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Manila Bulletin devider devider ARMing Macs

ARMing Macs

Published Nov 14, 2020 08:05 am

Apple is on track to completely control its Mac supply chain, similar to its move to control its iPhone and iPad supply chain (only thing left, I think, is the replacement for the Qualcomm modem — which I think will be replaced with an Apple version in five years’ time). Similar to the iPhone and iPad, Apple now controls the Mac processor and integrated graphics with the Apple Silicon M1 system-on-a-chip (SoC).

The M1 is similar to the A-processors, which power the iPhone and iPad, but when you talk about the M processor, the first thing that comes to mind is the motion co-processor. Anyway, the new M1 processor will power the 13" MacBook Air, 13" Macbook Pro and the new Mac Mini. Early benchmarks are appearing on the internet, and it show that the fan-less Macbook Air runs circles around the latest i9-based 16" MacBook Pro! If that isn’t a display of the core power and strength of the new M1 chip, I don’t know what will.

This isn’t Apple’s first chip transition, the first was from the PowerPC to Intel. However, unlike that transition, Apple is better prepared for this Intel to Apple Silicon move. Frankly, I think they have been testing this since they started putting the A-series chips on the iPads. All eyes are on feedback from users who will put it to its paces in real world use cases — and to see if it is indeed the fastest consumer processor to date.

Personally, I cannot wait to get my hands on one to test it. Whilst I do not have doubts that it is indeed fast, I have issues with some of my use cases, particularly using a virtualization software, such as Parallels Desktop, to run Linux. Whilst Linux has long had support for the ARM chip, this new architecture might be a bit tricky to have a virtual OS running on. Apple mentioned supporting hypervisors — which I guess this is what we will test. 

In addition, I am also keen on testing iOS/iPadOS applications running on this Apple Silicon Mac. The user experience will definitely be different (until Apple decides to support touch on Macs), but I guess we will see how feasible and usable this feature is. 

I am lucky to have no need to dual-boot my Macs using Bootcamp to run Windows, and this one definitely does not have support for Bootcamp. Sorry, Windows users, but maybe until Microsoft works on their ARM-based Windows and do some engineering magic with the Apple engineers, don’t get these Apple Silicon Macs until the likes of Parallels Desktop and VMWare have polished their virtualOS support.

Would I recommend this Apple Silicon Macs? Well, if you are deep in the Apple ecosystem and don’t rely on a lot of third-party applications, then it is a no brainer. On the other hand, the recommendation is to wait until your favorite third-party applications support it. 

However, if you are professional software engineer, graphics artists, photographer, videographer — or simply someone who pushes the computers to its full potential, I’d say wait for next year — when the next Apple Silicon chip comes out that will support discrete graphics and more Thunderbolt ports. So for you, the Intel-based Macs are still a good deal.

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