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Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

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Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#311

Post by socialdemocrat » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:44 AM UTC

BillinghamJ wrote: post #174

raphaelj wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is most probably more linked to Java/Kotlin vs Objective-C/Swift. Want an array of 1000 objects in Java ? You'll endup with 1001 allocations and 1000 pointers.

Pretty sure you'll end up with exactly the same in an NSArray? ObjC is excellent but it's not doing anything fundamentally magic there

Big difference is that Objective-C is a superset of C. Any Objective-C developer worth his/her salt will drop down to C code when you need to optimize. The object-oriented parts of Objective-C are way slower than Java. But the reason Objective-C programs can still outcompete Java programs is that you have the opportunity to pick hotspots and optimize the hell out of them using C code.

Object-oriented programs in Objective-C are written in a very different fashion from Java programs. Java programs tend to have very fine granularity on their objects. Objective-C programs tend to have interfaces which are bulkier, and larger objects.

That is partly why you can have a high performance 3D API like Metal written in a language such as Objective-C which has very slow method dispatch. It works because the granularity of the objects have been designed with that in mind.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#312

Post by SulfurHexaFluri » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:44 AM UTC

FroshKiller wrote: post #88

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…

With so many projects in need of changes to work on the M1, it sounds like it's more than ready for developers.

Ready for macos app devs. Not ready for web devs / dev ops / etc

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#313

Post by jolux » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:44 AM UTC

recursive wrote: post #201

jolux wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emoji are part of the OS because they’re frequently displayed on websites and in applications, so the system font needs to support them to render them correctly.

So does MacOS require an operating system update to get a new font?

Fonts are software.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#314

Post by alwillis » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:44 AM UTC

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.

Letting users skin the OS would be a better choice.

There's a huge amount of skinning going on with iOS 14 now [1].

[1]: https://mashable.com/article/how-to-customize-ios14-home-scr...

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#315

Post by IggleSniggle » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

pcr910303 wrote: post #133

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…

While I won’t go that far, arguing that macOS with a Windows 95 UI is a good idea, I do agree that Big Sur’s current UI is a mess. Traditional macOS users valued the Mac user interface deeply, and IMO that was why while iOS 7 got a big refresh, macOS got a much smaller one, only with flatness refinements. Big Sur feels like the iOS 7 for the Mac, and I’m very sad that I’ll have to wait at least 4~5 years to see the n…

This is actually how I feel about modern iOS too. Why is it a swipe there, a modal there...none of it has a rhyme or reason that makes sense to me. Ok, to get what I want here, do I need to force push, swipe, or tap some icon somewhere? There’s no consistency, everything is hidden, and each little thing to use the OS better is a “trick.”

On my personal iPhone, you swipe from the bottom to get Control Center, and on my work iPhone, you swipe from the top corner. If you want to send the output of one program to the input of another, you click share, move past a bunch of Contacts and Airdrop etc that I don’t think I’ve ever used in this way, swipe left/right to find an app, don’t find it, and either need to click an “Add” or “Other” button OR you need to swipe further down to click More..., until you can select thing you actually want.

I have so many gripes with the whole system. I almost believe that they are trying to make the thing harder to use so that they can create a dark-pattern around feeling a sense of mastery...but when I was trying to walk an elderly relative through the menus over the phone, it became especially obvious just much specialized knowledge the iPhone requires in order to do the very most basic of things, and almost NONE of it is discoverable.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#316

Post by musicale » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

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…

> Docker doesn’t work

"Docker" on macOS runs in a Linux VM under Xhyve iirc.

I imagine they will make an ARM version but your x86 images are probably toast unless you can emulate them somehow.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#317

Post by rangewookie » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

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.

I did this test last night with my buddy's 6K RED RAW footage. I could play 6K realtime at 1/4 quality, while my fully loaded MBP with i7 + 32GB of ram could only playback at 1/8 quality. Keep in mind real editors NEVER edit raw footage, they use proxies.

The really impressive part was that the mac mini did NOT spin up the fan during playback, completely silent. The i7 Macbook Pro sounded like a jet turbine spinning up within 30 seconds. Awesome.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#318

Post by Shish2k » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

rowls66 wrote: post #254

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…

The bit about reference counting being the reason that Macs and iOS devices get better performance with less ram makes no sense. As a memory management strategy, reference counting will always use more ram because a reference count must be stored with every object in the system. Storing all of those reference counts requires memory. A reference counting strategy would be more efficient in processor utilization compar…

> reference counting will always use more ram because a reference count must be stored

True, reference counting stores references… but garbage collection stores garbage, which is typically bigger than references :)

(Unless you’re thinking of a language where the GC gets run after every instruction - but I’m not aware of any that do that, all the ones I know of run periodically which gives garbage time to build up)

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#319

Post by ben-schaaf » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:46 AM UTC

kllrnohj wrote: post #272

anigbrowl wrote: post #228

For those of us who just don't where MacOS is concerned, what are the prospects for Linux on an M1?

Probably not very good, but the recent Ryzen offerings are still pretty strong, as is the very newest Intel stuff. See for example the 4900HS & 4800U on this Anandtech chart comparing spec2017 vs. the M1: https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph16252/119365.png That's basically just sorted by power consumption. 4900HS is the most power used & fastest, followed by the ~22W M1 with all 8 cores loaded, then the 15W 480…

And the thing to remember here is that the 4900HS and 4800U aren't just a process node behind, they're 2 full generations behind. Given the gains from Zen 3 it looks like AMD is in a good position to leapfrog the M1 with the next product cycle, not to mention gains from 5nm in the cycle after that.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#320

Post by jolux » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:46 AM UTC

nbzso wrote: post #204

jolux wrote: 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.

Yep, as a consumer I completely agree, this is firs iteration we will see better (may be). As a UI/UX designer I am hardwired to think in layers of interaction (created ergonomically by mouse pointer), flow and graphical representation. Look in broad term has an emotional impact and is a sum of lot of elements (lines, colors, whitespaces, iconography, animation etc.). But when we are speaking about interface - functi…

I don’t see much breakdown of the desktop paradigm from a usability perspective. Targets are larger and things are rounded off, but is that really as catastrophic as you suggest? I don’t have formal design training but I find it fascinating.

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