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M1 Macs Review

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Re: M1 Macs Review

#271

Post by officeplant »

alimbada wrote: post #126
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…

What kind of gaming are we talking about?

Blizzard already released ARM64 builds of WoW. More than likely D3 and Starcraft 2 as well. They were already fantastic supporters of the metal API so I imagine it was an easy transition for them.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#272

Post by Joeri »

ActorNightly wrote: post #214
yhersk0vitz wrote: post #16

I feel like this may the first time that Macbooks might actually be worth their premium from a purely hardware perspective. Before people jump on this, I mean that for example the previous Intel MB Pro with i5 would cost like $1,500, which is far more than almost any windows laptop running the same specs.

Has there been any sort of long term load tests? I feel like the chassis limitations are going to result in thermal throttling compared to similar performance laptops with actual cooling design. Even if it doesn't thermal throttle, one of my main complaints with Macbooks is that you can't actually use them in your lap cause they get uncomfortably hot. As for being worth it, wait till the next gen mobile chips in 2021…

The m1 macbook air reviews all say they don’t get hot, no matter what you throw at them, and they at most throttle down 15%. The macbook pro and mini stay cool and quiet and do not throttle, regardless of the workload. Any performance expectations you have from macs before the transition you should set aside, these are entirely new and come with very different characteristics.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#273

Post by EricE »

Lio wrote: post #242
BooneJS wrote: post #79

“New Intel chips were often delayed and offered only small improvements over previous generations.” As noted on HN and elsewhere, Intel’s struggle has been in manufacturing. They minimized risk (“got lazy”) when Moore’s Law reigned and their fabs were 1-2 generations ahead of everyone else, but have since squeezed every last architectural drop out of 14nm. Put Tiger Lake on TSMC 5nm and a lot of M1’s lead goes away.…

Interestingly, Intel could also control the whole stack. They make NUC hardware[1] and Intel Clear Linux[2]. They could tune that stack for a new purpose designed chip... if they wanted to, but it seems unlikely. 1. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits... 2. https://clearlinux.org/

They could. Still wouldn't run 90% of the software I use daily.

You need ALL the pieces of a puzzle to compete.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#274

Post by m_mueller »

lostlogin wrote: post #213
mattkevan wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same way my car beeps to remind me I’ve left the lights on, my MacBook buzzes to remind me I’ve still got Microsoft Teams open.

There is something wrong with Teams. As well as it’s resource hogging, it tries to connect to all my SMB shares (even if they are disconnected) when I open the app. Why is it doing this?

Microsoft programs get home sick and want to see some familiar file share protocol?

Re: M1 Macs Review

#275

Post by mikechen233 »

klelatti wrote: post #237
mikechen233 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found say intel not just failed in the process nodes. It also failed to see the rise of the dedicated fab (tsmc) and fabless business model as a more efficient model. Intel also failed at innovating on lower power designs and the gpu. Even at 14nm, there are so much that could be done to improve igpu performance. From color compression, to the more efficient shader array. The nintendo switch runs Nvidia tegra x1. I…

Feels like execution rather than strategy: they've tried at mobile, gpus, foundry etc - the right calls - but just haven't delivered. Apple / AMD / TSMC have executed much better.

I feel is both. Also a good strategist would have made sure whatever plan and vision you have is also going to be executed well. A strategy that didn't end up to be executed well is a failed strategy.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#276

Post by officeplant »

alberth wrote: post #197
nanna wrote: post #193

A concern in my University department is that some of the FOSS/small scale software we teach on won't work on our students' shiny new M1 Macs. Should we be worried?

I'd say the bigger concern is long term, will Apple even ALLOW you to even run non-App store software? E.g. FOSS On iOS they don't. And with this new direction of macOS & ARM, it's not out of the question the same will happen on the desktop. EDIT: why the downvotes? Seriously - what's wrong with what I said ... I'm genuinely curious.

>why the downvotes?

Probably because currently MacOS just has a slightly more nagging version of Window's UAC when it comes to unsigned software.

Saying that they will disable it holds about the same amount of weight as saying Microsoft will make Windows Win10 S mode only. Is it possible? Maybe, but neither company is going to shoot themselves in the foot like that in the current market.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#277

Post by Lio »

EricE wrote: post #273
Lio wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, Intel could also control the whole stack. They make NUC hardware[1] and Intel Clear Linux[2]. They could tune that stack for a new purpose designed chip... if they wanted to, but it seems unlikely. 1. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits... 2. https://clearlinux.org/

They could. Still wouldn't run 90% of the software I use daily. You need ALL the pieces of a puzzle to compete.

Horses for courses I guess.

Even when I'm on a Mac almost everything I do is either in browser or in a terminal.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#278

Post by GeekyBear »

wil421 wrote: post #171
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…

How can you tell your battery life if you’ve only had your Mac one day?

Some of the reviews have mentioned what running a particular heavy workload reduced their charge level by.

>After a single build of WebKit, the M1 MacBook Pro had a massive 91% of its battery left. I tried multiple tests here and I could have easily run a full build of WebKit 8-9 times on one charge of the M1 MacBook’s battery.

In comparison, I could have gotten through about 3 on the [Intel] 16” and the 13” [Intel] 2020 model only had one go in it.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro...

Re: M1 Macs Review

#279

Post by alwillis »

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…

Macos ships with some interpreters pre-installed as part of BigSur, including Ruby, Python and Perl. And most source distributions should just compile, but my guess is that it will be buggy given the arch + os combination is novel.

Everything at the Unix level Apple ships is already a universal binary, including Ruby, Python, etc. For example, zsh (and bash) run natively on the M1:

    file /bin/zsh

    /bin/zsh: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures: [x86_64:Mach-O 64-bit
      executable x86_64] [arm64e:Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64e]
    /bin/zsh (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
    /bin/zsh (for architecture arm64e): Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64e

Re: M1 Macs Review

#280

Post by ogre_codes »

mekster wrote: post #231
rsanheim wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does it mean you can no longer easily tell if a process has gone crazy and takes high CPU usage without a fan and you also can't even feel the slow down.

I was wondering something similar. VSCode tends to fly off the handle every once in a while and the only way I notice currently is a subtle lagging and the fan spinning up.

Though recently I switched back to VIM so perhaps this won't be an issue anymore.

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