Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs

#151

Post by Underphil » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 10:56 PM UTC

TheDong wrote: post #64

aljgz wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the logic for downvotes. We vote with our wallets. When I could not update the Ram on my personal Dell machine I asked for a Frame.work in my new job. As my Intel based FW at work had thermal throttling problems, for my next personal purchase I got an AMD one. As Ubuntu had shady practices, I installed Fedora, as Gnome forced UX choices I did not want, I used KDE. As I wanted my machine to be even…

"We vote with our wallet, so don't complain" is a bad take in my opinion. Like, for phones, I want a phone which runs Linux, has NFC support, and also has iMessage so my friend who only communicates with blue-bubbles and will never message a green-bubble will still talk to me. I also want it to have regulatory approval in the country I live in so I can legally use it to make calls. Because apple has closed the iMessa…

What is the blue and green bubble thing? I've never used an iPhone so don't understand the term. Does it classify messages as iMessage and non-iMessage?

Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs

#152

Post by jasomill » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 10:57 PM UTC

yonatan8070 wrote: post #84

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #13

What are the limitations of USB4/Thunderbolt compared with a regular PCIe slot?

I can speak to my own experience, YMMV I hooked up a Radeon RX 9060 XT to my Feodra KDE laptop (Yoga Pro 7 14ASP9) using a Razer Core X Chroma (40Gbps), and the performance when using the eGPU was very similar to using the Radeon 880M built into the laptop's Ryzen 9 365 APU. So at least with my setup, performance is not great at all. On paper, TB4 is capable of pushing 5GB/s, which is somewhere between 4x and 8x of P…

For gaming, lots of things can affect Thunderbolt eGPU performance.

First, you need to connect the display directly to the eGPU rather than to the laptop.

Second, you need to make sure you have enough VRAM to minimize texture streaming during gameplay.

Third, you'll typically see better performance in terms of higher settings/resolutions vs higher framerates at lower settings/resolutions.

Fourth, depending on your system, you may be bottlenecked by other peripherals sharing PCH lanes with the Thunderbolt connection.

Finally, depending on the Thunderbolt version, PCIe bandwidth can be significantly lower than the advertised bandwidth of the Thunderbolt link. For example, while Thunderbolt 3 advertises 40 Gbps, and typically connects via x4 PCIe 3.0 (~32 Gbps), for whatever reason it imposes a 22 Gbps cap on PCIe data over the Thunderbolt link.

Even taking all this into account, you'll still see a significant performance drop on a current-gen GPU when running over Thunderbolt, though I'd still expect a useful performance improvement over integrated graphics in most cases (though not necessarily worth the cost of the eGPU enclosure vs just buying a cheap used minitower PC on eBay and gaming on that instead of a laptop).

Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs

#153

Post by curt15 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 10:58 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #59

dd_xplore wrote: post #53

Why does Apple need to make the drivers in a walled garden? Atleast they should support major device categories with official drivers.

> Why does Apple need to make the drivers in a walled garden? Isn't that the whole point of the walled garden, that they approve things? How could they aim and realize a walled garden without making things like that have to pass through them?

I think the OP is asking why Apple is enclosing macs in a walled garden when that concept is generally associated with iPhones, not general-purpose computers.

Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs

#154

Post by simulator5g » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 11:31 PM UTC

sunnybeetroot wrote: post #69

TheDong wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Apple still won't release iMessage for Android or Linux (unlike every other messenger platform, like whatsapp, telegram, wechat, microsoft teams, etc, which are all cross-platform). Because of that, you need an apple device around to be able to deal with iMessage users.

That is no longer true. https://bluebubbles.app/ Well… it’s not exactly no longer true, you do need an Apple VM but it doesn’t have to be the end device.

This is against ToS and they will be shut down eventually

Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs

#155

Post by ascagnel_ » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 11:31 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #103

TheDong wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends how you define the market. In the 2001 microsoft case [0], the courts ruled Microsoft had a monopoly over the "Intel-based personal computer market". Apple has a monopoly over the "M-chip" personal computer market. They have a monopoly over the iOS market with the app store. They have a monopoly over the driver market on macOS. Like, Microsoft was found guilty of exploiting its monopoly for installing IE b…

> Apple has a monopoly over the "M-chip" personal computer market. They have a monopoly over the iOS market with the app store When a company is deemed an illegal monopoly, the DoJ basically becomes part of management. Antitrust settlements focus on germane elements, e.g. spin offs. But they also frequently include random terms of political convenience. I don’t think we want a precedent where companies having a produ…

More to the point: having a monopoly isn't de facto illegal (just look up natural monopolies), it's using the monopoly power in an anti-competitive way that's illegal. Microsoft wasn't charged with having a monopoly, they were charged because they used that monopoly to exclude Netscape Navigator and force bundling of IE.

Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs

#156

Post by bigyabai » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 11:41 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #93

MrArthegor wrote: post #88

A good technical project, but honestly useless in like 90% of scenarios. You want to use an NVidia GPU for LLM ? just buy a basic PC on second hand (the GPU is the primary cost anyway), you want to use Mac for good amount of VRAM ? Buy a Mac. With this proposed solution you have an half-backed system, the GPU is limited by the Thunderbolt port and you don’t have access to all of NVidia tool and library, and on other…

Chicken/egg. NVidia tooling is lacking surely in part because the hardware wasn’t usable on macOS until now. Now that it’s usable that might change.

Nvidia tooling like CUDA has worked on AArch64 UNIX-certified OSes since June of 2020: https://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-aarch64/

The software stack has been ready for Apple Silicon for more than a half decade.

Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs

#157

Post by troad » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 11:43 PM UTC

TheDong wrote: post #58

deepsun wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't purchase? I don't own any Apple devices, everything works fine.

Unfortunately, Apple still won't release iMessage for Android or Linux (unlike every other messenger platform, like whatsapp, telegram, wechat, microsoft teams, etc, which are all cross-platform). Because of that, you need an apple device around to be able to deal with iMessage users.

But you don't need an Apple device to contact iMessage users. Every iMessage ID is a phone number (SMS/RCS) or email.

You've listed a whole bunch of alternatives available to you, but for some reason you demand that Apple change its unique offering into just another one of those for you. Why? Is that not a completely enforced monoculture?

Apple has always been off to the side, doing their own thing, and for some reason that fact utterly enrages people. They demand that Apple become just like everyone else. But we already have everyone else! And in every single field Apple is in, there is more of everyone else than there is of Apple.

Have you considered people like Apple products precisely because they're not like everything else? That making Apple indistinguishable from Facebook or Google is no victory, but a significant loss for customer choice?

Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs

#158

Post by deepsun » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 11:52 PM UTC

TheDong wrote: post #58

deepsun wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't purchase? I don't own any Apple devices, everything works fine.

Unfortunately, Apple still won't release iMessage for Android or Linux (unlike every other messenger platform, like whatsapp, telegram, wechat, microsoft teams, etc, which are all cross-platform). Because of that, you need an apple device around to be able to deal with iMessage users.

Then it would be more correct to say that we "lose when we forego control" when our friends push the iMessage on us.

In my bubble literally noone uses iMessage. More tech savvy use Signal/GroupMe, less tech savvy use SMS/Email. Family use Signal to chat with me, as I can steer my own family a little.

Also I sometimes open web-interface of Facebook, but any attempts to offer WhatsApp I answer "sorry no Facebook apps on my phone, no Instagram/Messenger either". Never had any issues with that. Although I heard some countries are very dependent on Facebook, so might be hard there.

By the way, I noticed it's not hard to use multiple messengers actually, sometimes it's even faster to find a contact as you always remember what app to look at in recents.

UPDATE: My point is that you can also influence your life and how people communicate with you. Up to a point of course, but it's not like you can do nothing with it.

Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs

#159

Post by TheDong » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 11:53 PM UTC

Underphil wrote: post #151

TheDong wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We vote with our wallet, so don't complain" is a bad take in my opinion. Like, for phones, I want a phone which runs Linux, has NFC support, and also has iMessage so my friend who only communicates with blue-bubbles and will never message a green-bubble will still talk to me. I also want it to have regulatory approval in the country I live in so I can legally use it to make calls. Because apple has closed the iMessa…

What is the blue and green bubble thing? I've never used an iPhone so don't understand the term. Does it classify messages as iMessage and non-iMessage?

iOS has two built-in messaging apps. Like all phones, they have SMS built in, and hardly anyone uses it for anything except SMS 2FA codes.

And then they have iMessage, aka blue bubbles, which are kinda like Signal or Whatsapp or Telegram. Everyone in Europe uses whatsapp, and a lot of people in the US use iMessage. If you don't use whatsapp in europe, you'll have a rough time communicating with some social groups, and the same thing for iMessage in the US.

However, unlike every other messenger app I can think of, iMessage isn't cross platform.

Also unlike every other messenger I can think of, it comes installed by default and for some reason uses the same app as the SMS app, and also claims encryption but randomly switches to SMS and breaks encryption making it obviously the least secure of all the apps (and also backs up your keys to iCloud in a way apple can access them by default, neither here nor there).

Blue bubbles are when iMessage is acting as the iMessage app, and has encryption and can use features like sending high resolution photos, location, invites, and a bunch of other apple-specific features.

Green bubbles are when the iMessage app has converted itself into the SMS and RCS app, and has a reduced feature set, like being unable to remove people from group chats.

It's frankly a quite confusing decision to have two quite different apps built into the same app and indicate which feature-set is active based on the color of a UI element. I think everyone would prefer if apple split it into the 'Messages' app (SMS + RCS) and an optional 'iMessage' app which doesn't come installed by default, but you can download on the app store from Apple. I'm frankly surprised the EU hasn't forced apple to show a prompt for "default messenger app" on startup with the options being "Whatsapp", "iMessage", etc etc, like they do for default browser.

Re: Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs

#160

Post by beepbooptheory » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 11:54 PM UTC

amatecha wrote: post #144

qoez wrote: post #36

Idk why this doesn't link to the original source instead of this proxy source: https://x.com/__tinygrad__/status/2039213719155310736

Probably because you can't actually read anything more than the initial post without getting a login-wall: "Join X now to read replies on this post." (Not to mention "X" is a trash site now)

https://xcancel.com/__tinygrad__/status/2039213719155310736