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Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

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Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#961
post #855

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can exhaust my 64GB just opening browser tabs for documentation.

In case your statement is only a slight sarcasm: Isn’t that just the OS saying “unused memory is wasted memory”? Most of it is likely cache that can easily be evicted with higher memory pressure.

It’s a slight exaggeration, I also have an editor open and some dev process (test runner usually). It’s not just caching, I routinely hit >30 GB swap with fans revved to the max and fairly often this becomes unstable enough to require a reboot even after manually closing as much as I can.

I mean, some of this comes down to poor executive function on my part, failing to manage resources I’m no longer using. But that’s also a valid use case for me and I’m much more effective at whatever I’m doing if I can defer it with a larger memory capacity.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#962

Kind of surprising to me they’re not making more effort towards game support - maybe someone can explain what the barriers are towards mac support - is it lack of shared libraries, x64 only, sheer number of compute cores? When I see the spec sheet and “16x graphics improvement” I go okay what could it handle in terms of game rendering? Is it really only for video production and GPU compute tasks?

The gaming capability is there, but Apple only officially supports their own Metal on macOS as far as graphics languages, meaning the only devs with experience with Metal are the World of Warcraft team at Blizzard and mobile gaming studios. MoltenVK exists to help port Vulkan based games, but generally it's rough going at the moment. I'm personally hoping that the volume of M1 Macs Apple has been selling will cause d…

As a former Starcraft 2 player I’d say: don’t count on it. It wasn’t even worth it for Blizzard to make SC2 that performant on Vulkan. They had a graphics option for it, but it was buggy compared to the OpenGL option. When a company that size doesn’t want to commit the dev resources, that leaves little hope for the smaller companies.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#963

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume because so far the only devices released with M1 processors have been consumer devices with attached screens, the focus has been on bringing over the full graphical, desktop Linux experience to it, not just headless server linux.

I think you’re forgetting the Mac mini

You're right, I forgot they updated the mini with the M1 last year too.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#964

If Apple ever gets around to putting an M1 Max in a Mac Mini, that'd probably push me over the edge toward buying one.

Always wondered who the Mac minis were marketed towards. Sure they're cool but wouldn't you want something portable should you want to go to a coworking location or extend a vacation with a remote work portion of the trip? Surely in the world of covid remote work is common among developers... Would that mean you'd need a second device like an Air to bring on trips?

In a world of COVID remote work I got tired of my i9 always running loud and hot, and replaced it with a Mac mini which runs at room temperature, is the same or more snappy, since I was almost always running it in clamshell mode hooked up to the two displays anyway. And unplugging and plugging it back in to the TB hub always caused weird states that required reboots maybe 30% of the time.

So now I've got a Mac mini hooked up permanently to those monitors and it just works.

Now I am very tempted to trade in both my Mac mini and i9 for a 16" M1 pro so I can once again return to one machine that isn't always out of sync.

But I'm going to wait to see how well it runs in clamshell mode hooked up to 2 4k displays.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#965
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our local office only uses macOS and Windows for desktop computers, GNU/Linux nowadays only for servers in some Amazon and Azure cloud instances. Apple will have plenty of customers.

OSX is less than 1/7th of the desktop OS market, and iOS is slightly over 1/4th of the phone market; the major cloud companies are the largest consumers of desktop and server scale CPUs, and buy mostly AMD with some Intel only when cluster compatibility requirements apply; when it is non-x86, it is a mix of things that do not include any Apple ARM offerings but do include larger scale higher performance ARM CPUs and…

Apple's net income is not $22B a year -- that's way off.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#966

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSX is less than 1/7th of the desktop OS market, and iOS is slightly over 1/4th of the phone market; the major cloud companies are the largest consumers of desktop and server scale CPUs, and buy mostly AMD with some Intel only when cluster compatibility requirements apply; when it is non-x86, it is a mix of things that do not include any Apple ARM offerings but do include larger scale higher performance ARM CPUs and…

Apple's net income is not $22B a year -- that's way off.

Sorry, I meant per quarter.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#967

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a poorly considered take, no offense to you. I think you're failing to consider that Apple traditionally drives innovation in the computing market, and this will push a lot of other manufacturers to compete with them. AMD is already on the warpath, and Intel just got a massive kick in the pants. There's other arguments against Apple being as big as it, but this isn't a good one. Tesla being huge and powerful…

A lot of Apple fans keep saying Apple drives innovation, but I'd love to see where this has actually been true. Every example I've ever been given has a counter-example where someone else did it first and Apple did not do it in a way that conferred a market advantage; the only thing Apple has proven they're consistently better at is having a PR team that is also a cult.

Sure. Here's the basic pipeline: Somebody makes a cool piece of tech, but they don't have the UI/UX chops to make it work. Apple comes along and works some serious magic on the tech to make it attractive for everyday use. Other companies get their roadmap from Apple's release, and go from there.

Some examples:

Nice fonts on desktops

Smartphones

Tablets

Smartwatches (more debatable, but Apple did play a big part here)

In-house SOCs.

I suspect that their future AR offering is going to work the same way. The market is currently nascent, but Apple will make a market.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#968

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I shoot timelapse using Canon 5D RAW images, I don't know the exact dimensions off the top of my head but greater than 5000px wide. I then grade them using various programs, ultimately using After Effects to render out full frame ProRes 4444. After Effects was running out of memory. It would crash and fail to render my file. It would display an error message that told me specifically it was out of memory. I increased…

> But I love the fact that you have this cute little theory to doubt my actual experience to infer that I would make this up. The facts were suspect, your follow up is further proof I had good reason to be suspect. First off, the RAW images from a 5D aren’t 16 bit. ;) Importantly, the out of memory error had nothing to do with the “16 bit RAW files”, it was video rendering lots of high res images that was the issue w…

Yes, Canon RAW images are 14bit. Once opened in After Effects, you are working in 16bit space. Are you just trying to be argumentative for the fun?

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#969

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Color me skeptical. I believe you (and Apple) that the battery can be charged faster, but I am currently rendering video on an M1 MBP. Its power draw: ~20 Watts. That's a lot of charging overhead.

The 16” has a 100wh battery, so it needs 100w of power to charge 50% in 30 minutes (their “fast charging”). Add in 20w to keep the laptop running at the same time, and some conversion losses, and a 140w charger sounds just about right.

That actually sounds on the money. I hope you're right!

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#970

I'm so ridiculously happy with my first generation M1 I have zero desire to upgrade. Kind of wild to consider given how long it has taken to get here with the graveyard of Apple laptops in my closet.

See, this is why you have kids. Now my kid gets my M1 Air, and I get a M1 Max!

Your child is the justification for your relentless consumerism?
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