Saturday, November 28, 2020
8GB vs 16GB for M1 Mac — The TRUTH About RAM!
People are all excited at how powerful the new M1 chip Macs are, but non-upgradability is the Achilles heel of these products. There are a bunch of videos showing that you can do just fine with just 8 gigs of RAM, but that is just for running one task. These machines are designed to multitask, so 8 GB is really not enough.
An adequate amount of RAM today probably won't be an adequate amount of RAM five years from now. I upgraded my iMac from 8 GB to 40 GB, which is twice as much as I really need, but the difference in cost wasn't that much.
Because you can't upgrade the RAM on M1 computers, this chip really should just be used on tablets and phones. Instead, it is being used on the Mac Mini, which is a desktop, and laptops that are desktop replacements.
When Apple comes out with the next generation of iMacs, I hope that the RAM will be user upgradeable.
Tuesday, November 24, 2020
Amazon.com: Fire HD 10 Tablet (10.1" 1080p full HD display, 32 GB)
Last year I was watching the rave reviews for this $150 Amazon tablet. When they had it on sale for $100 during Black Friday week, I figured that was a great deal, but I also figured that I didn't really need another tablet. This year it is only $80 for the Black Friday sale, so I decided that for that price I could use it to test Android apps that I want to write.
Monday, November 23, 2020
How Apple Just Changed the Entire Industry
The first 20 minutes of this video is pretty interesting.
As a side note, I was surprised that my old iPhones 6+/6s+ could run Stockfish at similar speeds to my Core-I7 iMac.
Friday, November 20, 2020
M1 MacBook Air is Faster Than You Think! (Real Tests) - Krazy Ken's Tech Misadventures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVtQfsXLnSA
Apple has performed a minor miracle with its new M1 chip. It has 8 CPU cores, 8 graphics cores, and RAM all on one chip. It has a 5-nanometer process, which is better than the current Intel and AMD processors. It might not be possible to make smaller circuits without developing new materials. So far, there isn't much progress in this area.
What is surprising is that this same chip can run on the Macbook Air, which has no active cooling. This is essentially a mobile processor.
You can buy high-end desktop processors that are more powerful, but this System On a Chip is at least 22% faster than my 2017 (14 nanometer Intel quad-core I-5) iMac desktop according to a benchmark that I saw. That is not a reason for me to replace my desktop, but compared to their previous mobile processors, this thing is pretty impressive.
Reportedly Apple is going to come out with something better for their desktop computers. It would make sense that a desktop processor would be more powerful.
The only downside is that they can't run Intel-based programs natively, but have a software solution for running those programs. I'm not sure about Windows compatibility, but I heard something about being able to run some Windows programs through emulation.
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
Dear Linus...You're Wrong About the Apple M1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUkDku_Qt5c
At 3:50 they have a benchmark for the new Apple M1 chip in the Macbook Air, and it is about 22% faster than my iMac desktop computer. That is with no active cooling. Apple is making mobile processors and getting desktop performance out of them.
There is a rumor that there will be an M2 chip for the future desktop iMac computers. Maybe eventually. The M1 was supposed to target mobile devices.
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