On: Apple Silicon M1 Disruption

[bee_rider]

It isn't just the "new thing" feeling, the smartphone form factor opened up new computing tasks that weren't really possible previously.

The M1 is a quantitative, not qualitative improvement. That's why it won't be as memorable.

The battery life is impressive, but it should be noted that you could have essentially the same experience with an older device by keeping the heavy computations on another machine -- remote desktop has always been a pain of course, but everybody loves SSH, right?

[d3nj4l → bee_rider]

> The M1 is a quantitative, not qualitative improvement. That's why it won't be as memorable.

You're missing the forest for the trees. The quantitative improvements allow for advances in the qualitative experience. GP pointed out feeling impressed by coding all day and spending just 18% battery life. That's a qualitative experience. M1 (and chips like it that we'll see come up) will allow for a qualitative transformation like that. I remember when, if I had to get a powerful computer in the $1000 range, I'd either have to give up some power to get portability and battery life, or get a bulky powerful laptop with ~2-3 hours of battery life. With the M1 macs, you can get both, and that will set expectations that the rest of the market will have to follow if they want to survive. It's not as "revolutionary" as a new form factor, but it's a step towards a broader change in portable computing.

[bee_rider → d3nj4l]

> It's not as "revolutionary" as a new form factor, but it's a step towards a broader change in portable computing.

Sure, the claim's been walked back from "as memorable as the iPhone" to "a step towards a broader change in portable computing." At this point I guess I agree with that level of importance.