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Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

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Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#761
post #433

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I am a software developer, and I detest working on my mac laptop. At $lastjob I had a Linux desktop and it is, I believe, the most productive environment I have ever developed in. The job before, I had a windows desktop, and I prefer that to mac. You say you want to just "get things done expediently," but in my experience apple software is flat out inferior and OSX is the worst of the 3 major operating systems I have…

What does Linux give you that macOS doesn’t? I use both a Mac and an Arch Linux running i3/awesomewm, and to me macOS is like any Linux distro with a user-friendly desktop environment. I guess it doesn’t have an « official » package manager, but homebrew has most packages anyway?

freedom.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

x86_64, but of their own manufacture. A fair number of people use MBPs to run Docker containers and other Linux/Windows VMs; to ask them to sacrifice this functionality would be to risk a fairly significant user population.

If other companies could legally figure out how to license and build x86 chips, nVidia would already be there stamping them out. It's a legal minefield that's simply not worth exploring, even for Apple.

Why would nVidia want to do that in the first place?

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#763
post #589

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> Linux distros are by far the best environment for a computer scientists - made by developers, for developers - but there's no major vendor that sells machines with Linux pre-installed and supported, and getting Linux installed on the newest Surface or Dell toy is often a challenge that gets many frustrated. Is there any reason why something like the various Dell machines preloaded with Ubuntu or RHEL wouldn't count…

for laptops, dell seems to love 16:9 aspect ratio, which makes them inappropriate for development. for workstations, every dell i've seen uses custom cases that prevent upgrading the motherboard with an OTS component

Those are certainly downsides, and that's fair enough. The last Dell tower that I used was from about 2008 (Precision T-something). I remember adding a hard drive and RAM to it without trouble, but I can't talk about their non-business line, or larger modifications like replacing an expansion card or power supply.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#764
post #298

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And cost. Making something you can license to others and/or sell to 250000 users each year has a completely different cost compared to something you use only on your 20000 machines (source: [1]). Macs are already overpriced, I don't know how much Apple could sustain an in-house production of proprietary chips without hitting their users; they're probably going to ARM. [1]: https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=p…

And the fact that Apple can already beat x86 on speed per unit of electricity with its own architecture.

that only matters for large data centers and mobile. for laptops and desktops raw power matters.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#765

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You always ought to build on the same hardware you deploy on - to be blunt having multiple developers messing around on n different macs is just madness!

Just use docker or a VM for matching your production environment. Then your devs can use whatever device they're comfortable with. Add in a CI environment and then suddenly you don't need to force the same OS on everyone. Everybody likes something different.

Its better than nothing, but you still have added extra risk by doing it this way:

Are all the VM's exactly the same

Can you 100% prove that the vm behaves identically on all the varied hardware.

And no "professional" would consider "Everybody likes something different" is ever valid for a paying job!

No problem if its a hobby project but on a project with even a small number say 5 or 6 the risk isn't worth it.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#766

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Couldn't agree with you more. Ubuntu was my daily driver from the start of 2007 through early 2014 when I finally gave in and bought a rMBP. Despite missing the "real" nix environment being available right under the GUI, I have been much much happier on the Mac. I fought software update and driver issues for years. I ran the most bog standard HP laptops that I could get, albeit w/ Nvidia GPUs. Every distribution upgr…

> I've been running Linux for 20 years and I'm not willing to put up with these problems on my workstation. It seems like it must be a very small minority that can. What makes you think everyone faces the same issues as you? Maybe the problem is your specific hardware? I've been running linux based distros as my daily driver for over 10 years and literally never had any of the issues you described. Never had issues w…

I used Linux as my desktop OS for around ten years.

I learned, the hard way, the truth of the cliché: Linux is free only if your time is not worth money.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? MacOS is a certified Unix variant and it has everything you need to do local dev on it.

For server side software the deployment environment is overwhelmingly Linux making Linux also the most straightforward choice for the development environment. Its not a slight on MacOS, its tooling might be just as wonderful as the Linux one for deploying on MacOS .

Not all developers are writing server side software.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#768
post #678

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Exactly. Sure if you're trying to revive some old notebook with a Linux distro you're going to face issues (no different to if you try to install the latest MacOS on their earlier machines). With a modern machine, Linux is a very reliable and comfortable OS that doesn't restrict you in terms of hardware. The only minor criticism I have is that it lacks a high quality spreadsheet application like Excel (but with cloud…

Does Libre's open source spreadsheet not provide the functionality you need? I took a small HP stream, replaced Windows with POP! OS (from System 76) and the spreadsheet comes as part of the package. As far as I know, it's also easily available with vanilla Ubuntu.

It's 80% there, but for an advanced Excel user, libre office calc feels like Excel from 2005. I'm sure it can do everything advanced users need, but it's slow and clunky at times.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#769

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Actually, I just installed the latest lUbuntu and am having this exact problem. The preferences don't have a way to select natural scrolling and I've been "fighting" with it for a couple of days now, changing mysterious values in config files and restarting X. Then when I think I have it figured out a system update happens and it resets back to the original scrolling. This is the real value of macOS. I agree that I l…

Do either of these work? - https://askubuntu.com/questions/604002/mouse-wheel-scrolls-i... - https://askubuntu.com/questions/819662/how-to-invert-touchpa... (They're mutually exclusive; I put the 1st one 1st as undoing that one is a case of rerunning the command replacing the '1' with a '0') If the first one succeeds, try putting the command you used into ~/.Xdefaults and see if it sticks. The 2nd approach puts info…

The problem is not "had to go copy/paste something from the internet to make it work".

The problem is "didn't work out of the box". Using Linux as a desktop OS can be a death-by-a-thousand-cuts experience. Sure, whatever problem you run into there's probably someone who's figured out how to solve it and posted instructions online. But if the solutions are known, then the operating system shouldn't have those problems out of the box.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#770
post #624

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> and it's not going to work if I'm copying and pasting kernel code from Stack Overflow to get my trackpad to scroll the correct direction When was the last time you used a linux desktop, 2005? On any linux desktop I can think of (MATE, Gnome, KDE) this is a matter of going to Settings | Mouse & Touchpad | check or un-check the natural scrolling box as desired

Used Linux on the desktop through college before switching to a Mac. It’s still not great. Maybe worse now, considering that now you’ve got X and Wayland to choose from and GNOME has somehow alienated everyone and fragmented. How do you set things up so you can use Remote Desktop/VNC into a GNOME desktop using Wayland?

GNOME has a built in Wayland-compatible VNC server. Install the gnome-remote-desktop package and open the Settings app and enable Screen Sharing.
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