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Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

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Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Releasing documentation makes them de facto public APIs. People will code against them anyway, apps will break when Apple changes the not-really-private APIs, and Apple will get blamed.

This isn't the Windows ecosystem. Apple breaks everything all the time, and there's hardly a squeal. There is no company less afraid of "de facto stable" than Apple.

Not really - they change things much more rapidly, and communicate those changes, but don’t arbitrarily ‘break’ them.

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#192
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it wasn't always this bad. The speed at which Swift has changed has left the documentation behind. I've complained about this numerous times. Simply put, if you want useful doco don't look at the latest version of the language. They literally stripped the useful notes and examples and it's now a straight API print out. If you use stackoverflow (sarcasm) be prepared to constantly be using older versions of swift an…

Good documentation will come. Apple's current priority right now is converting macOS to a closed OS like iOS. Once this is done, Apple can advertise the fact how "easy" it is to build apps for both ios and macOS with one codebase. Apple will then taut "courage" as they force all Apple developers to switch to Swift if they want to develop on their ecosystem. You will ofcourse have to pay them for this privilege, and t…

Are you a senior executive at Apple?

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just started getting into macOS and iOS development and the documentation is HORRENDOUS. Even the classroom educational material Apple put out is incomplete, outdated, and often completely wrong! Additionally, It seems to be impossible to compile anything in Xcode other than a hello-world without gettting undocumented warnings and (non fatal) errors logged, which, if you can find a matching thread on their forums,…

Yes. I have recently released my first game in the app store. It is a simple game, and so this is probably the 3rd rewrite of it. The second rewrite was when I finally had an apple device, so I thought "I will do everything the apple way" - I used Swift and SpriteKit, and tried to do everything exactly how I thought the Apple people would like. I then dropped that laptop, and was told it would cost more than the pric…

There’s a lot you get for free from things like SwiftUI, such as accessibility, support for right to left locales, portability all the way from the Apple Watch to the TV, etc.

I am also currently writing an app using SDL on Linux, which I have previously written in SwiftUI and it’s a lot of fun, but it’s just not comparable.

My SwiftUI version runs on the watch, the iPhone the TV and even in widgets with barely any modification. (And with much better fonts!)

The Linux version is fun, but it’s just not comparable in terms of the work the platform is doing for me.

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not pretend Swift doesn't exist and just use Objective-C instead? It's stable, it's well-understood, there's a ton of examples and docs everywhere and it hasn't changed much in a decade. I'm mainly an Android developer, so I've never made anything serious for the Apple ecosystem (only some tiny Mac apps for myself), but I just hate moving targets with burning passion. It's hilarious to look at all the "community"…

100%. I hate swift.

Why? I loved obj-c, but Swift seems better in almost every way.

You can just program using obj compatible objects in Swift if you like.

What’s so bad about it?

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#195
post #65

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Or maybe different people have different needs and don’t care if every device is “open”. The vast majority of people are not enamored with technology for technologies sake. These are tools. Does the tool do what I want with the least amount of friction? That’s what they care about. Also how does Apples stance on one product in any way change the device you are using to post in any way? Are Apple thugs coming to your…

> Or maybe different people have different needs and don’t care if every device is “open” And that is exactly the point you miss. You are happy and don't care if Apple is open or not. Good for you. Some of us are not. And if you do not care whether Apple is open or not, what does it really matter to you if some of us advocate for more openness and transparency from them? It's important to us.

Why is it important to you?

Everything you want exists already - it’s just not provided by Apple.

Why do you care about what they do?

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#196
post #90

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A terrible analogy, they aren't hurting anybody, something which would be fundamentally wrong. A better analogy would be that Apple is baking bread in a way that you don't like. Which is only a problem if you are forced to eat it.

> A terrible analogy, they aren't hurting anybody, Hence the term boiling the frog. If everyone bakes their bread like this, and they definitely wish they could, that would be bad.

It sounds like your are saying it would be bad if everyone behaved like Apple, therefore Apple is bad.

I actually kind of agree with the first part. It would be bad if everyone behaved like them.

However I think the only thing that will cause that to happen is if the government gets involved in regulating what software can be sold.

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#197
post #88
post #7

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In the bigger picture Apple aren't really documenting anything for their new toys, which is not the end of the world but is a huge step back for openness. There is - as far as I can see - no long-form documentation for M1 other than patents. I already refuse to own apple products so I don't really have any skin in the game, but consider that if microsoft were like this the blind eye would not be turned - buy our new…

> consider that if microsoft were like this the blind eye would not be turned Microsoft was taken to court over undocumented APIs in Win 3.x that gave their own software an unfair advantage. This is why the Win32 documentation exists today.

Sure, but that’s because Microsoft had a monopoly and sold the operating system that almost everyone used.

It’s worth noting that Microsoft is still in that position. Apple just isn’t.

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#198
post #22
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the bigger picture Apple aren't really documenting anything for their new toys, which is not the end of the world but is a huge step back for openness. There is - as far as I can see - no long-form documentation for M1 other than patents. I already refuse to own apple products so I don't really have any skin in the game, but consider that if microsoft were like this the blind eye would not be turned - buy our new…

As someone who was actually thinking about getting the M1 based on the great performance and battery life, but without any actual use for it, I can see what you mean. But the lack of openness is enough to stop those ideas, a new Surface laptop or next generation AMD mobile is much more useful. I just hope that a battery life breakthrough is on the horizon from AMD or Intel.

Are you planning to write assembly language matrix operations?

I’m curious what projects you work on!

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They sell hardware, not really software. But they make more money from the Apple Store and the other services and they are always giving advantages to their own stuff on iOS like using private APIs or bypassing security rules .

If they make money from the App Store, why would they want to hobble the software in the App Store?

Only the software that directly competes with Apple own software. So for example Spotify was denied access to the special APIs for a while, browsers can't use their own engine, Apple apps can bypass firewall rules but games with lootboxes are welcomed because they don't compete with Apple and a 30% cut gets in Apple's pockets.

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#200
Apple M1 chip adopts Warehouse/Workshop Model

- Warehouse: unified memory

- Workshop: CPU, GPU and other cores

- Product(or raw material): information, data

there’s also a new unified memory architecture that lets the CPU, GPU, and other cores exchange information between one another, and with unified memory, the CPU and GPU can access memory simultaneously rather than copying data between one area and another. Accessing the same pool of memory without the need for copying speeds up information exchange for faster overall performance.

reference:

1. Developer Delves Into Reasons Why Apple’s M1 Chip is So Fast, https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/30/m1-chip-speed-explanati...

2. The Grand Unified Programming Theory: The Pure Function Pipeline Data Flow with Warehouse/Workshop Model, https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow

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