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Ode to the M1

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181–190 of 286 posts

Re: Ode to the M1

#181
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem with devices like Apple's Mx series laptops is that everything works fine...until it doesn't. This device is non-repairable and non-upgradeable as far as CPU, RAM and disk are concerned. Now people may claim that Apple hardware is superior to other manufacturers and that it will last longer. So far I have found that to be false, I have more old non-Apple hardware that is still working fine and few Ap…

Just had a 2019 MacBook Pro 16" have its SSD die randomly. Took it to a repair shop and they said that since the internal SSD is soldered on to the logic board, there is no easy way to repair it without also getting a whole new board, so the machine is essentially completely bricked. I can't even boot it off of an external drive because Apple requires the boot volume to be the internal SSD! I couldn't believe it was…

had the same thing happen to the ssd in my father's thinkpad ... replaced it with a new ssd.

Re: Ode to the M1

#182
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re out of luck if you need docker. M1 Macs would make fantastic Linux laptops, because macOS is appallingly bad at backend development. It makes it up in sheer hardware power and efficiency, otherwise I’d be completely at loss why it’s so loved.

> macOS is appallingly bad at backend development That's news to me. In what way are they bad compared to Linux? Both can run docker, Intellij, Insomnia and Dbeaver.

The main thing is Docker requires emulation

Re: Ode to the M1

#183
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem with devices like Apple's Mx series laptops is that everything works fine...until it doesn't. This device is non-repairable and non-upgradeable as far as CPU, RAM and disk are concerned. Now people may claim that Apple hardware is superior to other manufacturers and that it will last longer. So far I have found that to be false, I have more old non-Apple hardware that is still working fine and few Ap…

Just had a 2019 MacBook Pro 16" have its SSD die randomly. Took it to a repair shop and they said that since the internal SSD is soldered on to the logic board, there is no easy way to repair it without also getting a whole new board, so the machine is essentially completely bricked. I can't even boot it off of an external drive because Apple requires the boot volume to be the internal SSD! I couldn't believe it was…

Yeah that is a unfortunate design choice, I consider drives to be wear items, that is, they will wear much faster than the rest of the machine, and as such should be field replaceable units.

Re: Ode to the M1

#184

> Both Ubuntu and Windows run at native speed since they are virtualized instead of emulated. Coudl someone explain it to me how it's possible? Because their website clearly says "On Intel Macs, x86/x64 operating system can be virtualized. In addition, lower performance emulation is available to run x86/x64 on Apple Silicon" - and Windows on ARM64 is still in a preview.

They run ARM builds of both Ubuntu and Windows. To run x86 programs, on Ubuntu they use Rosetta and on Windows its own emulation solution.

Re: Ode to the M1

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it rare the decommissioned machines are given back to the employee after cleanup?

My org insists that the disks of all obsolete machines are destroyed and the rest of the hardware sent for disposal. I have a few systems that could be wiped and given away for charity but that’s not allowed. This seems incredibly wasteful to me.

seems a lot of orgs work on cargo-cult knowledge

https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/56891586200393318... (2015)

https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/11917713453627965... (2019)

i think swift had another post about it a bit more recently but i cannot find it now

if you encrypt the disk at the os level, you only need to throw away the keys, ie: reformat the drive. no need to physically erase as what is store is just noise once the keys are gone.

Re: Ode to the M1

#187
I have to pitch in and recommend Orb Stack[1] for virtualization here. If you need WSL-style, terminal-only Linux VMS or want Docker without the bloat of Docker desktop, it's the perfect tool. If you go with Alpine as your distro, the whole thing takes under 200mb of disk space, and less RAM and CPU than most Electron apps when idle. It can do most things that WSL can do, Finder integration, lightning-fast, extremely easy installation, VS Code integration, running Mac commands from Linux and vice versa, effortless file sharing and network connections between the host and guests, fully terminal-based management, out-of-the-box integration with things like "open" and "pbcopy", VPN / proxy detection and autoconfiguration, it can even use Rosetta instead of Qemu for running Intel binaries, which makes them faster than on quite a few Intel laptops.

I'm not affiliated with the company, just a very happy user.

[1] https://orbstack.dev/

Re: Ode to the M1

#189
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many Obj C libraries were a wrapping layer on top of the Carbon APIs and in terms of abstraction Obj C is also a level above C++. Passing everything as messages is an additional layer of indirection. NextSTEP itself was a big change compared to X or Windows's GUI stack. NeXT machines were beefy and adjusted to high workloads so the user experience wasn't problematic, but it's still more resource use than the standard…

Electron’s bloat and power consumption wouldn’t bother me so much if the performance was actually good on a fast machine. But the experience is awful compared to a native app.

My guess is that Slack for instance would never make a full blown native client for macos. If it wasn't electron, they'd probably have gone with Mono or another cross platform stack, and we'd see performance lag and memory bloat compared to a handcrafted native app.

I say that looking at macos' pretty big market share compared to what it was a decade or two ago.

And we see tons of users choosing VSCode or IntelliJ's offering above Textmate, Codea, or even BBEdit, so the market for handcrafted delightful editors is also pretty slim. And that trend was there since the Eclipse days, so nothing new either.

All in all, I really think the choice comes down to electron/cross compiled apps or no apps, in many many cases.

Re: Ode to the M1

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My org insists that the disks of all obsolete machines are destroyed and the rest of the hardware sent for disposal. I have a few systems that could be wiped and given away for charity but that’s not allowed. This seems incredibly wasteful to me.

seems a lot of orgs work on cargo-cult knowledge https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/56891586200393318... (2015) https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/11917713453627965... (2019) i think swift had another post about it a bit more recently but i cannot find it now if you encrypt the disk at the os level, you only need to throw away the keys, ie: reformat the drive. no need to physically erase as what is st…

Thanks for the links. I wonder if it’s entirely that, or if management fears that staff might somehow gain a benefit by taking obsolete hardware.
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