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iFixit has taken the M1-powered MacBook Air and MacBook Pro apart, giving us a glimpse into one of the last major unexplored areas of these products: their underlying physical design. We know some information about how Apple has integrated the hardware into the SoC M1 itself, but the company hasn’t exactly announced the guts of its latest systems.
Apple has done away with the fan inside the MacBook Air in favor of a passive cooler. iFixit spends some time discussing that previous versions of the Air had cooling issues, even with a fan, but notes that the current version of the chip doesn’t appear to have any. Aside from this change and the obvious addition of the M1 itself, the MBA is virtually identical to its predecessor, with some minimal changes to the battery specs that iFixit doesn’t detail.
MacBook Air powered by M1. Image by iFixit.
The MacBook Pro, meanwhile, has changed even less than the MacBook Air. iFixit actually notes that it had hoped for bigger changes, believing it would be a great opportunity for Apple to consolidate parts and components. Building the two systems from a set of common components whenever possible makes it easier to find spare parts. Apple has not taken this step.
Some articles suggest that Apple’s MacBook Pro does not run its fans or that the cooling technology inside the laptop needs to be more advanced than the previous one. iFixit pours cold water on these claims. The fan used by the new MacBook Pro is literally the same as the fan used by the old MacBook Pro. We have confirmation from Pat Moorhead that MacBook Pro fans will be spinning on certain occasions, but the overall noise reduction reports always seem to be accurate. If the fan is allowed to run at a lower speed, the noise it produces is greatly reduced.
Thermally, the M1 appears to be, as iFixit puts it, “just that good”.
Speaking of which, here is the SoC itself with the RAM exposed:
Close-up Apple SoC. Image by iFixit.
There is no T2 CPU in these new systems because all its functions are now integrated in the M1.
Buyers and potential users should be aware that the total experience of using ARM-powered MacBook Airs and Pros ranges from “excellent” if you are fully connected to native Apple applications, to “potentially problematic” if you are dependent. certain devices or applications. As time goes on and critics spend more time with these systems, a more complete picture emerges. One of those facts is that the M1 represents a quantum leap in overall low-power CPU performance, at very the least, compared to anything Intel or AMD has delivered.
The caveats that surface all relate to the software side of the Apple ecosystem. That doesn’t make them any less important to your buying decisions, but if we separate the hardware from the software, the M1 really does look extraordinary, especially on mobile. It’s fair to argue that the processor hasn’t shown that it can actually support high-core Intel and AMD processors as some early synthetic performance tests have indicated, but at this point we let’s talk about a 4 + 4. CPU taking on CPUs with 2x – 4x the number of “big” cores.
We’ve seen the M1 rated in SPEC, GeekBench 5, Cinebench R23, Handbrake, Adobe Photoshop, and a range of other apps, some emulated, some native. When running emulated software, M1 performance versus x86 has an impact of 20-30% on average. When running native software, Apple’s M1 is consistently much faster than the previous x86 processors it replaced. Some of that difference would be avoided if Apple had used the Intel Tiger Lake 2020 platform instead of Ice Lake 2019. Some would not.
Apple M1 motherboard. Image by iFixit.
The M1’s thermals are fantastic and its performance is better than any x86 processor ever demonstrated in its relevant TDP support. That doesn’t mean the M1 will be able to replace your desktop’s 8-16 chip next year. That doesn’t mean Apple will try to compete with x86 for the length and breadth of the server, desktop, and mobile markets. This means that for the first time in decades there is a non-x86 architecture with significantly better low-end performance per watt. and higher absolute performance in that same TDP envelope than anything else in the x86 universe.
It’s not a perfect chip. It’s limited to 16GB of RAM, and Macs are a bad choice if you want to gamble. There is no native Windows support on these systems and they offer a limited choice of ports. It is proven that emulation can drain battery much faster than native apps. Some people just don’t like macOS. (Don’t @ me. I’m one of them.)
There are, in short, a lot of practical reasons why someone might look at the new MacBook Pro, Mac mini, or MacBook Air and decide to stick with x86. A system can be a tremendous leap forward in some ways and a bad choice for many users in others. Depending on your use case and preferences, the M1 can always be one or the other.
Featured image by iFixit.
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