At Apple’s keynote yesterday, a lot was said about the innovations of the first three ARM machines. The M1 chip, which Apple first introduced in MacBook Air, MacBook Pro inches and Mac mini are used, among other things, should offer the best battery life of all Macs and beat any comparable PC in terms of performance. However, Apple’s choice of design, which is completely based on the old Intel variants of the three new machines, also leads to compromises. You notice it when you take a closer look at the specifications.

You could also say that Apple is saving the specs. So Apple uses the old (and extremely dusty) in both the new MacBook Air and the new MacBook Pro p webcam while in the iPhone 11 For example, it has long been used as a front camera 12 Megapixel sensor with 4K capability is used. At least, Apple promises, the quality of the image processing will improve because you are using a brand new Image Signal Processor in the Mac.

Apple Silicon: Of ARM processors and the future of the Mac | Comment on the “One More Thing” keynote According to Apple, it provides “noise reduction, greater dynamic range, improved automatic white balance and face recognition with machine learning”. The users would look “great on video calls”. Tests have to show whether this is true; It is clear, however, that the measly sensor has massive limitations – and there would have always been room for a better webcam.

Thunderbolt and eGPUs The new Thunderbolt 4 connection technology is still not included in the M1 Macs – although many observers expected it was. Instead, Apple continues to use Thunderbolt 3 as in the current Intel Macs. These are referred to as “Thunderbolt / USB 4”. They pack up to 40 Gb / s in Thunderbolt-3 Mode or up to 10 Gb / s in USB 3.1 Gen 2 mode. DisplayPort and of course charging of the machine are supported via the ports. There are only two of these in all M1 machines. This also applies to the MacBook Pro with 13 – inch screen. That can be very close. The Mac mini also has two traditional USB-A ports. It is possible that the company is still working on the implementation of Thunderbolt 4, which initially depends heavily on Intel hardware as usual. At least nice: All Macs still have a 3.5-inch jack for audio.

No longer possible in the future is the use of eGPUs for games or graphics-intensive applications. Their support was deleted without comment, as can also be seen from the specs. The Blackmagic eGPU sold by Apple is only listed as a compatible accessory for Intel machines. A corresponding confirmation came shortly afterwards from Apple itself. If you need full graphics power, you should also pay attention to the variant of the computer you are buying. The cheapest variant of the MacBook Air with 256 GByte SSD has only seven instead of eight graphics cores – Apple obviously switches one off here in the SoC.

GPU and upgrades You can completely forget the upgrade capability of the new ARM Macs. Neither RAM nor SSD are exchangeable; they should be soldered or part of the SoC and are probably also “married” to the motherboard via the Secure Enclave. Accordingly, one should consider using the GByte variants with a sufficiently large SSD. GPU and CPU also share the memory, the GPUs manage without their own RAM.

New Macs with Apple Silicon (20 Photos)
Apple’s first Mac with its own M1 CPU is the new MacBook Air.

With the MacBook Pro, the upgrade options are also limited compared to the Intel version. Intel machines allow up to 32 GByte RAM or 4 TByte SSD. With the M1 model it is only 18 GB of RAM or 2 TB of SSD. Apple places the machines in its product matrix where the entry-level MacBook Pro models with Intel chips were previously to be found; the company continues to sell the Intel variants.

(bsc)