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Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

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Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#301

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…

> 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…

I think Apple continues to push the manufacturing precision of their devices. Some of the bezel gaps and tolerances are impossibly precise and tight. That's a positive change on the axis of luxury.

There is an orthogonal axis - which is functionalism. You can continue to make products that are both luxurious and functional. See Olivetti (Sottsass), Braun (Rams), Herman Miller, Vitra, USM, etc. I think they are pretty fashionable products if we considered their popularity and some of them are in MoMA as iconic designs. Apple seems to be going negative on the axis of functionlism past few years. What if I told you that you don't need to make something look ugly to make it functional, utilitarian and usable?

I think they can make UI very marketable + functional if they hired the right folks. In fact, Apple is going back to skeumorphism (hey, its called neuomorphic UI now). Have you seen the battery icon? This kind of trend chasing without any purpose is my main gripe. Also, the windows 95 comment was sort of tongue-in-cheek to exemplify how bloated modern operating systems have become.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#302

This is not only Apple. All modern mobile ARM processors, ones that are used in Androids, too, they all are far ahead of Intel in TDP to performance ratio, almost by order of magnitude. Just make bigger ARM chips with more high-perf cores, and they will destroy Intel.

Not even close to true. Apple's ARM processors are unlike anyone else's, and everyone else's ARM processors are not particularly impressive. The power/performance isn't really there, and scaling performance up is not linear, either. You can't just "make it bigger" and retain the same power/performance ratio you had. The 1W power draw that the 'big' ARM cores target, like the Cortex-A78, isn't even that special. You c…

It's not far, really.

Android phones with Qualcom Snapdragon 865 scores better than an Intel i7 7700HQ (4 cores, 8 threads) on Geekbench on multi-core and ties on single core while using a magnitude less energy.

While this i7 model is not new, it's not the "U" low voltage processor version.

I could see Qualcom getting fancy and trying to scale their processors at 5nm.

https://browser.geekbench.com/android_devices/oneplus-8

https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-core-i7-7700h...

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#303

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…

> 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…

Agreed. I wrote a whole post on Apple and fashion. I'm sympathetic to the complaints about Apple's obsession with aesthetics, but the obsession is certainly motivated by what people want.

https://horriblyunderqualified.com/posts/apple-and-fashion/

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#305
post #190
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh hey another emacs user! You can turn off all the telemetry in macOS and they ask you if you want it on when you setup the computer. Agree to disagree on Big Sur, I love the new look. Keep in mind they’re calling it macOS 11, so there are probably bigger and less superficial changes down the road.

> You can turn off all the telemetry in macOS and they ask you if you want it on when you setup the computer. That's false. You can turn off OS analytics but there is tons of telemetry built into almost every Apple app, separate from that, that you cannot disable. It tells you about it on first app launch. Open Maps, for example, and it will tell you about the unique, rotating identifier it uses to track your searche…

They’re working on the OCSP issue and I would say it’s more of a disclosure bug than telemetry, which implies intent. You’re right about Maps but you’re saying it’s “almost every app,” do you know of others? Because I’m pretty sure it’s not “almost every app,” and moreover in Maps it’s required to deliver the functionality, so I’m also not sure I would call it telemetry.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#306
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brew is only slightly a mess, in my experience. I've installed brew both in the historical /usr/local location as well as the future home of /opt/homebrew. I then created these two aliases: alias armbrew="/opt/homebrew/bin/brew" alias intbrew="arch -x86_64 /usr/local/bin/brew" My PATH selects for programs installed in the /opt/homebrew location first and then /usr/local. I try to install with the ARM version first wi…

Running iTerm/Terminal in Rosetta allows it to work without issue, it's the best solution until more packages work natively under ARM. Duplicate iTerm.app, right click & "Get Info", check "Open in Rosetta". Now install homebrew how you would on an Intel Mac and everything will work.

This certainly works but then everything I install runs in Rosetta2. I'd prefer to run as much native as possible which is what my "two brew" solution gives me.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#307

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 worke…

Have been on big sur for a week now and I don't see the issue either. Things like the control center are a huge addition and mostly the ipad like changes were to border radii and colors unlike the windows 8 disaster.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#309

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…

Run an open source OS if you don't want stuff ripped out from underneath you.

Preferably one like gentoo or alpine.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The animations on the iPhone are what made me return to Android. On iPhones, you can only "reduce motion", which still has the "moving through molasses" feeling, replacing them with a fade in/out. Can you truly disable most animations in MacOS, or are they simply replaced with fade in/out animations?

Counter point: I only just noticed my iPhone animates things after I read this comment and went to find some.

Animations used to be ~2x slower, /that/ was painful. It's much better now, though I could go with another 2x speedup personally.
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