I'm not sure what you're trying to say - M1s are differing in clock speed, number of cores and number of GPU cores across Apple products as well.

"M1" is basically equivalent to "Core i" designation from Intel - except that Apple just doesn't tell you about the other part.

No? That's the entire point of the article. The only difference is whether you get a 7 core or 8 core GPU.

> If you want to buy a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, Apple will sell you an M1. Want a Mac Mini? You get an M1. Interested in the iMac or the new iPad Pro? You get an M1. It’s possible that the M1 CPUs inside the iMac will have different thermal or clock behavior than those inside the systems Apple has already launched, but the company’s decision to eschew clock speed disclosures suggests that these CPUs differ only modestly.

> with the M1, is that its custom CPU performance is now so high, at such low power consumption, that the choice of chip inside the system has become irrelevant within a given product generation

Exactly, so what is the point here? How exactly is that different from Intel generations?

Why does Apple put different amount of cores and clocks into different products if the choice doesn't matter? It seems like there are performance differences there if they choose to install differently configured SoCs in different devices and even split them by pricing on the iMac.

So, please, explain where's this big difference? (With more than a single sentence of your words if possible.)

I've seen nothing to indicate different products have different clock speeds?

So far we're seeing two differentiators. One is the use of the 7-GPU bin to hit the bottom-of-the-range price point for each product family. The other is simply the different thermal characteristics of different products - the passively cooled Air & iPad Pro will thermally throttle earlier than the actively cooled MBP, iMac & mini.

The products aren't being differentiated in silicon, they're being differentiated in feature & format. My mother can tell me the difference between an iPad and a macbook without describing anything that she can't see with her own eyes.

The M1 in the macbook air throttles when it gets too hot due to the thermal characteristics of the case (no active cooling).

The M1 in the macbook pro is actively cooled, and does not throttle.

When additional cooling is applied after-market to the macbook air, it has the same performance characteristics as the macbook pro.

The M1 is the same in both products. It throttles when hotter. It's more likely to throttle if not actively cooled and under heavy workload. It's not clocked differently. There's no artificial constraints.

There are only two different M1 versions. The 7 GPU version and the 8 GPU version. All of the cpu cores are the same. All power envelopes are the same. That's much different then the vastly different form factors and power envelopes intel has.

We have yet to see any new iPad Pro with the M1. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a difference in clock speed with those.

I don't expect so. The air has no active cooling and can run the M1. Should be doable for the ipad as well.

I have an M1 Macbook Air and this thing gets a bit hot for an iPad. I don't think the iPad Pro will be able to hold the same clock speed as long as the other machines over the long haul.