M1 on Tech Journeyman

Apple Silicon Evolution (vs Top Competitors) over the years

Sat, 01 Oct 2022 16:16:10 +0800

Healthy competition is always good for everyone because it brings the drive for people to be the best version of oneself. Intel is a dominant player in the microprocessor market. Dominance is so high that you basically get what Intel gives for a very high price. The smartphone revolution has changed that and with billions and billions of dollars of research went into making the most powerful hand computers ever known to man, we are now in the age where modified versions of mobile microprocessors can compete and beat out processors that are meant to be use on laptops and sometimes desktop.

A18 Pro vs M1: Will Apple’s Upcoming MacBook Air Satisfy Users?

Tue, 08 Jul 2025 08:27:22 +0800

As of today, you can find the M1 MacBook Air at Walmart for $599, despite Apple discontinuing that model some time ago. This peculiar situation raises questions about Apple’s strategy and product lifecycle. However, it highlights the enduring appeal of a design that dates back to 2010, which continues to satisfy user needs more than a decade later.

Now, there are emerging rumors suggesting that Apple is preparing to launch a new low-cost MacBook Air powered by the A18 Pro chip, which currently runs in the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max. This raises an important question: can a chip designed for mobile devices meet the demands of a laptop in today’s world?

Brief History of Apple Silicon: Evolve to meet user's changing needs

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 21:23:40 +0800

One of the craziest things that people thought Apple did was create a chip in their design to run the iPhone. For a lot of companies, the final product is a collection of components that are put together to create something new. Companies usually don’t create the component itself because of the high risk and cost involved. And through the years, Apple pushed the envelope into what kind of performance is possible that you can put in a 5-watt, air-cooled chip.

Final Cut Pro: macOS vs iPadOS Versions

Sun, 14 May 2023 09:09:32 +0800

The day that we have longed for has finally come. After years of building overpowered iPads, Apple finally bring apps that are worthy to fully utilize the desktop chip that Apple put on the iPads since 2021. Some of the pre-WWDC 2023 announcements that Apple made, one of which raises the brow is Apple launching Final Cut Pro (FCP) and Logic Pro for the iPad.

Although the official release will be on the 24th of May 2023, here is what we know so far.

Battle of the MacBook Air: 2022 M2 vs 2020 M1

Fri, 29 Jul 2022 11:07:00 +0800

Apple finally updated the MacBook Air for the Apple Silicon in WWDC 2022. With the benefits of Apple Silicon and lesson learned from the new MacBook Pro, the new Macbook Air is thinner, lighter and more capable than the predecessor. Curiously, Apple sell the new MacBook Air at a closer price to the MacBook Pro and still sell the M1 MacBook Air which was first unveiled in early 2020.

Officially, the base M1 MacBook Air is sold at the magic $999 price but you can get as low as $750 from Amazon Renewed, $850 from Apple Refurbished or $900 brand new from Amazon. With prices that low, is the M1 MacBook Air a better deal than the redesigned, brand spanking new M2 MacBook Air? We investigate to find out.

Shopping Apple Devices and others on a Budget

Mon, 09 May 2022 11:55:05 +0800

If you are reading the news in the United States in mid 2020, there is a lot to be concerned about: high-inflation which leads to high prices. There’s a war on the edge of Europe which allegedly makes gas prices higher, which in turn leads to higher prices of goods. Businesses are laying off people to cut costs.

However, in any crisis like this recession, there are a lot of opportunities. Opportunities like businesses cutting prices to clear out stocks or close sales. This is the best time to get things at a discount. And we take a look at things that available at discounted prices.

M1 Ultra vs Nvidia RTX 3090

Sat, 26 Mar 2022 10:34:37 +0800

In Apple’s March “Peek Performance” Event, Apple revealed to the world their latest and greatest Apple Silicon to date: the M1 Ultra in, for the first time in over a decade, a brand new Mac, the Mac Studio. During the presentations, Apple made many bold claims such as astounding 800 MB/s memory bandwidth and performance that may beat top of the line cards like the Nvidia’s GTX 3090. As Arthur C. Clarke would say: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. Many are skeptical that an integrated SOC that is focused on laptops can beat out full power-no-limits desktop components like the GTX 3090. We investigate such claims.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 vs Apple A15 and Apple M1

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 19:25:26 +0800

Qualcomm updated their mobile chip offering for 2022 in late November 2021. Unlike previous iterations, the new chip has a new naming convention, dubbed SnapDragon 8 Generation 1. The name change signifies a paradigm shift for Qualcomm as the manufacturer uses a brand new architecture for the SnapDragon 8 Gen 1. Since then, the SnapDragon 8 Gen has appeared on the usual suspects of flagship phones: the Xiaomi 12, Samsung Galaxy S22 series, Motorola Edge 20 Ultra and the Oneplus 11 Pro.

Apple M1 Series vs Intel Xeon W-series

Sat, 15 Jan 2022 18:58:21 +0800

Intel Xeon processors are Intel’s top of the line product. They might not be a best seller in terms of sales volume, but they tend to have huge profit margins because they are mostly catered for businesses that seek the ultimate in computing power at almost any cost. And at this level of performance, you will find chips that will cost $4,000 to $5,000 and in some cases where it’s meant for a mission-critical data center server, each chip can be in the range of $8,000 to $9,000.

iPhone: 15 years later. a Retrospective

Tue, 11 Jan 2022 11:41:22 +0800

On January 9th 2007, during an Apple event, Steve Job talked about Apple introducing three new devices: a new iPod, an telephone and internet communication device. In fact, it was actually one device and it was called the iPhone. It was one of a kind device and it captured the world’s imagination. 15 years since then, the iPhone has not only transformed Apple from a company that just came back to life support to an unstoppable technological behemoth, it also changed the modern world, for better or worse.

Macbook Air vs Macbook Pro 2021

Sun, 26 Dec 2021 14:40:50 +0800

With the MacBook Pro updated in late October 2021, Apple has finally updated all it’s mobile Macs to Apple Silicon. In Apple’s line up, you have three distinct tiers to choose from: the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro with M1 and the newly refreshed MacBook Pro. So now, the question is, which one is the right one for you?

We tested and looked at each of the laptops and laid down which is best for you. Read in the TLDR session to go straight into our conclusion and read on if you want the details like the upcoming M2 chip.

Apple M1 Max Duo and M1 Max Quad Predictions

Sun, 19 Dec 2021 09:54:34 +0800

As of the end of 2021, and one year on in Apple’s Mac transition to Apple Silicon, we are now only left with 3 final Macs that are still sold new and still running on Intel. By sales volume, most of the Macs are now running on Apple Silicon. Most popular Macs are the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro, while the starter 24” iMac is a solid all-in-one desktop solution. However, the final 3 Macs might be the most powerful statement by Apple to show that it had made the right choice to go to their own solution.

Apple M1 Series vs Intel 12th Generation Core i9

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 08:25:43 +0800

In a market system where there is healthy and equal competition, the consumer in the end would benefit from the innovation that is forced upon the producers to win and maintain market share. In the case of Intel, the company has been in a dominant position for quite some time and in the end, their product line stagnated and competitors caught up with their innovation. First came AMD with their Rayzen and Epyc line of CPUs. Then came Apple with their mobile and later, Apple Silicon offerings. The M1, the first of Apple Silicon, captures the imagination of what is possible. Intel, reeling from the mismanagement, production problems and uncompetitive product seems to be taking a hit.

Apple M1 Series vs Intel 12th Generation Core i9

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 08:25:43 +0800

Mac Mini vs iMac: Which one is the right one for you?

Sat, 07 Aug 2021 10:21:10 +0800

At the glance, the M1 Mac Mini and the newly redesigned M1 iMac 24" looked they are two completely different product that cater to two different Apple user demographics. In most cases, you will be right, but now both the Mac Mini and iMac is pretty much running with the same hardware but with different accessories, one would wonder how similar or different the Mac Mini and the iMac if both of them are similarly priced?

Apple M1 vs AMD Ryzen 9 5900X

Wed, 28 Jul 2021 15:57:12 +0800

Update: We also make a comparison between Intel’s latest Alder Lake CPU against the M1-series, from base to M1 Max. Read about it here

Imagine having the most powerful microprocessor in your hand. It has multilude of cores on a single die and each core can run two threads at the same. In some version of the same processor, it also has an integrated graphics so you can also run 3D software or even gaming on it. This is the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X processor, which is AMD’s flagship processor that is meant for gaming and high performance consumer computing.

Imagining the new iMac 2021

Wed, 07 Apr 2021 14:55:21 +0800

Apple first unveil the current slim unibody design in a October 2012 event. This design has more or less stay the same for 9 years, which means around 100 years in the IT world. Since those 9 years, the iPhone has gone around 8 iterations, the camera system has been improved by leaps and bounds, networking and processing power has managed to grow geometrically while the design has gotten more and more sleek. All these while, the design in 2012 is pretty much similar to the one in 2021. While the internals has been updated at least every year or every other year, it does not have the same amount of improvement like the iPhone does with their A-series chipsets and Apple own care and attention to detail.

Apple M1 vs Intel 11th Gen Core i9

Sun, 21 Mar 2021 10:57:48 +0800

Update: We also make a comparison between Intel’s latest Alder Lake CPU against the M1-series, from base to M1 Max. Read about it here

The M1 chip, the first Apple Silicon, was released in November 2020 with much fan fare. It immediately blow people minds away as it is not only have lower power consumption, but higher performance than a lot of more expensive and more powerful chips offered by their competitors. What’s surprising is that the chip that was designed to be put in a fan-less laptop can compete with a desktop chip that is geared for gaming.

MacBook Air vs Pro: Which M1 Laptops Should You Buy?

Fri, 19 Mar 2021 11:41:50 +0800

On WWDC 2020, Tim Cook announced to the world that Apple is making major changes on their Macs. They announced that they Macs will moving away from Intel CPU to their own CPU dubbed Apple Silicon. Couple months later and they introduce the M1 chip which ship on the lower end Macs namely the Mac Mini, MacBook Air and the lower end MacBook Pro 13".

People are mind-blown by the M1 performance. It beats out Intel best CPU, even after Intel updates it a year later and able to keep up with AMD best CPU. And it does all that using 1/10th of the power that needed to run Intel’s and AMD’s best. So far so good, but now, we have a dilemma, since the M1 powers both the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro, which one should you buy? Read on to find out.

Apple M1 vs Intel i7 11th Gen

Sun, 14 Mar 2021 10:11:50 +0800

On June 2020, during WWDC, Apple announced that the will move their entire platform away from Intel to their own Apple Silicon with the first product coming before the end of 2020. By November 2020, Apple launched their first Apple Silicon for Mac with updated versions of their lowest end offerings: the base Mac Mini, the base MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air. Everybody mind was blown away by the performance not only in terms of raw power but also battery life. It as though Apple has found new technology that never has seen before.

Why Apple Moved to ARM

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 10:27:54 +0800

The reason why Apple moved from Intel to Apple Silicon is the same reason why Apple left Power PC for Intel back in 2005. Let me count the ways.

Performance factor

The Apple A12X is now quite as powerful as most notebooks in the market. It’s amazing that you can edit a few streams of 4K video on fanless thin tablet. So performance per watt on the A12 is much more than on Intel chips. Imagine all this on 15w TDP and scale up on 45w like the one used in a MacBook Pro.

Apple M1 vs Snapdragon 888

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 15:14:23 +0800

Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 (888 from here on) and Apple M1 (M1 from here on) processors are CPU designed by respective companies that implements the ARM v8.0 ISA. While both implement the same instruction set, the internal design is totally different to suit their particular needs. One might say that comparing a mobile chip and a laptop chip is not fair, remember that the Snapdragon will be on a Samsung Galaxy Tablet S8 and the M1 is on the new 2021 iPad Pro. Get ready for a bloodbath.

Why M1 Macs Need Less Ram

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 22:38:14 +0800

Apple M1 macs has shown that with only 8GB, it can out perform PCs with double or even quadruple the RAM size. The answer to the mystery of how this is possible is Apple stance to optimize the marriage of software and hardware to reach the common goal: process as much I/O as possible. However, there is a limit to all the optimization in large dataset, but for most common tasks a typical user will face, it is surprising what Apple M1 macs can do away with just 8GB of RAM.

Is Macbook Air M1 Good for Programing and Normal Use?

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 15:59:29 +0800

I used a 2011 MacBook Air in 2016 to launch my first start up. The start up failed not because the engineering doesn’t work, we don’t have enough budget for marketing and didn’t get traction for people to get on our platform.

I also started a second project for a company using that same MacBook Air. The product is basically finished and at the last minute, the company decided to pull out from my venture.

Apple M1 vs Intel Core i9: A Deeper Look

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 13:14:36 +0800

It seems pitting Apple’s entry level CPU against Intel strongest is an unfair fight, like putting a small boy David vs the giant Goliath, but remember, David essentially bought a gun to a sword fight and Apple M1 is basically just that: the gun in a sword fight.

Mindset Differences

The architectural reflects the differences in the mindsets of both companies in developing their computing solution. Apple is an integrated systems developer that sells the final product directly to the customer. It controls all aspect of the product experience from the screen, keyboard and all the way to their CPU that runs the software that they also designed. Meanwhile, Intel is a chip merchant that have thousands of customer in which sells their product to the end consumer. You can think that Intel is the middleman of the computing world. While yes Intel do sell directly to consumer but the biggest customer is the PC-builders like Dell and Levono and server-builders like HP. Cloud providers like Amazon and Google counts as their biggest customer. Hence, Intel solution is more modular catering to different customer segments with different needs. Intel also needs to be open enough that anybody can create their own OS and run their machine code on it. Apple chip division only has one customer: Apple Inc.

How M1 Gets High Performance

Wed, 16 Dec 2020 09:17:53 +0800

The M1 speed up is not an overnight success story or concentrated efforts of a few engineers over a course of a year. It was over 10 years of research and development efforts by Apple because they see they are being held back by Intel. That cumulative efforts for 10 years results in a ultra portable laptop (Macbook Air) which can edit 3 streams of 4k video without a single fan onboard. How did this happen? It’s a long story …

How Long Macbook Air M1 Can Last?

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 09:28:51 +0800

The M1 Macbook Air might be the longest lasting laptop because the only moving parts in that laptop would be the hinge and the keyboard. And the electronic components might last even longer since they are not being stressed at all.

Now fans does not have a high failure rate since I got my MacBook Air and Mac Mini going into their 9th year and still running along. Hard drives usually have high failure rate after 100,000 hours (10 years) but now it’s all SSD, that failure rate is even higher. If that fails, it’s actually be a problem since everything is soldered on the board and the Touch ID is tied with the hard drive and the M1 chip (you cannot simply replace the Touch ID sensor).

Booting Linux on M1 and Beyond Challenge

Sun, 13 Dec 2020 19:17:29 +0800

If you referring to run in virtual environment? Yes, it does and Linux does have binaries compiled can you can pretty much run on virtual environment pretty much right now. If you thinking of replacing macOS with Linux, it is possible but hacky. If you thinking replacing macOS with Linux and everything works like the Touch Bar, Touch ID, power management and the camera, it won’t and it’s not coming for a long time.

Choosing Between the M1 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro 13-inch

Sat, 12 Dec 2020 14:58:55 +0800

The new Macbook Air with M1 Macbook Pro with M1 where launched at the same time and with basically the same specs that one would have a hard time determine which one to get. So the TLDR version is, the get MacBook Pro if you want a longer battery life, you need the Touch Bar, and if you are doing a lot of sustained heavy loads (like making a lot of music videos on 4K or color correcting thousand of 50MP photos after an event).

The drawbacks of Apple M1

Thu, 10 Dec 2020 12:21:28 +0800

Drawbacks of the Apple M1 is there, but there’s a few at this point. For most people, it’s not really that important, but for some, it’s a deal breaker.

It’s a first gen product. This will be the slowest, least powerful M-series chip that Apple is going to make. Things will get a lot faster when they optimize the chip and the software exclusively to Apple Silicon. Right now, Apple needs to maintain two separate build for its software: Intel and Apple Silicon

Apple M1 Roadmap

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 17:38:02 +0800

Update

Cpu-monkey has reported the emergence of ‘M1X’ chip that featured 12-core CPU and 16-core GPU.

Original story:

In WWDC 2020, Apple announced that it is transitioning from Intel to their own Apple Silicon. On the November 2020 event that featured the new M1 chip, it had been said that M1 will be the first of many in a family of SOC that will powers the future Macs. Now, predicting the future is a tough business since predictions can easily go wrong, but you can guess what Apple is working on based on the current line up.

M1 the Game Changer

Mon, 07 Dec 2020 16:15:10 +0800

The M1 chip is a game changer for the desktop / server segment for the PC industry as a whole, but it is just the last bastion for Intel and x86 in a world where RISC / ARM reign supreme.

The war on x86

The secret ‘war’ on x86 platform has been going on for years. The war has change considerably since 2007 when a guy named Steve Jobs shows this small communication device called the iPhone.

Apple M1 vs Intel Core i9 10th Gen

Mon, 30 Nov 2020 22:35:54 +0800

It will sound ridiculous, but it will be very interesting to see how a $699 system vs a $600 processor.

You can buy the microprocessor, just the Intel chip which is the Intel Core i9–10900k at Amazon for over $600. It comes with 10 cores, and has hyper threading to make it look like 20 cores. Remember, this is just the processor without hard drive, motherboard, memory, chassis, the power supply to make a base PC. Don’t forget to add Windows if you want to play games with.