That would only matter (to me, at least) if those Apple chips were propping up an open platform that suits my needs. As things stand today, procuring an M chip represents a commitment to the Apple software ecosystem, which Apple made abundantly clear doesn't optimize for user needs. Those marginally faster CPU cycles happen on a time scale that anyway can't offset the wasted time fighting MacOS and re-building decades-long muscle memory, so thanks but no thanks.
Sure. Insofar as Apple Silicon beats these things, "I'll take less powerful hardware if it means I'm not stuck with the Apple ecosystem" is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff to make. Two things, though.
First, I don't like making blind tradeoffs. If what I need (for whatever reason) is a really beefy ARM CPU, I'd like to know what the "Apple-less tax" costs me (if anything!)
Second, the status quo is that Apple Silicon is the undisputed king of ARM CPU performance, so it's the obvious benchmark to compare this thing against. Providing that context is just basic journalistic practice, even if just to say "but it's irrelevant because we can't use the hardware without the software".
Why do you need ARM? There is nothing magic, most CPUs are an internal instruction set with a decoder on top. bad as x86 is, decoding is not the issue. they can make lower power use x86 if they want. They can also make mips or riskv chips that are good.
There's nothing special about ARM, sure. Hence "for whatever reason". Still, ARM is a known quantity, and the leading alternative to x86 for desktop CPUs. The article is titled "reaching desktop performance".
We know how Apple's hardware performs on native workloads. We know how it performs emulating x86 workloads (and why). Surely "... and this is how this hardware measures up against the other guys trying to achieve the exact same thing" is a relevant comparison? I can't be the only person who reads "reaching desktop performance" and wonders "you mean comparable to the M1, or to the M3 Ultra?"
>I can't be the only person who reads "reaching desktop performance" and wonders "you mean comparable to the M1, or to the M3 Ultra?"
You're not. IMHO it's a fairly obvious, narrow and uncontroversial observation (and hence why its the top comment). That said, I personally still enjoyed the back and forth as many others one could imagine. There can be value in the counterarguments from multiple other usernames, as this facilitates sharpening reasoning for the conclusion from readers. (even when the original premise stays in tact)
The lack of others agreeing could be the result of many reasons. IMHO, a not insignificant one could be the incentive structure skews heavily towards lurking as HN rightfully disincentives "me too" type replies and not everyone always has something interesting to add
2c not an epistemologist ymmv
If you know how your favorite CPUs (and you can have many, even ppc) work in desktop performance units, then you have the numbers to compare. Are you sure you can migrate from Apple?
Sometimes the ISA matters. For example, modern ARM has flexible and lightweight atomics, whereas x86 is almost entirely missing non-totally-ordered RMW operations.
Memory models matter.
> Apple Silicon is the undisputed king of ARM CPU performance
The cores, yes, but you can get an AmpereOne with 192 ARM cores (or rent out beefier machines from AWS and Azure). If you need to run macOS, then you are tied to Apple, but if all you want is ARM (for, say, emulated embedded hardware development), you have other options in the ARM ecosystem. I'm actually surprised Ampere maxes out at 192 cores when Intel Xeon 6+ has parts with 288 cores on a single socket (and that can go up to 4 sockets).
I wonder how many cores you'd need to make htop crash.
The problem is you can't really compare things apples to apples anyway. You're always comparing different builds and different OSes to get a sense of CPU performance.
> the status quo is that Apple Silicon is the undisputed king of ARM CPU performance
If your metric is single thread performance yes but on just about anything else Graviton 4 wins.
Are M* chips even beating AMD anyway?
On average according to Geekbench, the M5 compared to the 9950X is ~17% faster in single thread performance and ~30% slower in multithread performance.
Individual benchmarks tell the bigger picture. These two are optimized for different use cases, with Apple heavily leaning towards low latency single thread throughput with low sustained power usage.
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/16833358?baseli...
EDIT: The M4 Max compares much more closely https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/16834801?baseli...
That M4 Max is in a laptop. The Mac Studio version is a couple percent faster still:
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/16839304?baseli...
The M3 Ultra sacrifices a bunch of single-thread performance for not that much of a multithreaded gain:
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/16839654?baseli...
Alright, thanks. Seems like a tradeoff issue.
Let's say my company makes systems for in-flight entertainment, with content from my company.
I am looking for a CPU.
I don't want to confront my users with "Please enter your Apple ID" or any other unexpected messages that I have no control over.
Is Apple M series an option for me?
This CPU will end up in products that are competing against Apple's in the market. People will look at and choose between two products with X925 or M4/5. It's a very obvious parallel and a big oversight for the article.
For better or worse if you make a (high end) consumer CPU it will be judged against the M-series, just like if you make a high end phone it will be judged against the iPhone.
Why should it be?
All he is saying: We currently have products in a similar product category (arm based desktop computers) that are widely used and have known benchmark scores (and general reviews) and it would make sense if I publish a new cpu for the same product category ("Reaching Desktop Performance" implies that) that I'd compare it to the known alternatives.
In the end you can just run Asahi on your macbook, the OS is not that relevant here. A comparison to macbooks running Asahi Linux would be fine.
But why would an article address _their_ specific usecase?
> But why would an article address _their_ specific usecase?
amelius, if anyone had specific requirements, it was you with your "systems for in-flight entertainment".
OP asked a very reasonable question for a very generic comparison to the 800-pound gorilla in the consumer CPU world in general, and ARM CPU world in particular.
If the article can reference AMD's Zen 5 cores and Intel's Lion/Sunny Cove, they could have made at least a brief reference to M-series CPUs. As a reader and potential buyer of any of them, I find it would have been a very useful comparison.
In industry, people want to take computing parts and build products with them.
This is not possible with Apple parts.
That's what my example was about. It was only specific because I wanted to have a concrete example.
> In industry
Talk about specifics, eh? Didn't you just argue against an article addressing "_their_" specific usecase?
In a store people will ask "is this better than an Apple?".
And I'll tell you one more thing, when I was in the industry and taking computing parts to build products with them I did not form an opinion by reading internet reviews. I haven't met anyone who did.
Does Apple allow benchmarks on Asahi Linux?
Believe it or not Apple has no say about this
The X925 core is used in chips like the gb10 for the nvidia dgx spark. So it is relevant to compare to apple silicon performance imo. The mac studio is pretty much a competitor to it.
When purchasing any ARM based computer a key question for me, is how many of those can I purchase for the cost of a Mac mini, and how many Mac mini can I purchase for the cost of that, and does that have working drivers...
And the answer there may absolutely be "none", which equates to doing away with ARM, which is totally fine. I don't have a horse in the x86 vs ARM race, especially since it's pretty clear that performance per watt stands within a narrow margin across arches on recent nodes.
totally true. for me it's unless until those apple hardware can run linux first-class, till then it's irrelevant. sad to say this but macos sucks.
This echoed my thoughts exactly - Linux only.
FWIW, Apple Virtualization framework is fantastic, and Rosetta 2 is unmatched on other Arm desktops where QEMU is required. For example, you can get Vivado working on Debian guest, macOS host trivially like that.
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/10/apple-to-phase-out-rose...
They are not phasing it out for virtualization.
Only reference I can find is:
"Starting with computers using macOS 28, Rosetta functionality will be available only for certain older, unmaintained games that rely on Intel-based frameworks."
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102527
And
"Beyond this timeframe, we will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks."
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-silicon/abou...
Been using Colima to run mixed architecture container stacks in docker compose on my M3 Mac and the machine barely blinks. I get a full day running a dozen containers on a single battery charge.
Colima is backed by qemu, not Rosetta, so if Rosetta disappeared tomorrow I don't think I'd notice. I'm sure it's "better" but when the competition is "good enough" it doesn't really matter.
still matters as a benchmark imo
Last time I tried, getting Linux working on Apple Silicon actually worked better than on Qualcomm ARM machine (which only support strange Windows).
Asahi Linux is fantastic these days, but as with most linuxes on laptops the power management / battery life is the worst part. If treating a laptop like a portable desktop is ok for your use case you'd be plenty happy. If you're far away from an outlet for too long however, you'll find it lacking. At least that's my experience. It's possible they eventually figure that out too...
> represents a commitment to the Apple software ecosystem
I don't see how that's holding you back from using these tools for your work anymore than using a Makita power tool with LXT battery pack.
Pretty simply because I don't want to use MacOS, its terrible window management, quirks and idiosyncrasies. In your comparison, my gripe wouldn't be about the hassle of finding 3rd-party compatible batteries, but about the daily handling of the Makita while knowing the DeWalt to be more ergonomic and better suited to my needs.
As someone who uses Linux, macOS and Windows interchangeably, I'm curious to know what you're using.
I learned to live with macOS, but I also like and use Gnome, which many Linux-only people hate. I tried most WMs on Linux, like Hyprland, Sway, i3, but none ever felt worth the config hassle when compared to the sane defaults of Gnome.
> the sane defaults of Gnome.
I have to admit that when I read this, my eyebrows went up so far that my hat moved.
I know what you mean, but Gnome was the DE that clicked the most for me (after I gave it a real try). I liked Gnome 2 and then 3 made me switch to KDE, then switched back. So I was actually completely wrong and, while writing this comment, I remembered what a pain it was to learn Gnome back then lol
That’s not what a commitment is though. If I use a Makita because the battery life and resale value is twice that of a DeWalt, I wouldn’t say Makita is asking for a commitment to their ergonomics.
We clearly have different values and priorities, and just to be clear, that's perfectly fine. I haven't considered "battery life" to be a bottleneck for about a decade, which is when all my devices started to be able to last me a whole day of work. Similarly, I only change device when I must, which most often equates to "when they die", so "resale value" doesn't matter to me (and in that regard, Apple takes themselves out of the selection pool due to poor repairability and no upgradeability). My devices are tools, I care that they help me do the task at hand while stepping as little as possible in the way.