The IT Nerd

Yesterday, Apple announced the M2 processor which is the successor to the M1 processor. It was dropped into a new MacBook Air and a 13″ MacBook Pro. And the second that this was announced, I got a bunch of emails from people asking if the M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, or M1 Ultra based Mac has been made obsolete?

First of all, let’s hit the specs:

• This new processor is a 8 core CPU made up of 4 high efficiency cores and 4 performance cores. But all of those cores come with more cache and memory bandwidth. This according to Apple delivers 18% greater multithreaded performance versus the M1.
• Where things diverge a bit is that there’s an 8 core GPU version which you should totally ignore, and a 10 core GPU version that will give you a 25% improvement in graphics performance versus the M1 at the same power level or 35% better at max power. At least Apple says that. Nobody has benchmarked it just yet.
• The Neural Engine of the M2 can process up to 15.8 trillion operations per second. Which is over 40 percent more than M1 says Apple.
• The media engine includes a higher-bandwidth video decoder, supporting 8K H.264 and HEVC video. Which is better than the M1…. And that likely implies that the iPhone 14 is going to do 8K video as the processor in that iPhone whenever it ships will likely br based on similar silicon.
• Apple’s ProRes video engine enables playback of multiple streams of both 4K and 8K video. Again implying that the iPhone 14 is going to get 8K video.
• Apple’s latest Secure Enclave provides “best-in-class security”. Which is Apple’s way of saying that they fixed this mostly harmless flaw and likely a few other things we don’t know about.
• A new image signal processor (ISP) that delivers better image noise reduction for those Zoom and Teams calls.
• You can spec it with a max of 24 GB of RAM up from the 16 GB in the M1. And at first glance, the memory upgrade prices seem reasonable by Apple standards. That’s not to say that it’s cheap. They’re just not gouging you for nearly as much this time around.
• It only supports Thunderbolt 3 instead of Thunderbolt 4. So just like the M1 it will only support 1 external display that has a resolution of up to 6K at 60Hz. This is a bit of missed opportunity in my mind. But I assume that Apple is trying to create a reason for you to buy the M2 Pro, Max or Ultra when they come out.

So with all of that out of the way, does it make your M1 series processor obsolete? In short, no. After all, when Apple comes out with the iPhone 13, it doesn’t make your iPhone 12 or iPhone 11 obsolete. This is no different. Besides that, if you have a M1 Pro, Max, or Ultra, those processors will utterly destroy the M2 in every way as they have way more headroom than the M2. At least until the M2 Pro, Max and Ultra appear. And even at that point, what I said about your iPhone not being made obsolete when the new iPhone comes out still applies.

Now I will admit that there’s a performance boost in the M2. But unless you are playing video games on your Mac, which despite what Apple claims nobody does because of the lack of triple A titles on the Mac platform, or you’re really pushing the M2 using Logic or Final Cut for example, you won’t notice the difference. Thus if you’re worried that you might of wasted your money on Apple’s first generation Apple Silicon, you haven’t. Feel free to enjoy your M1 based Mac today and for years to come.

This entry was posted on June 7, 2022 at 9:14 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.