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Wi-Fi packet capturing on M1 Macs is broken

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Re: Wi-Fi packet capturing on M1 Macs is broken

#11
post #3

Interesting that Apple still uses Broadcom Wi-Fi + BT chips in most of their product range despite lots of issues with them. Apple Watch nowadays is using Apple (codenamed Marconi) Wi-Fi + BT chips, hopefully they'll switch all their product lineup to those.

Are those from Infineon->Intel->Apple modem lineage or is that a different team?

I think the acquisition of the Intel modem group is too recent to have been integrated into the Apple watch

Re: Wi-Fi packet capturing on M1 Macs is broken

#12
post #3

Interesting that Apple still uses Broadcom Wi-Fi + BT chips in most of their product range despite lots of issues with them. Apple Watch nowadays is using Apple (codenamed Marconi) Wi-Fi + BT chips, hopefully they'll switch all their product lineup to those.

What are the issue with Broadcom chips?

Re: Wi-Fi packet capturing on M1 Macs is broken

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those from Infineon->Intel->Apple modem lineage or is that a different team?

I think the acquisition of the Intel modem group is too recent to have been integrated into the Apple watch

Why would they have not used them before the acquisition?

Re: Wi-Fi packet capturing on M1 Macs is broken

#15
post #5

Big Sur has been a significant drop in quality, even worse than Catalina. Some are bugs such as this one and some are just deliberately stupid design decisions like the changes to the notifications. I’m worried for the future of the Mac.

Early versions of Catalina were also not great. (Heck, early versions of any major macos release tend to be relatively buggy!) I think people tend to forget things like that, and only remember the later releases of an OS since that is the version they are likely switching off of it to the newer one. I personally have found big sir no more buggy than most releases. Better than some[1], worse than others. About middlin…

Later versions of Catalina remain not great. The problem is that each version of macOS compounds onto the next, since there's no time for the "tock" after the "tick" anymore. Sure, catastrophic bugs may get fixed, but some stuff just seems to degrade forever (I can't remember the last time drag and drop worked like I expected to... even on Apple apps). The OS usually launches around November, and By WWDC, we're already being told about macOS N + 1 and getting betas of that, so you basically get half a year of "bug fixes," before focus shifts to the next release. There's no "stable" period anymore.

Tiger through Lion had a 2-year release cycle. Ever since Mountain Lion, it's been a 1-year cycle. Further complicating this is that these have included unintuitively "ambitious" (or at least "labor intensive") changes. Big Sur was a UI redesign that touched the entire system. But let's not forget that Mojave was also a huge undertaking to get everything working with Dark Mode (both for Apple developers and third party developers). Meanwhile entire suites of apps get thrown out and the rewrites are used to dogfood Catalyst. It's just infinite churn. The core of the technology has taken on the properties of fashion. And that is just not a great recipe for stability.

I've personally chosen to try to approximate the missing "tock" cycle by upgrading to every other macOS. Clearly this is nowhere near the same benefit of Apple actually dedicating a full year and a half to a release, but at least I don't have to go through the (largely arbitrary) UI changes every year or so, and I have the "bugs I know" to deal with vs. the ones I don't yet know about.

Re: Wi-Fi packet capturing on M1 Macs is broken

#17
post #5

Big Sur has been a significant drop in quality, even worse than Catalina. Some are bugs such as this one and some are just deliberately stupid design decisions like the changes to the notifications. I’m worried for the future of the Mac.

As Linux laptop user, I'm bemused when the competition gets worse. Maybe Linux on Apple Silicon will be the best of both worlds in a few years --- I think the dedicated porting effort will more than succeed and will get something more polished than Linux on Intel macs ever was.

I don't share your optimism. If proprietary firmware and dkms blobs remain _de rigueur_, I can't see the situation on linux improving w.r.t. things like graphics cards and wifi chips.

Re: Wi-Fi packet capturing on M1 Macs is broken

#18
post #5

Big Sur has been a significant drop in quality, even worse than Catalina. Some are bugs such as this one and some are just deliberately stupid design decisions like the changes to the notifications. I’m worried for the future of the Mac.

As Linux laptop user, I'm bemused when the competition gets worse. Maybe Linux on Apple Silicon will be the best of both worlds in a few years --- I think the dedicated porting effort will more than succeed and will get something more polished than Linux on Intel macs ever was.

I use arch btw

Re: Wi-Fi packet capturing on M1 Macs is broken

#19
post #3

Interesting that Apple still uses Broadcom Wi-Fi + BT chips in most of their product range despite lots of issues with them. Apple Watch nowadays is using Apple (codenamed Marconi) Wi-Fi + BT chips, hopefully they'll switch all their product lineup to those.

Are those from Infineon->Intel->Apple modem lineage or is that a different team?

I'll just leave this old 2012 article link here.

https://www.macrumors.com/2012/12/03/apple-hiring-former-tex...

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