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M1 Macs Review

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Re: M1 Macs Review

#161

Post by rsanheim »

siraben wrote: post #58
em500 wrote: post #53

Copy-pasted the comment I left at another forum: The the M1 is Zen3 5600X performance in an ultra-portable form factor. Whether that's revolutionary or not particularly noteworthy depends on the individual use case. If you're don't care that much about power/heat/fan-noise, it's neat but not (yet) world shattering. Bit if you live your life on a small laptop, it may well be. According to rumors, we'll see Apple's 8 F…

> Linux native is not in the cards but it won't matter, it will work fine virtualized with hardly any performance penalty. If for some reason you insist on native linux, it's time to recognize that Apple hardware is not for you. How would one run a graphical Linux distro virtualized and by which software?

Install Parallels or VMware (once they have their universal builds ready), install your favorite Linux distro’s ARM build, and you are off to the races.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#162

Post by kllrnohj »

torginus wrote: post #76

I just bought a MacBook Air. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this redefines how we think about a laptop. Whereas previously a laptop was something that spent the bulk of its time plugged in, and only capable of short bursts of number-crunching/gaming due to thermal and battery limitations, I can literally get a good few hours of gaming untethered on this machine. And this is a base-level MacBook Air, I…

I can get a few hours of light gaming in on my Zephryus G14 on battery, and it has a vastly faster GPU than the one in the M1 such that I can also still play demanding games when tethered to a wall (it also has a VRR 120hz screen). A trick that the MacBooks can no longer pull of at all since eGPU support was killed.

It's a fantastic experience, but in no way has having this laptop for the last 6 months "redefined how I think about a laptop." It still does all the same things a laptop does, it still has all the same limitations a laptop has (like the physically small screen vs. other common gaming choices - be it desktop monitors or TVs). The M1 in the MBA doesn't really change any of that. Especially since the loss of bootcamp & eGPU means the MBA is a rather terrible gaming experience unless something drastically changes between game devs, Apple, and MacOS. The extra battery life is definitely welcome, but it's not game changing revolutionary, either. For some it may now be enough to go all day without charging, which is a key milestone, but many people were already there with the existing set of ultrabooks, too. Beyond that, eh? Kinda like a phone that can last 2 days. Cool trick, but it wouldn't change anything about my day to day life unless there happens to be a power outage overnight.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#163

Post by rsanheim »

cuillevel3 wrote: post #100
torginus wrote: post #76

I just bought a MacBook Air. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this redefines how we think about a laptop. Whereas previously a laptop was something that spent the bulk of its time plugged in, and only capable of short bursts of number-crunching/gaming due to thermal and battery limitations, I can literally get a good few hours of gaming untethered on this machine. And this is a base-level MacBook Air, I…

I wondered about that, doesn't it get hot and throttle performance?

My Air hasn’t gotten warm yet and I’ve been trying to really hammer it while I’ve been setting up my dev env and running benchmarks.

I have not tried Civ 6 late game benchmarks yet tho ;)

Re: M1 Macs Review

#164

Post by e_tm_ »

holstvoogd wrote: post #137
cowmoo728 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Dave2D's youtube review the Air will throttle after 8 minutes of full load. The Pro never throttles. https://youtu.be/XQ6vX6nmboU

Wow. That is pretty amazing. I have 15" 2018 mbp and it throttles if I look at it wrong ;-)

shhh. it will hear you.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#165

Post by coldtea »

siraben wrote: post #97
coldtea wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parallels and VMWare Fusion would run it. Virtualbox as well. We can already do this on Intel Macs, Windows PCs, etc. Graphics are not a problem. Heck, we could since forever also run graphical macOS and Windows on virtualization apps...

Is it enabled in VirtualBox by default?

If you mean running GUIS, in the Intel version yes.

The ARM/Apple Silicon version not sure if it's ready, might need work to even run cli.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#166

Post by rsanheim »

mrweasel wrote: post #71
ojosilva wrote: post #17

Here's looking at getting one. But I wonder what's the currently compatibility status of the dev stack: node, git, go, java, nginx, databases (pg, mongo, maria...), editors (macvim, vscode...), iTerm, et al. And the brew family of installs, which was covered as part of yesterday's thread [1]. Macos ships with some interpreters pre-installed as part of BigSur, including Ruby, Python and Perl. And most source distribut…

I think it's a little early to get an M1 based machine for development, unless you do iOS or macOS applications. My seven year old Macbook Pro could stand to be replaced, but it's getting Big Sur, and it's fast enough. I'll just wait another year and see how the ecosystem on the M-series CPUs look at that point.

I had my Ruby on Rails / node dev env setup within a couple hours - the only weird thing was Redis (via Rosetta) had to run as root for some reason.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#167

Post by coldtea »

chungus_khan wrote: post #142
coldtea wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The the M1 is a Zen3 5600X in an ultra-portable form factor. Well, also without x86 baggage, and with tons of SOC co-preccessors added, and a unified memory.

Unified memory is pretty normal on non-desktop systems and has been for a while.

Not sure which those "non-desktop" systems are.

If you mean "smartphones and tablets", ok. But this is a laptop, not a mobile phone, and it's new development there.

If you mean "laptops" then, no, they didn't have unified memory, much less have it be "pretty normal".

Re: M1 Macs Review

#168

Post by djs55 »

hart_russell wrote: post #12

I received an M1 mini 2 days ago. I noticed the Steam client seems to be a bit laggy in UI responsiveness, but besides that I have no complaints. I got it for use as a server, so I was a bit dismayed to hear that M1 Docker support has hit a roadblock, but hopeful that they figure it out soon.

Don't worry, we (at Docker) have been working on Apple Silicon support for a while. The command-line tools work under Rosetta 2 but the local VM inside Desktop will take a little bit longer to port. Just in case you haven't seen it there's some further info on Docker+M1 in the blog post: https://www.docker.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-chips-and-docke...

Re: M1 Macs Review

#169

Post by fulafel »

coldtea wrote: post #167
chungus_khan wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unified memory is pretty normal on non-desktop systems and has been for a while.

Not sure which those "non-desktop" systems are. If you mean "smartphones and tablets", ok. But this is a laptop, not a mobile phone, and it's new development there. If you mean "laptops" then, no, they didn't have unified memory, much less have it be "pretty normal".

Laptops with iGPUs are pretty normal, no? (And common on desktops too)

Re: M1 Macs Review

#170

Post by coldtea »

coldtea wrote: post #88
em500 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The locked bootloader will only run Apple signed operating systems (a la Chromebook, without the Chromebook Developer mode escape hatch). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23640746

Actually that's not the case. This post is misinformed (and 4 months old). There was a breakdown from an official Apple page how to boot alternative systems on an M1.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25145119

Choose one of the following security options:

Full Security: Ensures that only your current OS, or signed operating system software currently trusted by Apple, can run. This mode requires a network connection at software installation time.

Reduced Security: Allows any version of signed operating system software ever trusted by Apple to run.

Permissive Security: Does not enforce any requirements on the bootable operating system.

Note: The Permissive Security option appears only when System Integrity Protection (SIP) is disabled. To disable SIP, start up your Mac in macOS Recovery, open Terminal, then run the command csrutil disable.

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