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Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

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Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#791

Post by gameswithgo » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:42 PM UTC

jmnicolas wrote: post #655

reader_mode wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect C# is not that much better being a managed and garbage collected language C# is better than JVM in that it has custom value types. Say you want to allocate an array of points in Java you basically have to allocate array[pointer] all pointing to tiny 8 byte objects (for eg. 32 bit float x and y coords) + the overhead of object header. If you use C# and structs it just allocates a flat array of floats with…

I had a C# project that was too slow and used too much RAM. I can attest that structs use less memory however IIRC they don't have methods so no GetHashCode() which made them way too slow to insert in a HashSet or Dictionary. In the end I used regular objects in a Dictionary. RAM usage was a bit higher than structs (not unbearably so) but speed improvement was massive.

1. structs can have methods 2. the primary value of value types is not to use less ram (you just save a pointer, I guess times two because of GC) but the ability to avoid having to GC the things, since they are either on the stack or in contiguos chunks of memory, and to leverage cpu caches are you can iterate over contiguous data rather than hopping around in the heap. Iterating over contiguous data can be a large constant factor faster than over a collection of pointers to heap objects.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#792

Post by dariusj18 » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:43 PM UTC

codercotton wrote: post #310

peteretep wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They used animations as loading times, not bad UX to prevent you from staring at a blank screen, or waiting for an app to open, thinking the phone didn't register your action.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#793

Post by iguy » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:46 PM UTC

mumblemumble wrote: post #789

rini17 wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but offering no machine suitable for developers and power users will eventually hurt them when they leave whole ecosystem.

> offering no machine suitable for developers and power users This perception strikes me as having warped in from a different decade. Nowadays, at least in my neck of the woods, developers almost universally use laptops, and Apple's still plenty competitive in the (high end) laptop department. For the most part, the only developers I know who still use desktops are machine learning folks who don't like the cloud and…

Yes, I think they view the basic mid-range tower box as a nearly-extinct form. Like corded telephones & CRTs.

They choose to make the mac pro as some kind of halo product, I guess. But really the slice of people who need more power than an iMac, and less than this "Linux tower full of GPUs" or a render farm, they judge to be very small indeed. This wasn't true in the 90s, when laptops (and super-slim desktops) came with much bigger compromises.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#794

Post by dkarl » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

DHH tweet quoted in the article: You don't sit around thinking "oh, browsing the web is slow on my decked-out iMac", but then you browse with the M1, and you're like, DAMN, I can actually feel that +50%.

I wish I could feel excited about this, but my first thought is that web developers probably have a huge wish list of things they're ready to unleash to eat up that 50%. I was expecting to get a nice 5-7 year lifetime from my early 2020 Macbook Pro. Maybe I should revise my expectations, especially if more and more desktop apps are going to be built on web technology.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#795

Post by rbanffy » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

niea_11 wrote: post #656

michaelmrose wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A machine that wont outperform the new mini $6000 16 cores 32GB of ram least powerful gpu on the list 2GB of storage $8,799.00 28 cores 48GB of ram same gpu 4GB of storage $14,699 MSRP on a 2020 Toyota Corolla $19,600 AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X 32-Core 3.7 GHz Socket sTRX4 $2,629.90 Cost of the same basic GPU about $219 Cost of complete system equivalent to the almost car priced mac about 4200. 9k-15k isn't "a lot"…

I don't use apple products but I think the high price of a workstation is not something specific to Apple. From a discussion I had with a friend recently, I found that Precision workstations from Dell or Z workstations from HP have similar prices for similar performances (sometime prices can reach 40k or 70k dollars). When comparing Mac Pro to an enthusiast pc build, yes the mac pro is "overpriced", but the mac pro i…

> I think the high price of a workstation is not something specific to Apple.

A professional workstation, with support, services, guaranteed replacement components, guaranteed service-life, maintenance contracts and so on is very different from an enthusiast-built machine.

It's like comparing a BMW M3 to a tricked out VW Golf. You can fit a bigger, badder engine under the VW's hood, stiffen the suspension, replace the gearbox and so on but, in the end, you can get one straight from the dealer and not everyone is inclined to assemble a car from parts.

Did that once. It's fun, educational and not very practical.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#796

Post by rbanffy » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

PixyMisa wrote: post #771

michaelmrose wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just isn't how taxes work. If you spend 15k of your profits and buy capital goods you don't reduce your taxes by 15k because no one was going to charge you 100% tax on it. You save only the foregone taxes rate on the purchase.

And depreciation.

Of you can put your heavy workloads on the cloud and pass it as opex.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#797

Post by zaptheimpaler » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

jrm4 wrote: post #6

At the risk of being that (Linux) guy -- What is gained here if we're just still applying faster cycles to Apple-esque wasteful (and perhaps harmful, as we're apparently learning re: their telemetry) software? If people really dig their Apple stuff, great. But I think its worth thinking about the likelihood that a "slower" computer running Linux could probably serve the actual user better in terms of "getting stuff d…

Linux still doesn't have smooth scrolling. There is little visual consistency or shared UX patterns across apps. I had to hunt down a good font because the one that came installed with Pop and Ubuntu was terrible. Spent a day getting drivers for a wifi card to work. Had graphical flickers due to a bug in picom/nvidia that I had to go in and fix. Don't even get me started on the app ecosystem - Mac/win has stuff like omnifocus, 1password, Alfred, photoshop etc etc. Linux mostly you hope there's a web app.

There is strong opposition to the idea of paid app stores on Linux but almost all the best software I use is paid, because it takes teams of people working hard to build it. This is actually the most critical issue imo.

Linux has come a long way but I think they are understandably reluctant to hear bad news that it's still not good enough compared to the alternatives, even if it's much much better than it was.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#798

Post by freehunter » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

selykg wrote: post #734

matwood wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. At this point the argument is nearing joke/meme level.

It's popular to hate on Apple right now. Seems even Hacker News isn't immune to this trend.

HN has the ability to hate on literally everything. This forum is by far the most negative social platform I’m a member of. There’s rarely a positive word spoken about any article, and if the article isn’t worth negative comments we’ll find something else to hate, like the presentation of the website or the fonts or colors used.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#799

Post by auggierose » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #705

auggierose wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people pay more than 20% tax. At 50% tax the savings look pretty good.

That tax rate is corporation tax, not a personal tax. Does any European country have a 50% corporation tax? You're right if you start looking at "Well I run my own company so the cost compared to paying myself that cash as a dividend is much smaller", but that only really applies to those of us who do run our own small companies, own them fully and run them profitably, and have already pumped their personal earnings…

If you can run your business on a Zen box with an Nvidia 3090 in it, good for you!

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#800

Post by totaldude87 » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

Damn, I knew these are fast (from reviews, from pros) , but I was happy with my mid 2012 MacBook pro ,and all its modularity, even if it doesn't open 100 tabs or open 7 simultaneous , or lasts for 3-4 hours max without charging.

but Man, these "user" reviews are making me drive towards a purchase and its going to punch a hole in my wallet!

looks apple has reinvented the chips / processors

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