The previous articles of this series have analyzed the launch of the new Apple M1 SoC, the claims put forward about its architecture and performance, and the real value of the results measured. This article will focus on the downsides of early adoption, and the real value - misunderstood by most media - that Apple is bringing to the market with its introduction.
Compatibility woes are real and will stay for a while
It is important to understand this new generation of Macintosh has specific limitations right now, most notably - as predicted in the previous article - incompatibility with some suite and applications very popular among macOS users. This will remain uncharted territory for a while as users are finding out new compatibility issues daily; some of the more prominent (and sometimes unexpected) culprits include the likes of Microsoft Edge, Adobe Acrobat DC Suite, Adobe Reader XI, Android Studio, and Ableton Live. In the video editing compartment, only Final Cut Pro (which is a native application) has shown impeccable performance, while all other programs (such as Adobe Premiere) that must run under Rosetta 2 emulation are mostly serviceable. Compatibility issues on M1 are a mixed bag of applications that run poorly under Rosetta 2, applications that won't run even if they were expected to, and officially unsupported applications that are currently unavailable as they require a native build. To make sense of this and help users navigate until the developers will update their software, some tools and sites are already available - such as IsAppleSiliconReady - to provide updated lists of known working and non-working apps. Caveat emptor.
The real value of Apple M1
For what concerns the real value of Apple M1, at the moment everyone is missing the point: the real interesting result is that the very first Apple Silicon on a personal computer is good enough to hold its ground against mobility CPUs from competitors that have been in the market for decades. That is a groundbreaking result on its own, and one that should not be understated.
The obvious purpose of M1 is to be a placeholder, establishing Apple's presence in the CPU domain, and open the way for the next-generation chip, that will have more performance cores and a less restrained TDP, resulting in even higher performance at the expense of thermals. In that scenario, if Apple's claims are correct, efficiency will likely become the differentiator advantage as the next generation chips might have the potential to deliver more computational power. If Apple is capable of keeping this promise and deliver on their infamous power consumption / CPU performance ratio, there are very interesting premises for the future of ARM in personal computing outside of mobile devices.
Which one to buy?
It depends on the use case. Apple did a remarkable engineering and integration job, which resulted in the side effect of three computers obtaining very similar performance results. The real differentiators are customizability (how much can each system be specced up to meet a user's requirements), cooling solution (Mac Mini and MacBook Pro have an edge on the Air being active cooled, as that pretty much eliminates the need for thermal throttling that is constraining the M1 potential inside the fanless, passively cooled Air) and form factor (Mac Mini is a desktop).
Based on all results collected so far, the extra performance that can be obtained on the MacBook Pro doesn't seem to justify the price premium, except for usage scenarios with sustained high loads (e.g. video editing, heavy data processing). Some users - as a matter of taste - even find the Air more attractive just because it doesn't have the Touch Bar.
Users looking for a laptop will therefore likely be better off with a MacBook Air, as long as the lower ceiling on specifications is not a problem. The Mac Mini is a very good desktop with excellent performance, limited only by its lack of certain expansion ports. Yet, as already pointed out, this first generation of M1-based Macintosh is intended to be low-end: customers who need higher specifications and beefier hardware can still opt for Intel-based models, or wait for the next generation which Apple will almost certainly launch in 2021.
One More Thing: because of the M1, buying Apple today is a risk
Extending the concepts that have been introduced in the previous article, there is one final topic worth discussing: because of Apple M1, savvy users may want to refrain from purchasing Apple computers today.
It is a known fact that Apple has a long history of shelving old hardware and kicking it aside to make room for new generation products. Apple has clearly announced that their future roadmap for personal computing will see Intel processors replaced by Apple Silicon across the board; at the same time, first-generation Apple products are oftentimes short-lived and promptly replaced with newer models, that are addressing the most obvious shortcomings of their predecessors. The first Apple Watch (which was unceremoniously called "Series Zero" for those who didn't get the message) and the first iPad are good examples of this attitude.
This means that whoever is purchasing an Apple computer today is given two choices, each with a predictable outcome: buy an Intel-based Mac, whose hardware is confirmed by Apple to be on its way out; or buy an M1-based Mac, which will be superseded in less than a year by the next-generation Apple chip and then possibly dropped out of support 12 months later.
About the latter, it may be worth recalling that the first generation iPad was launched in April 2010, discontinued less than a year later (March 2011), and it received its last OS update on May 2012 - two year after launch.
While it is expected that a productivity device like a MacBook may benefit from a better, longer support lifecycle than a tablet, at the moment of writing there is no provision about what Apple will do; just a cautionary tale before spending a significant amount of money on a new Apple computer whose performance is just on par with many Windows PC that cost a fraction of the price.
Also, as anticipated in the previous article, these machines that have just launched are indeed to be considered "low end". If the latest rumors are true, M1 chips with 4 high performance and 4 efficiency cores will be vastly superseded in the next months by the next-generation Apple silicon sporting configurations with 12 cores (8 high performance and 4 efficiency cores), 16 cores, and possibly even 32 cores for high-end Mac Pro models: if the architecture scales appropriately, these next-generation chips will actually compete with the most powerful CPUs from Intel and AMD.