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M1 Macs Review

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Re: M1 Macs Review

#291

Post by CraigJPerry »

EricE wrote: post #265
Joeri wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder whether we need to reset expectations on memory amounts. From seeing the reviews where they launch every application installed on the 8gb air and it remains smooth I am suspecting that the unified memory and optimized storage interface means that for M1 macs 8 gb behaves like 16 gb on intel cpu’s.

Just remember that if your machine needs to swap because of low RAM you are now writing to your SSD. The permanently soldered in SSD that has a finite amount of writes. Saving $200 on RAM up front could get wiped out if you kill your SSD prematurely with constant, heavy swapping. Here I see the fast SSD speed as a negative - making it painless to do something inherently dangerous towards the lifespan of your SSD.

Would these first gen ARM chips not be obsolete by a few years before wearing out the SSD?

The SSDs from the previous gen are rated for something like 40Gb writes per day for 40 years i think.

I’d guess the battery will fail first, then the keyboard or screen hinge, then the logic board. But thats a pure guess.

I reckon the biggest risk is that all in one logic board, anything fails and you lose your HDD.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#292

Post by mthoms »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #283
sg47 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they still ship these Airs with 720p webcams from the 2000s? I have a 2020 Macbook Air that has a terrible webcam.

Yeah and the low light performance isn’t great either

I have a feeling an improved webcam (and FaceID) will be one of the features Apple will use to distinguish their forthcoming higher end MBP's.

Surely, they won't keep using the same aging technology. At least I hope not.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#293

Post by Joeri »

neogodless wrote: post #64
jstummbillig wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are looking at, tho, is not the pure hardware perspective, but the pure hardware numbers perspective, which excludes ergonomics, design, build quality and hardware/software integration as well as stuff like speakers and screens which might not be comparable because no other vendor does them exactly alike. I always found this strange, when looking at personal computers – or, in fact, most anything in life. As…

First, I appreciate the experience differential between macOS, Windows and Linux. I've enjoyed each, and have no major complaints about any. With the right hardware, I've really enjoyed installing and using Linux, while I struggle when drivers for networking have to be procured - I'm not experienced enough in that area to figure it out (or rather, I'm not motivated enough.) For me, Windows and macOS alike just work a…

What was likely meant by experience is things like the display (P3 retina 3K in the macbook air), the trackpad (still unmatched in any other device), the metal housing that is very refined and doesn’t flex at all, ...

In my experience if you want the level of physical build quality of a macbook, you end up in the price range of a macbook.

Windows vs macos vs linux, that is personal preference. I use all three and they all serve their roles well. I do find that windows and linux require more configuration and maintenance, but YMMV.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#294

Post by PopsiclePete »

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?

That's Electron for ya. We decided that javascript was thew ay to write cross-OS UI's. God help us.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#295

Post by jimnotgym »

EricE wrote: post #282
jimnotgym wrote: post #240

It is funny to read the comments full of excitement. To me the M1 thing fills me with dread. To me I just see problems for the IT team. I already know our corporate VPN doesn't run on Big Sur. I have no hope for the monitoring app, or the Antivirus. Apple is such a pain for corporate IT

Corporate IT is often an even bigger pain for it's users since things like VPNs are often bought to meet the need of Corporate IT and not the users :p

Yes, popular meme.

However I have a bunch of users who suddenly upped and left the office in April and still needed access to in house resources, fileshares, intranet, reporting services. Things we haven't finished moving to the cloud. Perhaps you can tell me how else I should do that overnight without a VPN?

Everyone elses job looks so easy doesn't it

Re: M1 Macs Review

#296

Post by alwillis »

jeromenerf wrote: post #254

This is refreshing to see competition actually deliver better products instead of just cutting costs. The technical innovation has only marginal value for me and I would love the same soc on a rpi like device, for home servers. Time will tell. Now, as a Linux guy, I’ll just wait until innovation turns commodity, having no interest in macOS whatsoever.

Now, as a Linux guy, I’ll just wait until innovation turns commodity, having no interest in macOS whatsoever.

You may have a long wait.

Apple has been killing Qualcomm and the other ARM licensees in performance for years. Apple shipped the first 64-bit ARM processor at least a year before Qualcomm could do it.

It took 10-years of designing their own ARM SoCs to get to the point of being able to produce the M1.

Apple showed Debian running in a VM on a prototype 6 months ago, so we know that's coming. There's a decent chance Linux running in a VM (or native Docker when that comes) will be much faster than Linux running on similarly priced Intel/AMD hardware.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#297

Post by Joeri »

mtgx wrote: post #21
mojzu wrote: post #6

Although I’m definitely not convinced enough to make the jump yet, those emulation benchmarks are impressive (and seem to also apply somewhat to general use based on another review I read). Running x86 code faster than native equivalents, using an ARM chip, that will probably be consuming significantly less power doing it is something I did not expect to see in gen 1 of this switch.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is mainly because Apple does mostly translation, while Windows on Arm is pure emulation. This combined with the fact that Arm-based Windows PCs have mostly used mobile chips not optimized for the desktop use-case and form factor, is why the new Arm-based Macbooks leave any Arm-based Windows PCs in the dust in terms of performance.

Windows on ARM also runs x86 apps via translation, but in their marketing materials they call it emulation.

x86 emulation works by compiling blocks of x86 instructions into ARM64 instructions with optimizations to improve performance. A service caches these translated blocks of code to reduce the overhead of instruction translation and allow for optimization when the code runs again.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on...

Re: M1 Macs Review

#298

Post by SubjectToChange »

EricE wrote: post #270
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.…

"Intel caters to the entire market (one the M1 just noticeably shrunk) with myriad integrators, workloads, and users, and each has different concerns and priorities making accelerated algorithm blocks useless to some and not-fast-enough for others." Which is why even if Intel does manage to solve their process problems, they are not out of the woods yet. As you point out Apple's per core performance is impressive, bu…

As you point out Apple's per core performance is impressive, but their ability to customize their hardware to optimize very specific compute tasks like the nsobject release example or floating for Javascript will be a lot harder to convince off the self/least common denominator parts like x86 processors have traditionally been.

The improvement in retaining and releasing NSObjects is mostly due to Arm's weaker memory model. And javascript specific instructions like FJCVTZS are available for anyone designing Arm cores. Also, IIRC, FJCVTZS was added to more closely match the way x86 handles floating point numbers because that is what Javascript was designed to target.

But if it did turn out to be on the right side of the cost/benefit equation now instead of having to convince multiple parties it's a good idea, at worst Apple just has to convince a few internal divisions to work together.

The problem is that Apple does what they want at their discretion. You need them, but that don't need you. Whereas hardware manufactures are usually quite sensitive to customer needs. We've already seen how this plays out with Apple's professional software products like Shake or Final Cut.

Not to downplay Apple's accomplishment, after all nobody expected them to be this competitive. But people are getting caught up in the hype.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#299

Post by niea_11 »

QuotedForTruth wrote: post #250
niea_11 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more fair to say comparing a bmw 3 series and a toyota supra. Both are good cars but one is known for its premium finish and quality, and the other for the customization possibilities you can have. :)

This is a funny comparison since BMW actually builds the Supra. Its basically a rebranded Z4. https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparison-test/a310046...

thanks for the link I didn't know that :D.

I'm not a car enthusiast, but the supra is the first car that came to my mind when I read the parent comment because I saw a lot of youtube videos with supras from the 90s (modified and) producing a lot of power.

Like this one [1], I think the car in the video is a 1999 model and stock it produces at most 325hp (info from wikipedia).

1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvh2HYIyBAs

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