This is very different at the moment, not only you could have patch updates for the modified properties but you could also perform rollback in case something is rejected by the server and so on and on.
It is all about the resolver who does this job for you.
Ember convention is to have adapter & serializer per model which comes abs brilliant when you go into later stage in your project.
If you intent to have model Person Ember would expect that you provide Person(Model) , PersonSerializer ,PersonAdapter where missing will use the application default ones. Default ones are resolved with App.ApplicationAdapter, App.ApplicationSerializer .
So if you do store.find('person', 1) Ember's default resolver would try App.Person then resolve the adapter App.PersonAdapter || App.ApplicationAdapter and App.PersonSerializer || App.ApplicationSerializer.
1) Store will use the resolver to identify the class