Microsoft Made an Arm-based Mac mini

[@prashank]

Qualcomm seems to be singlehandedly holding back ARM progress on non-apple platforms.

[@snazzy]

Pretty much, yes.

[@DigitalJedi]

Hell, even Rock chip is making real progress ar this point. The new RK series SoCs have some legitimately impressive performance compared to previous generations.

[@neliaironwood7573]

Aside from Nvidia & Apple they're literally the only ARM company that makes PC-level ARM chips. The big Snapdragon 9 Gen 1 ain't coming until 2024, but don't expect RTX 3080 level of performance from them

[@JeffGeerling]

Mediacom could be a player too. And I think if the focus early on would be energy efficient Windows laptops that could compete with the M1 Air in terms of price (half the price, a little slower, but similar battery life at least), Microsoft could maybe take that edge they don't get as much with cheaper Celeron/Atom laptops.

[@bulletpunch9317]

@@goruyorsunuzz they already know all that from the rt and windows phone days.

[@Maxlan]

The Qualcomm Microsoft exclusivity deal for arm is so frustrating. We could be so much further along if other chipmakers were allowed to develop arm chips for Windows, and maybe we'd even get an official version of Windows on MacOS again...

[@Rhedox1]

There is no exclusivity deal. That's a just false rumor.

[@terribletimes902]

@@Rhedox1 shut up qualcomm fanboy 😂

[@scellyyt]

@@Rhedox1 sources?

[@thor.mukbang]

@@NiSiRewinD for the same reason you’d want any kind of Windows

[@scellyyt]

@@NiSiRewinD I dunno maybe windows takes up majority of the desktop OS market share

[@-aexc-]

also this devkit is not really meant for development development as you implied, it's more of a testing device for devs moving to arm. most development will probably gonna be happening on a different computer.

[@WarrenPostma]

Right. I'll have an automated test runner running automated testing on this platform, looking for fundamental bugs, and I'll have a QA person testing builds on it. There's no way I write code, commit it to git and build in visual studio on here, but I might use this as a remote target and connect visual studio to remote debug an issue.

[@shadowtheimpure]

It's a native environment for 'run checking' an ARM compiled Windows app. That would be why they engineered it using an existing commercial Windows ARM platform, so that it gives a good real-world result.

[@jasonhaven7170]

Literally copying Apple

[@liaminwales]

@@jasonhaven7170 Most things work on the principle of finding some one who did it right and copying them, if your lucky you improve on it. Most apples best projects have just been a copy of something but done better. They did not make the first MP3 player, they made the one every one wanted. They did not make the first phone, they made the one people wanted. They did not make the first CPU, they made it better (but lost the people who made the M1 CPU, that's a mistake!).

[@Clarkzer0]

Got a base M1 Mini to quickly test updates during development without having to rent a cloud m1, has been great for it's cost, and is capable of almost anything it's asked to do. Dont use it often, but 10000% my best experience with an Apple product.

[@snazzy]

They're awesome little workhorses.

[@RyanStewartUSA]

Outside of Ipads its my first apple product, my first mac. Got it to replace a desktop and leave on 2/7 as my plex server. Basically allowed me to combine my i5 laptop, which was just my remoting into work PC anymore, and my i7 plex server (sucking juice and making heat in the closet). Mounted it under the desk and mounted a massive external drive right next to it. My only complaints is you cant configure the regular insert/home/delete/end keys to be used and that it can only power two monitors. Otherwise its done exactly what I wanted, all while being dead silent (never heard the fan spin up) and using a lot less juice.

[@Z4KIUS]

@@snazzy just missing RAM, ports and proper cooling

[@liamsz]

@@Z4KIUS?

[@theweirdsquid]

@@Z4KIUS The USB-C ports on the Mac mini are more capable than more purpose built ports on most other computers. You can easily buy a hub or dock and expand the port selection, since they have such huge bandwidth. And the Mac mini has cooling, it just doesn’t need to spin it all the way up to the point where it’s audible because the computer is so incredibly efficient. And you can configure it with more RAM. The only real downside is the monitor situation, but that’s a limitation of the original M1 processor. I’m not really sure what your point is.

[@tuckercoffin2164]

I remember when people tested virtualized windows on the M1 and it ran better on M1 than it ran on the surface pro X and everyone was saying that it was because you cannot compare an M1 laptop to a tablet... well look at that... it is still the case and now both are officially "computers".

[@marranin007]

yeah but this computer is a dev kit and not even a finished product for the average consumer

[@quayzar1]

​@@marranin007 Yeah but even Apple's 3 year old Developer Transition Kit with a 2018 A12Z has a better single core score on Geekbench. Qualcomm just doesn't seem interested in Desktop or Laptop performance in their ARM chips. Microsoft can do it's best but if Qualcomm doesn't step up it won't matter.

[@marranin007]

@@quayzar1 I guess so

[@alyx6427]

you can probably still get better performance on the A12Z kit than this tho

[@SL4US]

​@@alyx6427why not test apples to apples

[@Parris2000]

Always a treat when you see a new Snazzy labs video on your KZbin homepage!

[@snazzy]

[@satrioadi7044]

Ah Qualcomm, they never fail to disappoint everyone.

[@Ignacio.Romero]

How exactly do they disappoint when the SQ3 is by far the most powerful non apple soc?

[@pinkorcyanbutlong5651]

@@Ignacio.Romero ...by the fact that the most powerful non apple soc still is extremely less powerful than an older apple soc

[@Ignacio.Romero]

@@pinkorcyanbutlong5651 They're the only company trying

[@chawza8402]

@@pinkorcyanbutlong5651 I think they target different market, just like he says. The chip is the same as in surface studio (a frickin tablet) which you compare an M1 a fully fledged Desktop use. Most dev probably won't develope using that device since it will much harder to develop there. They only use it for build and testing

[@kurakuson]

​@@chawza8402 M1/M2 in ipads?

[@bryans8656]

I bought an RT when they released and really liked it, but it was certainly limited due to lack of developer support. Sadly, the same thing happened to the Windows phone, which I also really liked.

[@SudoYETI]

I had a Nokia Lumia 920. Was an amazing phone but the app store was god awful.

[@snazzy]

I loved Windows Phone. RIP.

[@Steamrick]

I used the Lumia 920 for almost 5 years. It was great.

[@bryans8656]

@@SudoYETI That was the same model I had. Yep, amazing phone.

[@adnamamedia]

I remember using the Surface RT, it was sooo janky but I made it work for what I needed somehow

[@Lord_Reset]

The absolute worst part about this is that I see it being achievable unlike some of the pie in the sky ambitions they have sometimes. Fantastic video and a great breakdown

[@abubakrakram6208]

I don't see why they'd bother to dothis. They can just sit and as long as devs don't care about Mac (which is most of the time), Intel and AMD wouldn't switch and they'd keep minting money. This is something that s not happening that Apple fans (myself inluded) insist is happening: there is no ARM revolution.

[@wheelsonfire1982]

@@abubakrakram6208 Wanna bet an arm on that?

[@abubakrakram6208]

@@wheelsonfire1982 I might. Money talks, not efficiency.

[@MmntechCa]

What Apple's done with their chips is nothing short of a minor miracle. But so far every other ARM SoC is hot garbage from a raw performance standpoint. The other issue is Apple has tight control of their ecosystem, so they can force devs on to a new architecture. Microsoft would have a much harder time with that. On top of that, after Arm (the company) announced more licensing restrictions, I'm starting to think RISC-V is the way forward. There's very few reasons to move away from x86 in the meantime.

[@raspberry1440kb]

My thoughts exactly.

[@justalawngnome7404]

Agreed. And even if there weren’t licensing restrictions for ARM, the fact that RISC-V is an open, royalty-free standard means that it (the ISA) is immune to international trade restrictions. If the US government decided to eliminate China’s access to SiFive, for example, China could still design its own RISC-V chips: the sanction wouldn’t immediately topple China’s entire hardware AND software stack. For this reason, nation-states (e.g. China, EU, India) are pouring BIG money into RISC-V: it’s difficult for the free markets to compete with unlimited military funding.

[@PercyPanleo]

Honestly, I think the main reason Apple is currently so far ahead of everyone else is because ARM seems to be going through what x86 was going through before AMD released the Ryzen line. Everyone other than Apple is just trying to catch up to Qualcomm while Qualcomm has no incentive to majorly improve their chips.

[@raspberry1440kb]

@@PercyPanleo Qualcomm seems thoroughly checked out of ARM and is instead eagerly awaiting the rise of RISC-V without risking their own farm over it.

[@nathanjokeley4102]

all of them are garbage even apple. there's a reason why they're relegated to only showing geekbench instead of any real world benchmark.

[@vmpgsc]

Yeah Win11 ARM running inside Parallels on my Macbook Pro M1 Max is pretty great - for the apps I use on Windows no problems and it's fast enough that I don't notice how fast or slow it is.

[@geordieal]

I'm Running Win 11 using Parallels on my M1 Max Mac Studio... It's probably the most pleasant Windows experience I've ever had! ( And have been using Windows since Windows 3.1! ) And the fact I could use my x86 Win 7 Licence to get ARM Windows made the switch painless

[@tareshk81]

Using M2 mac since year as a IT developer. No performance lag with great battery life so far or feels like missing any features I need to use daily but witnessed few crashes like once in a month.

[@jwstech8387]

If Microsoft could even at this game with Apple, that would be great for the PC people as a whole. On a side note, have you heard about the Asahi project? They ported Linux over to the M1/M2 silicon and recently achieved hardware accelerated graphics through a reverse engineered driver. It would be cool if you cover at some point. Anyways quality video, Quinn.

[@yarnosh]

Unfortunately MIcrosoft simply is not in a position to mount a wholesale transition to ARM. It's not going to happen. As long as there's still an abundance of new x86 PC options, few people are going to bother with Windows ARM just to get better power efficiency. Too many people play video games which would be some of the last things to get ported to ARM. Apple got away with it because people didn't really depend on Mac to play video games much in the first place. So there wasn't much expectation to be able to on M1 either. Not to mention, Windows is known for supporting legacy software. Apple doesn't have to. The expectation for Apple users and developers is that binaries will just stop working on recent versions of MacOS after like 5 years. But Microsoft tries to support stuff that's like 20+ years old. Microsoft has way too much momentum on x86. They are going to ride it out to the bitter end.

[@jwstech8387]

@@yarnosh Yeah, that is pretty true. This looks most likely to go the way of the Windows Phone. But if they get the ball rolling, we can hope someone will take it further.

[@datachu]

@@yarnosh Lol "People won't pay for better power efficiency" Did you just forget that laptops exist? The reason people aren't buying is because developers aren't supporting, costs are prohibitively high on the few Windows-on-ARM devices that exist (plus the ARM version of Windows is locked down so you can't put it on other popular ARM hardware like dev boards), and most of all... Because the performance is trash, especially for the price. It's mainly Qualcomm's fault, if you ask me. I can't wait for the exclusivity deal to expire soon, because Qualcomm has become fat and lazy on their throne of being the "flagship chip" company, their recent smartphone SoCs are nightmares of heat and poor efficiency, and barely more powerful than last few gens. Exynos and even MediaTek are catching up quick if not already on par. Imagine being on par with the budget option and the only reason you get picked is exclusivity deals lmao. Their days of being on top are surely numbered and that's a good thing. It's amazing to see what Apple has been able to achieve with ARM, hardware and software wise, so I just wish the same was possible with the more open ecosystem of PC as a whole (be it Windows or Linux, but let's face it, high performance Linux ARM laptops/desktops are a pipe dream unless a big company like Microsoft makes it happen with Windows first, then we can just install Linux).

[@yarnosh]

​@@datachu People will only pay for power efficiency if they can run their apps reliably on it, but developers won't bother making their apps work on Windows ARM until there is a critical mass of users to make it worthwhile. Microsoft simply does not have the leverage here to push things in any one direction. As long as the vast majority of Windows users are on x86, there's where the focus will be. And as the video pointed out, it's actually a better deal, with better performance, to just get a Mac Mini and run WIndows 11 ARM in parallels than it it is to get Microsoft hardware. Rosetta is just better than Microsoft's x86 emulation. You get so much more with the Mac. A better Qualcomm offering would help, but they're just so far behind. They're too late. Apple was successful, yes, in part because the M1 was such a strong chip, but also because they control ALL the hardware. Apple essentially just left x86 behind. Microsoft can't do that. They won't do that.

[@yarnosh]

@@datachu Also, with regard to Linux on high performance ARM laptops, Apple actually has a headstart there as well with Asahi Linux getting GPU support on M1. If Apple is smart they'll help Linux run better on their hardware. And I bet many Linux users will even switch to MacOS once they have genuine hardware. I know I did years ago. I used to be 100% Linux at work and home and then switched to MacOS.

[@JeffreyPresstonBezos]

The title fooled me, I casually read "Microsoft made a mac-mini", and then I revised " Microsoft made a what??! ". I had to re-read to understand that it said Microsoft and mac mini only..

[@Derpeusz]

I bought mini m1 16 gigs like last week, and I think it is still a great bang for a buck for computer like this. (Of course I bought it on black friday sale for a good price in my country)

[@knievelc]

Yeah I love mine.

[@mikeoxlong6351]

Black Friday is a America thing though 😮

[@litjellyfish]

@@mikeoxlong6351 what do you mean? Whole Europe is doing Black Friday / Week / Month since about 5 years ago or so

[@Derpeusz]

​@@mikeoxlong6351 Yes it it, here in Europe it's a little bit scammy "sales", but there are some nice apple resellers in my country, that made some good discounts. Sorry for that late reply XD, have a great day / night!

[@mohamedezawi6815]

I just appreciate your content and production. Even the sponsored part is fun and informative. Thank you.

[@TT-rt9vv]

I'm glad they put some effort into making arm-based hardware that is affordable. Arm-based windows (for a long time) has been hot garbage. Apple's translation layers make the change to ARM so seamless and that's what is holding windows back in terms of arm transitions, and getting the arm-based devices into developers hands (and for cheap) will hopefully improve the experience going forward.

[@chfgn]

Microsoft’s emulation layer isn’t the problem, it’s the Qualcomm chips that are running half the raw horsepower that Apple’s machines have. If Microsoft had access to chips with M1’s power then people would be happy to leave Intel behind and developers would jump at the opportunity to port their software.

[@rstidman]

windows nt for ARM and ARM64 wasn't that bad 30 years ago.

[@slipoch6635]

@@rstidman Yeah it was pretty decent for the time. The phone software for ARM they had after win8 was pretty good too, but they barely touched advertising it.

[@slipoch6635]

@@chfgn Depends on what you are doing, you will notice that most of the benchmarks are based on perf per watt, this is not a linear curve as can be seen by the performance of the M2 (which is the M1 chip with extra cores and the power limiter removed), thus when you ramp up an AMD system for multi-core processing or a 3080/3090 for vertex transformations the M1/M2 struggle and perform quite badly in comparison. Even for compilation, the M2 is only just faster (~3%) on a $4k (AUD) M2 system than a lappy I bought for $2k that is running a mid-high range 12th gen intel. Not that I do much compilation on a laptop as I notice quite the difference in speed compared to desktop.

[@lexuslfa4739]

Windows is not based on Unix unlike Mac OS which is unix based. All OS’s running on arm are unix based.

[@jims-tek]

Windows on ARM has came a long way since it was originally introduced in 1996. It still had a ways to go but part of the comparison that makes the Qualcomm chip look bad is that Rosetta is built into the chip on the M1 which Microsoft hasn't baked the translation layer into the chip yet. In this case it is better that Apple has designed their own chip since they were able to do this.

[@williamdrum9899]

I didn't think windows existed on anything other than x86

[@andrewkaster4033]

@@williamdrum9899 From a recent Old New Thing article called "Why does the usage of the initial registers of a Win32 process depend on whether it is a 32-bit or 64-bit process?", Raymond Chen notes: "Windows has supported many 32-bit processor architectures, and I’ve covered many of them in the past: x86-32, Alpha AXP, MIPS III, PowerPC, SuperH-3, and ARM. It also has supported a number of 64-bit processor architectures, including Alpha AXP (using all 64 bits this time), Itanium, x86-64, and AArch64." Windows has existed on a lot of things that aren't x86 :)

[@Longlius]

Rosetta isn't built on to the chip. M1 just supports x86 semantics for memory ordering which fixes most of the performance gap.

[@chriscalderon1337]

Firefox has arm support for windows, I use it in parallels on my Mac Studio.

[@missingno2401]

6:20 i know its not windows 10 but that screenshot gave me memories of the windows 10 prereleases, back when the xbox app was extremely unfinished and the default wallpaper was a snowy one

[@JoshCarknard]

At least the ssd is replaceable in the windows box,the m1 mac mini has it is soldered to the logic board.

[@lateral1385]

Which is an absolutely braindead, anti-consumer thing to do.

[@andikunar7183]

Thanks for the video, totally agree. The only issue with M1/M2 Macs + Parallels for running Windows which you did not mention, is it's lack of (nested) virtualization support - so no in-Windows WSL2, WSLgui, Docker,... My understanding is, that this is due to Apple forcing Parallels to use their built-in MacOS hypervisor and it's lack of nested virtualization support on Apple silicon. So this is where you still need the DevKit to test/dev for this "native" features.

[@Conzales]

Very informative and well put together video. Great job. Your channel is still the best at it, compressing a lot of testing work and research in a fun to watch and easy to understand video. Thx!

[@snazzy]

Thank you very much!

[@RichardBaileyrichoncode]

Not scratching the surface. Good one!

[@ThisUploaded]

Fun fact, the first surface device was actually a table. Microsoft then took that Branding they had lying around and turned it into the first consumer surface device, what we know today as the first surface tablet.

[@4dwaffle650]

I hope one day we'll be able to run Windows on M1 Mac natively.

[@keco185]

Yeah it's surprising Microsoft still doesn't allow it

[@4dwaffle650]

​@@keco185 They couldn't have done it until recently, because they had an exclusivity deal with Qualcom.

[@DigitalJedi]

The Asahi project has been trying with Linux. They recently got their own graphics driver up and running. I'd imagine there's something similar happening for windows somewhere... I hope.

[@ArthropodSpidey]

Why would you buy a Mac and then run windows on it? 🤢🤮

[@DigitalJedi]

@@ArthropodSpidey Because some people have different preferences than you and will do different thing with the hardware they own.

[@redpillsatori3020]

Great to see even Microsoft is starting to take ARM desktops seriously.

[@dingdong2103]

This kit only shows that when the surface pro sales bombed, they needed a new way to sell the stockpile of parts nobody wanted to pay for in the form of surface pros lol.

[@Bab4T]

They do for a while… However developers…

[@djw1091994]

As someone who does videography/photography on the side and IT for my main job....My 16" M1 Max MacBook Pro is my primary machine and I have parallels and windows 11 running 24/7. It's been rock solid, my favorite Windows machine is my MacBook... and it's a VIRTUAL MACHINE!? Kudos to Apple for leading the charge on ARM but it is wildly concerning how far behind the competition is. My MacBook is in low power mode on battery, 4 cores and 8GB of RAM allocated to the VM (default config from Parallels). I can be editing and exporting videos in Premiere or photos in Lightroom while the VM is running as usual AND STILL get 4-5 hours of battery life with the fans off or idling at their lowest speed. I gave Apple a LOT of crap for my 2016 MacBook Pro but held out for the M1 MAX 16". I'll still give them crap for other things but the hardware is exceptional this time around and their SOCs have held an incredibly strong lead over Qualcomm on mobile devices. Looking forward to more competition for Apple's ARM SOCs

[@Plumtopia]

One thing I worry about is if pcs do manage to make the jump to arm Will we be able to upgrade them? Like will manufacturers make socketable components like we have for PCs now, or will I need to spend $2000 on a new computer every time I need to upgrade ram or if I want a new GPU, even if I'm perfectly fine with all the rest of the computer?

[@asmc1492]

I think a huge roadblock for mass adoption of ARM desktop and laptops other than Macs is video games. Game developers just can't be bother to port to a completely different arrcatecture and that means most old videos games will be unplayable or run in lower performance even with a translation layer. And we know games care about performance numbers alot. Plus the lack of modularity defeats one of the main point of gaming desktops.

[@mpetrov2402]

​@@asmc1492 gaming is all about 3 things: is your CPU bottlenecking your GPU, does your PSU have the power for your GPU and how good your GPU is.Does it matter to you what your GAMING computer has under the hood as long as you can change the GPU and stay up to date in gaming ?

[@snil4]

@@asmc1492 It will be the same as the transition from 32 to 64 bit, it will take a lot of time, some developers might start to release arm builds together with x86, after many years someone will take the risk to only release on arm and the market will follow because the best x86 machine will be too weak to run the latest games anyway.

[@michaelandrews4783]

The fact it's storage is upgradable makes it superior to any Apple product even if the processor is a bit slower. if it fails you can swap your storage it into a new arm pc, making it more of a "professional device" than an M1 which becomes trash with you data stuck inside.

[@MultiStormywaters]

Is the 50-80% of native performance with Window's x64 emulation performance really "not that much worse" than the 70-90% of Rosetta's? I feel like the higher fluctuation of speeds and the fact that it will dog all the way down to 50% kinda sounds like it might be miserable.

[@Sloppyjoe96]

as long as arm remains to be a soldered on non upgradable, un-repairable land fill device i wont care either lmao

[@CFWhitman]

The thing is that Microsoft has almost no control over their hardware market. They can't afford to cut off AMD64 support. This leaves them with no ability to push developers onto a Windows for ARM platform. They hitched their company to x86/AMD64 a long time ago, and it will be very difficult for them to outlast that platform. Of course, they also ensure that the platform continues to survive much longer than it would be likely to if Microsoft could shift away from it.

[@evacody1249]

Good we don't need another walled place like Apple.

[@abstractobject5337]

The thing REALLY is that Microsoft doesn’t have control of their own software. The kernel, the userspace is intertwined and difficult to split for proper port to new Arch while maintaining legacy compatibility.

[@ocha-time]

I don't like that you pointed out that this thing isn't super good. I disliked that.

[@snazzy]

Sorry, Bill.

[@axilleas]

Could you do a Dev Kit vs Apple Silicon benchmark comparison? I think that would be fairer.

[@mclovin1071]

We needed this video.

[@longnightsofsolace4010]

For efficiency unfortunately, the SQ3 is built on a significantly inferior production node (Samsung 5nm vs the M1's TSMC 5nm). Based on the gains that Qualcomm made with the 8gen1 plus vs 8 gen 1, my guess would be a 20% improvement in MC performance whilst using 20-30% less power if they had also bothered to use the newer cores. Qualcomm seems to be waiting on the development of their Nuvia cores before making a real effort on WoA. TBF, it seems that the core was delayed by at least a year but unfortunately, the exclusivity deal they have with Microsoft is making them very complacent.

[@xerzy]

remember they're on a lawsuit with ARM Holdings over the tech they got from Nuvia, so uh... have fun

[@goldenharmonium]

who knew Bo Burnham's older brother knows so much about computers

[@ryanawol77]

Quinn you hit the heart of the matter dead on its head, Qualcomm's very strong monopoly over Windows creates complications whereby it scares developers away rather than welcoming them to develop their apps in ARM. Qualcomm is too confident and comfortable as it has too many stans that can't admit that other chips are doing/capable of doing better. I remember more than half a decade ago when Apple released their Bionic chip (can't remember the version) that clearly beats any Snapdragon powered phones, was met with blatant fanboy denials claiming a lot of negative things that was wrong. And Qualcomm's response was not good either. What they did was increase the energy usage (wattage) and crank up clock speed and core count and called it a day. Ever since then, Qualcomm Snapdragon have always been playing catchup with Apple Silicon be it M1/M2 or Bionic, and often times at the expense of efficiency. The stans have made it harder too for other chip maker such as Exynos from Samsung, with recent rumors from industry insiders of Samsung possibly moving on from Exynos and primarily use Snapdragon SOCs. Huawei's Hisilicon Kirin chips are interesting. But due to tensions from China's adamant surveillance over foreign data, and Huawei's deep relationship with the CCP, I don't think any international companies would be looking into developing for Kirin soon. Lastly, Google Tensor. Google Tensor reminds me of the "early" days of Iphones. Underpowered, but super well optimized. While Tensor is not as fast as Snapdragon's flagship counterpart, for what it is intended to do it's doing really well. I think Chromebook and ChromeOS can greatly benefit from integration between the Tensor CPU and the OS. Unfortunately, not so much for Windows, given that the two OSes are competing. I don't know what the future of ARM CPUs in the Windows market would be. If there's more competition, that would force the companies to evolve their chips better, but too much CPU might cause confusion at the software development level. Love it or hate it, I still have to give it to Apple for really pushing ARM computing to the next level. They didn't release a haphazard product. They ensure that the end product released was 99% usable and faster than most computers on the market, at an acceptable price to performance ratio. I, a Windows user myself can admit to that. Yet, at the same time I also know Apple's "walled garden" approach to their design, research, and development, allows for ARM computing to be such a success within their product line. It creates an easy standard/guideline for devs to follow when developing an application for MacOS.

[@jamesmutombo5565]

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has a better GPU when compared to the A16 and it's multi-core performance is only slightly behind. The single core performance and power consumption is where Apple has a significant advantage. Qualcomm's Oryon CPU releasing next year is meant to remedy the deficiencies in CPU performance as it is made by the team behind Apple's SoCs.

[@ojtibi9906]

"It's not even scratching the Surface..." I see what you did there.

[@snazzy]

😊

[@jojobobbubble5688]

Great video and informative information. I don't use Windows unless I need to ( I prefer Linux) but I find it depressing that a company I was once fond of has failed in so many markets. Here's to hoping Risc V becomes the future we desperately need.

[@monad_tcp]

7:04 isn't that the entire reason for having a dev board ? so devs can dev what's missing ?

[@dastardlyexperiments]

I've got an M1 Mac Mini and still haven't managed to ever get the fan the spin up, or overload the thing, it's the first CPU I've had in years that actually feels fast. When Apple decides makes them 'obsolete' in 5/6 years (they do this with all their systems) I'm looking forward to running Asahi Linux (or another distro) on it, which is shaping up to be amazing, and these machines will have an easy 10 year lifespan from new.

[@Nik6644]

My iPad 2 is working just fine though 🤔

[@richeyrich2203]

Never thought of that. Good idea! Think the m2 version will have the same usability after?

[@dastardlyexperiments]

@@richeyrich2203 even better by 10-20%

[@gerardragbir]

Gotta say that dashcam ad is the first time I’ve not skipped in any video ever 🤭

[@denvera1g1]

The windows ARM PC would not be all that bad if it used Nvidia Jetson ORIN.

[@salvadorfonseca165]

Has this guy been living under a rock? There's been a ton of devices with arm chips way before Apple.

[@pnkj2213]

M1 is still very powerful and i use M1 mac mini daily. Never faced any issues or lags

[@afnanahmad]

7:29 is that a spider moving up? 🕷

[@denvera1g1]

11:48 The fact that this is under $1000 tells me that at the last minute they decided to not market it towards consumers. Dev kits are traditionally expensive, just look at the Nvidia Orin NX $499 and its just the CPU and RAM, you have to provide the rest of the computer if you want the whole computer the Orin AGX can be as much as $2000 for the 64GB model that has the same CPU as the 4GB model(but better GPU similar to an RTX 3050 mobile at 1024FP32 and 1024INT+FP32)

[@denvera1g1]

Of note, while Orin should be notebly faster than the SQ3, it should be less efficient than the SQ3 possibly pushing total system power abive 60w. because i beleive Orin is on Samsung 8nm instead of samsing 5nm. Apple is far ahead of the SQ3 partly due to their years of custom hardware optimsation speciffically for IOS and MacOS(and optimizing sofrware for the hardware), but also because Samsung 5nm is closer in efficiency to TSMC 7nm, which puts this SQ3 chip on 2019 Apple A13 level of node efficiency. Even the 2020 Mac Mini was on TSMC 5nm which was a huge leap over 7nm in performance per watt

[@snazzy]

The Surface using the same board with 1/4 the memory is $1,500. So I think it’s a loss leader to plead with developers to bring their stuff over.

[@denvera1g1]

@@snazzy True they probably do need to bring this in as a loss leader to help future sales. And holy crap that die is massive. 340mm²? WTF does it have in there? This thing is massively more expensive than i expected, probably around the cost of the RTX 3060. You get 16 x86 cores from AMD in around 1/2 the space of these 8 cores. Heck the AMD equivelant of this, the 6800u is only 208mm² and that has an imensely powerful GPU for a mobile device and the CPU is both more powerful, and more efficient on par and sometimes better than the M1.

[@Dominus_Potatus]

Windows on ARM is expensive yet can't do a lot of things. M1 did great by supporting a lot of creatives app in day 1 or at most months since launching. Microsoft? Tough luck... Windows on ARM will mostly be used as browsing machine... in which case tablet is better. I understand that Microsoft is in a tough spot. It almost definitely confirms that Intel and AMD are pushing Microsoft to delay ARM in favor for their x64. While I can see that newest chip is getting more efficient, it still can't beat M1 as a package. M1 has a great balance between power consumption and performance. Intel and AMD, both have chips that can give us only once out of two choices.

[@southpolelf]

With Qualcomm being the problem using dated SoCs, if MediaTek is producing compatible SoC on a more up to date chipset. That and how much the Qualcomm exclusivity deal with Windows is hurting development.

[@snazzy]

Rumors have it there actually isn’t any exclusivity and Microsoft just can’t get anyone else on board to make chips.

[@zgrb]

The idea of Mac users thinking M1 is “old hat” has aged poorly based on M2 sales lol

[@jaykatariya3671]

Still considering this as a dev kit this seems suprising awesome

[@B.Ch3rry]

Can’t wait to get native BootCamp on Apple M-Series!

[@ananon5771]

the more i see apples arm chips, the closer i am to wanting one over intel or AMD, and i use linux (and its starting to be competent at that too, it only lacks vulkan, an Achilles heel, but a fixable one) almost exclusively (i basically only use windows on other peoples devices and have only used macOS in a VM in the past 10ish years).

[@marsovac]

I would also want an Apple chip, but being a supporter of open source I cannot. Microsoft on the other hand is making big strides towards open source lately. I hope they stay on the right way and produce a better chip and at some point even an open source OS.

[@ananon5771]

@@marsovac makes sense, but to me apple and MS are equally bad when it comes to that, so to me, the decision becomes utilitarian.

[@another3997]

Surely you should compare the performance against the original 'Apple Silicon' dev kits? They used older CPUs. As for ARM, apart from the very early days in the Acorn Archimedes/Risc PC, they've never really ventured in to the full 'desktop' performance arena. They've got the low power SOC markets all sewn up, although ARM licensees can design and manufacture their own chips, just like Apple did. But trying to break the Intel/AMD x86 stranglehold with ARM would be a huge gamble. Apple are the first to really push in that direction... but they have the financial and marketing resources to make it happen.

[@laosb]

Tricky part is, Apple DTK is protected by NDAs, and benchmarking on them is strictly prohibited. There're some Geekbench scores there though, but nothing to cross check as even you didn't return the DTK, it will not start today either.

[@SchwertKruemel]

@@laosb its just an iPad chip, we know how fast that is.

[@5urg3x]

The elephant in the room with M1 and M2 is GPU. Specifically with multiple displays. GPU performance is behind Intel iGPUs from 2018, and not to mention the PCIe controllers have a chip errata that prevents dGPUs from being used, even on other OS’s like Linux that do have drivers available. The fact that no one from the Mac community really wants to talk about this is concerning.

[@eulehund99]

Are you sure? I thought M1 outperforms iGPUs from Intel easily. AMD is very close with RDNA2

[@henryqng]

The slicone platform created by Apple put the last nail in the WinTel coffin.

[@rabailey65]

Last year Linus Tech Tips did a video comparing the M1 Macbook Air to the Surface Pro X. Their results were similar to yours. What many of the comments don't know is that it took years for Apple to get to M1. Microsoft will not catch up to Apple quickly.

[@ectomorph8570]

hey i was literally just on the street they shot the dashcam footage on. Should i buy a lottery ticket?

[@One-op8hf]

Compare apples dev kit(the one with the a13) to the Microsoft dev kit

[@snazzy]

Still no comparison. Also, 4 years old.

[@ArthropodSpidey]

Im pretty sure even the iPhone X would outperform Volterra lol

[@needsLITHIUM]

If I grabbed one of these, I'd probably throw AARCH Linux on it. Likely Endeavour OS or Manjaro, both of which are either forks or variants of Arch Linux.

[@mindbackup]

CPU is sub par, GPU is lacklustre, but the NPU on this is world leading. It has a better NPU than the M1 and competitive with the M2. This dev box is not just for developers to migrate their apps to arm, it’s practically the only way to test windows apps that use AI inferencing. Microsoft is saying that every computer needs an NPU to run upcoming software. The next version of ms-teams, for example, has features that fully use this NPU. Those features are not going to be available to any current x86 system because this dev box contains the only windows compatible chipset with enough NPU power. Microsoft needed this dev kit desperately to keep windows as a viable platform for next generation apps.

[@djphat1736]

This is the point where Apple tells Microsoft "hey, just license your OS to us. We will take care of the hardware for ya!" LOL

[@ayaand988]

Its funny that he says that "we forgot about windows Rt" when I'm watching this video on a surface rt

[@helloukw]

Its always nice to have some competition. Now Microsoft was never about cutting edge hardware, or budget friendly. Hell, its so bad it makes apple looks good, but, they get points for trying and its always nice to see a major OS developer caring about ARM. Now Kudos for apple for bringing the best in both Intel and AMD. Now its a good time to get w/e chip you like.

[@-aexc-]

windows on arm isn't gonna be useable for a long long time because most software on it is closed source so not compiled for arm. macos is controlled by one company so third parties have to adapt, and most Linux apps are open source so many versions have been compiled

[@bluephreakr]

Seems like a great little box to run an ARM Linux distro on. About the storage situation, it _looks_ like there's space for the standoff to exist - considered just moving the existing standoff there?

[@luigimaster111]

I think there are likely better options for Linux, Lotta pretty beefy SBCs out there.

[@TheMuso28]

@@luigimaster111 the 32GB RAM is very appealing for Linux use.

[@pinkorcyanbutlong5651]

just get an mac mini. and if you don't care about performance at all, something from pine 64

[@Rowrin]

I think the problem is Microsoft's marketing and handling of Windows RT screwed up public expectations of Windows ARM devices. The system was incredibly locked down; you could only install apps through Microsoft's store, of which there was little to no incentive for developers to put serious effort into doing and maintaining. They marketed the original Surface RT as a full fledged windows experience, which it was but only technically when no major 3rd party apps could be installed. Then there was the whole issue of Windows 8's UI being so radically different from what users were use to and expecting that it never really caught on. They barely got two iterations of the Surface RT tablets before killing the Windows RT line and the development team because of Microsoft's own mishandling of the project. Now, 10 years later they're trying to play catch-up.

[@kushagraN]

Well Microsoft either needs to build a brand new team to start chip development or heavily invest in atleast 1 chip manufacturer to develop larger chips. mediatek /Samsung /Qualcomm etc maybe even Google 🤭.

[@Dave102693]

I’ve been saying this for years. They need a separate channel for the continued development of Win on ARM or it’s gonna fail.

[@amarioguy]

when google is explicitly not porting Chrome to current ARM64 despite *literally having most the work done for them as of today with zero roadblocks* i have my doubts MS and Google are exactly in the best of relationships right now...

[@Dave102693]

@@amarioguy Google blocked Windows Phones from ever happening.

[@BrianKPepin]

They already have some experience with this -- the Xbox uses a custom SOC co-designed with AMD.

[@TechLineHD]

I want to see beard on your channel art. Great video!

[@amarioguy]

if you're wondering *why* chrome isn't running natively on ARM64 Windows - blame google. they are explicitly not porting it (reasoning we'll probably never know but i have my suspicions as to why). do also note that this dev kit does allow you to run Hyper-V VMs too (M1 cannot do this under parallels, M2/A15 and newer can do this but those are more expensive)

[@snazzy]

I’m not blaming Microsoft for not porting chrome. Am merely using it to demonstrate emulation shortcomings.

[@Dave102693]

Google needs to squash their beef with MS. It’s getting old at this point. Their support for Windows stuff has been terrible so far, yet they kiss Apple’s asses like if their lives depended on it.

[@amarioguy]

​@@snazzy ah gotcha - i definitely didn't mean for my message to come across like I said you were blaming MS, I just wanted to provide context for those unfamiliar as to why Chrome isn't natively ARM64 yet.

[@linuxgeex]

Windows for ARM has existed a lot longer than RT. There was also CE, which happened when Microsoft and Intel got together to make low-power Windows-powered PDA / Office equipment devices, and Intel licensed ARM, extending it with a prequel to Thumb, and dubbed it StrongARM. This was so successful that ARM licensed the extensions back and developed it into Thumb.

[@Dave102693]

I wish they MS would of built onto of that.

[@SudoYETI]

People REALLY underestimate just how amazing the M1/M2 chips are. They beat out everything easily in the same class range and often punch way above their own class. I'd really love to see another competitor bring ARM processors that rival Apple just for everything else.

[@WarAlex16]

True but it’s Mac OS. I prefer Windows :/

[@athmaid]

Funny since we're talking about Apple here, but even the pricing is pretty decent now. Actually thinking about buying a second hand Mac Mini for recording music since the 3500U in my laptop has abysmal performance. At least AMD improved their laptop processors quite a bit since that abomination

[@bulletpunch9317]

@elfrjz in what workload?

[@bulletpunch9317]

@elfrjz i see, i thought it was much better since it benches twice as fast as mx250 on gfxbench

[@torpedospurs]

Efficiency, absolutely. Performance? No. Laptop processors with AMD 5000 and 6000, and Intel 12th gen are usually more powerful, and AMD 6000 also has comparable integrated graphics.

[@ozgesagiroglu]

arm is the future. i am using an arm windows laptop and its perfect for my needs. good battery life, thin, light etc.

[@salmiakki5638]

Remember that we are comparing apple ARM core designs developed for high performance (M1 and newer iteration) and Oranges Qualcomm ARM cores developed for mobile (as per smartphone) The real offering from Qualcomm in terms of cores for high performance applications should come from their acquisition of Nuvia (legal case permitting) which btw are the same guys who developed apple M1 though M3

[@MrMgd33]

Great insightful video! Thanks for explaining and helping me understand!

[@willbroccolo8389]

can you put mac os on it?

[@TheGunnyBadger03xx]

It makes you wonder if Parallels would consider something like that.

[@OLBastholm]

A much worse, slightly cheaper Mac Mini would be so much fun!

[@willbroccolo8389]

@@OLBastholm agreed

[@willbroccolo8389]

@@TheGunnyBadger03xx it would be a great idea. Something cheap, upgradeable, and usable all at once.

[@CallousCoder]

The thing is that most apps will soon run for the majority in cloud and that’ll soon be overwhelmingly arm, for the simple reason of power per watt. Data centers (especially with today’s energy prices) are expensive to run. Floor space is expensive, cooling is increasingly more expensive and energy is expensive. So smaller, less heat, less energy and almost equal (or more in some cases) of CPU performances is a game changer. Soon you’ll just be compiling universal binaries that run arm and x64 as standard also on Windows. I’ve been developing for arm for almost a decade and on Linux it’s irrelevant for me if I compile for arm or x64. And on Mac is became even less of a hassle with universal binaries.

[@ThatKid2Diesel]

I think what apple has done with the arm based chips is amazing. However, I've never quite understood the alure of buying an apple computer. If your job was only web based sure any station will do, but repairability, cost, and general integration into most business level networks, whether that be printing, file sharing, domain environments, Windows is still king. I think apple computers are interesting, but would I ever own one? Highly doubtful.

[@Nik6644]

On the integration in business level networks thing: I work in a Uni IT-department. if you want to set up an apple device, you download a config file, install it in settings and it works. This is built in functionality and works very similar with VPNs & certs. We need a script for that on every other OS. the windows one has the largest codebase of them all. For printing it just works like it does on windows, the mac supports all the common protocols. I'm not too involved in the other two, but our file server works fine on every OS, but the worst on windows (due to few, but very annoying bugs)

[@bigsean6045]

Question though - does Intel has any plans to go into ARM? Or perhaps, AMD? I feel like both could be making great cpu's - although I'd give intel a slight advantage on this one. Also: Nvidia ARM cpu's??

[@nathanrignalll]

I’ve been using it as a linux development server and was actually a better choice over the m1 mac mini due to the 32gb of ram and lower price. Hope someone will make linux work natively

[@NonsensicalSpudz]

ARM on the PC side should've already been a thing for a few years before apple did theres qualcomm is just an ancor thats stuck

[@thelegend-e7919]

That sponsored product grabbed my interest more than whatever Snapdragon powered thing Microsoft has put out. Partially because it genuinely seems cool, partially because I just don't see much progress in Windows on arm over the last few years. Will continue watching as perhaps this will be a turning point!

[@snazzy]

Well, the problem is indeed Qualcomm.

[@edplat2367]

The only thing Microsoft has is software compatibility and market adoption. When they don't have that, they fail. I much prefer windows to Mac os but they need to sort a few key things out. Firstly they need to just off windows for arm freely so they can get it in to the hands of as many people as possible, second they need more partnerships to develop better hardware. I think nvidia would be key here. Lastly they need to be sending out these devices to influencers and they should have specs BETTER than the competition. Essentially they need to create a buzz so people are interested. Once they have a more established ecosystem they need to then start tackling corporations and the education sector.

[@Dave102693]

That requires spending a lot of money with no guaranteed of success.

[@decept1on]

i dont like the fact that you are comparing the microsoft devkit directly to the m1 mac mini... as you said, its only a devkit that enables developers to make apps for arm. Apple did the same, also with a slower chip. my point is that maybe this is just a cost saving alternative, and not the chip that microsoft might actually want in their high-end arm computers:)

[@snazzy]

Please watch the video. Even comparing the A12Z DTK, this chip gets crushed.

[@snazzy]

Also, even if that were true, the chip is available today in the Surface Pro 9 sold to the public. So they deserve the heat.

[@decept1on]

@@snazzy yeah you are right:) thanks for the clarification

[@iFix.]

ironically the best hope for windows on arm right now is actually mac, yes there is VMs but people still want to run windows natively on mac

[@Lord_LindaThePhilosopher]

This is such great timing I was literally looking for a windows on arm bench mark. I really want/wanted to see how good software compatibility has gotten on arm for windows. Especially video games.

[@Mereo110]

If you want games support, don't bother with Arm, stay with x86.

[@Lord_LindaThePhilosopher]

@@Mereo110 ya no that’s definitely not true I have gotten all of my steam games working on a MacBook using parallels so that’s not even close to true bud. Base m1 MacBook Air and they ran AMAZINGLY I was astonished at the performance

[@CC-gy7el]

The best way to improve Windows on ARM would be to develop a native version of Windows for Apple Silicon

[@Patrick_Starlord]

I’m a die hard Apple fan, but to me it’s really frightening that Apple is leading in the computer market especially regarding laptops by far for several years now. Hopefully other companies will eventually catch up or even surpass them and increase their market share again, otherwise in some decades we might be living in a world ruled by an apple

[@PaulStoffregen]

24 years ago people joked that Windows 98 looked so much like Windows 95 because Apple hadn't done anything worth copying over the last few years. In many ways we've been living in an Apple-led tech world for about 30 years.

[@eulehund99]

Competitors have created better laptops. Any Laptop with the Ryzen 7 6800U outperforms M1 and M2 and has the same efficiency. Screens are better there as well because OLED is used. The only problems remaining are the touchpad and speakers. Those are still trash on many devices.

[@TheGabbaKeks]

Apple isn't leading the computer market; Neither in market share nor performance. It has a niche spot in ultralight multimedia machines.

[@dhuwdhuwdhuw]

Meh, Im tired of microsoft selling potentials and half assed it, commit for once, damn it. I was once a huge believer of rt and windows phone. (Edit) they have a Hugeee head start, lack of developers jumping in should signaled them to start making the x86 translation, nope, they killed rt and that one nokia imo amazing tablet back then due to no one is jumping on microsoft store exculisivity nature of the os, not until rumors going around apple developing arm macs that they release sq1, imo they shouldve been selling this dev kit back then. But nope, 3 generations after apple is leading by a mile that they decided to care. I was a skeptic when mac released m1 since microsoft couldnt do it but as you can see, microsoft doesnt care, they just throw money developing it and see if it sticks. Every. Single. Time. Happens with windows phone and I suspect it will happen to this too, but that is just my 2 cents, I do actually still hope they stick.

[@jaws10278]

Windows Phone OS was awesome.

[@NegativeReferral]

ARM is the future of computing. You can thank Sophie Wilson for her contributions to the instruction set, which is part of what makes it more efficient. I think the next step in the development of ARM will be massive parallel processing, that is, having a large number (100+) of high-efficiency cores that can be turned on and off as needed. That way, we can use very little power for the low-intensity job of running Microsoft Word, compared to having every core run at once when editing videos.

[@johntrevy1]

Totally Agree. Microsoft may have buried Acorn as a company, but Acorn are having the last laugh and I couldn't be happier. I think it is long overdue time for Acorn to make a comeback and utilise the modern tech of today with RiscOS. Yes I know RiscOS is on Raspberry PI but those systems are severely under powered. Imagine a RiscOS system with 32GB RAM, an OS that is 10MB stored in flash ROM with an equal OS footprint to match, an SSD and an RTX3080. With the support on board I just don't think Microsoft or Apple could compete.

[@jthwang]

I thought RISC-V was the future.

[@johntrevy1]

@@jthwang I can't see it anytime soon. I don't know why it is such a big thing other than for political reasons.

[@jthwang]

@@johntrevy1 Oh? Did a politician hype it up?

[@johntrevy1]

@@jthwang All I hear is hype about how it is going to be an open architecture to stick it to the main manufacturers. Purely political.

[@farishanafiah8461]

If we want to see Windows on ARM grows bigger, this is the way to go. Apple can get away with the whole ARM matter because they force every app developers to code softwares for ARM only. Not so for Microsoft since x86 is still a big thing.

[@randomcommenterurl]

The x86 emulation is actually huge. ARM is the future for sure

[@MarkSixFilms]

And that’s comparing to 2 year old M1 base model. Just think about M3 Ultra, not even a remote comparison 💀

[@macinboss2159]

I've been looking for a dash cam I could trust (they all suck). SUPER happy they happened to sponsor you - and that I can trust your integrity. The fact you're running the spot means them must be good. Now on to watch the actual video

[@padnomnidprenon9672]

They are prisonner of the tactics that earn them so much money. I won't regret and it nice that alternative solution exists : android and linux mainly

[@snazzy]

It’s a good camera and a good value, I think. I turned all the ADAS stuff and sounds off. It’s just dead silent, does it’s thing, I forget it’s there, but it’ll help in case something bad happens.

[@Bliss467]

I root for Microsoft. They’re very friendly to developers. I want them to succeed in this space… But I don’t see myself recommending a windows laptop any time in the next decade given how far ahead Apple is on arm

[@slipoch6635]

Windows has been on retail ARM for about 10 years, they have released several devkits over the years. Rosetta is not a translation layer in the OS, it is a x86 interpretation chip that is on the M1 SOC, this is why it is so much better than Rosetta 1 which was purely software, This is also why rosetta works on Linux on the m1, because the VM can still send the 'same' commands to the SOC and the SOC will run them through the translation chip. So software -> linux -> vm container -> MacOS -> translation chip -> native code. It may also be possible that linux inatively supports the rosetta SOC and it may run the translation prior to exiting the VM, it's a fascinating area. Another point that needs to be made is that devkits typically use lower-end older CPUs of the same base type (x86, ARM, RISC), it was the same with early playstation devkits which had lower specs than the final retail release. Apple was a bit different here in that they were devkitting the CPU as well as the OS and other hardwarre components, whereas MS is only devving the OS. Also most devkits (this one included), rely on another sytem for the actual programming, the devkit being only for testing the software on compatible hardware to what is going to be released. There are many other manufacturers of ARM CPUs, AMD for one has been making ARM systems and SOCs for a very long time and make quite performant ones, but they are specialised cpus for doing particular things, not a general purpose SOC. I believe Microsoft will use the remaining time with qualcom to fine-tune windows on ARM, then when the CPU agreement (which seems like it should be a breach of competition laws) is finished they will move onto a different provider's cpus. Qualcom has a really pooor history of stifling innovation and trying to legally bind both their suppliers and their competition (see their breach of the wifi patents that Australia holds, Apple was also involved on this one, or their suing of ARM when they tried to use their aquisition of another much smaller company to bypass their legal contracts with ARM). Any which way, I'm not going to be buying an ARM system as a daily driver anytime soon.

[@giornikitop5373]

one thing to worry about is that in future revisions and once native arm apps for mac reach a complete level, apple might remove the in-chip rosetta support and use that chip space for more ai or encoders stuff. i mean, what point is there to have it, if all apps run natively and you get no profit from it?

[@slipoch6635]

@@giornikitop5373 The original plan was for them to have removed it and leave software translation in place for the M2, but the M2 released is simply a power uncapped M1 with more cores. Although it doesn't stack up against AMD at the same wattage. So essentially like an i9 (m2) vs an i7 (m1). This occurred because the next gen chip they are working on was supposed to have launched by now. AFAIK the plan to remove the x86 translation hardware is still in place. So that efficiency of translation may probably start to look more like rosetta 1 (a very slow pig). At the next CPU product launch unless they use the M1 design again.

[@PhotoJohn80]

I am one of the few that is really against an ARM based world. It seems that ARM can really hinder right to repair. You can't just upgrade your ram or hard drive or cpu or gpu or replace them if they go bad. I left Apple when they started soldering every damn component and now you can't even unsolder the component. You basically have to buy a whole new computer since everything is on one chip. I don't care how much more efficient ARM is right now.

[@javiej]

Sad situation for Apple fanboys if they have to use a dev kit to find a Windows desktop slower than an M1 desktop. I guess the release of the Nvidia 4090 on the Windows scene has caused too much pain in the Apple desktop community. It must be taugh when you expend 6000$ in top performance Apple M1 and then discover that a half price PC with a 4090 is an order of magnitude faster than your new toy.