Hi,
Most people are looking at these first Apple Silicon Macs wrong - these aren't Apple's powerhouse machines: they're simply the annual spec bump of the low end Apple computers with DCI-P3 displays, Wifi 6, and new the Apple Silicon M1 SoC.
To this day, standard benchmarks shows that the MacBook Air M1 has the same power as as contemporary Intel MacBook Pro. This is not me who says that, but
independent testers, implementing standard tests.
They have the same limitations as the machines they replace - 16 GB RAM and two Thunderbolt ports.
These are the machines you give to a teacher or a lawyer or an accountant - folks who need a decently performing machine who don't want to lug around a huge powerhouse machine (or pay for one for that matter). They're still marketed at the same market segment, though they now have a vastly expanded compute power envelope.
The real powerhouses will probably come next year with the M1x (or whatever). Apple has yet to decide on an external memory interconnect and multichannel PCIe scheme, if they decide to move in that direction.
Other CPU and GPU vendors and OEM computer makers take notice - your businesses are now on limited life support. These new Apple Silicon models can compete up through the mid-high tier of computer purchases, and if as I expect Apple sells a ton of these many will be to your prime (most profitable) customers.
The point about same limitations and the "RAM" same size of 16 Go is
almost true. The conception of Apple Silicon is-as a bigger iPhone processor. Remember: you can nowadays play some games on iPhones which were barely playable on a mid-high laptops or even computers 3 or 4 years ago. Apple Silicon is said to
do more with less power*, and it seems to be true, as, on iPhone, you have no fans, typically.
I don't believe in any external memory. Because the electrical linkage would then constitute a
slow bottle-neck,
suffering notably form the Joules effect, with an electrical resistance to the current, which increases proportionally to the length.
It's not about CPU vs GPU, and not even about "RAM". The Apple Silicon, if I do not mistake,
is both CPU and GPU, hence all the circuits which linked a CPU with a GPU on the old machines, air almost more here anymore (except considering the angstrom-sized transistors in themselves), and hence,
the latency for the communication between them (and occasionally the Joules effect, but it is counterbalanced with more difficult thermal dissipation), the latency, I wrote, will be
incredibly decreased.
Their unified memory replacing the "RAM" shall act the same on its part.
I won't bet that I can run Flight Simulator on M1 which has not the
raw ideal specification, but if Windows 10 will be available for Apple Silicon Bootcamp in 1 year (this is not the case in 2020, but the cruise speed on Apple Silicon is planed for 2021, and Microsoft was told to "work hard" to us), we might have surprises even on lower
raw specifications, due to the better inter-communication between the components.
In fact, I suspect that Apple - once they recover their R&D costs - will be pushing the prices of these machines lower while still maintaining their margins - while competing computer makers will still have to pay Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and nVidea for their expensive processors, whereas Apple's cost goes down the more they manufacture. Competing computer makers may soon be demanding lower processo prices from the above manufacturers so they can more readily compete against these models.
When Apple was near the failure thank to the copied Windows 95, nobody noticed it; interesting. (And Apple was winning a complaint against Microsoft, who warned about to stop Office if the complaint continued; that's why it stopped).
I don't see why Apple should suddenly care about the concurrency. Intel is maybe an old (hi-)story in 5 years.
The neo-liberal model standing for some decades in evolved lands, should suddenly stops for Apple... Pretty innocent.
Since they conceive their material (too), no reason not-to make benefits on it.
I believe the biggest costs for a chip fab are startup costs - no matter what processor vendors would like you to believe. Design and fab startup are expensive - but once you start getting decent yields, the additional costs are silicon wafers and QA. The more of these units Apple can move, the lower the per unit cost and the better the profits.
Also notice that the new Apple Silicon is not only for benefits, and not of any scam on the customer.
It is not always said, but the planet would have some years before an irreversible heating.
New less-consuming machines are not the sole solution by far. But if you multiply a gain of maybe 30 watts pro machine, multiplied by 4 billions or more, it makes a saving form some additional carbon dioxyde in the air.