M-series Apple silicon chips tout impressive performance but unpredictable release cadence. That makes it hard to keep up with which chips are in which devices. Apple currently has three generations of M-series chips, up to four variations of each generation, and three product categories that use M-series chips. Here’s the data to make sense of it all.
Expand Expanding Close
The most recent iPad Pro with M2 chip took performance another step forward, but what has changed from the previous iPad Pro when it comes to real-world use? Follow along for an in-depth look at the M2 iPad Pro vs M1 iPad Pro as we wait for the 2024 iPad Pro in May.
Expand Expanding Close
We’ve seen Linux running on Apple Silicon Macs before, but this week marks the first time you can run Fedora Linux on M1 and M2 Macs.
This is a collaboration between Asahi Linux and the Fedora Project, and marks a key milestone in a project which kicked off back in 2021 …
Expand Expanding Close
The new M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max Apple Silicon power the latest MacBook Pro laptops. Along with more powerful and efficient CPUs and GPUs, these MacBook Pros enable up to 128GB of memory, have brighter screens, improved battery life, and a new space black finish. Join along for a detailed comparison of what’s different and new with the M3 MacBook Pro vs M1 MacBook Pro lineup and some help answering the question, is it worth upgrading?
Expand Expanding Close
Following the original Apple Silicon iMac with M1 chip that launched in 2021, the first update of Apple’s all-in-one desktop has arrived. Read along with our in-depth comparison of the M3 iMac vs M1 iMac when it comes to performance, display, features, I/O, and much more.
Expand Expanding Close
Apple has been doing a great job with its Apple Silicon “M” chips for computers, as they deliver more performance without consuming too much power. On the other side, Qualcomm and Microsoft have been trying to develop a competitor to the Apple Silicon Macs. While the first attempts were unsuccessful, it seems that Qualcomm’s latest CPU has finally beaten Apple’s M1 and is catching up with M2 in terms of performance.
Expand Expanding Close
The launch of Apple Silicon Macs back in 2020 was one of the longest-awaited developments in the history of Macs. The rumors date back to at least 2014, and with hindsight, the writing was already on the wall when Apple developed its own chip for the first-gen iPad and iPhone 4 back in 2010.
Apple’s hardware chief, Johny Srouji, said last year that the company itself had been working on the project for 14 years …
Expand Expanding Close
M1 Mac Linux 6.2 support is now available – an achievement that Linux creator Linus Torvalds originally saw as an impossible task. It can be run on the M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra chips.
Torvalds had long wanted an ARM laptop capable of running Linux, and when the M1 MacBook Air came out said that it would have been the perfect machine but for the fact that Apple wouldn’t allow another OS to access the GPU and other elements …
Expand Expanding Close
Apple chip designer Tim Millet implied in a new interview that annual updates – or something close to this – are likely to be the norm for future Macs.
He talked about the company’s original goals for the development of the M1 chip, and how Apple is approaching work on each successive generation of Mac chip …
Expand Expanding Close
We didn’t have long to wait for 2023 Mac mini Geekbench scores, for both M2 and M2 Pro variants. As you’d expect, they show pretty dramatic performance gains over the M1 model launched back in November of 2020.
The base model M2 machine gets a relatively modest bump in the single-core test, but a much larger one for multi-core …
Expand Expanding Close
The Apple Self Service Repair program first launched for iPhone in November of last year is tomorrow being extended to M1 MacBook models – both MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.
The company says that the program will also be expanding into other countries, beginning in Europe, later this year …
Expand Expanding Close
It wasn’t long after the new(ish) MacBook Pro went on sale that we got to see some M2 speed benchmarks. These confirmed Apple’s claims in terms of improvements over the base M1 chip, but also confirmed that, as expected, the M1 Pro, Max, and Ultra chips still leave the M2 in the dust.
A new comparison table shows how the M2 speed compares to every other recent Apple Silicon chip, from the A13 Bionic in the iPhone 11, through to the M1 Ultra – and it makes for interesting viewing …
Expand Expanding Close
Now that the second generation of Apple Silicon for Mac has landed (albeit in a machine almost nobody should buy), it’s time to look at the performance of the M2 versus the M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra.
We don’t yet have any M2 benchmarks, but we still know a lot from Apple’s own statements …
Expand Expanding Close
The Stage Manager controversy doesn’t look to be going away anytime soon, despite Apple’s attempts to explain its reasoning for limiting the feature to M1 iPads.
I expressed my own disappointment that my 12.9-inch 2018 iPad Pro won’t get the feature, but it’s an even bigger blow to those who bought a 2020 model, only to discover that it is excluded from the headline iPadOS 16 feature just two years later …
Expand Expanding Close
A so-called PACMAN M1 chip attack created by MIT security researchers succeeded in defeating what has been described as “the last line of security” on Apple Silicon.
When designing the M1 chip, Apple created various layers of security, each designed to protect against an attacker who succeeded in penetrating the previous ones. Its final layer is a security feature known as PAC – and this has now been defeated …
Expand Expanding Close
AnandTech has taken a deep dive into the new M2 chip announced yesterday, focusing in particular on the M1 versus M2 chip performance. These chips are available in the all-new MacBook Air, and in an updated version of the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro.
The site says that while Apple has been as coy as ever when it comes to specifics on the chip (for example, the clock speed), we do know quite a few things already …
Expand Expanding Close
While we’re almost to WWDC 2022, customers are still facing long shipping estimates for their Apple devices. Supply chain issues have been plaguing Apple for months and will continue throughout the summer. Currently, the M1 MacBook Air is the only M1 Mac with delayed shipping. Most of the M1 MacBook Pro and M1 iMac models will ship this week.
Expand Expanding Close
We didn’t have long to wait after the launch of the Mac Studio to see a bunch of M1 Ultra benchmarks. These ranged from comparisons to the 28-core Intel Mac Pro to a comprehensive set of tests by Macworld.
A new set of tests not only aims to see how the M1 Ultra and M1 Max compare in real-life usage, but also when performing tasks specifically suggested by pro app users …
Expand Expanding Close
Intel last week provided an update on its 14th-generation Meteor Lake processors due to launch next year, but it seems that there may have been a crucial change to the company’s plans.
Intel has said as recently as last week that it would fabricate the chips itself, using a 7nm process, but a supply-chain report today claims that the company will instead outsource the work to TSMC, so it can benefit from the same 5nm process used for Apple’s M1 chips …
Expand Expanding Close
After digging into Apple Silicon, researchers have discovered a new vulnerability that affects Apple’s latest M1 and A14 chips. The Augury Apple Silicon microarchitectural flaw has been demonstrated to leak data at rest but doesn’t appear to be “that bad” at this point.
Expand Expanding Close
After adding support for the M1 through Rosetta last year, Nvidia has just announced that its GeForce Now cloud gaming service is picking up native support for M1 Macs through its latest app update.
Expand Expanding Close
Pro users of M1 Macs have reported disappointing transfer speeds with external SSDs, and tests appear to show that most M1 Mac Thunderbolt ports don’t support USB 3.1 Gen 2 – which means they don’t offer the maximum 10Gb/s transfer speeds that would be expected from Thunderbolt 4.
The tests were conducted on a 2021 16-inch MacBook Pro M1 Max, and a 2022 Mac Studio M1 Max …
Expand Expanding Close
With the two-year transition completed from Intel to its own silicon, Apple just unveiled all the M1 family chips to its main Macs. With that, the company is now readying the next wave of computers with the second generation of its processors.
In a new story from the Wall Street Journal, the publication writes a profile of Apple’s Johnny Srouji, a former Intel engineer and IBM executive that led Apple’s semiconductor division to ditch Intel for its own silicon.
Expand Expanding Close
The global chip shortage doesn’t appear likely to end any time soon. The manufacturer of crucial chipmaking machines has warned that its kit will be in short supply for another two years.
That’s particularly bad news for Intel as it seeks to play catch-up with the capabilities of Apple’s M1 chips …
Expand Expanding Close