beyond the pay grade, but this seems like a curious time to be declaring the Mac over.
> 
> There are over 100 million Macs in use, or were as of a couple of years ago. If they want to dump the business, I'd be happy to take it over and I won't charge them much.



Not declaring Macs are over... more along the lines of a _Macbook Makeover_ modeled after the iPad. Still love my MBP, and my wife will getting a new MBA when she gets back to the States... the irony being that said MBA, for a street price of around $899, is probably the best laptop ever made/released on price/value/performance metrics. Oh, forgot to factor in the $300 - $400 that her 2015 MBA is going for on Ebay... try that with a PC, lol.


----------



## synthesizerwriter

I thought that one of the major reasons that Apple were moving to ARM was that they have had problems getting Intel to reliably deliver the latest chips to an agreed timescale.

( https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/05/01/cook-maestri-intel ) example from a year or so ago...

When your supply chain isn't predictable it can get very expensive because you are waiting instead of building: storing half-built computers in a factory costs money; switching assembly lines on and off demotivates workers and reduces productivity; container shipping schedules slip and you have to pay extra for air-freight; Just-In-Time deliveries miss pre-booked time-slots and you have to rent extra warehouse space, etc. etc.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

LamaRose said:


> said MBA, for a street price of around $899, is probably the best laptop ever made/released on price/value/performance metrics



As I've posted several times, I like my 11" MacBook Air just a little bit too much to be normal.

It's not a powerful machine, but it doesn't need to be for its intended uses.


----------



## gsilbers

LamaRose said:


> I've broached this topic before... basically that developers should be focusing more on lower cost/high volume sales vs. high cost/lower volume. But the name "Henry Ford" usually brings "boos" from the crowd. Boutique/niche libraries will always have their place - not everyone wants a high-end shamisen lib - but the days of $150 piano or violin libs bringing in a solid margin are over.



Different strategiest i suppose.. 

for waves it makes sense to have a new 29.99 sales every week.. cuz they have tons of plugins to rotate. 
while sonnox has much less plugins but have a nice user followers and higher priced. 

its basicallty the business strategy is being forced by content aggregators.. similar like the value of music nowadays and spotify, and we all have to accept it. 

piano/violin sample libraries still require recording, editingm mapping and scirpting. 
which is part of the price. after one year its lowrred. 
similar to EQ plugins etc that there is still the upfront testing and coming up w new prodcuts. 
with a crowded market and as any business , prices come down and mostly bigger established companies make it happen. 

its defenitly an interesting topic for both users and developers. 
Since apples history with music and establishing that a song.. no matter how great.. is only .99cents. 
and thousands of artists and record labels went under or look for $ eslewhere while apple pockets half of each sale. 

so will that happenw ith new mac apps? sinnce everything is turning into subscirption models are we all going to be hooked to thousands of small subscirption services ran through apples? 
sample libraries and loop libraries sold with a subscirption service? is that why spitfire, orchestral tools, 8dio, output are making their own samplers? 

The apple switch to arm does signify a lot of unforseen changes besides the obvuous universal binary and intel macs getting obsolete faster than normal..


----------



## Dewdman42

Now an iPadPro running OS11 might actually get my attention.









Apple reportedly evaluating Apple Silicon-powered macOS on iPhone | AppleInsider


A leaker reports that Apple is working on Apple Silicon prototypes with macOS running on the iPhone, which would allow a user to plug an iPhone into a dock or monitor, and have a full desktop experience.




appleinsider.com


----------



## gsilbers

Dewdman42 said:


> Now an iPadPro running OS11 might actually get my attention.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Apple reportedly evaluating Apple Silicon-powered macOS on iPhone | AppleInsider
> 
> 
> A leaker reports that Apple is working on Apple Silicon prototypes with macOS running on the iPhone, which would allow a user to plug an iPhone into a dock or monitor, and have a full desktop experience.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> appleinsider.com



wow that blew my mind. 

If iPhones become more powerful then it would just a connector to have an external screen, and usb hub
and do some "beats"


----------



## Dewdman42

I'd probably buy an iPadPro this afternoon if I knew I could run OS11 on it completely with MS Office and everything else when I travel, or boot it to iOS for other times.


----------



## ironbut

Production Expert has a great article on the transition.








Apple Silicon - A Developer Helps To Explain The Impact | Production Expert


There is obviously a lot of detail about how Rosetta 2 and Universal 2 are going to work, and we wanted to explore the reality of how these will impact the pro-audio sector. In this article with the help of an audio software developer, we try to explain some of the challenges as it pertains to audio




www.pro-tools-expert.com


----------



## jcrosby

ironbut said:


> Production Expert has a great article on the transition.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Apple Silicon - A Developer Helps To Explain The Impact | Production Expert
> 
> 
> There is obviously a lot of detail about how Rosetta 2 and Universal 2 are going to work, and we wanted to explore the reality of how these will impact the pro-audio sector. In this article with the help of an audio software developer, we try to explain some of the challenges as it pertains to audio
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.pro-tools-expert.com


This confirms pretty much every worst case scenario I assumed would happen... A lot of orphaned plugins, some interfaces and hardware will inevitably fail to make the cut where the manufacturer doesn't update drivers as needed.

Here's the real gotcha though:

*All Or Nothing - No Mix and Match*

_What this means is that although you get to decide to run your DAW under Rosetta 2 or Natively on Apple Silicon (if it’s been updated to native) *you will not be able to run Intel-based plug-ins under Rosetta 2 in a DAW that is running natively on Apple Silicon (and vice versa)*. Put even more simply, our developer explains that *this means you will not be able to mix and match a Native Apple Silicon DAW with Intel-based plugins. This means all of your plugins will have to be able to run natively on Apple Silicon before you can use them in a DAW running natively. You may even find your plug-ins get updated before your DAW – but the same problem will arise!*

This means you are going to run everything through Rosetta 2 (DAW and Plugins) until everything you need has been ported over unless there is some kind of process bridge tool made available, as happened with the 32-64 bit transition. *That’s assuming audio plugins, iLok/eLicenser protection, drivers work under emulation at all – when it comes to the audio production world there are a lot of ifs, buts and maybes.*_

This is going to be an absolute mess for a lot of people.

*All Stop On Product Development Its Port, Port, Port…*

_... Whatever the boss had them working on will now have to wait because *they only have got 6 months before enthusiastic early adopters of the new Macs start to complain, bitterly accusing developers of being lazy, because Apple said it only takes a couple of days to port something to Apple Silicon. *“Thanks, Apple”.

*Windows users will also be able to thank Apple for monopolising a lot of audio development hours that might otherwise have gone into the creation, or improvement of, tools that they could have benefitted from!*_


----------



## gsilbers

Wow.. no thunderbolt anymore?!
Like FireWire 400 and 800.... keeps getting obsolete so fast.


----------



## wayne_rowley

gsilbers said:


> Wow.. no thunderbolt anymore?!
> Like FireWire 400 and 800.... keeps getting obsolete so fast.



Don’t be so sure. As I think I have written elsewhere, Apple will be further along than they wanted to reveal. The Developer Systems (minis) may not have Thunderbolt, but when they demoed MacOS on Arm they were using a Pro Display 6K... those suckers are Thunderbolt 3!!


----------



## synthesizerwriter

Thunderbolt was developed by Intel and Apple, but it isn't exclusive to Intel hardware. You can get it on some AMD-powered motherboards...

https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/amd-motherboard-asrock-first-thunderbolt-certification-intel


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

jcrosby said:


> This confirms pretty much every worst case scenario I assumed would happen...



Without intending to be a bigger jerk than normal, I simply don't understand why so many people are so upset.

Again: software will need updating whether or not Apple switches chips on machines none of us owns yet. When we do, we can run orphaned instrument and processing plug-ins on an inexpensive Intel Mac.

Again again: the next generation of chips will always be more powerful than the previous generation.

There are so many things to worry about today. Not this.


----------



## Vik

gsilbers said:


> Wow.. no thunderbolt anymore?!
> Like FireWire 400 and 800.... keeps getting obsolete so fast.











Intel Takes Steps to Enable Thunderbolt 3 Everywhere, Releases Protocol | Intel Newsroom


What's New: Intel is well on its way to making the innovation delivered with Thunderbolt™ 3 available to everyone. Today, Intel announced that it




newsroom.intel.com


----------



## Dewdman42

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Again again: the next generation of chips will always be more powerful than the previous generation.



Not to say that i'm particularly "worried", but this assertion is not necessarily true when making the switch from Intel to ARM, things could get slower for a while. Yes, we can safely assume each new ARM will be faster then the last ARM to some degree, but at this point in time we cannot assume that the first ARM will be faster then the last Intel. In fact its quite likely it will be slower in raw cpu performance. It will bring lower power consumption, we do know that. But there is zero evidence whatsoever at this point that the ARM processors will be more powerful then the current Intels. 

That is very much left to be seen what is going to happen. There are other reasons that Apple is making the switch to ARM. Plenty of experts have stated clearly in numerous places that at least as of now, ARM can't keep up with the raw processing of Intel. That isn't to say that might not come up with a way to beat it, and Intel will be trying to beat that too, but nobody has done it yet and its very much left to be seen.

As has been stated here numerous times, Apple is not switching to ARM in order to have the next generation of super fast CPU's.. They will gain control over the process, lower heat and power problems, which have plagued their MBP's, Mini's and iMacs for years now...so ARM is going to solve that problem, but personally I think it will be quite some time until they have any kind of ARM mac that can compete with their i9 and Xeon macs today in terms of raw cpu performance.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> But there is zero evidence whatsoever at this point that the ARM processors will be more powerful then the current Intels.



As I posted before, I've heard a credible report that they will be for our application.

That's not necessarily the same thing as raw CPU performance.


----------



## Dewdman42

Nick Batzdorf said:


> As I posted before, I've heard a credible report that they will be for our application.



post your source, otherwise that is fiction as far as I'm concerned.

and yes, raw performance will probably not be there for a while.


----------



## ironbut

Maybe I'm just a glass half full kind of guy but after reading that article and since the dust has settled a little, I'm moving from the "wait and see" to the "can't wait to see" camp.
I don't think anybody doubted that the next few years were going to be bumpy (for developers in particular), but I'm beginning to think that at the other end, it may be the next big surge in performance.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> post your source, otherwise that is fiction as far as I'm concerned.



I'm not going to get friends in trouble. My suggestion is that you take it as a possibility, not fiction - which is how I'm taking it too.


----------



## Dewdman42

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I'm not going to get friends in trouble. My suggestion is that you take it as a possibility, not fiction - which is how I'm taking it too.



sorry can't do that. I deal with facts only. We can certainly HOPE for the best and I do, but until we see it, its just a pipe dream. 

The best bet for most on this forum is to stick with their intel macs for the next few years and see what happens.


----------



## andybancroftcooke

i'm gonna build myself a motherfucker of a hackintosh and then disconnect it from the internet forever. it can sit in the studio and do what it needs to do forever and ever. until they change electricity.


----------



## seclusion3

I see it that instead of us looking at specs and saying 24 core, 128 gigs of ram yadayada. Even though many many app's do not reach the full potential of that type machine, even some with staggering specs. We're gonna see apps utilize the full potential of the machine that may not look impressive in About This Mac, but run properly, quiet, low latency and be thin and outperform the old tech.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

andybancroftcooke said:


> until they change electricity



I heard a rumor that Apple is planning on doing that next year.


----------



## Alex Fraser

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Without intending to be a bigger jerk than normal, I simply don't understand why so many people are so upset.


Possibly because the move to ARM is going to end an era of computing that some aren't willing to say goodbye to. Hackintosh-ing (is that a word?) will eventually become a lot harder or cease to exist in it's current form. Apple hardware will be locked down tighter, software distribution more tied to Apple's model.

Personally, I don't have an issue with any of that if ARM leads to fast, silent computing. If people have to say goodbye to certain plugins or software, workflows or even move to Windows..so be it.

Technology (and profit) marches on and it's up to us to adapt. It's not going to stop anyone working.


----------



## synthesizerwriter

Thunderbolt was developed by Intel and Apple, but it isn't exclusive to Intel chips etc.. You can get it on some AMD-powered motherboards...

https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/amd-motherboard-asrock-first-thunderbolt-certification-intel


----------



## wayne_rowley

Here we go: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/08/apple-arm-based-macs-thunderbolt-support/

Looks like there is hope for my UAD Arrow after all!!


----------



## gsilbers

wayne_rowley said:


> Here we go: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/08/apple-arm-based-macs-thunderbolt-support/
> 
> Looks like there is hope for my UAD Arrow after all!!



i wonder about the underlying tech for the onboard DSP chips uad uses, sync w the computer and all of that. i think it shouldnt matter but with my virus ti, its always a huge issue with any new Mac OS thats different. like catalina doesnt support the TI for some reason. 
anyways... not sure about the tech but onboard DSP for interfaces is quite different to normal audio interfaces.


----------



## gsilbers

The quick comment from linustech that got my attention saying that apple is running these new i9 intels hot so they later can sell the ARM chips as ooohhh.. so good in comparison... 
but i9 is alrady very hot.


----------



## gsilbers

well, 
this was news to me...


an ipad pro can export/benchmark better than an i5 macbook pro 2020. 

which means ARM chip macbooks will be as good (mid level at least) but not have that dreaded hot thermal issue and loud fan noise. (which im experiencing w a16 inch).


----------



## IFM

From what I am seeing 2nd or 3rd hand of course is that ARM is going to way out perform the Intel side. That being said it's all speculation till we start seeing them in the real world. I personally am looking forward to what lies ahead but that won't mean my other Macs won't continue to run.

Heck I just got a 2012 MacBook Pro that looks like it was just taken out of the box. Has a SSE and upped the ram to 16gb and it makes a great laptop for my streaming and recording of live performances. I'm probably going to also use it for AVB recording and Waves Soundgrid routing (via a USB to ethernet adaptor).

I don't care it is locked at Catalina. The first Mac I'll replace is my last gen MacBook with the ARM MacBook Pro...my little mobile office.


----------



## InLight-Tone

Some people CAN'T handle change...


----------



## thevisi0nary

InLight-Tone said:


> Some people CAN'T handle change...



It comes from not knowing what to expect but also the prospect of how long there will be support for intel machines. I doubt that will be a problem though, I think arm is a good move.

The only reason I've abandoned having a powerful laptop as a main workstation I can take with me is because of thermal issues and poor battery life, arm chips look to address both of these problems.


----------



## Ashermusic

thevisi0nary said:


> It comes from not knowing what to expect but also the prospect of how long there will be support for intel machines. I doubt that will be a problem though, I think arm is a good move.
> 
> The only reason I've abandoned having a powerful laptop as a main workstation I can take with me is because of thermal issues and poor battery life, arm chips look to address both of these problems.



As I have said before, you pay more money for less power and less screen real estate with an Apple laptop vs a desktop. If you need the portability, fine, but I think a lot of people who don’t buy them because their friends do.


----------



## thevisi0nary

Ashermusic said:


> As I have said before, you pay more money for less power and less screen real estate with an Apple laptop vs a desktop. If you need the portability, fine, but I think a lot of people who don’t buy them because their friends do.



Definitely true. For everything other than music though the portability is really convenient. I can do photo editing anywhere with a laptop, but raw editors are surprisingly heavy on the cpu.


----------



## Michael Antrum

I’ve often thought that the attitude to hackintoshes on this forum is rather odd.

I mean, what is the difference between stealing someone’s intellectual property in the form of, say, a sample library, and stealing OSX.

If someone comes on here exhorting the piracy of sample libraries, they are sent away with a flea in their ear.....

Just because Apple is a big company, doesn’t mean stealing their IP is right....


----------



## wayne_rowley

Michael Antrum said:


> I’ve often thought that the attitude to hackintoshes on this form is rather odd.
> 
> I mean, what is the difference between stealing someone’s intellectual property in the form of, say, a sample library, and stealing OSX.
> 
> If someone comes on here exhorting the piracy of sample libraries, they are sent away with a flea in their ear.....
> 
> Just because Aaple is a big company, doesn’t mean stealing their IP is right....



Agree completely.


----------



## Al Maurice

I can remember a time, when ARM chips out performed Intel and that was in the late 80's and early 90's. However I would say Intel has been struggling for years to keep in the race: their chips have probably come to the limit of what's possible, with the number of transistors they cram into their silicon wafers. With each generation they have to achieve the near impossible to enable them to avoid interference effects, yet alone counter the over heating issues.

Some motherboards manage to prevent the chips becoming overly throttled after a short burst of activity. Most don't so they quickly drop off in performance from their peak capacity. Hence some of the older chips often out perform the nearer ones at higher clock rates.

So I wouldn't say the era has ended, just gone fall circle. And it's about time, we once again have some serious competition in the consumer grade end of the market CPU wise. In any case most mobile devices have an ARM chip in them, making it only a question of time until they hit the laptop and also the desktop market once again.


----------



## macavalon

The biggest and probably only benefit in the short term is your laptop battery will last longer. If apple own the processor chipset, like they do for iphone/ipad then they can fully control the power supply consumption. Of course this means little if you need to run your cpu at the max to encode video or run VIs...

As others mentioned the cpu instruction set is completely different, so any program/plugin written to target the intel instruction will need to be rewritten (unless just written in pure c/c++ then it's hopefully just a recompile from Xcode !)

But don't forget that some plugins and programs use the GPU to do some of the heavy lifting, so it might not be all bad...


----------



## jcrosby

Michael Antrum said:


> I’ve often thought that the attitude to hackintoshes on this forum is rather odd.
> 
> I mean, what is the difference between stealing someone’s intellectual property in the form of, say, a sample library, and stealing OSX.
> 
> If someone comes on here exhorting the piracy of sample libraries, they are sent away with a flea in their ear.....
> 
> Just because Aaple is a big company, doesn’t mean stealing their IP is right....


Installing a version of macos you obtained via your actual mac(s) isn't stealing the OS.

Whether it's ethical or not ethical to install it on non-Apple hardware is a different question. But as per usual... People assume people running hackintoshes run them because they're either pirating the OS are ok with piracy.

By that logic if you install a Kontakt library on a 3rd machine, say a VEP slave, and the license agreement technically limits you to two machines, you're pirating that library.

If you've ever owned a mac that was kneecapped by Apple at a specific OS, but used dosdude1's patcher to install an OS newer than the limitation put in place by Apple you're also leaning in the same direction. And if you've ever used dosdude1's patcher to donwload a version of macos you failed to download in time before pulled from the app store you are indeed, every bit as guilty of the same grey area that is hackintosh.

If you've ever owned, or known anyone who's owned a 2009 Mac Pro that had the EFI flashed to function as a 2012. You're already soaking dipping your toe in the same pool. That 2009 mac was never intended to have its EFI flashed to be converted into a 2012 Mac Pro. 

If you took it into an ASP for service they would deny you service of the machine becuase it is a "non-standard configuration". (I tried to have my 2009 serviced.) To paraphrase the ASP: We can't service your machine if you've modified it because it's what Apple refers to as a non-standard configuration, and Apple could pull our status as an authorized service provider.

Sure seems like there's are a lot of areas where there's some overlap. And your standard for piracy defines anyone who managed to install a Kontakt library on one or more machines than the license agreement allowed as engaging in the act of stealing.


----------



## Michael Antrum

macavalon said:


> The biggest and probably only benefit in the short term is your laptop battery will last longer. If apple own the processor chipset, like they do for iphone/ipad then they can fully control the power supply consumption. Of course this means little if you need to run your cpu at the max to encode video or run VIs...
> 
> As others mentioned the cpu instruction set is completely different, so any program/plugin written to target the intel instruction will need to be rewritten (unless just written in pure c/c++ then it's hopefully just a recompile from Xcode !)
> 
> But don't forget that some plugins and programs use the GPU to do some of the heavy lifting, so it might not be all bad...



Sorry, butI think you are wrong. I think heat and thermal throttling will be the big win here. Macbook Pro battery life is pretty decent as it is, and whilst improving that is always a bonus, thermal efficiency will be the more valuable prize.


----------



## Michael Antrum

jcrosby said:


> Installing a version of macos you obtained via your actual mac(s) isn't stealing the OS.
> 
> Whether it's ethical or not ethical to install it on non-Apple hardware is a different question. But as per usual... People assume people running hackintoshes run them because they're either pirating the OS are ok with piracy.
> 
> By that logic if you install a Kontakt library on a 3rd machine, say a VEP slave, and the license agreement technically limits you to two machines, you're pirating that library.



I was always under the impression that the Apple licence agreement forbids use on non Apple hardware.

Part 2, section I:



> I. Other Use Restrictions. The grants set forth in this License do not permit you to, and you agree not to, install, use or run the Apple Software on any *non-Apple-branded computer*, or to enable others to do so. Except as otherwise permitted by the terms of this License or otherwise licensed by Apple: (i) only one user may use the Apple Software at a time, and (ii) you may not make the Apple Software available over a network where it could be run or used by multiple computers at the same time. You may not rent, lease, lend, sell, redistribute or sublicense the Apple Software.


----------



## macavalon

Michael Antrum said:


> Sorry, butI think you are wrong. I think heat and thermal throttling will be the big win here. Macbook Pro battery life is pretty decent as it is, and whilst improving that is always a bonus, thermal efficiency will be the more valuable prize.


By thermal efficiency I assume you mean it will consume less energy for same cpu number instruction per second (vs intel cpu) ... so it will save energy and thus your battery can last longer ?


----------



## Michael Antrum

macavalon said:


> By thermal efficiency I assume you mean it will consume less energy for same cpu number instruction per second (vs intel cpu) ... so it will save energy and thus your battery can last longer ?



No, that the heat won’t cause your CPU to be throttled back and therefore bottleneck the performance.

With the last gen there were many people saying that they got better real world performance from the i7 than the i9 MacBook Pro as the i9 got so hot it was throttled back to performance levels below the i7 when put under load.

Of course if they were not so obseseed with the thing being so thin, that would help too....


----------



## jcrosby

Michael Antrum said:


> I was always under the impression that the Apple licence agreement forbids use on non Apple hardware.
> 
> Part 2, section I:


That's violating the EULA, not piracy. Also, as I stated above, flashing a 2009 Mac Pro to upgrade it to CPUs available for the 2012 model, (which are all over VI-Control) is also a violation of the EULA:

Section K:

K. Backup Copy. You may make one copy of the Apple Software (*excluding the Boot ROM code and other Apple firmware that is embedded or otherwise contained in Apple-branded hardware*) in machinereadable form for backup purposes only; provided that the backup copy must include all copyright or other proprietary notices contained on the original. Apple Boot ROM code and firmware is provided only for use on Apple-branded hardware and *you may not copy, modify or redistribute the Apple Boot ROM code or firmware, or any portions thereof.*

The ethics can be argued. But those same ethics apply to modifications such as the popular 2009/2012 Mac Pro conversion. And using dosdude1's patcher to install a version of macos not supported by that hardware profile. It's referred to as a *patcher* for a reason, it patches the macos installer to bypass the hardware limitations intended by Apple.


----------



## macavalon

Michael Antrum said:


> No, that the heat won’t cause your CPU to be throttled back and therefore bottleneck the performance.
> 
> With the last gen there were many people saying that they got better real world performance from the i7 than the i9 MacBook Pro as the i9 got so hot it was throttled back to performance levels below the i7 when put under load.
> 
> Of course if they were not so obseseed with the thing being so thin, that would help too....


Indeed laptops produce lots of heat when run at max speed continuously... especially fanless designs.. . For performance I would stick with a desktop that can be properly cooled.
But ... I run an i7 laptop and run with reduced max speed so it doesn't overheat ... once you hit 80C it always drops down to 800MHz...which is next to useless !


----------



## Michael Antrum

jcrosby said:


> That's violating the EULA, not piracy.







__





Apple Inc. v. Psystar Corp.: Ninth Circuit Holds that Apple did not Engage in Copyright Misuse


Apple Inc. v. Psystar Corp., No. 10-15113 (9th Cir. Sept. 28, 2011)Slip Opinion The Ninth Circuit affirmed the Northern District of California’s holding that Psystar infringed Apple’s federal copyrights, and...




jolt.law.harvard.edu





Anyway, you are not going to conveince me that its right to steal Apple's OS. And I'm pretty sure I'm not going to convice you you are wrong. So we'll just have to agree to disagree (which seems to something of a lost art these days.....)


----------



## jcrosby

Michael Antrum said:


> __
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Apple Inc. v. Psystar Corp.: Ninth Circuit Holds that Apple did not Engage in Copyright Misuse
> 
> 
> Apple Inc. v. Psystar Corp., No. 10-15113 (9th Cir. Sept. 28, 2011)Slip Opinion The Ninth Circuit affirmed the Northern District of California’s holding that Psystar infringed Apple’s federal copyrights, and...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> jolt.law.harvard.edu
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Anyway, you are not going to conveince me that its right to steal Apple's OS. And I'm pretty sure I'm not going to convice you you are wrong. So we'll just have to agree to disagree (which seems to something of a lost art these days.....)


You won't becuase again, I didn't steal it, I downloaded and prepared the installer using one of my multiple legit macs. We certainly will, and thats perfectly fine...


----------



## Michael Antrum

macavalon said:


> Indeed laptops produce lots of heat when run at max speed continuously... especially fanless designs.. . For performance I would stick with a desktop that can be properly cooled.
> But ... I run an i7 laptop and run with reduced max speed so it doesn't overheat ... once you hit 80C it always drops down to 800MHz...which is next to useless !



You are bang on here. In fact I had to upgrade last year and bought a PC laptop instead of the Macbook Pro (This was before the 16 inch was released). The keyboard and the thermals were the main reason I went PC to be honest.

However, if they sort this out with the new CPU's (keyboard is already sorted on the new 16 inch I understand), the there's a good chance I'll jump back when I replace it.


----------



## SGordB

Anders Wall said:


> Sold the G5 for a few happy meals, traded the HD card for a HDX card (with a small fortune in between).
> The Pentium PC's I've had during the same period have been sent to the junkyard without a single dime in return. Hopefully there's more than hamburgers in the Intels when the Arm hits.
> 
> Best,
> Anders
> (to be clear I got money not food when I sold the G5, it was meant as a "funny" metaphor)



Too late. Apple was listening.


----------



## gsilbers

macavalon said:


> The biggest and probably only benefit in the short term is your laptop battery will last longer. If apple own the processor chipset, like they do for iphone/ipad then they can fully control the power supply consumption. Of course this means little if you need to run your cpu at the max to encode video or run VIs...
> 
> As others mentioned the cpu instruction set is completely different, so any program/plugin written to target the intel instruction will need to be rewritten (unless just written in pure c/c++ then it's hopefully just a recompile from Xcode !)
> 
> But don't forget that some plugins and programs use the GPU to do some of the heavy lifting, so it might not be all bad...



And the heat issues. Don’t forget the crazy heat issues and subsequent fan noise.

I got the new MacBook and it’s crazy to see how bad the heat issues are. And later learned that the issue is a few models years back. I have also a 2012 MacBook and I can load much more and have no heat issues. 

My guess is that people got used to bad heat and fan noise but Apple wasn’t pleased plus all the other issues w intel crapping on deliveries and qc.
So if arm MacBooks can be 1:1 cpu wise but not have heat and fan noise issues then they’ll be a huge success.


----------



## vitocorleone123

gsilbers said:


> And the heat issues. Don’t forget the crazy heat issues and subsequent fan noise.
> 
> I got the new MacBook and it’s crazy to see how bad the heat issues are. And later learned that the issue is a few models years back. I have also a 2012 MacBook and I can load much more and have no heat issues.
> 
> My guess is that people got used to bad heat and fan noise but Apple wasn’t pleased plus all the other issues w intel crapping on deliveries and qc.
> So if arm MacBooks can be 1:1 cpu wise but not have heat and fan noise issues then they’ll be a huge success.



Let's not entirely blame Intel here - just mostly. Apple is all about less is (charged for) more. A arrogance that everything being thinner is everything being better doesn't do anyone any good when it comes to thermals, to a point.


----------



## gsilbers

vitocorleone123 said:


> Let's not entirely blame Intel here - just mostly. Apple is all about less is (charged for) more. A arrogance that everything being thinner is everything being better doesn't do anyone any good when it comes to thermals, to a point.



Well, there are a few videos with the iPad Pro 
Va
MacBook and the cpu seemed about the same but no heat or fan issues due to arm.
Intel seems to be hell bent on desktop cpu for gamers and servers type of clients.
But mainly intel screwing up a lot things bringing it’s stock price a lot lower.


----------



## SGordB

I know about as much about microprocessors as Donald Trump knows about public health, but I'm not gonna let that stop me from offering this observation in the form of a chart I just put together (below). Would love to hear what those of you who do know the ins and outs of microchips make of the near-vertical trajectory of Apple Silicon ("A-series iOS") development since 2013 (I can't find Geekbench comparables prior to that year) compared to the best of Apple's Intel-inside offerings ("Intel MacOS") and perhaps even AMD (my data is a little spotty for AMD; e.g. no apparent speed bumps from 2014-2016). Single-core performance seems to be the most relevant bottleneck for some of us (myself included). If past is precedent, I would expect single-core Geekbench 5 scores for AS Macs to debut at 1500+ (A14 bionic) and be pushing 2000 within a year or two (A15), given the ~20%* annual increase in A-series performance so far. As for multicore performance, if a tight, thin, uncooled slab like an iPad Pro can handle 4 or 6 "big" cores, it seems reasonable to expect Apple's engineers to accommodate many, many more inside the fan-cooled chambers where we make our MacOS music.

*Edit: I just calculated the compound annual growth rate, and it‘s actually 30%. That implies the A14 bionic, due out in a month or two for the new iPhone, will score closer to 1700. Geekbench has yet to post scores for the new iMacs, but from what’s been posted here and there so far, it looks like they’re unlikely to be much higher than last year’s flagship i9 (1242).


----------



## Anders Wall

SGordB said:


> Too late. Apple was listening.


Well, there you go.
Then again you could probably sell the voucher (or the toy) on Craigslist. A potential first step to that new Arm:ed Mac.
Best,
/Anders


----------



## Technostica

Nvidia has formally agreed to buy ARM; pending regulatory shenanigans.
Not sure this will impact Apple as they have a lifetime Architecture license!
If the deals goes through it will rock a lot of boats.


----------



## robgb

There is legal precedent that the acquiring company is not obligated to honor the contracts of the selling company. A friend of mine had a contract with a movie studio for a book she sold to them. The studio was acquired by a larger studio, her script was rewritten and produced, and while she was initially paid (at the time she sold to the smaller studio), she got no screen credit, her book was not credited, and she wasn't paid the massive production bonus her contract promised. She sued.

The court found that the acquiring studio was not obligated to honor her contract with the smaller studio.


----------



## Denkii

I choose you, lawyerchu!


----------



## rnb_2

As noted at https://daringfireball.net, Apple uses the ARM64 instruction set (and has a perpetual license for it), but does not license chips or chip designs from Arm. The Chinese may have more strenuous objections to this deal, as it puts Arm under a US corporation, with all that entails these days. A huge segment of China's technology sector is based on (licensed) Arm processors.


----------



## gst98

rnb_2 said:


> As noted at https://daringfireball.net, Apple uses the ARM64 instruction set (and has a perpetual license for it), but does not license chips or chip designs from Arm. The Chinese may have more strenuous objections to this deal, as it puts Arm under a US corporation, with all that entails these days. A huge segment of China's technology sector is based on (licensed) Arm processors.


The bigger objection is that ARM is British and they design for the MoD. They are apparently looking to intervene, but it's unlikely they will be able to in time given that all resources are on trade negotiations.


----------



## rnb_2

gst98 said:


> The bigger objection is that ARM is British and they design for the MoD. They are apparently looking to intervene, but it's unlikely they will be able to in time given that all resources are on trade negotiations.



It's a shame when you're so occupied treating the self-inflicted wounds to your feet that you can't do anything about the guy sawing off one of your arms.


----------



## gst98

As to Apple/ARM, apparently Apple have been rapidly hiring up engineers with the aim to make Apple silicon their own IP from the ground up. Seems like they probably don't care much about this as they were already planning a way around it.


----------



## Technostica

gst98 said:


> As to Apple/ARM, apparently Apple have been rapidly hiring up engineers with the aim to make Apple silicon their own IP from the ground up. Seems like they probably don't care much about this as they were already planning a way around it.


Are you sure, as if they change ISA twice in a short period that would be complicated?
I doubt that ARM charge enough for it to be worth their while!


----------



## gst98

Technostica said:


> Are you sure, as if they change ISA twice in a short period that would be complicated?
> I doubt that ARM charge enough for it to be worth their while!


No, as I understand it would be an imperceivable change to the user, and the motivation (like with everyone else) is Apple would not want to have to mess with NVIDIA. From what I hear Apple silicon/A series chips are already mostly their own work and I don't this is a big deal. It just the next step to bringing everything in-house for Apple and it seems very logical.

The founders of ARM have been very outspoken about how much they dislike NVIDIA getting involved as it makes ARM no longer an impartial company. Whether it's Apple, China, the MoD or whoever, none of them signed up from NVIDIA to be involved and will look for other way around it.


----------



## Technostica

gst98 said:


> No, as I understand it would be an imperceivable change to the user.


When has Apple ever changed ISA without it being noticeable to users?
If they already had the ISA & IP to move away from ARM then why transition from x86 to ARM in the first place?
It sounds like wild speculation to me.


----------



## gst98

Technostica said:


> When has Apple ever changed ISA without it being noticeable to users?
> If they already had the ISA & IP to move away from ARM then why transition from x86 to ARM in the first place?
> It sounds like wild speculation to me.



Well yes this are all just speculations and educated guesses that people are making.


----------



## Technostica

gst98 said:


> As to Apple/ARM, apparently Apple have been rapidly hiring up engineers with the aim to make Apple silicon their own IP from the ground up.


They will have to hire loads of engineers just to work on all the new ARM chips for laptops, desktops and workstations. That's a large undertaking.


----------



## gst98

Technostica said:


> They will have to hire loads of engineers just to work on all the new ARM chips for laptops, desktops and workstations. That's a large undertaking.


Yes it will be, but have you seen their research and development budget? With Apple silicon they're moving things halfway in-house, why would they stop there? Ultimately we have no idea what's going on but I don't think its that farfetched based on their track record


----------



## Technostica

gst98 said:


> With Apple silicon they're moving things halfway in-house, why would they stop there?


Why not build their own Fabs as well? Companies have to draw the line somewhere.
Moving to their own ISA isn't the issue for me, but moving from x86 to ARM to AppleISA in short succession seems strange.
Of course there may be good reasons for it, but if it is to go ahead, I don't see that Nvidia buying ARM is the main reason.
They would probably have to have planned for this all along for it to have a chance of being smooth.
That's just me adding to the speculation!


----------



## gst98

Technostica said:


> Why not build their own Fabs as well? Companies have to draw the line somewhere.
> Moving to their own ISA isn't the issue for me, but moving from x86 to ARM to AppleISA in short succession seems strange.
> Of course there may be good reasons for it, but if it is to go ahead, I don't see that Nvidia buying ARM is the main reason.
> They would probably have to have planned for this all along for it to have a chance of being smooth.
> That's just me adding to the speculation!


No you're right this would have been in the pipeline for a long time. Hypothetically.


----------



## rnb_2

Apple doesn't call their processors ARM - they're just 64-bit A-series processors in mobile devices, and Apple Silicon (for now - there may be a brand name when released) for Macs. They use the ARM64 instruction set (for which they have a perpetual license), but are not based on licensed ARM designs. I'm honestly not knowledgeable enough to know how much any of this matters in the big picture, but I get the feeling that Apple would have been a bidder if they were concerned - they could afford to outbid anybody if a sale to someone else jeopardized the heart of their business.


----------



## gst98

rnb_2 said:


> Apple doesn't call their processors ARM - they're just 64-bit A-series processors in mobile devices, and Apple Silicon (for now - there may be a brand name when released) for Macs. They use the ARM64 instruction set (for which they have a perpetual license), but are not based on licensed ARM designs. I'm honestly not knowledgeable enough to know how much any of this matters in the big picture, but I get the feeling that Apple would have been a bidder if they were concerned - they could afford to outbid anybody if a sale to someone else jeopardized the heart of their business.


Apparently ARM asked Apple if they were interested and they said no. Would seem that the existing terms of licensing is all they need. There were also suggestions that Apple might not have been allowed to over monopolistic control.


----------



## synthesizerwriter

Technostica said:


> When has Apple ever changed ISA without it being noticeable to users? ...


I thought Apple's first Macs were Motorola 68000, then they moved to IBM's PowerPC, then to Intel. Each time, the transition was pretty smooth for me. I still have a PowerPC Mac running...


----------



## JonS

robgb said:


> There is legal precedent that the acquiring company is not obligated to honor the contracts of the selling company. A friend of mine had a contract with a movie studio for a book she sold to them. The studio was acquired by a larger studio, her script was rewritten and produced, and while she was initially paid (at the time she sold to the smaller studio), she got no screen credit, her book was not credited, and she wasn't paid the massive production bonus her contract promised. She sued.
> 
> The court found that the acquiring studio was not obligated to honor her contract with the smaller studio.


That is not how the law should work. She should have gotten paid big money. That sucks.


----------



## gsilbers

synthesizerwriter said:


> I thought Apple's first Macs were Motorola 68000, then they moved to IBM's PowerPC, then to Intel. Each time, the transition was pretty smooth for me. I still have a PowerPC Mac running...




then you are lucky. for most of us the UB and having to buy a new mac pro was not that cool. Lost many plugins that small developers just decided to leave alone. 
I sold my powerpc and got the intel version and still using it. so moral of the story.. do not buy an intel mac right now. or if you just did, sell it and wait for arm. 
The benchmarks are aldready showing very promising results in speed/power for arm macs. 

but most importantly, no heat or fan issues..which is the main problem with MacBooks for a while. 

As for Arm... i thought the same with nvidia but and posted somehwere and got plenty of links to read on how apple silicon is different etc etc.


----------



## SGordB

I think the Apple event today confirms that A14 single-core performance will likely be in the 1500+ (Geekbench 5) range. From CNET:

"Compared with last year's midrange iPad Air models, the new tablets are 40% faster at ordinary processing tasks and 30% faster at graphics, Apple said at an online launch event Tuesday."

The fastest current iPad Air (3rd gen.; A12 bionic) scores 1112 on Geekbench 5.

So, all other things being equal (they never are, of course), the first Apple Silicon Macs - which likely will be based on the A14 bionic or something better -- could deliver single-core performance around 20% better than the best Macs today.


----------



## SGordB

... Mind you, CNET also tells me (this won't be news to many/most of you) that Intel has finally come up with a massive speed bump in its upcoming Tiger Lake/11th gen. processors (https://www.cnet.com/news/intel-tiger-lake-chip-delivers-long-awaited-laptop-speed-boost/):

"For productivity chores like word processing, [the Tiger lake chips are] 32% faster than Ice Lake and 24% faster than AMD's Ryzen laptop chip, Intel said, citing its own tests of systems with the same power consumption. For video editing, it's 49% faster than Ice Lake and double the speed of AMD. For streaming online games, it's got a 77% speedup over Ice Lake and 146% over AMD."

So, ironically, if Apple had continued with Intel, it might have finally emerged from its single-core performance funk in 2021 anyway. But obviously there's a lot more in the silicon shift for Apple -- and hopefully us -- than just that.


----------



## Alex Fraser

Time to warm the thread up again?
Apple November 10th event.

Interesting from the article:


> Apple engineers are currently developing a new Mac Pro that looks like the current design at about half the size. It’s unclear if that Mac will replace the current Mac Pro or if it’s an additional model. Apple’s chip designs could help the company reduce the size of its computers due to increased power efficiency, but the current Mac Pro is large, in part, to fit components like additional storage drives and graphics chips.



Mark Gurman is about as connected as it gets. <shrug>


----------



## mscp

Alex Fraser said:


> Time to warm the thread up again?
> Apple November 10th event.
> 
> Interesting from the article:
> 
> 
> Mark Gurman is about as connected as it gets. <shrug>




You mean ring? lol.


----------



## wayne_rowley

Alex Fraser said:


> Time to warm the thread up again?
> Apple November 10th event.
> 
> Interesting from the article:
> 
> 
> Mark Gurman is about as connected as it gets. <shrug>



At half the size it won't have any PCIe slots. Not an issue for many users, but a big issue for other (thinking Pro Tools & UAD). Will be interesting to see how the industry adapts to Apple Silicon.


----------



## Alex Fraser

wayne_rowley said:


> At half the size it won't have any PCIe slots. Not an issue for many users, but a big issue for other (thinking Pro Tools & UAD). Will be interesting to see how the industry adapts to Apple Silicon.


Yep. It's not hard to believe that _if_ such a machine exists, it could be a cheaper version of the MP. Desktop class stuff with an emphasis on Thunderbolt etc could tick a lot of boxes.


----------



## Technostica

wayne_rowley said:


> At half the size it won't have any PCIe slots.


Even mini-ITX systems can host PCIe cards and Apple will surely need at least one PCIe 4.0 x16 slot for a GPU?
With current high end GPUs consuming 300W or more, having a slot for one seems essential as that seems the optimum way to install one currently.
Thunderbolt 4.0 doesn't increase the bandwidth over 3.0 and that is compromised in terms of bandwidth and latency.


----------



## rnb_2

Alex Fraser said:


> Time to warm the thread up again?
> Apple November 10th event.
> 
> Interesting from the article:
> 
> 
> Mark Gurman is about as connected as it gets. <shrug>



Realistically, if that machine exists, it won't arrive until 2021 at the earliest. The current Mac Pro is as large as it is pretty much entirely for graphics cards and other PCI cards, not "storage drives", since you have to buy 3rd party brackets and cabling kits just to install standard 3.5" drives internally.

There is still a lot of conjecture around future GPUs - Apple put a lot of emphasis around WWDC on changes that developers would need to make to account for their integrated GPUs and the way Apple Silicon shares RAM, but some are still trying to figure out what role AMD GPUs will play in the future. My gut feeling is none - I expect Apple to handle everything. They can already decode multiple streams of 4k video on an iPad; handling multiple streams of 8k on future Apple Silicon pro Macs doesn't seem like a stretch. Whether the GPU will be split off to an expansion card remains to be seen - it would be a benefit for upgradeability, but since I don't see any need for Apple to sell such a card to anyone outside its own niche market, there wouldn't be any reason for it to adhere strictly to PCI standards. How they would handle other PCI or similar expansion remains to be seen.

Given the above, I think a dramatically smaller pro desktop is entirely possible, but not for at least 12, and more likely 24, months. Next week will see the announcement of the first laptops, likely just 13-14" models, with everything else still to come.


----------



## gsilbers

I guess you guys are not old enough to remember the mac cube? 
Because that about how big it would be if it’s half size as the Mac Pro.

It would be great. Something bigger and powerful than the Mac mini but less than the desktop. And doesn’t include screen like the iMac. Expandable and At a decent price. 
Which seems to be what most of us here want. 
that pci slot is not a big deal for some. 
but it’s a lot for gamers and other people so who knows.


----------



## gsilbers

is that half the size? Mmm.


----------



## Dewdman42

You are describing a new mini, not a pro. A pro will need at least four pci slots and plenty of expansion for ram and storage. I don’t think we will see new pro nor mini for quite some time. This month I expect to hear about an ARM laptop.


----------



## AlexRuger

> Apple engineers are currently developing a new Mac Pro that looks like the current design at about half the size. It’s unclear if that Mac will replace the current Mac Pro or if it’s an additional model. Apple’s chip designs could help the company reduce the size of its computers due to increased power efficiency, but the current Mac Pro is large, in part, to fit components like additional storage drives and graphics chips.



If this model exists and is priced appropriately, I'm all in. I've never wanted anything else from Apple 🤤


----------



## Vik

AlexRuger said:


> If this model exists and is priced appropriately, I'm all in. I've never wanted anything else from Apple 🤤


With the increasing amount of fast, external storage solutions, I don’t mind having external drives anymore. The arguments for those gigantic computers will dissolve even more when all new Macs use ARM chips.


----------



## Michael Antrum

Vik said:


> With the increasing amount of fast, external storage solutions, I don’t mind having external drives anymore. The arguments for those gigantic computers will dissolve even more when all new Macs use ARM chips.



I really hate the expense of enclosures and having loads of cables all over the desktop. One nice box, even if a bit bigger, is a less cluttered solution.


----------



## Dewdman42

I really like keeping my storage inside the box also.

One reason why PCI slots are still a requirement for pro machines is that there are many solutions which are PCI based. Not just video. 

But while we're talking bout video, let me point out that the cheese grater originally shipped with built in video on a PCI card, but then later Apple changed the requirements of OSX to Metal. This was no problem for a Cheesegrater since it had PCI slots and the video adapter could easily be swapped out for a Metal one. Nobody knows the future of what Apple will do, but that's just one example of where a PCI based solution is better then something hardwired into the motherboard.

But there are other reasons too. Over time I have had the option to outfit my cheesegrater with SATA3 storage via PCI cards. it originally only came with SATA2. Some people have upgraded to PCI based bluetooth cards with newer bluetooth. Perhaps some faster wifi that way. USB3 that way. Etc.. 

Anything coming out now will seem fast now, but in 5 years will be outdated..which is when PCI slots start to become extremely useful to keep the machine going.

In addition, and this is the biggest reason for me actually, there are certain audio card solutions which only come in PCI flavor. TB3 is getting pretty fast now so this may be less of an issue then it was in the past, but still to this day the audio interfaces with the lowest latency are all PCI based. Myself I use a Lynx audio card which interfaces with my X32 mixer. This has extremely low latency. The X32 gives me a lot of inputs so that I can have all my keyboards I never use plugged in and available to use. hehe. Alright. But anyway, I intend to use that PCI interface for years to come. I will switch to PC if Apple removes the option to use it. Well they just put out their expensive MacPro with PCI slots, so clearly they haven't completely given up on PCI slot mind set, but what is left to be seen is whether they will come out with a mid tier macPro model that has PCI slots, doesn't cost a fortune, performs as well as a top end Mini or iMac perhaps, probably running on ARM.

We shall see... but it won't be this month. This month we will see a new ARM laptop.


----------



## SGordB

I guess the upside for those of us who aren't looking for a Macbook form factor upgrade into Apple Silicon is we'll be able to learn from the experience of any music peeps who do take the bait. I'm really excited about the possibility that even the laptops, what with their greater cooling capacity than the iPads, might run the A14 bionic chips at much higher clock speeds. What if that means single-core performance closer to 2000 than the ~1600 the iPad Air is getting? And what if it, finally, translates into Macs that can, say, track live, complex (e.g. sampled piano) MIDI music performance at low buffer settings with nary a snap, crackle or pop, even if the usual non-audio apps are running in the background (for those of us who like to do it all on one machine)?


----------



## Monkey Man

Michael Antrum said:


> I really hate the expense of enclosures and having loads of cables all over the desktop. One nice box, even if a bit bigger, is a less cluttered solution.


Same here, mate.


----------



## gsilbers

by the looks of it, mm

imac w/o the screen attached.

apple might be aiming at showing off their video capabilities and not have pcie w gpu. And no pcie at all. 

and they throw that pro word around willie nillie

From the article :

Apple engineers are currently developing a new ‌Mac Pro‌ that looks like the current design at about half the size. It's unclear if that Mac will replace the current ‌Mac Pro‌ or if it's an additional model. Apple's chip designs could help the company reduce the size of its computers due to increased power efficiency, but the current ‌Mac Pro‌ is large, in part, to fit components like additional storage drives and graphics chips.


----------



## Monkey Man




----------



## Jay Panikkar

Apple might reveal some ARM-based products next week.


----------



## Technostica

Today is the day.
The bar is set very low right now by Intel so it's relatively easy for Apple to beat that.
I wonder if they will be able to beat AMD though?

With regard to the rumours of a smaller Mac Pro workstation which won't be mentioned today, that should be fairly easy given that the current full size one was heavily outdated and outgunned even at the time of release.
So it shouldn't be difficult to match that in a small form factor.
If released next year we could be looking at the following:
Apple - Intel

1. Architecture. Current - a variant of Intel's from 2015
2. Process. 5nm - a variant of Intel's 14nm first released in 2014
3. PCIe. 5.0 or 4.0 - 3.0
4. RAM. DDR5 - DDR4
5. Memory channels. 4 or more - 6.
6. GPU. ? - AMD.

A 32 core ARM CPU on TSMC's 5nm with quad channel DDR5 4,800 should easily allow better performance plus much lower power consumption which helps to keep the form factor smaller.

The big question for me is GPU.
It seems unlikely that Apple will want to scale up their own GPU to compete with high end AMD and Nvidia chips.
I say this becasue the cost of designing and producing such a chip that will sell in comparatively very low numbers will be high.
Unless they take a very unorthodox and also expensive route they will go for for a PCIe card, so using AMD is straightforward.

That's next year or so and today the laptops are a much easier proposition.


----------



## Michael Antrum




----------



## wayne_rowley

Very interesting. Good start. Machines look great for general computing, but not for DAW. Not enough RAM.


----------



## marius_dm

16GB max... I wouldn’t dismiss it yet though, will have to see how it behaves in real world workloads


----------



## Virtuoso

Yes - 16GB maximum on all the new models. That's shared with the GPU as well.

Still the 720p camera too. Meh - I'll pass.


----------



## gsilbers

They seem amazing. 
But yeah, up to 16 g ram Max :(

maybe samples don’t need that much ram?


----------



## Technostica

The RAM is on the same package as the CPU which will limit how much they can offer. 
Overall though that was amazing. 
The first time I've seen Apple live up to the hype around them. 
A real game changer.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

Virtuoso said:


> Yes - 16GB maximum on all the new models. That's shared with the GPU as well.
> 
> Still the 720p camera too. Meh - I'll pass.



Very disappointing :(

Was hoping for at least a 32GB option.


----------



## BassClef

It does seem odd to drop max Ram from 64GB to 16GB in the new MINI. We'll see if this "shared" memory is a good.


----------



## marius_dm

One thing I’ve always complained about with MBPs was overheating and horrible fan noise. I see the new one still has a fan, but if they fixed that under high loads I might buy one.


----------



## wayne_rowley

BassClef said:


> It does seem odd to drop max Ram from 64GB to 16GB in the new MINI. We'll see if this "shared" memory is a good.



The new Mini only replaces the 4 core. You can still get the 6 core Intel model, upgradable to 64GB. Mine has 32GB and my music regularly exceeds 16GB. I’ll pass on this one DAW wise, but my wife needs a new laptop to replace her again Air, and the new ones look great!


----------



## el-bo

16g ram limitation will obviously bother most users here. Perhaps it'll take until M3 before that maximum is increased. Or perhaps they are really looking to make a more obvious delineation between the professional and prosumer, leaving higher memory capacities for the future iMac Pro and Mac Pro.

16g ram is a limit I can definitely work within. Just curious to see the GeekBench scores for the new Mini.


----------



## Alex Fraser

16gb is fine for the vast majority of music makers outside VIC and for anyone who’s happy to load-as-you-need. But sure, multi mic monster templates probably not.


----------



## Technostica

BassClef said:


> It does seem odd to drop max Ram from 64GB to 16GB in the new MINI. We'll see if this "shared" memory is a good.


It's because they aren't using memory sticks at all, soldered or otherwise. 
The RAM is part of the M1 Chip along with the CPU, GPU and everything else. 
Unified memory can offer dramatic performance gains for certain workloads, especially if the CPU and GPU share data. 
Probably not a big deal for current DAWs, but for next generation...


----------



## typewriter

Mac Mini with 1TB SSD and 16gb Ram is 1300 $ .
No 10gb ethernet option, only 16gb ram. And the SSD prices are simply insane. Sigh.


----------



## samphony

Just look what StaffPad is capable of on a 12“ ipad pro. I think it’s time to adjust to what we think apps need when it comes to ram. Same goes when it comes to the capabilities of future sample libraries. Now that the neural engine is part of the mac machine learning etc can be part of intelligent instruments. I envision a future where i don’t have to puzzle together my next symphonic hybrid something and would leave certain things to the under the hood technology of instruments. I would say this is a start for a new creative computer era. For anything else meaning working like you want to work now there’s intel macs or pcs.


----------



## Vik

The low RAM is probably in there to keep the price and temperature low. They also need to not deliver 'the full package' in these entry level products so the ARM based 17" MBP and Mac Pro clearly will offer more for the pros than these models. Apparently, Logic can run up to three times as many instruments on the M1 based Mac Book Air than the previous, Intel-based, MBA – and USB4, and three array studio quality mics – whatever that is – also looks like more than one usually would expect from an entry level product. The 13" Mac Book Pro also offer 'up to 2.8 times faster CPU' then the previous 13" MBP. The Mac Mini has an up tp 3 times faster CPU than the previous model – so this looks, IMO, very promising.


----------



## BassClef

Vik said:


> The low RAM is probably in there to keep the price and temperature low. They also need to not deliver 'the full package' in these entry level products so the ARM based 17" MBP and Mac Pro clearly will offer more for the pros than these models. Apparently, Logic can run up to three times as many instruments on the M1 based Mac Book Air than the previous, Intel-based, MBA – and USB4, and three array studio quality mics – whatever that is – also looks like more than one usually would expect from an entry level product. The 13" Mac Book Pro also offer 'up to 2.8 times faster CPU' then the precious 13# MBP. The Mac Mini has an up tp 3 times faster CPU than the previous model – so this looks, IMO, very promising.



Yes... I see a Mac Mini PRO in the future!


----------



## gsilbers

samphony said:


> Just look what StaffPad is capable of on a 12“ ipad pro. I think it’s time to adjust to what we think apps need when it comes to ram. Same goes when it comes to the capabilities of future sample libraries. Now that the neural engine is part of the mac machine learning etc can be part of intelligent instruments. I envision a future where i don’t have to puzzle together my next symphonic hybrid something and would leave certain things to the under the hood technology of instruments. I would say this is a start for a new creative computer era. For anything else meaning working like you want to work now there’s intel macs or pcs.



I’m still a bit confused as to the unified ram thing.

sampled instruments will still need to be loaded in ram, correct?
If we set kontakt instrument to purge (or the other one that doesn’t take ram)
Then maybe these unified ram will be apt to load and playback a ton of sample instruments ?


----------



## BassClef

My son... IT Manager... just ordered the 13" MacBook Pro.


----------



## Manaberry

What's the clock of that new chip?


----------



## Saxer

gsilbers said:


> I’m still a bit confused as to the unified ram thing.
> 
> sampled instruments will still need to be loaded in ram, correct?


A big part of the samples are already streamed from disc. You only need the sample start to get the instrument realtime playable. It's a question of speed how big the buffer has to be to allow a fast enough reloading while a note is running.


----------



## Technostica

gsilbers said:


> I’m still a bit confused as to the unified ram thing.
> 
> sampled instruments will still need to be loaded in ram, correct?
> If we set kontakt instrument to purge (or the other one that doesn’t take ram)
> Then maybe these unified ram will be apt to load and playback a ton of sample instruments ?


Unified RAM in this context means a single pool that is shared between the CPU and GPU. 
Gaming consoles have been doing this for years now. 
This also uses a shared memory addressing which is where some of the gains come from. 
For sample libraries the 16GB limit is the most relevant and limiting feature. 
It does come with a PCIe 4.0 controller so at least storage access can be faster.


----------



## BassClef

Manaberry said:


> What's the clock of that new chip?



Web site shows does not show any cores speeds.


----------



## davidson

Are we going to ignore the fact that apple are charging £200 for 8GB of ram? That's got to be 10x markup. I'm as big an apple fan as you'll meet but they really outdid themselves with that one.


----------



## rnb_2

davidson said:


> Are we going to ignore the fact that apple are charging £200 for 8GB of ram? That's got to be 10x markup. I'm as big an apple fan as you'll meet but they really outdid themselves with that one.



This isn't normal DRAM - this is RAM built into the SOC, so it's much, much faster to access. It basically turns system RAM into a massive L4 cache. Can't compare costs because nobody has done anything like this with this sort of computer.


----------



## el-bo

davidson said:


> Are we going to ignore the fact that apple are charging £200 for 8GB of ram? That's got to be 10x markup. I'm as big an apple fan as you'll meet but they really outdid themselves with that one.



Well, they have also cut the price of the base model by 200, so seen in it's entirety it's perhaps not so bad


----------



## Manaberry

BassClef said:


> Web site shows does not show any cores speeds.


Passive cooling, no freq. You know what it means :D


----------



## Michael Antrum

Well, it’s time for the well known refrain that has become so commonly heard after an Apple product announcement......


----------



## Technostica

rnb_2 said:


> This isn't normal DRAM - this is RAM built into the SOC, so it's much, much faster to access. It basically turns system RAM into a massive L4 cache. Can't compare costs because nobody has done anything like this with this sort of computer.


I am glad someone gets it. 
I think this is where a lot of the gains come from, not from the actual CPU cores. 
UMA, coherent memory and on chip memory are the big deals here as opposed to the ARM architecture.


----------



## BassClef

Technostica said:


> I am glad someone gets it.
> I think this is where a lot of the gains come from, not from the actual CPU cores.
> UMA, coherent memory and on chip memory are the big deals here as opposed to the ARM architecture.



...and we will later see M2s and M3s with more cores, more RAM and even faster GPUs.


----------



## Technostica

BassClef said:


> ...and we will later see M2s and M3s with more cores, more RAM and even faster GPUs.


The main limits are the size of the chip and the thermal constraints. 
For workstations it's not feasible to build a single chip that contains all those components in enough quantity to be competitive. 

The unknown here is how the RAM is packaged on the M1 Chip. 
Is it a monolithic chip or a multi chip module? 
That will define some of the limits.


----------



## Drumdude2112

Hmmmm 🤔 interesting , maybe i can use this new 8 core beast to run the daw and smaller 'sketch size' templates and relegate my current 6 core mac mini (with 64 gig of ram ) to a VE Pro server for the larger templates .


----------



## Technostica

Ironically, the most significant improvement here may well be the memory architecture which is completely separate from the move to ARM.
With the RAM being on the same package as the cores, the improved latency and bandwidth may be very dramatic.
This seemingly explains the performance gains being claimed for a chip with so few performance cores.


----------



## el-bo

BassClef said:


> Yes... I see a Mac Mini PRO in the future!



Hence the decision to go back to silver for the 'standard' model...perhaps


----------



## SupremeFist

Drumdude2112 said:


> Hmmmm 🤔 interesting , maybe i can use this new 8 core beast to run the daw and smaller 'sketch size' templates and relegate my current 6 core mac mini (with 64 gig of ram ) to a VE Pro server for the larger templates .


I have the 6-core mini with 64gb RAM and nothing in this announcement makes me sorry I bought it this year — in that respect it's good news!


----------



## Michael Antrum

SupremeFist said:


> I have the 6-core mini with 64gb RAM and nothing in this announcement makes me sorry I bought it this year — in that respect it's good news!



I’m in similar place as yourself - I moved to a Windows laptop in 2019, mainly due to the keyboard problems, thermal issues and price (this was before the 16” came out)

I bought a Razer 15“ and upgraded it to 64gb and 2tb, all for under £2k. By the time it’s time to upgrade it, Apple and the software vendors should have this all sorted out and we’ll have some understanding of this new architecture.


----------



## rnb_2

I'm thinking about grabbing a 16GB M1 mini - I just swapped a 2014 mini out for the i3 Intel mini as a media server (would take a $100 hit on a return, so I'll keep it for that duty), but Apple will give me $190 for the the "retired" 2014. A new M1 mini for $700 might be worth it just for testing.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

rnb_2 said:


> I'm thinking about grabbing a 16GB M1 mini - I just swapped a 2014 mini out for the i3 Intel mini as a media server (would take a $100 hit on a return, so I'll keep it for that duty), but Apple will give me $190 for the the "retired" 2014. A new M1 mini for $700 might be worth it just for testing.



Actually, you could demo it for 14 days and return it for a full refund if it doesn't perform. Despite my initial disappointment abut the Ram limitation, a majority of my productions use well under 16GB anyways, and this is a new technology. For $1300, I may give this a go soon myself (to replace my 2013 MB Pro).


----------



## rnb_2

Jeremy Spencer said:


> Actually, you could demo it for 14 days and return it for a full refund if it doesn't perform. Despite my initial disappointment abut the Ram limitation, a majority of my productions use well under 16GB anyways, and this is a new technology. For $1300, I may give this a go soon myself (to replace my 2013 MB Pro).



Yes, that thought had occurred to me


----------



## el-bo

One thing that I'm confused about is why the MacBook Pro is now considered to be 'Pro'. I'm not talking in relation to the rest of the market, but in relation to the 'Air'. Especially considering they've halved the physical ports, and it's the same chip in both, is it really only the touch-bar that distinguishes them?


----------



## Symfoniq

It also looks like Logic Pro X 10.6 is imminent. Notice "Footnote 11": https://www.apple.com/mac/m1/#footnote-11



> Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction Mac mini systems with Apple M1 chip, and production 3.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i3-based Mac mini systems, all configured with 16GB of RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with prerelease Logic Pro 10.6.0 with project consisting of multiple tracks, each with an Amp Designer plug-in instance applied. Individual tracks were added during playback until CPU became overloaded. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of Mac mini.


----------



## rnb_2

el-bo said:


> One thing that I'm confused about is why the MacBook Pro is now considered to be 'Pro'. I'm not talking in relation to the rest of the market, but in relation to the 'Air'. Especially considering they've halved the physical ports, and it's the same chip in both, is it really only the touch-bar that distinguishes them?



Since it has a fan, the Pro should still have a performance edge on the Air, but remember that this is only replacing the 2-port Pro, which came with a 1.4GHz base processor vs. the 2GHz base processor of the 4-port models. There will probably not be as big a disparity in performance as there was, but there will still be some.


----------



## davidson

rnb_2 said:


> This isn't normal DRAM - this is RAM built into the SOC, so it's much, much faster to access. It basically turns system RAM into a massive L4 cache. Can't compare costs because nobody has done anything like this with this sort of computer.



That's interesting, thanks for the info. Still, for the majority of us considering the switch at some point it either means we won't be able to because of the limitations of how much ram the M1 can hold, or we sell our first borns along with an arm and a leg for the £3,500 it going to cost us for a 64GB option.


----------



## Alex Fraser

Symfoniq said:


> It also looks like Logic Pro X 10.6 is imminent. Notice "Footnote 11": https://www.apple.com/mac/m1/#footnote-11


Good spot. 👍
Fun few days ahead then.


----------



## rnb_2

davidson said:


> That's interesting, thanks for the info. Still, for the majority of us considering the switch at some point it either means we won't be able to because of the limitations of how much ram the M1 can hold, or we sell our first borns along with an arm and a leg for the £3,500 it going to cost us for a 64GB option.



Happy to help. Remember, these are the lowest-cost Macs in the lineup, so Apple has room to build in pricing for future M2/3/etc chips in iMacs and higher-end laptops (or a more "pro" mini) that allow for more RAM without breaking the bank.


----------



## davidson

rnb_2 said:


> Happy to help. Remember, these are the lowest-cost Macs in the lineup, so Apple has room to build in pricing for future M2/3/etc chips in iMacs and higher-end laptops (or a more "pro" mini) that allow for more RAM without breaking the bank.



I hope you're right. RAM aside, it's a promising start by apple. I guess I'll be sticking with my trashcan for another year or two yet.


----------



## Alex Fraser

I’m guessing “user upgradable ram” is now a historical footnote. That’ll please the purists. 😅😉

Snark aside, does the “all on a chip ram approach” have ramifications for the MP etc?


----------



## gsilbers

el-bo said:


> One thing that I'm confused about is why the MacBook Pro is now considered to be 'Pro'. I'm not talking in relation to the rest of the market, but in relation to the 'Air'. Especially considering they've halved the physical ports, and it's the same chip in both, is it really only the touch-bar that distinguishes them?



Mostly marketing.
Same as the iPhone pro max.
Why would a phone be “pro”

I always thought the MacBook should have a pro and non pro as well as air.

pro would have more USB ports, ram and ssd capacity. While the Normal non pro would be just like the one released today.
But I’m sure they have it nailed down to a science when to use the word “pro”


----------



## el-bo

rnb_2 said:


> Since it has a fan, the Pro should still have a performance edge on the Air, but remember that this is only replacing the 2-port Pro, which came with a 1.4GHz base processor vs. the 2GHz base processor of the 4-port models. There will probably not be as big a disparity in performance as there was, but there will still be some.



Thanks! That does make sense.

I'm still not in the market for a new machine, despite my current 2012 MBP failing miserably. And ultimately, I'm no longer looking for the fastest, screaming-est computer. What this shift potentially means for me is getting a very 'functional' (and still powerful) Mac, at a previously unheard of price. The new Mini with coming at just over 1000 euros (16g/256g) seems to be an amazing bargain. 

But what's the catch? When they talk about 3X faster, are they perhaps comparing it to the old, base i3 model? What are your thoughts on how this might stack up to the current benchmarks, if you have any idea at all of what to expect. Current geekbench 4 scores have the i3, i5 and i7 at circa 15000, circa 21000, and circa 25000, respectively. Where will a brand-new 1000 quid Mac sit?


----------



## gsilbers

Alex Fraser said:


> I’m guessing “user upgradable ram” is now a historical footnote. That’ll please the purists. 😅😉
> 
> Snark aside, does the “all on a chip ram approach” have ramifications for the MP etc?



Apple must know about logic and orchestral instrument use of ram.
Outside of rendering farms it’s the only time anyone needs more than 32gb. And they offer 64 on MacBook Pro 16.

in still wonderingabout how ram inside a chip will work. And if it will be better and work for us, orwe just have to buy the 64 ram version if it comes out and have to choose cpu, ssd and ram all at once without upgrade :/


----------



## gsilbers

el-bo said:


> Thanks! That does make sense.
> 
> I'm still not in the market for a new machine, despite my current 2012 MBP failing miserably. And ultimately, I'm no longer looking for the fastest, screaming-est computer. What this shift potentially means for me is getting a very 'functional' (and still powerful) Mac, at a previously unheard of price. The new Mini with coming at just over 1000 euros (16g/256g) seems to be an amazing bargain.
> 
> But what's the catch? When they talk about 3X faster, are they perhaps comparing it to the old, base i3 model? What are your thoughts on how this might stack up to the current benchmarks, if you have any idea at all of what to expect. Current geekbench 4 scores have the i3, i5 and i7 at circa 15000, circa 21000, and circa 25000, respectively. Where will a brand-new 1000 quid Mac sit?



The ram is the catch. 16gb if ram as we know it , is not that great for music.

but the intel Mac mini is amazing. Get 32 or 64of ram so it’s a very good deal. Specially now that those will go down in price a lot.


----------



## el-bo

gsilbers said:


> Mostly marketing.
> Same as the iPhone pro max.
> Why would a phone be “pro”
> 
> I always thought the MacBook should have a pro and non pro as well as air.
> 
> pro would have more USB ports, ram and ssd capacity. While the Normal non pro would be just like the one released today.
> But I’m sure they have it nailed down to a science when to use the word “pro”



I dig it. However, there always was quite the difference in performance between the 'Pro' models and 'Air'; enough to consider it a 'Pro' machine. Now, at least at this early stage, there is not so much between them. What's different is that the 'Air' (Having the same chip, larger standard storage, and greater memory) might actually be a valid option for music composition and production.


----------



## Technostica

They have copied Intel and integrated the TB3/USB 4 controller into the CPU. 
This improves the latency a lot so should help with the performance of external storage and GPUs.


----------



## Ashermusic

gsilbers said:


> The ram is the catch. 16gb if ram as we know it , is not that great for music.
> 
> but the intel Mac mini is amazing. Get 32 or 64of ram so it’s a very good deal. Specially now that those will go down in price a lot.




But this new Integrated Memory system _may_, and I don't know yet, mean that it becomes a matter of running most of the samples on big SSDs rather than RAM, and SSDs are probably fast enough.


----------



## rnb_2

el-bo said:


> Thanks! That does make sense.
> 
> I'm still not in the market for a new machine, despite my current 2012 MBP failing miserably. And ultimately, I'm no longer looking for the fastest, screaming-est computer. What this shift potentially means for me is getting a very 'functional' (and still powerful) Mac, at a previously unheard of price. The new Mini with coming at just over 1000 euros (16g/256g) seems to be an amazing bargain.
> 
> But what's the catch? When they talk about 3X faster, are they perhaps comparing it to the old, base i3 model? What are your thoughts on how this might stack up to the current benchmarks, if you have any idea at all of what to expect. Current geekbench 4 scores have the i3, i5 and i7 at circa 15000, circa 21000, and circa 25000, respectively. Where will a brand-new 1000 quid Mac sit?



I'll be able to tell you in a couple weeks - I just placed my order for a 16GB mini. The memory upgrade seems to delay the shipping date by a week.

I'm planning, for now, to basically A/B test it against my i7 mini - my keyboard and monitor already work with multiple computers, and I have a Magic Mouse which doesn't currently get any use. I think it will replace my i7 mini as my photo/video computer once M1-native apps come from Adobe early next year, and the i7 mini will replace my 2012 iMac as my dedicated music machine.


----------



## Ashermusic

rnb_2 said:


> I'll be able to tell you in a couple weeks - I just placed my order for a 16GB mini. The memory upgrade seems to delay the shipping date by a week.
> 
> I'm planning, for now, to basically A/B test it against my i7 mini - my keyboard and monitor already work with multiple computers, and I have a Magic Mouse which doesn't currently get any use. I think it will replace my i7 mini as my photo/video computer once M1-native apps come from Adobe early next year, and the i7 mini will replace my 2012 iMac as my dedicated music machine.




Great, I will be following your reports with great interest as I presently have a 2018 i7 Mac mini six core with 64 GB.


----------



## BassClef

The video did say, "Three times the tracks and plugins in Logic Pro" in case you missed it. Three times what?


----------



## el-bo

gsilbers said:


> The ram is the catch. 16gb if ram as we know it , is not that great for music.



As I mentioned in an earlier post, that kind of RAM limit is not going to work for many of the musicians on this forum. But for many of us, it's very workable. I've never had more than that. With a machine as old as mine is, the CPU tops out before the RAM does  

Of course, it's a total non-starter for those who have huge, sprawling, multi-mic template, and for whom track-freezing is not compatible with real-world deadlines.



gsilbers said:


> but the intel Mac mini is amazing. Get 32 or 64of ram so it’s a very good deal. Specially now that those will go down in price a lot.



I've been watching the prices of refurbished Minis for quite a while now. There is certainly huge value to be had, even with the extra ram and larger storage. But the Intel units are not without issues. Heat is quite a big problem, as are the very low-powered graphics chips. 

The bigger concern for me, is with regard to longevity. I like to use my computers till they die (I'm still running a 2012 MBP). And while I don't think it'll happen for a few years, Intel compatibility will eventually be dropped.


----------



## el-bo

BassClef said:


> The video did say, "Three times the tracks and plugins in Logic Pro" in case you missed it. Three times what?



Haha! Indeed! But there's no small-print in video presentations.

There's only one chip on offer. It couldn't simultaneously triple the performance of the i3, i5 and i7. But even if it managed to triple Logic's performance on the i3, that'd already be enough reason to order it


----------



## BassClef

I'm just a hobbyist with less than 1TB of samples, and my largest template being only 125 tracks. I imagine an 8 core, 16GB M1 MINI with a 2TB internal SSD would likely stream samples to CPU/RAM very quickly!


----------



## davidson

el-bo said:


> Haha! Indeed! But there's no small-print in video presentations.
> 
> There's only one chip on offer. It couldn't simultaneously triple the performance of the i3, i5 and i7. But even if it managed to triple Logic's performance on the i3, that'd already be enough reason to order it



It says in the footnotes that it was against the 4-core 3.6 i3, using tracks with amp designer.


----------



## Technostica

Ashermusic said:


> But this new Integrated Memory system _may_, and I don't know yet, mean that it becomes a matter of running most of the samples on big SSDs rather than RAM, and SSDs are probably fast enough.


Unified memory means that the RAM is shared between the CPU and GPU and has nothing to do with storage. 
So that by itself doesn't impact sample libraries.
Two things will help though:
1. The RAM is part of the M1 Chip which should give it higher performance. 
2. It uses a PCIe 4.0 controller which gives double the bandwidth.


----------



## davidson

Out of interest, what actually happens when you run out of ram in a project in logic? I don't think I ever have.


----------



## gsilbers

Technostica said:


> Unified memory means that the RAM is shared between the CPU and GPU and has nothing to do with storage.
> So that by itself doesn't impact sample libraries.
> Two things will help though:
> 1. The RAM is part of the M1 Chip which should give it higher performance.
> 2. It uses a PCIe 4.0 controller which gives double the bandwidth.



well, I think he means that since ssd and cpu will be faster and ram is integrated that samples might not need to be stored all in ram, or that much in ram. And that doing dfd will be acceptable for composers or at least up to a point where we would think of ram in another way. 
which because Apple only offering Mac mini at 16gb ram maybe there is something to it. They must of known ram will be an issue for people outside of large composing templates.


----------



## Technostica

davidson said:


> Out of interest, what actually happens when you run out of ram in a project in logic? I don't think I ever have.


The operating system will generally page data to storage which is a magnitude slower which therefore results in performance degradation.


----------



## gsilbers

el-bo said:


> As I mentioned in an earlier post, that kind of RAM limit is not going to work for many of the musicians on this forum. But for many of us, it's very workable. I've never had more than that. With a machine as old as mine is, the CPU tops out before the RAM does
> 
> Of course, it's a total non-starter for those who have huge, sprawling, multi-mic template, and for whom track-freezing is not compatible with real-world deadlines.
> 
> 
> 
> I've been watching the prices of refurbished Minis for quite a while now. There is certainly huge value to be had, even with the extra ram and larger storage. But the Intel units are not without issues. Heat is quite a big problem, as are the very low-powered graphics chips.
> 
> The bigger concern for me, is with regard to longevity. I like to use my computers till they die (I'm still running a 2012 MBP). And while I don't think it'll happen for a few years, Intel compatibility will eventually be dropped.



Well, coincidence but I do have that 2012 and I got the Mac mini.

I first went with the MacBook 16 inch w 64 ram and yep, the heat and fan issues are very pronounced.

so I sold it and bought the mini and down payment for a BMW X3... because that’s how fuckinn much a MacBook Pro is.

the mini doesn’t have the fan issue. It does get warm but no where near the MacBook. It sits silent next to me even when recording so it turned out a pretty good deal.

I do agree on longevity. Right now it’s obsolete at 2 years transition to all out arm processor and maybe 6 years for no more support at all or OS X not working and having a iOS pro or whatever they’ll come upz

hard to find the right mac now that these ones are 16gb ram top


----------



## el-bo

davidson said:


> It says in the footnotes that it was against the 4-core 3.6 i3, using tracks with amp designer.



Ah, ok...My mistake 

Still impressive. The current Intel i5 has a GeekBench score of 1.5 times my current machine. Not sure what that is in real-word terms. However, if this base-level chip is really outdoing that then that's a great start.

Thanks!


----------



## MGdepp

Basically, they put a fan into the MacBook Pro with the same CPU and that fans allows it to work fast for a longer time ... I wonder when the first tech geeks will post videos with cooling solutions for the air and compare the performance! 

Well, if the performance holds the promises they make, they could be onto something. The Battery performance is REALLY amazing!!! But I think it was a little early to put this chip into a Mac mini and MacBook Pro (well, at least to early for many users). Going down drastically with RAM and ports is a bad sign! IMO they should have waited with those devices until those specs could at least be equal to the previous generation.


----------



## el-bo

gsilbers said:


> so I sold it and bought the mini and down payment for a BMW X3... because that’s how fuckinn much a MacBook Pro is.








gsilbers said:


> I do agree on longevity. Right now it’s obsolete at 2 years transition to all out arm processor and maybe 6 years for no more support at all or OS X not working and having a iOS pro or whatever they’ll come upz



That actually reminds me of another huge draw for me to go 'silicon' i.e being able to use the tons of iOS apps that I've accumulated over the years. The iPad 3 that I have barely runs them anymore, and many aren't Universal, and so won't run on my phone.


----------



## Nate Johnson

Jeremy Spencer said:


> Actually, you could demo it for 14 days and return it for a full refund if it doesn't perform. Despite my initial disappointment abut the Ram limitation, a majority of my productions use well under 16GB anyways, and this is a new technology. For $1300, I may give this a go soon myself (to replace my 2013 MB Pro).



I’ve got the same 2013 model - VERY tempting to snag a new one!


----------



## wayne_rowley

I’ll stick with my i5 Mini for now. Some interesting comments on the UAD forum. They are referring to compatibility in stages and it sounds like they haven’t started yet! It’s going to be a long time before my UAD arrow works with Apple silicon, if it ever does!

Ordered a MacBook Air for my wife though, so may be able to experiment at some point. 

Definitely need at least 32GB of RAM. All in all I reckon another 6-12 months before the first serious AS Mac that can support orchestral VIs well enough are launched.

After all Spitfire keep adding more and more microphones. Memory does not grow on trees...


----------



## Nate Johnson

I find it funny that everyone is freaking out over ram. Folks, this is a completely new paradigm - I’d say 16gb of ram in this chip is going to go a lot further than the ram we’re used to...


----------



## samphony

I think that StaffPad shows as an iOS app how efficient apps could handle footprint etc. it is up to developers to innovate on this new platform. As I said for current and old workflows there are intel macs and pcs.

to whats next in Apple Silicon Land is also a developers responsibility. I’m all for new and more intuitive workflows. Luckily my 2013 vader helmet still does a great job.
I’ll definitely test an M1 mac and probably still grab a 7,1 mac pro.


----------



## marius_dm

Nate Johnson said:


> I find it funny that everyone is freaking out over ram. Folks, this is a completely new paradigm - I’d say 16gb of ram in this chip is going to go a lot further than the ram we’re used to...



We'll have to wait and see. Let's not forget the iPad Pro has 6GB of RAM and can play huge Staffpad pieces with no problems that sound more convincing than a lot of stuff posted on this forum, IMHO.


----------



## Nate Johnson

marius_dm said:


> We'll have to wait and see. Let's not forget the iPad Pro has 6GB of RAM and can play huge Staffpad pieces with no problems that sound more convincing than a lot of stuff posted on this forum, IMHO.



yeah, the staffpad/ipad thing is kind of mind-blowing. I bet you there’s gonna be some maaaaajor changes in how we deal with sample libraries+daws coming sooner than later.


----------



## Michael Antrum

Staffpad on a Macbook Pro would be interesting to see how that would work...



marius_dm said:


> We'll have to wait and see. Let's not forget the iPad Pro has 6GB of RAM and can play huge Staffpad pieces with no problems that sound more convincing than a lot of stuff posted on this forum, IMHO.



Staffpad libraries are normally about 0.5-1.5 Gb max.

Go and put Berlin Strings on the new M1 CPU - then you'll be back to speed of your storage - it won't matter how the RAM interacts with the CPU if you can't move the data into RAM quickly enough.....


----------



## el-bo

This is quite a balanced video:


----------



## synthetic

It's not 16GB of RAM, it's 16GB of magic Apple RAM!

Also that's shared with the GPU so it's more like 8GB. But we'll see.


----------



## marius_dm

Michael Antrum said:


> Go and put Belin Strings on the new M1 CPU - then you'll be back to speed of your storage - it won't matter how the RAM interacts with the CPU if you can't move the data into RAM quickly enough.....



But that's the thing though. Sample library producers love to brag about how many 100s of GB their stuff is, which is just... ugh... Is our general approach to sampling flawed? Probably. With all the advances in ML and advanced DSP maybe we can come up with a better approach.


----------



## Nate Johnson

So is it assumed that whatever third-party software is working on Big Sur beta (intel macs) will also be working on these M1 machines? Or is all of that thrown out the window because of the new chip architecture?


----------



## Michael Antrum

marius_dm said:


> But that's the thing though. Sample library producers love to brag about how many 100s of GB their stuff is, which is just... ugh... Is our general approach to sampling flawed? Probably. With all the advances in ML and advanced DSP maybe we can come up with a better approach.



Until you get modelled instruments that sound and play convincingly, you are going to need lots of RAM.




Nate Johnson said:


> So is it assumed that whatever third-party software is working on Big Sur beta (intel macs) will also be working on these M1 machines? Or is all of that thrown out the window because of the new chip architecture?



It will be translated in realtime to the M1 CPU using Rosetta 2 as an abstraction layer - or an Intel CPU simulator if you like....just like they did with the original Rosetta when Apple moved from PowerPC to Intel CPU's....


----------



## rnb_2

Nate Johnson said:


> So is it assumed that whatever third-party software is working on Big Sur beta (intel macs) will also be working on these M1 machines? Or is all of that thrown out the window because of the new chip architecture?



One of the things I will be testing on the mini is performance of Intel applications on the M1 versus my i7 mini, and also how big the jump is when M1-native apps start rolling out. Should be interesting.


----------



## el-bo

rnb_2 said:


> One of the things I will be testing on the mini is performance of Intel applications on the M1 versus my i7 mini, and also how big the jump is when M1-native apps start rolling out. Should be interesting.



Are you a Logic user, by any chance?


----------



## rnb_2

el-bo said:


> Are you a Logic user, by any chance?



I am, though at an extremely rudimentary level. I may pick up @Ashermusic's new book to help with that.


----------



## jcrosby

Michael Antrum said:


> Until you get modelled instruments that sound and play convincingly, you are going to need lots of RAM.


Indeed... The reason why sample libraries eat RAM is that disks still can't perform at the speed of RAM. Currently a chunk of each sample has to be loaded into ram for smooth playback. That's just the way it is and probably will stay for quite some time.


----------



## rnb_2

I was shocked to find that there was an area of computing that was so much more RAM-dependent than even 4k+ video. GPUs evolved to speed up most common still image processing, then moving image processing and 3D, and have expanded into general computing via CUDA, etc., but VIs still rely very heavily on the most basic hardware that has existed in PCs since their invention: RAM, CPU, and storage. Much more than even video, composition with VIs relies on very old-school "let's just throw as many resources at the problem as we can".

It will be interesting to see how the Infinite series (and other modeled libraries) performs on AS compared to more traditional libraries, since the memory footprint is very small. Really testing that will require a lot of work from NI (and others), but I'm not sure how much work will be needed from Kontakt instrument developers - it's going to be an interesting several months, I think.


----------



## el-bo

rnb_2 said:


> I am, though at an extremely rudimentary level. I may pick up @Ashermusic's new book to help with that.



But it sounds like you're knowledgable enough to be able to run a few benchmark comparisons


----------



## rnb_2

el-bo said:


> But it sounds like you're knowledgable enough to be able to run a few benchmark comparisons



Wrapping my head around tech is where most of what talent I have actually lies - VI-C gave me a new, technically complex subject to pour into my brain every day during the pandemic, and helped keep me sane. Whether I'll actually compose anything of note, even to me, remains very up in the air, but I do have some understanding of the technical issues that people here deal with, so I'm hoping I'll be able to provide some good information.


----------



## gsilbers

synthetic said:


> It's not 16GB of RAM, it's 16GB of magic Apple RAM!
> 
> Also that's shared with the GPU so it's more like 8GB. But we'll see.



so true. maybe thats why these 1st m1 macs are mini, air and 13inch. Ideal for folks who wont be adding egpu, or needs tons of ram or nothing fancy. basically the average user. who surf the web. blogs. makes quick youtube videos. and maybe does some hiphop/edm stuff. you know. the hip business creative person. tipical mac guy at starbucks . 

and my guess is that the 720p fits into this ecosystem so poeple keep buying the iphone for the fancy camera while the laptop is for zoom only.


----------



## LamaRose

gsilbers said:


> I’m still a bit confused as to the unified ram thing.
> 
> sampled instruments will still need to be loaded in ram, correct?
> If we set kontakt instrument to purge (or the other one that doesn’t take ram)
> Then maybe these unified ram will be apt to load and playback a ton of sample instruments ?



I was thinking this same thing... integrated drives have become so fast, virtual real-time ram may be the new norm.


----------



## LamaRose

davidson said:


> Are we going to ignore the fact that apple are charging £200 for 8GB of ram? That's got to be 10x markup. I'm as big an apple fan as you'll meet but they really outdid themselves with that one.



And the enema has gotten that much larger as the ram is now Apple ram...


----------



## LamaRose

Sorry if this has already been addressed, but how is this new chip architecture going to affect Kontakt, Sine, UVI, etc? I understand the potential of rosetta as a bridge, if needed, but I wonder if Kontakt and company have addressed any potential issues.


----------



## emilio_n

Jeremy Spencer said:


> Very disappointing :(
> 
> Was hoping for at least a 32GB option.


Maybe is a limitation of the M1 chip and we will see more RAM options for bigger MBP and the iMacs next year. I was thinking to get an iMac 2020 but maybe I will wait a few months and see. We will see Logic tests soon with this first round.


----------



## emilio_n

LamaRose said:


> Sorry if this has already been addressed, but how is this new chip architecture going to affect Kontakt, Sine, UVI, etc? I understand the potential of rosetta as a bridge, if needed, but I wonder if Kontakt and company have addressed any potential issues.


This is the key point for all of us... We will see that soon.


----------



## gsilbers

LamaRose said:


> Sorry if this has already been addressed, but how is this new chip architecture going to affect Kontakt, Sine, UVI, etc? I understand the potential of rosetta as a bridge, if needed, but I wonder if Kontakt and company have addressed any potential issues.




those developers in the ad sure seemed happy dancing and all on how easy it was to switch using UB2.

lets see DAW manufacturers and plugin guys if theyll do the happy dance and do the switch to arm in just a few hours.. or its going to be like melda venting publicly during catalina updates.

UAD doesnt seem they even looked at it yet.


----------



## Dewdman42

Sat through the whole event video. Overall I must say I'm more impressed with this announcement from Apple then I have been for quite a while in past few years.. I'm impressed with what they have done. There is some groundbreaking, perhaps industry-changing architecture changes that could change everything...but not overnight.

We shall see how the benchmarks and real world DAW tests shake out in the coming weeks. I rather expect that most of the improvement in performance is going to be related to graphics specifically. This gives a strong user perception of "snappiness". Its also to do lots of typical user operations that normally don't actually require a ton of CPU power....without running so hot. So less fan noise. 

But we shall see if it tends to throttle down under serious CPU loads in a DAW mix down, for example. 

I still find it hard to accept that these will be any better at hard DSP crunching then current top Intel offerings. I think these first gen M1 machines will make AWESOME consumer computers for the vast majority, definitely a huge improvement for what most people do with their laptops...watch video, surf the web, play games, edit video perhaps, use typical desktop software (most of which barely taxes any CPU). They are massively improving all the right things for those typical use cases, but to me it doesn't appear that, this gen anyway, is going to be a leap forward in CPU crunching that will help most of us in DAW land.

The 16gb ram limitation will definitely be a factor, just to get started.

I could easily see one of these mini's making a great DAW computer to host LogicPro, with all my sample libraries and most of the big DSP crunching happening on VePro servers, probably running MS Windows no less, but at least I could for a reasonable price, continue to run LogicPro as a VePro master, well within the limitations of 16gb Ram and whatever the M1 can do with DSP.

Its also important to note that its still going to be quite a while until all our audio software is converted to native ARM. Patience folks.

But its exciting to see real macs this far along already on ARM and I'm impressed with the architectural decision that Apple is making to consolidate everything into the chip, drastically reducing a lot of inter-module communication. This is a massive leap forward in home computer design. 5 years from now we very well could see some really nice higher end macs based on this architecture.


----------



## Andrew Aversa

The better question would be what music production software actually *does* work on ARM...? Besides StaffPad and Logic. I'm talking VST/AU plugins and other software - Cubase, Nuendo, REAPER, Wavelab, anything Adobe, Pro Tools... I think the answer is "no" to literally all of that, right? 

The tech behind this is certainly exciting. But any ARM laptop is a glorified iPad and IMO not suitable for the kind of virtual instrument/synth heavy production we do.


----------



## dflood

el-bo said:


> ly one chip on offer





Dewdman42 said:


> Overall I must say I'm more impressed with this announcement from Apple then I have been for quite a while in past few years...



It was some impressive marketing for sure, and the best thing for me was the message that they are not giving up on the Mac and aren’t about to be left behind in the personal computing space. The M1 may fall short of the mark for some of the most demanding music sequencing, but it is only a first generation chip aimed at consumer level machines. We’ll have to see how future iterations address higher RAM needs, or if such RAM limitations as we currently understand them are even still a thing given faster SSDs and pipelines. Apple has a pretty good record of producing great real world results through optimization rather than brute specs. It will be interesting to see how this new architecture performs when we see some DAW benchmarks, particularly with those Mac Minis.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

Dewdman42 said:


> Its also important to note that its still going to be quite a while until all our audio software is converted to native ARM. Patience folks.



This, for sure. I doubt even my Apogee Element would be supported anytime soon. Patience!


----------



## Wunderhorn

The Apple eco-system is closing up more and more. Between the new chips and Big Sur Apple will (reportedly) start to conceal network connections and home calls. This is a huge privacy concern. And there is not authority to regulate this and god only knows what happens with your user data.

It will also get more and more restrictive for developers. The level of which they will have to conform to Apple 'guidelines' and the certification mania might even drive some of them away. We will see. Remember, they don't do all this for you, the user, in the first place. They do this to serve themselves first.

Just to note that not all shiny new things are to be looked at all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

That said, I just started to feel comfortable when I was able to work beyond 128GB RAM, so to me the M1 does not look like anything that could be seriously considered for any work involving Logic and massive sample libraries. For now it is a toy and a means for Apple to test the waters. They'll have enough beta testers who will even pay to be that guinea pig. I suggest to wait and watch what happens.


----------



## gsilbers

more about the ram and why its limited to 16gb









Why the MacBook Pro is limited to 16GB of RAM -


To much fanfare the MacBook Pro was released. Then to much disillusionment its biggest limitation became clear: that it has a 16GB RAM ceiling on all of its models. The community reaction was strong enough to elicit a response from Phil Schiller: To put more than 16GB of fast RAM into a notebook...




macdaddy.io


----------



## rnb_2

gsilbers said:


> more about the ram and why its limited to 16gb
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Why the MacBook Pro is limited to 16GB of RAM -
> 
> 
> To much fanfare the MacBook Pro was released. Then to much disillusionment its biggest limitation became clear: that it has a 16GB RAM ceiling on all of its models. The community reaction was strong enough to elicit a response from Phil Schiller: To put more than 16GB of fast RAM into a notebook...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> macdaddy.io



That's an old article, probably from 2016 or 2017 (it's irritating that there is no date that I could find). The first thing that felt odd was the quote from Phil Schiller, who is now semi-retired. Also, the technical data around RAM power usage all matches up with issues that developers, in particular, were having with the then-new Touchbar MacBook Pro models that debuted in late 2016.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

gsilbers said:


> more about the ram and why its limited to 16gb
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Why the MacBook Pro is limited to 16GB of RAM -
> 
> 
> To much fanfare the MacBook Pro was released. Then to much disillusionment its biggest limitation became clear: that it has a 16GB RAM ceiling on all of its models. The community reaction was strong enough to elicit a response from Phil Schiller: To put more than 16GB of fast RAM into a notebook...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> macdaddy.io



I’m guessing that article is a few years old. The new MB Pro’s have up to 64GB, and there’s only an Air available so far in the laptop lineup.


----------



## rnb_2

Jeremy Spencer said:


> I’m guessing that article is a few years old. The new MB Pro’s have up to 64GB, and there’s only an Air available so far in the laptop lineup.



You're close - the 16" Intel MacBook Pro goes to 64GB, the Intel 13" MacBook Pros go to 32GB, and there is an M1 13" MacBook Pro (along with the M1 Air) that only goes to 16GB. But this is absolutely an old article, as well.


----------



## KerrySmith

zircon_st said:


> The better question would be what music production software actually *does* work on ARM...? Besides StaffPad and Logic. I'm talking VST/AU plugins and other software - Cubase, Nuendo, REAPER, Wavelab, anything Adobe, Pro Tools... I think the answer is "no" to literally all of that, right?
> 
> The tech behind this is certainly exciting. But any ARM laptop is a glorified iPad and IMO not suitable for the kind of virtual instrument/synth heavy production we do.



Cubasis?


----------



## Ashermusic

zircon_st said:


> The better question would be what music production software actually *does* work on ARM...? Besides StaffPad and Logic. I'm talking VST/AU plugins and other software - Cubase, Nuendo, REAPER, Wavelab, anything Adobe, Pro Tools... I think the answer is "no" to literally all of that, right?
> 
> The tech behind this is certainly exciting. But any ARM laptop is a glorified iPad and IMO not suitable for the kind of virtual instrument/synth heavy production we do.




While it is possible that assessment is correct, it may or may not be, I will reserve judgement until people actually get into the trenches with it and see how the whole Integrated Memory thing works with big sample libraries, streaming almost everything from SSDs instead of RAM. As for Cubase, Nuendo, REAPER, Wavelab, anything Adobe, Pro Tools they will have to adapt, just as they did when Apple switched from Motorola to Intel chips. But the whole Rosetta 2 thing may get them by until then?

And btw, my understanding is that todays' iPads actually haver faster chips than the computers so "glorified iPad" may not be a bad thing. 

But it certainly is tantalizing.
.


----------



## Alex Fraser

If I had a pound coin every time someone said “we shall see” in this thread, I’d have enough money to buy one of these new things.. 😅

I refute the “glorified iPad toy” idea. I could write and create a living on any of these new machines. It’s early days. Perhaps machines packing more ram are on the horizon.

We shall see.


----------



## Michael Antrum

Alex Fraser said:


> If I had a pound coin every time someone said “we shall see” in this thread, I’d have enough money to buy one of these new things.. 😅
> 
> I refute the “glorified iPad toy” idea. I could write and create a living on any of these new machines. It’s early days. Perhaps machines packing more ram are on the horizon.
> 
> We shall see.



You owe me a quid...


----------



## Ivan M.

rnb_2 said:


> I was shocked to find that there was an area of computing that was so much more RAM-dependent than even 4k+ video. GPUs evolved to speed up most common still image processing, then moving image processing and 3D, and have expanded into general computing via CUDA, etc., but VIs still rely very heavily on the most basic hardware that has existed in PCs since their invention: RAM, CPU, and storage. Much more than even video, composition with VIs relies on very old-school "let's just throw as many resources at the problem as we can".
> 
> It will be interesting to see how the Infinite series (and other modeled libraries) performs on AS compared to more traditional libraries, since the memory footprint is very small. Really testing that will require a lot of work from NI (and others), but I'm not sure how much work will be needed from Kontakt instrument developers - it's going to be an interesting several months, I think.



Can't see how audio processing can be parallelized to such an extent as rendering, it's just a different problem. Gpu compute evolved around processing pixels, but audio is temporal. Each sample depends on the previous ones (imagine a long reverb). 

You could only split up the work a bit. I can see speed up for physical modeling instruments (not fx, just sound gen) where you could split notes to dedicated gpu threads.

Exciting times ahead


----------



## Al Maurice

This reminds me of the early 32bit Archimedes days, which were guess powered by the forerunner of the modern day ARM chip. For some reason Acorn, remember them, only designed their chipset to support 24 bit, enabling the the rest of the PC register to support status flags, with the premise being why would anyone want anything more than 16Mb. Also the ARM chips had a lower power threshold, which makes them great for small portable devices and low speced laptops.

Now here we are again, a new chip that currently only supports 16Gb, which leaves M1 out of the reach of any power users, so that just leaves us with the Intel platform for the time being at least.


----------



## Manaberry

Just found this gem.


----------



## Sovereign

Everything integrated, no e-GPU, memory on-chip, easy access to (cheaper) consumer upgrades a thing of the past. I'm sure Apple loves it.


----------



## MartinH.

I just took a quick look at the product pages, didn't read the conversations in the thread. Imho if this thing would be faster than intel macs, it would be more expensive too. Apple would never ever sell a better product for cheaper, that's not who they are. Their lowend MBP now costs less than their high end iPhone...




Ivan M. said:


> Can't see how audio processing can be parallelized to such an extent as rendering, it's just a different problem. Gpu compute evolved around processing pixels, but audio is temporal. Each sample depends on the previous ones (imagine a long reverb).
> 
> You could only split up the work a bit. I can see speed up for physical modeling instruments (not fx, just sound gen) where you could split notes to dedicated gpu threads.
> 
> Exciting times ahead



Reaper already figured out how to mostly solve this problem with "anticipative fx processing". Basically you don't need to calculate everything realtime if you know certain tracks won't receive unpredictable input through routing or recording. If a track is just midi data and plugins and is not record armed, it can be processed ahead of others and only downstream the effects on the master and on record-armed tracks need to be processed in the realtime thread. It makes starting playback slightly less responsive, but it's so worth it imho, to get more out of your cpu by more intelligently balancing the computational load accross all cores.


----------



## Ivan M.

MartinH. said:


> Reaper already figured out how to mostly solve this problem with "anticipative fx processing". Basically you don't need to calculate everything realtime if you know certain tracks won't receive unpredictable input through routing or recording. If a track is just midi data and plugins and is not record armed, it can be processed ahead of others and only downstream the effects on the master and on record-armed tracks need to be processed in the realtime thread. It makes starting playback slightly less responsive, but it's so worth it imho, to get more out of your cpu by more intelligently balancing the computational load accross all cores.



Oh, wow, wasn't aware of that! Nice, well done reaper!


----------



## ReleaseCandidate

Al Maurice said:


> Now here we are again, a new chip that currently only supports 16Gb, which leaves M1 out of the reach of any power users, so that just leaves us with the Intel platform for the time being at least.



The CPU isn't for power users. Won't be for many years (if at all).


----------



## Nate Johnson

Kinda want to throw caution to the wind and pick up a 16gb/512gb.....AIR. Difference between that and the 13" Pro isn't much (the latter having a fan and touch-bar) Albeit only a $50 savings. 

The only thing I might regret is not holding out for a chassis redesign. Which I would assume the soonest we would see that is spring. hmmmm


----------



## ridgero

The M1 is awesome, but this Apple Chip is both a step forward and a step backward.

I‘m impressed by the power, especially how snappy everything feels, but disappointed about the RAM. I know that the soldered RAM are kind of necessary to get this fast speeds, but how much will 128 GB will cost in an iMac then? 2000???

I guess the iMac i7/i9 will have a great value over the next couple of years.


----------



## Nate Johnson

ridgero said:


> The M1 is awesome, but this Apple Chip is both a step forward and a step backward.
> 
> I‘m impressed by the power, especially how snappy everything feels, but disappointed about the RAM. I know that the soldered RAM are kind of necessary to get this fast speeds, but how much will 128 GB will cost in an iMac then? 2000???
> 
> I guess the iMac i7/i9 will have a great value over the next couple of years.



I would think that the necessity for quantity of ram would decrease as the memory itself becomes faster? Of course sample library developers would have to adapt as well.


----------



## wayne_rowley

Nate Johnson said:


> I would think that the necessity for quantity of ram would decrease as the memory itself becomes faster? Of course sample library developers would have to adapt as well.



Only up to a point. And you will need the fastest storage - i.e. soldered on supplied by Apple which will make the overall system cost very high. 

Don't forget that as sample libraries get more detailed, with mor microphone positions their memory requirements also increase.


----------



## wayne_rowley

ridgero said:


> The M1 is awesome, but this Apple Chip is both a step forward and a step backward.
> 
> I‘m impressed by the power, especially how snappy everything feels, but disappointed about the RAM. I know that the soldered RAM are kind of necessary to get this fast speeds, but how much will 128 GB will cost in an iMac then? 2000???
> 
> I guess the iMac i7/i9 will have a great value over the next couple of years.



I know. But the M1 is a low-end 'entry level' ARM solution. They still have the Intel MacBook Pros and the Intel 6-core minis for higher end. 

I am sure they will have a pro-end solution that can be upgraded - eventually! The thing is how much will it cost, and whether the mid-range systems such as the iMac will also remain upgradable.


----------



## MartinH.

Nate Johnson said:


> I would think that the necessity for quantity of ram would decrease as the memory itself becomes faster? Of course sample library developers would have to adapt as well.



As long as bandwidth and latency between disk and RAM isn't improving to the degree that RAM caching becomes obsolete for enough tasks and the software gets adapted to no longer do it... the answer is "no" imho.


----------



## Alex Fraser

wayne_rowley said:


> I know. But the M1 is a low-end 'entry level' ARM solution.


Yes, totally and I feel the point is already missed in the rush to decry the ram and the usual anti-Apple nonsense. The video expiclity calls Apple Silicon a "family of chips" and describes the M1 as


> "optimised for our most popular low power systems where small size and power efficiency are critically important."



That's key. These new Macs constitute the "lower end" of the range. That they already look to be nice production tools bodes well I think.


----------



## ridgero

Nate Johnson said:


> I would think that the necessity for quantity of ram would decrease as the memory itself becomes faster? Of course sample library developers would have to adapt as well.



The data still need to be loaded into the RAM.

The CPU now has a way quicker access to the RAM, that results in a lower latency.


----------



## ridgero

wayne_rowley said:


> I know. But the M1 is a low-end 'entry level' ARM solution. They still have the Intel MacBook Pros and the Intel 6-core minis for higher end.
> 
> I am sure they will have a pro-end solution that can be upgraded - eventually! The thing is how much will it cost, and whether the mid-range systems such as the iMac will also remain upgradable.



By now, those „old“ Intel CPUs are pretty slow in real life performance.

Even this M1 CPU is capable of much much much more, but is limited by the RAM. Especially for musicians like us.


----------



## jcrosby

I'm skeptical of the M1 numbers. If you use Logic stock plugins only? Sure, I'm 100% confident Apple optimized the shit out of this... They've probably been doing this behind the scenes for months already...

When it comes to AU plugins however I'm super confident it's going to be pretty similar... Apple always find a way to fluff the numbers based on limited/specific use cases.

Until I see an Apple Silicone mac run 2x or more instances of Kontakt on the same current intel machine I'm plenty skeptical about the claim I read this afternoon.


----------



## Alex Fraser

On the Air vs Pro thing - as far as I see (apart from the usual stuff like bigger trackpads, Touch Bar etc) the key difference between the machines is that the Air (presumably) uses throttling and no fan, whereby the Pro keeps peak performance _with_ a fan. Sorry, "active cooling."


----------



## Technostica

It has been reported that all these models can only support a single external monitor.
Do look into this before purchasing as that is a deal breaker for some.
Is this really likely though? I doubt it.

Added. It seems as if the Mac Mini supports 2 displays and the laptops can support one external display, presumably alongside the internal one.


----------



## Eloy

Apple Announces The Apple Silicon M1: Ditching x86 - What to Expect, Based on A14







www.anandtech.com


----------



## Technostica

For those wondering about the integrated memory and faster storage, this seemingly is Apple using the same as Intel does in their 11th generation laptop chips.
This means LPDDR4x-4267 and PCIe 4.0.
PCIe 4.0 SSDs have been out for a while and we are already seeing the second generation controllers which bring max throughput up to over 7GB/s, which is double that of PCIe 3.0.
RAM at 4,267 is a big increase over the usual maximum of 3,200. That is possible because mobile systems can place the RAM very close to the SoC which allows them to clock it higher as the connections are much shorter.
In this case Apple are seemingly using a MCM (multi-chip module) approach which places the RAM on the same package as the Apple Silicon.
This is all best guess for now.

The big question is how much this impacts current software performance?
RAM and Storage bandwidth are very important, but beyond a certain point the scaling stops.
So you need enough CPU or GPU grunt to actually use all that bandwidth or it just remains unused.
So if someone here has a laptop with an 11th generation Intel CPU and a PCIe 4.0 SSD it would be interesting to see DAW benchmarks.

For the future though there are interesting things afoot.
One of these is DirectStorage which allows a computing device to access compressed data much faster and more efficiently, so with less hit on the CPU.
This is used by the next generation Xbox and is coming to Windows 10.
So streaming large compressed sample libraries becomes easier and even more so when PCIe 5.0 comes out relatively soon. 4.0 seems as if it will have a short life except maybe for more power limited mobile systems.
Apple could add something similar and with their Unified Memory Architecture they may have an advantage.
One reason why GPUs aren’t used for audio work is due to the latency and bandwidth constraints.
With Apple using Unified Memory it means that the GPU, CPU and NE engine can all access the RAM seemingly at the same speed. Plus the data doesn’t need to be copied from the main system RAM to the VRAM on the GPU which is the real performance killer with current discrete GPUs.

So as well as the ARM cores which sound good, the whole platform has a lot of potential.
Be interesting to see what software developers can squeeze out of these new platforms over the next 5 years.
Apple may actually have a significant platform advantage over x86/Windows for the first time in ages.
Although AMD are doing some goods things for sure, including allowing the GPU and CPU to share resources.


----------



## Ashermusic

I can tell you this for sure, sample libraries will sound better on computers with ARM chips. 😆


----------



## Technostica

Ashermusic said:


> I can tell you this for sure, sample libraries will sound better on computers with ARM chips. 😆


Using a Macbook Air, the samples just seem to have the right type of air!


----------



## wayne_rowley

Technostica said:


> Using a Macbook Air, the samples just seem to have the right type of air!



That would be the MacBook Air Lyndhurst model...


----------



## ridgero

Technostica said:


> It has been reported that all these models can only support a single external monitor.
> Do look into this before purchasing as that is a deal breaker for some.
> Is this really likely though? I doubt it.



I guess this is right, Apple is always on point with their tech specs about displays.


----------



## LamaRose

Final Cut Pro should be a good indicator for CPU/RAM performance... certainly Apple has this ready to roll upon release.


----------



## el-bo

Ashermusic said:


> I can tell you this for sure, sample libraries will sound better on computers with ARM chips. 😆



Perhaps...At the very least they need to sound as good as they do now, or composers will be up in ARMS


----------



## synthetic

Maybe the pro machines will just keep adding processors? The new Mac Pro with eight M1 chips for 128 cores and 128GB of RAM for $128k?


----------



## ridgero

You can hate or love Apple, but with the transition to ARM they are giving the industry a huge boost. 2020 is the first year in over a decade that I feel like something is really going on in the computer industry. 

Hands down, without AMD this jump would look like even more ridiculous.


----------



## rnb_2

Technostica said:


> It has been reported that all these models can only support a single external monitor.
> Do look into this before purchasing as that is a deal breaker for some.
> Is this really likely though? I doubt it.



This is correct for the M1 laptops - one display, up to 6k. The M1 mini supports two external displays - one up to 6k over Thunderbolt, one up to 4k over HDMI.


----------



## Dewdman42

I am excited that they made them 6k ready because hopefully this will drive more general 6k displays in the future across the industry. We need 6k for true widescreen HDPI. 

I may pick up one of these MB air's to replace my aging MBP. At least I'll have something to test out ARM as we go along. 

Its going to be kind of exciting to watch what happens in the industry. Apple is going out on a limb in a lot of ways with this. However, I think this new approach is already right in line with the low end consumer base. I mean last night I just ordered a new iPhone, why? Because my iphone7 Plus doesn't support wireless charging. Ok.. After several hours of lamenting over the best way to buy a new iPhone, which model with which options, whether to buy from AT&T or direct from Apple, whether to buy AppleCare+, whether to get AppleCare+ theft and loss protection, etc.. cha ching...Apple is getting more from me then a new MB Air! And in all likelihood, in 30 months I will do that again....cha ching... 

Apple has a formula for making money here and it totally has been working for iPhones and iPads...so why not for computers too? These M1 computers will be very disposable, like iPhones are. Couple years, then trade up. That will be the new model. The consolidated processor will lend itself to NEEDING to trade up also...

All of that works wonderfully well for consumer level stuff that costs a thousand bucks or less. Its not clear to me that this approach, nor architecture will work so well for higher end power computing. And so far Apple is not producing higher end platform on this model...what I see is that they are trying to bring the laptop and consumer desktop computer more in line with the marketing machine they employ for iPhones and iPads....which is the trade-up every other year philosophy, and make sure to pay for AppleCare addons and learn to depend on the AppleStore.


----------



## Technostica

Dewdman42 said:


> These M1 computers will be very disposable, like iPhones are. Couple years, then trade up. That will be the new model. The consolidated processor will lend itself to NEEDING to trade up also.


I highly doubt that as phones are much more about trends and fashion then PCs ever have been.
So I don't see that unless you buy the base model with 8/256 and your usage changes or there is a paradigm shift which demands more performance.
5G is a paradigm shift for some phone buyers but not sure that happens much with PCs.

The CPU, RAM and SSD were already soldered on some Macs anyway so no change there.


----------



## Dewdman42

well from my perspective its not really about fashion. I did not just pay over a thousand bucks to upgrade my iphone7 to an iphone12 for any reasons related to fashion whatsoever. My iPhone stays inside a case and nobody can tell what version it is.

Apple constantly brings out little nice-to-have features, that make it compelling to upgrade. For example, wireless charging. Nicer camara, Cloud storage of photos, etc. This will be the case for computers too...actually they will combine it with the iPhones, so some feature the integrates your laptop with your iPhone will only be possible if you trade up both. mark my words...that's where the money is and where they are trying to push consumers. Apple Watch, is already heading in that direction too. Plus don't get me started about how much they are making from AppleCare!

And they provide trade up incentives. AT&T gave me a $350 trade in credit on my iphone7, for example. 

The consumer market doesn't require anything close to the kind of computing power that we usually need here for what we do. But...they do like some whiz bang features...which sometimes require a new chip installed, or better Bluetooth or something to make happen. Its not really raw CPU crunching that most people need or stated another way...its debatable whether they actually "need" it, but Apple still try to make it seem "compelling" enough that they want to trade up. Then they market the hell out of the trade up idea. Lots of Apple users are also obsessed with having the most up to date magic voodoo from their beloved company.

Me...I am still quite content using my 2010 Cheesegrater, which has been updated numerous times and still is performing fabulously. I hope Apple doesn't lose sight of this, I feel the 2010-12 cheese grater might be the best home computer ever made! But I don't think it made even close to enough money for Apple. People bought them, then people like me bought later on the used market (no revenue for Apple). People like me have said "meh" to every iMac and Mini that has come out during the entire last decade. That was a great computer they made with expandability and longevity, but from an earnings perspective...bad move by Apple. They can make SOOO much more money with disposable, cheaper computers and a trade-up philosophy that matches what they are doing everywhere else in their company...and spectacularly successful I might add.

So we have the new 2019 MacPro...it is same idea as the cheesegrater...but ridiculously priced. Will they come out with something that is more in line price wise with what the cheesegrater was in 2012? I doubt it. I think they will continue on this thread of selling higher quantity of lower end, disposable computers...which will be really incredible computers for the masses and they will sell a lot of them and make billions of dollars..and people will trade up often too, but then there will be a wide gulf between that and their true power user computers....which will cost mint, if they even keep supporting them at all.

I know a lot of people that don't use mac computers..they use PC's. Mainly due to the cost in the past. But these same people have iPads and iPhones all through their household and stand in long lines on black friday to pick up a deal on an ipad, etc.. You can call it "fashion" but I think that is a cynical view. the iPhone provides incredible usability compared to every other smartphone on the market and that's why everyone wants one and wants to generally trade up more often then they really should have to, thanks to clever marketing off whiz bang features which can only run on the latest models.


----------



## rnb_2

Developers that I follow are heralding the M1 Macs as a massive advance for consumer-level computer systems, which is what these first three models are. The nice thing about that, though, is that as consumer machines get more powerful, some of them start to become useful for higher-end tasks, which is what I'll be testing.

My current i7 Mac mini is a nice machine, but I bought it for photo and video work, so a big, noisy eGPU was a necessity from the get-go. My eGPU is essentially a computer for my computer - the mini is perched on top of, and dwarfed by, the enclosure. Because I don't shoot very high-resolution photos - I'm happy with my Olympus m43 cameras and Sony RX10 IV, all at 20mp - and only occasionally dabble in pro video, 16GB of RAM has been fine. Once Adobe gets Lightroom Classic and Photoshop M1-native, my impression is that the M1 mini will be easily able to replace my i7 mini for photo/video work while not having any need for the eGPU. The i7 mini w/eGPU then replaces my 2012 21.5" iMac as a dedicated music (and possibly a bit of Windows gaming) rig.

In my case, this will be a $900 computer replacing a 2-year-old setup that cost over $2k (same RAM, same storage).

I don't disagree with @Dewdman42 that the M1 Macs present a pretty ideal consumer computing platform that also leaves Apple plenty of upgrade sales opportunity down the line, but I disagree with the timeframe, at least for the Mac mini. Laptops are a harder call because they take a lot more abuse (AppleCare is usually recommended for laptops for this reason), but from a performance standpoint, I think these machines will last a normal user 4-5 years in many cases.

Also, Apple is pretty good about recycling older systems - to my surprise, I discovered yesterday that they will give me almost $200 for a 5-year-old i5 mini that I just replaced as our media/backup server. It's likely that someone who wants to upgrade from a functioning M1 system in a few years will get at least something in trade for it, or could sell it for more if they don't mind the headache of a private sale.

What Apple will do for higher-end systems remains to be seen. I think we'll see some segmentation based more on RAM needs that outright CPU horsepower - the M1 looks to be VERY fast, possibly faster than any Intel-based Apple laptop - as the cost of on-package RAM will force 32/64/128+GB RAM to higher-end machines that have room for the extra cost in their pricing. Much of the higher price of the higher-end Intel-based Macs goes to Intel now, but with Apple's SOC R&D spread out over hundreds of millions of phones, tablets, and more traditional computers, the CPU will be a comparatively low-cost item per unit, leaving pricing room for more high-priced RAM.

At the very high end, it will be interesting to see how they handle the traditional "pro" market's desire for upgradability. Might we see swappable SOCs, where you upgrade your CPU/GPU/NE and RAM in one go? There might be hurdles involving the tight pairing of the Secure Enclave and storage, but I think they can figure that out if needed - installing a new system SSD in a 2019 Mac Pro is already pretty involved, after all.

However it shakes out over the next two years, this is going to be a very exciting time. We haven't seen a change of this magnitude in the computing industry in a very, very long time.


----------



## Alex Fraser

Not sure non upgradable = disposable. 

The phone market is different. Here in the UK, no one buys a phone outright. They buy it “on contract” with a cell provider and pay for it over 2 years. I assume it’s much the same in the U.S. 

At the end of the contract, most folk simply “get an upgrade” - a new phone and commit to another two years. The true cost of the phone is hidden and it’s why Apple releases new phones every year like clockwork. 

Different market to Macs where even the latest models will give 5-7 years of active service and updates.


----------



## Dewdman42

in USA they don't do that anymore. People buy phones with an installment plan and if you want to upgrade to a new phone in 2 years, you'll have to pay off the balance owed on the previous phone. Its typical for the installment plan to to be 30 months. They do provide easy installment plans built into your phone bill so it just feels like part of your phone bill...but really at this point in USA you have to buy the phone...and you own it...after you pay it off...and later on you might have an option to trade it in for something better. The trade in value of my 3 year old iphone7 was only $80, but AT&T offered a deal to let me trade it in for $350...which possibly included a contract for service, but I don't recall reading anything about a service commitment..not that I care because I don't plan to change service anytime soon..


----------



## Dewdman42

And I agree..there is no reason a computer (or phone!) shouldn't be useful for 5-7 years, but I don't think Apple will agree with you or I...they will be pushing for the same kind of trade up wars that exist today for phones, touchpads and smart watches.. They will push that for laptops and consumer desktops...which are orders of magnitude higher quantity then the user base like us using power computers.


----------



## Technostica

Dewdman42 said:


> You can call it "fashion" but I think that is a cynical view.


Phones are trendy and fashionable in a way that PCs never have been and this is for Android as much as Apple.
I've witnessed this and it's just an observation, no judgment.
People are much more invested in their phones as they do so much for them and they often have them with them 24/7.
PCs in comparison are more of a utilitarian tool.



Dewdman42 said:


> The iPhone provides incredible usability compared to every other smartphone on the market and that's why everyone wants one.


There's even more hyperbole there than the Apple event from yesterday.
If you really believe that then there's no point in continuing this conversation.


----------



## rnb_2

The thing with phones, though, is that the service involves negligible cost after equipment rollout, so they have a ton of money to goose sales and offer above-market upgrade deals knowing that they'll more than make that up on the service as long as they keep you from taking up another provider's offer and switching. 

With a computer, there really isn't a comparable "service" company involved, beyond Apple themselves, and they can do just fine if you upgrade your phone every 2-4 years, your iPad every 4-5, and your computer every 5-7. Unless something comes along that requires a LOT more CPU power or RAM, I don't see there being as much upgrade pressure with Apple Silicon Macs as there was with Intel, because the performance floor is so much higher.


----------



## rnb_2

Technostica said:


> Phones are trendy and fashionable in a way that PCs never have been and this is for Android as much as Apple.
> I've witnessed this and it's just an observation, no judgment.
> People are much more invested in their phones as they do so much for them and they often have them with them 24/7.
> PCs in comparison are more of a utilitarian tool.
> 
> 
> There's even more hyperbole there than the Apple event from yesterday.
> If you really believe that then there's no point in continuing this conversation.



While the statement is a bit over-the-top, if you simply add "if you are in on the Apple ecosystem" as a caveat, it's not ridiculous.


----------



## Dewdman42

nothing over the top about my statement. iPhones very arguably provide the best user experience of any smartphone on the market. I know many people that tried to swim up stream with android phones and eventually gave up to get an iPhone once they got over themselves. Part of it is definitely the entire eco system too though..true. Apple watch, iPad, iPhone...and now M1 computers.


----------



## vitocorleone123

Dewdman42 said:


> nothing over the top about my statement. iPhones very arguably provide the best user experience of any smartphone on the market. I know many people that tried to swim up stream with android phones and eventually gave up to get an iPhone once they got over themselves. Part of it is definitely the entire eco system too though..true. Apple watch, iPad, iPhone...and now M1 computers.



Android has been out of “beta” (my term for the multitude of versions that felt unfinished) for a couple years now. iOS is different, not better. What is better is the integration of the OS and hardware. That’s what still puts it over the top for me.

I started using both iOS and Android with v1, designing apps for them.


----------



## InLight-Tone

Dewdman42 said:


> nothing over the top about my statement. iPhones very arguably provide the best user experience of any smartphone on the market. I know many people that tried to swim up stream with android phones and eventually gave up to get an iPhone once they got over themselves. Part of it is definitely the entire eco system too though..true. Apple watch, iPad, iPhone...and now M1 computers.


That would be me, I even entertained going the Microsoft route , including phones(!) since I used Windows for many years never owning a Mac. But I built a Hack a year ago and here I am with an iPad, iPhone, and the Hack and working on getting my wife out of Windows with one of these new M1 Laptops. I'm personally waiting for some more memory before I buy one, but ya, the MacOS experience won me over big time...


----------



## rnb_2

I think Android has, by most accounts, matured over the last few years and is very capable, but is let down a bit sometimes by low-price hardware. Google's presence as a hardware manufacturer has not done as much to direct the market as I expected, largely because their heart just never seems to be in it when it comes to making physical products, plus the flood of cheap Chinese phones that are more like forks than part of a larger Android ecosystem.

Android just doesn't have a story beyond the phone, though - they've never been able to create a meaningful tablet ecosystem (it's really just an iPad ecosystem, still), and Wear hasn't really gone anywhere in comparison to Apple Watch. Their only meaningful PC success is in the very low-cost education market, in spite of a few attempts to do at least a mid-range Chromebook (that always ends up abandoned). If you want a system that integrates from the phone (or even a watch) up to desktop PCs without hiring someone to assemble it for you or dedicating your life to keeping it running, you go with Apple. It doesn't always "just work", but the mental overhead to keep an Apple household running is at least manageable.


----------



## gsilbers

Dewdman42 said:


> in USA they don't do that anymore. People buy phones with an installment plan and if you want to upgrade to a new phone in 2 years, you'll have to pay off the balance owed on the previous phone. Its typical for the installment plan to to be 30 months. They do provide easy installment plans built into your phone bill so it just feels like part of your phone bill...but really at this point in USA you have to buy the phone...and you own it...after you pay it off...and later on you might have an option to trade it in for something better. The trade in value of my 3 year old iphone7 was only $80, but AT&T offered a deal to let me trade it in for $350...which possibly included a contract for service, but I don't recall reading anything about a service commitment..not that I care because I don't plan to change service anytime soon..




yep, was surprised how much the payment plan of my iphone x was tied to next year model when i tried to pay all of it a few months in advance... i woudlnt be eligeble for trade in for the iphone11 or whatever. 

and apple jacking up the prices , having an apple card, and cash back on apple stuff plus stating boldly the monthly pricei think thats the deal. having apple prodcuts be more of a subscription thing. 
instead of yearly like the iphone im guessing itll be 2-5 years and mostly for the business that have several macs in once company. 


we dont see these sort of installment/car loan/lease type of deal in the computer world but i think its what apple wants to do with the macs to make money. Be more like a luxury car thing. Just change to the new model every few years and keep paying the $220 or whatever a month. 

We know better and understand tech stuff, but i remember poeple when i worked more of a business office that they did the iphone lease and where exited to renew it for the new iphone.

So in the long run itll cost you more getting a new computer every few years at a monthyl payment that buying it monthly. And apple betting on apple geeks to do this with ipads, laptops and mac mini (hint hint.. what just came out)
having everything on one chip also helps lower the 3rd party upgrades and bitching from the geeks about the apple tax on memory, gpu etc.


----------



## Andrew Aversa

Ashermusic said:


> While it is possible that assessment is correct, it may or may not be, I will reserve judgement until people actually get into the trenches with it and see how the whole Integrated Memory thing works with big sample libraries, streaming almost everything from SSDs instead of RAM. As for Cubase, Nuendo, REAPER, Wavelab, anything Adobe, Pro Tools they will have to adapt, just as they did when Apple switched from Motorola to Intel chips. But the whole Rosetta 2 thing may get them by until then?
> 
> And btw, my understanding is that todays' iPads actually haver faster chips than the computers so "glorified iPad" may not be a bad thing.
> 
> But it certainly is tantalizing.
> .



The engineering that went into this is certainly amazing. Battery life and processing power seem excellent. I have no doubt it's fast. But comparing it to an iPad is accurate in terms of *what you can do with it - *that's what I want to emphasize.

* You cannot run Adobe products.
* You cannot run 99% of plugins (instruments, samplers, synths, effects). Maybe even 100%.
* You cannot run most DAWs or audio editing applications (Pro Tools, REAPER, Cubase, Melodyne, iZotope, etc.)
* You cannot run typical desktop utilities and programs.
* You cannot run 99% of games, even ones previously Mac-compatible (important if you are doing scoring for games!)
* You cannot run many creative tools like Davinci Resolve.

Yes, it's *possible* these will be compatible in the future, and they *might* run under emulation. I'm not saying these things will never work.

However it's fair to say *at this time* that you are essentially buying a big iPad, no more, no less. If you are expecting to load up your Kontakt template, or do photo editing, or run games on Steam, etc., you will be extremely disappointed on day one.

Also keep in mind that Apple's reported benchmarks on what their system can do are going to be highly cherry-picked. What I think most creatives will want to see is a true apples-to-apples (no pun intended) comparison with something we care about. For example, a DAW benchmark like running X compressors or simultaneous EXS-24 voices. Or render times in Final Cut, or making ZIP files.

--- On the topic of performance, let's look at some numbers we do have. The very latest iPad Air (4th gen) - Apple's fastest chip to date - scores 1585 in single-core, 4182 in multi-core on Geekbench, with 6 cores total. So we can expect maybe 33% more performance on multi-core with these new machines at minimum. Let's round up and say +50%.

The single-core score is readily matched by the latest AMD chips, so no advantage there. As for multi-core, the processor is utterly demolished by the competition. Even with a generous +50% boost (~6k score), even last-gen mid-tier Intel and AMD chips easily double that (and more). 

I suspect that the 4 big / 4 small core model will be very useful for a number of tasks, but it cannot possibly compete in raw power with desktop-tier Intel OR AMD chips for serious multi-core processing power.


----------



## Ashermusic

zircon_st said:


> The engineering that went into this is certainly amazing. Battery life and processing power seem excellent. I have no doubt it's fast. But comparing it to an iPad is accurate in terms of *what you can do with it - *that's what I want to emphasize.
> 
> * You cannot run Adobe products.
> * You cannot run 99% of plugins (instruments, samplers, synths, effects). Maybe even 100%.
> * You cannot run most DAWs or audio editing applications (Pro Tools, REAPER, Cubase, Melodyne, iZotope, etc.)
> * You cannot run typical desktop utilities and programs.
> * You cannot run 99% of games, even ones previously Mac-compatible (important if you are doing scoring for games!)
> * You cannot run many creative tools like Davinci Resolve.
> 
> Yes, it's *possible* these will be compatible in the future, and they *might* run under emulation. I'm not saying these things will never work.
> 
> However it's fair to say *at this time* that you are essentially buying a big iPad, no more, no less. If you are expecting to load up your Kontakt template, or do photo editing, or run games on Steam, etc., you will be extremely disappointed on day one.
> 
> Also keep in mind that Apple's reported benchmarks on what their system can do are going to be highly cherry-picked. What I think most creatives will want to see is a true apples-to-apples (no pun intended) comparison with something we care about. For example, a DAW benchmark like running X compressors or simultaneous EXS-24 voices. Or render times in Final Cut, or making ZIP files.
> 
> --- On the topic of performance, let's look at some numbers we do have. The very latest iPad Air (4th gen) - Apple's fastest chip to date - scores 1585 in single-core, 4182 in multi-core on Geekbench, with 6 cores total. So we can expect maybe 33% more performance on multi-core with these new machines at minimum. Let's round up and say +50%.
> 
> The single-core score is readily matched by the latest AMD chips, so no advantage there. As for multi-core, the processor is utterly demolished by the competition. Even with a generous +50% boost (~6k score), even last-gen mid-tier Intel and AMD chips easily double that (and more).
> 
> I suspect that the 4 big / 4 small core model will be very useful for a number of tasks, but it cannot possibly compete in raw power with desktop-tier Intel OR AMD chips for serious multi-core processing power.



But you can run it under Rosetta 2 until that stuff is compatible, correct?


----------



## gsilbers

Seems the MacBook Air m1 outperforms the new MacBook 16 inch









Apple Silicon M1 Chip in MacBook Air Outperforms High-End 16-Inch MacBook Pro


Apple introduced the first MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini with M1 Apple Silicon chips yesterday, and as of today, the first benchmark of the...




www.macrumors.com







But I already failed hard at linking articles so who knows 

Very tempting to buy.. but man that 16gb ram limit :/


----------



## gsilbers

neat. Except for that ram limitation and not sure yet of daw benchmarks. Stilll pretty interesting.


----------



## Alex Fraser

Ashermusic said:


> But you can run it under Rosetta 2 until that stuff is compatible, correct?


My impression is that yes, this is the case. At least for "normal" apps. I'm not sure about DAWs and plugins though..


----------



## sherief83

Do not buy, hold your horses guys. 16gb is nothing for Daw use.

To me, the sweet spot: 

Mac mini, M1+ 128gb of unified ram+ 8tb of pci4 drive. 

Unified ram as probably mentioned means both GPU and everything else is just using one ram memory. thats why 128gb to me is the sweet spot. 

I'm actually fine that it can at most drive one monitor. You guys will just have to explore ultrawide monitors like 34" ones (thats 27" + 3/4 of another 27") or you can go full 49" ultra wide (that will be two 27 inche together) that right there will give you the dual monitor feel but only need one input from the mac.

so thats one USBC, the other can be used for Audio controller and we're all set. but if Apple gives us...4 USBC ports...

Who needs a Mac pro. 

My personal bet, we won't see a Mac mini like that until 2023 or 2024, so everyone that bought the 2019 mac pro should feel safe now.


----------



## gsilbers

Interesting the benchmark says 8 core with 3.2ghz for the MacBook Air. Very cool. There are rumors about a 14 inch and 16 inch in the works. If those have at least 32gb of ram I think I’ll take the plunge.


----------



## Andrew Aversa

Ashermusic said:


> But you can run it under Rosetta 2 until that stuff is compatible, correct?



In theory! But we have no idea what the performance impact of this would be, or if plugins like VST/AU/AAX are supported, or how software like Vienna Ensemble is supported, not to mention tightly-integrated copy protection like iLok, etc. Some of these things are already finicky to run on a native system at low latencies, so I'm highly skeptical that they will have 1:1 compatibility and performance through a layer of emulation. 

It's common to wait on buying new tech until it's independently reviewed and tested, but I think this is especially true here since there are so many unknown variables. There really isn't any guarantee that any of our highly specialized tools will work, or how they will perform.


----------



## Technostica

You will have to wait for drivers to be available for some hardware.
Not sure about USB class compliant stuff!


----------



## rnb_2

zircon_st said:


> The engineering that went into this is certainly amazing. Battery life and processing power seem excellent. I have no doubt it's fast. But comparing it to an iPad is accurate in terms of *what you can do with it - *that's what I want to emphasize.
> 
> * You cannot run Adobe products.
> * You cannot run 99% of plugins (instruments, samplers, synths, effects). Maybe even 100%.
> * You cannot run most DAWs or audio editing applications (Pro Tools, REAPER, Cubase, Melodyne, iZotope, etc.)
> * You cannot run typical desktop utilities and programs.
> * You cannot run 99% of games, even ones previously Mac-compatible (important if you are doing scoring for games!)
> * You cannot run many creative tools like Davinci Resolve.



You don't actually know any of the above to be true. Some of those tasks may not run as well under emulation as they do on Intel hardware, some may not run at all, but we honestly don't know at this point, so saying that anyone is "buying a big iPad" based on the above is pure conjecture on your part.



zircon_st said:


> Also keep in mind that Apple's reported benchmarks on what their system can do are going to be highly cherry-picked. What I think most creatives will want to see is a true apples-to-apples (no pun intended) comparison with something we care about. For example, a DAW benchmark like running X compressors or simultaneous EXS-24 voices. Or render times in Final Cut, or making ZIP files.



Apple actually does provide exactly these benchmarks: the M1 Mac mini can load and run 3x as many Amp Designer tracks before overloading the CPU as the comparably-configured i3 mini it replaces, and renders a complex 2-minute timeline with up to 4k content up to 6x as fast. 



zircon_st said:


> --- On the topic of performance, let's look at some numbers we do have. The very latest iPad Air (4th gen) - Apple's fastest chip to date - scores 1585 in single-core, 4182 in multi-core on Geekbench, with 6 cores total. So we can expect maybe 33% more performance on multi-core with these new machines at minimum. Let's round up and say +50%.
> 
> The single-core score is readily matched by the latest AMD chips, so no advantage there. As for multi-core, the processor is utterly demolished by the competition. Even with a generous +50% boost (~6k score), even last-gen mid-tier Intel and AMD chips easily double that (and more).



The benchmark was actually ~7000-7500, and these are not replacing "mid-tier" Intel chips.



zircon_st said:


> I suspect that the 4 big / 4 small core model will be very useful for a number of tasks, but it cannot possibly compete in raw power with desktop-tier Intel OR AMD chips for serious multi-core processing power.



I don't know who you're trying to convince here. I've been recommending for months that people with heavy composing workflows buy the current iMac instead of waiting for Apple Silicon to arrive, and this week's announcements don't change that in any way. That doesn't mean that what was announced wasn't extremely impressive, and only going to become more so as more software becomes Universal. While none of these first batch of machines is going to replace a mid-tier or higher configuration for those that need that, it does reset the performance expectations for consumer computers, and the sheer horsepower of the CPU/GPU combo may see some professional workflows modified just to take advantage of such affordable, small footprint, power-efficient grunt.

Long story short, developers that get Universal apps out there sooner will probably see some increased sales as owners of these machines start grabbing software that really takes advantage of them. This will apply as much to DAWs and plugins as anything else - there are a ton of pandemic music hobbyists out there that can afford this much performance a lot more easily than they could last week.


----------



## rnb_2

sherief83 said:


> I'm actually fine that it can at most drive one monitor. You guys will just have to explore ultrawide monitors like 34" ones (thats 27" + 3/4 of another 27") or you can go full 49" ultra wide (that will be two 27 inche together) that right there will give you the dual monitor feel but only need one input from the mac.



The laptops can only drive one external display; the M1 Mac mini can drive two - one up to 4k via HDMI, one up to 6k via Thunderbolt.


----------



## wayne_rowley

gsilbers said:


> neat. Except for that ram limitation and not sure yet of daw benchmarks. Stilll pretty interesting.



Impressive for a passively cooled ‘mobile’ chip! Gives a lot of hope for the desktop class AS!


----------



## Alex Fraser

Anyone with more tech chops than myself care to speculate on the form Apple Silicon will take in the Mac Pro?


----------



## Vik

zircon_st said:


> But we have no idea what the performance impact of this would be, or if plugins like VST/AU/AAX are supported



All AudioUnits for iOs (and all other iOs apps) should already work, shouldn't they?




__





iOS Musician Apps, Supported Technologies is Audio Unit (AU) (641)







synthyfrog.com


----------



## thevisi0nary

Alex Fraser said:


> Anyone with more tech chops than myself care to speculate on the form Apple Silicon will take in the Mac Pro?



That will surely be the last one to roll out. Me thinks it’s not trivial fitting ram and more cores onto this thing, and they would want to offer the most of each possible on their high end machine.

Also makes sense to wait until any potential problems emerge and that the software ecosystem is bustling and running smoothly. I don’t see them releasing their top pro model while relying on Rosetta for the majority of software. Unless Rosetta just works that well but that remains to be seen.

Maybe a year, year and a half? For a base model Mac Pro.


----------



## wayne_rowley

thevisi0nary said:


> That will surely be the last one to roll out. Me thinks it’s not trivial fitting ram and more cores onto this thing, and they would want to offer the most of each possible on their high end machine.
> 
> Also makes sense to wait until any potential problems emerge and that the software ecosystem is bustling and running smoothly. I don’t see them releasing their top pro model while relying on Rosetta for the majority of software. Unless Rosetta just works that well but that remains to be seen.
> 
> Maybe a year, year and a half? For a base model Mac Pro.



I think we will get a clue when they start to release higher end desktop chips next year. More cores, yes, and memory, but we may find that Apple go back to a multiprocessor architecture as they had with the 2009-2012 Mac Pros.


----------



## chimuelo

I’m doing some amazing stuff with my iPad and MIDI with my Physis K4 Master MIDI Controller. WiFi hardware like HX-3.5 Organ Module and Bome Box made using a single KeyBed a dream come true.

Don’t see Mac replacing my PC but if they can keep taking chores and lightening my PC’s load I’m happy.

Cinebench 23 includes tests for anyone wanting some comparisons.









New Cinebench Version R23 Supports Apple's New M1 Chips


The benchmark also focuses on heat soaking your CPU cooler




www.tomshardware.com


----------



## thevisi0nary

wayne_rowley said:


> I think we will get a clue when they start to release higher end desktop chips next year. More cores, yes, and memory, but we may find that Apple go back to a multiprocessor architecture as they had with the 2009-2012 Mac Pros.



Makes sense. It’s hard for me to see how they could cram a ton of cpu and gpu cores, a ton of ram, and a huge cache onto one SOC and have them benefit from the shared and short pipeline the way the m1 does.


----------



## el-bo

Deleted, as it seems the thread already dealt with a similar suggestion.


----------



## Technostica

wayne_rowley said:


> I think we will get a clue when they start to release higher end desktop chips next year. More cores, yes, and memory, but we may find that Apple go back to a multiprocessor architecture as they had with the 2009-2012 Mac Pros.


It seems unlikely that they will use dual CPUs.
AMD already have 64 core CPUs on TSMC's 7nm process.
Apple will be using 5nm or even 3/4nm in two years, so you could easily be looking at a 96+ cores per CPU by then.
Dual CPUs causes issues so you only use it where you really need to.

They will likely need to use a discrete GPU chip if they want to be competitive across a wide range of workloads.
There are newer ways of connecting chips available today, but they don't overcome some basic limits such as thermal density.
AMD's 64 Core CPU uses 8 chiplets, each of which have 8 cores and connect to a single I/O die. So there are 9 discrete chips on the single package underneath the heat-spreader.
You can also have a separate CPU and GPU die on the same chip, along with high speed HBMx memory.

There's a lot that can be done but you have to keep power in mind.
Apple could do something radical and build a massive (multi-die) single chip using an unusually large socket and cool it with water.
Judging by how efficient ARM is, they could do a lot with a 300W budget.
RAM would be external but it can still be Unified, although that gets more complex if using a multiple chip design.
Using quad channel DDR5 5400 or higher would give better bandwidth than their current 6 channel DDR4.


----------



## rnb_2

rnb_2 said:


> While none of these first batch of machines is going to replace a mid-tier or higher configuration for those that need that, it does reset the performance expectations for consumer computers, and the sheer horsepower of the CPU/GPU combo may see some professional workflows modified just to take advantage of such affordable, small footprint, power-efficient grunt.



Case in point: "Hollywood thinks new Mac mini 'could be huge' for video editors".

Should be interesting to see the impact the RAM limitation has on this, or if large, fast storage makes it moot. That doesn't change the RAM-hungry nature of a large VI template, but like I said, cheap computers with this much performance can alter workflows if it saves money and time overall.


----------



## Alex Fraser

rnb_2 said:


> Case in point: "Hollywood thinks new Mac mini 'could be huge' for video editors".
> 
> Should be interesting to see the impact the RAM limitation has on this, or if large, fast storage makes it moot. That doesn't change the RAM-hungry nature of a large VI template, but like I said, cheap computers with this much performance can alter workflows if it saves money and time overall.


Yep. Some of us have switched to "bottom up" style templates because loading from SSD is so fast - or a welcome pause to inhale coffee. "Disabled track" style templates and the like make it all possible. If you're willing to make the switch of course..


----------



## el-bo

Alex Fraser said:


> Some of us have switched to "bottom up" style templates.



What does that mean?


----------



## wayne_rowley

Alex Fraser said:


> Yep. Some of us have switched to "bottom up" style templates because loading from SSD is so fast - or a welcome pause to inhale coffee. "Disabled track" style templates and the like make it all possible. If you're willing to make the switch of course..



They help. But even taking that approach, you can still hit trouble when it comes time to mix and you want to enable and mix multiple microphone positions for each track.

The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, but I’d be more comfortable with 32GB minimum.

Wayne


----------



## wayne_rowley

el-bo said:


> What does that mean?



Start with few or no tracks and add them, rather than hundreds or more and take them away.


----------



## Dewdman42

I'm definitely encouraged about the future of M1 ARM with some of these initial benchmarks coming in. I'm particularly encouraged about the prospect of a mid tier MacProLite by 2022. That will be right on schedule for me!

I agree about needing a minimum of 32GB, but I'd rather have 64gb. I have 128gb now, but honestly, It never gets filled up, it was overkill for me. 16gb is simply not enough for me. 32gb would probably be fine, 64gb would be super fine. Sample libraries have not been getting any smaller over the years, if anything they've been creeping up larger and larger in size. 16gb is not enough for us in what we do, especially looking into the future at libraries with increasingly complex articulation support.

I want to point out that GeekBench is not quite the same as running a sustained DAW test. GeekBench runs for a relatively short amount of time and sometimes hides thermal issues that can occur in real-world situations. It also doesn't really test your disk throughput that well and is not really a full system test, its really focused narrowly on testing the actual CPU.

Its left to be seen how the M1 is going to actually stack up when all the Diva lovers start cranking out their various DAW stress tests. But at least initially, the single core performance according to Geekbench looks very very promising.. I will be very curious to see what kind of low latency people achieve on record-enabled tracks too... I think it will probably really perform very very well in that regard, but may fall short for large track-count mix downs. We shall see though. 

Its anyone's guess how they might scale this M1 architecture up to more powerful machines in the future. I can see the benefits of the integrated CPU.. But how they will scale it up with more cores or whatever will be interesting to see. They are already saying they have the most transistors ever on this M1 chip, just to support the 4+4 cores that are there now. I also think possibly it may be non-trivial to bring in 64gb of memory to this architecture...and it might not even be in their interest financially to do so, as most users don't need that much memory. this is one of the downsides of a highly integrated architecture like that.


----------



## vitocorleone123

Dewdman42 said:


> Its anyone's guess how they might scale this M1 architecture up to more powerful machines in the future. I can see the benefits of the integrated CPU.. But how they will scale it up with more cores or whatever will be interesting to see. They are already saying they have the most transistors ever on this M1 chip, just to support the 4+4 cores that are there now. I also think possibly it may be non-trivial to bring in 64gb of memory to this architecture...and it might not even be in their interest financially to do so, as most users don't need that much memory. this is one of the downsides of a highly integrated architecture like that.



Add additional SoCs as a dongle?


----------



## Technostica

vitocorleone123 said:


> Add additional SoCs as a dongle?


Start saving for the gold plated version to match your first generation iWatch.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

rnb_2 said:


> cheap computers with this much performance can alter workflows if it saves money and time overall.



Actually, I now work this way now and I absolutely love it. I used to load bigger templates on a slave, but found I could get by just fine with just my MB Pro 16GB Ram; realizing I never used 75% of the crap I was pre loading in the first place. After several years, I know what I have in my VI arsenal, and load what I need on a per-project basis. I'm also not a multiple mic mix kinda guy, so that helps too .

Should also add that the Samsung T5 & T6 SSD's are a Godsend, have never had to freeze tracks. I can even load the entire BBCSO Pro (default mic mix) and still have Ram free.


----------



## el-bo

wayne_rowley said:


> Start with few or no tracks and add them, rather than hundreds or more and take them away.



Thanks! Interesting, though, as since joining this forum I've been much more convinced of the idea of using templates. Not interesting in having hundreds of tracks, but as a king procrastinator I find staring at a blank project a little too overwhelming.


----------



## wayne_rowley

el-bo said:


> Thanks! Interesting, though, as since joining this forum I've been much more convinced of the idea of using templates. Not interesting in having hundreds of tracks, but as a king procrastinator I find staring at a blank project a little too overwhelming.



I find templates useful for orchestral music when I want the full orchestra ready and waiting to play. For any other kind of music I usually start with a blank page.


----------



## Alex Fraser

el-bo said:


> Thanks! Interesting, though, as since joining this forum I've been much more convinced of the idea of using templates. Not interesting in having hundreds of tracks, but as a king procrastinator I find staring at a blank project a little too overwhelming.


You can have it both ways.

In Logic for example, you can take advantage of "dynamic plugin loading" (or whatever the official Apple term is.) This means you can set a gigantic template up as normal with as much detail as you want. When you come to re-use the template, all your tracks will be "deactivated" and no sample data loaded. As you use the template and select tracks to work on, the plugins and sample data are loaded into the project as you go. Tracks not used in the project don't load any data.

I understand Cubase has a similar feature.

Granted, the more ram you have the better, but workflows like this can save on precious resources.

Also, I dispute your self appointed title as "King Procrastinator" - for he is I.


----------



## el-bo

wayne_rowley said:


> I find templates useful for orchestral music when I want the full orchestra ready and waiting to play. For any other kind of music I usually start with a blank page.



The blank page appeals to me because it avoids falling into the trap of having a similar sonic footprint for multiple pieces. However, there are still ways of setting up a basic, but flexible template that cuts out a lot of repetitive tasks while still offering a blank canvas. 

For me, this would involve having a couple of multi-out Battery instances, with all the outputs already broken out. Same for Ultrabeat, Kontakt and BFD. With the exception of a BFD kit, all these drum/perc percussion would remain empty. All tracks would have gain and metering plugs set up, and likely a few other basic go-to effects on every channel. A bunch of send channels set up, loaded to the gils with fx, plus the 'standard' reverb sends (These to be preceded and succeeded by the 'appropriate eq's and compressors). Then a few parallel processing sends, sends for side-chaining and sends for resampling. Bang Ozone and Morphit on the mAster-buss and Bob's your auntie's live-in lover  All of these plugs lie dormant, consuming zero resources, until I decide to use them...or not

At this point, nothing has really imparted any particular sonic-signature. Add a sketching piano (Because "If it sounds good on piano...") and we're ready to fly...

...alledgedly


----------



## el-bo

Alex Fraser said:


> You can have it both ways.



That's what she said  ... Sorry



Alex Fraser said:


> In Logic for example, you can take advantage of "dynamic plugin loading"



Actually, it's only because of this that I'd even consider it. Using an old laptop with CPU and ram limitations would otherwise put a dampener on it all. 



Alex Fraser said:


> Also, I dispute your self appointed title as "King Procrastinator" - for he is I.



You can't dispute facts 🤷


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

el-bo said:


> Thanks! Interesting, though, as since joining this forum I've been much more convinced of the idea of using templates. Not interesting in having hundreds of tracks, but as a king procrastinator I find staring at a blank project a little too overwhelming.



A template doesn't need to be huge. I still use templates, but they are generally about a dozen or so tracks....just enough to get the inspiration flowing.


----------



## Ashermusic

Jeremy Spencer said:


> A template doesn't need to be huge. I still use templates, but they are generally about a dozen or so tracks....just enough to get the inspiration flowing.




I have a bunch of different templates with different numbers of instruments for different musical tasks. All it takes is bit of drive space.


----------



## el-bo

Jeremy Spencer said:


> A template doesn't need to be huge. I still use templates, but they are generally about a dozen or so tracks....just enough to get the inspiration flowing.



Indeed! Really only looking to cover some basic options, and routing/workfows that'd be normal, regardless of genre. Add in an instance of a few different synths, some basic orchestral longs and shorts, a few empty Kontakt instances, multi-out drum instruments and not much more.


----------



## el-bo

Ashermusic said:


> I have a bunch of different templates with different numbers of instruments for different musical tasks. All it takes is bit of drive space.



A nice idea, also.


----------



## Alex Fraser

With a sly glance back at the actual OT, I use saved patches in Logic. So, one click loads the plugin, library, articulation maps, colours etc. You can recall multiple tracks or whole sections as "track stacks" too.


----------



## MartinH.

el-bo said:


> Thanks! Interesting, though, as since joining this forum I've been much more convinced of the idea of using templates. Not interesting in having hundreds of tracks, but as a king procrastinator I find staring at a blank project a little too overwhelming.



I found a way to procrastinate by making new templates, so now I have more templates than finished tracks. :D


----------



## SGordB

A deep dive on unified memory from a senior Apple engineer: 

It's largely Greek to me, but adds to the impression that 16 GB of unified memory might do the work of ... lots more ... fragmented ... memory on our legacy Intel Macs. But to what extent, if any, might that be the case for sample libs?


----------



## MartinH.

SGordB said:


> It's largely Greek to me, but adds to the impression that 16 GB of unified memory might do the work of ... lots more ... fragmented ... memory on our legacy Intel Macs.



I watched from the timestamp you linked till the end and the answer is no.



SGordB said:


> But to what extent, if any, might that be the case for sample libs?



Not at all. 

The new architecture makes a _ton _of sense for games and GPU-compute applications (basically everything involving machine learning, which is a steadily growing number of applications and eventually will be virtual instruments too). But for the sample library tech that we have today and that we all still use, less - but unified - RAM just means less RAM here. Actually to some degree it will mean "even less RAM", because from the available memory for application you now have to deduct the memory that is used for everything that used to be stored in VRAM. It's not a ton for regular applications, but it's definitely non-zero. 

So right now, I think it's detrimental to buy an M1 mac for a composer. But I can totally see this architecture potentionally being the way forward for the future, because that bottleneck that it addresses is a _huge _issue for a lot of usecases, just not at all for sample playback. Maybe a hybrid design that has lots of traditional DDR RAM _in addition _to the unified memory would be the kind of compromise that composers can benefit from too. You'll have to wait and see, but I definitely wouldn't jump on this first gen of new tech just because its new. They said themselves they're still making new intel macs.


----------



## gsilbers

SGordB said:


> A deep dive on unified memory from a senior Apple engineer:
> 
> It's largely Greek to me, but adds to the impression that 16 GB of unified memory might do the work of ... lots more ... fragmented ... memory on our legacy Intel Macs. But to what extent, if any, might that be the case for sample libs?




Interesting.

I’m guessing it’ll be a change on how we normally work and understand what computers can and should do.
Having the same ram for gpu and other things might yield much better performance that maybe in the future a separate gpu card will not be needed for video games and video work?

so maybe the orchestral instruments loaded into ram will be the same. Somehow the new chips would be able to optimize everything that loading so much won’t be necessary?

obviously the Apple guys where holding back a bit since they said buying a intel MacBook is ok and won’t be obsolete... (suuuure).

and the interviewer didn’t ask how about memory intensive ram apps.
But they did mentioned the focus was battery life and performance like a device or notebook.


----------



## gsilbers

MartinH. said:


> I found a way to procrastinate by making new templates, so now I have more templates than finished tracks. :D



I might hire you 

I hate making templates.


----------



## rnb_2

Just got a surprise: my M1 Mac mini has shipped a few days ahead of schedule. Was originally supposed to be arriving 11/24-27, will actually arrive 11/19.


----------



## Michael Antrum

What spec did you go for ? I am very keen to hear what you think of it....


----------



## Michael Antrum

Just seen this - it looks very promising...









New M1 MacBook Air smokes Core i9 16-inch MacBook Pro in Geekbench


A new listing on Geekbench 5 for the M1 MacBook Air posts impressive numbers. The machine handily beat the Core i9-9880H 16-inch MacBook Pro in both single- and multi-core tests by a wide margin. More impressively, the M1 MacBook Air uses a 10 Watt CPU that is passively cooled and still beat the...




www.notebookcheck.net


----------



## MartinH.

Michael Antrum said:


> Just seen this - it looks very promising...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> New M1 MacBook Air smokes Core i9 16-inch MacBook Pro in Geekbench
> 
> 
> A new listing on Geekbench 5 for the M1 MacBook Air posts impressive numbers. The machine handily beat the Core i9-9880H 16-inch MacBook Pro in both single- and multi-core tests by a wide margin. More impressively, the M1 MacBook Air uses a 10 Watt CPU that is passively cooled and still beat the...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.notebookcheck.net







> Yes, you read that headline correctly: according to a new listing in the Geekbench 5 database, the M1 MacBook Air *absolutely destroys* the Core i9 16-inch MacBook Pro in both single- and multi-core tests.
> 
> [..]
> 
> Comparatively, the top-of-the-line 16-inch MacBook Pro with a* Core i9-9880H performs about 35% worse in Geekbench 5’s single-core test and about 15% worse in the multi-core test.*



I think I have a different definition of what "absolutely destroys" means, but it is impressive nonetheless. I've checked a bunch of review scores on that geekbench site and even an iPhone ranks higher on singlecore performance than that i9 Macbook Pro (almost as high as the M1 Macbook Air). Mut multicore is what counts for audio. 

I do have to say though, for people that mainly use synths - if through some absolute miracle their x86 emulation works flawlessly - this could be a really sweet device for outdoor composing away from a power source, because of the much better battery life time.

But if you think you can just load a big orchestral template that needs more than 16 gb of RAM, I still expect people to get disappointed. No one has addressed yet how the bottleneck between SSD and unified RAM would be any different than on current gen hardware designs.


----------



## Michael Antrum

I agree about the sensationalist headline, but when you take the cost of the 16" MacBook Pro into account, and the battery life, it is really promising....

The RAM situation means that M1 systems will be, ahem, 'less than optimal' for myself, of course. So I'm looking to see what come down the tracks over the next year or so. But if this is just the first one, and indeed their entry level one, then things are looking very promising.

If I were in the market for a system for general use, I'd be very tempted with the MacBook air....but I'm not.

But if they shoehorn 64gb into this ecosystem, without it costing the gross national product of Lichtenstein, then I'll be spending some money....


----------



## P3TAAL

All they have to do is bring the price of upgrading the ram into the real world and everyone would a darn site happier about getting one of these machine's. I must say I'm a little concerned to the point where I'm thinking of getting and learning Cubase. I love my imac but if the Ram becomes soldered on and at current prices....
But who knows maybe once they roll out the higher end machine's they might put all my fears to rest. Just got a 2020 imac so won't be looking for a few years anyway


----------



## Michael Antrum

P3TAAL said:


> All they have to do is bring the price of upgrading the ram into the real world and everyone would a darn site happier about getting one of these machine's. I must say I'm a little concerned to the point where I'm thinking of getting and learning Cubase. I love my imac but if the Ram becomes soldered on and at current prices....
> But who knows maybe once they roll out the higher end machine's they might put all my fears to rest. Just got a 2020 imac so won't be looking for a few years anyway



With the new CPU's, the RAM is inside the CPU. There will be no RAM upgrades on the M1 powered chip - it's inherent in the design - or at least that's how I understand it.

That is, unless they do something a bit left field like secondary DRAM - 16gb on the CPU and say, 32gb regular DRAM on the board for fast data access.

But the M1 architecture as it currently stands, precludes any possibility of a RAM upgrade....


----------



## P3TAAL

Michael Antrum said:


> With the new CPU's, the RAM is inside the CPU. There will be no RAM upgrades on the M1 powered chip - it's inherent in the design - or at least that's how I understand it.
> 
> That is, unless they do something a bit left field like secondary DRAM - 16gb on the CPU and say, 32gb regular DRAM on the board for fast data access.
> 
> But the M1 architecture as it currently stands, precludes any possibility of a RAM upgrade....


Sorry I didn't mean upgrading the ram yourself I mean Apple need to bring the price of Ram down at the purchasing stage. That's what I mean by upgrade.


----------



## Michael Antrum

Well, I cannot disagree - £200 for 8gb - at least Dick Turpin wore a mask......


----------



## Ashermusic

rnb_2 said:


> Just got a surprise: my M1 Mac mini has shipped a few days ahead of schedule. Was originally supposed to be arriving 11/24-27, will actually arrive 11/19.



You have now become the most important member if this forum , for me.


----------



## Jay Panikkar

I'm seeing Apple's new ARM line-up being trashed by many enthusiasts online but this new line-up is not intended for pros in the first place.

These are little more than mobile hardware in different form factors and it will serve the overwhelming majority of Apple's consumers very well. In the same vein as mobile devices, these have been specifically optimised to get the best performance and efficiency in certain types of workloads.

It's obviously _not_ geared for music / audio people or pros in general, because our use cases employ workloads that require many I/O lanes, massive RAM capacity and software dependant on x86 architecture. It might be a while before ARM can fulfil these needs without any hitches—assuming that it can—because of fundamental differences between these architectures.

From Apple's POV, there is a massive increase in margins going ARM because it's _much_ cheaper to put together, in addition to being able to lock down the ecosystem further.


----------



## rnb_2

Ashermusic said:


> You have now become the most important member if this forum , for me.



According to UPS, they're now saying 11/17, which means it's coming with the "first wave"


----------



## Michael Antrum

Jay Panikkar said:


> I'm seeing Apple's new ARM line-up being trashed by many enthusiasts online but this new line-up is not intended for pros in the first place.
> 
> These are little more than mobile hardware in different form factors and it will serve the overwhelming majority of Apple's consumers very well. In the same vein as mobile devices, these have been specifically optimised to get the best performance and efficiency in certain types of workloads.
> 
> It's obviously _not_ geared for music / audio people or pros in general, because our use cases employ workloads that require many I/O lanes, massive RAM capacity and software dependant on x86 architecture. It might be a while before ARM can fulfil these needs without any hitches—assuming that it can—because of fundamental differences between these architectures.
> 
> From Apple's POV, there is a massive increase in margins going ARM because it's _much_ cheaper to put together, in addition to being able to lock down the ecosystem further.











Arm technology is now powering the world’s fastest supercomputer


Arm’s first system on the Top 500 list, the Astra from Sandia National Labs, landed at #150 and was announced at SuperComputing 2018




www.arm.com





I think that Apple ARM CPU's might have a little more range than these first models, which I agree are more for 'normal' users. (As opposed to us weirdos...)


----------



## rnb_2

P3TAAL said:


> Sorry I didn't mean upgrading the ram yourself I mean Apple need to bring the price of Ram down at the purchasing stage. That's what I mean by upgrade.



I get the sentiment about RAM prices - Apple has historically overcharged for RAM in order to create nice, round numbers - but the actual cost to upgrade at order time has not increased with the switch to Apple Silicon. It's been $200 (or your equivalent currency - sorry, UK!) to go from 8GB to 16 for as long as I can remember. And $400 to go from 16 to 32, etc.

There's a US reseller (Expercom) that undercuts Apple pricing on machines with upgradeable RAM by installing their own RAM at order time, sometimes by hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The big question will be which of the M-class Macs still have upgradeable RAM - fingers crossed for both a high-end iMac and Mac Pro equivalent (I honestly don't think they can hope to sell the latter without upgradeable RAM).


----------



## Jay Panikkar

Michael Antrum said:


> Arm technology is now powering the world’s fastest supercomputer
> 
> 
> Arm’s first system on the Top 500 list, the Astra from Sandia National Labs, landed at #150 and was announced at SuperComputing 2018
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.arm.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I think that Apple ARM CPU's might have a little more range than these first models, which I agree are more for 'normal' users. (As opposed to us weirdos...)



Hardly news. There is a sizeable gulf between supercomputers and the professional computing segment. It'll take a couple years at least before any advances in the supercomputing space can trickle down to our segment. And it also has to happen in a way that makes sense economically otherwise the industry will take a long time to adopt it.


----------



## rnb_2

Michael Antrum said:


> What spec did you go for ? I am very keen to hear what you think of it....



I got the 16GB/256GB config to match my i7 2018 mini, with the aim of having it replace that for my photo/video work. We'll see how the faster processor paired with a (likely) less-powerful GPU (vs my Vega 56 eGPU) shakes out with Lightroom Classic/Photoshop/Final Cut.


----------



## Michael Antrum

Like Jay, I will be very interested to hear your thoughts on the new platform - though I have a feeling this is going to be a big step up. 

In the UK that config is £ 899 - a very interesting price point for an Apple PC if it has the kind of horsepower they say. 

The GPU will be the interesting thing. On some ways the presentation was deliberately vague....

However, I do think that ARM's heyday may well be upon the horizon.....


----------



## gsilbers

rnb_2 said:


> Just got a surprise: my M1 Mac mini has shipped a few days ahead of schedule. Was originally supposed to be arriving 11/24-27, will actually arrive 11/19.




Im curious.. 

can you see where did it ship from? 

My macbook pro 16 inch came directly from china. I think it makes a stop somewhere where the package is changed or something so it doesnt have anything "china" on it. 
sneaky apple to avoid politics.


----------



## Jay Panikkar

rnb_2 said:


> We'll see how the faster processor paired with a (likely) less-powerful GPU (vs my Vega 56 eGPU) shakes out with Lightroom Classic/Photoshop/Final Cut.





Michael Antrum said:


> The GPU will be the interesting thing. On some ways the presentation was deliberately vague....



Oh yeah, I forgot about the GPU change completely! It'll be interesting to see how it works out.


----------



## DoubleTap

Can you use an external GPU with the M1s?


----------



## tav.one

DoubleTap said:


> Can you use an external GPU with the M1s?


Nope


----------



## el-bo

Jay Panikkar said:


> These are little more than mobile hardware in different form factors and it will serve the overwhelming majority of Apple's consumers very well.



I't quite bizarre, though. On day one, and with their cheapest options (Air and Mini), they've already given most of their customers more computer than they'll ever know what to do with


----------



## P3TAAL

rnb_2 said:


> I get the sentiment about RAM prices - Apple has historically overcharged for RAM in order to create nice, round numbers - but the actual cost to upgrade at order time has not increased with the switch to Apple Silicon. It's been $200 (or your equivalent currency - sorry, UK!) to go from 8GB to 16 for as long as I can remember. And $400 to go from 16 to 32, etc.
> 
> There's a US reseller (Expercom) that undercuts Apple pricing on machines with upgradeable RAM by installing their own RAM at order time, sometimes by hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The big question will be which of the M-class Macs still have upgradeable RAM - fingers crossed for both a high-end iMac and Mac Pro equivalent (I honestly don't think they can hope to sell the latter without upgradeable RAM).



Just thinking aloud here.

With everything being so closely integrated what are the chances of using the SSD as a sort of RAM thingy. The technologies seem to be merging to me.
I am no computer buff but isn't ram like a really fast SSD that doesn't hold onto the memory.

Again I'm just a novice when it comes down to the nitty gritty technical stuff.


----------



## SGordB

P3TAAL said:


> Just thinking aloud here.
> 
> With everything being so closely integrated what are the chances of using the SSD as a sort of RAM thingy. The technologies seem to be merging to me.
> I am no computer buff but isn't ram like a really fast SSD that doesn't hold onto the memory.
> 
> Again I'm just a novice when it comes down to the nitty gritty technical stuff.



I've had similar thoughts. The Mac's internal SSDs read at up to 3.4 GB/s. For someone like me whose templates typically are in the 12-18 GB range when optimized (to the best of my ability) to stream off of ~450 MB/s external SATA SSDs, the question is how much smaller might that RAM footprint be with buffers optimized to a 3.4 GB/s internal drive? (And yes, I get that the current Intel Macs also feature that SSD speed.)


----------



## Dewdman42

The main huge advantage of M1 is that data communication between components has been drastically reduced. if you use SSD streaming instead of the new integrated ram, it will largely negate a huge part of what is making the M1 benchmark so well. The SSD is not integrated. I suspect that M1 owners will be able to use more SSD streaming in order to cram more samples into 16gb but will see their overall performance drop in a big way.


----------



## DoubleTap

SGordB said:


> I've had similar thoughts. The Mac's internal SSDs read at up to 3.4 GB/s. For someone like me whose templates typically are in the 12-18 GB range when optimized (to the best of my ability) to stream off of ~450 MB/s external SATA SSDs, the question is how much smaller might that RAM footprint be with buffers optimized to a 3.4 GB/s internal drive? (And yes, I get that the current Intel Macs also feature that SSD speed.)



Google tells me that RAM is roughly 30 times faster than SSDs, so it's probably not fast enough to be a substitute.


----------



## SGordB

DoubleTap said:


> Google tells me that RAM is roughly 30 times faster than SSDs, so it's probably not fast enough to be a substitute.



No, it's definitely not a substitute. What I'm talking about is the percentage of a sampled VI that one needs to load into RAM (the "pre-load buffer" or words to that effect) to get glitch-free performance. It's always a fraction of the complete sample -- just enough, with headroom, to ensure the rest of the sample for any given note at xx velocity can be streamed from the disk on time.


----------



## Dewdman42

As I said...the more you stream from SSD, the less you will be taking advantage of M1's architecture. 

Listen, if you have doubts...just wait a few more weeks. It won't be long before we see some DAW stress tests on these new machines. Then you'll know.


----------



## Ivan M.

SGordB said:


> No, it's definitely not a substitute. What I'm talking about is the percentage of a sampled VI that one needs to load into RAM (the "pre-load buffer" or words to that effect) to get glitch-free performance. It's always a fraction of the complete sample -- just enough, with headroom, to ensure the rest of the sample for any given note at xx velocity can be streamed from the disk on time.



I think it depends on the amount of processing needed. For simple sample streaming, my intuition is current ssd speeds are more then enough to half the preloaded buffers. Needs a test, though...


----------



## P3TAAL

Dewdman42 said:


> As I said...the more you stream from SSD, the less you will be taking advantage of M1's architecture.
> 
> Listen, if you have doubts...just wait a few more weeks. It won't be long before we see some DAW stress tests on these new machines. Then you'll know.





Ivan M. said:


> I think it depends on the amount of processing needed. For simple sample streaming, my intuition is current ssd speeds are more then enough to half the preloaded buffers. Needs a test, though...


Thanks for the explanations. 
I guess in the future SSD's and Ram tech might merge even more where they sort of work in tandem


----------



## jcrosby

Ivan M. said:


> I think it depends on the amount of processing needed. For simple sample streaming, my intuition is current ssd speeds are more then enough to half the preloaded buffers. Needs a test, though...


I've used a preload buffer of 24 for at least the last 4 years, maybe longer. Voices haven't been a problem, and I've never noticed any CPU penalty. If you ever felt there was a performance penalty for some reason you can just untick it or raise the buffer without having to relaunch your DAW.

In terms of SSD vs RAM, RAM will always win. (At least with the current technology).. A fast SSD is completely different from memory integrated with the CPU. There's a reason why RAM is the memory component used to assist the CPU in queuing calculations the need to be completed.


----------



## SGordB

Dewdman42 said:


> As I said...the more you stream from SSD, the less you will be taking advantage of M1's architecture.
> 
> Listen, if you have doubts...just wait a few more weeks. It won't be long before we see some DAW stress tests on these new machines. Then you'll know.



I'm waiting, I'm waiting! No chance of me ordering one of these until early adopters like Rick have sent us their dispatches from the front (thank you, Rick). But while we wait, we can't help but wonder, right? As for taking advantage of the M1 architecture, I have a 2017 iPad with just 2 GB of RAM that let's me do whatever I want to do on it, leave as many apps open as I like, with nary a hiccup. Meanwhile, the flagship 2014 i7 iMac (4 GHz, 32 GB) I run my DAW on all too easily goes into snap, crackle and pop mode if, say, I do some serious sampled piano playing and have some basic apps running in the background (Mail, a browser with a few dozen tabs -- like on my iPad -- etc.). My hope is that the Apple Silicon architecture + Big Sur on its Macs will be as optimized to handle a typical big, messy plate of simultaneous (if not necessarily, "multi-tasking") software as the A-series + iPadOS/iOS is. I suspect there will be other M1/M2 etc. benefits for me even if it turns out a small RAM footprint with a blazing SSD turns out to be adequate for my DAW requirements. But I've waited ~6 months beyond my usual upgrade schedule and can hang in there at least another few weeks.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Jay Panikkar said:


> It's obviously _not_ geared for music / audio people or pros in general, because our use cases employ workloads that require many I/O lanes, massive RAM capacity and software dependant on x86 architecture. It might be a while before ARM can fulfil these needs without any hitches—assuming that it can—because of fundamental differences between these architectures.



All true, but I heard from someone who watched it that they did feature Logic in the presentation.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> As I said...the more you stream from SSD, the less you will be taking advantage of M1's architecture.
> 
> Listen, if you have doubts...just wait a few more weeks. It won't be long before we see some DAW stress tests on these new machines. Then you'll know.



It'll be longer before all our third-party plug-ins are updated.

Dewdman, are you running out of resources on your 5,1? As I keep saying, I'm simply unable to bring mine to its knees - although I'm not running dozens of mic positions of anything. For that it probably makes sense to use slave setups.


----------



## Dewdman42

P3TAAL said:


> Thanks for the explanations.
> I guess in the future SSD's and Ram tech might merge even more where they sort of work in tandem



Most users do not need to stream many GB's of audio data from SSD, like we do here. This is a unique requirement that we have. I very much doubt that SSD's will be integrated into the CPU any time soon, as Apple has done with the main RAM. 

In any case, total system throughput will always be a factor of the lowest common denominator. That CPU can't run fast to their potential if its waiting around for the SSD's. The M1 architecture has greatly improved RAM performance, most particularly related to GPU memory. With our Intel current boxes, your GPU has its own memory and then there is the system RAM. Your CPU operates by shoveling data in and out of the main RAM. But nearly every frame of video has to then be shoveled from there to the GPU's own dedicated memory. That "shoveling" represents a LOT of overhead...and basically it usually causes your CPU to be sitting around waiting on the shovels rather then running full tilt at 100% efficiency. 

With M1, they consolidated the GPU into the CPU in a more direct way and sharing the same memory area, so that this "shoveling" overhead doesn't even have to happen. The GPU reads each frame of video out of the same memory space that the CPU is using to process it. 

That is a massive efficiency improvement in desktop computer architecture and that's why we are seeing these huge benchmark reports now. However, If you then resort back to streaming a lot of data from your SSD's...then the CPU will be back to waiting around again...just like it was for RAM on our current Intel's....only even worse because SSD's are "30 times slower" then RAM even...so... if you push into more SSD streaming in order to get more samples into your 16gb, then basically a lot of the M1 benefits will be negated. You'll still get the video sharing benefits though...but still the CPU will be waiting around on the SSD. 

So we'll see how that pans out when people start doing stress tests.. Even Apple is saying they were surprised by how well their tests turned out..they weren't expecting it to do as well as it did. So either Apple has accidentally stumbled upon a magical change in desktop computing...or we're still waiting for the shoe to drop when people start doing real world tests like DAW use.


----------



## rnb_2

gsilbers said:


> Im curious..
> 
> can you see where did it ship from?
> 
> My macbook pro 16 inch came directly from china. I think it makes a stop somewhere where the package is changed or something so it doesnt have anything "china" on it.
> sneaky apple to avoid politics.



Oh, it's definitely coming direct from China (Shenzhen - my iPhone 12 mini came via Shanghai). That's a given for almost everything Apple makes for the US market (Mac Pros are assembled in Texas, I think, but that's it). The pallet with my Mac mini on it is currently in Hong Kong - I think it will then pass through Japan, then Alaska, then the big sorting center in Louisville.


----------



## Dewdman42

Nick Batzdorf said:


> It'll be longer before all our third-party plug-ins are updated.



yea true. Well I will be interested to see in depth LogicPro stress tests using all LogicPro plugins, which presumably will be native ARM in 10.6. We can see what its like with 100 tracks of EXS using big sample ram or whatever... but honestly I think most musicians are well advised to wait for the next gen ARM, at least. That being said, I don't know who will do these stress tests.



> Dewdman, are you running out of resources on your 5,1? As I keep saying, I'm simply unable to bring mine to its knees - although I'm not running dozens of mic positions of anything. For that it probably makes sense to use slave setups.



No I am generally not running out, its the rare plugin that is a bit hot on the CPU, for all practical purposes it still remains to me completely non-issue. I am extremely annoyed about how Apple is forcing (or trying) us out of being able to continue using these machines.

I haven't needed a VePro slave at all. And I don't really want to have to. In my case i've invested thousands in PCI hardware also...which I don't want to give up lightly...so I will continue using my 5,1 for the foreseeable future...on Logic ProX 10.5, or Cubase...or even Reaper if I have to. I love my cheese grater and will not get rid of it until it truly can't keep up or Apple comes out with the replacement I need.

if I were going to go the route of a VePro Slave thing...Yea I could use a lite Mini or something for hosting LogicPro and a VePro slave on whatever, windows probably....but... I still want my high end audio cards plugged into the primary DAW machine...which for me are PCI.. So... that really isn't an option for me anytime soon. I may go that route down the road if all else fails...but I'm probably more inclined to try Cubase for a while honestly..


----------



## Dewdman42

ps - do we really need LP10.6? No not really. Now if Apple suddenly fixes all those annoying bugs that have been hanging around for years in LPX....but we have to upgrade to get it...then I'll be pretty ticked, but what are the odds they are going to fix those aforementioned bugs? not good honestly...so "meh". Keep making music with the cheesegrater on Mojave and don't worry about it for now.


----------



## method1

Apple apps on macOS Big Sur bypass firewall and VPN connections • Apple Terminal


Since the original publication of this article, macOS Big Sur has exited beta and been released to the public. Despite this, there is no indication that Apple




appleterm.com





This is interesting, seems apple does not expect their products to be used in enterprise environments where security is a priority!

Maybe it'll be "patched" in the release?


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

P3TAAL said:


> Just thinking aloud here.
> 
> With everything being so closely integrated what are the chances of using the SSD as a sort of RAM thingy. The technologies seem to be merging to me.
> I am no computer buff but isn't ram like a really fast SSD that doesn't hold onto the memory.
> 
> Again I'm just a novice when it comes down to the nitty gritty technical stuff.



This is sort of why I'm able to get by just fine with my current MB Pro. I've never been one of those guys that loads everything into Ram for the sake of having a big template. SSD's can stream really fast, and I'm even streaming via USB 3.


----------



## telecode101

..


----------



## InLight-Tone

If they put out a model with 32 GB Ram I would have bought one, as of now I'm on 64 GB and the thought of 32 GB was making me nervous, but this new architecture is exciting...


----------



## Cinebient

Interesting that all....i will see next week or so when my M1 Macbook Pro get delivered. 
I also wanted to wait for a 16" with M2 and 64GB RAM and whatever but that will be also over 4K or even 5K and so i just pulled the trigger. 
But i am anyway a just laptop user and so far i was fine with my old 15" late 2013 with i7 quadcore and just 8GB RAM. 
I do not need big templates and so 16 GB RAM should be enough for what i do since i also have some large libraries but at the end if you do not need tons of mic positions they do not sound better than some great smaller ones if clever used.
I bet next year might come the first "real" powerful M whatever macbook and desktop mac but then i might resell it for a good price and upgrade or i am still have and do not need it anyway.
Important is just that it works out for me what means i still can run my plug-ins inside the ARM Logic (from what i heard it should work) and it should perform better of course (even under Rosetta 2) as my old macbook. I guess i will see in some days and if it does not work as i want i have 14 days to test it. 
The long battery life is a great thing and also that i can run iOS apps then. 
Also some developers seems already working on releasing ARM native versions.
My old one is already on Big Sur and so far everything works for me within Logic 10.6....even Kontakt.
So far so good.


----------



## Alex Fraser

Cinebient said:


> Interesting that all....i will see next week or so when my M1 Macbook Pro get delivered.
> I also wanted to wait for a 16" with M2 and 64GB RAM and whatever but that will be also over 4K or even 5K and so i just pulled the trigger.
> But i am anyway a just laptop user and so far i was fine with my old 15" late 2013 with i7 quadcore and just 8GB RAM.
> I do not need big templates and so 16 GB RAM should be enough for what i do since i also have some large libraries but at the end if you do not need tons of mic positions they do not sound better than some great smaller ones if clever used.
> I bet next year might come the first "real" powerful M whatever macbook and desktop mac but then i might resell it for a good price and upgrade or i am still have and do not need it anyway.
> Important is just that it works out for me what means i still can run my plug-ins inside the ARM Logic (from what i heard it should work) and it should perform better of course (even under Rosetta 2) as my old macbook. I guess i will see in some days and if it does not work as i want i have 14 days to test it.
> The long battery life is a great thing and also that i can run iOS apps then.
> Also some developers seems already working on releasing ARM native versions.
> My old one is already on Big Sur and so far everything works for me within Logic 10.6....even Kontakt.
> So far so good.


Good luck, and please do report back with any findings. 👍

Would be particularly interested in hearing how hard and loud the fans work. Those on my 2019 MBP are annoying at times.


----------



## Cinebient

I will do. On my current one the fans go crazy sometimes, especially if i use something like Kaleidoscope from 2CAudio. Trying to use B2 reverb with 4X oversampling in real-time will be a good test for me too. No chance for this with even once instance on my current machine (of course not needed but still a good test for me to see how it performs these things, especially under Rosetta 2).
This will be interesting since i wonder especially how plug-ins which really needs multi-core/thread support will run on this. 
But anyway since i will stay with mac there is just one way in the future. 
Then i will see also how things like Hans Zimmer Strings, some larger Kontakt libraries run on these "entree" level new architecture.


----------



## el-bo

rnb_2 said:


> Wrapping my head around tech is where most of what talent I have actually lies - VI-C gave me a new, technically complex subject to pour into my brain every day during the pandemic, and helped keep me sane. Whether I'll actually compose anything of note, even to me, remains very up in the air, but I do have some understanding of the technical issues that people here deal with, so I'm hoping I'll be able to provide some good information.



Looking forward to it (The tech testing, and the music  )

Do you have the latest benchmark test for Logic Pro?









New Logic Multitrack Benchmark Test - Logic Pro Help






www.logicprohelp.com





I tried it last night, and managed to get 38 tracks. For a 2012 MacBook Pro, I think that's pretty impressive.


----------



## rnb_2

el-bo said:


> Looking forward to it (The tech testing, and the music  )
> 
> Do you have the latest benchmark test for Logic Pro?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> New Logic Multitrack Benchmark Test - Logic Pro Help
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.logicprohelp.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I tried it last night, and managed to get 38 tracks. For a 2012 MacBook Pro, I think that's pretty impressive.



I do have that benchmark test - I'll run it on my current machines before the new one arrives.


----------



## gsilbers

The big question will be that ram limit on big templates so let us know how much you can load until it crashes or gives you an error. 

Just to see, these macbooks are certainly not aimed at that specific workflow but still would be nice to know. maybe have a frame of reference for next models.


----------



## gsilbers

*Apple Silicon M1 Emulating x86 is Still Faster Than Every Other Mac in Single Core Benchmark











Apple Silicon M1 Emulating x86 is Still Faster Than Every Other Mac in Single Core Benchmark


The first native benchmarks of Apple's M1 chip appeared on the Geekbench site last week showing impressive native performance. Today, new...




www.macrumors.com




*


----------



## gsilbers

wont do me much if im using apple silicon logic pro with x86 audio units as those wont likley work. 
Maybe cubase x86 with x86 plugins w rosetta.


----------



## Dewdman42

Its an interesting point, I wonder if there is a way to force LogicPro to run in Intel mode? its a universal binary after all.


----------



## rnb_2

I'm fairly certain there will be a way to force Rosetta mode if software uses plugins that haven't been converted. DAWs aren't the only software that use a lot of plugins...


----------



## Ashermusic

Logic will be able to run Silicon compatible plugins in the same project as Rosetta 2 plug-ins.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> Its an interesting point, I wonder if there is a way to force LogicPro to run in Intel mode? its a universal binary after all.





Ashermusic said:


> Logic will be able to run Silicon compatible plugins in the same project as Rosetta 2 plug-ins.



I wonder how efficient that'll be.

In any case, I've been told that Logic needs some things in Catalina for Apple Silicon support, and that's why they dropped Mojave.

The degree of sense that makes is about 3 (out of 360), but that's what I was told.

I don't want to go as far as to call this depressing, and I'm certainly not blaming the Logic team, but my rear end is chafing nonetheless. Logic is the only program in the multiverse that needs Catalina, and lots of people will have to waste a lot of money to keep up with it.


----------



## rnb_2

Ashermusic said:


> Logic will be able to run Silicon compatible plugins in the same project as Rosetta 2 plug-ins.



This is a change from what we heard earlier, though I don't think that was "official" in any way. If true (and, given your connections, I have no reason to doubt it), that does change some assumptions about how long it will be before an Apple Silicon Mac could be particularly useful (RAM issues notwithstanding, of course). I don't want to read too much into that, so does it mean that Universal applications don't have to run in Rosetta mode themselves in order to load Intel plugins on Apple Silicon?


----------



## Dewdman42

rnb_2 said:


> so does it mean that Universal applications don't have to run in Rosetta mode themselves in order to load Intel plugins on Apple Silicon?



I very much doubt that is the case. 

See this article: https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/pr...icon-a-developer-helps-to-unpack-what-we-know



> What this means is that although you get to decide to run your DAW under Rosetta 2 or Natively on Apple Silicon (if it’s been updated to native) you will not be able to run Intel-based plug-ins under Rosetta 2 in a DAW that is running natively on Apple Silicon (and vice versa).


----------



## Dewdman42

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I wonder how efficient that'll be.



It won't be very efficient. hehe.

Basically at first people with ARM machines may run LogicPro as an intel app, in Rosetta, so that all their existing plugins will work.

but then later as there are more plugins in ARM, they will at some point switch to running LogicPro as ARM...and give up using their 3rd party plugins that haven't been ported yet...

Until hopefully someday they are all ported and wonderful on ARM.



> I don't want to go as far as to call this depressing, and I'm certainly not blaming the Logic team, but my rear end is chafing nonetheless. Logic is the only program in the multiverse that needs Catalina, and lots of people will have to waste a lot of money to keep up with it.



I don't disagree. I have been a very vocal critic of Apple's lack of backwards compatibility in their practices for 30 years. I think they generally have an attitude that they just want to fly forward without looking back, too bad for you if you're back there still, buy a new Mac and try to keep up. That is their general attitude...and they have made a lot of money that way so why stop now.

Really, it is definitely possible that in order support universal binaries, it has to be on Catalina...which is bad news because it means a lot of other programs are going to come out with universal binaries that also require at least Catalina.

What Apple SHOULD have done is kept the cheese grater on the Catalina list...because its not that hard to do.. Some hackers on the internet made it work, why not Apple? They didn't even try. They just chopped it off the list and over a few easy little tweaks block it from using Catalina. IMHO, that is the part that is really bad. They should support this box pretty much indefinitiately until it really can't run stuff any more (_which in my view will be when everything is native ARM), _or at the very least until there is a suitable replacement, which right now there is not.

By the way, last night I installed OpenCore on my cheese grater and installed Catalina and its running very well right now. so.. there is always that. But each year it will get more and more complicated to do this kind of thing, and the OpenCore procedure is not for the faint of heart...some Macs are harder to do than others. I suspect that yours would be "easy" like mine...so you might look into that, but I'm warning ya..its not a two click procedure.


----------



## rnb_2

Dewdman42 said:


> I very much doubt that is the case.
> 
> See this article: https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/pr...icon-a-developer-helps-to-unpack-what-we-know



Thanks - references to that were what I was remembering. So, I guess this means that we'll be able to load Apple Silicon plugins within a DAW that is running in Rosetta mode in order to load Intel plugins? That article doesn't specifically say that's not possible - only the opposite - but it is sort of implied, isn't it? The article says all or nothing...


----------



## Dewdman42

the double negatives are starting to give me a headache...hehe.

Rosetta takes an intel-only host and translates to ARM on the fly, including any plugins hosted inside it. I guess, that if you have an intel host, hosting intel plugins..the whole thing could go through rosetta on an ARM machine. But you can't really mix ARM plugins with intel plugins in that situation. Unless they developed a really sophisticated and complicated engine internally to do so.

If you have a universal binary app running on ARM...running as ARM....then it won't host intel plugins period.

Theoretically it would be possible for Apple to use separate process to host plugins. They could have an ARM plugin hoster and an Intel plugin hoster running on Rosetta, and then have LogicPro use inter app communication to those two separate processes to send the audio around, etc.. Theoretically that is possible but would be extremely complicated and not worth the hassle when they feel that in a few years all their machines will be ARM.


----------



## rnb_2

Also, sadly, UPS has thrown the dreaded "EXCEPTION" tonight, and is no longer committing to a delivery date. The package sat in Hong Kong for a very long time, not sure of the reason. I'm assuming that my order managed to squeak into the initial shipment, so I'm wondering if there are a lot of people who got their hopes up for delivery earlier in the week than Apple led them to expect (Apple's email to me said 11/19). I just rewatched that part of the presentation, and Apple only said "available next week", so maybe Thursday is really the release day, and UPS got ahead of themselves?


----------



## rnb_2

Dewdman42 said:


> the double negatives are starting to give me a headache...hehe.
> 
> Rosetta takes an intel-only host and translates to ARM on the fly, including any plugins hosted inside it. I guess, that if you have an intel host, hosting intel plugins..the whole thing could go through rosetta on an ARM machine. But you can't really mix ARM plugins with intel plugins in that situation. Unless they developed a really sophisticated and complicated engine internally to do so.
> 
> If you have a universal binary app running on ARM...running as ARM....then it won't host intel plugins period.
> 
> Theoretically it would be possible for Apple to use separate process to host plugins. They could have an ARM plugin hoster and an Intel plugin hoster running on Rosetta, and then have LogicPro use inter app communication to those two separate processes to send the audio around, etc.. Theoretically that is possible but would be extremely complicated and not worth the hassle when they feel that in a few years all their machines will be ARM.



All that makes sense - I'm just trying to square it with what Jay said.


----------



## Dewdman42

Hey he knows people, so maybe they did find a way to do it. you can hope.

Regarding delays, I just ordered an iPhone 12 Pro and it was also a month delay, they sent me a note saying its because of China and Pandemic and certain particular parts that are back ordered in the manufacturing process. I suspect its the same deal with your new M1 Mac.


----------



## rnb_2

Dewdman42 said:


> Hey he knows people, so maybe they did find a way to do it. you can hope.
> 
> Regarding delays, I just ordered an iPhone 12 Pro and it was also a month delay, they sent me a note saying its because of China and Pandemic and certain particular parts that are back ordered in the manufacturing process. I suspect its the same deal with your new M1 Mac.



Different issues - the iPhones are running into shortages of (IIRC) display controllers. My Mac mini was originally supposed to arrive 11/24-27, but then I got an email saying 11/19 from Apple, then a notification from UPS saying 11/17. So, my order has shipped, it's just a question of exactly when it's going to arrive during the coming week.


----------



## gsilbers

Graphics seems to be doing well as wel









M1 Chip Beats GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and Radeon RX 560 for Graphics Performance


Apple's M1 processor often surpasses the graphics performance of desktop GPUs, including the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and AMD Radeon RX 560,...




www.macrumors.com





But I have no idea what it means as I don’t deal w high intensive graphics but does seem good.

maybe it’s sort of a paradigm shift where having all in one chip makes it powerful enough that we re think having to buy separategraphics cards for most application , even high end video games, and also even for us the use of extra ram for large templates.
speculation of course.

I have so many fucking audio units, that I’m sure I’ll loose a ton just like I did on the intel transition.

oh well. If I can have a simple yet powerful laptop I’ll be happy.


----------



## gsilbers

Dewdman42 said:


> I very much doubt that is the case.
> 
> See this article: https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/pr...icon-a-developer-helps-to-unpack-what-we-know


Interesting stuff.

the avx part got my attention since that was the whole deal with massive x.
hope it teaches NI a lesson and do that sort wierd crap anymore.
when I finally got massive x on my Mac mini,
Still couldn’t figure out why do all that avx stuff, even worse, it’s a whole new synth platform to have to re learn. 
im still bitter and Deviating from topic.

anyways, I’m sure I’ll loose some plugins and I’m not sure logic will have a Roseta option. Seeing how Apple like really push for their upgrades I’m leaning theyll opt not to have Logic Pro be Roseta app and force to open in native silicon and put a torch on developers. .


the gpu cpu thing is also interesting.
For non graphics intensive apps like logic and audio stuff we might get more power from the m1. So that seems cool.

The thunderbolt part is weird. I thought Apple co develop with intel The thunderbolt tech.

I learned my lesson with Apple ever since FireWire800 and it’s better to stay withthe most compatible simple usb.

Between thunderbolt interfaces, no external egpu I’m sure a lot of developers will be pissed.


----------



## rnb_2

To clear something up re: Thunderbolt, that article was revised to include Apple’s statement that it would be included, and all of the M1 Macs have two Thunderbolt 3/USB4 ports.

Also, I expect that Logic will be a Universal Binary on Big Sur that can run as either native for Apple Silicon or as Intel via Rosetta 2.


----------



## Alex Fraser

The general rule is the more hardware, drivers, third party software you use for your music making, the more at risk you are when Apple inevitably makes changes, be it software or hardware.

I'm not judging how everyone works and creates music, but we have to remember that Apple aren't in the business of propping up highly customised workflows and setups. I'm sure that the obvious Kontakt/Spitfire/NI stuff will be updated in due course. But all the older hardware and software? You keep it in rotation - you take the risk that it'll eventually loose support.

The reason Logic is so cheap (I haven't paid a penny on it since 2013!) is that it exists to _encourage sales of Apple hardware. _ So, the new shiny will always be a priority for Apple. 

That said, it's worth noting that Catalina supports machines that are 7-8 years old. That's pretty fair. That you could have brought a Mac seven years ago and still run the latest Logic/OS combo today (and not pay Apple a cent in the meantime) is hardly peak "Evil Apple."


----------



## Technostica

gsilbers said:


> Graphics seems to be doing well as wel
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> M1 Chip Beats GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and Radeon RX 560 for Graphics Performance
> 
> 
> Apple's M1 processor often surpasses the graphics performance of desktop GPUs, including the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and AMD Radeon RX 560,...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.macrumors.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But I have no idea what it means as I don’t deal w high intensive graphics but does seem good.
> Maybe it’s sort of a paradigm shift where having all in one chip makes it powerful enough that we re think having to buy separategraphics cards for most application , even high end video games, and also even for us the use of extra ram for large templates. speculation of course.



Unified memory has been used in gaming consoles for many years as it helps with graphic intensive loads which games obviously are! 
The new $500 Xbox series X uses a unified 16GB GDDR6 (560 GB/s), a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, a CPU with 8 high performance cores with SMT and the GPU is on the same chip.
The previous version also used unified memory and was released about 7 years ago.

How will this impact audio software?
It’s usually only the GUI that uses the GPU and they tend to be light usage so not sure we will see significant gains here. There are some GUIs that are more demanding so maybe gains will be more significant there.
But we may see a new class of audio app that offers much greater levels of visual feedback or interaction without incurring a large or any performance hit.

Can audio software use the GPU and NE (Neural Engine) to handle audio in ways that CPUs can’t or do it more efficiently?
That I find the more interesting question as opposed to just better GUIs.

It has been speculated that the M1 is using LPDDR4X-4266 so here are some rough memory bandwidth figures for current hardware in GB/s:

2,000 HBM2E Nvidia A100
936 GGDR6X Nvidia RTX 3090
560 GDDR6 Xbox series X (Unified)
208 DDR4 3200 octo channel (AMD Server/ Pro Workstation)
104 DDR4 3200 quad channel (AMD Workstation)
~85 LPDDR5-5400 (Intel laptop 2021)
68 LPDDR4X-4266 dual channel equivalent (Intel/AMD laptops & Apple M1!)
52 DDR4 3200 dual channel (AMD desktop/laptop)

Apple may have better internal latency with the buss that connects all the engines together which will help with performance. The reviews should be very interesting.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> By the way, last night I installed OpenCore on my cheese grater and installed Catalina and its running very well right now. so.. there is always that.



The problem for me is, as I keep saying, that I'm not rich enough to buy everything I already own all over again. More specifically, $500 to upgrade my audio interface so it'll work with Metric Halo's 64-bit driver is cruel and unusual.

But rather than getting annoyed at Apple for abandoning an old machine, I focus on how good it still is. I just wish they hadn't dropped 32-bit support in macOS.


----------



## Ashermusic

Nick Batzdorf said:


> The problem for me is, as I keep saying, that I'm not rich enough to buy everything I already own all over again. More specifically, $500 to upgrade my audio interface so it'll work with Metric Halo's 64-bit driver is cruel and unusual.
> 
> But rather than getting annoyed at Apple for abandoning an old machine, I focus on how good it still is. I just wish they hadn't dropped 32-bit support in macOS.



To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven.


----------



## DoubleTap

gsilbers said:


> Graphics seems to be doing well as wel
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> M1 Chip Beats GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and Radeon RX 560 for Graphics Performance
> 
> 
> Apple's M1 processor often surpasses the graphics performance of desktop GPUs, including the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and AMD Radeon RX 560,...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.macrumors.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But I have no idea what it means as I don’t deal w high intensive graphics but does seem good.
> 
> maybe it’s sort of a paradigm shift where having all in one chip makes it powerful enough that we re think having to buy separategraphics cards for most application , even high end video games, and also even for us the use of extra ram for large templates.
> speculation of course.
> 
> I have so many fucking audio units, that I’m sure I’ll loose a ton just like I did on the intel transition.
> 
> oh well. If I can have a simple yet powerful laptop I’ll be happy.



Beating the 1050Ti is both good and okay. On the one hand, the fact that an integrated chip can beat a GPU is impressive.

On the other hand, the 1050Ti was an entry level spec GPU three years ago. After the extraordinary CPU benchmarks, it feels a lot more run-of-the-mill, even though, as I said, it's impressive that the M1 is even competing with GPUs.

To my mind, that's a good-enough performance rather than a mind-blowing one. It seems like a chip that's clearly capable of multiple displays and decent graphics, but it's not going to excite gamers (who don't use Macs in general anyway, obviously).


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Ashermusic said:


> To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
> There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
> And a time to every purpose, under Heaven.



You are incanting under skies the gods have long since departed.


----------



## Dewdman42

Alex Fraser said:


> That said, it's worth noting that Catalina supports machines that are 7-8 years old. That's pretty fair. That you could have brought a Mac seven years ago and still run the latest Logic/OS combo today (and not pay Apple a cent in the meantime) is hardly peak "Evil Apple."



On the other hand I have a pc here that I built in 2007. It was a hackintosh for a long time until that became too hard and I moved back to windows. It’s still sitting here chugging along on the latest version of windows10, 13 years later. Nothing stopping it from going another 5 years at least, using windows latest OS no less, granted it’s not fast enough to be my primary machine any more, but it’s still up to date and it’s not actually THAT slow. No reason at all to put it out of service.

a lot of perfectly capable macs will be entirely out of service in five years or less. No comment about the evilness of that


----------



## Dewdman42

Technostica said:


> bla bla bla about unified memory.
> .
> .
> How will this impact audio software?
> It’s usually only the GUI that uses the GPU and they tend to be light usage so not sure we will see significant gains here. There are some GUIs that are more demanding so maybe gains will be more significant there.
> But we may see a new class of audio app that offers much greater levels of visual feedback or interaction without incurring a large or any performance hit.



Apple stated somewhere that in particular they saw benefits when apps using Metal are used. That would of course particularly be very obvious with games and video editing apps (which is most of what they talked about and showed off in the press conference last week). I agree that audio apps will not really be taking too much advantage of that..but I will say...When VePro7 came out, it was noticeably worse performance on my non-Metal OSX system. When I interacted with VSL about it, they suggested I upgrade OSX because of metal. So I bought a metal card and upgraded to Mojave and wow, the performance of VePro went up like 20%...actually so did the overall machine benchmarks. maybe 15%. Just because of Metal.

So I think even without gaming, the Metal API is being used to harness the power of the GPU for regular desktop use. It will not be 3x performance increase like claimed by Apple, unless you're running games or rendering a lot of video, but there will be a little performance bump because just animating little windows opening and closing, or LED meters, etc..will all be handled by metal, with a faster GPU memory architecture of the M1.

It probably will not make up for the fact that with a lot of tracks...the basic cores will not keep up with top end current Intel boxes. That is my prediction.


----------



## Dewdman42

Nick Batzdorf said:


> The problem for me is, as I keep saying, that I'm not rich enough to buy everything I already own all over again. More specifically, $500 to upgrade my audio interface so it'll work with Metric Halo's 64-bit driver is cruel and unusual.
> 
> But rather than getting annoyed at Apple for abandoning an old machine, I focus on how good it still is. I just wish they hadn't dropped 32-bit support in macOS.



I totally hear you. It still is a great machine and whatever equipment you have....still great. You just won't be able to run it on the latest version of OSX or LogicPro. This is what Apple does. If we don't like it, we can switch to Windows and have more longevity. And I agree, its not chump change. But on the other hand, what you have now still makes the same great music it was making 2 weeks ago, without changing a thing.

Most likely other DAW's will join the Catalina requirement over the next 12-24 months also in my view. And not long after that Big Sur will probably become minimum requirement. When they do, we will have to either:


Just keep using older versions of everything that work perfectly fine and sound just as good and don't worry about it.


hack our cheese grater to keep it up, which so far has been doable, but will become harder over time.


buy a new ARM mac and all related audio/midi hardware that also has to be updated in order to join the party.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> 3. buy a new ARM mac and all related audio/midi hardware that also has to be updated in order to join the party.



Right, and the right ARM Mac isn't available yet.


----------



## Dewdman42

I agree. Its also presuming that Apple will eventually make the right kind of ARM mac available, I'm not sure why I would feel assured of that happening when they haven't done so since 2012.

That's why its either 1 or 2 for me for next 2 years probably. I am still experimenting with #2, so far so good, but its not over yet. I just need a way to occasionally run a couple important 32bit things..which frankly I will have to let go of sooner or later...so.. I also might have to replace all my trusty MOTU midi gear, but we'll see.


----------



## Michael Antrum

I'm going to stay on Mojave and Cubase for as long as possible. 

Cubase 11 which just came out runs fine on my Cheesegrater -by the time I have to move, I am very hopeful that Apple will have a new Silicon Mac that works for compose workflows....

If not, then, with sadness, I'll move to PC completely...


----------



## gsilbers

Dewdman42 said:


> I totally hear you. It still is a great machine and whatever equipment you have....still great. You just won't be able to run it on the latest version of OSX or LogicPro. This is what Apple does. If we don't like it, we can switch to Windows and have more longevity. And I agree, its not chump change. But on the other hand, what you have now still makes the same great music it was making 2 weeks ago, without changing a thing.
> 
> Most likely other DAW's will join the Catalina requirement over the next 12-24 months also in my view. And not long after that Big Sur will probably become minimum requirement. When they do, we will have to either:
> 
> 
> Just keep using older versions of everything that work perfectly fine and sound just as good and don't worry about it.
> 
> 
> hack our cheese grater to keep it up, which so far has been doable, but will become harder over time.
> 
> 
> buy a new ARM mac and all related audio/midi hardware that also has to be updated in order to join the party.




Im still in high sierra. im guessing a lot of poeple will stay there or mojave for a long time. 

Specially in post production and big companies, upgrading is a whole ordeal. 

Im a bit bummed out about not having the latest quick sampler but its not a big deal. 
not really into the new live loops and i have a ton of plugins i dont want to loose. 

i did get a new mac mini which is great but have it as a second rig. initially bought the i9 macbook pro but it has way too noisy and hot. 

so i have hopes for the new MacBooks but just waiting on that ram limit and how it will affectus. 


im plannig on having the cheese grater be a workstation mostly for older projects or side stuff. 

im not too happy how fast apple keeps moving OS. seems it was a few months ago that every developer was complaining about Catalina and not recomending upgrading. 
And now its not only a new OSX , its a whole universal binary that maybe works or maybe its rosetta and a whole bunch of confusion that will of course lead me to loose a ton of plugins from developers who are not active. fro chiken system translator to A1triggerGate. 


Im slowly moving over to the new mac mini and this whole notion of being forced to upgrade to stay current and see how it goes. So far is ok. the monthyl payment is not that bad for the mini and the ram upgrade wasnt too bad. now i get a more powerfull computer than the macpro at a fractino of the size and original price. 
i still need something portable so if the new macbook with more ram come out then no doubt itll blow the mini and the pro i have and the only limit will be HD space, which for portable, having so many peripherals is a pita. 

but i still think i have 2 more years for the mac pro though. then im sure itll be clear where this transition is going for us. maybe the half size macpro will be the key?


----------



## mscp

I've switched to a PC in 2017 and never looked back; however, if Apple releases a CPU and enough RAM that puts Intel/AMD to its knees in terms of performance...well...welcome back Apple! 

Being held hostage to OS and Logic? Try again Apple. Computers are utilities, not fashion accessories - to me at least. Windows is great (well, at least here it is).

I still don't know why people have so much anger/resentment for Windows. Were they THAT bad in the past? I literally don't know since I've always been a Mac user.. well, until recently.


----------



## gdoubleyou

People are getting their M1 Macs, Cinebench looks good.









Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Pro Earns 7508 Multi-Core Score in Cinebench Benchmark


The new M1 Macs are now arriving to customers, and one of the first people to get the new M1 13-inch MacBook Pro with 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, and 8GB...




www.macrumors.com


----------



## SGordB

Let the unboxing and livestreamed testing begin...


----------



## el-bo

Still a lot of speculating, and likely not of practical use for many of us. However, I thought this was interesting:


----------



## davidson

The M1 equipped systems can only output to two displays, is that correct? I'm a three display whore, couldn't and wouldn't switch to less. I hope the next iteration increases that limit.


----------



## tav.one

davidson said:


> The M1 equipped systems can only output to two displays, is that correct? I'm a three display whore, couldn't and wouldn't switch to less. I hope the next iteration increases that limit.


Mini supports two external displays. The books support just one.


----------



## gsilbers

Anyone here got their new macs?


----------



## gsilbers

The reviews are mainly that blogger, simple video editing guys who didn’t mention ram much.

Which seem to be the main target market.


----------



## InLight-Tone

gsilbers said:


> The reviews are mainly that blogger, simple video editing guys who didn’t mention ram much.
> 
> Which seem to be the main target market.


Ya that's to be expected. So close and yet so far (to a decent chunk of RAM)!?! The wait continues, be strong my Hackintosh...


----------



## el-bo

gsilbers said:


> Anyone here got their new macs?



Dave has...and Dave is cool 😀


----------



## whitesaber

Would a mac mini be a good purchase to run Logic Pro / Cubase while all libraries and vsts run on slave machines? If so, would one need 8 gb or 16gb ram? 

I'm not really planning to buy one. Just a thought


----------



## Jetzer

Interesting to see they kind of recommend getting the Air and the extra $300 for a Pro is not worth the money....unless you do long-term sustained heavy processing.

I am thinking of getting the Air. I am not gonna use it much for audio work, but I do want to be able to do some sketching on it, so I am thinking about getting the 512, 16gb version.


----------



## gsilbers

Jetzer said:


> Interesting to see they kind of recommend getting the Air and the extra $300 for a Pro is not worth the money....unless you do long-term sustained heavy processing.
> 
> I am thinking of getting the Air. I am not gonna use it much for audio work, but I do want to be able to do some sketching on it, so I am thinking about getting the 512, 16gb version.




I’ve been seeing these reviews but the aim is not for audio or ram.
We still not sure if that 16gb ram will be shared with other apps. Or if the ssd and it’s so fast that we rethink how we use ram in general.


----------



## Technostica

gsilbers said:


> I’ve been seeing these reviews but the aim is not for audio or ram.
> We still not sure if that 16gb ram will be shared with other apps. Or if the ssd and it’s so fast that we rethink how we use ram in general.


It has a PCIe 4.0 controller for an SSD and the RAM is LPDDR4X-4266 both of which are the same as Intel's current laptop platform. Although Intel's platform also supports DDR5 but they haven't fully validated it yet due to how new it is, which is probably why Apple have stuck with DDR4. Intel will have DDR5 support Q1 2021 or so.

PCIe 4.0 supports up to ~7GB/s.
LPDDR4X-4266 typically supports up to ~68GB/s

So with a factor of 10 difference plus a much lower latency for RAM don't expect the SSD to replace RAM anytime soon.

The big gains will be for tasks that use the GPU and NI engines in conjunction with the CPU and especially where they benefit from the Unified memory. The memory being integrated has no relevance to its speed.

Has anyone seen tests for how fast the SSD is?


----------



## Cinebient

Technostica said:


> It has a PCIe 4.0 controller for an SSD and the RAM is LPDDR4X-4266 both of which are the same as Intel's current laptop platform. Although Intel's platform also supports DDR5 but they haven't fully validated it yet due to how new it is, which is probably why Apple have stuck with DDR4. Intel will have DDR5 support Q1 2021 or so.
> 
> PCIe 4.0 supports up to ~7GB/s.
> LPDDR4X-4266 typically supports up to ~68GB/s
> 
> So with a factor of 10 difference plus a much lower latency for RAM don't expect the SSD to replace RAM anytime soon.
> 
> The big gains will be for tasks that use the GPU and NI engines in conjunction with the CPU and especially where they benefit from the Unified memory. The memory being integrated has no relevance to its speed.
> 
> Has anyone seen tests for how fast the SSD is?





https://www.macerkopf.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/macbook_air_ssd_benchmark.jpg?x43887


----------



## el-bo

Having watched a few of these review videos now, it would be a huge shock to me if audio-production is going to be M1's Achilles heel. The RAM upper-ceiling will be an issue for bigger templates, of course.


----------



## Technostica

Cinebient said:


> https://www.macerkopf.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/macbook_air_ssd_benchmark.jpg?x43887


Thanks but I have no idea how to translate that for non video work.


----------



## Cinebient

Technostica said:


> Thanks but I have no idea how to translate that for non video work.



Well, i also not  All it seems that its about 2X as fast as the previous ones.


----------



## Alex Fraser

According to the reviews I’ve seen, fan noise appears to be a thing of the past for both the mini and pro. That’s excellent news.


----------



## seclusion3

I had a dream, someone backed up their current system, and migrated it to a ArMBP and opened Logic Pro in Rossetta 2 and everything worked. The 16 gigs ram worked great. I/O with a Thunderbolt Dock connected with external drives and monitors. The system worked with buffers at 32, something an i7 coughed at!


----------



## starise

Wonderful machine...much faster!!
Wait- Nothing works with it yet!!

Nice paper weight. Is that sarcastic or true?
Mac be like- Hold our hand for a bit send us your money.

" I have a new Mac" Great! Make any decent projects on it? 

No but it's looks cool and has a nice display.


----------



## el-bo

starise said:


> Wait- Nothing works with it yet!!



Except _everything_ works for it! It seems that it might have enough CPU headroom to handle the extra level of abstraction that is Rosetta and still be more powerful than was previously expected.


----------



## Alex Fraser

el-bo said:


> Except _everything_ works for it! It seems that it might have enough CPU headroom to handle the extra level of abstraction that is Rosetta and still be more powerful than was previously expected.


That seems to be the common theme: Whatever jumble of apps the reviewer runs, native or rosetta, it all runs like butter. 

The acid test will be a daw + plugins running under Rosetta. I don’t think I’ve seen a reviewer try that yet.

We shall see. 😉


----------



## gsilbers

Alex Fraser said:


> That seems to be the common theme: Whatever jumble of apps the reviewer runs, native or rosetta, it all runs like butter.
> 
> The acid test will be a daw + plugins running under Rosetta. I don’t think I’ve seen a reviewer try that yet.
> 
> We shall see. 😉



It’ll be interesting under cubase to see if plugins work.
I doubt Apple will let us install logic x86 so we can use plugins.

but maybe they thought about it.

I don’t remember how it was in Rosetta 1.


----------



## Alex Fraser

gsilbers said:


> It’ll be interesting under cubase to see if plugins work.
> I doubt Apple will let us install logic x86 so we can use plugins.
> 
> but maybe they thought about it.
> 
> I don’t remember how it was in Rosetta 1.


They must have thought about it. Maybe there’s a plug-in scan on load (Logic) and if non-native stuff is found, Logic boots as Rosetta. No idea really.


----------



## rnb_2

My Mac mini did end up arriving today - I'm not sure if the knowledge that a package can get from Hong Kong to the coast of Connecticut in 27 hours will come in handy in the future or not.

Still getting the basics set up and doing some system benchmarks - the reviews are all accurate, so far. I'll report back when I have more useful info.


----------



## gsilbers

rnb_2 said:


> My Mac mini did end up arriving today - I'm not sure if the knowledge that a package can get from Hong Kong to the coast of Connecticut in 27 hours will come in handy in the future or not.
> 
> Still getting the basics set up and doing some system benchmarks - the reviews are all accurate, so far. I'll report back when I have more useful info.



yeah!!


let know about those plugins and logic if it can work on rosetta2 etc. 

and ram limit. 


and have fun!


----------



## colony nofi

While I guess there are quite a few barriers to entry for composing on the new m1 macs, they might not be so high for sound post production. If we can justify it, I'd love to get one here just to see how projects run (or if we can even get them to run yet... nuendo isn't qualified to work on big surr yet, nor are many of the important plugs we use. However, thats a separate issue from being able to work on m1 - it just needs to be solved first.)


----------



## el-bo

colony nofi said:


> nuendo isn't qualified to work on big surr yet.



Oh wait! Are they shipping with Big Sur, then?


----------



## gsilbers

el-bo said:


> Oh wait! Are they shipping with Big Sur, then?



they have to. its the only way theyll run the drivers, specs, m1 chip etc. 
so not way of intalling older OS


----------



## gsilbers

colony nofi said:


> While I guess there are quite a few barriers to entry for composing on the new m1 macs, they might not be so high for sound post production. If we can justify it, I'd love to get one here just to see how projects run (or if we can even get them to run yet... nuendo isn't qualified to work on big surr yet, nor are many of the important plugs we use. However, thats a separate issue from being able to work on m1 - it just needs to be solved first.)




totally see it being amazing for post. 

basically this is the system we ran in the studio to mix tv shows back in 2010ish

and i could open up same type of project/tamplate/load with my new mac mini 2019
so if these m1 have better benchmarks than the mac mini then im sure my next mix project to be laying down on a sofa scorlling through tons of tracks


----------



## el-bo

gsilbers said:


> they have to. its the only way theyll run the drivers, specs, m1 chip etc.
> so not way of intalling older OS



Actually, it's something I knew for the past two generations. This time I got so distracted by the whole 'Silicon SOC' aspect I completely forgot :(

Apologies to @starise if the "Wait- Nothing works with it yet!!" comment was in reference to Big Sur. I just assumed they were talking about the other incompatibility issues 

I'll get my coat...


----------



## colony nofi

gsilbers said:


> totally see it being amazing for post.
> 
> basically this is the system we ran in the studio to mix tv shows back in 2010ish
> 
> and i could open up same type of project/tamplate/load with my new mac mini 2019
> so if these m1 have better benchmarks than the mac mini then im sure my next mix project to be laying down on a sofa scorlling through tons of tracks


I laughed seeing the fire extinguisher in your rack room. Old machines really did get that hot sometimes.

The whole mac mini thing is getting more and more interesting... just wish it had 4 usb-4 ports over 2. We need 10Gb/s networking (there goes one port - damn I wish they still had that option for the in built ethernet) and a tv output (decklink - another thunderbolt / usb4 port - and we dont know if they work yet... they're not a graphics "card" so am hopeful...)

And with object oriented mixing / offline processing become far more usable... and even the option of serving vst's via ethernet being a realistic prospect... edit workstations become much much simpler to setup/manage. Mix rooms are still a thing... but its easier for a small facility to have one or two mix rooms which are complex and a one size fits all setup for edit stations than needing to worry about each and every workstation separately. Free's up space - you can potentially run 4 workstations in one small room - and just have one "break out room" that people can book to rest ears / work on speakers.

Virtual surround via headphones is good enough for track lay now. Its fast becoming a brave new world.


----------



## Knute5

Got a report of 90 tracks before overload msgs. on default settings and stock sound card on the 16GB Mac mini M1 using the Logic Benchmark here: https://www.logicprohelp.com/forum/...uWfA-IVsd4_Qf0G4p2nVZOai9yYCnib7QcLhRXRAlsceI


----------



## colony nofi

Knute5 said:


> Got a report of 90 tracks before overload msgs. on default settings and stock sound card on the 16GB Mac mini M1 using the Logic Benchmark here: https://www.logicprohelp.com/forum/...uWfA-IVsd4_Qf0G4p2nVZOai9yYCnib7QcLhRXRAlsceI


That is super impressive. Now with RME drivers working on big sur, i look forward to seeing those numbers with a babyface or UFX or....


----------



## el-bo

Knute5 said:


> Got a report of 90 tracks before overload msgs. on default settings and stock sound card on the 16GB Mac mini M1 using the Logic Benchmark here: https://www.logicprohelp.com/forum/...uWfA-IVsd4_Qf0G4p2nVZOai9yYCnib7QcLhRXRAlsceI



The last-generation i7 Mini apparently managed to sustain 73 tracks, so maybe it's not too unrealistic for a newer computer to have beaten that. An Intel could probably get there. But the fact that the Air could potentially get close to this is what's really impressive. Definitely interested to see how many tracks the Air would lose due to possible thermal throttling.


----------



## colony nofi

Oh - but that this is first gen silicon. Sure, built off of what - 7 years of arm cores by apple now. But even 5 years ago, folk were laughed out the room when the thought was that apple could pull off serious x86 competition any time in the next decade due to the massive performance gap between the two. Needless to say, the reports coming out the last few days (the anandtech reports are thorough) show that this chip is not only capable, but processing per watt beats pretty much anything out there, and its single core performance is utterly astounding. Its thermal performance is great owning to efficiencies meaning the chip works damn well at 10W (!!!!). This is the first silicon that apple have released that have pushed this architecture past what is needed in mobile/ipad devices, and it scales better than most people expected. 

I was hugely skeptical of the whole thing. Colour me surprised.

It also seems like the chip has been designed to facilitate higher numbers of cores (perhaps 8 firestorm cores in the 16" mbp - they have the thermal envelope for more, or perhaps even pushing clock speed.)

It begs the question as to what they are planning for imac/new mac pro. We'll know in the next 24 months of course.

Re thermal throttling. There's pretty good info on whats happening there. Unlike x86 chips in the same thermal envelope, the chips don't throttle straight away, maintaining full speed for approx 8 mins under full load, then gradually going down about 15-20% over the next 20 mins or so until they settle. Thats crazy for a fanless system.


----------



## tav.one

el-bo said:


> The last-generation i7 Mini apparently managed to sustain 73 tracks, so maybe it's not too unrealistic for a newer computer to have beaten that. An Intel could probably get there. But the fact that the Air could potentially get close to this is what's really impressive. Definitely interested to see how many tracks the Air would lose due to possible thermal throttling.


It was 83 for the Mac Mini 2018, check this post: https://vi-control.net/community/threads/2018-mac-mini.76268/post-4315856


----------



## Alex Fraser

colony nofi said:


> Re thermal throttling. There's pretty good info on whats happening there. Unlike x86 chips in the same thermal envelope, the chips don't throttle straight away, maintaining full speed for approx 8 mins under full load, then gradually going down about 15-20% over the next 20 mins or so until they settle. Thats crazy for a fanless system.


That's...crazy.
The fans on my 2019 MBP speed up within a minute of heavy load.

Quick aside. On the day I got this machine, my mother in law asked me to set up her new iPad. The iPad felt like the future - so fast, silent and quick. Afterwards, I turned on the the MbP. The fans started up almost immediately and didn't stop for a few hours until the initial HD index had completed. Felt like a tractor in comparison to the iPad and that's always stuck with me.


----------



## jcrosby

tav.one said:


> It was 83 for the Mac Mini 2018, check this post: https://vi-control.net/community/threads/2018-mac-mini.76268/post-4315856


Yeah. If there were an i9 Mini it'd do the same if not better. The i9 16 inch macbook hits around 100 according to GS. Since Logic is optimized for the m1 chips I think the real test will be how it handles kontakt, omnisphere etc...


----------



## el-bo

tav.one said:


> It was 83 for the Mac Mini 2018, check this post: https://vi-control.net/community/threads/2018-mac-mini.76268/post-4315856



Ah, gotcha! I took that number form the LogicProHelp thread. So it's pretty close, albeit with the M1 version running cooler and quieter than the i7. Cheaper, also 😉


----------



## el-bo

colony nofi said:


> Re thermal throttling. There's pretty good info on whats happening there. Unlike x86 chips in the same thermal envelope, the chips don't throttle straight away, maintaining full speed for approx 8 mins under full load, then gradually going down about 15-20% over the next 20 mins or so until they settle. Thats crazy for a fanless system.



Yeah! Forgot that part of the story. Cheers!


----------



## Vik

colony nofi said:


> It begs the question as to what they are planning for imac/new mac pro. We'll know in the next 24 months of course.


I hope they move on, and avoid sticking to the old product categories (iMac, Mac mini, Mac Pro etc). What most of us need is something between the Mac mini and the Mac Pro.


----------



## tav.one

Vik said:


> I hope they move on, and avoid sticking to the old product categories (iMac, Mac mini, Mac Pro etc). What most of us need is something between the Mac mini and the Mac Pro.


I think the Apple Silicon Mac Mini that will replace the current Hi-end Mac Mini will be just that.


----------



## Alex Fraser

tav.one said:


> I think the Apple Silicon Mac Mini that will replace the current Hi-end Mac Mini will be just that.


Agreed. I think any "pro" version of the mini that runs (almost) silent, with a ram bump and a good selection of IO will scratch that itch for everyone but the purists and PoWeR users.


----------



## whitesaber




----------



## gsilbers

Any news on that ram limit for sample libraries ?


----------



## khollister

I don't think U-he has released a native version of anything yet, so that Diva test would be running it translated via Rosetta. Wonder if Alchemy is native as well? And does this confirm you can run translated Intel binaries inside native Logic Pro?


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

Knute5 said:


> Got a report of 90 tracks before overload msgs. on default settings and stock sound card on the 16GB Mac mini M1 using the Logic Benchmark here: https://www.logicprohelp.com/forum/...uWfA-IVsd4_Qf0G4p2nVZOai9yYCnib7QcLhRXRAlsceI



That posting is from two years ago. Is there an update somewhere in that thread?


----------



## macmac

When I saw the specs of the new M1 mini I wondered is this 16GB RAM limit not an issue due to this new architecture, whereas the last mini could be upgraded to 64GB?


----------



## John Zuker

macmac said:


> When I saw the specs of the new M1 mini I wondered is this 16GB RAM limit not an issue due to this new architecture, whereas the last mini could be upgraded to 64GB?


 
Yeah, what gives with the limited RAM? Kind of useless for us composers unless its more-better-different in the architecture.


----------



## SupremeFist

It's "just" audio tracks and a ton of plugins, rather than VIs, but this is an M1 Air running Pro Tools and all the plugins through the Rosetta emulation layer and it's... pretty wow. (Vid from DigitalDrugLord at GS.)


----------



## rnb_2

I'm still getting things set up here - haven't even started installing plugins yet. The system runs great thus far - very snappy - but I'm getting a lot of inconsistency running the Logic Pro benchmark. I saw that someone got up to 90 tracks, but I'm lucky if I hit 70 so far. If somebody could give a rundown of Logic settings that I can check that might be effecting performance (I know about 128 buffer, but one try went better with buffer at 32 for some reason), that would be a big help. I don't have an audio interface connected to it, so just using the built-in audio for now - my i7 mini has a Thunderbolt 3 hub that has an interface that seems to work fine for the little that I do on that, music-wise, and will eventually move to the M1 mini.


----------



## gsilbers

rnb_2 said:


> I'm still getting things set up here - haven't even started installing plugins yet. The system runs great thus far - very snappy - but I'm getting a lot of inconsistency running the Logic Pro benchmark. I saw that someone got up to 90 tracks, but I'm lucky if I hit 70 so far. If somebody could give a rundown of Logic settings that I can check that might be effecting performance (I know about 128 buffer, but one try went better with buffer at 32 for some reason), that would be a big help. I don't have an audio interface connected to it, so just using the built-in audio for now - my i7 mini has a Thunderbolt 3 hub that has an interface that seems to work fine for the little that I do on that, music-wise, and will eventually move to the M1 mini.



Can you run logic on Rosetta 2 ?

iguess once you try to install plugins you will see if it’s possible.


----------



## macmac

I'm interested in knowing about the file system compatibility with other drives. Right now I have the i7 mini on Mojave and I use an external T2 enclosure with 4 drives which includes my sample storage and audio recording drive. I still want my Mojave system for times when I need the software I don't intend to / can't upgrade. If I had the new M1 mini, I might want to utilize those external drives between both minis, but it may not be possible since Big Sur may change the file system, plus preference changes, thus rendering it no longer viable to the i7 mini. In that case, I may have to have duplicates of these drives exclusive to the M1 and treat both minis/drives as independent systems, especially with preferences and such (e.g. I keep my iTunes, Photos, and document files on one of those external drives). 

What would be nice though is if I could share my monitor with both computers. In any case, right now I'm just thinking out loud.


----------



## SupremeFist

macmac said:


> I'm interested in knowing about the file system compatibility with other drives. Right now I have the i7 mini on Mojave and I use an external T2 enclosure with 4 drives which includes my sample storage and audio recording drive. I still want my Mojave system for times when I need the software I don't intend to / can't upgrade. If I had the new M1 mini, I might want to utilize those external drives between both minis, but it may not be possible since Big Sur may change the file system, plus preference changes, thus rendering it no longer viable to the i7 mini. In that case, I may have to have duplicates of these drives exclusive to the M1 and treat both minis/drives as independent systems, especially with preferences and such.
> 
> What would be nice though is if I could share my monitor with both computers. In any case, right now I'm just thinking out loud.


Big Sur will not change the file system of external drives.


----------



## Alex Fraser

It’s worth redoing your Time Machine backup in APFS though. Much faster.


----------



## rnb_2

Native Access won't even try to run on Apple Silicon at this point - just points you to their website for info - so can't install anything


----------



## Alex Fraser

rnb_2 said:


> Native Access won't even try to run on Apple Silicon at this point - just points you to their website for info


I’m straining against the limits of my technical competence here.. but I’m pretty sure Native Access is built using some form of cross platform app engine (Electron?) i.e it’s not a standard Mac app. I wonder.. 🧐


----------



## rnb_2

Alex Fraser said:


> I’m straining against the limits of my technical competence here.. but I’m pretty sure Native Access is built using some form of cross platform app engine (Electron?) i.e it’s not a standard Mac app. I wonder.. 🧐



I know NI also had some older hardware products that they said could be physically damaged by Big Sur (!!!!), so maybe they're just being extremely cautious. Kinda puts a damper on things, though - most of my VIs are in Kontakt.


----------



## Alex Fraser

rnb_2 said:


> I know NI also had some older hardware products that they said could be physically damaged by Big Sur (!!!!), so maybe they're just being extremely cautious. Kinda puts a damper on things, though - most of my VIs are in Kontakt.


Have you tried the Spitfire App?


----------



## el-bo

John Zuker said:


> Yeah, what gives with the limited RAM?



Wanting to be able to sell future Mac computers?


----------



## el-bo

whitesaber said:


>




Love it. Might have to try the Alchemy test, also.



SupremeFist said:


> It's "just" audio tracks and a ton of plugins, rather than VIs, but this is an M1 Air running Pro Tools and all the plugins through the Rosetta emulation layer and it's... pretty wow. (Vid from DigitalDrugLord at GS.)



This is getting so interesting. Really impressive video, and it ain't even native.


----------



## el-bo

rnb_2 said:


> I know about 128 buffer



As far as I know, you could only run it at 128 if you make sure that the highlighted track is not active i.e contains plugins, and record-ready. Use a blank audio track as the highlighted track. Or to be safe, just set the buffer to 1024. Also, I think that processing buffer should be set to 'Large'.


----------



## rnb_2

Alex Fraser said:


> Have you tried the Spitfire App?



Next up - I only have Discover and Labs, though.


----------



## gsilbers

Someone at gearslutz said they could load a few 3rd party plugins in logic. hopes are up


----------



## Cinebient

So no N.I. plug-ins on Apple silicon? That would be game over for me sadly then. I hope not.


----------



## gsilbers

rnb_2 said:


> I'm still getting things set up here - haven't even started installing plugins yet. The system runs great thus far - very snappy - but I'm getting a lot of inconsistency running the Logic Pro benchmark. I saw that someone got up to 90 tracks, but I'm lucky if I hit 70 so far. If somebody could give a rundown of Logic settings that I can check that might be effecting performance (I know about 128 buffer, but one try went better with buffer at 32 for some reason), that would be a big help. I don't have an audio interface connected to it, so just using the built-in audio for now - my i7 mini has a Thunderbolt 3 hub that has an interface that seems to work fine for the little that I do on that, music-wise, and will eventually move to the M1 mini.



someone mentioned that for the benchmark you have to change the amount of "cores" from automatic to 8 cores in the logic preferences. not sure if its your case , but just in case ill mention it.


----------



## rnb_2

Cinebient said:


> So no N.I. plug-ins on Apple silicon? That would be game over for me sadly then. I hope not.



It's not permanent, but that is the case currently - hopefully, they'll get everything cleared relatively quickly, both for Big Sur and for Rosetta on M1, then move on to the work of getting Universal apps done.


----------



## Cinebient

rnb_2 said:


> It's not permanent, but that is the case currently - hopefully, they'll get everything cleared relatively quickly, both for Big Sur and for Rosetta on M1, then move on to the work of getting Universal apps done.



I have not trouble here with Big Sur on my intel mac with any Kontakt library but if N.I. will not let me install anything on apple silicon i have to return it sadly since i sadly need Kontakt and cannot wait a few months since N.I. is slow with updating things mostly. 
Yeah, maybe i was too euphoric here. I wish i would not need Kontakt, the only thing now holding me back to leave all N.I. stuff.


----------



## Alex Fraser

Cinebient said:


> So no N.I. plug-ins on Apple silicon? That would be game over for me sadly then. I hope not.


I’m betting it’s less about the plugins and more to do with Native Access itself.


----------



## seclusion3

Someone mentioned that right click, get info click to make Logic Pro boot in Rosetta 2


----------



## rnb_2

seclusion3 said:


> Someone mentioned that right click, get info click to make Logic Pro boot in Rosetta 2



Yeah, that's how it worked during the PPC to Intel transition.


----------



## SGordB

macmac said:


> When I saw the specs of the new M1 mini I wondered is this 16GB RAM limit not an issue due to this new architecture, whereas the last mini could be upgraded to 64GB?



The trick is to compare these first Apple Silicon Macs to the entry level mobile Macs they're replacing -- and, with a bit of stretching -- to assume this first SOC was optimized for the Air (power sipper, no fan) and good enough for the entry level Macbook Pro (both of which also topped out at 16GB RAM) -- and, hey, why not throw it into the entry level Mac Mini too? Everything points to the M1 being on a parallel development path to its sister A-series, which means we should expect Macs with M1z/x/y SOC's any week or month now, probably starting with the hotly rumoured 24" iMac. These bigger, beefier SOCs won't have to pander to power-sipping laptops, low budget buyers and fanless enclosures. I would bet real money that they will be built to accomodate up to 32GB, 64GB or eventually more RAM as they climb up the price-point ladder and find their way into 27" or 32" 6K iMacs, the Mac Pro and heavy-lifting Mac Minis. One thing I don't have the tech chops to speculate about is whether the M1 could be clocked >3.2GHz in these plugged in, well-cooled 12-core, 16-core and beyond M1 variations. If so, their single core specs could rise even higher. Then, a year from now, the M2 line will come out, making even these beasts seem slow by comparison.


----------



## rnb_2

OK, here's the first interesting technical point: Logic Pro is running in Apple Silicon mode, but is running Intel plugins. In Activity Monitor, the process using the most CPU is AUHostingCompatibilityService (Logic Pro). With one instance of Spitfire LABS loaded, it sits at around 33% CPU (of 800% total), and climbs to ~50% with four instances loaded.

So, the idea that everything in your pipeline would have to be Universal before you could run the host in native Apple Silicon mode has turned out to be false, as near as I can tell.

Edit for extra info: I just checked my i7 mini with the same instruments loaded, and there is no similar process running, so it's definitely something that is handling Intel AUs on Apple Silicon without forcing Logic to run in Rosetta 2.


----------



## colony nofi

John Zuker said:


> Yeah, what gives with the limited RAM? Kind of useless for us composers unless its more-better-different in the architecture.



Hey John - and others asking about the RAM limits.

M1 is an all in one package that includes RAM (its a "stacked package") in the one "chip" (whatever that means these days). There are no ram slots on motherboards using the M1, and its doubtful there ever will be. It has distinct advantages for system timings / thermals / latency as opposed to having the RAM off the main die. But the design means that the ram cannot be upgraded. The Ram is literally put inside the chip during the manufacturing process. Apple currently make only 2 versions of the M1 chip. One with 8GB Ram, one with 16GB. The chips with only 7 GPU cores (lowest end air model) are exactly the same as the 8GPU cores (x-rays seem to confirm this) just with one GPU core disabled due to manufacturing issues. This is extremely common (known as binning in the industry - there's a reason zen core based AMD chips are designed the way they are...the zen 3 architecture is VERY efficient from a manufacturing perspective.)

Apple's philosophy in creating the M1 is intriguing. They've gone for the LOWEST end of all their products. Yet, the air accounts for a huge percentage of their laptop sales, so they are confident.

They're essentially non-upgradable items, but they're being designed for a lifetime of around 7 years, with a 4 year mean. Being non-constrained by the need to have upgradable components has meant they have been able to eek out extra performance / efficiencies. That is excellent for a huge proportion of users, but not necessarily for those of us that like to upgrade machines over time. It is certainly completely different to buying a PC. I've heard from other hardware manufacturers that they are looking very closely at what apple have done and there will be some who try to replicate their approach.

The RAM is shared between all computation on the chip. So thats CPU high efficiency cores, low efficiency cores, Neural Engine, GPU cores. But you can think of it in a very similar way to ram in a current Mac, only the amount available to any given thread will be less due to the shared nature. When running cubase/logic, we'd expect only minimal ram to go to processes outside of those running the DAW though. The GPU/Neural cores are not utilised massively. (Though there's interesting talk amongst ios audio devs the last few years about leveraging it... I haven't followed closely, but I wonder if some interesting DSP may be possible using that engine)

The ram being used is LPDDR4. Pretty standard stuff. LP as in all the current mac laptops. Its performance is surprisingly awesome even compared to higher wattage standard ram. Look to a move to LP DDR5 in 24 months or so. This is just conjecture through supply channels. Intel is looking to get there quicker.

The takeaway is - YES. For many DAW workflows, 16GB will not be enough. One maybe able to set RAM usage to be lower than normal in things like kontakt (once it is working) to offset this issue a little, but it will be a wall for some. Its surprising how much you can get done with 16GB, but for those of us used to monster DAW workstations (or even the 64GB macbook pro) its going to need a change in workflow to use - and the machine is probably not for us.

But higher RAM M series chips are on their way. How this is implemented is anyones guess. There's been interesting discussions around implications of higher amounts of ram in a stacked die situation and possible limits, but apple has shown us with the M1 that they have some incredible chip designers and engineers who are REALLY thinking outside the box and delivering innovations beyond any of the other major chip manufacturers. 

Expect 32/64 GB on high end MBP's. Expect a mac mini with higher specs in a year or so's time to replace the intel mini's still being sold. Expect a mid level mac pro which is NOT a mini. With at least 64GB ram. Its either going to be a processing monster in a smaller case, or its going to be a mid level machine, with another super high level machine sitting above. Conversations I've had have seen people super convinced of both approaches. Expect workstation class performance - including the possibilities of > 128GB Ram.

Apple Silicon has some tricks up it sleeve still for sure, and they'll delight and surprise us a few more times in the 24month rollout.

Just like AMD really surprised us with Zen 3... (although not quite on the same level as apple's)


----------



## gsilbers

colony nofi said:


> Expect 32/64 GB on high end MBP's. Expect a mac mini with higher specs in a year or so's time to replace the intel mini's still being sold. Expect a mid level mac pro which is NOT a mini. With at least 64GB ram. Its either going to be a processing monster in a smaller case, or its going to be a mid level machine, with another super high level machine sitting above. Conversations I've had have seen people super convinced of both approaches. Expect workstation class performance - including the possibilities of > 128GB Ram.




I did read the rumors of a smaller mac pro. Im guessing the mac mini will probably stay as is and be just the entry level mac it used to be. while that medium size mac pro will have more power and ram. 
btw- the only thing thats bigger than mac mini and smaller than a mac pro w/o a screen attached its the apple mac cube. Yep..im predicting the 2021 mac cube


----------



## vocalnick

Cinebient said:


> I have not trouble here with Big Sur on my intel mac with any Kontakt library but if N.I. will not let me install anything on apple silicon i have to return it sadly since i sadly need Kontakt and cannot wait a few months since N.I. is slow with updating things mostly.



Does Native Access work for you on Big Sur? I've just done a test upgrade on my 16" Intel Macbook Pro, and while Kontakt itself seems to work fine in my existing projects, I can't seem to run Native Access any more, so I'd be out of luck if I had to install it fresh...

EDIT: Actually never mind, I just reinstalled the latest Native Access version and it works fine on Big Sur.

In any event, I wonder if Kontakt might work if you had migrated an existing system across rather than installed from scratch?


----------



## seclusion3

Maybe the Trashcan can be revitalized with M(x)Arm system.


----------



## Alex Fraser

Big Sur/Intel here. Native Access seems to be working fine.


----------



## whitesaber

aaand another bench with 3rd party plugins :


----------



## Cinebient

Yes, no problem with N.I. on Big Sur and intel, so i thought it will run trough Rosetta but N.I. will not let me even try it. No problem if we talk about weeks but there is no clear answer if it takes them months or whatever. 
Since longer time i would anyway like to avoid everything N.I. but at least i need Kontakt still.


----------



## rnb_2

Some other notes: UVI Workstation, ROLI Equator (v1), FXPansion Cypher 2 and Strobe 2, Spitfire LABS, and Arturia Analog Lab Lite 4 all seem to work very well at this point (selecting presets with the mouse in Cypher 2 doesn't seem to work, but the arrow keys do; didn't notice any other major quirks). BBCSO Discover didn't pass Logic's AU validation for some reason, even though LABS works. Computer-based iLok also seems to work fine - I was able to activate my UVI products without issue.

Since NI is a no-show for now, I'll be installing everything else I can think of for testing. Next up is probably some IK stuff from the recent group buy.


----------



## vocalnick

rnb_2 said:


> Native Access won't even try to run on Apple Silicon at this point - just points you to their website for info - so can't install anything



Just thinking out loud - do you still have an Intel machine with Kontakt installed? I wonder what would happen if you manually copied the Kontakt app into the applications folder (and possibly the associated library folders)?

Even if it worked it would be a limited victory, as you'd need Native Access to authorise it, but it could give us some idea of how big a job NI have in front of them. if it's just getting Native Access to run, then hopefully it might be relatively quick...


----------



## el-bo

Blimey! 😮

MacBook Pro 13" M1 2020 16GB - 435 Space Designers @26 degrees C









Apple MacBook Pro M1 Audio Power Test - Logic Pro | Production Expert


The MacBook Pro M1 audio power test is just one of the tests we are going to be conducting with the new Apple Macs in the coming weeks, this test is Logic Pro.




www.pro-tools-expert.com


----------



## Alex Fraser

el-bo said:


> Blimey! 😮
> 
> MacBook Pro 13" M1 2020 16GB - 435 Space Designers @26 degrees C
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Apple MacBook Pro M1 Audio Power Test - Logic Pro | Production Expert
> 
> 
> The MacBook Pro M1 audio power test is just one of the tests we are going to be conducting with the new Apple Macs in the coming weeks, this test is Logic Pro.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.pro-tools-expert.com


The choice quote for me:


> *What About Fan Noise?*
> On the MacBook Pro i9 after running the test for 2 minutes the temperature of the Mac was around 80 degrees C. At this point, the fan was going fast enough to dry your hair.
> 
> On the new MacBook Pro 13" M1 after running the same test for 5 minutes the temperature of the Mac was around 26 degrees C. We couldn't get the fan to kick in. This thing is silent, it could spend its life in a monastery where one has to take a vow of silence.


That's insane if correct. My current 2019 MbP routinely hits the high 80's under load with fans to match.


----------



## el-bo

Alex Fraser said:


> The choice quote for me:
> 
> That's insane if correct. My current 2019 MbP routinely hits the high 80's under load with fans to match.




For a different perspective: I currently run my 2012 MBP upside-down and with the base cover removed. If I turn off wifi, bluetooth etc., ramp up the fans to 6000rpm and close down all apps i.e just leaving the laptop idling, the lowest temperature I will see is 30C. This new MBP runs 4 degrees cooler while running 435 instances of Space Designer 

At this point, the term "GameChanger!" doesn't really cut it.


----------



## gsilbers

vocalnick said:


> Just thinking out loud - do you still have an Intel machine with Kontakt installed? I wonder what would happen if you manually copied the Kontakt app into the applications folder (and possibly the associated library folders)?
> 
> Even if it worked it would be a limited victory, as you'd need Native Access to authorise it, but it could give us some idea of how big a job NI have in front of them. if it's just getting Native Access to run, then hopefully it might be relatively quick...



That’s true. Also doesn’t it do the same when first hooked up and says to transfer from an old mac option?


----------



## seclusion3

Yes, migration may get u up and running.


----------



## rnb_2

Doing a migration would bring over a bunch of stuff I really don't want on the new machine, and NI actually doesn't recommend using Migration Assistant or backup software to move their applications to a new computer. I'd love to have Kontakt to test, but since music is going to be the secondary use for this machine, I don't want to beat my head against things too much on that front.


----------



## seclusion3

I hear u on a clean install.
It’s on my todo list at some point.
I’ve done migration from 2007 to 2008 to 2010 MacPro and lastly 2017 iMac. Kontakt always ran. All my instruments are on external drives.
Using a super duper clone so I always have a backup.
Currently running Big Sur, expecting an issue, but it’s been great.
I did see Big Sur notify me of a Tascam being incompatible. That would be my 1884 which was obsolete since 2009 or so... 🙃


----------



## khollister

I just opened Native Access on my Mac to check something else, and it downloaded and installed an update to itself. NI may have already fixed this - might want to try again


----------



## rnb_2

khollister said:


> I just opened Native Access on my Mac to check something else, and it downloaded and installed an update to itself. NI may have already fixed this - might want to try again



Thanks for the heads-up, but no such luck - I opened Native Access on the M1 mini and got the same message as yesterday, so I re-downloaded the installer and replaced the app, but still no dice.


----------



## Nate Johnson

Whhhyyy am I still reading this thread!!

I just ordered an intel 8 core iMac....and whereas today’s M1 options are shaping up be excellent machines, but probably on the minimal side of what we need and nothing is running native yet anyways, I can’t help but think about a year from now - will I be regretting my decision?


----------



## Ashermusic

Nate Johnson said:


> Whhhyyy am I still reading this thread!!
> 
> I just ordered an intel 8 core iMac....and whereas today’s M1 options are shaping up be excellent machines, but probably on the minimal side of what we need and nothing is running native yet anyways, I can’t help but think about a year from now - will I be regretting my decision?




A year from now? No. 3 years from now? Maybe.


----------



## rnb_2

Nate Johnson said:


> Whhhyyy am I still reading this thread!!
> 
> I just ordered an intel 8 core iMac....and whereas today’s M1 options are shaping up be excellent machines, but probably on the minimal side of what we need and nothing is running native yet anyways, I can’t help but think about a year from now - will I be regretting my decision?



I hope not. You've been making do with an old computer for a loooooong time; the M1 Macs probably aren't suitable for you, long term, from a RAM perspective; you got one of the Macs that is still faster than the M1s. While faster computers are always coming, I think that you made a good choice based on your current needs, and that iMac will serve you well for years - enjoy it!


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Nate Johnson said:


> Whhhyyy am I still reading this thread!!
> 
> I just ordered an intel 8 core iMac....and whereas today’s M1 options are shaping up be excellent machines, but probably on the minimal side of what we need and nothing is running native yet anyways, I can’t help but think about a year from now - will I be regretting my decision?



You can always sell Macs on the used market if you need to upgrade later.


----------



## Ivan M.

If you use modeled virtual instruments that don't take much of ram, but utilize more of the cpu, then ram wouldn't be an issue and M series cpu single core speed is perfect for the job. 
For me a 24GB version would be just fine. Waiting for the next year to see the new M's


----------



## Thunderous Light

Ivan M. said:


> If you use modeled virtual instruments that don't take much of ram, but utilize more of the cpu, then ram wouldn't be an issue and M series cpu single core speed is perfect for the job.
> For me a 24GB version would be just fine. Waiting for the next year to see the new M's


Im just curious, how do you know which VST's are modeled and which are not? Does each developer label that on their website or is there some type of way of discovering which is which? I ask because I would like to know which of mine are modeled or if I have any at all.


----------



## Ivan M.

Thunderous Light said:


> Im just curious, how do you know which VST's are modeled and which are not? Does each developer label that on their website or is there some type of way of discovering which is which? I ask because I would like to know which of mine are modeled or if I have any at all.


Yes, it's the main selling point, modeled meaning it gives you more expressive flexibility and control over sound. Or example sample modeling, audio modeling, pianoteq. Some are physically modeled some are semi physically modeled.


----------



## rnb_2

Ivan M. said:


> Yes, it's the main selling point, modeled meaning it gives you more expressive flexibility and control over sound. Or example sample modeling, audio modeling, pianoteq. Some are physically modeled some are semi physically modeled.



Aaron Venture, as well.


----------



## vocalnick

Looks like Kontakt works - except you can't authorise it!

I got sick of trying to find the answer on forums, and I figured I was going to end up with one of these eventually, so I went into town and bought one to play with 

I had the DMG installer for Kontakt 5 sitting in an old downloads folder, and I can confirm it installs and opens. Works as a standalone instance, as an AU plugin within Reaper (also running under Rosetta) and also in GarageBand (presumably native)

I don't have any sample libraries here to test functionality (I've literally stopped for lunch in a coffee shop to quickly try this out), but it all _looks_ completely fine.

Of course without Native Access to authorise it, I can only run it in demo mode, so that's annoying...

Hopefully NI will sort that out soon - such a TINY hurdle. I'd even be happy to manually enter serial numbers if it got things up and running in the interim, but that's no longer a thing... Sigh...


----------



## Alex Fraser

I guess the next test would be for someone to try and fill the ram with samples and then see how/if the unified memory and fast swap can make any difference.


----------



## el-bo

Nate Johnson said:


> I can’t help but think about a year from now - will I be regretting my decision?



Yes! No!... ... Maybe?

It depends on a few factors, which might be worth exploring.


----------



## el-bo

Ivan M. said:


> If you use modeled virtual instruments that don't take much of ram, but utilize more of the cpu, then ram wouldn't be an issue and M series cpu single core speed is perfect for the job.



Indeed! In fact, for the majority of non-orchestral musicians the 8gb base model will likely be more than enough. In the new Mac mini, Apple has potentially shifted from the perception of over-priced (and under-powered) luxury devices to a budget-priced studio computer that outdoes both Windows and Mac devices many times it's price.


----------



## vocalnick

A quick preliminary follow up. I just did a system migration from my 16” i9 to the new M1, plugged in my samples SSD, and opened up a previous Reaper project with a couple of dozen Kontakt instances. Mostly Albion One, a couple of other bits and pieces.

I only fiddled around for a few minutes, but it worked well! Kontakt didn’t _appear _to be in demo mode, although I didn’t wait the full 15 minutes to see if it timed out (it’s really late here and I’m going to bed)

_EDIT: Nope, it's definitely running in demo mode - apologies for the false hope._

So it looks like a system migration _might _be a workaround if you need to get NI stuff running on these new systems.



rnb_2 said:


> NI actually doesn't recommend using Migration Assistant or backup software to move their applications to a new computer.



They don’t recommend using Apple Silicon either, but if that’s the Mac we have, then I reckon for now we go with whatever gets us back to work 🙂


----------



## el-bo

vocalnick said:


> A quick preliminary follow up. I just did a system migration from my 16” i9 to the new M1



Another possibility might be to use your Intel computer make a clean Big Sur install on an external drive, then boot into it from the M1. I wonder if there's anything that would prohibit this.


----------



## seclusion3

Migration is your friend. I’m not sure why any company would say don’t. Other than having some legacy outdated software in there. The time savings alone are great. Superduper clone and try with the clone.


----------



## rnb_2

Alex Fraser said:


> I’m straining against the limits of my technical competence here.. but I’m pretty sure Native Access is built using some form of cross platform app engine (Electron?) i.e it’s not a standard Mac app. I wonder.. 🧐



You might have been on to something here.


----------



## Alex Fraser

rnb_2 said:


> You might have been on to something here.


I hate all these "cross platform" halfway house apps that everyone insists on using, but I'm a hardcore cultist Mac purist, so..


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

Nate Johnson said:


> Whhhyyy am I still reading this thread!!
> 
> I just ordered an intel 8 core iMac....and whereas today’s M1 options are shaping up be excellent machines, but probably on the minimal side of what we need and nothing is running native yet anyways, I can’t help but think about a year from now - will I be regretting my decision?



You can still return it!


----------



## Jetzer

Ordered a M1 Macbook Air 16gb! Will try it for some light music around christmas holiday.


----------



## Technostica

Benchmark Cinebench R23 multithread:
Apple M1: 7508 - 7833









Cinebench R23: CPU-Ergebnisse mit AMD und Intel


Maxon hat Cinebench R23 veröffentlicht. Wie schnell welcher Prozessor im CPU-Benchmark ist, kann die Community im Schwarm ermitteln.




www.computerbase.de


----------



## Nate Johnson

Jeremy Spencer said:


> You can still return it!



I didn't buy it from Apple this go around - and there's 15% restocking fee. Its gonna be fine. Once I get it up and running I doubt I'll care! Besides, down the road I can hand this one off to the wife, who actually makes money (photography) using these things!


----------



## rnb_2

Nate Johnson said:


> I didn't buy it from Apple this go around - and there's 15% restocking fee. Its gonna be fine. Once I get it up and running I doubt I'll care! Besides, down the road I can hand this one off to the wife, who actually makes money (photography) using these things!



That's the spirit!


----------



## Fox

Nate Johnson said:


> I just ordered an intel 8 core iMac....and whereas today’s M1 options are shaping up be excellent machines, but probably on the minimal side of what we need and nothing is running native yet anyways, I can’t help but think about a year from now - will I be regretting my decision?



Yes, that is the question, where will we be a year from now? How much RAM will the new MAC models have? What can be run natively by that time? 

I'm wanting to pull the trigger on a intel 8 core iMac, too (and I think that's a good call to do so). Regardless, I don't absolutely need it, so I'm wondering if might just hold on for a year and make do with my 2015 MacBookPro, and see what happens. Decisions, decisions!!


----------



## wayne_rowley

Fox said:


> I'm wanting to pull the trigger on a intel 8 core iMac, too (and I think that's a good call to do so). Regardless, I don't absolutely need it, so I'm wondering if might just hold on for a year and make do with my 2015 MacBookPro, and see what happens. Decisions, decisions!!



Best advice I know when it comes to computers - if you don't need it wait and don't buy. Something better will likely be out when you do need something.


----------



## ironbut

I'll be looking to retire my 2012 MBP in the next couple of years (for location stuff).
The capabilities of these new laptops is already impressive. 
I sure would like to get a decent sized screen without selling my house though (fingers crossed).


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

@rnb_2 maybe I missed a post on it....but have you tried hooking up more than one monitor? I've read reports that dual displays are not possible with the Mini.


----------



## rnb_2

Jeremy Spencer said:


> @rnb_2 maybe I missed a post on it....but have you tried hooking up more than one monitor? I've read reports that dual displays are not possible with the Mini.



The mini does support two displays - one via Thunderbolt/USB-C, and one via HDMI. The M1 appears to have a limit of two displays total, so the M1 laptops only support one external via Thunderbolt, plus the internal display.


----------



## gsilbers

vocalnick said:


> A quick preliminary follow up. I just did a system migration from my 16” i9 to the new M1, plugged in my samples SSD, and opened up a previous Reaper project with a couple of dozen Kontakt instances. Mostly Albion One, a couple of other bits and pieces.
> 
> I only fiddled around for a few minutes, but it worked well! Kontakt didn’t _appear _to be in demo mode, although I didn’t wait the full 15 minutes to see if it timed out (it’s really late here and I’m going to bed)
> 
> So it looks like a system migration _might _be a workaround if you need to get NI stuff running on these new systems.
> 
> 
> 
> They don’t recommend using Apple Silicon either, but if that’s the Mac we have, then I reckon for now we go with whatever gets us back to work 🙂



Cool. 

Where you able to load the same amount of instruments onto ram? or how was the difference with ram. 

I read somewhere that ram is handled differnetly on M1 but not sure how it translates to sample libraries.


----------



## vocalnick

I’m afraid Kontakt _was _running in demo mode - apologies for any false hope. But it’s clearly compatible with Rosetta2, so once we can authorise we should be off to the races 🙂



gsilbers said:


> Cool.
> 
> Where you able to load the same amount of instruments onto ram? or how was the difference with ram.



I’m not a huge template guy, so all I can say at this is it seemed to handle my workload OK from the limited testing I did. I'll have a more objective look at RAM use when I get some time to sit down and play with it, and see if i can load it up with something more complex.



> I read somewhere that ram is handled differnetly on M1 but not sure how it translates to sample libraries.



Yeah I've read a lot of conjecture around that too. It does seem to _feel _a bit less restrictive than I’d expect from 8GB, but I’m not sure if it’s placebo...


----------



## colony nofi

Oh - now this looks VERY interesting.









Apple Lists M1-Based Mac Mini Logic Boards With 10 Gigabit Ethernet in Internal Parts Ordering System


While the new Mac mini with the M1 chip is only available with Gigabit Ethernet, Apple has listed multiple M1-based Mac mini logic boards with 10...




www.macrumors.com




10g based motherboards in spare parts inventory (and at least for the moment, if you are an apple authorised repair partner, you can ORDER them. Just heard there's at least one shop who is ordering one to potentially sneak to a well known you-tube reviewer...)

I was able to test a mac mini m1 on thursday for only a couple of hours - and tried a bunch of post stuff (nuendo) on it. Lets just say... if I can sort out the ports issue (it involves reviewing all the peripherals we use) - AND if we can get one with 10G ethernet (we run sessions from a central file server) then this is a dream edit room workstation.

I'm also salivating around one day soon setting up a single EPYC based machine for hosting plugins on gridder - potentially on its own separate ethernet (would need additional nics for each computer, but would go down that path after proving the concept.)

This makes the sound editing part of post production workflow a much cheaper prospect when you just need to "throw some more man power" at a project. 

Interesting that the M1 we had opened a large TV 5.1 mix - and ran it with ease. Nice and smooth....


----------



## marius_dm

I just got the cheapest Air M1 8GB and it runs so much smoother than my i7 2018 15'' 16GB. I only got it to play with it a little before they release the 16'' and then pass it down to my wife after that. 
I have to say though, I'm really impressed, it was about time for someone to shake things up in computing. I've been slamming this little guy with a project in Logic using the built-in instruments and fx and it doesn't break a sweat, it's just lukewarm. No fan noise, barely any heat, It's pretty wild.


----------



## vocalnick

marius_dm said:


> I've been slamming this little guy with a project in Logic using the built-in instruments and fx and it doesn't break a sweat, it's just lukewarm. No fan noise, barely any heat, It's pretty wild.



This matches my experience with Logic on here too. I throw a lot of instruments in but I can’t seem to get it to bog down.

I haven’t used Logic as a daily driver for a long time, but I have a little time between projects coming up, so while I’m waiting for Native Instruments to get their act together I might get re-acquainted.


----------



## gsilbers

vocalnick said:


> This matches my experience with Logic on here too. I throw a lot of instruments in but I can’t seem to get it to bog down.
> 
> I haven’t used Logic as a daily driver for a long time, but I have a little time between projects coming up, so while I’m waiting for Native Instruments to get their act together I might get re-acquainted.




my guess is that NI is doing the upgrade the proper way and doing it for all of their plugins at once. Which might take time .
And they also have the hardware/gear which might have issues or is more complex


----------



## InLight-Tone




----------



## SGordB

Same guys as above. In brief: Studio One 4 via Rosetta not ready for prime time, but Logic universal binary handles the limited range of not-yet-supported third-party effects plugins they tested with ease. I'm still waiting for someone to throw a 15-20GB+ mass of sampled VIs at Logic to see how it manages the RAM, VRAM and SSD I/O load. All indications are the M1 runs rings around its Intel predecessors in that department, not unlike its A-series siblings.


----------



## rnb_2

Well, I took the plunge, started over from scratch and migrated my data from my i7 Mac mini to see what the NI experience was like.

First things first, DO NOT do what I did and reformat the system drive via Recovery Mode in preparation for reinstalling the OS from scratch - this puts the drive in an "un-owned" state with no user with rights to install the OS (oops). Fortunately, I found a Reddit thread that pointed me in the right direction - it's just like the brute force method for making a troubled iPhone/iPad behave: put the device in Device Firmware Upgrade (DFU) mode and connect it via USB to a Mac running Apple Configurator 2, which will then download the latest OS and install it fresh on the connected device.

With that out of the way, I still had some hurdles to get over, specifically working around the lack of a working version of SoftRAID for my OWC Express 4M2 (there is a beta that will see the drives, but I haven't succeeded in mounting them yet). So I had to shuffle some drives around and get things arranged so that I can switch between my i7 and M1 minis by moving one Thunderbolt cable between them.

For my short-term goals, I needed to test the M1 with Adobe Lightroom Classic to make sure it will at least be in the ballpark of the performance of my i7 for common tasks while running in Rosetta, since the Universal version probably won't be out until sometime early next year. I was optimistic, and my optimism was warranted: the interface is as responsive as my i7 mini with an RX Vega 56 eGPU, and adjusting photos feels no different between the two setups. As a final test, I converted almost 500 20MP raw photos to JPEG, and the M1 finished up about 30 seconds faster than the i7 (about 4% faster). Once Lightroom is running native on Apple Silicon, it will be MUCH faster.

Now, on to what you all care about: Native Instruments. As suspected, everything basically runs, but (sadly) only in 30-minute Demo Mode, with no ability to activate via Native Access. In limited testing, I did experience one instance of Kontakt not properly resizing the window to accomodate an interface in Logic, but no issues using Kontakt standalone. Playing within Kontakt seems no different than on Intel, though I will have to fire up the i7 again to compare specifics on CPU usage. Komplete Kontrol works fine with my M32 controller - no major issues that I could find. I'm able to browse as normal, audition patches, etc, but again, only in Demo mode.

Overall, things look very promising - it doesn't appear that NI has a ton of work to do to get everything working via Rosetta (it appears it's mostly getting Native Access itself to work). How long it will be before we see Universal versions of the major applications is anyone's guess, but at least with Logic's ability to use Intel plugins, things are functional right now, and will only improve over time.


----------



## Alex Fraser

rnb_2 said:


> Overall, things look very promising - it doesn't appear that NI has a ton of work to do to get everything working via Rosetta (it appears it's mostly getting Native Access itself to work). How long it will be before we see Universal versions of the major applications is anyone's guess, but at least with Logic's ability to use Intel plugins, things are functional right now, and will only improve over time.


If you stop and think about it for a second, this is all nuts. That somehow it all hangs together and works. Apple pulled off something special here.

And of all the software titles...it was always going to be Native Access that stopped the fun, right? 😂


----------



## DoubleTap

Has anyone seen a reviewer compare RAM on any of the new machines? There's plenty who've said that an 8GB machine can stroll through thousands of plugins and so on. But obviously it's harder to A/B the 8GB to 16GB RAM from a consumer point of view.

I'm wondering what sort of detectable difference there is. What can you do with a 16GB machine that you can't do with an 8GB?

There are a lot of assumptions that 16GB RAM wouldn't be enough for big orchestral templates, and the logic behind that is pretty sound, but it would be interesting to see how it actually pans out in the real world.


----------



## marius_dm

OT Sine seems to work fine in Logic Pro. I just created a project and I could push around 16-17 channels of the free Layers library with all articulations loaded and all mic positions loaded. The CPU barely moved, but I hit the memory ceiling. This is on the base model Air 8GB.


----------



## thevisi0nary

rnb_2 said:


> Well, I took the plunge, started over from scratch and migrated my data from my i7 Mac mini to see what the NI experience was like.
> 
> First things first, DO NOT do what I did and reformat the system drive via Recovery Mode in preparation for reinstalling the OS from scratch - this puts the drive in an "un-owned" state with no user with rights to install the OS (oops). Fortunately, I found a Reddit thread that pointed me in the right direction - it's just like the brute force method for making a troubled iPhone/iPad behave: put the device in Device Firmware Upgrade (DFU) mode and connect it via USB to a Mac running Apple Configurator 2, which will then download the latest OS and install it fresh on the connected device.
> 
> With that out of the way, I still had some hurdles to get over, specifically working around the lack of a working version of SoftRAID for my OWC Express 4M2 (there is a beta that will see the drives, but I haven't succeeded in mounting them yet). So I had to shuffle some drives around and get things arranged so that I can switch between my i7 and M1 minis by moving one Thunderbolt cable between them.
> 
> For my short-term goals, I needed to test the M1 with Adobe Lightroom Classic to make sure it will at least be in the ballpark of the performance of my i7 for common tasks while running in Rosetta, since the Universal version probably won't be out until sometime early next year. I was optimistic, and my optimism was warranted: the interface is as responsive as my i7 mini with an RX Vega 56 eGPU, and adjusting photos feels no different between the two setups. As a final test, I converted almost 500 20MP raw photos to JPEG, and the M1 finished up about 30 seconds faster than the i7 (about 4% faster). Once Lightroom is running native on Apple Silicon, it will be MUCH faster.
> 
> Now, on to what you all care about: Native Instruments. As suspected, everything basically runs, but (sadly) only in 30-minute Demo Mode, with no ability to activate via Native Access. In limited testing, I did experience one instance of Kontakt not properly resizing the window to accomodate an interface in Logic, but no issues using Kontakt standalone. Playing within Kontakt seems no different than on Intel, though I will have to fire up the i7 again to compare specifics on CPU usage. Komplete Kontrol works fine with my M32 controller - no major issues that I could find. I'm able to browse as normal, audition patches, etc, but again, only in Demo mode.
> 
> Overall, things look very promising - it doesn't appear that NI has a ton of work to do to get everything working via Rosetta (it appears it's mostly getting Native Access itself to work). How long it will be before we see Universal versions of the major applications is anyone's guess, but at least with Logic's ability to use Intel plugins, things are functional right now, and will only improve over time.



Out of the goodness of thine heart, if you happen to have any free time, would you per chance see how the demo kontakt runs with Reaper emulated?


----------



## DoubleTap

marius_dm said:


> OT Sine seems to work fine in Logic Pro. I just created a project and I could push around 16-17 channels of the free Layers library with all articulations loaded and all mic positions loaded. The CPU barely moved, but I hit the memory ceiling. This is on the base model Air 8GB.



Sounds great - what does the memory ceiling look like in terms of performance?


----------



## marius_dm

DoubleTap said:


> Sounds great - what does the memory ceiling look like in terms of performance?



It wasn't pretty actually, once I duplicated a few tracks and attempted to play 20 tracks the Air got quite hot and it froze up, I actually had to reboot it. Not sure if this is because Sine is not supported in Rosetta yet, or because of the unified memory? I'm sure Apple will fix it, they probably get thousands of error reports from users when that happens.

But again, keep in mind that library has a lot of mic positions which multiply the number of voices dramatically.


----------



## IFM

marius_dm said:


> It wasn't pretty actually, once I duplicated a few tracks and attempted to play 20 tracks the Air got quite hot and it froze up, I actually had to reboot it. Not sure if this is because Sine is not supported in Rosetta yet, or because of the unified memory? I'm sure Apple will fix it, they probably get thousands of error reports from users when that happens.
> 
> But again, keep in mind that library has a lot of mic positions which multiply the number of voices dramatically.



Sine is probably not my 1st choice of player to test when I get the Air. I find it a bit buggy at the best of times.


----------



## colony nofi

One thing we were trying to do - and just didn't get the time to do - when we had an M1 in for test, was to do identical baseline tests as well.

In order to make considered judgement about the usefulness of these new macines, we need to be able to compare apples to - er - apples. 

If we get the machine back for further tests, I'll definitely try and devise a few. But essentially just simple setups that are very easy to reproduce and have others try out as well. There are so many variables with DAW systems that its difficult to get "one test to rule them all" (although DAW bench goes close!)

So - if anyone gets there before us (I'd say we are 2-3 weeks off at least) it would be great to try some basic instrument / sample tests which are the same on intel mac hardware vs m1.


----------



## vocalnick

thevisi0nary said:


> Out of the goodness of thine heart, if you happen to have any free time, would you per chance see how the demo kontakt runs with Reaper emulated?



I reported on this a page or two back. I haven't tested it extensively, but it seemed to work just fine - subjectively it felt exactly the same as on Intel. No obvious bugs or foibles that I came across.

There is an initial lag for the binary translation when you run an Intel app for the first time, but then subsequent launches are as-normal.


----------



## rnb_2

thevisi0nary said:


> Out of the goodness of thine heart, if you happen to have any free time, would you per chance see how the demo kontakt runs with Reaper emulated?



I don't currently use Reaper, so I don't know if I'm the best person to give it a go. I'm barely familiar enough with Logic to be useful...


----------



## mat1

colony nofi said:


> So - if anyone gets there before us (I'd say we are 2-3 weeks off at least) it would be great to try some basic instrument / sample tests which are the same on intel mac hardware vs m1.



I'm probably going to pick up a base level Air today that will need to get me through at least a few weeks of sessions before it becomes my day to day.

We've already had Logic Pro benchmarks but nothing really to test the ram/voice counts. Maybe something using the stock Kontakt library that everyone has? It works in demo mode. I'm happy to give it a go if you've got any ideas


----------



## ZenBYD

I got an M1 Macbook Air a couple of days ago. Logic runs great... as do most things. RAM is obviously the limiting factor here but the CPU seems capable enough. It does get hot though, but the thermal envelope of those chips is very impressive.

I know it's probably not of much interest, but it's actually also really cool to be able to run ipad and iphone apps. I much prefer the app experience for a lot of things, vs websites, so it's great to have that option.


----------



## Cinebient

Finally got my M1 MacBook Pro and so far i love it. Have not much time to test much before weekend but just at least it already blows my old i7 quad core MacBook Pro out of the water (even using Rosetta2) while staying cool as ice and battery will last much much much longer.
Also funny that iOS apps which are AUv3 appears inside Logic as AU (but some are not stable working yet).
So far I could not get the fans working nor could I fry an egg on it like on my intel one.
So much power inside such a small package which stays cool and battery will last long. It feels like a whole new level of laptop for me.


----------



## PeterBaumann

Getting very jealous reading all this on my 2018 MBP (15-inch, 2.6GHz 6-core, 32GB RAM) with the fan running on max just using Chrome


----------



## Alex Fraser

PeterBaumann said:


> Getting very jealous reading all this on my 2018 MBP (15-inch, 2.6GHz 6-core, 32GB RAM) with the fan running on max just using Chrome


<nods in solidarity>


----------



## marius_dm

PeterBaumann said:


> Getting very jealous reading all this on my 2018 MBP (15-inch, 2.6GHz 6-core, 32GB RAM) with the fan running on max just using Chrome



I can relate, I think I have MBP fan noise PTSD lol. My 2018 MBP was only used for email, web browsing, videos because of the heat and fan noise.


----------



## Antkn33

I'm just a little skeptical on the ram limit. Sure the OS and Logic will run fine. But the apps and samples seem really won't care about the new architecture. They just wants ram.


----------



## gives19

I got a MacBook Air, (ARM M1chip), for my wife and it's screaming fast! Have her older one now from 2018. Put 16GB of ram, but it seems to not really need it IMHO. Of course, for what we do it's not really the rig, but it's an indication that it seems to run much fast and super quick and with Big Sur than I imagined. I am really glad I waited to upgrade my Mac Pro Trash can which I am going to replace with the next gen Mac Pro if it get's approved. Hopefully it will be coming soon!


----------



## lychee

I'm amazed that after 46 pages of this thread no one has heard this rumor about a 12-core M1X to equip a future MacBook Pro 16 in 2021.


----------



## SGordB

My 2014 i7 iMac is maxed out at 32GB and this is a typical situation when other apps are competing with my DAW for that RAM:





The more of my samples MacOS decides to relegate to VRAM, the more crackly they get. 

But here's the $64,000/64GB question: Would an M1 system do an appreciably better job of managing that RAM? It's not like I need all of it all of the time. All I need is whatever small portion of the samples in my template are being used at any given time -- moment, even. We already know the M1 will be accessing VRAM from an integrated SSD that reads at up to 3400 MB/s, or about 7 times as fast as the SATA III SSDs where most of my samples reside and my external boot drive.


----------



## Cinebient




----------



## babylonwaves

SGordB said:


> We already know the M1 will be accessing VRAM from an integrated SSD that reads at up to 3400 MB/s, or about 7 times as fast as the SATA III SSDs where most of my samples reside and my external boot drive.


if you want performant access to memory, you need RAM. M1 or not.


----------



## lychee

I have the impression that in the long term the Mac, IPad, IPhone environments will merge, a bit like Microsoft tried to do (without success).
In any case, the price was one of the arguments that always put me off at Apple, but if they start to make efficient and affordable computers ...


----------



## mauriziodececco

lychee said:


> I'm amazed that after 46 pages of this thread no one has heard this rumor about a 12-core M1X to equip a future MacBook Pro 16 in 2021.



That kind of spec came out on a rumor a while ago.

Anyway, if you look to the current product alignement, it is clear that M1 machines substituted the low ends; Mac Book Air, 2 port Mac Book Pro, and 4 core Mac Mini. Intel 6 core Mac Mini are still on sale, and so higher end 13" Mac Book Pro. And of course without speaking about RAM.

So, since we know Apple will transition the whole product line in two years, we know that there will be more coming. We also that the unified on package RAM (if you believe to anandtech, 8 LPDDR4x channels) is one of the strong point of the M1, and that it doesn't look very practical to move the RAM to the mother board and keep 8 memory channels on a latop.

So, i would call an M1X with 32Gb RAM, 4 thunderbolt channels and more CPU an educated, highly probable guess, more than a rumor; in terms of CPU, to keep the same kind of product differentiation you have now, you need more high performance CPU, 6 or 8, so you get easily 10-12 CPU (4 high efficiency).

No idea about the GPU; probably it should be bigger/faster, always for product differentiation.
And a good question is if they will go to 64Gb or not.

Maurizio


----------



## Technostica

mauriziodececco said:


> We also that the unified on package RAM (if you believe to anandtech, 8 LPDDR4x channels) is one of the strong point of the M1, and that it doesn't look very practical to move the RAM to the mother board and keep 8 memory channels on a latop.


That is effectively dual channel DDR4-4266 in speed terms, so Apple will be able to beat that with entry level dual channel DDR5 next year.


----------



## colony nofi

Technostica said:


> That is effectively dual channel DDR4-4266 in speed terms, so Apple will be able to beat that with entry level dual channel DDR5 next year.


Folk I have been able to speak to think DDR5 is not going to come to the apple platform in the next 12 months - possibly 18-24.

Intel is ahead of AMD with launching products with DDR5 support at the moment. The best quote I heard was "AMD have other [tech] fish to fry..." I wouldn't be surprised that its a similar attitude within Apple right now.

Apple moving to DDR5 will only happen with LP versions (which generally come later) - at least for all but workstation class versions of the "M" chips. Time will tell if they develop silicon that has the ram outside the chip. I've even heard a VERY good case for leaving 16GB of ram on the chip, AND allowing it to address additional external ram via standard RAM slots. I was kind of gobsmacked by the complexity of attempting to do this, but someone with a bunch of chip design knowledge saw a rather unique way thru, especially given what is known about the M1 structure / architecture already.

What I know for absolute certain is apple has a solution for higher ram amounts on (some) M series computers to be released in the next 24 months.


----------



## Vik

colony nofi said:


> What I know for absolute certain is apple has a solution for higher ram amounts on (some) M series computers to be released in the next 24 months.


They said that the transition would take 24 months when they announced Apple silicon this summer, and they also said that it would take 24 months when they announced the new Macs recently. Let's hope they won't keep saying that.


----------



## colony nofi

Vik said:


> That said that the transition would take 24 months when they announced Apple silicon this summer, and they also said that it would take 24 months when they announced the new Macs recently. Let's hope they won't keep saying that.



I do not know apple's release schedule. 

The 24months window is me combining two pieces of known info

(a) there are M based systems being tested right now with >16GB ram 
(which are for the initial release of apple silicon based macs)
(b) apple has publicly said their transition will take up to 24months.

The only way I can see this being wrong is that they don't bring this tested product to market. At this stage in the development, that would be rare, but not unheard of. Other similar hardware tests in the past are usually in the 6-18 month band. I do not have first hand info as to when the test started. I'm not going to ask / place anyone in a situation where even by agreeing with or denying info they are breaking confidentiality agreements.


----------



## Cinebient

So now it seems that on the m1 machine I suffer mainly from graphical problems with plug-ins.
Like GUI can just be open first time and then it hangs forever while trying to open the GUI again.
Also Logic crash with some plug-ins...also mostly if I open the GUI.
So its not all good so far. Sadly some of my most used plug-ins suffer from it.
Not sure yet if I return it and wait some months or just go with what works for now.


----------



## Vik

Cinebient said:


> some of my most used plug-ins suffer


Can you mention some of the problematic plugins?


----------



## SGordB

Cinebient said:


> So now it seems that on the m1 machine I suffer mainly from graphical problems with plug-ins.
> Like GUI can just be open first time and then it hangs forever while trying to open the GUI again.
> Also Logic crash with some plug-ins...also mostly if I open the GUI.
> So its not all good so far. Sadly some of my most used plug-ins suffer from it.
> Not sure yet if I return it and wait some months or just go with what works for now.



Jon Sine on YouTube said he'd learned a trick for this problem: run Logic Pro in Rosetta emulation and it evidently does a way better job of converting third-party plugins than when you try and do it through Logic Pro universal-binary/native. Deets here:


----------



## Cinebient

Vik said:


> Can you mention some of the problematic plugins?



F.e. 2CAudio Precedence, P900 (my favorite synth), some does not work at all like Lunar Lander (also from the P900 guys), some of my iOS AUv3 which runs now inside Logic but not stable.
Of course N.I. stuff cannot even installed to test via Native Access yet. 
I still have to test a lot more but not sure if i have enough time to test all what i want in the next 1 1/2 week. 
In general i also get a lot stuck midi notes while playing and turning knobs/sliders on the GUI at the same time. Mmhhh, so far i am not sure if i will go with this.


----------



## Cinebient

SGordB said:


> Jon Sine on YouTube said he'd learned a trick for this problem: run Logic Pro in Rosetta emulation and it evidently does a way better job of converting third-party plugins than when you try and do it through Logic Pro universal-binary/native. Deets here:



Thank you, i will try if that helps.
At least so far when things working i can run 2-3 times more of everything as before, even with non ARM tools (but just compared to my old i7 quadcore macbook pro from 2013).


----------



## tabulius

M1 at 10W is impressive for sure. I wonder what will happen when M?X is running around 100W? As a life long pc user, a future mac started sound interesting. I hope that there will be some kind of modularity and possibility to an upgrade in upcoming ARM Imacs and Pros, like M2 SSDs or sata-ports.


----------



## Cinebient

O.k. I tried to load Logic with Rosetta and indeed now the GUI problems are solved.
But now even worse I have a complete audio fail, no sound at after the some seconds and I have to quite Logic. So it seems for me the mix between intel and ARM tools is not working great so far. 
And then no Kontakt for maybe longer on this machine is not a great deal. 
So I rather use just Logic and very few plug-ins or I send it back and look what is going on in 6 months or so. I will wait a week and see how it goes.


----------



## SGordB

Cinebient said:


> O.k. I tried to load Logic with Rosetta and indeed now the GUI problems are solved.
> But now even worse I have a complete audio fail, no sound at after the some seconds and I have to quite Logic. So it seems for me the mix between intel and ARM tools is not working great so far.
> And then no Kontakt for maybe longer on this machine is not a great deal.
> So I rather use just Logic and very few plug-ins or I send it back and look what is going on in 6 months or so. I will wait a week and see how it goes.



that sucks, but did you watch the whole video? I remember there was another simple step Sine said he has to take after loading a third party plugin in Logic native before the plugin runs right.


----------



## Technostica

tabulius said:


> M1 at 10W is impressive for sure.


As measured by Anandtech the M1 is a 20W+ chip. 
Which is amazing enough itself but if it was a 10W chip it would be miraculous. 
If it was 10W you wouldn't need a fan in the Mini for starters. 

It's the same with RAM, many people have an unrealistic expectation of what you can achieve for CPU bound workloads just because it's Unified. 
It's great as it is, but it's not magical. 

I am looking forward to the chip for premium laptops which should be a beast.


----------



## mat1

marius_dm said:


> It wasn't pretty actually, once I duplicated a few tracks and attempted to play 20 tracks the Air got quite hot and it froze up, I actually had to reboot it. Not sure if this is because Sine is not supported in Rosetta yet, or because of the unified memory? I'm sure Apple will fix it, they probably get thousands of error reports from users when that happens.
> 
> But again, keep in mind that library has a lot of mic positions which multiply the number of voices dramatically.



Can you change the preload buffer on Sine? if so how does it get on with this at minimum?


----------



## Cinebient

Time for some more real-life tests (at least what i do mostly). And beware i only compare it to my current old late 2013 macbook pro retina 15" with just the base 2.0 Ghz i7 quadcore and 8 GB RAM.
My M1 macbook pro has 16 GB RAM.
I wanted to test some more cpu heavy things and Kaleidoscope is a good one.
I took just a ES2 string patch and send it trough a heavy Kaleidoscope preset to see how much i can layer and play in real-time. Well even at 1024 sample buffer 2 is the max on my old and fans and heat kicking in very fast and after 5 minute even the 2 give me some overload issues here and there.
On the M1 i could run 5 (Logic running in Rosetta mode) instances while it gets warm but i hear still no fan noise. 6 is too much here but at 512 sample buffer i still can run 5.
So i guess with optimized tools and maybe a coming M1X whatever in a 16" with maybe double the performance cores it should handle 3-4 times more of everything which is way beyond any intel machine of this size.
Another test was to run a more heavy pluck sound with large shimmer reverb from Dune 3 synth at 32 sample buffer playing in real-time. Here i could get 9 instances with my old but after a while it throttle down and i was able for 7 stable instances.
On the M1 i got at least 3X more and it does not seem to suffer from throttle after a while. Again it gets a bit warm but still no noise from a fan.
But beware, i saw (no use of an audio interface here) the old one has less latency mostly 2-3ms less.
EDIT: 
Oh sorry, maybe i confused something here. Again i tested it with and without headphones and compared it again. It shows me indeed shorter (one way) latency on my old BUT the round trip latency is actually shorter mostly or quite the same on the M1 machine. 
Anyway i feel not really any difference here so all is fine for me in this case. 
Well, i am not a drummer


----------



## PeterBaumann




----------



## Andrew Aversa

Increasing the power budget of a chip does not scale performance linearly, and depending on the architecture, more power might not really do anything. 

For example, a stock AMD 5950x (16 cores) consumes about 120w. A heavy overclock brings it to 252w - over 100% more power draw - yet its performance in most benchmarks doesn't even improve 10%. 

Plus, even if you can eke out more performance from a higher power budget, it may not be desirable. Apple has notoriously had issues managing thermals, and seems to prefer using minimal cooling where possible. A 100w chip would need substantially more cooling, would use more energy (obviously) and require a bulkier power supply.


----------



## jamie8

in this test in logic he never ran any plugins never ran anything running virtual instruments like spitfire or even diva or omnisphere , just ran tracks, maybe he is not able to, due too coding and big sur but i think rosetta lets you ? , yes the m1 is faster but at this point you are not really taxing the system for real work applications in music , logic is apples own beast and it should run faster and more on the new m1 but the tools we use on a day to day basis for orchestral work etc .. hmm not so sure. ..yet.....


----------



## thevisi0nary

jamie8 said:


> in this test in logic he never ran any plugins never ran anything running virtual instruments like spitfire or even diva or omnisphere , just ran tracks, maybe he is not able to, due too coding and big sur but i think rosetta lets you ? , yes the m1 is faster but at this point you are not really taxing the system for real work applications in music , logic is apples own beast and it should run faster and more on the new m1 but the tools we use on a day to day basis for orchestral work etc .. hmm not so sure. ..yet.....



This is all I'm waiting for. Kontakt is 70% of my vsti usage so that will be the deal maker or breaker for me.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

colony nofi said:


> The 24months window is me combining two pieces of known info
> 
> (a) there are M based systems being tested right now with >16GB ram



I have no doubt it's true, but can you characterize the source?


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

By the way, as Patton said, victory is fleeting. (Or at least George C. Scott said that at the end of the movie.)

Point being, Apple will only be ahead for a little while. Other chip companies will respond, just as Google responded to the iPhone with Android.


----------



## Fleer

Okay. Getting the MacBook Air with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Should suffice for Spitfire BBCSO. I hope. Any thoughts?


----------



## Technostica

Nick Batzdorf said:


> By the way, as Patton said, victory is fleeting. (Or at least George C. Scott said that at the end of the movie.)
> 
> Point being, Apple will only be ahead for a little while. Other chip companies will respond, just as Google responded to the iPhone with Android.


Apple have first call on TSMC for new fabrication nodes which is significant and especially with Intel being in crisis mode fabrication wise. 
ARM does appear to be a very efficient ISA.
Apple's architecture team are very focussed so they are only designing for themselves so can drop the baggage; no 32 bit support at all!
Apple's architecture design teams have a very good track record albeit that has been for mobile very low power chips.
So they may have a healthy lead for a while with AMD keeping them honest!

The M1 has set the bar very high so my expectations are high and my curiosity is piqued.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Technostica said:


> no 32 bit support at all



:(


----------



## rnb_2

Technostica said:


> Apple have first call on TSMC for new fabrication nodes which is significant and especially with Intel being in crisis mode fabrication wise.
> ARM does appear to be a very efficient ISA.
> Apple's architecture team are very focussed so they are only designing for themselves so can drop the baggage; no 32 bit support at all!
> Apple's architecture design teams have a very good track record albeit that has been for mobile very low power chips.
> So they may have a healthy lead for a while with AMD keeping them honest!
> 
> The M1 has set the bar very high so my expectations are high and my curiosity is piqued.



Yeah - Qualcomm has not made up meaningful ground ever since the A-series processors leapt ahead around 2013's A7. It's become a truism that the fastest Android phones haven't come close to catching the previous year's iPhone by the time the new year's iPhone arrives, while sporting specs that, on paper, look like they should be competitive (more RAM, more cores, etc).

Microsoft's tentative re-entry into the ARM world has been pretty underwhelming so far, in part because of Qualcomm's weakness and in part because Microsoft hasn't been able to maintain backward-compatibility as well as they usually do because of the inability to jettison anything along the way. Assuming Microsoft can get over the latter hurdle, the lack of performance from the Qualcomm side will continue to be a thorn in their side for some time. AMD certainly can compete on overall system performance, but typically by using an order of magnitude more power. It's going to be a while before a non-Apple laptop or (very) small desktop will be able to compete with the combination of speed and battery life (or low energy use) of the M1 Macs, and by the time they do, Apple will probably have another generation or two of processors in the wild, along with variants tuned to specific system needs.

We haven't seen this big a sea change in the computer industry since 2006, when the first Intel Core Duos came on the scene. I'm sure that Apple will eventually find it more difficult to make the kinds of gains they've been making year-on-year, but they'll be generating so much profit to plow into R&D along the way that it will be hard to bet against them for the foreseeable future.


----------



## Thundercat

PeterBaumann said:


> Getting very jealous reading all this on my 2018 MBP (15-inch, 2.6GHz 6-core, 32GB RAM) with the fan running on max just using Chrome


No worries mate; I'm making music on a late 2013 MBPro 15" with 16GB RAM. A bit long in the tooth but she keeps a run-in' so I'm still happily user her.


----------



## Fleer

Similar here, mid 2012 with 16GB memory. Would be nice to try that fanless MBA M1 with 16GB acting like 32GB and more.


----------



## rnb_2

Remember: these are the slowest Apple Silicon Macs that will ever be sold, so whenever you're able to get back into the market, your options will be better. I jumped now out of curiosity and because the M1 mini is enough computer for my day-to-day needs, and frees up my 2018 i7 mini to become dedicated to music, where it replaces a 2012 iMac.


----------



## DoubleTap

One thing that occurs to me, looking at my Windows laptop's Event Viewer after a BSOD and trying to work out if the "critical" errors are going to add up to something fatal before I can transfer my ilok, is peripherals. 

What would I need to get to create a functional system using a Mac Mini? An external drive, obviously, since even a 2TB drive wouldn't be enough.

And probably a USB hub of some sort. But how many ports would I realistically need? My estimate is that I'd need six, for the external drive, mouse and keyboard, AI, midi keyboard, and a spare. Plus an option for a second monitor. So I'd want at least four extra ports. 

That adds up to about an extra £600 in total - anyone have some advice on what would be actually necessary? It is making me pause for a moment before making the change.

Although when I look back at event viewer on Windows and see that something in the firmware is throttling the CPU, without any hint what it might be (yes, all my drivers are up to date) I am fairly convinced I'll have do it at some point.


----------



## ridgero

I ordered a Mac mini with 16 GB RAM & 512 GB SSD - Estimated delivery: End of December :/

The RAM seems to be a big bottleneck, but maybe it isn‘t a big deal. Because of its “Swap Memory“ technology. I wonder how this will translate in real life performance with orchestral libraries. I will let you know.

To use the SSD as RAM is insane, the reviews confirm that this feature works really great. Future will tell, if the swap memory technology will harm your SSD and make them slower or damage it over time.


----------



## Cinebient

I decided to stay with it since I really get used to the light and mobile form factor while it gives me at least double the performance of my old MacBook Pro 15".
So I go without N.I. stuff so far, not a problem at all since I anyway wanted to get rid of all their stuff. The only thing I hope is that I will be able to run at least Kontakt (Player is enough) for some of my sample libraries which relies on it.
Its mainly for Emotional Cello, Viola and Violin. Maybe if it will take too long I also will replace them. I still have the Bohemian Cello and Violin and I saw the Viola is evolving as well. Not tested yet but I heard UVI things works, will try that next.
I also have to see if the Spitfire Audio app let me install things like HZS on the M1 Mac. I anyway do not like their Kontakt libraries because of the bad and tiny GUI.
So maybe a good time to finally avoid everything related to N.I. from this point.


----------



## Rory

Fleer said:


> Okay. Getting the MacBook Air with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Should suffice for Spitfire BBCSO. I hope. Any thoughts?



Are you taking about running Core or Pro on one of these machines? If Pro, could you elaborate on why you think these M1 computers can handle Pro?


----------



## Cinebient

So I tried the Spifire Audio app and it is a but nightmare since it shows things as not-installed but they are, I have to repair things again and again. Some things shows up as installed some not (even if they are). No fun to use it. Maybe I have to reinstall everything form zero. I hate such buggy apps.
But at least I got some things working (even if they say not installed in the spitfire app) like HZS and EWC. 
So I just made a short test and used a 60 cellos preset with 20! mic positions, copied the instance and it played well so far. 
I was not even able to use more than 3-4 with more than one instance or maybe 6-7 with one instance on my old (with just 8 GB ram here). 
So I have to do more tests to see how far the 16 GB shared ram goes and what settings to use to make the best out of it.
With all 26 mics on in one instance I got dropouts but not sure if that was RAM or cpu related. Also beware it still everything under Logic Rosetta version.
For sure its a big upgrade for me. And again it stays cool, my old would already fry my legs.


----------



## Cinebient

O.k. to add something. I am surprised now....in a good way.
So I just tried another 60n cellos preset and enabled all 26 mic positions copied it 3 times changed the preset (but also all mic positions) and it still plays well all together. It shows in the activity monitor about 12 GB RAM used which not changed from 3 to 4 instances.
Lets see how far it can go.
Also beware HZS samples are running from my extern SSD via usb-c (Samsung T5 2TB).
I expected about double the performance and load with double the RAM but so far I get more than 4 times....even under Rosetta and from an extern SSD.
But I guess it can handle more, I will see. Interesting. What magic is it?
Edit: Another real life test:
Now I just tried using 8 instances of HZS with each having 4 mic positions and on top 4 instances from EWC also each with 4 mic positions.....and it plays smooth. 
I can just compare that all to my old i7 quad core MacBook Pro with 8 GB RAM but so far I got running so much more than on my old machine that it feels like I have 10 times more RAM, lol.


----------



## Fleer

Rory said:


> Are you talking about running Core or Pro on one of these machines? If Pro, could you elaborate on why you think these M1 computers can handle Pro?


If that 16GB works like 32GB or more with SSD swap, it could maybe handle Pro!


----------



## Rory

Fleer said:


> If that 16GB works like 32GB or more with SSD swap, it could maybe handle Pro!



I look forward to your post on this experiment.


----------



## Fleer

Will do once I get it. Might be January by the looks of it, as Apple is swamped ...


----------



## ridgero

Rory said:


> Are you taking about running Core or Pro on one of these machines? If Pro, could you elaborate on why you think these M1 computers can handle Pro?



*Swap Memory*

It looks like a huge step in the right direction.


----------



## ridgero

Cinebient said:


> O.k. to add something. I am surprised now....in a good way.
> So I just tried another 60n cellos preset and enabled all 26 mic positions copied it 3 times changed the preset (but also all mic positions) and it still plays well all together. It shows in the activity monitor about 12 GB RAM used which not changed from 3 to 4 instances.
> Lets see how far it can go.
> Also beware HZS samples are running from my extern SSD via usb-c (Samsung T5 2TB).
> I expected about double the performance and load with double the RAM but so far I get more than 4 times....even under Rosetta and from an extern SSD.
> But I guess it can handle more, I will see. Interesting. What magic is it?
> Edit: Another real life test:
> Now I just tried using 8 instances of HZS with each having 4 mic positions and on top 4 instances from EWC also each with 4 mic positions.....and it plays smooth.
> I can just compare that all to my old i7 quad core MacBook Pro with 8 GB RAM but so far I got running so much more than on my old machine that it feels like I have 10 times more RAM, lol.




Can you please do me a favour and try to load the following song. Does this song work properly? Its from Christian Hensons Youtube Tutorial









Trois Gnossiennes Assets.zip


1 file sent via WeTransfer, the simplest way to send your files around the world




spitfireaudio.wetransfer.com


----------



## Rory

ridgero said:


> *Swap Memory*
> 
> It looks like a huge step in the right direction.



Yes, I understand the theory, even without boldface. I look forward to a test.


----------



## ridgero

Rory said:


> Yes, I understand the theory, even without boldface. I look forward to a test.


Sorry, didn‘t want to offend you, just want to make it easy to read


----------



## Cinebient

ridgero said:


> Can you please do me a favour and try to load the following song. Does this song work properly? Its from Christian Hensons Youtube Tutorial
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Trois Gnossiennes Assets.zip
> 
> 
> 1 file sent via WeTransfer, the simplest way to send your files around the world
> 
> 
> 
> 
> spitfireaudio.wetransfer.com




But is this not made with BBC Orchestra? I only have the BBC Discovery version sitting here.
Also I can easy avoid to use more RAM since I now can go much lower with preload buffer and such and so I still have to find out where the sweet spot is between CPU/RAM with the Spitfire (non-Kontakt) stuff.


----------



## ridgero

Cinebient said:


> But is this not made with BBC Orchestra? I only have the BBC Discovery version sitting here.
> Also I can easy avoid to use more RAM since I now can go much lower with preload buffer and such and so I still have to find out where the sweet spot is between CPU/RAM with the Spitfire (non-Kontakt) stuff.



Ah sorry, I thought you use the BBC Orchestra.


----------



## Cinebient

ridgero said:


> Ah sorry, I thought you use the BBC Orchestra.



No, my non Kontakt Spitfire libraries are just Hans Zimmer Strings, Eric Whitacre Choir, BBC Discovery and all the Labs stuff.
I have a lot from their Kontakt libraries too but I even found they not great on my 15" with the tiny GUI so I anyway do not used them much. But of course even if I wanted I cannot yet until N.I. get their things together and let me install my payed software.


----------



## rnb_2

DoubleTap said:


> One thing that occurs to me, looking at my Windows laptop's Event Viewer after a BSOD and trying to work out if the "critical" errors are going to add up to something fatal before I can transfer my ilok, is peripherals.
> 
> What would I need to get to create a functional system using a Mac Mini? An external drive, obviously, since even a 2TB drive wouldn't be enough.
> 
> And probably a USB hub of some sort. But how many ports would I realistically need? My estimate is that I'd need six, for the external drive, mouse and keyboard, AI, midi keyboard, and a spare. Plus an option for a second monitor. So I'd want at least four extra ports.
> 
> That adds up to about an extra £600 in total - anyone have some advice on what would be actually necessary? It is making me pause for a moment before making the change.
> 
> Although when I look back at event viewer on Windows and see that something in the firmware is throttling the CPU, without any hint what it might be (yes, all my drivers are up to date) I am fairly convinced I'll have do it at some point.



Your best bet would be a Thunderbolt dock - the best of these have 4-6 USB ports (plus the two USB-A ports on the mini should do for your needs), network jack (probably not needed, but handy for laptops), and a display connection of some sort (DisplayPort/miniDP, or you can use the second Thunderbolt port to connect a Thunderbolt or USB-C display). I have, and like, OWC's dock, though I'm not sure how available that would be in the UK - there are several other options.

So, one display via the HDMI port on the Mac mini, one via the dock, and use the second Thunderbolt port for your samples SSD. You can use bluetooth mouse/keyboard, as well, if USB is needed for other things.


----------



## ridgero

Very interesting!


----------



## Fleer

Was waiting for this one. Thanks.


----------



## DoubleTap

rnb_2 said:


> Your best bet would be a Thunderbolt dock - the best of these have 4-6 USB ports (plus the two USB-A ports on the mini should do for your needs), network jack (probably not needed, but handy for laptops), and a display connection of some sort (DisplayPort/miniDP, or you can use the second Thunderbolt port to connect a Thunderbolt or USB-C display). I have, and like, OWC's dock, though I'm not sure how available that would be in the UK - there are several other options.
> 
> So, one display via the HDMI port on the Mac mini, one via the dock, and use the second Thunderbolt port for your samples SSD. You can use bluetooth mouse/keyboard, as well, if USB is needed for other things.



Thanks, I've seen those OWC things. Sounds like I'm not making any wrong assumptions. 👍


----------



## rnb_2

Just made an interesting discovery - I can load Kontakt inside Nektar's Nektarine plugin, seemingly without limitations, on my M1 Mac mini. I don't get any demo notifications, and it seems to work fine on a late night, cursory look.


----------



## ridgero

rnb_2 said:


> Just made an interesting discovery - I can load Kontakt inside Nektar's Nektarine plugin, seemingly without limitations, on my M1 Mac mini. I don't get any demo notifications, and it seems to work fine on a late night, cursory look.



Has someone tried to play a project with sample libraries which uses more than 16 GB RAM?


----------



## el-bo

rnb_2 said:


> Just made an interesting discovery - I can load Kontakt inside Nektar's Nektarine plugin, seemingly without limitations, on my M1 Mac mini. I don't get any demo notifications, and it seems to work fine on a late night, cursory look.



Nice 👍🏻


----------



## LamaRose

Fleer said:


> Okay. Getting the MacBook Air with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Should suffice for Spitfire BBCSO. I hope. Any thoughts?



Are you going to migrate from your old system? This seems to be the trick for bypassing the current N.I. registration hurdle. Can't remember if the SF player has a purge function, but it's an incredible asset in Kontakt... every instance purged from the get-go in the template.


----------



## Ashermusic

ridgero said:


> Has someone tried to play a project with sample libraries which uses more than 16 GB RAM?



I think a lot of us await reports on this.


----------



## rnb_2

Ashermusic said:


> I think a lot of us await reports on this.



We might be in a bit of a chicken/egg situation here - anybody who makes a living from running big orchestral templates isn't going to run out and try an M1 Mac for grins, knowing what we know at this point. I have the hardware but no big orchestral libraries (just TOC2 and KHVE), and am still very much feeling my way around VIs and composing, so lack the ability to really push things. There is a small chance that I might still pick up BBCSO Core today, but I'd still lack something of substance to test it with.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Ashermusic said:


> I think a lot of us await reports on this.



I'm not holding my breath.

As I probably wrote in this thread (I've said it over and over), there's a reason iPhones and iPads have RAM in addition to flash storage. It just doesn't make sense that you can put #40 of samples in a #16 bag.

What is a possibility is that you can get away with much smaller head start buffers, in fact I'd be surprised if the RAM installed doesn't get more mileage than we're used to getting, even with NVMe.


----------



## Michael Antrum

Ashermusic said:


> I think a lot of us await reports on this.



To some degree, I don't think it really matters how it performs with 16gb RAM. 

Until the platform supports minimum 32gb (preferably 64gb) I don't think this version of the new platform is going to be optimal for our nefarious activities....

But I'm ready for a new desktop soon, in fact a little overdue, so I look forward to seeing what comes next year....


----------



## marius_dm

After testing the base model Air M1 for a few days really hoping I could switch as soon as possible (I've been dreaming of using just one mobile machine as my main for years), I concluded that I'll have to wait.
I tried loading a project I've been working on in Studio One that has lots of real instruments channels along with Keyscape, Superior Drummer 3 and tons of Waves plugins. I can't get the latency lower than 512 samples. I know Presonus said they saw a significant performance drop under Rosetta 2 and this seems to confirm that. I also tested Reaper under Rosetta with similar results - lots of glitches and hangups.
Even if I can live with having to abandon all Native Instruments or Izotope stuff for now, there are just too many glitches at the moment (might be due to the 8GB of RAM?).

So I'll say that if you need a machine that works for this type of workload it is not the time to get a fully loaded MBP M1. I'm anxiously waiting for the next upgrades and first wave of software support.

EDIT: BTW I usually work at 64 samples with an RME Digiface USB.


----------



## SGordB

This, from a thread on Pianoworld, is one of the most discouraging things I've seen about the first tier M1 SoC's VI performance:

"I just recorded a piece that I posted in the N1X thread. I played for 20-30 minutes until I came up with a passable take and there was not a single glitch on the Air M1 and I was at buffer size of 128 for peace of mind. So, I can confirm: Garritan CFX Full works on M1 CPU and will be glitch-free at buffer size of 128 but will require that you close all other apps."

The poster (CyberGene) is running an "entry level" (so 8GB) Air with, IIRC, 1 or 2 GB max RAM allocation in his settings for the CFX, which is a notoriously demanding plugin. He's running the standalone version (Aria) under Rosetta, so obviously it's less than we can expect from a native version. I don't recall what pre-cache he settled on, but as a veteran Garritan CFX whisperer he would have gravitated to whatever works best on this system. Many more posts from him with more deets here: http://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/3048687/1.html

I'm kind of deflated by these results, because even on my 2014 iMac quadcore i7 (4 GHz) with 32GB RAM, last night I was able to hammer away to my heart's content at a 64 buffer setting when running the CFX in standalone Aria mode with little else in the background (and zero VRAM compression by MacOS). Today, running it inside an 18 GB song in Studio One (5+ GB compressed), I have to back off to 128 to get acceptable, if not 100% crackle-free, performance (as usual). (Last night, in an empty song in S1, it flew without hiccups at 64 -- and zero VRAM.)

I had all but assumed that the M1's stellar single-core performance (Geekbench: 1700+!) would at least make it run rings around aging Intel Macs like mine (~1050) when tracking dense sampled piano playing -- even under Rosetta. Still, we could use more reports from the front lines, especially on 16GB systems with fans.


----------



## Michael Antrum

Isn't Garritan CFX also running through Rosetta 2 though ? That could make a massive difference.....


----------



## SGordB

Michael Antrum said:


> Isn't Garritan CFX also running through Rosetta 2 though ? That could make a massive difference.....



Yeah, that's what I mean. It runs inside the Aria plugin/standalone, which can only run under Rosetta for now.


----------



## Fleer

40 instances of KeyScape in MainStage


----------



## DaveP

Fleer said:


> 40 instances of KeyScape in MainStage



Looks good. How low of a buffer setting are you able to get?


----------



## DoubleTap

Okay, ordered.


----------



## LamaRose

Fleer said:


> 40 instances of KeyScape in MainStage




Why in the hell can't Apple apply this scripting into Logic for recording? Maybe it's coming, but sounds like they've been sitting on this for awhile.


----------



## gsilbers

Fleer said:


> 40 instances of KeyScape in MainStage





Is this your video? 


im trying to understand a little more since its keyscape and MainStage. 


in theory, logic could load the same amount of similar type of sample librares like a basic orchestral template? 

And would be playing as many instruments at the same time? Im guessing a very dense arragement.


----------



## SGordB

Fleer said:


> 40 instances of KeyScape in MainStage




I want to be dazzled by this, but my would-be enthusiasm is tempered by multiple questions it raises.

How much RAM did this particular Soundscape piano preset use? (e.g. "lite" or full? pre-cache size?)

To what extent, if any, does Mainstage load the first instance into RAM and then access the same sample pool for subsequent tracks so that RAM usage doesn't build up as much as the demo might lead one to assume?

He writes that the buffer was 128. That's good. But the max. polyphony was set much lower than you'd want for serious piano playing (IIRC, just 32 or maybe 64).

Can somebody play some actual music when doing these stress tests, the demanding kind, say, when it comes to a piano VI, that involves many long stretches of dense polyphony with lots of pedal (at least this guy tried to approach that level of stress by dragging his hand across the keyboard with the pedal down a few times)? It's not like it's hard to come up with that kind of MIDI if you can't produce it yourself, e.g.: http://www.kunstderfuge.com/ 

Then, rather than have every track playing exactly the same notes with the exact same preset at the same time (in case that also is handled more efficiently than different notes at the same time), one could take the same Ravel or Rachmaninoff or whichever MIDI transcription and _stagger it_ on multiple tracks so that each track is playing a different slice of a complex piece of music simultaneously. Turn the volume down (or up) depending on how cacophonous (or delightful) the result is.


----------



## SGordB

I should have looked more closely, but as he added tracks, his RAM usage only rose by about _1 or 2 MB per track_. When he maxed out at 50 tracks, his total RAM usage was just 66 MB, well below what even one typical piano VI chews up. Also, the max. polyphony was indeed 32 on each track.

EDIT: That would be total RAM usage within Mainstage, with an increasingly small proportion being consumed by resources other than Keyscape. To answer one of my own questions, it looks like Keyscape's RAM consumption did increase pretty much proportionately with every added instance (from around 15 MB at 10 tracks). But as bullish as I am about where Apple Silicon is taking the Mac, I can't believe that just 1 or 2 MB of loaded samples can sustain a smooth low-latency piano VI performance even on an M1 Mac with a super-fast internal NVME SSD.
... Or maybe the first instance used ~10 MB and then it was ~1.5 MB for each of the subsequent ones.


----------



## Fleer

Sorry guys, not my video, found it through my friend (Google). But it does look good, doesn’t it?


----------



## marius_dm

These are all very artificial tests. The only way to test is with real world projects. Nobody seems to talk about all the dropouts they are getting (I'm absolutely allergic to dropouts, I guess RME spoiled me...)


----------



## Fleer

I’m pretty fond of dropouts myself


----------



## Cinebient

I will test Keyscape and Omnisphere 2 tomorrow on my M1 macbook and will try myself how far it goes....within Logic.
I like to trigger 3-4 heavy Omnisphere (+ some FX) presets as one multi. More was not possible with my old macbook. I doubt i could play 40 or so at once. I hope it handles at least 10. I will see.


----------



## dflood

This is not about music applications, but it offers a nice historical overview and some opinions on just what a game changer this is going to be - for everyone, not just Apple.


----------



## Virtuoso

SGordB said:


> But the max. polyphony was set much lower than you'd want for serious piano playing (IIRC, just 32 or maybe 64).


The piano patches in Keyscape default to 32 for some reason and the maximum polyphony you can set is 64.

I've always found that odd for a VI dedicated to keyboard instruments. On other piano VIs, you can get voice counts into the hundreds with no issues if, for example, you play glissandi with the damper down.


----------



## DaveP

What I'm really curious about is how low of a buffer we can hope for for live performance. 2015 MacBook Pro 2.7 i5 is barely making it anymore...in most cases, not. A bunch of Kontakt instances, several Zebra, live mic processing and a few Respiro. Midi stream from a wind controller seems to be the biggest issue. 1024 is not doable and that's what I seem to be seeing in most of these 'reviews'. Lower the better!!!


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

DaveP said:


> What I'm really curious about is how low of a buffer we can hope for for live performance. 2015 MacBook Pro 2.7 i5 is barely making it anymore...in most cases, not. A bunch of Kontakt instances, several Zebra, live mic processing and a few Respiro. Midi stream from a wind controller seems to be the biggest issue. 1024 is not doable and that's what I seem to be seeing in most of these 'reviews'. Lower the better!!!



I think that i5 is your issue, my late 2013 i7 can run at 256 with a lot more thrown at it than that. What are you using for an interface?


----------



## DaveP

For audio, MOTU Ultralitemk3. Yes probably the i5. I really want to relegate this MBP to a nice life on a shelf and am 'worried' about the eventuality of the new stuff compatibility/performance.


----------



## Cinebient

So I made a short test with some of my Logic patches. Loading several stacked track with Keyscape. 40 is not realistic and I just used her 512 buffer since its what I use most because my old i7 quad core MacBook (late 2013) was just able to play one of these stacked tracks with 3-4 Keyscape (but plus some extern FX) instances at 1024. 3 at 512.
So this is just my use case and real life test so not sure what that means for others.
But to compare that now to this smaller M1 MacBook which stays still silent all the time.
F.e. I could play 14 instances of Keyscape where each also has its own B2 reverb added.
The sound sources where about 50 % from the LA Grand 30% Wing Tack Piano and 20% a mixture from some of the Toy Pianos. They all had a different microtuning to it while playing 4-6 note chords, some fast glissandos, a fast arp included.
I am really happy since this handles so much more than my old machine and we still talk about not optimised software (I run Logic under Rosetta here).
Also the samples are streaming from my extern Samsung T5 SSD.
So with optimised software, samples streaming from the faster intern SSD it might perform even much better and I could imagine 30-40 instances "dry" Keyscape.
In general the Spectrasonics plug-ins runs really well under Rosetta and I would have never thought that they are not optimised yet if I did not know it.
Indeed, the activity monitor showed me here about 12 GB RAM in usage while playing these 14 instances of Keyscape and 14 instances of B2 reverb.
Then I added another stacked track with 3 Hans Zimmer Strings instances but this was too much (but RAM usage was still only at 13 GB). 
So I have the feeling that I run out of CPU power before I get trouble with RAM.
Not sure. 
But if the rumoured 16 inch get really 8 off these performance cores it will be a beast of a laptop. 
I really like this little M1 machine and this gives me already the power I need. 
So i am a happy user so far.


----------



## Cinebient

And another short stress test.
I loaded 6 instances of Keyscape, each with another instrument (LA Grand, Wing Tack, Wurlitzer, Rhodes, Clarinet, Glock Piano all set to polyphony 64).
Again used an own B2 reverb for each instance on top.
Now set Logic to buffer 32, armed all tracks, played some random chords and again fast glissandos etc.....
And all played fine without a drop out here. The MacBook get a bit warm but no fan noise and also not really hot or so. 
Again, without optimised software, using extern SSD for samples, no audio interface.


----------



## el-bo

Quite weird to be standing in front of the 'Air' and 'Pro' in a store, this afternoon. I've always loved the form factor of the 13" models, but of course ever gave them a second thought due to them being so totally underpowered. Now knowing how much 'grunt' is under the hood, they seem even more stunning.

It also occurred to me that the release of higher models will also come with enough other technology that it would completely price me out of the market. Not that I can afford any of them, currently (Also, my current model seems quite unwilling to die on me), but the current Air might one day be mine, bought re-furbished of course, and still a few times more powerful than what I'm currently using.

Good times!


----------



## Cinebient

Also interesting post from U-he in the KVR forum:
"
We're going to post our benchmarks shortly.

On the MBP with M1 processor, Diva on Rosetta2 plays 120 voices - if MultiCore is turned off. That's a magnitude as much as a 2015 MBP with Intel i7. However, with Multicore turned on, drop outs appear at 30 voices already. Luckily, the M1 is so powerful, there is no need for Multicore. A single core can easily handle Diva's full polyphony at best setting. Using Rosetta.

We expect our native builds to perform better, particularly as we're going to support the new multithreading paradigm for audio plug-ins. Those builds are coming a long nicely, a first beta should be available in a few weeks.

- U"


----------



## gsilbers

Cinebient said:


> So I made a short test with some of my Logic patches. Loading several stacked track with Keyscape. 40 is not realistic and I just used her 512 buffer since its what I use most because my old i7 quad core MacBook (late 2013) was just able to play one of these stacked tracks with 3-4 Keyscape (but plus some extern FX) instances at 1024. 3 at 512.
> So this is just my use case and real life test so not sure what that means for others.
> But to compare that now to this smaller M1 MacBook which stays still silent all the time.
> F.e. I could play 14 instances of Keyscape where each also has its own B2 reverb added.
> The sound sources where about 50 % from the LA Grand 30% Wing Tack Piano and 20% a mixture from some of the Toy Pianos. They all had a different microtuning to it while playing 4-6 note chords, some fast glissandos, a fast arp included.
> I am really happy since this handles so much more than my old machine and we still talk about not optimised software (I run Logic under Rosetta here).
> Also the samples are streaming from my extern Samsung T5 SSD.
> So with optimised software, samples streaming from the faster intern SSD it might perform even much better and I could imagine 30-40 instances "dry" Keyscape.
> In general the Spectrasonics plug-ins runs really well under Rosetta and I would have never thought that they are not optimised yet if I did not know it.
> Indeed, the activity monitor showed me here about 12 GB RAM in usage while playing these 14 instances of Keyscape and 14 instances of B2 reverb.
> Then I added another stacked track with 3 Hans Zimmer Strings instances but this was too much (but RAM usage was still only at 13 GB).
> So I have the feeling that I run out of CPU power before I get trouble with RAM.
> Not sure.
> But if the rumoured 16 inch get really 8 off these performance cores it will be a beast of a laptop.
> I really like this little M1 machine and this gives me already the power I need.
> So i am a happy user so far.



interesting. 

now, just out of curiosity, can you load the same in the intel macbook and it uses the same amount of ram when loaded?


----------



## rnb_2

Just happened upon this on NI's forum - it worked for me to get Komplete Kontrol and Kontakt out of demo mode (without adding the Nektarine layer in my case). Still can't do anything with Native Access, so no adding new Kontakt libraries that need activation, but it's a step in the right direction.

Edit: it did not work to get Maschine out of demo, and other users didn't have luck with Traktor, but those are less important for our purposes.


----------



## Dewdman42




----------



## Dewdman42

Exclusive: Why Apple M1 Single "Core" Comparisons Are Fundamentally Flawed (With Benchmarks)


I have something pretty exciting for our readers today; something that almost everyone appears to have missed in the clamor for Apple M1 benchmark comparisons. What if I told you that pretty much all of the single-core benchmark comparisons between the Apple M1 and modern x86 processors you see...




wccftech.com


----------



## Cinebient

gsilbers said:


> interesting.
> 
> now, just out of curiosity, can you load the same in the intel macbook and it uses the same amount of ram when loaded?



Sorry, I cannot try that anymore since my old one is wiped out now. 
The performance upgrade for me was so good in general that I will not look back now.
In almost all real-life test I personally use I can use mainly 2-3 X (in terms of using sample libraries I even seems to get more out of it) more of everything and even could play a few things at buffer setting 32 if needed which never worked before for me.
I can't compare it to a maxed out new 16" or desktops/iMacs but this little laptop runs mainly all I need so far even under Rosetta much better as my old MacBook (remind: a late 2013 i7 base quad core). 
It also seems others seems quite happy with results of their M1 machines. 
I mean these are the entree level ones now to replace the old entree ones and here the performance is really out of the world.
I anyway almost never look much at cpu/ram measures/benchmarks/activity monitor and stuff but I just try what combination works and if it crackles/throttles/runs all still smooth in real-time if all tracks are armed as well.
So far I was never more happy with a laptop. Maybe the size is a bit what I have to deal with since I also prefer larger laptops normally but I also begin to like how much less weight I have in my hands compared to my old 15".
I might go also for a 16" M1X or so in near future but maybe I even do not need this anymore.
What surprised me really in a good way is that really now ALL things (beside N.I. stuff) just works. And with more optimised plug-ins it only will get better.


----------



## gsilbers

Cinebient said:


> Sorry, I cannot try that anymore since my old one is wiped out now.
> The performance upgrade for me was so good in general that I will not look back now.
> In almost all real-life test I personally use I can use mainly 2-3 X (in terms of using sample libraries I even seems to get more out of it) more of everything and even could play a few things at buffer setting 32 if needed which never worked before for me.
> I can't compare it to a maxed out new 16" or desktops/iMacs but this little laptop runs mainly all I need so far even under Rosetta much better as my old MacBook (remind: a late 2013 i7 base quad core).
> It also seems others seems quite happy with results of their M1 machines.
> I mean these are the entree level ones now to replace the old entree ones and here the performance is really out of the world.
> I anyway almost never look much at cpu/ram measures/benchmarks/activity monitor and stuff but I just try what combination works and if it crackles/throttles/runs all still smooth in real-time if all tracks are armed as well.
> So far I was never more happy with a laptop. Maybe the size is a bit what I have to deal with since I also prefer larger laptops normally but I also begin to like how much less weight I have in my hands compared to my old 15".
> I might go also for a 16" M1X or so in near future but maybe I even do not need this anymore.
> What surprised me really in a good way is that really now ALL things (beside N.I. stuff) just works. And with more optimised plug-ins it only will get better.




cool. just wanted to see how it allocates ram compared to the intels. like if it would still load the same amount of keyspace but instead of 1gb of ram loaded, the new macs would say 500mb or something along those lines.


----------



## gsilbers

Dewdman42 said:


>




Seems like going out the way to prove the m1 reviewers are wrong. Without maybe understanding the issues with intel macs? OR at least seeing it from another point of view. Its like junkie xl with 1600 template tracks saying the same thing and how poeple are wrong because they cant load that many tracks in ram.

The fan and heat issues of the mac intels have been a huge deal imo. i had the 16 inch and sold it because of that issue. the fan noise would kick in for just a few web tabs when open. I thought it was broken but turns out since 2017 macs this has always been an issue.
So trying to prove there is fan noise with 6k video and giving it a huge load doesnt seem that those intel macs where considered and ust took the term "no fan noise" from reviewers to the extreme. 

Also, and she did say so, the m1 macbook is not for her, but poeple buying those macbook m1 are not going to be editing 6k videos with effects and all that. But to be fair, apple did add the word "pro" to it when imo they shouldn't.

So i think the m1 are good based on the info out there but also, its not trying to replace high end laptops or desktops but its baseline consumer rate has some very impressive results, specially for the size, batery life and heat.


----------



## Cinebient

gsilbers said:


> Seems like going out the way to prove the m1 reviewers are wrong. Without maybe understanding the issues with intel macs? OR at least seeing it from another point of view. Its like junkie xl with 1600 template tracks saying the same thing and how poeple are wrong because they cant load that many tracks in ram.
> 
> The fan and heat issues of the mac intels have been a huge deal imo. i had the 16 inch and sold it because of that issue. the fan noise would kick in for just a few web tabs when open. I thought it was broken but turns out since 2017 macs this has always been an issue.
> So trying to prove there is fan noise with 6k video and giving it a huge load doesnt seem that those intel macs where considered and ust took the term "no fan noise" from reviewers to the extreme.
> 
> Also, and she did say so, the m1 macbook is not for her, but poeple buying those macbook m1 are not going to be editing 6k videos with effects and all that. But to be fair, apple did add the word "pro" to it when imo they shouldn't.
> 
> So i think the m1 are good based on the info out there but also, its not trying to replace high end laptops or desktops but its baseline consumer rate has some very impressive results, specially for the size, batery life and heat.




But still M1 does better than intel in this test (it was answered in the comments and M1 is still better than intel for laptop).
Again, in all my tests, and I mean playing plug-ins live at different settings/combinations, the little M1 book is way better than my intel. And that is all I care about at the end.
I mean not sure why everyone now compete that with high end desktop class systems or gamer laptops which weight 10 pounds and loose half their power if not connected with power cable. 
I think fact is that in the category where the MacBook Air and base MacBook Pro 13" are, they are the best what you can get right now (if your software/hardware works with it).
And even more of a strange thing that these Apple MacBooks are almost cheaper than what you need to spend for a similar windows laptop (if you even could get one of this size/performance/battery life/not loosing performance without power connection).
As usual there is a lot hot or top reviews and just a few with pro and contra.
m whatever high end desktops are coming in the next 2 years. So we will see how that scales up then. As a laptop only user and as music tools are my most used apps on these machines, I really feel I made a good deal for now.
I guess I stop now watching all these comparisons and just have fun with it


----------



## el-bo

Dewdman42 said:


>




Don't really get her point. Surely the reason she owns that expensive Mac Pro is because of having to edit 6k video etc. and none of the cheaper Mac computers being up to the task. Her saying that this entry-level laptop is not fit for such purposes is no revelation. The whole 'And it's still cold' aspect to the reviews is really almost an aside. It's the ability to do the tasks in the first place that's dropping jaws. And if there were any doubt she was talking nonsense, her summary that it would be an adequate Chromebook/Media player was surely confirmation.


----------



## Dewdman42

Her point is that under load the m1 cpu hits very high temperatures with inadequate cooling and she predicts the cpus that get pushed will have short longevity because of that.

she was not comparing m1 performance to intel at all, but merely cranking the cpu on a job and looking for flaws, which she found one.

interestingly, part of the reason the M1 may be prone to “meltdown” is because the architecture is able to saturate the cpu core to its full capability, see the other article I posted. But if other things get out of the way then the cpu is free to run at maximum RPM. So yea that helps do amazing scores and lots of plugins but it also means it’s possible to get hot CPU’s depending on what you do with it.

it’s just information folks, do whatever you wish with that.

There have been lots of encouraging reports so far, I still remain positive about the future of Mac ARM.


----------



## el-bo

Dewdman42 said:


> Her point is that under load the m1 cpu hits very high temperatures with inadequate cooling and she predicts the cpus that get pushed will have short longevity because of that.



But this is nothing new to the Macbook Pro, nor any computer really. Running at it's maximum temperature, constantly, will reduce the life of the components. But not many people do that. And those that do specifically seek out computers that allow extreme cooling solutions. 

My first Macbook pro lasted seven years (Died due to an incident with a very wet cat). But I used it for a ton of video/DVD re-encoding, and a lot of gaming. Temperatures were very high, often for hours on end. Never showed any strain.
And it was only around six years into using my current laptop for gaming that I thought it might be better to witch to a console so that i could try to eke out as many more years as possible from the Mac.

As for the cooling in her example, I'd say adequate is exactly what it was. 100 degrees is still below the mark at which intel suggest the possibility of instability. And the fans seemed to kick in right at the point where they needed to, to keep within that threshold. Of course, we don't have any info on how Apple's M1 compares, but it's entirely possible that it may have a higher threshold than Intel's tech.

Either way, when things start to look dodgy, power will get throttled or the computer would shut itself off.




Dewdman42 said:


> it also means it’s possible to get hot CPU’s depending on what you do with it.



Of course. However, with other reviewers, they were pointing out that temperatures were remaining low, despite the kinds of loads that most of us wouldn't need.



Dewdman42 said:


> it’s just information folks, do whatever you wish with that.



Absolutely! And I'm glad you shared it. My issue is that I think that she knows enough about this stuff to have not drawn the conclusions she drew. I got the feeling that at least part of her motivation was to be the one to spoil the party (That role would normally have fallen to LinusTechTips, but he seems to be quite content eating his words  ).

She's shooting high-end footage from high-end equipment, that demands high-end computer power, with the commensurate cooling solutions, to process. All she managed to show was that under certain conditions the processor gets hot and that the fans actually do their job. Pointing to a working pre-Intel laptop as any argument for longevity If it does still get any use, it could only be for the lightest of duties). Maybe I'm wrong, but it just feels a little disingenuous.

Again, nobody who wanted to edit the kind of data she wants to edit would ever really consider doing it on a laptop, except in a pinch, in which case it will still do it, but at the expense of a certain period of higher-temperatures.



Dewdman42 said:


> There have been lots of encouraging reports so far, I still remain positive about the future of Mac ARM.



Absolutely! We've seen reviewers cram their projects with more plugins than we could ever realistically need, and all way within safe thermal thresholds. And the majority of those who work with video, will find even these early 'budget' line options to be more than adequate (I'm subscribed to at least three YT channels who do everything on a fan-less iDevice).

To clarify: Glad you shared it


----------



## rnb_2

el-bo said:


> Don't really get her point. Surely the reason she owns that expensive Mac Pro is because of having to edit 6k video etc. and none of the cheaper Mac computers being up to the task. Her saying that this entry-level laptop is not fit for such purposes is no revelation. The whole 'And it's still cold' aspect to the reviews is really almost an aside. It's the ability to do the tasks in the first place that's dropping jaws. And if there were any doubt she was talking nonsense, her summary that it would be an adequate Chromebook/Media player was surely confirmation.



There are lots of eyeballs (and ad dollars) in doing bad faith hot takes, unfortunately. Even people sharing it to disagree gets views, after all (that's why people on Twitter discourage retweeting such things, preferring screenshots instead).

There's a former AMD employee/"consultant" who writes for Forbes' "contributor network" - unvetted blogs burnished by association with Forbes, or is Forbes' reputation diminished by association instead? - who is doing something similar for old people (like me) who'd rather read a short piece than sit through several minutes of Youtube. He's getting roasted in some quarters, but there are still plenty of people eager for contrarian takes on Apple.


----------



## Technostica

As a general aside, when looking at temperatures, don't forget that you need to clearly differentiate between how hot your laptop feels to you and the internal temperature of the CPU. 
Your laptop could be cool to the touch but the chip is thermally throttling due to internally hitting 100C, or whatever its limit is.
Or you can have a hot laptop with excellent cooling that is not thermally throttling due to excellent cooling; may be noisy though.


----------



## el-bo

rnb_2 said:


> There are lots of eyeballs (and ad dollars) in doing bad faith hot takes, unfortunately. Even people sharing it to disagree gets views, after all (that's why people on Twitter discourage retweeting such things, preferring screenshots instead).
> 
> There's a former AMD employee/"consultant" who writes for Forbes' "contributor network" - unvetted blogs burnished by association with Forbes, or is Forbes' reputation diminished by association instead? - who is doing something similar for old people (like me) who'd rather read a short piece than sit through several minutes of Youtube. He's getting roasted in some quarters, but there are still plenty of people eager for contrarian takes on Apple.



I did mis-hear her, with regard to the web-browsing statement. When I went back for a second watch, I realised that she was really saying that for those typical netbook duties the Air is still the best bet.

This is the first of her videos that I've watched, so Im not prepared to write her off completely. But it's just such a strange point to make. I'd be very interested to hear rational arguments why the current MBP (Even Air) isn't all the computer I'd need (Speaking just for me, and not perhaps the majority on this forum), but I'm still waiting 

*EDITED*: Just read the title to the video - *"**Shocking Truth about Apple M1 MacBook Pro - Melting Down at 100C" *

Oh my!


----------



## el-bo

Technostica said:


> As a general aside, when looking at temperatures, don't forget that you need to clearly differentiate between how hot your laptop feels to you and the internal temperature of the CPU.
> Your laptop could be cool to the touch but the chip is thermally throttling due to internally hitting 100C, or whatever its limit is.
> Or you can have a hot laptop with excellent cooling that is not thermally throttling due to excellent cooling; may be noisy though.



True, on both counts. These days, I keep my Mac extremely well ventilated, while also running fans at about 4500rpm. Things are running extremely cool, these days.


----------



## Dewdman42

I don't really want to be in the position of defending Terese or her videos...so I will skip most of your rant against her..I recommend you comment on her you tube page, she might even respond to you, ask her why she did or didn't do certain things if you truly seek truth. 

But just a couple general technical comments for the sake of clarity...



el-bo said:


> As for the cooling in her example, I'd say adequate is exactly what it was. 100 degrees is still below the mark at which intel suggest the possibility of instability.



Two problems with that statement that bear you taking heed. One is that we're not talking about an Intel CPU, we're talking about a new Apple CPU and we do not know exactly what kind of heat it can handle. The Apple Cpu has a lot more stuff built into it besides the cores..will it be more or less sensitive to problems from overheating? We do not know yet. 

Secondly, 100 degrees is DEFINITELY not how hot you want your Intel CPU's to be running. Not only can they become unstable, but they can literally burn out the silicon. That's why we have coolers on our CPU's to save them from destroying themselves. 100C degrees is definitely a cause for concern, in my view on ANY CPU... In the Mac world people don't dabble with overclocking, but on the PC side, overclocking is a popular hobby and people spend all manner of money on fancy cooling systems to prevent them from hitting that temperature. I have an overclocked PC here and I can tell you from testing that it starts to get unstable and shuts itself down way way way before 100C.

Most of the test situations that have been brought up about the M1 have focused on the fact that under "typical" situations, it is not getting hot and makes no noise! That is great news! The open question was, what happens if you do put it under serious load...can it be made to get hot, can it be made to be noisy, will the CPU's throttle down or will they burn out over time? Etc.. these are valid questions that Terese put to the test and exposed that yes..the M1 can get hot...the fans will turn on...and get plenty loud..and I think she inferred that they may throttle down their speed too, but I wasn't 100% clear on that. Mainly I think she was concerned with the fact that within 30 seconds they reached 100C...which is frankly...much too hot to be running your CPU's. if you do that often you will in fact fry them eventually. Or to use her words..."Melt" them.

Now..the other side of the coin is, will we smash the Cpu and cause it to overheat in mixing sessions or while bouncing tracks or whatever, typical stuff we do in audio work? I think probably not, but I still want to hear more field reports from people actually using these things for real audio work, rather then mock up situations with 500 instances of some plugin.

This kind of information from Terese is the first time I saw a report where someone was actually using proper scientific method to search for flaws rather then searching for validation of their purchase.


----------



## ridgero

Does someone have a simple BBC Core project for Logic Pro? I want to test it with the Mac mini


----------



## el-bo

Dewdman42 said:


> I don't really want to be in the position of defending Terese or her videos...so I will skip most of your rant against her..I recommend you comment on her you tube page, she might even respond to you, ask her why she did or didn't do certain things if you truly seek truth.



Don't see why you'd need to defend her, as I don't think my comments could really be perceived as an attack on her. Getting a little nagging feeling with regard to her motivations is certainly not a personal attack. I also don't think I was ranting. Apologies if that was the case.

I personally think the title of the video lies somewhere between exaggeration and clickbait, but she's hardly the first Youtuber to use such tactics. I also don't think that what she is showing is any cause for alarm. It's just expected behaviour. Perhaps if I didn't have a long backlog of replies to YouTube conversations that are really important to me, then I might ask her to dive deeper than the currant headline-grabbing.

Either way, I've no ill-will to her, and didn't intend my comments to have come over as such.




Dewdman42 said:


> Two problems with that statement that bear you taking heed. One is that we're not talking about an Intel CPU, we're talking about a new Apple CPU and we do not know exactly what kind of heat it can handle. The Apple Cpu has a lot more stuff built into it besides the cores..will it be more or less sensitive to problems from overheating? We do not know yet.



I did comment on the fact that i was going by Intel benchmarks and that Apple's new chip was an unknown. But I guess I did just assume that Apples would automatically do better, and that might not actually be the case. Definitely interested in finding out.



Dewdman42 said:


> Secondly, 100 degrees is DEFINITELY not how hot you want your Intel CPU's to be running. Not only can they become unstable, but they can literally burn out the silicon. That's why we have coolers on our CPU's to save them from destroying themselves. 100C degrees is definitely a cause for concern, in my view on ANY CPU... In the Mac world people don't dabble with overclocking, but on the PC side, overclocking is a popular hobby and people spend all manner of money on fancy cooling systems to prevent them from hitting that temperature. I have an overclocked PC here and I can tell you from testing that it starts to get unstable and shuts itself down way way way before 100C.
> 
> Most of the test situations that have been brought up about the M1 have focused on the fact that under "typical" situations, it is not getting hot and makes no noise! That is great news! The open question was, what happens if you do put it under serious load...can it be made to get hot, can it be made to be noisy, will the CPU's throttle down or will they burn out over time? Etc.. these are valid questions that Terese put to the test and exposed that yes..the M1 can get hot...the fans will turn on...and get plenty loud..and I think she inferred that they may throttle down their speed too, but I wasn't 100% clear on that. Mainly I think she was concerned with the fact that within 30 seconds they reached 100C...which is frankly...much too hot to be running your CPU's. if you do that often you will in fact fry them eventually. Or to use her words..."Melt" them.



I'm not trying to make the case that 100 degrees is where one would want to be running, very often. However, there are processes that seek to use as much power as the computer will give. Performing those same processes on much more powerful computers won't necessarily run cooler; instead, the processes will just finish more quickly.

The perspective to hold onto is, like you say, in most typical situations the M1 gives a lot of power without the expected heat and noise. Whether dipping into extremes will cause the M1 to shit itself is the question. But i don't see why it would when such a situation has not been the norm...ever?

The question as to whether CPU's can handle these high temperatures has come up countless times on forums such as MacRumours, over the years, as many (This was me, also) get quite afraid when they feel a bit of heat, hear the fans and read the temperatures. But as scary as it seems we know that there are failsafe measures in place to avert disaster. Down-clocking and eventual shut-down are there to stop issues, and many people such as myself spent hours (Months, when combined) in those upper realms without any noticeable issues, whether at the specific times or when viewed against the total longevity of the machines.

I've read that some chips (especially on gfx cards) are rated safe up to temperatures of 115 degrees, and have also read that silicon has a much higher melting point than these chips are ever going to be able to exceed. I might be wrong.

Ultimately, for this issue to be a problem, we'd have to imagine that either Apple haven't implemented their temperature safe-guards at the right level, or perhaps that they'd take the risk of huge customer backlash when M1-equipped laptops started melting around the one-year mark. Personally, I think they've got it covered. but it won't be the first time that Apple trying to push the boundaries has ended up with sub-par machinery.

Anyway, I'm still not saying that users should be running at those kinds of temperatures for months, on end. One doesn't need to Handbrake their entire DVD collection, without pause. Common sense should hopefully prevail 



Dewdman42 said:


> Now..the other side of the coin is, will we smash the Cpu and cause it to overheat in mixing sessions or while bouncing tracks or whatever, typical stuff we do in audio work? I think probably not, but I still want to hear more field reports from people actually using these things for real audio work, rather then mock up situations with 500 instances of some plugin.



I think it'll be the videographers that will be pushing their systems the most. Any of us that concentrates purely on music will likely fall way way below these heat thresholds. It's why i'm pretty confident that the fan-less Air would serve me just as well. Even at low temperatures, it considerably outperforms any computer I've ever used.



Dewdman42 said:


> This kind of information from Terese is the first time I saw a report where someone was actually using proper scientific method to search for flaws rather then searching for validation of their purchase.



I'm not sure we'd agree on what constitutes "proper scientific method", but at this point I'd rather not spend time arguing with someone who I'm pretty sure I'm mostly in agreement with


----------



## Cinebient

As I said in another thread there seems to be also some problems and in almost all cases they seems to be related to GUI/graphic things.
F.e. while the Spectrasonics plug-ins runs great and so I now experienced that when I let the plug-in GUI open (which is in general sludgy but was before too for me), I get a giant audio latency which makes it unusable for live playing.
Since I almost never let the GUI open I just stumbled over this today. So be aware, not all works flawless right now.
Repro from U-he f.e. seems to have the same trouble for me here on my M1 MacBook.
Edit: It seems Repro f.e. works better in the native ARM version of Logic but there other plug-ins do not work at all or crashing Logic or even worse (Falcon seems to bring some GUI issues which stays in the background even if I closed the Logic GUI but happily it gone away when I closed Logic completely.
So some things working in the Logic rosetta version and some seems to work better in the ARM version. I guess it will take some months for prime time.
I still have time to test my MacBook until 8th of January to send it back if I wanted, so some extra time it seems compared to the usual 14 days but so far I just like the machine.
I guess time to get rid of some of my bloat anyway since Logic alone covers 90% of what I need today and the rest will be just native ARM version within the next 6 months. I will replace everything else or leave it/sell it.


----------



## gsilbers

Hopefully I’m not reposting


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

100˚ C is 212˚ Fahrenheit, THE BOILING POINT OF WATER!

(Okay, it changes at different altitude, but still...)


----------



## el-bo

Nick Batzdorf said:


> 100˚ C is 212˚ Fahrenheit, THE BOILING POINT OF WATER!
> 
> (Okay, it changes at different altitude, but still...)



But Intel (Presumably Apple, also) have a 'danger' limit that will force computer shutdown as a means of protection. Up until that point there seems to be a dance between fan utilisation and CPU throttling, so as to keep away from that limit without overly compromising utility.

From what I can gather, Intel have set that hard limit at around 105 degrees, but some chips have higher limits. Apple's is an unknown quantity. However, it would make no sense that they'd allow their chips to exceed the danger threshold. 

Again...nobody is saying that chips should be run at this temperature constantly, but getting close to these limits is normal practise for some processes, and has been for many years.

Also, what has the boiling point of water got to do with it?  Different materials have different points at which they shift from inert to agitated, or to total meltdown. I wouldn't want my blood to reach 100 degrees C, but my coffee mug seems to have no problem holding boiling water 🤷


----------



## Technostica

This site do very in-depth reviews:








Apple MacBook Air 2020 M1 Entry Review: Apple M1 CPU humbles Intel and AMD


The M1 based entry-level Macbook in our extensive technical test.




www.notebookcheck.net









__





Apple MacBook Pro 13 M1 with more than 20 hours battery runtime, but no performance advantage over the MacBook Air


Apple also equips the entry-level MacBook Pro 13 with its new M1 processor. The battery runtime is really good, but the MacBook Pro 13 does not really have a performance advantage over the MacBook Air.




www.notebookcheck.net


----------



## Ivan M.

Nick Batzdorf said:


> 100˚ C is 212˚ Fahrenheit, THE BOILING POINT OF WATER!
> 
> (Okay, it changes at different altitude, but still...)



Of water, but cpu's aren't made of water


----------



## Ivan M.

Too lazy to quote now, that yt review is wrong, because it only shows a certain problem, without context or comparison. Context - who will use it like that benchmark shows, and comparison - what's the improvement from the previous solution (intel).
I like max tech reviews, because they put laptops side by side and simply show you the difference


----------



## SGordB

Here comes the inevitable (starting as early as tomorrow):

“Apple's next potential launch period for a Mac could be March 2021, with historical product launches tending to err away from January and February in favor of the third month. A December launch could still potentially happen, with one rumored for Tuesday, but it seems unlikely to take place so close to the end of the year.”









Apple Silicon iMac & MacBook Pro expected in 2021, 32-core Mac Pro in 2022 | AppleInsider


Apple's short-term plan for Apple Silicon is reportedly a larger MacBook Pro and iMac refresh in 2021, with a Mac Pro with up to 32 high-performance cores coming at some point in 2022.




appleinsider.com


----------



## InLight-Tone

Gotta keep this Hackintosh afloat till the next wave...


----------



## Ivan M.

Waiting for more cores and 32GB, then I'm buying! 😃 
Quite strange to be this excited, really, I hate all tech companies, but finally these are good machines 😁


----------



## el-bo

Ivan M. said:


> Too lazy to quote now, that yt review is wrong, because it only shows a certain problem, without context or comparison. Context - who will use it like that benchmark shows, and comparison - what's the improvement from the previous solution (intel).
> I like max tech reviews, because they put laptops side by side and simply show you the difference



Watching the video again, it shows that the process will take just over three minutes to complete. That's such a little amount of time, in the grand scheme of things. She does say that 100 degrees is melting point, which we know isn't even true of Intel, never mind Apple. What she doesn't say is how often she'd be pushing the CPU, in such a manner. Nor do we get any idea how long it takes to return to normal after the process. And, as you say, no comparison to other computers.

When I first used Handbrake on my C2D Macbook, many years ago, it would run extremely hot with the fans spinning at maximum. When I replaced that with a much newer and more powerful Macbook, the heat and fan situation was the same. The only difference was that the process took less time to complete. I'm pretty sure that if she put compared any Intel Macbook to the M1 that each one of them would seek to use the maximum power available, and the only difference would be measured in process time. 

It would make sense to me that the end-user be able to stipulate their own trade-off between CPU power and time i.e Choose to run a process at 20% of the power/heat, and just leave it to run for much longer. But if that were possible, then the video would've been pretty redundant.


----------



## Ivan M.

el-bo said:


> Watching the video again, it shows that the process will take just over three minutes to complete. That's such a little amount of time, in the grand scheme of things. She does say that 100 degrees is melting point, which we know isn't even true of Intel, never mind Apple. What she doesn't say is how often she'd be pushing the CPU, in such a manner. Nor do we get any idea how long it takes to return to normal after the process. And, as you say, no comparison to other computers.
> 
> When I first used Handbrake on my C2D Macbook, many years ago, it would run extremely hot with the fans spinning at maximum. When I replaced that with a much newer and more powerful Macbook, the heat and fan situation was the same. The only difference was that the process took less time to complete. I'm pretty sure that if she put compared any Intel Macbook to the M1 that each one of them would seek to use the maximum power available, and the only difference would be measured in process time.
> 
> It would make sense to me that the end-user be able to stipulate their own trade-off between CPU power and time i.e Choose to run a process at 20% of the power/heat, and just leave it to run for much longer. But if that were possible, then the video would've been pretty redundant.



Exactly!


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Ivan M. said:


> Of water, but cpu's aren't made of water



You need water to make tea in China.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

el-bo said:


> Also, what has the boiling point of water got to do with it?  Different materials have different points at which they shift from inert to agitated, or to total meltdown. I wouldn't want my blood to reach 100 degrees C, but my coffee mug seems to have no problem holding boiling water 🤷



Okay, just as long as witches with silicone breast implants don't have to worry about them melting.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

OUCH! I just found out that boiling water is FUCKING HOT!

Who would have known?


----------



## el-bo

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Okay, just as long as witches with silicone breast implants don't have to worry about them melting.






Nick Batzdorf said:


> OUCH! I just found out that boiling water is FUCKING HOT!
> 
> Who would have known?



It's entirely possible that neither Apple, Intel or AMD are aware of your research. Perhaps contact them to let 'em know about teh silcone boobies and how "boiling water is FUCKING HOT!"


----------



## Technostica

If you want to know what temperatures CPUs are rated at for long term continuous loads look at server chips. 
I am not so concerned about the internal CPU temps as chips are designed to look after themselves. 
What does concern me in general is how that heat impacts the lifespan of other components which are near by. Which is why Servers tend to have a lot of airflow to cool everything. 
The M1 are low power though, so regardless of internal temps there isn't much actual heat to damage other components I suspect.


----------



## Funkfish

I feel like this is relevant to this thread 









Apple working on a 32-core processor for high-end Macs


Alongside processors meant for new iMacs and Mac Pros.




www.theverge.com


----------



## Alex Sopala

Funkfish said:


> I feel like this is relevant to this thread
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Apple working on a 32-core processor for high-end Macs
> 
> 
> Alongside processors meant for new iMacs and Mac Pros.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.theverge.com



I'd ultimately want to see what it's priced at and how it does. It'll take a LOT to be competitive in that space, and if they pull it off, then that just benefits us, the end users. That and I imagine by then most devs will have ARM versions of their plugins and whatnot.


----------



## woodslanding

Nick Batzdorf said:


> :(


Yeah, Apple travels light. PCs have BAGGAGE. ( Also known as 'backwards compatibility'. )


----------



## el-bo

Alex Sopala said:


> I'd ultimately want to see what it's priced at



I think things are going to start getting quite a bit more expensive


----------



## Alex Sopala

el-bo said:


> I think things are going to start getting quite a bit more expensive



I'm just thinking compared to a comparable PC system. Considering AMD has a 32 core CPU at 1/4 the price of Intel's 28 core Xeon W and blows it out of the water for most applications (ignoring the RAM limit), the price for entry into that space is no longer in the "used/newish car" territory. If they charge $10k without any crazy graphics power or crazy amounts of RAM, I'd question the heck out of that.


----------



## Jetzer

My MacBook Air M1 16gb arrived today! First impression is that I am amazed. It's feels razor sharp and responsive. I mean really...+ it makes absolutely no sound whatsoever.

I have installed Cubase and played around with it for a little bit. No serious testing yet though. I am not sure when I will get to it, but maybe this weekend. 

This is also not meant to be a workhorse for me, I am gonna use it mostly for other office-type stuff, but I am gonna do some light sketching with this so I am curious to see how far I can push it.


----------



## el-bo

Alex Sopala said:


> I'm just thinking compared to a comparable PC system. Considering AMD has a 32 core CPU at 1/4 the price of Intel's 28 core Xeon W and blows it out of the water for most applications (ignoring the RAM limit), the price for entry into that space is no longer in the "used/newish car" territory. If they charge $10k without any crazy graphics power or crazy amounts of RAM, I'd question the heck out of that.



Maybe not $10k. However, I reckon this budget line might remain capped at 2-ports, 16g RAM limit and older screen-tech. Perhaps the rumoured 14-inch will get the newer screen-tech, more power, RAM and ports and the 16-inch will come at a price that reflects the extra screen real-estate and might have a much higher power graphics engine etc. 

All just speculation, but I don't think it'll be long before Apple are selling $3.5k laptops with this technology. All well and good, but most people who just work on the music side of things would be fine with the current M1 CPU power, GFX (Even ports, using hubs) etc. but to get that extra 32GB - 128GB of RAM may come at too much of a premium.


----------



## Michael Antrum

I'm hoping my Late 2013 Macbook Pro 13" is going to keep going until they bring a new one out with at least 32Gb RAM.

The hinges are going (actually, my hinges are going a bit too, but that happens in your 50's), the track pad is sticking sometimes, and the down arrow is foobar'd (fortunately, mine is working well).

If it collapses in a heap of dust, then I'll bite the bullet and get the current model, but I really want 4 TB ports and 32gb RAM......


----------



## tabulius

Jetzer said:


> My MacBook Air M1 16gb arrived today! First impression is that I am amazed. It's feels razor sharp and responsive.



Auch! Be careful with that  I really wish we could take a peek at the 2021 - 2022 models already. Because then it really gets interesting. And then Steinberg, Presonus, and 3rd party developers have had time to make native versions. There have been rumors for half the size M? Mac Pro. The 2013 model form factor would be pretty nice in my opinion with actual expansion slots for M2 and the like! It WILL be expensive tho, we know Apple. I bought a 65-inch 4k television with less than Apple monitor stand :D


----------



## Michael Antrum

New baby Mac Pro 2021 - 4 slots for nvme drives and 4 pci slots.

Tell Tim to stop pissing about and get it done.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

woodslanding said:


> Yeah, Apple travels light. PCs have BAGGAGE. ( Also known as 'backwards compatibility'. )



True, although there are now 64- and 32-bit versions of Windows.


----------



## marius_dm

Not sure if anyone posted this yet.

https://isapplesiliconready.com/for/music


----------



## Dewdman42

Nick Batzdorf said:


> True, although there are now 64- and 32-bit versions of Windows.



yes but the 64 bit version of windows still runs 32 but apps.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> yes but the 64 bit version of windows still runs 32 but apps.



But - unless I'm mistaken - not the 32-bit VE Pro?


----------



## Dewdman42

I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t run on windows


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Okay, it is running now. Maybe it was just that some 32-bit plug-ins I have are past their sell-by date.


----------



## Alex Sopala

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Okay, it is running now. Maybe it was just that some 32-bit plug-ins I have are past their sell-by date.



It runs, you're just limited to 4GB RAM in the program, because that's what 32 bit's limitation is, which is why we have 64 bit. There are a bajillion and a half programs that don't need more than 4gb RAM to do their thing, so they code it in 32 bit. Backwards compatibility was always a given on pretty much every system until Catalina came along.


----------



## rnb_2

Alex Sopala said:


> It runs, you're just limited to 4GB RAM in the program, because that's what 32 bit's limitation is, which is why we have 64 bit. There are a bajillion and a half programs that don't need more than 4gb RAM to do their thing, so they code it in 32 bit. Backwards compatibility was always a given on pretty much every system until Catalina came along.



They didn't want to have to support 32-bit on Apple Silicon (and Rosetta 2), so Catalina took that hit so that Big Sur wouldn't have to.


----------



## wayne_rowley

Hmm. Slightly disappointing reports on USB speeds here. Hopefully fixable with an update, but perhaps also highlighting these new Macs are definitely aimed at low-end consumers rather than content creators.


----------



## el-bo

wayne_rowley said:


> Hmm. Slightly disappointing reports on USB speeds here. Hopefully fixable with an update, but perhaps also highlighting these new Macs are definitely aimed at low-end consumers rather than content creators.




The Bluetooth issue is nothing new, and can normally solved by experimenting with computer and peripherals placement. The other issues they report aren't so encouraging. Not sure they'd be prohibitive in my workflow, but I can imagine that being the case for others. Either way, definitely not expected behaviour.


----------



## Fleer

FabFilter at the ready!




__





FabFilter News - December 2020






www.fabfilter.com


----------



## rnb_2

The Bluetooth issue is, unfortunately, not something that changing device placement seems to solve. My mini will sometimes completely drop Bluetooth connection to both my Logitech keyboard and Apple trackpad at the same time, and refuse to reconnect - I do also have a wired Wacom tablet connected, so I still have pointer control, but no ability to type until I restart. Some say they solved the Bluetooth issues by disabling WiFi, but that didn’t do the trick in my case. I currently have both devices connected via USB to my Thunderbolt hub to cut down on frustration.

I can’t speak to the WiFi or USB performance issues (I am using my wired network primarily), as I haven’t tested those, but will try to do that today, out of curiosity.

I suspect all of this will be fixed via firmware updates, hopefully soon. Will it be before NI gets Native Access working? Fortunately, I have the USB ports available, so there’s nothing crippling my use at the moment.


----------



## Cinebient

So far i experiended none of these problems with my M1 macbook pro. 
Hopefully it stays this way. I really like this machine a lot so far.


----------



## rnb_2

A quick update on speed via the USB4/Thunderbolt 3 ports - I tested with a Thunderbolt 3 NVMe drive (don't have a simple USB-C drive for testing at the moment), and saw slightly slower write speed on the M1 vs the Intel (~930MB/s vs 1080MB/s), but equal read speeds (~1350MB/s).


----------



## Technostica

This review has Logic tests 








Mac mini 2020 Review: Apple M1 Silicon Performance Deep Dive - Page 3


Apple's first stab at a small form factor desktop and laptop processor offers impressive performance-per-watt metrics. - Page 3




hothardware.com


----------



## rnb_2

Technostica said:


> This review has Logic tests
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Mac mini 2020 Review: Apple M1 Silicon Performance Deep Dive - Page 3
> 
> 
> Apple's first stab at a small form factor desktop and laptop processor offers impressive performance-per-watt metrics. - Page 3
> 
> 
> 
> 
> hothardware.com



But with only 8GB of RAM in their test system, they suspect it was hobbled in some of the Logic benchmarks, where some plugins aren't native, and those that are seemed to want at least 16GB of RAM.


----------



## DaveP

Still, reviewers are using a way too large of a buffer to be useful for live performance. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places for such info. Has anybody seen reviews in the tiny buffer range? This especially in view of what seems to be a (relative) bottleneck in the usb input stream. My midi stream is probably a gnat in the ocean but but but.....


----------



## Cinebient

DaveP said:


> Still, reviewers are using a way too large of a buffer to be useful for live performance. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places for such info. Has anybody seen reviews in the tiny buffer range? This especially in view of what seems to be a (relative) bottleneck in the usb input stream. My midi stream is probably a gnat in the ocean but but but.....



Depending on what you need, I was able to play several instances of Keyscape, Omnisphere plus FX at buffer 32.


----------



## DaveP

Cinebient said:


> Depending on what you need, I was able to play several instances of Keyscape, Omnisphere plus FX at buffer 32.


That sounds promising for my purposes. Guess I need to bite the bullet if I want to know for sure. Thanks for the input!


----------



## Manaberry

Once natively supported, would a Mac Mini M1 be a good candidate to run my Cubase project - 1900 tracks (with my 18 cores PC as libraries host with VEP) and Pro Tools mixing session? 

I wish to go for mac soon, to be able to use some macOS only plugins. 12 cores / 32 GB RAM would be perfect though.


----------



## Cinebient

I tested now also the SSD speeds and yes, sadly I can confirm that on my late 2013 MacBook Pro my extern SSD (Samsung T5, format is APFS) have 358MB/s write and 421MB/s read while on my brand new M1 MacBook Pro I get 307MB/s write and 384MB/s read.
Maybe I have should gone for the maxed out intern SSD with 2 TB since my old was just
681MB/s write and 709MB/s read compared to the new M1 with 2870MB/s write and 2869MB/s read.
I hoped at least the new could get the max out of the T5 which should be over 500MB/s.
Lets hope its a software thing.
Also be aware, since there are some reports about bluetooth issues and wifi.
Bluetooth was fine mostly but my Seaboard Rise will disconnect if I use MPE mode and play a lot midi notes with lots of polyphonic modulations but I had the same problem with my old MacBook Pro late 2013. So not sure if its in general just too much midi traffic via bluetooth or both machines suffers from the same or the Seaboard is the joy killer here. In "normal" piano mode it works fine. Other bluetooth connections also seems stable so far.
Wifi: No issues here so far I could complain about.


----------



## Cinebient

I saw now a report that someone tested this with a Samsung T7 which was fine then. 
Anyone with a Samsung T7 and M1 machine here?
Maybe its the T5 which doesn't like the M1 or vice versa for some reason?


----------



## el-bo

Cinebient said:


> I tested now also the SSD speeds and yes, sadly I can confirm that on my late 2013 MacBook Pro my extern SSD (Samsung T5, format is APFS) have 358MB/s write and 421MB/s read while on my brand new M1 MacBook Pro I get 307MB/s write and 384MB/s read.



This obviously shouldn't be happening, but I'm wondering if that amount of slow-down makes any real-world difference. If you had to actually speed-check it to notice, maybe it's not so drastic.

A way to test it would be to place a couple of 3rd-party Kontakt libraries on the external (Best to choose something that takes quite a while to load it's samples into a particular patch). Then wipe the libraries from internal drives of your computer, and set each computer's Kontakt to find the library on the external drive. Then make a project with nothing but a few instances of these externally-stored libraries to see how much difference it takes each computer to load.


----------



## el-bo

rnb_2 said:


> The Bluetooth issue is, unfortunately, not something that changing device placement seems to solve. My mini will sometimes completely drop Bluetooth connection to both my Logitech keyboard and Apple trackpad at the same time, and refuse to reconnect - I do also have a wired Wacom tablet connected, so I still have pointer control, but no ability to type until I restart.



Interesting, because we have a similar set-up (Wired Wacom, BT keyboard and Apple Trackpad) and my experience was absolutely influenced by device placement.

In the last three years I've made minor adjustments to my computer placement, with the constant being where my typing/navigation peripherals were placed. 

- 1st setup - Laptop was a couple of metres away, but with a clear line of sight to peripherals. Got BT dropouts pretty often (As in your case, either had to restart or after an amount of time they'd automatically reconnect).

- 2nd setup - Moved laptop to a position where the antennae (Back of laptop, incorporated into tthe screen lid) were about 60-70 cms away. Still got the dropouts, but less frequently.

- 3rd setup - Same laptop and peripherals position, but I changed the arrangement of my musical keyboards. Now I had a huge chunk of ROLI metal between my peripherals and the laptop. Dropouts seemed to remain about the same. However, I'd often get moments where the keyboard would become laggy e.g words appearing quite a while after being typed, and the trackpad would barely track. In both cases, placing the units next to the laptop (on top of the Seaboard) gave them a boost which was weirdly maintained when moving the peripherals back to 'base'

- Current setup - Now I have everything in the same place, but the laptop has it's base removed and the is oriented with it's 'back' towards me. With the antennae closer to me and half-exposed, I've not had a single dropout incident, nor have I had any moments of lag. It's been just over a month.

---

Also worth pointing out (I know this has been a problem for some users), that I have a 10-port powered usb hub connected. However, it resides about 30 cms below the laptop, with two slabs of wood in-between.




rnb_2 said:


> Some say they solved the Bluetooth issues by disabling WiFi, but that didn’t do the trick in my case.



That would make sense. At least with my generation of Macbook the Wifi and BT antennae are located in the same place, and therefore probably interfering with each other. 

-----

Anyway...just a different perspective. Of course, It's not going to be practical for people to have their computers so close, and certainly not with their guts exposed to the world (Although probably safer for the Mini). Just a different perspective


----------



## Cinebient

el-bo said:


> This obviously shouldn't be happening, but I'm wondering if that amount of slow-down makes any real-world difference. If you had to actually speed-check it to notice, maybe it's not so drastic.
> 
> A way to test it would be to place a couple of 3rd-party Kontakt libraries on the external (Best to choose something that takes quite a while to load it's samples into a particular patch). Then wipe the libraries from internal drives of your computer, and set each computer's Kontakt to find the library on the external drive. Then make a project with nothing but a few instances of these externally-stored libraries to see how much difference it takes each computer to load.



In real-life there is not much difference. Still no Kontakt libraries still N.I. let me install.
But anyway the longest to load for me was always Bohemian Violin and Cello within Falcon and indeed here it even takes a bit longer. 
Loading the LA Custom Grand within Keyscape/Omnisphere also always took a good while (well, maybe 10-15 seconds) but when I save it as Logic patch and the load it I just have to wait 2 seconds (strange).
However, the difference is not really noticeable until you really load things which were already playing slow like the Bohemian or almost most larger sample libraries within UVI-Falcon, a reason I much prefer Kontakt. 
Now I really wished I´ve gone for the 2 TB intern which would covers almost all I need to install and regular use (just about 1.7 TB) and I guess the performance would be much better. 
Sounds like a minor thing but using extern SSD with fast speed is important for me and not sure if I want to pay that amount of money for a step back in this area. It should at least slightly outperform my 7 years old MacBook Pro. 
I heard using a thunderbolt 3 hub works fine which is a bit strange.
But if I have to buy a hub or something like an extern Samsung X5 SSD I could have payed a bit more to get all the intern speed it offers. Anyway I wonder if the 2 TB is not also even faster as it was in the past with 1/2 TB SSD compared to slower speeds with 256/512 GB SSD. I really would need to test all my Kontakt tools and hope N.I. hurry up.
I really like the whole feel of this machine but then I begin to ask me if I was to euphoric.
Like I said, great that I have a much extended test phase here (from delivered 24th of November to 8th of January) to decide if I really stay with it.
Since also rumours get so high about the next ones coming maybe within the next 3-6 months I might save that money plus more and go then for a maxed out 16". But I guess it will be at least double the price then.
I could get my old back (from my wife) install everything again and use it for another half year. Not sure yet.


----------



## el-bo

Cinebient said:


> In real-life there is not much difference.



I wonder if you'd even have noticed if it hadn't been made public. That's not a slight against you, as I'm pretty sure I'd not have noticed. In the case of loading up most instruments, we might be talking a second's worth of difference, perhaps?



Cinebient said:


> Sounds like a minor thing but using extern SSD with fast speed is important for me and not sure if I want to pay that amount of money for a step back in this area. It should at least slightly outperform my 7 years old MacBook Pro.



I get it. SSD was such a major boost when I installed mine, even for just the small day-to-day snappiness. Of course, much of that is down to the internal system drive, which in the M! would be extremely fast.

I do get that little thought nagging at you that it is not as fast as it is supposed to be, but I still think that in actuality it makes very little difference. Paying the huge premium increase internal storage to 2tb might be worth it to you, if only to relieve the nagging thoughts. Or maybe those extra seconds (and I'm not mocking you) are important to you. In case it's the second option, it doesn't make sense to me that you'd be using the external drive you are using. On your older computer, the transfer speeds would've been capped in line with the drive you have, but that's no longer the case. 

I've read on these forums members reporting that the performance bump from HDD to SSD was huge, but that going from standard SSD to the latest blazing fast drives is practically unnoticeable (Makes sense, given the types of relatively small files us musicians are working with). But if you really want to improve on what you have, you could save a lot of money on a 3rd-party NVME drive, housed in a TB3 enclosure


----------



## Cinebient

el-bo said:


> I wonder if you'd even have noticed if it hadn't been made public. That's not a slight against you, as I'm pretty sure I'd not have noticed. In the case of loading up most instruments, we might be talking a second's worth of difference, perhaps?
> 
> 
> 
> I get it. SSD was such a major boost when I installed mine, even for just the small day-to-day snappiness. Of course, much of that is down to the internal system drive, which in the M! would be extremely fast.
> 
> I do get that little thought nagging at you that it is not as fast as it is supposed to be, but I still think that in actuality it makes very little difference. Paying the huge premium increase internal storage to 2tb might be worth it to you, if only to relieve the nagging thoughts. Or maybe those extra seconds (and I'm not mocking you) are important to you. In case it's the second option, it doesn't make sense to me that you'd be using the external drive you are using. On your older computer, the transfer speeds would've been capped in line with the drive you have, but that's no longer the case.
> 
> I've read on these forums members reporting that the performance bump from HDD to SSD was huge, but that going from standard SSD to the latest blazing fast drives is practically unnoticeable (Makes sense, given the types of relatively small files us musicians are working with). But if you really want to improve on what you have, you could save a lot of money on a 3rd-party NVME drive, housed in a TB3 enclosure


Like i said, i only notice it when i use Falcon and use things like Bohemian Violin/Cello.
This was indeed the reason i tested it actually because it took so long too load here. 
Also of course the best way to save money is to use what i already have and used to be fine, even on my old machines.
In my case i have a 2 TB Samsung T5, a 500 GB T3 and a 256 GB T1. But i mainly just use the T5. The T1 is way to slow. The speed increase from the T3 to T5 also was actually not that much, it was more about the space and that the T5 was the same price then.
I thought about a T7 but i do not think its worth the extra money to replace the already great T5, especially since 2 TB is also the limit here.
I also thought about a hub or even a Samsung X5 thunderbolt 3 SSD but its also not that much cheaper compared to the upgrade to 2 TB intern SSD when i think its still a bit faster, no dongles needed, no extern hardware at all. I like it very mobile with almost no external hardware needed. A reason i have no problem with just 2 ports but at least then they should outperform 7 years old intel crap


----------



## el-bo

Cinebient said:


> Like i said, i only notice it when i use Falcon and use things like Bohemian Violin/Cello.
> This was indeed the reason i tested it actually because it took so long too load here.
> Also of course the best way to save money is to use what i already have and used to be fine, even on my old machines.
> In my case i have a 2 TB Samsung T5, a 500 GB T3 and a 256 GB T1. But i mainly just use the T5. The T1 is way to slow. The speed increase from the T3 to T5 also was actually not that much, it was more about the space and that the T5 was the same price then.
> I thought about a T7 but i do not think its worth the extra money to replace the already great T5, especially since 2 TB is also the limit here.
> I also thought about a hub or even a Samsung X5 thunderbolt 3 SSD but its also not that much cheaper compared to the upgrade to 2 TB intern SSD when i think its still a bit faster, no dongles needed, no extern hardware at all. I like it very mobile with almost no external hardware needed. A reason i have no problem with just 2 ports but at least then they should outperform 7 years old intel crap



Well, you can get 4tb of NVME for the price Apple charges for their 2tb internal. Just bung it in an enclosure and you're sorted. If you needed to buy more space, then 2-4tb of external NVME might be worth considering. Otherwise, you could save a lot of money by deciding whether a few seconds of accumulated extra time per-day, for only a couple of your preferred instruments, is worth the extra investment 🤷


----------



## Alex Fraser

el-bo said:


> Well, you can get 4tb of NVME for the price Apple charges for their 2tb internal. Just bung it in an enclosure and you're sorted. If you needed to buy more space, then 2-4tb of external NVME might be worth considering. Otherwise, you could save a lot of money by deciding whether a few seconds of accumulated extra time per-day, for only a couple of your preferred instruments, is worth the extra investment 🤷


Hehe. The irony of it all.

Notice that loading over USB bus is slower on new Macs.
Complain about the lost time you'll spend loading data.
Spend (hours?) making a YouTube video about it/posting on social media thereby wasting even more time. 😉


----------



## el-bo

Alex Fraser said:


> Hehe. The irony of it all.
> 
> Notice that loading over USB bus is slower on new Macs.
> Complain about the lost time you'll spend loading data.
> Spend (hours?) making a YouTube video about it/posting on social media thereby wasting even more time. 😉



I get it, though. While I can definitely argue myself out of throwing that kind of money against mere seconds' worth of extra 'down' time, there is still that nagging desire to want to have the newest and fastest...especially in a machine that is excelling in so many other areas. In this specific case, it is made worse by the performance worsening. 

I'm no stranger to wanting nice amounts of fast storage (I have 3tb of internal SSD, spread over two drives, in my current ol' Macbook). But it's plenty fast enough for me, as is. If standard SSD speeds had never been eclipsed, I'd have no complaints


----------



## Fleer

Here's thinking my MacBook Air 16GB /2TB will be wunderbar for BBCSO.


----------



## Cinebient

Of course first world problems. Indeed I just had a look at these Sabrent Thunderbolt 3 SSD´s and they seems to perform almost as good as the intern SSD for indeed half the money and you could take it with you to the next machine of course.
I also looked at their super tool free enclosure which looks nice and easy to use and not too clumsy.
But I am a bit overwhelmed and no expert here for what would be the best choice or if it even works as expected on these M1 machines (but it seems from report that thunderbolt 3 works fine).
Also they go up to 8TB as well if needed.
Of course there is always something better and I end one day with a collection of extern SSD or a Frankenstein set-up I want to avoid with a tree of dongles just to save some money. I don't know, lol


----------



## el-bo

Fleer said:


> Here's thinking my MacBook Air 16GB /2TB will be wunderbar for BBCSO.



To all of you willing to advance to the bleeding-edge, thank you for your service! Just remember to wear protective underpants


----------



## el-bo

Cinebient said:


> Of course there is always something better and I end one day with a collection of extern SSD or a Frankenstein set-up I want to avoid with a tree of dongles just to save some money. I don't know, lol



My boot drive is 2tb, and currently more than half-full (It could definitely do with a bit of house-keeping, though). It would only take me buying BBCSO PRO before I started to feel that a larger capacity would eventually be necessary. Your future-projections for capacity may be completely different, but you may still end up needing externals. Imagine what 8tb of Apple storage would cost


----------



## Cinebient

el-bo said:


> My boot drive is 2tb, and currently more than half-full (It could definitely do with a bit of house-keeping, though). It would only take me buying BBCSO PRO before I started to feel that a larger capacity would eventually be necessary. Your future-projections for capacity may be completely different, but you may still end up needing externals. Imagine what 8tb of Apple storage would cost



Well, for the 16" Apple take for 7.5 GB (upgrade from 512 to 8TB) about € 2700 :O
I just sometimes wonder what works and what not and how etc. F.e. while my intern SSD from the old one is not much faster it actually performs much much faster than using an external SSD with almost the same speed (via USB3). 
Thunderbolt might be the way to go.


----------



## marius_dm

Native Instruments has a beta version of Native Access that allows installing and authorizing their stuff on Apple Silicon.









Apple Silicon (M1) Compatibility News


On November 10th, 2020, Apple announced the release of the first Mac computers to contain Apple Silicon, their new generation of processors. Apple Silicon Macs require Apple’s latest macOS operatin...




support.native-instruments.com


----------



## rnb_2

marius_dm said:


> Native Instruments has a beta version of Native Access that allows installing and authorizing their stuff on Apple Silicon.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Apple Silicon (M1) Compatibility News
> 
> 
> On November 10th, 2020, Apple announced the release of the first Mac computers to contain Apple Silicon, their new generation of processors. Apple Silicon Macs require Apple’s latest macOS operatin...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> support.native-instruments.com



Seems to work fine, though it does point up some additional issues with NI's coding standards. When NA started up successfully for the first time on my M1 Mac mini, it wanted to Repair several items, all of which had been migrated over from my i7 mini and encountered issues because NI recorded application paths including the name of the system drive. I routinely change my system drive names to go along with computer names, which lead to NA not finding things in the Applications folder because the system drive name didn't match. Not hard to fix, but odd - no other apps that I migrated over had that issue.


----------



## colony nofi

Cinebient said:


> I tested now also the SSD speeds and yes, sadly I can confirm that on my late 2013 MacBook Pro my extern SSD (Samsung T5, format is APFS) have 358MB/s write and 421MB/s read while on my brand new M1 MacBook Pro I get 307MB/s write and 384MB/s read.
> Maybe I have should gone for the maxed out intern SSD with 2 TB since my old was just
> 681MB/s write and 709MB/s read compared to the new M1 with 2870MB/s write and 2869MB/s read.
> I hoped at least the new could get the max out of the T5 which should be over 500MB/s.
> Lets hope its a software thing.
> Also be aware, since there are some reports about bluetooth issues and wifi.
> Bluetooth was fine mostly but my Seaboard Rise will disconnect if I use MPE mode and play a lot midi notes with lots of polyphonic modulations but I had the same problem with my old MacBook Pro late 2013. So not sure if its in general just too much midi traffic via bluetooth or both machines suffers from the same or the Seaboard is the joy killer here. In "normal" piano mode it works fine. Other bluetooth connections also seems stable so far.
> Wifi: No issues here so far I could complain about.



Heya,
How are you testing the speed?
It's worth noting that software like Blackmagic Speed Test - although giving an interesting benchmark - do not reflect real world usage of kontakt. But they are a good starting point for sniffing out issues.

You need to use real-time analysis to really see what is going on

The first step would be something simple like istat menus... then look at geektool, and terminal commands like iostat and fs_usage

Just looking at your data, its within 10% read times (all we care about for vi use!) which like others have mentioned would be rare to actually "feel" in day to day use. (I'd imagine your margin of error for testing would be at least 5%).

I suspect though that the issue you are seeing is WORSE than you are detecting with Speedtest, due to the differences in the way kontakt uses drives compared to the program you were using to test the drive speed. No matter - lets get some good data and we can really see. Remember, for Kontakt / VI's, IOPS are important - often JUST as important as speed, as well as the size of the chunks of data being read (the smaller the chunk, the lower the drive throughput.)

I don't have a T5 here, else I would try. For giggles, I have a few usb and thunderbolt SSD's which I can mess around with if I have the time and compare to mac pros, pc's, older mac minis and the like. I wish I had more time - will see what space opens up early in the new year. 

For some extra nerdy goodness... I do know that the Samsung T5 requires UASP to be enabled to get full bandwidth from it. (Thats USB attached SCSI). Without it, the performance drops real world 15-20% under most loads. I remember folks upgrading to 10.15 and seeing performance drops because the kext wasn't loading, but I don't remember the solution... there WAS one. Google is your friend for that one.)

as of now - I have no idea how 10.16 is working, as I have not loaded it on any machines aside from it being on the M1 mini I have here for testing. And since we don't really use these systems, I'm not sure its worth me spending hours looking into it. But I suspect a few different things - from cables (oh the number of times they cause unsuspecting issues) to things not yet implemented for M1 silicon at driver level. What I will look at is the blackmagic usb docks, which we have quite a few of at work, and some large Glyph external SSD's.

Right now we don't know what is actually causing your slowdowns in real world it / what you are experiencing just from a random disk speed test. I'd encourage all to investigate further / ask more questions.

I just got off the phone to some other techs - and there's definitely performance differences of greater than 10% being seen for externally connected SSD's to USB4 (either by thunderbolt OR USB). 
There's a LOT of variables at play. Apparently not every T5 drive is displaying the same results, making tracking down the source of the issue harder.

There are differences where :
Some drives are not even being turned on properly, and need to be connected thru a hub
BETTER speeds being seen through USB (t5) or Thunderbolt Hubs (t7)

Samsung is aware of the issue and is looking into it. Apple is aware of the issue as well, but I don't get to hear about if they are prioritising it or not. . They're a secretive bunch. And you never know - there might be folk in other forums who are experiencing these issues too - a lot of editors have used T5's and T7's in the field - I'd go sniffing around their forums too.

Samsung have in the past done well with updating firmware on their drives. But the speed differences are not just restricted to samsung drives.

It *is* known there are potential issues with the amount of power that is being supplied thru the mac mini USB4 ports. This is not a limitation of the mac, but rather most likely a software issue (either bug or by design) somewhere in OSX. There are also big differences being seen using different cables (as suspected). USB4 is going to be VERY complicated for all in this regard. Since different cables will behave very differently / there is no need for a cable to supply max bandwidth, and cheaper cables def will cause problems. We've already seen this with USB 3.1/2 over USBC....)

I figure this is just one of many such things to unpack with the transfer over to apple silicon.


----------



## Cinebient

Oh nice, finally I could install all my Kontakt sample libraries and all seems to work fine.
Now I am also happy again with my T5 since I cannot notice any slowdowns here with my M1 in terms of sample streaming. Native Access give me some errors/failed installations but at the end I could get everything working as before. Nice.


----------



## PJMorgan

Cinebient said:


> Oh nice, finally I could install all my Kontakt sample libraries and all seems to work fine.
> Now I am also happy again with my T5 since I cannot notice any slowdowns here with my M1 in terms of sample streaming. Native Access give me some errors/failed installations but at the end I could get everything working as before. Nice.



Been lurking in this thread for a while now to see how well Kontakt runs on m1. Have you had a chance to test how the m1 memory handle a typical orchestral/hybrid Project? Ive decided to stick with my hackintosh at least until the next more powerful apple silicon shows up, but I'm still curious to see how the m1 handles itself.

Ideally i think I'd need at least 32gb ram because my current projects are hitting between 17 & 24gb. I recently tried working in win10 for a while but i just can't get on with it even though it's not a bad OS but macos is definitely IMHO a much nicer environment to work in. So ive decided to save for at least (hopefully) a more powerful apple silicon mac mini next year.


----------



## Cinebient

PJMorgan said:


> Been lurking in this thread for a while now to see how well Kontakt runs on m1. Have you had a chance to test how the m1 memory handle a typical orchestral/hybrid Project? Ive decided to stick with my hackintosh at least until the next more powerful apple silicon shows up, but I'm still curious to see how the m1 handles itself.
> 
> Ideally i think I'd need at least 32gb ram because my current projects are hitting between 17 & 24gb. I recently tried working in win10 for a while but i just can't get on with it even though it's not a bad OS but macos is definitely IMHO a much nicer environment to work in. So ive decided to save for at least (hopefully) a more powerful apple silicon mac mini next year.



For me it does all i need and more for now.
I got the 16GB RAM version macbook pro.
I stopped lurking at activity monitor and measures etc. since i simple load things and see if it still performs and i read about that anyway the showed used RAM in activity monitor means nothing since if yozvhave more it will use more but the RAM pressure is more important. I might have a look.
So far i did not hit a RAM limit for me here (but CPU here and there with several instances of very cpu intense FX).
I also wanted to wait for MX1 or M2 within a 16“ but i think i do not need that power (and double price to pay) not really.
Of course its hard to say but if you running large templates and need a ton of RAM you might indeed better wait. 
I can run so much more compared to my old 8GB RAM macbook (much more than double, more 4,5....or more).
I am happy so far. This might even work for for years as is, even under Rosetta.


----------



## PJMorgan

@Cinebient Really happy for you with your m1 MBP & that it's working out for. I do use a template of about 300ish tracks but all tracks disabled so I'm only using ram for loaded instruments, which is why I was curious about how well the 16gb m1's handles running multiple sample based instruments.

I started out with macos on a 2012 mac mini which was a great upgrade At the time from my aging Q6600 self built PC, then on to a pretty top spec 2015 5k imac. I miss how quiet both those machines where for the most part & really like macos compared to windows. The pc I have now is pretty decent (8700k with 48gb ram) & handling most things i throw at it with ease, especially since i got macos running on it.

But I love the idea of running macos on a quieter but powerful AS mac mini or similar & with less power consumption. I'm just gonna have to get rid of that old PC mentality "must upgrade at least every 3-4 years " & just use what I have until it's not cutting it anymore.

I'll wait & save for hopefully a more powerful AS mini or imac next year but these 1st gen m1 macs are definitely impressive.


----------



## ridgero

I tried my Spitfire BBC SO Template via Rosetta 2 on an MacBook Air / M1 / 16 GB

All instruments loaded / Only Mix 1

Intel Mac: around 16 GB RAM
M1 Mac: 56 GB RAM

You can play every instruments, but it has dropouts - I guess because of the Swapped memory

I'm pretty sure it's due Rosetta 2 emulation and it will change once the plugin is optimised for ARM.


----------



## gzapper

42 gigs of memory swap going on and it still plays!
How bad are the dropouts?
I could deal with dropouts as long as it bounces to disk fine.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

ridgero said:


> I tried my Spitfire BBC SO Template via Rosetta 2 on an MacBook Air / M1 / 16 GB
> 
> All instruments loaded / Only Mix 1
> 
> Intel Mac: around 16 GB RAM
> M1 Mac: 56 GB RAM
> 
> You can play every instruments, but it has dropouts - I guess because of the Swapped memory
> 
> I'm pretty sure it's due Rosetta 2 emulation and it will change once the plugin is optimised for ARM.



Do you have all of the unused articulations purged from each instance of the SF player?


----------



## mohsohsenshi

ridgero said:


> I tried my Spitfire BBC SO Template via Rosetta 2 on an MacBook Air / M1 / 16 GB
> 
> All instruments loaded / Only Mix 1
> 
> Intel Mac: around 16 GB RAM
> M1 Mac: 56 GB RAM
> 
> You can play every instruments, but it has dropouts - I guess because of the Swapped memory
> 
> I'm pretty sure it's due Rosetta 2 emulation and it will change once the plugin is optimised for ARM.



Interesting.
Can you play 20+ tracks of instruments at the same time without dropout or system overload?
I don't quite get it that there is no freeze screen when surpassing the RAM limits.


----------



## Dewdman42

All modern computer systems can use more virtual ram than the physical amount present in their system. The OS will swap the data in and out of the disk drive dynamically in order to accomplish that....with performance loss of course. performance can degrade substantially when too much swapping starts to happen.

you will be much better off by using streaming tech built into your sample player then by relying on virtual memory.


----------



## mohsohsenshi

40+GB of virtual ram is too much, that will kill your SSD soon due to its rewrite limit.

I tried to max up the ram and I've got overload warning/ crash on both mac and PC even though they have enough disk space for virtual memory.


----------



## Cinebient

ridgero said:


> I tried my Spitfire BBC SO Template via Rosetta 2 on an MacBook Air / M1 / 16 GB
> 
> All instruments loaded / Only Mix 1
> 
> Intel Mac: around 16 GB RAM
> M1 Mac: 56 GB RAM
> 
> You can play every instruments, but it has dropouts - I guess because of the Swapped memory
> 
> I'm pretty sure it's due Rosetta 2 emulation and it will change once the plugin is optimised for ARM.


Not sure if that even means anything. Most important parts seems the pressure and this seems just at 61%.
I also have BBC Core (and even might upgrade to pro) and a M1 MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM. 
Do not tested it yet really much but so far I had no trouble with the Spitfire player beside in Logic Rosetta mode it add a lot latency when the GUI is open. 
There is something (also with other plug-ins) that blow up something if the GUI is used (sometimes especially if scrolling is used. 
Lets hope Spitfire updates their Player to native ARM as well. I prefer it over their Kontakt GUI´s a lot but Kontakt works just fine.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

mohsohsenshi said:


> 40+GB of virtual ram is too much, that will kill your SSD soon due to its rewrite limit.
> 
> I tried to max up the ram and I've got overload warning/ crash on both mac and PC even though they have enough disk space for virtual memory.



rewrite limit? It would take years.


----------



## chimuelo

PJMorgan said:


> Been lurking in this thread for a while now to see how well Kontakt runs on m1. Have you had a chance to test how the m1 memory handle a typical orchestral/hybrid Project? Ive decided to stick with my hackintosh at least until the next more powerful apple silicon shows up, but I'm still curious to see how the m1 handles itself.
> 
> Ideally i think I'd need at least 32gb ram because my current projects are hitting between 17 & 24gb. I recently tried working in win10 for a while but i just can't get on with it even though it's not a bad OS but macos is definitely IMHO a much nicer environment to work in. So ive decided to save for at least (hopefully) a more powerful apple silicon mac mini next year.


The next iteration will be even better. Which is why I’m watching carefully because a chip designed to work with an in house OS has huge advantages.
App£€ didn’t stop using Intel, they just took their top engineers, so in a sense your getting Int€£ silicon.

Intel’s Activist Investors drove away their top engineers which Apple benefitted from, and now they’re even demanding Intel sell off it’s Fabs which is another dumb move. 

Amazon, Google, Samsung and Apple, not to mention AMD have no need to wait around for Intel anymore. Investors will have their ultimate corporation of diversity. They might even give AMD a run for their money in 2023.


----------



## rmak

Has anyone noticed a drop in price of Intel models for MacBook Pro and Mac mini when the m1 chips came out? I plan to upgrade to the 2020 iMac 8core i7 and am wondering if there will be much of difference between current price and when the arm chip models come out in 2021. To be conservative, I will probably buy new or refurbished or from a recognized dealer (Macofalltrades, small dog, bhphoto etc) not buy from private party.

I noticed on bhphoto, they only have 2019 Imacpro mainly left listed. it is because all the 2019 iMac are sold out? Will this happen to the 2020 iMacs as well on their web page?

I guess the biggest thing is timing and when to purchase. I am not very familiar with when is the best time to buy when new models enter the market.


----------



## rnb_2

Right now, we're only seeing big price drops on the Intel Macs that were replaced by Apple Silicon models - so the low end (2-port) MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air, and the i3 Mac mini. That's just retailers getting rid of obsolete stock. Other than that, we're mainly seeing fairly normal discounts between competing retailers.

You probably won't see big discounts on the 27" iMac for a while, as it will likely be late in the Apple Silicon replacement queue - likely 2nd-to-last, before only the Mac Pro. We're more likely to see something like a 24" Apple Silicon iMac to replace the 21.5" Intel sometime in 2021, and the 21.5" iMacs will get cleared out then. Retailers will generally start discounting old stock when a new model is released - that's why you aren't seeing 2019 iMacs at most retailers now, those have already been cleared out. While there might be occasional low-stock issues with the current iMacs, you shouldn't see the 2020 27" models become unavailable until after their replacements are launched.

MacRumors has a "when is it safe to buy a new Mac?" feature, but take it with a grain of salt right now, as it's based on historical gaps between new product releases for each line. With the Apple Silicon switchover, I don't think Apple is bound by history these days. If you're looking for a deep discount on the 2020 i7 27" iMac, you'll probably have to wait for the Apple Silicon replacement to hit, and you may find they're hard to get new at that point if Apple has stopped production.


----------



## rmak

rnb_2 said:


> Right now, we're only seeing big price drops on the Intel Macs that were replaced by Apple Silicon models - so the low end (2-port) MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air, and the i3 Mac mini. That's just retailers getting rid of obsolete stock. Other than that, we're mainly seeing fairly normal discounts between competing retailers.
> 
> You probably won't see big discounts on the 27" iMac for a while, as it will likely be late in the Apple Silicon replacement queue - likely 2nd-to-last, before only the Mac Pro. We're more likely to see something like a 24" Apple Silicon iMac to replace the 21.5" Intel sometime in 2021, and the 21.5" iMacs will get cleared out then. Retailers will generally start discounting old stock when a new model is released - that's why you aren't seeing 2019 iMacs at most retailers now, those have already been cleared out. While there might be occasional low-stock issues with the current iMacs, you shouldn't see the 2020 27" models become unavailable until after their replacements are launched.
> 
> MacRumors has a "when is it safe to buy a new Mac?" feature, but take it with a grain of salt right now, as it's based on historical gaps between new product releases for each line. With the Apple Silicon switchover, I don't think Apple is bound by history these days. If you're looking for a deep discount on the 2020 i7 27" iMac, you'll probably have to wait for the Apple Silicon replacement to hit, and you may find they're hard to get new at that point if Apple has stopped production.


Thanks for the note. This is helpful. 

Ill check out macrumors, and it sounds like even if the 2020 models are deeply discounted (not sure how much $ this means) when the new models roll out, it'll be hard to get a hold of a 2020. On top of that, the new 2021 27" iMacs are probably some time away. I think my best bet is probably just to buy one now if I need it and do not want to wait 8 months to a year for the next model to come out.


----------



## rnb_2

rmak said:


> Thanks for the note. This is helpful.
> 
> Ill check out macrumors, and it sounds like even if the 2020 models are deeply discounted (not sure how much $ this means) when the new models roll out, it'll be hard to get a hold of a 2020. On top of that, the new 2021 27" iMacs are probably some time away. I think my best bet is probably just to buy one now if I need it and do not want to wait 8 months to a year for the next model to come out.


That would be my recommendation if a new machine would make a big difference for you over the next 12 months - we may not see an Apple Silicon 27" (or larger) iMac before early-to-mid 2022, though Apple could always surprise us. If you want a good source for the best current prices on various Macs, AppleInsider has a fairly comprehensive list here.


----------



## DoubleTap

Does anyone have any views or insight into audio interfaces and the M1s? My MPB has arrived and it's great - I just did a track with 44 instances of Vital at 2x oversampling and could probably have added several more although it was starting to grunt a bit. 

However, I did hook up my AI via an Anker 13-in-1 and it didn't seem to have any positive performance effect. In fact judging by touch, the MBP seemed to cool down after I disconnected it. Two points though - my AI is a Traktor Audio 2 for DJing rather than anything as snazzy as an SSL 2+ or whatever, and NI software compatibility is obviously a bit more shaky than most other developers.

And the second thing is that I have in my head that AIs should be connected directly rather than through a dock or a hub - could that have made a difference? 

Of course the general view is that Macs don't need AIs anyway, at least not the same way PCs need ASIO.


----------



## colony nofi

Well, you need an AI if you want better quality than the inbuilt audio... which is *reasonable* on the current macbook pros, but not amazing. If it means anything to you, there's some high profile composers who work without an audio interface with the macbook pro (even using bluetooth headphones!) - I'm not sure how that is for latency / CPU - I just haven't tested it.

I happen to be away from my studio and only have a MBP (fully loaded late 2018) with me... and just trying out the inbuilt audio now, it won't play back a session that otherwise plays back ok with an RME babyface pro at 512 samples. YMMV. 

I much prefer throwing an RME babyface pro into my kitbag...

For reasons that are too complicated to get into here right now, it generally is better to directly connect an interface to a MBP than through a hub, although I have had success using a Caldigit thunderbolt hub and various RME interfaces. It can DEFINITELY make a difference - much depends on the hub, and somewhat on the interface.

I've so far only tested a babyface pro on the M1 mini we've got in the studio - and I'm not around for a while to do any further testing. IF I get the time, I'll do a test with the internal audio as well.

Much of the "insights" I think you are after will come from how well the drivers for the different cards are written for the new M1. For the moment, it seems that the RME approach is working very well. (RME don't use standard USB protocols - they roll their own. Their programming is top notch - which helps a huge deal.)

If anyone wants an interface tested with the M1 Mini who is in AUS, I can do a little testing second half of Jan. Hit me up with a PM and you can come round to the studio or arrange to get the interface to me. We have a few non-RME interfaces around the place (A thunderbolt MOTU, USB Presonos and a couple of non updated MH's.) I'll try get to them first.


----------



## rmak

colony nofi said:


> Well, you need an AI if you want better quality than the inbuilt audio... which is *reasonable* on the current macbook pros, but not amazing. If it means anything to you, there's some high profile composers who work without an audio interface with the macbook pro (even using bluetooth headphones!) - I'm not sure how that is for latency / CPU - I just haven't tested it.
> 
> I happen to be away from my studio and only have a MBP (fully loaded late 2018) with me... and just trying out the inbuilt audio now, it won't play back a session that otherwise plays back ok with an RME babyface pro at 512 samples. YMMV.
> 
> I much prefer throwing an RME babyface pro into my kitbag...
> 
> For reasons that are too complicated to get into here right now, it generally is better to directly connect an interface to a MBP than through a hub, although I have had success using a Caldigit thunderbolt hub and various RME interfaces. It can DEFINITELY make a difference - much depends on the hub, and somewhat on the interface.
> 
> I've so far only tested a babyface pro on the M1 mini we've got in the studio - and I'm not around for a while to do any further testing. IF I get the time, I'll do a test with the internal audio as well.
> 
> Much of the "insights" I think you are after will come from how well the drivers for the different cards are written for the new M1. For the moment, it seems that the RME approach is working very well. (RME don't use standard USB protocols - they roll their own. Their programming is top notch - which helps a huge deal.)
> 
> If anyone wants an interface tested with the M1 Mini who is in AUS, I can do a little testing second half of Jan. Hit me up with a PM and you can come round to the studio or arrange to get the interface to me. We have a few non-RME interfaces around the place (A thunderbolt MOTU, USB Presonos and a couple of non updated MH's.) I'll try get to them first.


I've been learning Logic Pro X and various plugins in my 2016 MacBook Pro without an AI with headphones plugged into the laptop phone jack, doing things ITB. Hmm Maybe a whole other world will open if I start using one.

I always thought audio interfaces were more for recording your own audio into DAW. I guess I should read up on this stuff.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

rmak said:


> I've been learning Logic Pro X and various plugins in my 2016 MacBook Pro without an AI with headphones plugged into the laptop phone jack, doing things ITB. Hmm Maybe a whole other world will open if I start using one.
> 
> I always thought audio interfaces were more for recording your own audio into DAW. I guess I should read up on this stuff.


It will work wonders with latency, a definite asset for sure.


----------



## DoubleTap

colony nofi said:


> Well, you need an AI if you want better quality than the inbuilt audio... which is *reasonable* on the current macbook pros, but not amazing. If it means anything to you, there's some high profile composers who work without an audio interface with the macbook pro (even using bluetooth headphones!) - I'm not sure how that is for latency / CPU - I just haven't tested it.
> 
> I happen to be away from my studio and only have a MBP (fully loaded late 2018) with me... and just trying out the inbuilt audio now, it won't play back a session that otherwise plays back ok with an RME babyface pro at 512 samples. YMMV.
> 
> I much prefer throwing an RME babyface pro into my kitbag...
> 
> For reasons that are too complicated to get into here right now, it generally is better to directly connect an interface to a MBP than through a hub, although I have had success using a Caldigit thunderbolt hub and various RME interfaces. It can DEFINITELY make a difference - much depends on the hub, and somewhat on the interface.
> 
> I've so far only tested a babyface pro on the M1 mini we've got in the studio - and I'm not around for a while to do any further testing. IF I get the time, I'll do a test with the internal audio as well.
> 
> Much of the "insights" I think you are after will come from how well the drivers for the different cards are written for the new M1. For the moment, it seems that the RME approach is working very well. (RME don't use standard USB protocols - they roll their own. Their programming is top notch - which helps a huge deal.)
> 
> If anyone wants an interface tested with the M1 Mini who is in AUS, I can do a little testing second half of Jan. Hit me up with a PM and you can come round to the studio or arrange to get the interface to me. We have a few non-RME interfaces around the place (A thunderbolt MOTU, USB Presonos and a couple of non updated MH's.) I'll try get to them first.



Thanks - I'd totally take you up on that offer if I was in Oz.

Of course, I made a total noob mistake which was to forget that I'd not downloaded the driver. So I did but, spoiler alert: the NI driver didn't work, an unsurprising plot twist. No wonder it wasn't making any difference.

From googling, it looks like, as you say, RME were quickest off the mark, and it looks like Apogee and UAD have got their devices working with Apple Silicon too. Conflicting reports about Focusrite and Roland. I'm now educating myself on what "class compliant" means, since those AIs don't need drivers apparently.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

colony nofi said:


> If anyone wants an interface tested with the M1 Mini who is in AUS, I can do a little testing second half of Jan. Hit me up with a PM and you can come round to the studio or arrange to get the interface to me. We have a few non-RME interfaces around the place (A thunderbolt MOTU, USB Presonos and a couple of non updated MH's.) I'll try get to them first.


Assuming MH = Metric Halo, interfaces that aren't updated won't run, because their drivers are 32-bit. So nothing past Mojave will work.

In my case, everything comes unraveled with Catalina - and my MH interface the most expensive thread. (Hard to justify the cost of upgrading a 20-year-old interface that's working perfectly.)


----------



## gzapper

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Assuming MH = Metric Halo, interfaces that aren't updated won't run, because their drivers are 32-bit. So nothing past Mojave will work.
> 
> In my case, everything comes unraveled with Catalina - and my MH interface the most expensive thread. (Hard to justify the cost of upgrading a 20-year-old interface that's working perfectly.)


3D Metric Halo cards will run. I hear you about the upgrades, though. I upgraded three boxes this year and now two are down in the shop because a 20 year old power supply starting sending them 44 volts. Still, don't know of too many other interfaces that old that you can upgrade and still sound good enough to be worth it.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

gzapper said:


> 3D Metric Halo cards will run. I hear you about the upgrades, though. I upgraded three boxes this year and now two are down in the shop because a 20 year old power supply starting sending them 44 volts. Still, don't know of too many other interfaces that old that you can upgrade and still sound good enough to be worth it.



Yup, 3D Metric Halo cards will run. They cost $500. My 20-year-old 2882 is worth $500.

I admire the company and like the guys. And I'd like to support their support for their old interfaces. That shows integrity.

And I really like the interface. It's been working day in and out without issue, and its sound still stands up - one of my best equipment investments ever.

But as I've said many times, I just can't justify the $500. And yes, it bugs the fuck out of me every time I think about it.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

By the way, if you fried something that's one thing, but I replaced the external power supply a few years ago with one from an electronics store. It wasn't expensive.


----------



## gzapper

Nick Batzdorf said:


> By the way, if you fried something that's one thing, but I replaced the external power supply a few years ago with one from an electronics store. It wasn't expensive.


I know, I'm getting replacement power supplies from amazon once I get my boxes back from MH. Unfortunately I was stupid and thought it was my 2882 so plugged the power supply into another 2882 and fried both at once. They've been down there for almost 6 months now, repairs are pretty slow.....


----------



## ism

For entirely non-musical reason, I've just ordered an M1 16G MBP. 

I get by just fine for music with my 8G 2012 MBP, so I really don't need to shift music over to the new machine right away. Though 16G would effectively tripple the memory I have to work with, so it would be nice.


Anyone care to bottom like the above discussion ... is it worth shifting to the M1 for music right away, or does it need time to mature?


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

ism said:


> For entirely non-musical reason, I've just ordered an M1 16G MBP.
> 
> I get by just fine for music with my 8G 2012 MBP, so I really don't need to shift music over to the new machine right away. Though 16G would effectively tripple the memory I have to work with, so it would be nice.
> 
> 
> Anyone care to bottom like the above discussion ... is it worth shifting to the M1 for music right away, or does it need time to mature?


I've got ask...what VI's are you running on your current setup?


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## ism

Jeremy Spencer said:


> I've got ask...what VI's are you running on your current setup?



Lots of pretty common libraries around these part ... SSW, SStS, OACE, SsS, Tundra, Orchestral Swarm, LCO, LSCS, Time Macro, OT Special Bows, Insolidus, Genesis, Sunset Strings ... that sort of thing. With a bit of purging (and an SSD) all these are quite light weight. Occasionally I need to freeze a track or two, but not that often. I don’t think I’d attempt Berlin Strings, or any big Spitfire player libraries with 8G, and the inability to purge in UVI means that I don’t reach for Bohemia Cello as often as I might otherwise. I’d sometimes like to run more instances of Genesis, which takes a lot of memory even with samples purged, but it has excellent poly legato, so this isn’t a huge limitation. 

Of course, I’m not writing symphonies, nor running epic full templates. But I seldom feel that the limitations of my machine are what keeps me from writing better music.


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## LinusW

I got two Mini M1 16 GB today, what would you like to know about it? Any audio areas not covered by YouTube videos so far?


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## SGordB

LinusW said:


> I got two Mini M1 16 GB today, what would you like to know about it? Any audio areas not covered by YouTube videos so far?


Congratulations! One thing I would really like to know is how well these first M1s perform under the strain of performing or playing back dense single-track musical content -- dense with respect to polyphony and sample load. I think a great way to test that would be to throw some virtuosic piano repertoire (Ravel, Liszt -- take your pick: http://www.kunstderfuge.com/ravel.htm -- or use your own if you have any) into a track that's rocking the most deeply sampled piano you have and can run natively and/or via Rosetta 2. What does it take to get the crackles and pops? How low can you set the buffer? How does the M1 SOC handle swapping/compressing the RAM of a big sampled instrument, especially if you're using other RAM-heavy apps at the same time? My 32 GB 2014 i7 iMac loves to swap/compress the RAM of my sample-heavy piano VIs at the slightest provocation, and who cares if it then becomes a cacophony of snaps, crackles and pops? Not MacOS -- on Intel, at least. A lot of people will dump a simple chord progression on a track running a stock, low-RAM instrument and copy the track 100 times to stress-test the system. I haven't seen anyone take a more real world approach like this, although I all but gave up looking several weeks ago. And if the M1 handles one such track with ease, what happens when you duplicate THAT x times?

So that's your assignment should you choose to accept it


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## gzapper

LinusW said:


> I got two Mini M1 16 GB today, what would you like to know about it? Any audio areas not covered by YouTube videos so far?


Similar to SGordB, I'm interested in how the M1 deals with memory swaps.

So loading up more than 16 gigs in RAM in whatever library you have and running a pile of voices to see if it plays, stutters, drops voices or just generally is workable would be amazing.

For instance, I do mobile work and have been working on a lowly 16 gigs on a macbook pro, where I can barely load BBCSO in either a DAW or Dorico. That just about kills the machine but it will sort of run and will bounce to disk with most, but not all voices. 

So add that to a general test for number of voices within a manageble (say 10-12 gigs) RAM test for SGordB, please.


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## Jeremy Spencer

gzapper said:


> Similar to SGordB, I'm interested in how the M1 deals with memory swaps.
> 
> So loading up more than 16 gigs in RAM in whatever library you have and running a pile of voices to see if it plays, stutters, drops voices or just generally is workable would be amazing.
> 
> For instance, I do mobile work and have been working on a lowly 16 gigs on a macbook pro, where I can barely load BBCSO in either a DAW or Dorico. That just about kills the machine but it will sort of run and will bounce to disk with most, but not all voices.
> 
> So add that to a general test for number of voices within a manageble (say 10-12 gigs) RAM test for SGordB, please.


Regarding BBCSO, have you tried trashing all unused articulations from each instance? With this method, I can load the entire orchestra....and it’s only 10GB.


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## Andrew Aversa

Jeremy Spencer said:


> rewrite limit? It would take years.


Well, if you are using 40GB of swap every time you open a session... say you open a session a day. That's 14.6TB a year not counting *any* other writes. Yes, it will take a few years but you could certainly hit a write limit, and degrade the disk capacity before that, I would think. Not a sustainable solution IMO!


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## Jeremy Spencer

Andrew Aversa said:


> Well, if you are using 40GB of swap every time you open a session... say you open a session a day. That's 14.6TB a year not counting *any* other writes. Yes, it will take a few years but you could certainly hit a write limit, and degrade the disk capacity before that, I would think. Not a sustainable solution IMO!


Is this true for streaming, though? I was under the impression there’s no rewriting.


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## Nick Batzdorf

Andrew Aversa said:


> Well, if you are using 40GB of swap every time you open a session... say you open a session a day. That's 14.6TB a year not counting *any* other writes. Yes, it will take a few years but you could certainly hit a write limit, and degrade the disk capacity before that, I would think. Not a sustainable solution IMO!



The far more immediate risk is damaging your entire computer system when you throw it as hard as you can against a wall in frustration because it won't play without glitching.

Also be sure to factor in the cost of fixing the wall.


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## Cinebient

SGordB said:


> Congratulations! One thing I would really like to know is how well these first M1s perform under the strain of performing or playing back dense single-track musical content -- dense with respect to polyphony and sample load. I think a great way to test that would be to throw some virtuosic piano repertoire (Ravel, Liszt -- take your pick: http://www.kunstderfuge.com/ravel.htm -- or use your own if you have any) into a track that's rocking the most deeply sampled piano you have and can run natively and/or via Rosetta 2. What does it take to get the crackles and pops? How low can you set the buffer? How does the M1 SOC handle swapping/compressing the RAM of a big sampled instrument, especially if you're using other RAM-heavy apps at the same time? My 32 GB 2014 i7 iMac loves to swap/compress the RAM of my sample-heavy piano VIs at the slightest provocation, and who cares if it then becomes a cacophony of snaps, crackles and pops? Not MacOS -- on Intel, at least. A lot of people will dump a simple chord progression on a track running a stock, low-RAM instrument and copy the track 100 times to stress-test the system. I haven't seen anyone take a more real world approach like this, although I all but gave up looking several weeks ago. And if the M1 handles one such track with ease, what happens when you duplicate THAT x times?
> 
> So that's your assignment should you choose to accept it


Interesting test, I just tested it with my M1 MacBook Pro (16 GB RAM) with Noctuelles. Logic is running under Rosetta, used Keyscape C7 (polyphony 64) and buffer set to 32....runs smooth here.
And that with the samples streaming from my extern Samsung T5 SSD and no audio interface used. Not bad. The single core performance of these machines is really awesome.


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## Technostica

Andrew Aversa said:


> Well, if you are using 40GB of swap every time you open a session... say you open a session a day. That's 14.6TB a year not counting *any* other writes. Yes, it will take a few years but you could certainly hit a write limit, and degrade the disk capacity before that, I would think. Not a sustainable solution IMO!


A Samsung 970 Evo Plus 256GB has a 5 year warranty that covers it for 150TB of writes.
So it would take 10 years to hit that level at the rate you stated.
So for the warranty period you can write twice as much per day and still be covered.
In independent testing many drives have shown endurance levels well over ten times what the warranty covers them for.
I would be very concerned about performance but not endurance.


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## rnb_2

Jeremy Spencer said:


> Is this true for streaming, though? I was under the impression there’s no rewriting.


With the caveat of SSD warranties and endurance that others have noted, using SSD as swap does involve rewriting, so ideally we'd be looking at streaming as much as possible. How to strike a balance between streaming and swap is probably a bit of a black art, and I'm not sure how controllable it might be by a DAW vs. utilizing whatever the OS decides to do, which may not be the best option for this very niche task.


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## Jeremy Spencer

rnb_2 said:


> With the caveat of SSD warranties and endurance that others have noted, using SSD as swap does involve rewriting, so ideally we'd be looking at streaming as much as possible. How to strike a balance between streaming and swap is probably a bit of a black art, and I'm not sure how controllable it might be by a DAW vs. utilizing whatever the OS decides to do, which may not be the best option for this very niche task.


Interesting, thanks. I still think it would take many years though. I have a ten year old SSD that was used regularly, zero issues. I recently replaced it _only_ because I upgraded to a bigger size.


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## wayne_rowley

Interesting rumour on Macrumors today: Apple could be developing 2 new Mac Pro models to replace the 2019. One a smaller ’cube’ like model running on Apple silicon. The other a full tower replacement for the current Mac Pro... and remaining on Intel!

Is so, it would be safe to assume that support for a Intel Macs will be for a long time to come!


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## Alex Sopala

wayne_rowley said:


> Interesting rumour on Macrumors today: Apple could be developing 2 new Mac Pro models to replace the 2019. One a smaller ’cube’ like model running on Apple silicon. The other a full tower replacement for the current Mac Pro... and remaining on Intel!
> 
> Is so, it would be safe to assume that support for a Intel Macs will be for a long time to come!


Interesting if true, but I hope they can at least not have to use Xeon for everything in that line. Unless Intel drops their prices compared to Threadripper, which I imagine will only get better with time. Intel did get a new CEO (who's actually an engineer, thankfully), so at least they're starting to get back on track and have an opportunity to catch back up, but they've got a lot of ground to cover.


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## gsilbers

gsilbers said:


> I did read the rumors of a smaller mac pro. Im guessing the mac mini will probably stay as is and be just the entry level mac it used to be. while that medium size mac pro will have more power and ram.
> btw- the only thing thats bigger than mac mini and smaller than a mac pro w/o a screen attached its the apple mac cube. Yep..im predicting the 2021 mac cube



Not to tute my own horn but I seem to have nailed it ! 

mac cube


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## tmhuud

gsilbers said:


> Not to tute my own horn but I seem to have nailed it !
> 
> mac cube


There soooooo cute!


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## mauriziodececco

It make sense; Apple have a lot of R&D money to develop chips for phones, laptops and middle range desktop, but the Mac Pro market do not generate enough money to develop a chip just for it; unless Apple start to sell Arm chip for the server market :->


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## playz123

That smaller Mac Pro could be exactly what I need in order to replace my current ‘trash can’ model, especially if the price is right and more software is made compatible with the M1 chip. Waiting patiently.


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## Technostica

mauriziodececco said:


> It make sense; Apple have a lot of R&D money to develop chips for phones, laptops and middle range desktop, but the Mac Pro market do not generate enough money to develop a chip just for it; unless Apple start to sell Arm chip for the server market :->


What AMD do is use a modular chiplet based architecture which scales from 8 cores or less up to 64 currently.
That will increase next year as well, probably to 96 or more.
So whilst Apple can easily beat what they have in the current Intel Pro series, to be competitive at the high (versus AMD) end they need to aim much higher.
If they take a modular approach it seems more easily achievable and affordable.
If they take the monolithic approach as per Intel currently, that seems harder in both senses.

ARM server chips already have traction and look to be gaining more momentum.
So there is a market and the margins are Applesque.


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## Victor N.

Jetzer said:


> Ordered a M1 Macbook Air 16gb! Will try it for some light music around christmas holiday.


hey 👋

it is probably lost in the pages but i was wondering if you got to try your DAW (was it Cubase?) on your Macbook Air M1?

trying to figure out if it runs Cubase 10.5 Pro fine. and if it is a good machine for composing in general.

thanks.


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## Jetzer

Victor N. said:


> hey 👋
> 
> it is probably lost in the pages but i was wondering if you got to try your DAW (was it Cubase?) on your Macbook Air M1?
> 
> trying to figure out if it runs Cubase 10.5 Pro fine. and if it is a good machine for composing in general.
> 
> thanks.


Hey! I have been working on my Air M1 during the Christmas holidays. I am running Cubase 10.5 and it works great! Performance has been absolutely amazing, I have been running u-he Zebra and Diva and some Spitfire libraries, and performance has been stellar. I am not running huge ram-intensive projects, but on one synth heavy track that I would consider fairly heavy on cpu , cpu usage was only at 30%.


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## Victor N.

Jetzer said:


> Hey! I have been working on my Air M1 during the Christmas holidays. I am running Cubase 10.5 and it works great! Performance has been absolutely amazing, I have been running u-he Zebra and Diva and some Spitfire libraries, and performance has been stellar. I am not running huge ram-intensive projects, but on one synth heavy track that I would consider fairly heavy on cpu , cpu usage was only at 30%.


this is super good news. thanks for sharing 😊


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## Tronam

Victor N. said:


> hey 👋
> 
> it is probably lost in the pages but i was wondering if you got to try your DAW (was it Cubase?) on your Macbook Air M1?
> 
> trying to figure out if it runs Cubase 10.5 Pro fine. and if it is a good machine for composing in general.
> 
> thanks.


Cubase 10.5 is working surprisingly well. The odd one out is Cubase 11, which for some reason is not working properly at the moment. Some speculate it has something to do with changes to how it renders the GUI. Hopefully Steinberg can at least patch this for short term Rosetta compatibility while they work on full optimization later in the year.


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