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Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

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Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#851

Post by bitL »

chongli wrote: post #408
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…

Apple does not want to offer to the hackintosh/enthusiast market because they are the most price conscious segment. Targeting that segment means putting out extremely performant, low-margin commodity machines. Doing so then cannibalizes the market for their ultra-high-end stuff. Not only that, though. Enthusiasts are also extremely fickle and quick to jump ship to a cheaper hardware offering. If you look at all of Ap…

> Apple does not want to offer to the hackintosh/enthusiast market because they are the most price conscious segment. Targeting that segment means putting out extremely performant, low-margin commodity machines. Doing so then cannibalizes the market for their ultra-high-end stuff.

Looking over the shoulder at a 64-core Threadripper with 256GB of ECC RAM, 3090FE, Titan RTX and Radeon VII, yeah right. Some of us do Hackintoshing because we want more dope specs than what Apple offers and customizability that comes with PC hardware.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#852

Post by rsync »

derefr wrote: post #843
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…

> it won't help in areas that Apple just organizationally doesn't care about/doesn't have the bandwidth for because that's not a technology problem I would posit that Apple is always going to keep macOS working on some workstation-class hardware, just because that kind of machine is what Apple's software engineers will be using internally, and they need to write macOS software using macOS. Which means one of two thin…

"I would posit that Apple is always going to keep macOS working on some workstation-class hardware, just because that kind of machine is what Apple's software engineers will be using internally, and they need to write macOS software using macOS."

I have always hoped that we could rely on that heuristic - that internal Apple usage of their own products would guarantee that certain workflows would be unbroken.

In practice, this has never held up.

Over the past 10-12 years it has been reinforced over and over and over: Apple engineers use single monitor systems with scattered, overlapping windows which they interact with using mousey-mousey-everything and never keyboard shortcuts.

They perform backups of critical files - and manage financial identities - using their mp3 player.

The fact that multiple monitors - and monitor handoff - is broken in fascinating new ways with every version of OSX tells you how Apple folks are (and are not) using their own products.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#853

Post by stetrain »

matsemann wrote: post #599
ogre_codes wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple's walled garden Apparently over the years the definition of "Walled Garden" has drifted a lot. The iPhone has a "Walled Garden", unless you jailbreak, it's very difficult to run anything outside the App Store. My Mac? Almost nothing I run is from the App Store. Nothing needs to be from the App Store. Most of what I run doesn't even go through Gatekeeper and it certainly never touches software I build or compi…

> My Mac? Almost nothing I run is from the App Store. For now.

Seems like a giant processor architecture change with changes to driver models, app runtimes, and requiring translation to run any legacy software would have been a great time to do that if they ever planned to.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#855

Post by damnyou »

pjmlp wrote: post #827
mikepurvis wrote: post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but there's a legit gap in the datacenter— not having a sanely, legally rackable OS X machine is a pretty big problem for a lot of organizations. Not everyone wants to do their Jenkins builds or generate homebrew bottles on a Mac Mini under someone's desk.

None of those use cases seem relevant for iOS or macOS development.

If you ever get a chance to meet employees at CircleCI or some other CI provider at a conference after Covid is over, consider asking them about how they rack Mac Minis.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#856

Post by damnyou »

mikepurvis wrote: post #831
pjmlp wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those use cases seem relevant for iOS or macOS development.

Surely you'd want CI builds for your app? I suppose you can always go the sassy option and just offload this problem onto Travis or CircleCI, but then they're the ones stuck figuring out how to rack thousands of Mac Minis, dealing with thermals in a machine that isn't set up for hot/cold aisles, a computer that doesn't have a serial port or dedicated management interface, etc. If you're a big enough org or the app is…

No company on the planet is big enough for Apple to make exceptions like that. All of them either use a cloud provider or a custom rack design just for Mac Minis.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#857

Post by jsjohnst »

speleding wrote: post #739
coldtea wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the developers and power users that still use desktop machines/towers are either very cpu-power-hungry niche exception, or the more backwards ones, and thus least likely to influence/be imitated by anyone...

I care to differ (as a developer on a desktop). The reason for developing on a desktop is that my productivity is much higher with 3 screens, one of which is a 40 inch, a full 101 key keyboard and a mouse.

> The reason for developing on a desktop is that my productivity is much higher with 3 screens

Those requirements don’t dictate a desktop[0]. Also, the physical size of the monitor is irrelevant, it’s the resolution that matters. Your video card doesn’t care if you have a 40” 4K monitor or an 80” 4K monitor, to it, it’s the same load.

The reason I still have a cheese grater Mac Pro desktop at all is because I have 128gb RAM in it and have tasks that need that much memory.

[0] I’ve connected eight external monitors to my 16” MBP (with laptop screen still enabled, so 9 screens total). I don’t use the setup actively, did it as a test, but it very much works. The setup was as follows:

TB#1 - 27” LG 5K @ 5120x2880

TB#2 - TB3TB2 adapter, then two 27” Apple Thunderbolt Displays @ 2560x1440

TB#3 - eGPU with AMD RX580, then two 34” ultrawides connected over HDMI @ 3440x1440, two 27” DisplayPort monitors @ 2560x1440

TB#4 - TB3TB2 adapter, then 27” Apple Thunderbolt Display @ 2560x1440

So that’s almost 50 million pixels displayed on around 4,000 square inches of screens driven by a single MBP laptop.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#858

Post by nemothekid »

Twisell wrote: post #810
kllrnohj wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But again that didn't change with M1 . We're talking MacOS vs. MacOS here. Your quote is fully irrelevant to what's being discussed which is the outgoing 32gb macbook vs the new 16gb-max ones. They are running the same software. Using the same ObjC & Swift reference counting systems.

We've run full circle there ARC is not specific to M1, BUT have been widely used in ObjC & Swift for years AND is thus heavily optimized on M1 that perform "retain and release" way faster (even when emulating x86) Perfect illustration of Apple software+hardware long term strategy.

That still doesn't mean that M1 Macs use less memory. If retain/release is faster then the M1 Macs have higher performance than Intel Macs. That is easily understood. The claim under contention here is that M1 Macs use less memory, which is not explained by hardware optimized atomic operations

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#859

Post by DonaldPShimoda »

derefr wrote: post #843
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…

> it won't help in areas that Apple just organizationally doesn't care about/doesn't have the bandwidth for because that's not a technology problem I would posit that Apple is always going to keep macOS working on some workstation-class hardware, just because that kind of machine is what Apple's software engineers will be using internally, and they need to write macOS software using macOS. Which means one of two thin…

> I would posit that Apple is always going to keep macOS working on some workstation-class hardware, just because that kind of machine is what Apple's software engineers will be using internally, and they need to write macOS software using macOS.

I hope I'm not out of line here, but this is not what a "workstation" is. "Workstation" actually has a specific meaning in the realm of enterprise computing solutions, and developers do not (generally) use workstations.

A workstation is something that, say, the people at Pixar use, or Industrial Light and Magic. It's an incredibly powerful machine that can handle the most intensive of tasks. Software development is generally not such a task, unless you're frequently re-compiling LLVM from source or something. (And even then, it's a world of difference.)

Apple's software developers, like most software developers who use Apple machines, use MacBook Pros (for the most part). Sometimes Mac Minis if they need multiple test machines, and I'm sure there are some who also have Mac Pros. But overwhelmingly, development is done on laptops that they dock while at work and take home with them after. (This was my experience when I interned there, anyway.)

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#860

Post by ogre_codes »

trollied wrote: post #596
ogre_codes wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, the "walled garden" is intended for the underlying hardware. I don't think that is what he was saying at all. Regardless. There is nothing preventing Linux (or Windows) from booting on Mac M1 hardware. People almost certainly will have Linux running on Mac hardware before too long. It's just a slog getting it working well. Not a walled garden in any traditional sense, just difficult to implement.

Linus has openly said he wants Linux running on one: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/20/11/24/2225209/linus-t...

> Linus has openly said he wants Linux running on one

Linus has been lusting after Apple hardware for a long time. He's also been exceedingly frustrated by the lack of drivers for most of that time.

8 years ago in an interview with Tech Crunch, he waxes poetic about the MacBook Air:

> "That said, I’m have to admit being a bit baffled by how nobody else seems to have done what Apple did with the Macbook Air – even several years after the first release, the other notebook vendors continue to push those ugly and clunky things. Yes, there are vendors that have tried to emulate it, but usually pretty badly. I don’t think I’m unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and light."

https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/19/an-interview-with-milleniu...

I don't see his criticism of Apple drivers in this article, but he was pretty frustrated even back then.

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