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M1 Macs Review

sixcolors.com

311–320 of 391 posts

Re: M1 Macs Review

#311

Steve Jobs would be proud. I imagine Apple didn't say anything like that, but I really think he would be stoked with this, especially a cooler computer (no fan) and a leg up all competitors.

I wouldn't be surprised if he planned this. Lisa Sue said she plans 10 years out in advance regularly, because building up hardware takes that long.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#312
post #48
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.

It's interesting you say "not convinced", curious what you are skeptical of? I'm not upgrading because I just bought a 16" Mbpro 2 months ago, but I'm more than convinced this new architecture is the real deal. Unfortunately for me my 6 year old MacBook just died and I have to have something for work.

Usually gen 2 hardware is the ideal time to buy. It might be a few years before we get a gen 2 MBP, so imo no worries.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#313

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…

>the general lack of Mac support in games combined with the removal of 32-bit support in Catalina mean, you're not exactly spoiled for choice.

There are people already running 32-bit windows apps through Wine on the M1. When there is a will there is a way.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#314
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

Unpardonable in the age of covid. And I'm tired of trying out no name webcams from Amazon and hooking them with dongles and they barely stay on top of the monitor.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#315

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…

> Much faster

We can only hope so. I would love to run Linux on my iPad (which is not m1 of course). I would be sad to use macOS though. That’s all early thoughts.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#316
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ You would be right to say that Intel couldn’t make the M1. It’s not because Intel’s fabs are struggling or Apple has found tricks no one else in the world knows about. It’s because Apple controls the entire software stack and therefore knows what they need on the chip. Intel caters to the entire market (one the M1 just noticeably shrunk) with myriad integrators, workloads, and users, and each has different concerns…

It’s by the rest of the industry figuring out how to collaborate on delivering similar gains without vertical integration. This is one of the smartest things I've seen on HN in a long time. This is exactly what has to happen if the other companies don't want Apple to eat their lunch.

The thing is... doesn't Samsung already do this with their Exynos chips? And even with Qualcomm, they must already build them with Android (even a particular phone) in mind, right? Yet somehow the A14 is faster than a Snapdragon 865. I think strategically if Exynos put pressure on Qualcomm in a nontrivial way (e.g. Samsung switched entirely, and started selling Exynos chips to their competitors) that would change the game. Maybe the fab needs to be spun out of Samsung, just as Intel's fabs might be spun out as well.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#317
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just hope they someday put in a good GPU. Something comparable to an Nvidia 3060 would be great. The GPU in the M1 is perfectly good for the power targets it's trying to hit. Either fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, Apple is unlikely to be able to do with the GPU what they did with the CPU. That is, there's no legacy in either Nvidia nor AMD's GPUs that Apple can cut out to get wins. An…

What gpu offers the same power efficiency as the one in the m1? Apple is matching the 75w 1050ti with less than 5w of power. The 3060ti is a 200w gpu, which is 40x the power draw of the gpu in the m1, but it is only 5x the performance. Gpu’s might not scale linearly, but it may very well be the case that apple will blow us away when they ship their high end gpu’s.

I can’t wait to see Apple’s high-end GPU configurations. In either laptop or desktop form factor.

Efficiency is cool. (heh) But if I need X then a highly efficient X/5 still doesn’t deliver X.

I doubt Apple will ever sacrifice their overly thin MacBook ergonomics for power. But I’m hoping they max out their desktop form factor.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#318
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A battery life of 4 hours doesn't sound okay, my 2013 MBP lasts longer (original battery).

I have a late 2019 16" MBP - the battery life is very poor. 4hrs is pushing it.

Yeah I have same-ish battery life. I pretty much live inside Chrome + VSCode though. Bare Node dev server, no Docker.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

_Do you think God stays in heaven because He, too, lives in fear of what He’s created?_

Re: M1 Macs Review

#320
post #263
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also hate the difference in cmd, alt and ctrl keys from other keyboards. It's a matter of habit, and super easy to configure from the keyboard preferences in macOs. The trade-off is that ctrl is almost exclusively used for unix-y thing, and all the usual GUI-y things use Cmd. Using a shell is just painful for me in anything other than macOS for that reason alone. Incidentally, because of the pervasive support for…

> Using a shell is just painful for me in anything other than macOS for that reason alone. On Linux at least you can use Ctrl-Shift-x, Ctrl-Shift-c and Ctrl-Shift-v for cut, copy and paste in the terminal. So again it's just a case of getting use to the shortcut differences. On macOS Del can also be found on fn-Backspace and I often remap the right Alt key to Ctrl. It's pretty easy to adapt to either with a little ti…

The point is that it’s just annoying that the terminal is a special application that has its own shortcuts for everything. I could use shift-ins or ctrl-ins too — but I don’t want to. I want the terminal to behave like any other application.
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