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Comment by skohan | Hacker News Reader

When they released the M1 macs without a design change, my initial take was that it was a cowardly move: they didn't want to attach a big design change and risk calling a lot of attention to what might be a flop. But I actually think it was more of a boast: showing exactly how changing only the processor changes everything in a clear A/B test scenario.

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That's not the reason, it was almost certainly due to Rosetta and nothing else.

Changing the processor architecture over for the first time was going to be a massive undertaking (I'm sure there are still folks there who have nightmares about universal binaries from '06). They had no way to run a wide public beta of the hardware before releasing, so had to play it as safe as possible.

The only sane way to migrate something so fundamental is to change absolutely nothing besides the processor, so that you have a side-by-side comparison between the previous generation and the new one out in the wild to debug problems that come up. If they had added [Face ID / a touchscreen / new mechanics for the keyboard] they'd need to debug whether those changes were causing the bugs rather than the M1 changes.

That's why I've fought myself to hold of - I'd expect the next MBP to be a fundamental redesign.

I can live without a touchscreen, but please just give me a Face ID laptop Apple.

> [...], but please just give me a Face ID laptop Apple.

Why is that so much more convenient than eg the fingerprint scanner?

(Even entering my password is pretty quick for me.)

I haven't use any form of Face ID on any device so far. So I am genuinely curious. I do see the appeal of finger print auth over having to type a password or a code on the phone.

I actually strongly prefer the fingerprint to face-authentication (especially in the age of masks). Face ID is just so much more responsive to things like lighting conditions, and you pretty much have to look directly at your phone, so you can't casually unlock while the phone is sitting on the table while you're at a coffee date or something. I'm always touching my phone/laptop anyway when I want to use it, so I honestly see no advantage to not just using that touch itself to unlock.

That's my thinking as well. But lots of people seem to really like Face ID, and I strongly prefer to assume that there's just something I'm missing, instead of assuming those people are all idiots.

I have an iPad Pro with FaceID and the smart folio keyboard and that is a close analogy to the laptop with FaceID.

With FaceID I don’t have to “do” anything to unlock it. When I sit down in front of the iPad, it is just unlocked. I don’t have to think or act to make it happen.

With the laptop with touchID, I need to press a key to wake it and then press the right finger on the touchID key to unlock. It is a more deliberate and complex action.

I can see on phones that the differences are less, but even in the time of masks, I tend to prefer FaceID. If I’m using my phone, I’m also looking at it. The mask gets in the way but that is only a few times a day when I’m at the grocer or something like that. I know that with touchID I could pull my phone out of my pocket and unlock with my finger in one movement, but that doesn’t save much for me. You may use your phone differently that that’s fine. I think there would be value in a phone with both systems as people have different needs and preferences.

This is 100% it.

More than that - masks are an issue currently if you’re trying to unlock your phone indoors in a public place with Face ID, but I just don’t find myself in a situation where I’m wearing a mask when I need my laptop.

(I’m not going to Starbucks or sitting in an office right now, and very likely won’t be until widespread vaccination has taken place).

The convenience of Face ID is transformative to my workflow. It really does essentially take you back to when your passwords would just automatically auto-fill without any kind of checks that it’s still you, without your passwords being stolen if someone swipes your unlocked laptop and runs off.

FaceID uses infrared, lighting conditions do not matter.

You can disable the requiring of looking at the phone and unlocking via FaceID in settings, I regularly unlock my phone without holding it so I am "dead on looking at it".

That said, I also prefer TouchID.

FaceID uses infrared, lighting conditions do not matter.

This is straight up not true. It works fine in the dark, but unlocking an iPhone in direct sunlight can often take a couple of tries.

I've never seen this myself on a XR, but I will take your word for it (As it does make sense), thanks for the info.

I was more thinking lack of light not being a issue, I didn't take into account that mass amounts of light can blow out the image for the sensors.

On the controrary it does not work in complete darkness, dim light is fine. My iPhone 12 never unlocks with Face ID in the middle of the night, and neither did my iPhone XS. I can however see a faint red light flash from the sensor when it tries, I guess this is spill-over into the visible spectrum from the IR.

Think about your experience using Face ID on your phone compared to fingerprint. It’s just easy.

I have no experience using Face ID on my phone.

I have a Magic Keyboard for my iPad Pro that I use as a Zoom machine and for saving thoughts, doodles, and for distraction free documentation writing. Aside from that it’s also my main tablet for content ingestion.

Using it docked in the keyboard makes it feel like a laptop. FaceID for filling in forms, authenticating with SSO, it’s all basically instant and requires almost no thought from me, not even a single cycle of brain power needed.

I will say it’s not like, amazingly more convenient than the TouchID sensor on my MBA, but it’s nice to have.

This, essentially.

It more or less reverts to the same experience of being on Chrome on any other platform where your passwords just automatically are input, without the obvious security compromises.

I think it was more motivated by the fact that the first months with the new processor architecture are rough from a software point of view. While Rosetta seems to work great, there are a lot of things which didn't work initially and now slowly come around with more and more native packages appearing. A complete redesign of the machines would have attracted too many customers who would not have been ready for the bumpiness of the software in the first months.

Yeah this is what I thought at first too, but in my experience it was remarkably smooth. Even as a developer, which is probably a worst-case scenario for this type of transition, I have barely had to think about the fact that it's a different arch

I ran into this. I was making a lot of very conservative noises early on at work about potential risks to our workflows, and I've been waiting and waiting. I had thought making docker images on a different architecture to deployment would bite us, but so far it's the dog that didn't bark.

I don't know how in hell they did it, but I'm impressed so far.

It won’t be a flop.

It will be a teraflop.

More seriously, by the way, do we have comparison between the black iMac Pros and the M1? It would be ironic if iMac Pros were surpassed by the 1/4th-prices M1...

The M1 wins in single core performance and power consumption, in everything else, the pro wins.

They did the same thing when they switched to Intel. Nearly every model inherited its previous design, with big design changes coming after the product line had transitioned. At the time the general consensus was that they were timid about making big visible changes that might make existing customers feel like their products had changed too much. But now it seems like the norm for Apple to stagger architecture and design changes.

There was talk that it was because Apple didnt want to alert Intel as to the massive leap the M1 would be!

How would a design change have clued them in about the performance difference?

If there were rumors of a design that was impossible with an Intel chip, that would have tipped their hand. Keeping mostly the same initial design meant is was easy for Intel to think Apple was just replacing like for like to save some money.

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