Wi-Fi packet capturing on M1 Macs is broken • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by xbar » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 5:00 AM UTC

dandongus wrote: post #78

roody15 wrote: post #61

Leopard = meh Snow Leopard = Awesome Lion = meh Yosemite = ok Sierra = good High Sierra = Awesome Mojave = meh Catalina = meh Big Sur = meh (snow leopard and high sierra were the best IMO) Mac Admin for 15 years

you skipped ML (meh) and mavericks (best)

High Sierra's hatred of all my USB devices was an experience like no other. I feel a reciprocal spite.

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

#102

Post by philistine » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 5:10 AM UTC

wyager wrote: post #89

imwillofficial wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broadcom makes some good stuff now and then (Rpi’s)

The Broadcom SoCs used in the RPi's are not "good stuff" at all - they are one of the worst pieces of junk I have ever had the displeasure of using. They are extremely unstable, and if you want any kind of moderately reliable deployment of an RPi, you need to use a watchdog timer to reset the device if it freezes. Except - guess what - the watchdog timer itself is broken on the RPi! (As of the last time I tried this,…

It sounds as painful as making sure every card is in the culturally agreed slot with an Apple II.

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

#103

Post by philistine » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 5:12 AM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: 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.

With the two previous transitions, Apple went through all sorts of weird pains. This time is no different, but unfortunately they still have to release yearly and implement the macOS version of each new service.

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

#104

Post by exmadscientist » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 5:13 AM UTC

slig wrote: post #47

chrisbrandow wrote: post #43

So, I’m dumb about this stuff, but I have a wireless keyboard that uses a WiFi dongle to connect. I’ve lost connection with it a few times on my new m1 Mac. I had never lost connection with it in the previous 5 years. Could this be related to the phenomenon the authors are describing?

Are you using a USB-C dongle? That is known to cause issues with things operating in the 2.4GHz spectrum (such as Bluetooth and your keyboard dongle).

It's not so much the Type C connector causing the problem but rather the high data rates of SuperSpeed USB (or whichever one it is that causes the trouble; I can't keep track of the USB-IF's recent garbage). So Type A (9-pin) connectors are vulnerable as well. But given that a BT or BTLE dongle can't really run very fast, I doubt they're using anything above USB HS (480Mbps) and therefore unlikely to interfere at 2.4GHz no matter what the connector.

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

#105

Post by wmf » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 5:15 AM UTC

spiznnx wrote: post #97

Bluecobra wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Broadcom chips aren't very well regarded in PC Gaming or Server enthusiast markets either I always thought that it was funny that their NICs are much to be desired yet their ASICs power a wide variety of enterprise network switches capable of moving terabits of traffic at low latency. https://people.ucsc.edu/~warner/buffer.html

Broadcom has been through so many mergers and acquisitions that I doubt the two product lines have much DNA in common.

Even Broadcom's wired NICs have different generations that came from different acquisitions: Tigon3 (tg3) came from Alteon AceNIC, I forgot where NetExtreme 2 (bnx2) came from, and NetExteme E (bnxt) is an in-house effort that is somewhat derived from the StrataXGS switches.

So yeah, Broadcom is a rollup of two dozen different companies so the quality of one product tells you nothing about others.

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

#106

Post by de6u99er » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 5:17 AM UTC

totetsu wrote: post #26

my123 wrote: 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.

Marconi is named after inventor of the radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo_Marconi?wprov=sfla1

My French guy at work, would tell me now that it was actually the French who invented the radio.

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

#107

Post by StreamBright » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 5:18 AM UTC

IntelMiner wrote: post #99

dannyw wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the fact that Broadcom essentially enabled the Pi to be created in the first place?

Broadcom "enabled" the Pi to be created because the SoC for the original RPi 1 was a flop. They wanted to use it for Set Top Box (Cable TV, Google TV etc) devices but couldn't find any buyers One of the engineers who worked on it worked out a deal with Broadcom to simply reuse the design and market it toward education instead

And it boots with the GPU which is not 3D accelerated in version 4 because the whole project was done by one person who just left. This is one of most popular SBCs out there. I wish it was a bit better.

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

#108

Post by konart » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 5:19 AM UTC

toinetoine wrote: post #80

cptskippy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still no where near as bad a Linux on the laptop the last time I tried it. I haven't used Linux on a laptop in a decade because it was so bad I swore it off.

I was in the same boat until summer of 2020. Switched to ubuntu 20.04 w/ gnome desktop on my home laptop and haven't looked back.

I have Fedora 33-34 with gnome (initially with KDE as a I was a fan back in my Ubuntu\Arch days) and I only keep it to install updates from time to time to see if it is as usable for a general use as macOS.

Still nowhere near.

Perfect for coding though.

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

#109

Post by philistine » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 5:20 AM UTC

photojosh wrote: post #24

tolmasky wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 alrea…

I just moved on to Big Sur since I got an M1... the previous MBP was on High Sierra, so you can imagine my culture shock! Big Sur reminds me of nothing more than Windows XP, and that's not a compliment.

I’ve taken a big liking to Big Sur. It is a graceful evolution of the UI that needs a lot more precision work (like Preferences, the menu bar shortcuts and Notifications) but it’s a solid base for the next couple of years.

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

#110

Post by StreamBright » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 5:22 AM UTC

wyager wrote: post #89

imwillofficial wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broadcom makes some good stuff now and then (Rpi’s)

The Broadcom SoCs used in the RPi's are not "good stuff" at all - they are one of the worst pieces of junk I have ever had the displeasure of using. They are extremely unstable, and if you want any kind of moderately reliable deployment of an RPi, you need to use a watchdog timer to reset the device if it freezes. Except - guess what - the watchdog timer itself is broken on the RPi! (As of the last time I tried this,…

And the lack of 3D accelerated video with rpi4. I wish I knew about these prior purchasing rpi. There is a good market for small form general purpose computer with 4g ram + decent gpu. I am still not sure if Intel’s NUC would worth a try in this category.