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Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

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Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#221

Post by redelbee »

jrockway wrote: post #196
redelbee wrote: post #69

I have an iPad Pro with keyboard and a 15-inch MacBook Pro I got when my previous MacBook Air couldn’t handle the video editing I was dabbling in. I desperately want one machine (and probably in the iPad form factor) but I don’t know if Apple is ever going to get me there. What say you HN? Is there a future where I can have a single machine? Any other suggestions for what I can do about it today? I’ve test driven Sur…

What is stopping you from selling your iPad and having a single machine right now? I have personally avoided laptops for years because I hate managing more than one machine. The one time a year I need my laptop, it's out of commission for a day while updates install or whatever. For that reason, I have a desktop and take an iPad Pro when I'm going to be away from home. The iPad is no computer replacement, but it can…

That’s a good question.

I use the iPad for some work (editing photos, email, etc) but mostly I use it for entertainment. I’m using it now for web browsing, I watch TV/movies on it as I don’t have a TV and don’t always want to use my projector/screen setup, and I do some light gaming on it occasionally.

The laptop is for work, which is photo editing (again) video editing, design work, word processing, light web development, and various other business needs (accounting, spreadsheets, etc).

I’ve tried to switch to iPad only so I don’t have to cut out entertainment completely but almost everything work related is slower and more annoying on the iPad. So I end up with both.

As another commenter above mentioned if the iPad ran OSX I would probably just have the iPad, but here we are.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#222

Post by redelbee »

chrisabrams wrote: post #207
redelbee wrote: post #69

I have an iPad Pro with keyboard and a 15-inch MacBook Pro I got when my previous MacBook Air couldn’t handle the video editing I was dabbling in. I desperately want one machine (and probably in the iPad form factor) but I don’t know if Apple is ever going to get me there. What say you HN? Is there a future where I can have a single machine? Any other suggestions for what I can do about it today? I’ve test driven Sur…

I remember how disappointed I was when the iPad 1 came out and it didn’t run OS X...some of us have wanted an OS X tablet for 20+ years... I really do think that a 13 or 15 inch MacBook Pro 2 in 1 like the Dell xps would sell pretty well... [edit] fixed spell check

Agreed! I seem to remember a company that was hacking up MacBooks to make them into touch screens at one point and I totally thought that was the inevitable future we’d be living in. Maybe it’s still in the future, but I’m tired of waiting.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#223

Post by zakki »

RachelF wrote: post #218
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stop changing the UI like you’re working at Hermès. It’s not fashion. Of course it is. Our phones are intimately close to us. Physically, cognitively, socially and even emotionally. They may be the most widely-owned intimately-connected object humans have ever invented outside religion. Our computers don't occupy as close of a niche. But they're in a similar space. I agree with your observation that the new OS feel…

But one can choose to ignore fashion and wear comfortable clothes. Apple has chosen to make everyone live in its crazy world. Letting users skin the OS would be a better choice.

Usual answer is: go buy other vendor product.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#224

Post by kllrnohj »

gameswithgo wrote: post #144
darren_ wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This quote doesn’t really cover why M1 macs are more efficient with less ram than intel macs? You’ve got a memory budget, it’s likely broadly the same on both platforms, the speed at which your retains/releases happen isn’t going to be the issue. it’s not like intel macs use GC where m1 uses RC. (It explains why iOS does better with less ram than android, but the quote is specifically claiming this as a reason for 8G…

yeah its a bit of a stretch. to the extent that macos apps use garbage collection less than pc apps it would need less ram. but they are kinda hopping around a macos vs android comparison which makes no sense. I think mac enthusiasts trying to imagine why a max of 8 or 16gb is ok. it is ok for most people anyway.

It also would have no difference between the outgoing Intel ones and the incoming Apple Silicon ones. Same pointer sizes, same app memory management, etc... Some fairly minor differences in overall binary sizes, so no "wins" there or anything either.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#225

Post by sooheon »

person_of_color wrote: post #160
victor106 wrote: post #109

> A task like editing 8K RAW RED video file that might have taken a $5000 machine before can now be done on a $699 Mac Mini M1 or a fan-less MacBook Air that costs $999 That’s insanely great. Maybe I am exaggerating but Apple’s M1 might be the best innovation in the tech industry in the past 5 years.

Even more than k8s?

Debatable, but for personal computing there is no contest.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#226

Post by avalys »

jrockway wrote: post #200
nojito wrote: post #90

I upgraded from a 32gb x86 machine to the 8gb macbook pro and it's downright amazing and I saved a bunch of money in the process. Apple is going to make an absolute killing on people upgrading RAM unnecessarily.

I don't understand this comment. The new M1s all have 16GB of RAM integrated with the SoC, and it can't be upgraded. If you had 32GB on your old machine and didn't need that much, that's kind of on you, right?

The M1s have 8 GB standard, 16 GB is a $200 upgrade. The parent is stating that 8 GB is actually fine and that people will be paying to upgrade to 16 GB unnecessarily.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#227

Post by matthewmacleod »

neilpanchal wrote: post #4

I just got one. I’m blown away by the speed as well. Chrome runs insanely fast! Alas, it’s not developer ready yet. Brew is a mess. Docker doesn’t work. PyCharm is WIP although can use x86 version. I was skeptical of the hype but this little laptop has made me realize how slow everything else is. Unfortunately, while the hardware has accelerated far beyond expectations, the software - specifically MacOS BigSur is a m…

The thing is, I just don’t see the problem. I upgraded from Mojave last week, noted that the UI is slightly different, and… that’s it. Everything still works fine, the UI looks a little more similar to the iPad, and I figured that was probably the main reason - since people will be running iOS apps on Macs going forward, there’s been an effort to introduce some more consistency. I find it incredibly hard to get worked up about it.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#229

Post by kllrnohj »

ytch wrote: post #193
nottorp wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like some form of GDDR instead of plain DDR. Not only faster, but I bet simultaneously accessible from both the CPU and GPU.

This reminds me that Xbox series X/PS5 use Unified GDDR for higher memory bandwidth, I'm curious if such design can help x86 catch up M1?

x86 has been doing unified memory for integrated GPUs since at least 2015. It's not a new thing, see for example https://bit-tech.net/news/tech/cpus/amd-huma-heterogeneous-u...

The reason GDDR isn't typically used for system RAM is it's higher latency & more power hungry. Like, the GDDR6 memory on a typical discreet card uses more power than the an entire M1-powered Mac Mini power hungry.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#230

Post by fomine3 »

brundolf wrote: post #25

This is fascinating: > Retain and release are tiny actions that almost all software, on all Apple platforms, does all the time. ….. The Apple Silicon system architecture is designed to make these operations as fast as possible. It’s not so much that Intel’s x86 architecture is a bad fit for Apple’s software frameworks, as that Apple Silicon is designed to be a bespoke fit for it …. retaining and releasing NSObjects i…

I can't understand why less RAM is enough specially in Apple Silicon rather than Intel. Is the argument proved?

RAM capacity is just RAM capacity. Possibly Swift-made apps uses less RAM compared to other apps, but microarchitecture shouldn't be matter.

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