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Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

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Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#361

Post by knolan »

Hamuko wrote: post #347
Klonoar wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t run Electron apps, even an older Mac will fly. My 2015 is still astoundingly fast, it just doesn’t have Chrome bogging it down.

My early 2011 MacBook Pro definitely isn't fast but it's usable for checking out a couple tabs worth of stuff on the sofa. My work 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro actually doesn't feel that fast considering how fucking expensive it is.

My 16” had two speeds.

Quiet and cool with about 11 hours of battery life when writing, reading or some simple productivity stuff.

Fast but loud and hot when doing anything else with about 3 hours of battery life. Even the Touch Bar (which I don’t hate, but I also don’t love) is uncomfortable to the touch.

It seems there is no in between. I’m generally happy with the machine, but I’m very interested in what’s next for the big MBP.

Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#362

Post by foldr »

hajile wrote: post #300
jolux wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

16GB is not "low memory" for the vast majority of users.

It’s a deal with the devil (especially on the pro machines) where you trade 50% faster CPU for 50% less RAM. Everyone raves about how 8GB machines feel, but the massive SSD usage and pitiful lifespan shows that there’s not a free lunch here. 16GB (or a 24GB option) goes a long way toward preventing early death. I actually suspect they’ll be launching a free SSD replacement program in the next couple years. I’ve also…

> I actually suspect they’ll be launching a free SSD replacement program in the next couple years.

Not even the most alarmist estimates suggest that the SSDs on the 8GB machines will start dying after two years!

At the moment the SSD lifetime concerns are little more than FUD. Everything we know is perfectly consistent with these machines having SSD lifetimes of a decade, even with heavy usage.

Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#364

Post by JonathanFly »

forgetfulness wrote: post #175
dman wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a laptop?

Maybe the commenter has a very interesting use for it, but why would you buy a 256 GB RAM machine (which isn't a lot of memory for this arena either) to develop the model, instead of using something smaller to work on it and leasing a big cluster for the minutes to hours of the day that you'll need to train it on the actual dataset?

>Maybe the commenter has a very interesting use for it, but why would you buy a 256 GB RAM machine (which isn't a lot of memory for this arena either) to develop the model, instead of using something smaller to work on it and leasing a big cluster for the minutes to hours of the day that you'll need to train it on the actual dataset?

A 128GB of a ram in a consumer PC is about $750 dollars (desktop anyway, laptop may be more?). That's less than a single high end consumer gaming GPU. Or a fraction of a Quadro GPU.

So to the extent that developers ever run things on their local hardware (CPU, GPU, whatever) 128GB of RAM is not much of a leap. Or 256GB for Threadripper. It's in the ballpark of having a high-end consumer GPU.

Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#365

Post by ogre_codes »

flohofwoe wrote: post #298
ogre_codes wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe for some low hangers, but compiling code will still be faster, XCode and VSCode will be a bit snappier, Safari and Messages will be a bit better. These base things need to work on a broad range of products. The fact that Apple writes much of their software for iOS and MacOS at the same time means much of it is designed to run on fairly light hardware. I know we’re all stuck with bloated stuff like Slack and som…

> but compiling code will still be faster I don't know about that, LLVM is getting slower with each new release too [1]. Same for Xcode: startup is very noticeably slower than a few years ago on the same machine. Starting into a debugging session for the first time is much slower (it used to be instant, now it's multiple seconds). The new build system in Xcode is most definitely slower than the old one, at least for…

I suppose that’s a fair comment. The whole build system and IDE slow down when working with Swift. It’s possible Swift wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for faster processors.

One nice thing is Swift is slow to build but quick at runtime.

Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#366

Post by imwillofficial »

homarp wrote: post #252
SSLy wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is called "What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away."

and this is now called Electron trading speed of development with 'hardware optimization'. Mac being a small market, some users are still opiniated/loud enough to reward nicer/native UI vs cross-ish platform lowest common denominator UI. Maybe there is hope Arm mac stays fast.

Yep, see the success of the Nova editor.

Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#367

Post by gregoriol »

mortenjorck wrote: post #39

This would be quite an accelerated timeline if Apple ships its second-generation M-series chip only eight months after the first. Typically, they’ve followed a sort of six-month tick-tock pattern for the A-series, launching a new major revision in the fall with the new iPhone, and launching an “X” revision in the spring with new iPads. I think most observers have been expecting an “M1X” for Apple's first pro-oriented…

Some people (a lot?) are now waiting for the new Pro devices and won't buy new until then

Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#368

Post by Hamuko »

imwillofficial wrote: post #366
homarp wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and this is now called Electron trading speed of development with 'hardware optimization'. Mac being a small market, some users are still opiniated/loud enough to reward nicer/native UI vs cross-ish platform lowest common denominator UI. Maybe there is hope Arm mac stays fast.

Yep, see the success of the Nova editor.

It's a success?

Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#369

Post by sschueller »

kumarvvr wrote: post #156

Somewhere, the collective whos who of the silicon chip world is shitting their pants. Apple just showed to the world how powerful and efficient processors can be. All that with good design. Customers are going to demand more from Intel and the likes. Just imagine Apple releasing the Mx chips for server infrastructure. Intel ought to be sweating bullets now. edit: a word.

But it's not really the chip, we have powerful ARM CPU every except on desktops. It's the combination of software and the chip that makes this a huge computing jump. No one wanted to invest in rewriting software to switch away from x86.

Re: Apple's follow-up to M1 chip goes into mass production for Mac

#370

Post by Klonoar »

Hamuko wrote: post #347
Klonoar wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t run Electron apps, even an older Mac will fly. My 2015 is still astoundingly fast, it just doesn’t have Chrome bogging it down.

My early 2011 MacBook Pro definitely isn't fast but it's usable for checking out a couple tabs worth of stuff on the sofa. My work 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro actually doesn't feel that fast considering how fucking expensive it is.

You know, I believe you on the 2019 - I've heard this from more people than I care to admit, and makes me glad I skipped that year.

I think from 2016-2019 was a rough era for the MacBook Pro when you factor in price for performance; still great machines, but they didn't feel as polished as the 2015 MBP or the 2020 M1's.

Edit: year banding.

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