Apple announces new Mac Mini, Air + 13" MBP featuring their own M1 chip.

[audiothing]

Ok, I've received my M1 MacBook Pro 13" yesterday. Spent a few hours installing and configuring it from scratch (avoiding any migration).

TL;DR: This thing is fast, cold, and silent.

I've never heard the fan kicking in.
After 30 min of continuous building with XCode, I can feel it a bit warm, but still no fan noise.

The M1 is faster than my MacBook Pro 15" 2018 i7 2.6 GHz at building our plugins. Oh, and it's building universal binaries, so essentially building it twice (I guess?).

I can build AU, VST2, VST3 intel/silicon versions without issues.
AAX builds for intel only (no silicon SDK yet afaik), but also no issues so far.

I've only tested Logic and our plugins work as they should, both intel and silicon versions. More tests needed, but it's very promising.

Rosetta 2 is so fast that I don't notice any performance drops. Some apps actually feel faster.

The battery is also extremely good, even under stress. Nothing compared to my previous MacBooks or other PC laptops I have used.

I'm very impressed. I didn't need to refactor any code, so far it just works.

[Cinebient]

So NI isn’t going to update Kontakt player anymore for Big Sur? Or are you just saying you’re not using them anymore?

N.I. do not allow installing of Native Access on M1 machines, so I cannot install anything. And it might take them a while as usual for updates.
I just need Kontakt, nothing else and it runs as other said but you cannot authorise it without Native Access and it will run in demo mode.
N.I. is the only company which seems to not allow even to try to install things. I get tired of them anyway.
So I hope I can still use my current Kontakt libraries soon but I will not buy more anytime soon or any N.I. stuff. There is plenty other stuff which just works for me.

[Sascha Franck]

Cinebient, would you mind running a little singlethread Logic stress test on your machine? So far the only numbers I have from an M1 machine were done by some Macbook Air (8GB) owner, would like to know what your machine could possibly do.
Here's the link, a description is inside the zip (obviously, anybody else using Logic could run this, too).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10IG2v- ... sp=sharing

[Passing Bye]

TL;DR: This thing is fast, cold, and silent.

Like my ex lovers

[Ploki]

i have 3 buyers for my Intel 13" - can't wait to order the M1, the reports are just great

[Cinebient]

Cinebient, would you mind running a little singlethread Logic stress test on your machine? So far the only numbers I have from an M1 machine were done by some Macbook Air (8GB) owner, would like to know what your machine could possibly do.
Here's the link, a description is inside the zip (obviously, anybody else using Logic could run this, too).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10IG2v- ... sp=sharing

O.k. I just tried that with buffer 32 and got 47 space designers stable.
I will compare that to the rosetta version (edit: it was 41 under Rosetta) and other buffer settings.
Not sure if 47 is good here?
Edit: I got 72 space designers running smooth with buffer 64 and all 90 at 128 (maybe it could run more).

[Sascha Franck]

O.k. I just tried that with buffer 32 and got 47 space designers stable.
I will compare that to the rosetta version (edit: it was 41 under Rosetta) and other buffer settings.
Not sure if 47 is good here?
Edit: I got 72 space designers running smooth with buffer 64 and all 90 at 128 (maybe it could run more).

First of: Thanks for running the test!
And yes, these are pretty great numbers.
At 64 samples, I'm getting 24 from my cheesegrater (2x2.66GHz).
A guy running a new 16-core Mac Pro is getting 52 at 64 samples, around 30 at 32 samples.
Another guy with a 10-core iMac Pro is getting 30/53 at 32/64 samples.

The Macbook Air (8GB) seems to do 45 at 32 samples and around 70 at 64 samples, so it's just a tad less than your MBP - I actually expected the difference to be a little bigger, but then, as long as things aren't really running hot (so the MBA throttles while the MBP has a fan to help), it might just to be expected.

So, in terms of singlecore performance, these M1 thingies are even crushing the most expensive Intel machines by quite a huge margin.

[djmino02]

Any industry buzz on progress for plugin applications (VST and AU) that are running off the new chip and OS natively and not with Rosetta 2 emulation? Also, is there a place to keep track of such a thing or get updates/notifications of plugins that are working natively?

I saw on Youtube that people were using Logic by running compatibility w/ Rosetta 2 and having success with using some plugins.

[Bombadil]

I have the go ahead from my wife to get a souped up mini: 1tb ssd, 16gb RAM. Comes to around €1,450. then I'll need a 4k monitor. Everything I've read so far indicates that it will blow my 4ghz, 32gb RAM i7 out of the water, and that cost me €3,300 in 2015. I'm just going to wait until more is known, 3rd party plugs run natively. I expect a lot of my stuff won't get updated to Apple Silicon, and that represents a significant loss, a couple of grand, at least if they won't run with Rosetta. I wish the baseline model would be sufficient, but I need more storage and RAM.

[Ploki]

I have the go ahead from my wife to get a souped up mini: 1tb ssd, 16gb RAM. Comes to around €1,450. then I'll need a 4k monitor. Everything I've read so far indicates that it will blow my 4ghz, 32gb RAM i7 out of the water, and that cost me €3,300 in 2015. I'm just going to wait until more is known, 3rd party plugs run natively. I expect a lot of my stuff won't get updated to Apple Silicon, and that represents a significant loss, a couple of grand, at least if they won't run with Rosetta. I wish the baseline model would be sufficient, but I need more storage and RAM.

M1X was apparently leaked, 12-core (8 performance + 4 efficiency).

I'm selling my 13" on sunday, still thinking whether to just wait a bit for the M1X Macs, supposedly a 14" and 16".

I mostly work on my Mac Mini tho, so the laptop is not critical in any manner (especially now when there's no live shows), i'll be replacing my Mini for Apple Silicon when i can successfully run everything on the laptop i'll get, likely not until the end of 2021.

[Bombadil]

I don't want a laptop, though. Will be interesting to see new iMacs, but with the Retina display, and magic keyboard and mouse, a lot more expensive. I'll use the ones I have now with the mini IF there are no issues with overheating and the fan, which made my 2011 miniserver unuseable for audio, even listening to iTunes. So, wait and watch. I know these new processors use far less energy and audio production should be a doddle. I am quite frankly amazed at what I'm seeing.

[revvy]

Apple won’t switch
Apple won’t be putting this in a laptop anytime soon
Apple won’t be putting this in an affordable computer anytime soon
All the devs are going to abandon Apple
These new Apple computers are going to be slow, like crippled iPads
All pro and business users will be switching to Windows
These benchmarks are a joke, they won’t perform well under real-world conditions

Er…

[Bombadil]

[No_Use]

Ok, I've received my M1 MacBook Pro 13" yesterday. Spent a few hours installing and configuring it from scratch (avoiding any migration).

TL;DR: This thing is fast, cold, and silent.

I've never heard the fan kicking in.
After 30 min of continuous building with XCode, I can feel it a bit warm, but still no fan noise.
to my previous MacBooks or other PC laptops I have used.

Er...isn't it fanless?
edit: Or is that only the M1 MacBook Air?

[Bombadil]

Pro and mini have fans, I think.