Not totally comparable, intel and amd aren’t limited by power draw, going up to over 100 watts on the high end and intel and amd have proper desktop cooling, whether it be water or air. M1 is a 15 watt chip being passively cooled (in the macbook air), plus the fact that macos is completely optimised for the M1 chip. I think that if M1 was available to put in a windows 10 gaming pc and it had same power draw and same cooling it would probably perform better but there is no way to know because current circumstances are just too different

Not really comparable, since different architectures. Take all benchmark results with a huge grain of salt. But they are not really competing with each other anyways, since different architectures, M1 only available in notebooks, thermal and power draw constraints, etc.

In general, the top end CPUs will be a lot faster in basically anything. They have much less thermal constraints and feature a lot more logic. Apples M1 is a pretty impressive product based on its energy efficiency, not because of its raw power. The benchmark comparisons you saw floating the internet are flawed since modern x86 architectures are designed for the use of SMT, while the Apple M1 is not.

https://wccftech.com/why-apple-m1-single-core-comparisons-are-fundamentally-flawed-with-benchmarks/

I believe that Apple Silicon Macs will be supported much longer than the Intel Macs were evening into the "obsolete" designation. From what I've observed support for older Macs was often dropped based on things like older hardware features (i.e. older bluetooth standards, more limited GPU ability) and the Apple Silicon is essentially a much smoother curve without any drastic breaking points. I can't see much of a drastic "break point" unless say, the M3 or M4 has some significant OS feature that Apple cares about tied to that new hardware ability.

Looking at the current M2 versus M1, I can't see between the two how the M2 would be supported for some future macOS whereas the M1 would be dropped, for example.

I think they will be supported just as long if not longer. Apple is definitely rushing the Intel Macs out the door right now so they can stop dedicating resources to Intel

7 years is the average from "new" machines to "obsolete". "vintage" is machines that are getting close to not receiving major OS releases. The newest machine on the vintage list is a 2016 MBP. Considering your machine is 3 years newer than that and your machine isn't even on the vintage list, your fears are unfounded.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624

From history you can expect 7-8 years of Mac Os support

Apple had 3 major chipset changes who knows what future holds

Apple raising share prices means it must generate more profit from existing users.

I guess Intel might need a little longer to find their way out the door. Let's see who wins this race!

Let's be honest, majority of Apple Mac buyers use their systems to general browse the web, YouTube, music, movies, social media, e-mail, calender, etc. all things of which you can do on a $100 Chromebook

It might be a pitch to OEM partners to get more of them on board with Lunar Lake as they don't like the on-package DRAM

It might be an internal pitch to Intel sales employees so they can make the same pitch to business volume customers to buy Lunar Lake over M series laptop chips.

I don't know if this presentation was a good idea, but that's my theory.

My point was more about how overpowered and overpriced the hardware can be for such everyday tasks. Like using a Ferrari to do grocery runs - sure, it gets the job done, but a hatchback would too.

If you can't put out better uarchs, put out whatever kind of marketing attempt this is.

This whole video feels pretty desperate, way more desperate than they actually need to be. Our processors are better because you can play games, choose between OEMs you don’t care about, and get slightly better battery life in video playback is not the winning strategy Intel thinks it is.

Maybe it's better they laid off their entire marketing team.

At least the money will be better spend on the E-core team, P-core team or discrete graphics

Memory is memory. Also on Apple silicone macs memory is shared between CPU and GPU

New ones are faster and memory is memory.

Not sure what exactly it is you are looking for here?

Don't buy an Intel Mac.

I had a core i7 MacBook Pro with 16GB of ram. It was a great machine. I was able to work on some pretty large Photoshop documents. (16 bit, hundreds of layers, tens of thousands of pixels wide). It complained a little bit, but it got the job done better than the windows machines that I was given at work that had twice the ram.

These days, I use an M1 MacBook Pro with 64 gigs of ram. Not only does it blow that old Intel MacBook completely out of the water, but it also outperforms all of the ridiculously powerful PCs that I used to use for all of my production work.

I have a core i9 windows PC under my desk that has 128GB of ram and a 3080 card. I haven't booted that thing in a long time. like more than a year. It's not that it isn't powerful, it's that I just hate using windows that much.

Probably if your current Mac have 64GB of memory you will want your new Mac to have at least 64GB of memory

Comparisons between similar configurations of M1 and Inte Macs makes little sense, imho

Wait a few years before buying an ARM MacBook. There is always problems with first generation(s) of new devices. This is a general problem, not specific for Apple, and not specific for computers. Other advanced stuff has the same problems. The software also needs to mature over some years before it is realiable.

Since your primary purpose seems to be gaming you should pause and consider why exactly it should be a MacBook (with a rather small screen). The PC gaming world might be a better place to look. MacOS is not the best gaming platform. - You might do better even with an Apple TV connected to your big TV screen. Or a game box of sorts.

The transition switch to AS is two years as announced by Apple. Doesn’t mean all the software will have switched over by then though. Best to buy a machine now that runs everything just fine and buy your next computer in five years when the transition of both hardware and software is long over.

I’m excited for the new hardware but will wait a generation or two for the inevitable transitional bugs to be remedied.

Thank you all for your advice; I will be getting the i7 Intel chip and have a custom heat pad for my MacBook!

What's the point of trucks and sports cars when the Toyota Prius exists?

Wtf dude

Because not everything works on ARM64. Most software is made for x86-64 architecture CPUs. A lot of software doesn't natively run in MacOS either.

On top of that server compute demands highly scalable can't compute which AMD leads the industry in.

Compatibility with software that target x86(-64) (nearly every PC software).

😂

Apple silicon exists to support Apple products only while AMD and Intel supply chips to other tech companies. It’s not a fair comparison since they serve very different purposes.

You will be fine with intel. The silicon is way to new and we don’t even know how much extra performance it’s going to provide. And if you are using any non-apple sotware, you are better with the intel since on silicon macs the programs will be translated via rosetta 2 which will come with performance loss.

By the way old iphones don’t get slower because new ones come out. They get slower as their battery age in order to last more. If you get a new battery it’s going to be as fast as new (almost, cause everthing gets slower as it ages).

you should be worried because you could lose support for your intel mac in just a few years.

You're getting the last best Intel MacBook and in three years you can get a more mature and polished ARM MacBook

Hardware made specifically for their proprietary software and API’s, meaning it can run code optimized for Apple SoC’s faster and more efficiently.

Would their SoC’s be just as performant if they sold them to 3rd party OEM’s? Probably not, the hardware is likely designed from the ground up for macOS so forcing Windows or Linux on it would likely sacrifice a lot of the advantages that come with running macOS.

Generalizing the hardware enough to allow for better compatibility with other OS’ kinda defeats the purpose of why Apple made the M-series processors in the first place.

Apple Silicon uses Arm chip designs, which are more power and cost efficient than x86 (Intel, AMD) chips. Therefore they can afford to put more power in for the same cost and hit to battery life. Qualcomm chips are also Arm-based but focus on power efficiency for mobile devices, not really for laptops. Apple customises Arm designs for high performance, with tighter integration and better memory.

For parts that used integrated graphics, definitely moving to in-house. For dGPU parts? Probably staying with AMD. Unless Apple wants to make an utterly massive GPU, they're going to stay with AMD for pro/compute. I don't see a reason why not.

They managed to play Shadow of The Tombraider translated on the fly from x86 to ARM at 1080p. I think dGPU on Mac's is in its death throws. Probably will only see them in Mac Pros and iMac Pros.

Silicon*

For MacBooks and lower end iMacs? Yes, definitely.

Maybe they license RDNA2 from AMD like Samsung and create their own shit at their own pace not having to rely on anyones execution.