We have to see if ARM can deliver more than just a good entry level performance. Nobody doubted that it's good for entry level. Regarding the iMac, I don't consider anything this big with this small of a monitor perfect for anything anymore. In 2021 you want to have an ultra widescreen monitor and an iMac with a 27" monitor is a useless waste of desk space.

 

Wow call me shocked - further benchmarks in running under emulation via Rosetta 2 and STILL running faster than an i9:

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/15/m1-chip-emulating-x86-benchmark/

This is great news for Intel apps such as DAWs running under emulation before they eventually get ported to ARM.

 

It's running faster than than an 8 core i9 - I don't just call that entry level performance

 

Geekbench looks pretty impressive, indeed. But I wouldn't jump to conclusion yet. E.g. Geekbench includes AI benchmarks and we know that Apple included hardware for that. Running some Photoshop filters 10x faster than other CPUs is nice and improves Geebench score but won't help you in your DAW.

It's a lot of new technology, very different from all we know, so let's wait and see how it does in real life usage.

 

according to Geekbench (which I agree isn't really that good indicator of sustained performance), looks like the new fanless MBAir is on par with entry 8-core model of Mac Pro 2019 which is ridiculous given the fact Air needs probably around 1/10 of power for such performance

 

Agreed but I have to say I didnt expect emulated code to run nearly that well they reckon 79-80% of native which is still pretty good for potential DAW speeds.

 

Last edited: Nov 16, 2020

I don't know yet how real life examples will look like, but from what I've heard, everything Java is reportedly pretty much unusable (e.g. Bitwig). But take this with a grain of salt as I don't personally know the guy who said this.

Hopefully we'll gain some more insights tomorrow, when the first machines will reach youtubers etc.

 

Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look
full article: https://blog.jacopo.io/en/post/apple-ocsp/
and response from Jeffrey Paul https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/

 

@GT33 Yeah, it was obvious that jacopo was lying when I was reading it!
Jeffrey is right.

 

I know this doesn't qualify as anything but the Flux Capacitor when in Target Disk Mode gives me a slight nerd-on

 

trustd runs in Catalina the only difference between 10.5.7 and 11 is that trustd will be run after the firewall on port out for internet as a kernel level process. After the bugs get aired out of 11 and I upgrade I will check the packets and see if anything changed. If you have a mac with iServices trustd is running and has been since 10.12 it is what enables push messages like 2FA on all apple devices, find myphone/tablet and remote bricking of lost devices, it also manages certificates for DRM music/video/app store/icloud/mail/calendar/notes... trustd is not IDFA and even IDFA doesn't actually track people it is a tool to allow people to opt out of being tracked at all - that's a part of iOS14 where Apps have to declare what they are registering and give you the option to either turn off or refuse to install the App. Like the label on the hamburger box that says this has enough fat to cause death or the big warning on a pack of cigarettes that says you are going to get cancer. Can apple still tack you if they want - of course they can, they've always able to because of you AppleID/email you used when your turned on the phone or computer, they don't need an IDFA because that anonymizes you, they already have a non-anonymous unique identifier for you.

I am not going to go over this again because I wouldn't want go on about stuff everybody already knows, but if you don't want iServices just block apple FDQNs after the wire that comes out of your computer. If you don't want services from personal digital certificates like trusted devices, protable ssh certificates between services,vault, keychain, screen swap, auto forward from iphone/ipad other mac... block it after the wire it is a soft fail so it causes no harm to the OS but you will no longer be able to use any of the iServices and will loose access to date you have on Apple servers weather that is loops or patches for logic or you photos w/e you will not be able to authenticate automatically and you will not have access to stuff.

trustd modern behavior of checking app hashes ONLY for apps you bought and download from the app store or apps that were installed with a signed and notarized digital certificate is Apple's answer to signed installer packages that have had malware injected into them while still leaving the signature in place. There was a bru-haha about such an exploit a some months ago when some people downloaded a pirate copy of LittleSnitch from a famous but dubious Russian torrent tracker - even though all the comments said it was malware in Russian. This modern behavior isn't that modern though iOS devices have been doing this since the days of the iPhone 5 on boot on, on app install, or over WiFi.

How does it do this, well everyone is familiar with a hash of package ZIP/TAR/RAR doesn't matter you can get unique hash from any data package use a search engine and learn about it if you need to or care. Two things are hashed, the installer and the app. When you launch the installer if the trustd sends with your private key an e[hash+salt] Apple's server which has your public key to make sure it is coming from your Apple ID [this is unique to you and if they want to log it for some reason they will, if you bought the software from them they already have that logged) you get back a certificate for your keychain that the installer is safe and the hashes match. If the app was not signed or notated you would either get a [Apple can not verify the authenticity of blah blah do you want to install anyway?] If the hash fails because the app was notated and signed but the hashes are different you get the can not load this [XXXX] you can sign it yourself and trustd will no longer check on app launch as its now on your local keychain, also you've told your OS you are big boy with big pants and you do what you want.

Anyway - it's a free world you do what you want, this is so boring after awhile it gets old trying to explain things at this level and wonder if I am being douchy and talking down to people inadvertently or not being technical enough for those who understand enough who wo;; actually get it. I am over it. Educate yourself, I am not getting paid to this and I've exhausted my weekly quota of altruism.

Peace.

 

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202491
Published Date: November 16, 2020

In addition, over the the next year we will introduce several changes to our security checks:

• A new encrypted protocol for Developer ID certificate revocation checks
• Strong protections against server failure
• A new preference for users to opt out of these security protections

 

so, new benchmarks,
Apple M1 fanless MBAir, even when emulated via Rosetta 2, beats every Intel Mac in singlecore Geekbench - THAT is a big deal:
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/4731213

and also, M1's graphics shreds dedicated GTX 1050 Ti and RX 560 (do note those gpus are 75W rated alone, while M1 entire package including cpu is limited by 30W on Air):
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-silicon-m1-graphics-performance

and Cinebench singlecore beating Intel 10900K and 10900KF:
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cinebench_r23_single_core-15
and Cinebench multicore on par with Ryzen 2600X:
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cinebench_r23_multi_core-16
(both on 8GB ram 13-inch MacBook Pro with 512GB of storage)

 

Last edited: Nov 17, 2020

Awesome, I keep my eyes on it.

 

and the new Mac Mini being even a notch better,
which confirms my thought of Mac Mini having the (insignificantly) best cooling and power delivery of all the 3 new M1 Macs:

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/mac-mini-m1-benchmarks-revealed-and-they-crush-intel

 

hmm so I did run Geekbench on my 4.3GHz i7-5820K, and it seems only area where my CPU wins against MBAir is the machine learning, interesting:
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/4731213?baseline=4780213

and comparison of my spec against M1 Mac Mini is just nuts:
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/4769847?baseline=4780213

EDIT - Geekbench is a bit messy, do note the first link is comparison against M1 Intel virtualization, second comparison link is against native M1

 

Last edited: Nov 17, 2020

That's some impressive numbers especially on the 8GB mini when I've seen so many people claiming the M1 machines are poor purely because of their 16GB of RAM limitation on these first gen models.

Not surprising your multi-core is better given the HT is enabled on your 6-cores which should help a lot with that vs the base 8 core on the M1.

 

That's because none of the benchmarks would improve with more RAM anyway. Geekbench runs with 4GB or 4TB just the same. More RAM doesn't change the score.

From the tests I've seen on Youtube so far, the new notebooks are great for what they are. They seriously lack in GPU power though. The internal GPU is better than other internal GPUs but it's still just an internal GPU and no match for pretty much any recent dedicated budget graphics card on the market. Which isn't a problem because nobody would expect that in entry level models. But it's still unclear if and when we will see a Mac Silicon with a dedicated GPU.

So far, pretty much nothing runs on the M1 Macs. The DAWs I've seen running on Rosetta2 are unusable. Plugins aren't usable either.

The M1 is great for casual users but for the time being it's still a long way for more serious users and enthusiasts. It's a great start for Apple though. I'm just not sure how much Apple Silicon can scale up for more performance on desktops and if we will see dedicated graphics cards.

Personally, I'm impressed with the entry level performance, but I don't have a use for entry level hardware. It tells very little on what to really expect from performance desktops. But it will need quite some time until most software will be ported anyway, so let's wait and see what comes next.

 

I understand most audio hardware manufacturers will have to rewrite their device drivers (unless already using Class Compliant Mode, or some sorts of networked AoIP system) which is already a task for couple months imo,
matter of DAWs and plugins is tricky as well, because they rely on (almost) realtime performance, which Rosetta 2 by design is not suitable for,

BEFORE (June 2020)


and AFTER (November 2020)


bonus: spot all the differences