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Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

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Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#641

Post by bscphil »

jolux wrote: post #175
nbzso wrote: post #77

Those of us who are long enough in UI design know what is a result of attention to detail and professional GUI. We have all used Os X not only for UNIX like core (Darwin) but for consistent UX and UI libraries. In some point in time Apple was influencing our work in really meaningful way by setting the standard (remember Apple Human Interface Guidelines pre Yosemite). For me personally Soundtrack Pro is most polished…

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.

> 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.

Agree. Hardcore Linux user (custom KDE theme) here, and I have to say that macOS 11 is easily the most aesthetically appealing desktop theme I've ever seen. Just completely mops the floor with everything else, especially the previous version of macOS. The changed margins / white space are great, colors fantastic (eerily similar to the ones I use on KDE), perfect font rendering (as always), and I really love the changes to Finder.

In terms of actual usage I have quite a few issues, of course. Requires some heavy work with Karabiner and settings changes to make it usable, in my opinion, and you still can't beat KDE because of its customizability. But in terms of pure visual appeal it's unmatched. Apple's visual design team is the best.

That said, I don't use the App Store at all (at least as far as I can help it), nor do I really use any Mac specific apps (Photos, QuickTime, iTunes, etc) since this is a development machine, so a lot of rough edges are probably invisible to me.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#642

Post by IshKebab »

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 don't think this really makes sense. How many of the benchmarks that people have been running are written in Objective-C? They're mostly hardcore graphics and maths workloads that won't be retaining and releasing many NSObjects.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#643

Post by foldr »

nojito wrote: post #215
jrockway wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Nope. Regular usage at around 17-18 gb ram. Similar workflow peaks at barely 6gb on the macbook pro.

Modern OSes and apps make aggressive opportunistic use of available memory for caching and other performance-enhancing purposes. A side effect of this is that however much RAM you put in your machine (within reasonable limits), it always looks as though you're using the majority of it once you're running a few apps. Hence the large number of people who think that they "need" 16GB of RAM when in fact they are just getting a small to medium performance boost from it.

You can see a concrete example of this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP1_4wek4nI The 16GB Macbook Pro is "using" more memory than the 8GB model to run the exact same tasks.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#644

Post by headmelted »

headmelted wrote: post #636
xoa wrote: post #57

Not to speak for anyone else, but one thing I gently disagree with: > Given that Hackintoshers are a particular bunch who don’t take kindly to the Apple-tax[...] I have zero issues with an Apple premium or paying a lot for hardware. I think a major generator of interest in hackintoshes has been that there are significant segments of computing that Apple has simply completely (or nearly completely) given up on, includ…

Agree completely. I don’t know that the “Apple tax” moniker is really fair anymore, either. The machines have always commanded a premium for things that enthusiasts don’t see value in (I.e. anything beyond numeric spec sheet values), so most critics completely miss the point of them. There’s a valid argument to be made that they’re also marked up to higher margins than rivals even beyond the above, but I’m not sure i…

In terms of high performance products, I’m actually really excited for the next Mac Pro. They’ve got novel design options open to them that no rival has.

The M1 costs Apple relatively little to produce per unit - I would expect them to keep the overall design for a Mac Pro but have stacked modules such that the side wall of the Mac Pro is a grid of 4 or more such modules each with co-located memory like the M1 has. Obviously performance would depend upon the application being amenable to a design like that but a 32 or 64 5nm core Mac Pro is not out of the question, and would be impossible to match for performance in the next few years by any Hackintosh.

Even after capacity frees up at TSMC for AMD to move to 5nm, they won’t be able to co-locate memory like the M1 does due to standards compliance with DRAM sticks.

I think the next couple of years will be really turbulent for other vendors - the M1 is likely far more significant for the PC market due to how disruptive it is than it is for the Mac market.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#645

Post by m463 »

headmelted wrote: post #636
xoa wrote: post #57

Not to speak for anyone else, but one thing I gently disagree with: > Given that Hackintoshers are a particular bunch who don’t take kindly to the Apple-tax[...] I have zero issues with an Apple premium or paying a lot for hardware. I think a major generator of interest in hackintoshes has been that there are significant segments of computing that Apple has simply completely (or nearly completely) given up on, includ…

Agree completely. I don’t know that the “Apple tax” moniker is really fair anymore, either. The machines have always commanded a premium for things that enthusiasts don’t see value in (I.e. anything beyond numeric spec sheet values), so most critics completely miss the point of them. There’s a valid argument to be made that they’re also marked up to higher margins than rivals even beyond the above, but I’m not sure i…

> I don’t know that the “Apple tax” moniker is really fair anymore, either.

I think it's still accurate and honestly that's apple's business model.

I think the resale value for a student macbook doesn't really matter. It still costs the student - while they are poor - as much as 4x what other students pay for their laptop. Many students are paying $250 for their laptop.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#646

Post by Twisell »

joking wrote: post #605
notriskfree wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt the M1 macs are really using memory much more efficiently; the stock M1 macs with 8GB were available rapidly; the Macs with 16GB ram or larger disk space had a three to four week delay when ordering; a lot of enthusiasts and influencers rushed out and got base models; they are then surprised to find they can work ok in most apps with only 8GB. Perhaps they never really needed to fit 32GB into their intel macs…

When you need 32 or 64gb of ram is not because the data structures or the programs you use need memory, it's because the data they use (database content, virtual machines, images, videos, music... ) fill that ram, and those data is not going to occupy less on an arm machine.

However real case usage of such massive amount of data are limited for typical desktop user. Massive database load usually happen on specialized servers in which 256Go RAM and more are pretty mundane.

So on customer PC ram is maybe more used as caching mechanisms or eaten away by poorly designed memory leak/garbage collection.

And if your GPU is able do to real time rendering on data heavy load maybe you need less caching of intermediate results as well.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#647

Post by Tepix »

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.

Why are we even talking about 8k video? It's something that almost noone needs and even fewer people have to edit. My guess is most people are still happy with editing their FHD videos. Something that works well on a five year old laptop.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#648

Post by Synaesthesia »

tlrobinson wrote: post #439

I’m curious if/how Apple Silicon will compete in the server market. Apple certainly isn’t known for producing cost effective servers, but if they really posses this technology that leapfrogs commodity hardware they’d be crazy not to use it in every market possible, right?

That's what I was thinking. On the other hand they do have an amazing vehicle for selling high margin goods already.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#649

Post by aseipp »

skohan wrote: post #577
oblio wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does "Linux run stable" on existing Macs? Not that I know of, 15 years after the introduction of Intel Macs. You might have to wait forever.

Isn't this mostly about driver support? I'm not a hardware guy, but it's hard to understand why it's so difficult to reverse engineer something like the touchpad driver. Isn't it just a matter of measuring the IO and reproducing it? I mean how has MS done this for bootcamp?

Apple was the one who provided and wrote those Bootcamp drivers for Windows, not Microsoft. That's how it normally works: the hardware vendor writes (or contracts, whatever) the drivers for the hardware they ship, not Microsoft. Windows by itself isn't much of an obstacle; it'll boot on just about any x86 device as long as the drivers are there...

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#650

Post by Betelgeuse90 »

paultopia wrote: post #147

I bought a pretty heavily specced (not top of the line, but close) 16" MBP in April. Kinda kicking myself... and aggressively insisting to myself that the screen real estate matters a lot to me. Damnit.

Have done the same in December 2019. I'm telling myself I really need 2 external monitors, as that's what I use at home. The M1 machines only support one external monitor (even in clamshell). Not a lot of people seem to be mentioning this.
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