… for Random Weirdness

Tip #1601: Divergent Thoughts on the New M1 iMacs

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

The new M1 iMacs have performance, but they are still entry level.

Here are two takes on the new M1 iMac. The first is from PremiumBeat, the second from Larry Jordan.

This section, written by Mike Maher, first appeared in PremiumBeat.com. This is an excerpt.

Apple announced a colorful new line of iMac computers that can finally use highspeed GPU render engines once exclusive to PCs.

Apple has announced the newly redesigned iMac featuring the company’s powerful M1 chip. The machine features a 24-inch screen, HD FaceTime camera, new keyboard with Touch ID, and is available in seven different colors.

Apple has certainly put a focus on promoting their own Final Cut Pro X. The latest version was released with the last line of MacBook Pro laptops that also feature the M1 chip and accelerated performance on Metal, Apple’s hardware-accelerated 3D graphic and compute shader API. The new iMac will feature these same M1 chips, and we’ll likely see the release of a new iMac Pro in the next year.

[Given that these new machines haven’t shipped yet, final performance specs are only guesswork. But,] Final Cut Pro is seeing render performance increased up to 20%, with iMac users looking to see up to 35% faster. Editors can work with 8K RED RAW up to three times faster, depending on their model machine. Rendering your timelines is said to be up to six times faster, with increased playback for 4K and 8K projects.

As for Adobe Premiere Pro and the rest of the Creative Cloud, in December, the team announced that M1 builds of Adobe products were underway, with early betas available for Premiere Pro.

Cinema 4D has long been on both PC and Mac, but when it came to rendering power, PC dominated the 3D market with NVIDIA’s powerful GPU rendering power. Now those render engines once exclusive to NVIDIA have been ported over to Apple’s M1.

This is one of the most artist-friendly drops in quite some time for Apple. Vast improvements make a difference not only on the technical side for rendering, but also improved stability in all sorts of apps for video creation, music making, motion design, and 3D. The last MacBook Pro release and these iMacs are the way to the future for Mac to catch up on all the creatives they were losing to the PC market.

Larry Jordan shares his thoughts on the new iMacs. While he is impressed with their performance, they are still lacking when it comes to GPU speed, ports, RAM and Ethernet. “Keep in mind that Apple still considers the M1 as an entry level chip.”

Read his thoughts here: Configuring an M1 24″ iMac for Video Editing.