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Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

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Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#941

Post by andrekandre »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #885

I'm amused by the praise. I've been a Linux user for the last 10 years. Last week I got an M1 Mac Mini to do some iOS development on. It feels fast, but not substantially faster than Linux. Safari is a bit snappier than Firefox, but that's about it. Was macOS on Intel really that much slower?

> Was macOS on Intel really that much slower?

not really, except for maybe integrated intel graphics (switching monitors is the bane of my life)

that being said, the same or better performance of a high-end "hair-dryer" macbook pro in the form factor of a fanless macbook air and price-point + having increased battery-life is the huge draw imo

until now, we've never had that kind of high end performance in such a small, quiet and inexpensive form factor

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#942

Post by FireBeyond »

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.

Apple on the new Mac Pro that I got a month ago: 192GB memory? That will be $3,000. NewEgg? We'll sell you the same specced memory from the same manufacturer for $800. And you get to keep/sell the baseline 32GB memory.

8TB SSD? $2,000, thanks. OWC and NewEgg? Here, have a PCIe 4xM.2 card and 4 2TB SSDs for $1,100. Oh, and they'll be 50% faster, you just can't have them as the only drive on the system (my Apple SSD runs at around 2800MB/s, the alternative, 4500MB/s).

So they are entirely marked up, and look in any forum - by far most people are not doing what I'm doing, and just "going straight Apple for convenience", though the memory installation was less than 1 minute, and the SSD installation less than 5, including unboxing, seating the 4 drives, reinstalling the heatsink on the card and installing. I get "my time is money", and "it just works" (which, as we know, more and more is less the case with Apple), but really, for me, that was a $3,100 savings for <10 minutes effort.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#943

Post by dschuler »

vetinari wrote: post #911
dschuler wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AppleCare for the Macs is definitely worth it. They even replaced the display on my MBP after 5 years when I called (that seems to be the key is to call someone at Apple directly). This was a part they should've recalled, but anyway I wouldn't have gotten a new display without AppleCare.

There was a display replacement program for 2012-2015 MBP13s, due to the staingate. Though I recall that it was for 4 years since date of purchase, or so.

Yep it was related to that, even though AppleCare ended up replacing my screen after 6 years (not 5 like I initially remembered). It was an unexpected bonus and I’m still quite happy about it. But the key was to call AppleCare directly and not go to the geniuses.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#944

Post by dschuler »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #938
vetinari wrote: post #911

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a display replacement program for 2012-2015 MBP13s, due to the staingate. Though I recall that it was for 4 years since date of purchase, or so.

I wonder if there will be one for 2019 MacBook Pros. The repair shop said the replacement display was also faulty, so they had to order a replacement replacement.

Is this the connector problem where the screen doesn’t turn on?

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#945

Post by andrekandre »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #303
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…

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/

> but the obsession is certainly motivated by what people want.

that may be true, but businesses would be keen to also give us what we need more than just what we want... thats how you get "faster horses" vs the automobile

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#946

Post by [deleted] »

kllrnohj wrote: post #249
sunflowerdeath wrote: post #211

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…

[deleted]

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#947

Post by kovek »

rootlocus wrote: post #733
DarkmSparks wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You seem to be insinuating that, used to, people were "more literate" and are becoming more ignorant. No, I'm saying the goalposts moved - a lot. The same way widespread reading and writing moved the goalposts back in the day. >How does not understanding how computers work limit people? It puts them in the class that considers computers to be magic, like not knowing how to read and write put people in a class that c…

Most people can use computers just fine which, by definition, is enough for them to be computer literate. Where's the problem? How much do you need to know about how your car works to benefit from driving it?

Similarly to how literal literacy enables access to information, Computer Programming literacy could enable people to derive more value from open software, for example. It could enable people to automate some tasks, or make some tasks easier (eg. gathering + summarizing information, which can enable someone to make better predictions/decisions).

If I want to know what happened today, I can read the newspaper. If I want to know what happened on Nov 25, every year, I could write a quick script fetching this information from some source and look at that list showing Nov 25 (although yes, Wikipedia provides some of that info).

Computer Literacy provides tools to interact with information.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#948

Post by headmelted »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #910
headmelted wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. To be honest I did the same back-of-the-napkin math that you did prior to buying my MBP - the thing is the TCO is even worse if you customise the machine. Example - a Mac is a Mac for resale purposes - if I attempt to later sell an XPS that I've opened up and put an SSD in and a couple of SODIMMS - I now need to recoup my cost on all of those things. The problem is that if someone is looking at a used XPS…

I wasn’t trying to address the resale value. Only the tax part. The perception of the tax comes from Apple simply not offering compromised parts for a particular set of parameters. And other manufacturers willing to sell at large discounts regularly!

Can’t argue with this. They gouge absurdly on storage and memory.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#949

Post by AtlasBarfed »

headmelted wrote: post #644
headmelted wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. O…

It might force Intel / AMD / Broadcom to get serious about hardware and at least integrate more of the components for notebooks. Maybe not go full on OEM, but a lot more than the CPU, because M1 is probably fundamentally winning with SoC design.

I would like to know if they are using fundamentally better batteries, and how much a 5nm process lead is behind this.

But I will hand it to Apple, if they finally did something to break the 4-8 hour battery life limit, a limit that always seemed to stay the same despite node shrink after node shrink after node shrink, and really about the same on-screen performance for usual browsing/productivity application use.

I was pretty distrustful of the ARM move, but if they deliver this for the Macbook Pro, I'll hop to ARM.

Associated with the CPU people "getting serious" is them pushing an OS, which would have to be Linux. Intel should have done this 20 years ago, at least as leverage to make Windows improve itself.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#950

Post by tedd4u »

valuearb wrote: post #835
darren_ wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This quote doesn’t really cover why M1 macs are more efficient with less ram than intel macs? You’ve got a memory budget, it’s likely broadly the same on both platforms, the speed at which your retains/releases happen isn’t going to be the issue. it’s not like intel macs use GC where m1 uses RC. (It explains why iOS does better with less ram than android, but the quote is specifically claiming this as a reason for 8G…

Yea, this is a BS theory. I have a 16Gb M1 MacBook Air and the real answer is that it has super fast SSD access, so you don’t notice the first few gigabytes of swap. But when swap hits 8-9 Gb, it’s effects start to get very noticeable.

I tend to agree! I think Big Sur on M1 uses 16kB page size vs 4kB on Intel so maybe that contributes to more efficient / less obvious perf issue when swapping.
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