Future of Logic Pro and Cubase on Mac

[BONES]

It may be a win, depending on what your definition of "faster" is. I can't see their graphics competing with nVidia Quadro, for example, which means they will be hopeless for the most important things I use a laptop for. It runs a version of OSX, just like ARM-based laptops have been running a version of Windows 10 for several years now but, as we've seen, they are no replacement for an Intel-based laptop with Windows 10. And honestly, when was the last time battery life was an issue? Maybe in 2005, when you were lucky to get an hour out of a high spec laptop, but it's not been an issue for me in at least a decade. But, of course, Apple tells you it's important so that makes it important, right?

[Sampleconstruct]

I talked to a Steinberg developer some days ago and he told me that they are in the process of adapting their software to run on the new Apple chips.

[k-tronix]

It may be a win, depending on what your definition of "faster" is. I can't see their graphics competing with nVidia Quadro, for example, which means they will be hopeless for the most important things I use a laptop for. It runs a version of OSX, just like ARM-based laptops have been running a version of Windows 10 for several years now but, as we've seen, they are no replacement for an Intel-based laptop with Windows 10. And honestly, when was the last time battery life was an issue? Maybe in 2005, when you were lucky to get an hour out of a high spec laptop, but it's not been an issue for me in at least a decade. But, of course, Apple tells you it's important so that makes it important, right?

These M1 chips are an early, first step in a progression in which Apple hopes to walk away from Intel's engineering roadmap. I'm fairly sure that graphics will come along later in the more professionally-focused offerings. They're just going for the lower-end market for now--little of tremendous interest to most creatives. Agree that battery is much of a consideration. Seems like they just wanted to highlight the efficiency of their new design.

[tooneba]

Speaking of the performance of the software FCPX is optimized to work fast even on lesser CPU. There is review doing benchmark of same job on FCPX and PC's equivalent software. So at least for apple's native application there is a chance ARM chip can hang on to the usable level. I don't know how non-native softwares will fare.

[apoclypse]

Speaking of the performance of the software FCPX is optimized to work fast even on lesser CPU. There is review doing benchmark of same job on FCPX and PC's equivalent software. So at least for apple's native application there is a chance ARM chip can hang on to the usable level. I don't know how non-native softwares will fare.

DaVinci Resolve can be fairly heavy and in Apple's video they said it can playback and edit 8K video without dropping any frames. Even an AMD 3950X can't do the with an 1080TI Nvidia card.

Apple's system is actually pretty damn slick. GPU, CPU, Neural Engine, etc all use the same pool of ram, the chip itself has way more cache than an x86 chip as well. They can pass data to and from the gpu to the neural engine to the cpu without any overhead. It's all on one package. That make it potentially easier to develop for (no need to keep copying data from different pools of memory, which can be a significant speedup) but also Apple can add even more specialized chips into the package to accelerate certain workloads like they been doing on their mobile devices. Imagine some kind of audio processing DSP accelerator being built-in or something similar. They actually have hardware accelerated compression hardware built in to cache data in and out of storage.

This thing is a game changer imo. Especially if the rumored performance gains are true. Both AMD and Intel are in for interesting times.

[egbert]

Are you serious? They just launched their new ARM-based Macbook Air, with promises of Macbook Pros going the same way later in the year. i.e. They just turned Mac laptops into oversized iPads with no touchscreen.

You mean they just made their laptops faster, with significantly better battery life, they still run OSX but can also run iOS apps as well... Nice win for us Mac users... there are a number of iOS apps I look forward to using.

The New Apple Silicon Mac Mini is showing a 50% cpu improvement for single core in early tests... very impressive.

On what sort of tasks? Floating point stuff? Apple performance claims have a long history of hyperbolae - what really matters in the end is how does it perform on the specific tasks that relate to an area of work.

If you want to run a zillion plugins in a DAW mix, how will it compete with a Ryzen 5950 or whatever Intel can cook up to compete with that? That is the standard right now. And graphics hardware is not limited to the Iris stuff Intel shoehorned into it's CPUs - as Bones points out that market if full of mature products with much more power.

[tooneba]

Speaking of the performance of the software FCPX is optimized to work fast even on lesser CPU. There is review doing benchmark of same job on FCPX and PC's equivalent software. So at least for apple's native application there is a chance ARM chip can hang on to the usable level. I don't know how non-native softwares will fare.

DaVinci Resolve can be fairly heavy and in Apple's video they said it can playback and edit 8K video without dropping any frames. Even an AMD 3950X can't do the with an 1080TI Nvidia card.

Apple's system is actually pretty damn slick. GPU, CPU, Neural Engine, etc all use the same pool of ram, the chip itself has way more cache than an x86 chip as well. They can pass data to and from the gpu to the neural engine to the cpu without any overhead. It's all on one package. That make it potentially easier to develop for (no need to keep copying data from different pools of memory, which can be a significant speedup) but also Apple can add even more specialized chips into the package to accelerate certain workloads like they been doing on their mobile devices. Imagine some kind of audio processing DSP accelerator being built-in or something similar. They actually have hardware accelerated compression hardware built in to cache data in and out of storage.

This thing is a game changer imo. Especially if the rumored performance gains are true. Both AMD and Intel are in for interesting times.

By the end product coming to the market other technology also advances accordingly. In the current state, it looks like there isn't much difference in cost effectiveness.

[BONES]

These M1 chips are an early, first step in a progression in which Apple hopes to walk away from Intel's engineering roadmap. I'm fairly sure that graphics will come along later in the more professionally-focused offerings.

Why? Apple already only offer sub-par Radeon graphics, there is absolutely nothing to suggest they will ever offer anything to the pro market. Given the price of a new MacPro, I'd suggest they are doing their best to get rid of their pro customers.

Even an AMD 3950X can't do the with an 1080TI Nvidia card

That's because a 1080TI is a low-level gaming card, it' not designed to edit video with. For that stuff you need nVidia Quadro (or whatever they just changed the name to).

This thing is a game changer imo.

You mean like ARM has been for Windows? Of course Apple are going to talk it up, it's meaningless marketing BS. DaVinci Resolve, for example, was probably originally designed to run on RISC processors anyway, like DEC Alpha.

[kev2525]

Cubase upgrades are paid for each version, while Logic is not (currently)....so you'd save €100 a year with Logic.

[egbert]

Cubase upgrades are paid for each version, while Logic is not (currently)....so you'd save €100 a year with Logic.

If you ignore the price of the dongle, that is.

[ozinga]

Cubase upgrades are paid for each version, while Logic is not (currently)....so you'd save €100 a year with Logic.

If you ignore the price of the dongle, that is.

Does not matter if you are already a Mac user.

[egbert]

Cubase upgrades are paid for each version, while Logic is not (currently)....so you'd save €100 a year with Logic.

If you ignore the price of the dongle, that is.

Does not matter if you are already a Mac user.

How often do you buy a Mac?

[Etienne1973]

Cubase upgrades are paid for each version, while Logic is not (currently)....so you'd save €100 a year with Logic.

If you ignore the price of the dongle, that is.

Does not matter if you are already a Mac user.

How often do you buy a Mac?

How often? Every 8 or 10 years.

[apoclypse]

You mean like ARM has been for Windows? Of course Apple are going to talk it up, it's meaningless marketing BS. DaVinci Resolve, for example, was probably originally designed to run on RISC processors anyway, like DEC Alpha.

Windows on ARM ran on your bog standard Qualcomm chips which is handily outperformed by Apple's chips on mobile devices. If MS had the expertise to create their own ARM based chips like Apple then you would have a point. Otherwise what you wrote here is nonsense. For one MS wasn't even really trying and the Windows platform is based on legacy support. Win32 applications are still supported. Apple does not have that issue as they are less tied to legacy support in general. If you've been using Apple's core apis then Rosetta2, universal binaries etc should all just work for the most part.

Apple is just using the ARM instruction set, the chip itself is their own. Early benchmarks shows the chip significantly beating an Intel chip in single core performance. If the Geekbench benchmark numbers are true, it handily beats a Core I9 based MacBook Pro. Think about that. A MacBook Air can run circles around a Core I9 Intel chip at better power efficiency to boot. Until we have real numbers we won't know the performance exactly, but if true that's not just marketing that could be a death knell for x86.

As for DaVinci. When it was first released it ran on specialized hardware. Not sure what that has to do with a MacBook Air being able to edit and playback 8K video in it. DaVinci resolve hasn't run on specialized hardware since the mid aughts. DaVinci Resolve today and that version are not even the same software, for one DaVinci wasn't even an NLE then and secondly has been running on Windows, Linux, and Macs since 2008. You think BMD had some super secret DEC Alpha code they just pulled out their ass to make apple look good? Please stop spouting nonsense. If anything DaVinci should perform worse since that software relies heavily on GPU acceleration.

[pdxindy]

It may be a win, depending on what your definition of "faster" is. I can't see their graphics competing with nVidia Quadro, for example, which means they will be hopeless for the most important things I use a laptop for. It runs a version of OSX, just like ARM-based laptops have been running a version of Windows 10 for several years now but, as we've seen, they are no replacement for an Intel-based laptop with Windows 10. And honestly, when was the last time battery life was an issue? Maybe in 2005, when you were lucky to get an hour out of a high spec laptop, but it's not been an issue for me in at least a decade. But, of course, Apple tells you it's important so that makes it important, right?

Regarding battery life, just cause something isn't an issue for you, doesn't mean it isn't an issue for someone else. Your experience is not the measure for everyone. In my case, most of the time laptop battery life is not important as I have it plugged in. But sometimes I am using my laptop without access to power and then a significantly longer battery life is an added bonus. Plus of course less battery use for the same task means less heat and less fan noise.

My definition of faster, is faster... compared to previous Mac models, it is faster for CPU and faster for Graphics.

The Apple Silicon Macs are not using a stripped down version of OSX.