According the “sales material” presented, my best guess is similar. But let’s wait for the “physical material”… and let’s see how the SU team will handle it.
(However - I’m not an Apple user, I tried it a good few years ago, but I didn’t keep it. Nevertheless, I respect and pay attention to the innovation that they represent …)
I’m really curious.
First benchmarks are already here and they are overwhelming. The M1 chip dwarfs the Core i5 of the 2019 iMac. MacBook Air M1 is even faster than MacBook Pro 16" with Intel Core i9! “Amazing” as Apple fellows would say 
And this is for a 1st gen chip that was primarily designed for laptops (half cores are “efficient” low power ones).
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I’ll be honest, there is a technolust that i’m fighting to not order a Mac Mini right now. If I they offered a trade-up option for existing Intel Macs I’d already be trying to trade up my 13" MBP.
They most definitely have a trade-in option and will give you cash for your old machine.
Ahah, my subconscious told me that too: last night I dreamt that a friend of mine had broken the motherboard of my MacBook Pro 13" Touch Bar (broken in half in the dream 
) and that I had no choice but to buy a new one 
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Maybe I should say, if they had a trade-up plan that gave me more value for my current laptop. Pennies on the dollar is not a winning proposition. (c;
edit: actually they appear to do pretty good with their offer… hrm, decisions decisions
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“keep your old Mac if you plan to use SketchUp” I’m not so sure. Looking at some of the Benchmarks filtering through for the performance of Rosetta 2 (the “legacy” or transition emulator to run x86_64 applications) it still looks like SKP 2020 and beyond will run much faster on the M1 chip even with emulation.
Got a link to real world benchmarks or are you relying on marketing material?
The M1 is better than A12Z so expect decent results.
MattL, Apple’s history making their own efficient silicon is evident in their entire lineup of iOS devices. The A11 bionic processor, for example. They are insanely fast and efficient, topping most of the competition, all in a form factor that fits in your pocket without overheating. Benchmarks are there, of course, for anyone to see, and all very real world. That Apple was able to duplicate this with a breathtaking 5nm architecture for the M1 is impressive, to say the least.
The iPhone 12’s A14 Bionic chip wins the competition as it has the highest performing CPU (Both in Single-Core and Multi-Core tasks) and the fastest GPU. It is also the most power-efficient chip because it is the first mainstream product to be fabricated on TSMC’s 5 nm Process.
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My only concern is stuff that just outright doesn’t work… it doesn’t matter how fast it is if it won’t run. That won’t be known until we have people with this computer on their desk. As it is, I realized that Bootcamp is out the window with the M1 so will be a little slower to upgrade… i lose the ability to use Windows but gain the ability to use all of my iPad apps on my Mac. Hmmm
All sounds interesting (for a long time Mac user)! Wait and see how SketchUp fairs (fares?). One thing: I have many apps that Apple tells me are “not optimized” for the latest system and they work fine.
Hi Jody, I think you’re right. We have to see if it works and I think I am going to bite the bullet and try a mac mini, Sketchup on a Mac at the moment (and I am running it on an Macbook Pro i9 processor) is a bit clunky sometimes and layout is not so usuable and still seems to be developed independently (even the shadows for example). I think Sketchup is great and I want it to progress; I use Sketchup professionally and every orbit and selection counts. I have noticed that Shapr is on Apples front page as working on the M1, I feel that Sketchup should have been there. Please use all the subscription money for this year and build the user base for Mac and iOS, invest in the people, software and hardware to make this transition great. I have/had Vectorworks and C4d licences and I stuck with Sketchup because of the ease of use and the community of developers, as have a lot of people. Please ask Trimble management to support us in using their/your software because it really is great.
many thanks
Dan
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Why worry about it? All that matters is whether or not the chip gives us a better experience.
Been running Sketchup on a 2018 Mini with 32G memory and the experience is very good. Been using Mini’s (which are basically laptops without the screen) for years and never had a problem, but others may be creating bigger files than I do.
No one loses the ability to use Windows. Bootcamp is a cludge…use VMWare Fusion. I have Windows 10 open all the time on my Mini and I don’t have to re-boot to use it.
Unfortunately, I think I read somewhere that the new chip won’t support emulators (Parallels, VMWare) because I think they basically piggy back off boot camp.
Thanks for correcting what previous commentors might have misunderstood from all the uncritical positive news!
To be precise, boot camp/dual boot runs another OS directly on the hardware (without macOS) where as virtualization software runs another OS inside macOS (and passes its instructions directly to the hardware), and emulators additionally translate every single instruction to the underlying hardware (slower than virtualization).
While Apple provides emulation of x64 macOS applications (Rosetta 2) to the new hardware (Intel x64 → Apple Silicon), they don’t seem to offer a solution for whole operating systems (like emulating 64bit Windows on Apple Silicon). The most likely scenario is that Parallels/VMWare might support virtualization of the operating system (Windows for ARM directly on Apple Silicon) which itself supports to some degree emulation of legacy x64 applications.
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That’s a euphemism that is currently very popular in marketing (even SketchUp use it!). For the general reader it makes it unfortunately hard to distinguish:
- whether something is totally impossible (e.g. currently Python Numpy on Apple Silicon)
- or a compatible version has not yet been built and released (SketchUp XXXX on Apple Silicon)
- or it might more or less work but is untested and not officially supported by customer support (SketchUp 2020 on Big Sur)
Therefore it’s good to critically inform oneself and not take a purchase decision only based on marketing/advertisement.
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