On this episode, I want to talk a little bit about Apple’s newest and biggest announcement: Apple Silicon for the Mac. In their “One More Thing” keynote presentation given on November 10th, 2020, Apple finally showed us the 2020 lineup of Mac products, featuring Apple’s first Mac SoC, the M1 Chip. By integrating the CPU, GPU, memory, and I/O controllers, among other systems, into one chip, Apple is taking massive strides forward for greater efficiency in their Mac lineup.
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Apple is, in fact, releasing a whole new lineup of Macs featuring the Apple M1 chip, its first Apple Silicon Chip designed for more than just iPhones. In this video, I just want to give you my own brief synopsis of the announcements from today, telling you what I’m excited about, what I’m skeptical about, and what my recommendation is for you if you’re looking to purchase a new Mac.
First off, I am very excited to see SoC’s making their way to Mac, no matter who’s making ‘em. If you’re unfamiliar, an SoC is a system on a chip, which essentially means that one chip can play the role of multiple old chips, such as being able to function as your CPU, GPU, and RAM all at once. This is tough to do, but if you can do it well, integrating all of these systems into one chip can vastly improve the performance and efficiency of a computer.
Simply put, this performance and efficiency increase over standard stems from the fact that your information doesn’t need to move around the board to a whole bunch of different chips. Imagine you’re hosting a party and you need to go pick up decorations, food, party favors, maybe some friends so it’s not just you, partying alone… Well, you could go to several different stores that each specialize in one thing that you need for the party-or, you could just go to the Food and Stuff store that’s already on the way home from work and pick up everything you need for the party in one fell swoop. The M1 chip is like the Food and Stuff of the Mac motherboard, making it quick and easy for the processes on your computer to pick up and utilize anything they need, all in one place.
I’m also very excited about the M1’s 5-nanometer process, as that truly is pushing the bounds of chip architecture, something that seems to be happening at an ever-quickening pace. As a power user myself, I’ve never really worried a whole lot about the efficiency of my chips. Because of the demanding nature of my work, editing, and animating high-resolution video has never-not been a power-hungry process, I’ve always expected to be tethered to an outlet most of the time. But the efficiency that Apple is claiming on this new lineup of Macs, thanks to the M1 chip, is actually fairly exciting for those who need to work on the go, even power users like me.
You may be thinking to yourself now, well, that sounds pretty good, and it is. So, what am I skeptical about? Well, I’m generally skeptical about the performance claims that Apple is making. I mean, they literally said that this new M1 chip would feature "The world's fastest integrated graphics in a personal computer" and would "Deliver[] up to 2x the CPU performance of the PC chip" "at just 10W" whatever “the PC chip” means and whatever metrics they’re using to test this performance… But that’s the problem-see, Apple isn’t just going to put their new devices up against all of their existing competition during a keynote, that wouldn’t be very Apple-like. They aren’t going to immediately give us everything we want to know about this M1 chip and its performance, that’s just not what they do. We’ll just have to wait until comprehensive reviews start coming out before we know whether or not all of these glitters really are gold.
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Go to: nuun.dev/ to see more of my work or get in contact for a project.
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Current Fav Film Camera: Canon P
Current Fav Film Lens: Leica 100mm f/2.8 APO
Fav Digital Cam: Canon EOS R
Fav Digital Lens: Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8L IS USM
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Used for this video:
Canon EOS R
Sigma ART 24-70 f/2.8 EF
Zoom H5 Audio Recorder
Behringer UM2 USB Audio Interface
Shure MV7 Podcast Microphone
Atomos Ninja V External Monitor/Recorder
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Music Credits:
Chill Lofi Hip-Hop-"Days Like These”
Chill Jazzy Lofi Hip Hop-“Jazz Hop Music”