Three weeks after Apple announced new MacBook Pro laptop, orders for virtually all models still lasted for weeks – as they were pretty much available from the start. If you don’t order one right away by October 18 or manage to buy one in an Apple store after October 26, you’ll have to wait a while.
Supply chain issues are part of that, but the long-awaited transition from Intel chips to chips based on Apple’s custom ARM-based systems also highlights the need for hardware True professional level. And make no mistake, the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips are pretty much everything Apple users want, featuring both high-performance/high-performance cores, up to 64GB of RAM, multiple GPU core options, and basic benchmarks. conveys Apple’s basic message to the entire industry: keep up.
There’s a reason Apple’s event is called “Unleashed.”
Performance/power issues
For years, there have been complaints that Apple executives were not particularly happy with the power/performance ratio of Intel processors. The performance-per-watt ratio is never good enough. Intel chips, for example, run cool enough to be used in a MacBook Air, never to be considered high performance. And the company’s more powerful chips draw too much power and generate heat to match. (That’s a bad combination for laptops.) Each Intel chip forced a compromise that Apple’s engineers had to design around, resulting in Apple’s foray into chip design.
The M1 Pro and M1 Max improve on the already impressive M1 chip launched last year with a 13-inch configuration. MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. (Apple still sells the smaller MacBook Pro, but it now lives in the shadow of its big brothers.) The new 14-in. and 16-inch. MacBook Pro is specially designed for business and power users and offers much more than just multi-core SOC: it also has a 16-core Neural Engine, ProRes hardware accelerator (for high-end video editing), a suite 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB unified memory, up to 8TB of high-speed storage, the ProMotion display with mini LED, and a battery that can last a full workday.
That’s just the hardware side: Because Apple wrote macOS Monterey specifically to take advantage of custom hardware, MacBook Pro delivers performance with unprecedented efficiency. And while there are still technically faster computers, there aren’t any that can match Apple’s performance-per-watt. These new Macs seem to defy the age-old logic and expectation that more power always means more heat and less battery life.
Intel can’t keep up, and so it was left behind. Now, macOS developers must also ensure that they are not left behind. They also have to keep up.
Developers must do too
Since Apple Silicon is a completely different hardware architecture, existing applications need to be recompiled, at best or rewritten, at worst, to take full advantage of what Apple has to offer. Apple provides Rosetta 2, a compatibility wrapper that allows most x86 Mac apps to run seamlessly on Apple Silicon. Most end users won’t (or at least, shouldn’t) notice; their apps will work as is (and some will actually run faster on Apple Silicon, even with the Rosetta 2 translation layer). When developers bring their software fully into the M1 chip, their applications will experience significant performance gains.
There are limits to Rosetta 2 compatibility. Not everything will run; virtual machines and applications designed around kernel extensions will not function properly or not at all. That’s why software developers can’t rely on Rosetta 2 as anything other than a stopping distance; Don’t leave your users hanging for too long. Big companies like Adobe and Microsoft have been making the transition to Apple Silicon; many others have pledged support, and the troublemakers will get there eventually – or they will be replaced by alternatives. Given the rate at which Apple is innovating in terms of hardware, I wouldn’t have waited long if I were a developer.
Apple learns some lessons
The last time Apple released a new laptop, I remember being very frustrated as a longtime Apple user and as a Mac administrator. I wanted one, but I didn’t. The updates that Apple provided in the previous generation of MacBook Pro did not suit my needs. I was never a fan of the Touch Bar technology, thought the butterfly keyboard was usable, didn’t like losing the MagSafe connection, and really don’t like that Apple has removed all port options that bring the Pro into the MacBook Pro. Although that MacBook Pro line sold very well, the complaints continued. That is why all changes in the new models are very welcome.
That’s why, unlike the last model, I’d love to have one of these. And I keep wondering: if Apple can get that much performance out of the MacBook Pro, what would the Mac Pro desktop look like?
Busy, admin
Mac admins have to keep up too: these new laptops mean MDM solutions and business-critical applications need to be tested to make sure they work well with macOS Monterey. And the arrival of the M1 Pro and M1 Max models means that administrators have another set of hardware to test compatibility with. While any Mac admin worth his salt has had to test Monterey compatibility since WWDC, the process of ensuring Apple Silicon hardware is compatible with existing implementations can no longer be abandoned. via.
Reminder: MacBook Pro with Intel chip can no longer be purchased.
And while Intel’s Macs will be supported for years to come, Apple Silicon is here, and that’s the future – ready or not.
No change is painless, and while Apple’s transition to the new chip architecture will cause problems in some production environments, these are good problems to have. The hard part for chipmakers, hardware competitors, developers, and Mac admins will be keeping up with Apple once it’s actually launched.
Copyright © 2021 IDG Communications, Inc.
