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M1 Macs Review

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Re: M1 Macs Review

#181

Post by Eric_WVGG »

zerkten wrote: post #47
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 VS Code will get there very quickly given demand and availability on Windows ARM. For nginx etc, many people have moved to Docker or uses Vagrant workflows which may slow them down. Anyone who follows more classic workflows or installs from Brew should be in better shape.

I would urge VSCode users to give Panic’s new Nova IDE a look. It’s a real native app, even without an M1 it has a much snappier feel to it.

If Docker isn’t ready by the time 16” M1s come around, I’ll probably just resort to cloud instances for a while.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#182

Post by mistersquid »

mojzu wrote: post #101
Shivetya wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What caught me off guard was the possibility through Codeweavers to run even 32bit windows software https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/jwhite/2020/11/18/okay-im-o...

That is impressive, makes me wonder whether there's a potential future where Apple puts chips like these into servers to run existing software faster/on lower power

> a potential future where Apple puts chips like these into servers

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that potential future is already here. Mac mini is a server and off-the-shelf rack mounts are easy to find. [0]

[0] For example: https://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacmini.html

Re: M1 Macs Review

#183

Post by rconti »

shmoogy wrote: post #13
snazz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MacBook Air that GP mentioned doesn't even have a fan! That's certainly a nice benefit.

I really want the air for when I work outside in the summer. I worked from an iPad quite often with the magic keyboard, and it started throttling and sometimes overheated to the point of failure while outside in the sun. It's too cold in Chicago to test, but I would love to see if the MacBook Air can work while outside in direct hot sun - it's the only reason I'm considering the MBP.

Order a silver one instead of a dark grey one, just to be safe? :)

Re: M1 Macs Review

#184

Post by masklinn »

TillE wrote: post #178
coldtea wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Is there a distinction between shared graphics memory (an ancient and still very common thing) and "unified memory"?

Yes, they're absolutely nothing alike.

Shared memory means the CPU and the GPU share physical memory in different address space, so 512MB RAM with 64MB shared means the CPU gets 448MB and the GPU gets 64, and data has to be copied from one chunk to the other.

Unified memory means both CPU and GPU not only share physical memory but share the address space, all memory is accessible to both at the same time. This means that e.g. you can create commands or load data in memory on the CPU then just tell the GPU "your stuff is here" with no copy needed anywhere, and likewise the other way around.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#185

Post by masklinn »

fulafel wrote: post #169
coldtea wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

iGPU doesn't mean unified memory.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#186

Post by masklinn »

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".

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

Consoles have used unified memory since last generation I think?

AMD APU have supported unified memory since kaveri I think, and Intel iGP have supported limited version of data sharing for a while, but I don't think one can call UMA "pretty normal".

Re: M1 Macs Review

#187

Post by yagya »

rsanheim wrote: post #140
CraigJPerry wrote: post #3

After 6 years away from being "all in" on Apple, yesterday my base spec MacBook Air M1 arrived. Battery life is the key takeaway for me. Performance is fine but I'm used to a powerful desktop so it's not blowing me away but the battery life definitely is blowing me away. To run things under rosetta there's an arch command: e.g. arch -x86_64 brew install xxx - the arch preference is inherited by sub processes. I'm kin…

Yeah so far the performance is very close to my 10 core iMac Pro I use for day to day development. This is on a MacBook Air with no fan, and so far I haven't felt the machine even get warm even when compiling _and_ also running tests or importing data in other processes. This is when running a decently sized Rails monolith w/ PostgreSQL & Redis, so a fairly typical modern Rails setup. It's seriously impressive.

Once I get mine, I plan on building AOSP and seeing what limits I can push the hardware to.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#188

Post by bla3 »

I'm really really excited about the new hardware here. Bummer that the software is pretty meh. If macOS was as great as it was in the 10.6 days I'd be the happiest Apple user ever.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#189

Post by rsanheim »

m0zg wrote: post #38

Reviews (including this one) all say webcam sucks pretty bad though. Why Apple chose to release a laptop with a subpar webcam in 2020 is a mystery to me. This isn't even hard or expensive. Spend a couple dollars more on that webcam, Apple, don't be so greedy.

Yeah I'd imagine its entirely because they wanted to keep the form factor the same as the old Macs, and changing the camera will require a full redesign.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#190

Post by unix_fan »

alex_duf wrote: post #156
unix_fan wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native linux could actually be a thing… https://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/jtrt2l/upcoming_...

Does that mean you have to jailbreak your own machine to install linux or is it just a coincidence and it's just the same team?

No. https://keith.github.io/xcode-man-pages/bputil.1.html

This changes the security mode to Permissive Security. Permissive Security uses the same "global" digital signature for macOS as the above Reduced Security option, in order to allow running software which is not the latest version. Thus anything other than the latest software therefore may have security vulnerabilities. At a high level, Permissive Security allows configuration options to be set to not require all software to be digitally signed. This can allow users who are not part of the Apple Developer program to still be able to introduce their own software into their system. Additionally, especially dangerous security downgrades may be restricted to Permissive Security, and only available via CLI tools for power users rather than GUIs. Passing this option will explicitly recreate the LocalPolicy from scratch, (i.e. it does not preserve any existing security policy options) and only the options specified via this tool will exist in the output local policy.

It sounds like Apple left the boot loader unlocked on these systems, just not by default.

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