The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned • Hacker News Board

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#281

Post by mhh__ » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #277

bouk wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you get to experience that! My worst computer recently has been a Thinkpad running Linux, basic things like suspending the laptop when it closes just never work properly. But I'm sure the year of Linux on the desktop will come one day.

It won't get better than this, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10 https://chromeos.dev/en/linux Unless the fragmented desktop communities finally decide what the whole stack should be like, for users and desktop developers.

> It won't get better than this,

Microsoft don't let you access perf_event, which immediately makes it useless for me for example.

It's not really fragmentation as much as there not being being a billion dollar company making the stack actually work in the first place - if Apple decided to rebase onto Linux for some reason there's nothing stopping them getting everything shipshape just that it takes a lot of time and money. The vast majority of Linux boxes distro's are probably pareto distributed so 20-80 to make up a random number. The stack isn't that sparse.

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#282

Post by dogma1138 » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

jsjohnst wrote: post #247

dogma1138 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung has quite cheap high speed external SSDs the T5 is like $150 for the 1TB drives now. USB type C Gen 2 10gig is fast enough for most video editing especially any editing you could do on a device like the M1. Personally if I was editing videos I would be using an external storage device both due to the capacity and the fact that my data is then portable. With the full disk encryption on the M1 I wouldn’t be sto…

I was just about to reply the same. I own a handful of Samsung T5 and T7 SSD drives (the new T7 being twice as fast, but also more expensive) and they are great. 1-2TB is sufficient as the internal HD for me (aka make no representation of other’s needs) and everything else goes on my NAS or when remote a SSD HD like the T5/T7. When I need extreme performance (aka video editing usually), I’ve got a Samsung X5 which us…

And potentially if you edit videos even portable SSDs aren’t enough.

Raw 8K RED footage at 75 FPS which is what you would be recording at if you master at 4K 60* is about 120GB a minute that’s over 7TB an hour.

No reasonable internal drive could support that and you’ll be looking at a high speed NAS or an NVME JBOD/DAS solution to support that.

*The extra frames and pixels are really important for final mastering as you need extra bits to do image stabilization, cropping, color grading and sharpening correctly it also makes more complex post processing work easier to perform even things like rotoscoping are much easier to do when your objects are twice the size and you have much less pixel bleed between what you want to roto and the rest of the frame.

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#283

Post by disposekinetics » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 9:17 PM UTC

acjohnson55 wrote: post #117

mbesto wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be new to Macs. I'm still on the MBP 2015 and it's "the best computer I've ever owned". Everything since then has technically upgraded parts, but the regressions (touchbar, butterfly keyboard mishaps, etc.) are not worth the upgrade. That's why this is surprising.

My 2010 MBP 15" is still my favorite.

2011 MBP for me. Everything since has felt like a downgrade.

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#284

Post by bouk » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

timvisee wrote: post #200

You're talking about software here. You'd have the same experience on almost any macbook. In fact, for the things you're describing you'd probably have a better experience with a non M1 machine. There's only one line that is related to the actual M1 MacBook Air hardware. Have you tried other machines as well, such as a ThinkPad? Have you ever used Linux?

Yes I'm talking about Software because it has a new CPU architecture. I have used a thinkpad with Linux and it was a terrible experience.

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#285

Post by bouk » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 9:20 PM UTC

atemerev wrote: post #196

I have bought an M1, and so far I am slightly disappointed. Intel macbook pro was quite fine, too. Firefox is still occasionally slow. No significant improvements in compilation speed (well, homebrew still relies on Rosetta 2). Instant wakeup is cool, but not a life-changing improvement. Etc.

Homebrew works without Rosetta 2, maybe you have to reinstall it so it runs natively. It should be installed under /opt/homebrew

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#286

Post by nwotnagrom » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

loh wrote: post #235

The most interesting thing about this to me was the bit at the end about Windows and Games. I've heard of Windows emulation on Mac before but this is the first time I've heard of Parallels. > Now you can download Steam and basically install anything and it will probably work. Microsoft really did some amazing magic in getting both 32-bit and 64-bit x86 programs running on arm64. The author makes it sound like you can…

I prefer browser based options such as shells.com where you can actually just access Windows or Linux on a virtual cloud computer. Much easier than messing with Parallels...

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#287

Post by danaris » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

DennisAleynikov wrote: post #163

thatswrong0 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they ended up shipping the m1 macs running essentially SafariOS What on earth are you talking about

idk if you are at all familiar with arm computers but they have been out for a while, mainly running things like ChromeOS or for microsoft EdgeOS or "Windows 10 S" the strategy revolves around using web performance on arm to overshadown the general lack of optimized arm apps. as apples release of the M1 has shown, no apps are really optimized yet even 1 month after launch for an APPLE product... thats where the Safar…

No, the version of macOS on M1 Macs is the exact same version as on Intel Macs. They don't run absolutely every piece of software that Intel Macs do, but it's pretty damn close. It's certainly not even in the same category as something like ChromeOS and ARM Windows.

It sounds like you may be pre-judging the M1 Macs based on your past experiences with ARM desktops/laptops. I strongly suggest that you put those experiences aside when looking at these, because Apple has gone to a great deal of effort to ensure that the experience is as close to the previous iteration as possible, with the benefit of the extra performance and battery life the M1 gives. It's really nothing whatsoever like the comparison between Intel and ARM Windows, or Windows and ChromeOS.

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#288

Post by ja27 » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #98

alphadevx wrote: post #24

In my experience, the latest computer I buy is always "the best computer I've ever owned". They get better every year, why is this still surprising?

You must be new to Macs. I'm still on the MBP 2015 and it's "the best computer I've ever owned". Everything since then has technically upgraded parts, but the regressions (touchbar, butterfly keyboard mishaps, etc.) are not worth the upgrade. That's why this is surprising.

My 15" 2015 MBP was the best bang-for-the-buck Mac I've owned. Got it used (to avoid getting a butterfly keyboard MBP), almost max CPU, max RAM, swapped in an NVMe SSD and a semi-permanent microSD card.

I love my 16" MBP but wasn't blown away by the upgrade. Touchbar is meh and mostly in my way. Speakers are a big win. Keyboard is a tossup but at least I avoided the butterfly era. Everything else is just noticeably better but not a "wow" better. My biggest annoyance is fan noise when attached to a monitor. Running at native panel resolution seems to help.

I'm looking forward to the 16" class M1.

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#289

Post by 7402 » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

RomeoDelta wrote: post #189

I am no Apple fanatic. I'm a die-hard Linux user and open source proponent. I wouldn't touch the M1 with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole. But with all that said... I kind of like articles like these. I enjoy seeing people happy with good tech because I like good tech. It pleases me that there are people getting this much enjoyment out of innovative and (I'll admit it) quite impressive hardware. So rock on, Apple f…

The world is a better place when someone can disagree with another's opinion, and yet still take pleasure in their happiness.

Re: The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned

#290

Post by adrian_b » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #256

adrian_b wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct only about Ryzens based on the old Zen 2. Any new Ryzen 5xxx based on Zen 3 is faster in single-thread than the best Apple M1. In general-purpose benchmarks, like Geekbench 5, the maximum Apple M1 score is 1752, while Ryzen 5xxx score between 1800 and 1876. In computational benchmarks, where the IPC is limited by some execution resources reaching 100% utilization, so the higher average IPC of Apple M1…

https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-7-5800x The 5800x is a 105 watt part(!!!), still gets starched by the M1 in single core, and is only about 40% faster in multicore despite using all that power to drive double the performance core count. But by all means, go off to cherry pick more niche benchmarks...

I did not cherry pick any benchmarks, I have picked the only 2 benchmarks that have been published for both Apple M1 and for Zen 3, and that were also freely available, so I could also run them on my own computer, to verify that the published benchmark results are correct.

They are not niche benchmarks. Geekbench 5 covers many common application domains and its only flaw is that the GB5 tests are very short so they finish before the CPU overheats and slows down, so this benchmark is much more favorable for Apple M1 than for a desktop CPU.

Even if GB5 is advantageous for M1, it still shows that Zen 3 is faster.

gmpbench tests a fundamental feature of any CPU, its ability to compute operations with large numbers. That may not matter for you but it is definitely one of the important criteria for measuring the single-thread speed of a processor, so when Apple M1 scores 6422 and a Ryzen 7 5800X (not the fastest Ryzen) scores 7816, there is no doubt about which starches which.

Moreover, the multi-thread results that I have seen for Geekbench 5, which very strongly favors Apple M1 (because in a real application M1 would overheat soon and it would slow down) show a 60% higher speed for 5800X, not of 40%, e.g. 12339 for 5800X vs. 7716 for Apple M1.

If you want to live with the illusion that Apple M1 is faster in single-thread execution than Zen 3, even if all the real numbers from benchmark results contradict you, that is your privilege.