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I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

simonhartcher.com

461–470 of 541 posts

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#461

TFA suggests ARM64 might be the answer. It's not that simple. Asahi Linux on Apple silicon still uses substantial energy when the lid is closed, compared to MacOS on the same hardware. With Asahi you might get a couple of days of sleep before the battery dies but you definitely won't get a month.

That might be down to the weirdness of (or Linux's unfamiliarity with) Apple silicon, not ARM in general.

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can also just tell them to get an M2 MacBook Air for $800 Yes, you will find that most material problems can be solved by buying more stuff. If they wanted to buy a new laptop, they would have done that. > You'll have to do near zero troubleshooting That's the case now. Meanwhile, with the Macs they use, I have to explain that there's a difference between Intel and ARM Macs, that no, their software won't work i…

I'm a huge Linux fan but "it just works" is not a phrase I'd use in the same paragraph as Linux. Try explaining to your grandma that she needs to open a terminal and run "sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade"

Why would grandma do that when there's been an update manager service GUI for two decades?

Either set it to do upgrades in the background automatically or tell her to hit "Install updates" when she sees a notification about it. Ideally you'd click the checkmark that enables the former.

The great thing about Debian and Ubuntu LTS releases is that they're rock solid and nothing changes for like a decade or however long they're kept on life support.

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on an AMD machine that System76 wrote the firmware for, and they specifically wrote in S3 sleep functionality despite the base firmware missing it.

Do you have a source for that? The only thing I've found is S3 sleep under coreboot, which only applies to intel.

These[1] have S3 sleep enabled in their firmware thanks to System76.

[1] https://hpdevone.com/

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right that it’s “a hundred different pieces each doing it right” but you gloss over the disadvantage of decentralization: getting everybody on board with the project. With a centralized product (such as at Apple) the CEO can say “I want to increase battery life on existing hardware by 20% before next release or you’re fired” and people will work 80 hours a week to get that done. With open source? You’ve got te…

Because it's not actually a disadvantage, because if it's actually open source no one can stop anyone else from doing it. If you or your company wants to work 80 hour weeks to improve power efficiency on Linux, you can submit patches to all the different projects where nobody else is doing the work. And that actually happens in real life. Most of the projects care to begin with because they use their own stuff and do…

And that actually happens in real life. Most of the projects care to begin with because they use their own stuff and don't want to ruin their own battery life or have a competitive disadvantage over the alternative.

Sure, they try not to ruin the battery life, but who is investing the amount of engineering resources into Linux battery life that Apple invests into macOS's? No one, of course, because the ROI of doing that for Apple is much higher than doing the same for Linux. Linux's open nature means that going for SotA battery life does not yield a competitive advantage, so no one does it.

If you or your company wants to work 80 hour weeks to improve power efficiency on Linux, you can submit patches to all the different projects where nobody else is doing the work.

In other words, centralize the battery life project. Who is doing that?

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Less than a minute” is going to feel horribly slow to people that are used to instant-resume and not having to think about shutdown vs. sleep. You might be okay with it, but I suspect most consumers today won’t be.

I'm reminded of this Steve Jobs story: So it's the MacBook Air guy's turn. He comes in and places his prototype down in front of Steve. Steve opens the lid. Two seconds later he picks up the laptop and heaves it so hard it skipped across the table like a stone on water: "I said fxxking INSTANT ON!!" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44879509

I know it's poor form to speak ill of the dead in general and of St Jobs in particular, but I do not see how anyone gets much more from stories like this than "Steve Jobs was an ill-tempered dick of a bully" and "power made Steve Jobs immune to getting his head kicked in which is absolutely what happens if you behave that way outside of an air-conditioned Silicon Valley office".

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#466
post #351

Honest question, how is it possible that Macs are so much better in terms of hardware? Context: I use a MacBook at work and a Lenovo with Linux at home and now I might need to change my personal laptop, but I struggle to find (hardware) reasons why not to buy a MacBook, a MacBook Air is actually cheaper than another laptops with similar specs. There's still the ideology of repairability and openness which still plays…

CPUs are the main reason. They’re about 1-1.5 generations ahead of AMDs mobile offering, and OEMs have sweetheart deals with Intel, which is more like 4-5 generations behind. So flagship business laptops (which are the only comparable laptops in terms of build quality to Macbooks) are hamstrung, and everything else is built like a matchbox even with AMD cpus.

That’s a factor, but I’d still rather have an M1 MacBook Air than any other laptop with a comparable form factor. Surely AMD and Intel can offer something that’s at least able to compete with an M1 in terms of performance per Watt. But Apple’s competitors are just nowhere near offering a comparable product.

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Framework doesn't produce it's own CPUs. It buys them directly from Intel. Producing your own CPU is really difficult, if you want it to be competitive with other state-of-the-art CPUs.

They don't need to make their own CPUs for that. Framework can write its own BIOS and ACPI drivers for Windows and Linux to have proper sleep support. But that's more R&D expenditure they probably can't afford. For example, for my home lab, I bought a used Intel 12th gen industrial PC from a specialized Taiwanese embedded systems company, whose BIOS allows very granular control of all sleep states plus individual pow…

Do those settings actually work? My HP laptop with a 10th gen intel has an option for this. Windows manages to suspend, but it doesn't come back to life. Linux is broken, too.

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#468
post #252

I don't remember having "range anxiety" under S3 suspend on my old intel laptops. It just worked and they woke up reasonably reliably and quickly under linux if you had a regular thin and light with integrated graphics. I had an Apple intel laptop that might have been marginally faster returning to life but it basically just worked on either. The move to modern standby has been a mess. It seems to have improved a lot…

I think it is more lived experience than urban folklore - it definitely happens.

can confirm, my MS Surface did it all the time, something about shutting the lid before removing the power supply. I can't recall now, but it was the thing that make me switch back to apple.

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do basically everything in a web browser Then you are deliberately handicapping yourself, this isn't something you can blame on the OS. It's like complaining that a car has bad fuel economy because you always stay in first gear. As for the displays, you are comparing apples to oranges. You can get a high DPI monitor which is smaller than 32 inches for cheap. Which is plenty of screen for the distances where DPI d…

Well, I don't do everything in the browser and the terminal. I also use my IntelliJ IDEs. But other than that? Most macOS apps are now inferior to browser-based analogs. Calendar, contacts, email, iMessage, Music, TV - they all just suck.

My experience is just the opposite. I have never encountered a cloud app which is anywhere near the best paid apps in quality. What cloud app is better at photo editing than Affinity or Photoshop? What cloud calendar is better than BusyCal? What cloud spreadsheet is better than Excel? IDE and text editor? Etc.

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and yet my M1 manages to drain the battery in suspend mode in just a few hours

Something's wrong. Maybe a setting or a random app is preventing your laptop from sleeping properly. You have many threads here saying that MacBooks can go weeks on sleep, and that's also my experience (M1 Pro).

There was a thread about just this issue another day.

I don't daily drive an MBP anymore, only occasionally. But I had one for a week or so, and once or twice I've noticed that my backlit keyboard still had its lights on, which is unusual when the computer sleeps. The screen was dark, though, so it can be confusing.

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