51–60 of 364 posts
I don't understand why exerting better control over hardware + software would mean we are being duped. A more cohesive experience provided by Apple can only be a win for them and their customers.
> At some point in the not too distant future, old x86 applications will cease to run on Macs, as emulation support won’t run forever One thing I can credit Android some, and Windows a lot (even 10 with all its manifold privacy and user-hostility problems) with is that they are backwards compatible. exceptions to every rule, etc., but I can run all old versions of Android apps on an Android 11 phone, same for Windows…
True, that's a good thing, but that's also where you get a lot of the cruft that slows things down. For example Apple no longer has to support OpenGL and it can just cut out relevant hardware on the SoC level, leaving more room for other things. On the smartphone front, Qualcomm can't do that, since it sells its chips to a broad base that have variable requirements. I guess it's a tradeoff.
Just for everyone who is scared by this statement - macOS on Apple Silicon still supports OpenGL and OpenCL, but it is emulated on top of Metal now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is in extremely bad taste—not to mention ludicrously inaccurate—to compare your premium laptop ecosystem options with chattel slavery.
Aren't Apple devices assembled in sweatshops? The comparison might be more accurate than intended.
It was a masterclass in duping really. Step 1. Design the enclosure/thermals for a much lower TDP ARM chip, causing the Intel chips to thermal throttle and run hot as possible burning your lap and roasting your palms for years Step 2. Introduce the new powerful ARM chip which now runs much cooler and faster in the same enclosure Step 3. Profit! Worked on me, I just ordered mine
That would hold water if people only compared it to intel Macs. Last I saw, most decent reviews compared it also to other mobile intel processors, so who exactly is in the group that's duping you?
It was a masterclass in duping really. Step 1. Design the enclosure/thermals for a much lower TDP ARM chip, causing the Intel chips to thermal throttle and run hot as possible burning your lap and roasting your palms for years Step 2. Introduce the new powerful ARM chip which now runs much cooler and faster in the same enclosure Step 3. Profit! Worked on me, I just ordered mine
How is that a dupe? A dupe would be if the M1 chip was worse than Intel. If Apple can design a chip for those constraints and Intel can't, it's Intel's fault and problem
> Don’t be duped by performance, Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control Yes. That's the biggest benefit, and another reason I'm buying it (on top of great performance for my NLE apps). I want the Mac to be it's own platform, and be under Apple's control and vision. If it's also made foul-proof and air-tight, so much the better. I don't want another lowest common denominator OS converging on the same point.…
The problems with this are more societal ones than technical or practical: It is impossible, for example, to install most popular apps for macOS without identifying yourself to Apple (and by extension the US government and military intelligence). You can't use the App Store (even for free apps) without an Apple ID, and you can't get an Apple ID without a phone number. (In many countries, you can't get a phone number…
For those kind of problems, I agree. But I think they should be solved in the political and legal level, not some technical fix.
If you can't trust the government, if the government wants increasingly more data, the government should be curbed by protests, voting, and so on. The apps not talking to the vendor is just a band-aid. They can still get your moves from your phone, your searches from Google, and so on.
And, in any case, Tor is not a substitute for democracy.
>It builds a world in which it is impossible to easily build or distribute tools that the state really doesn't want distributed or used, because Apple is too large to deny them their demands.
We shouldn't allow the state to have a say on this, like we shouldn't allow censorship.
(Of course, many tech people, are all ok for censorship, as long as it happens to the right, that is bad, guys, e.g. those peddling "fake news" -- with the state or the Zuck guaranteeing for them what are "real news", like the WMDs and other establishment truths).
> Don’t be duped by performance, Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control Yes. That's the biggest benefit, and another reason I'm buying it (on top of great performance for my NLE apps). I want the Mac to be it's own platform, and be under Apple's control and vision. If it's also made foul-proof and air-tight, so much the better. I don't want another lowest common denominator OS converging on the same point.…
> Don’t be duped by performance, Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control Yes. That's the biggest benefit, and another reason I'm buying it (on top of great performance for my NLE apps). I want the Mac to be it's own platform, and be under Apple's control and vision. If it's also made foul-proof and air-tight, so much the better. I don't want another lowest common denominator OS converging on the same point.…
The problems with this are more societal ones than technical or practical: It is impossible, for example, to install most popular apps for macOS without identifying yourself to Apple (and by extension the US government and military intelligence). You can't use the App Store (even for free apps) without an Apple ID, and you can't get an Apple ID without a phone number. (In many countries, you can't get a phone number…
Now, it is worth giving consideration to the possibility that Macs will become so much better than the competition that they could become like iPhones, and develop more of a stranglehold over people's lives.
As it stands now, and in the immediate future, I don't see this as a valid concern. There are just too many good alternatives, if your concerns are limited to the above.
(now, I wish open hardware became way more prevalent -- not PC open, but open source with libre firmware. I'm concerned that window is permanently closing, as the market is consolidating on very literal monopolies with highly restricted firmware. Almost every company I'm aware of is now using Synopsys IP for their DDR4 PHY trainer -- a CPU which has direct access to memory, and writable, signed, encrypted firmware...)
Never owned an Apple product and generally don't have too great of an opinion of this ecosystem. But the M1 MacBook Air is perhaps the first Apple product that really caught my attention. A fan-less (without overheating issues) ultrabook with crazy batter life outperforming every comparable offering out there for $1,000. Pretty much the best deal on the market, unless you have specific issues with it. Which in my cas…
+1.
> Pretty much the best deal on the market, unless you have specific issues with it.
For example, if you try Linux or BSD, and you'll find none of the peripherals works, and the community reverse engineering efforts will take years before getting basic functionality, and even then, the battery will only last for 2 hours and nobody besides Apple knows how exactly the power management mechanism works, thus PM will forever be broken. I learned my lesson the hard way on Windows tablets.
There was a time when "non-x86" is automatically developer/hacking-friendly (ancient examples are SPARC, MIPS, and those ARM Chromebooks were probably the last examples...), now the landscape has changed. I always want to use a non-x86 machine as my desktop, but perhaps it's time to abandon this idea.
Always one guy who shouts about control and submission. Don't like it don't buy it?
"I like my polluting car, if you don't, don't buy one"
"I like my t-shirt that has been manufactured with slave labour, if you don't, don't buy one"
Can we stop with this naive "Let me buy one, if you don't like it don't buy it" ?
This puts your immediate personal comfort over the common future of computing, technology, freedom, privacy, economy and more.