WWDC 2022: What was Announced

[DT]

Geez, the M2 13" MBP still only has 2 ports, and no mag safe and a 720p vs. 1080P camera! It looks like the M2 MBA is much closer vs. the last iteration, both have 500 nit / P3 displays, the battery life is 18 vs. 20 hours.

Plus, if you go to 16GB memory on the 13" for a closer comparison (and an appropriate amount for "pro" use), then the 14" with an 8/14 core M1 Pro, more ports, larger display, support multiple displays is only $300 more.

The 13" M2 MBP makes zero sense.

 

[Cmaier]

Installed the ipados beta profile on my old ipad… which now CHARGES! I guess I got the new ipad for no reason. Oh well.

 

[diamond.g]

Apple introduced Metal 3, with new tools for game developers, along with upscaling technology. They also had the lead developer for "Resident Evil: Village" on stage to announce an Apple Silicon version. I'm sure the crowd over at MR are going to be pleased by this and not at all irrationally upset. But hey, "Apple doesn't care about gaming".

Also, notable is what wasn't announced: no information on an Apple Silicon Mac Pro.

Don’t forget No Man’s Sky is finally coming to MacOS.

 

[Cmaier]

Apple introduced Metal 3, with new tools for game developers, along with upscaling technology. They also had the lead developer for "Resident Evil: Village" on stage to announce an Apple Silicon version. I'm sure the crowd over at MR are going to be pleased by this and not at all irrationally upset. But hey, "Apple doesn't care about gaming".

Also, notable is what wasn't announced: no information on an Apple Silicon Mac Pro.

Undoubtedly, it will use an M2 variant. Something I predicted quite awhile ago based on images of the M1 crossbars.

Aside from allowing more M2Maxes to be tiled, RAM support per M2Max will likely be 50% higher than for M1Max.

 

[Cmaier]

Nice logo

 

[Colstan]

Undoubtedly, it will use an M2 variant. Something I predicted quite awhile ago based on images of the M1 crossbars.

You're a regular Svengali, @Cmaier, never change.

I realize that there's only so much to go on, beyond Apple's fancy slide show, but do you have any hot takes on the M2?

BTW, notice how much Gurman botched? The Mac Pro won't be based on M1, and macOS 13 didn't get a System Preferences redesign. His well has run dry. Kuo was wrong about the new Air still being M1-derived. Apple has gotten much better about shutting down leakers.

 

[Cmaier]

So based on this, I assume the M2 chip for the Mac Pro will be made of 4 M2 Maxes, each of which may have at least 12 cores. Physical RAM up to 192GB.

 

[DT]

Apple has gotten much better about shutting down leakers.

It's their new head of security ...

 

[Cmaier]

You're a regular Svengali, @Cmaier, never change.

I realize that there's only so much to go on, beyond Apple's fancy slide show, but do you have any hot takes on the M2?

BTW, notice how much Gurman botched? The Mac Pro won't be based on M1, and macOS 13 didn't get a System Preferences redesign. His well has run dry. Kuo was wrong about the new Air still being M1-derived. Apple has gotten much better about shutting down leakers.

Well, the preferences may have been updated and they just didn’t talk about it?

Not much to go on for M2, but the faster memory bandwidth and ability to have more physical memory is most interesting to me. Certainly must be avalanche and blizzard. No ray tracing in the GPUs is notable, but that seems like something that would come in the 3nm node, I guess - physical die Area must be at a premium since they are still at 5nm, and ray tracing isn’t small, is my understanding.

 

[Cmaier]

I also can't believe in an M1 variant considering the Senior VP of Hardware said that the M1 line was completed with the Ultra. That was in March. Apple's plans aren't changing that quickly. Even if they consider an M1 variant to be an existing M1, that still means that Ternus said no new M1's even though they planned to release a new M1. That doesn't make a lot of sense. They just wouldn't have said anything about future products instead as is the norm for Apple.

Yep. Rumors were just wrong. M2 always made the most sense, but people seemed to think it was impossible until they released Mac Pro with M1. Of course I thought Mac Pro would be M2, anyway. What we’ve learned is that the leaks have really dried up.

 

[Joelist]

Yep. Rumors were just wrong. M2 always made the most sense, but people seemed to think it was impossible until they released Mac Pro with M1. Of course I thought Mac Pro would be M2, anyway. What we’ve learned is that the leaks have really dried up.

Also the rumor mill underestimated what M2 was bringing to the table. Higher per core and therefore total CPU performance, higher memory bandwidth, both more advanced and more GPU cores, New blocks for ProRes among other things (basically built in Afterburner).

 

[Renzatic]

Can't lie, I'm interested and have absolutely no need for it.

Well, yeah. It comes in that dark blue color. That's hard to resist.

 

[Cmaier]

Also the rumor mill underestimated what M2 was bringing to the table. Higher per core and therefore total CPU performance, higher memory bandwidth, both more advanced and more GPU cores, New blocks for ProRes among other things (basically built in Afterburner).

One thing that‘s interesting from the Srouji presentation is they are apparently allowing the GPU to increase in power over the current GPU. 25% improvement at same wattage, 35% max improvement.

 

[JayMysteri0]

Well, yeah. It comes in that dark blue color. That's hard to resist.

That's one reason I have a new iPad Air!

 

[Runs For Fun]

I said I was pretty satisfied with my M1 MBA and wouldn't be interested in upgrading so soon. But damn Apple know how to sell stuff to me lol. I still don't think I'll get this new one but I'm really tempted. That blue is and MagSafe would free up a port.
Also, finally some real kind of multi-tasking on iPadOS with Stage Manger! Can't wait for that.

Nice logo

View attachment 14668

Yeah I really like the colors of that logo.

 

[theorist9]

One thing that‘s interesting from the Srouji presentation is they are apparently allowing the GPU to increase in power over the current GPU. 25% improvement at same wattage, 35% max improvement.

Were those per-core figures or overall? If the latter, they'd have to allow an increase in wattage to keep the per-core wattage the same, since they're going from 8 GPU cores to 10, right? Since the core count is increasing by 25%, the only way the max wattage wouldn't increase is if the max per-core wattage dropped by >=20% (which apparently didn't happen).

[E.g., just using round numbers for simplicity, if the M1 is 1W/core, that's 8W total (for the non-binned variant with 8 GPU cores). For the M2's 10-core GPU to have no increase in wattage, it would need a per-core wattage of no more than 0.8 W/core x 10 cores = 8 W, i.e., a per-core drop of >=20%.]

And if those are overall performance figures, that indicates an 8% increase in per-core performance at max wattage (1.08 performance increase x 1.25 core count increase = 1.35).

 

[Runs For Fun]

Oh some other things. Really looking forward to Apple Pay Later. That would be amazing to not have to go through a third party for something like that. Also excited for all the changes coming to Mail. Heart rate zones in WatchOS will be really nice! I also really like the changes to the lock screen.

 

[theorist9]

So based on this, I assume the M2 chip for the Mac Pro will be made of 4 M2 Maxes, each of which may have at least 12 cores. Physical RAM up to 192GB.

I assume you meant 384 GB, since the M2 Max should offer up to 64 x 24/16 = 96 GB.

 

[Cmaier]

I assume you meant 384 GB, since the M2 Max should offer up to 64 x 24/16 = 96 GB.

Yep. i forgot the final x2.

 

[Cmaier]

At least some devices will support landscape faceid.