781–790 of 942 posts
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You joke, but I think this is actually true. If companies gave their developers of client-facing software slower computers the resulting software would end up being faster.
It's not the end product itself that eats huge amounts of RAM or CPU. It's the dev tooling.
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My gaming PC is almost 10 years old and is with an i7 3770. Only upgrade was a GTX 980 five or six years ago. That thing flies for anything and everything I put it through. One day I'll retire it as a gaming machine and convert it to a Linux server or a casual workstation and I am sure it's going to be even faster than Win10.
Yeah, I have two thinkpads -- one from 2010 and one from 2012. Both of them have enough grunt to get through most any task, the heaviest of which is compiling large codebases. One of them was my daily driver for eight years; I only upgraded to a Ryzen because I wanted MOAR COARS and more RAM. It's funny how today's computers could theoretically handle a user's workload for decades yet Apple builds them to fall apart…
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I think that’s because 99% of regular computer tasks don’t need 24 cores operating at 5 billion cycles per second. The differences between an i7-4xxx and i7-11xxx are more about hardware acceleration, eg HEVC and SIMD. That’s why they look so much better in benchmarks that are designed with that in mind. My main desktop is an unRAID server that hosts multiple VMs. Only yesterday I discovered that I accidentally only…
This is perhaps the real genius of the M1. It's a great chip and all. But when you make it the only choice, people are finding the only choice is more than sufficient. And now Apple only has to produce one piece of silicon for their iMacs, iPad Pro, and Laptops. What a boon for logistics.
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Speak for yourself. Me personally? I would like one core per Chrome tab.
My new M1 constantly freezes, and I’m pretty sure it’s because of chrome. Or the secret SSD thrashing design flaw that Apple is hoping nobody talks about till they quietly fix it. Was a bit disappointing. I was like, finally! A new thing! I’m freeeeeee..... wait no it still freezes, I miss sandy bridge, etc.
Safari is best, but Firefox is also pretty decent nowadays.
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Basically many modern Android phones today work perfectly well paired wirelessly with modern TV screen. Enable desktop mode, pair with a mouse and keyboard, and you have a kind of working environment: video chat, programming, text editing, office apps - all exists. That's actually how to watch youtube without ads, because non-Android TV has no freetube/newPipe apps.
Sadly I can't use a terminal or VSCode on Android so I can't use it as a development environment.
You can also connect a usb-c hub if you want hdmi in and out, network etc. It's even possible to drive 3D printers directly over USB.
As an additonal bonus, for Galaxy Notes and some newer S devices you can use a stylus for art, signing PDFs etc. They also support splitscreen multitasking and virtual desktops which is quite practical if you work from the terminal (emacs).
Certain phones can be very good replacements for a computer if you require the portability.
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It's far from being as definitive as you say. Trying to find with one of the best 5800U scores: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/7449909?baselin... It's for 5800H which is at 45W where Ryzen can get a tiny edge.
Ok, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the 5800U@15W. On Cinebench, the 5800U gets much more than the M1 in multicore and slightly more in single core. It even edges out the M1 on Geekbench, though Gb is a poor benchmark.
Cinema 4D, the program that Cinebench benchmarks, normally does the renders on NVIDIA GPUs, not CPUs. As such, it’s a very poor benchmark.
And those 5800U results are at probably much higher than 15W. (Because that’s the base config, OEMs are free to ship with higher TDPs)
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That is really a problem only if you watch tech news. In reality people use computers for years, so having a 4 or 5 year old tech doesn't really matter that much.
Developers should be upgrading on 2-3 year cycles max - the leap in performance of 2 generations noticeably impacts performance and unless you're doing some really trivial stuff - performance matters. Check out Chrome build time benchmarks between 3/4xxx and 5xxx series (or any dev tool related benchmarks). 10-20% off your iteration cycle is noticeable - and that's a single generation jump. Increasing iteration speed…
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Once bitten, twice shy. I considered that keyboard to be designed to fail. I'm not interested in gambling that another component won't fail the same way. It's easier to use products that have not demonstrated such designed failures. The good news however is that due to this garbage tier engineering I've discovered that desktop Linux is more stable for me than post-Catalina OSX - I'd have probably never found this out…
Designed to fail is preposterous. Apple lost a ton of money due to that problem, both directly in paying for repairs, and indirectly in damage to their stock price. It's pretty clear what happened, and it's unfortunate but banal: someone went too far with making the key mechanism as thin as possible, and all plastic to make it easier to manufacture. Ends up the plastic wasn't strong enough for the little pins in the…
I see it as a symptom of the Jony Ive ideology, untethered from realty by Jobs, poisoning Apple in the early 2010s. iOS7 flat UI, overthin devices, keyboards.
Signs are pointing that Apple is recovering from this (new aTV remote).
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Have you used a recent Macbook? The Macbook Pro keyboard is unique in that is is the only time in my life I have ever experienced a keyboard breaking. I think people are a little too nostalgic when talking about Apple build quality. There's a 2011 MBP here that still works well. But recent releases... no better than the competition really.
Which competitor has a touchpad that’s equal to or better than apple?
Coming from lifelong Linux-land it's actually comical reflecting on how poor these things operate in day to day. The most prominent issue for me is how poorly they operate with my USB-type C dock I use for multi-monitor.
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That is really a problem only if you watch tech news. In reality people use computers for years, so having a 4 or 5 year old tech doesn't really matter that much.
Developers should be upgrading on 2-3 year cycles max - the leap in performance of 2 generations noticeably impacts performance and unless you're doing some really trivial stuff - performance matters. Check out Chrome build time benchmarks between 3/4xxx and 5xxx series (or any dev tool related benchmarks). 10-20% off your iteration cycle is noticeable - and that's a single generation jump. Increasing iteration speed…
Compiling Chrome is a nice benchmark but in reality dev cycles are quite smaller (or you might want to optimize your toolchain).
Finally, it's quite common for developers to forget the kind of hardware their users are running on. Then they produce software that only runs well on the next gen hardware. If you develop on a beast, then at least test whatever you are producing on a 3-4 year old machine to see how it will work for the clients.