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Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

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Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#901

Post by mjochim »

noduerme wrote: post #897
teiferer wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a little sluggish > surprised by how quick it felt Aren't these properties of the (G)UI rather than of the processor? I've been using systems 20 years ago that were super snappy. The same software would still be snappy today obviously. But the software has become bloated to the point that you need to run the latest generation of CPUs such that things are not sluggish. In principle you don't need 32-core GHz CPUs to…

Yeah... my solution for the last 3 decades (with a grain of salt) has been to buy the most expensive decked out Apple laptop every 6 years and never, ever update the OS. This is in line with my philosophy about shoes: I only own 5 copies of one pair (4 in boxes in my closet until I wear the current ones out). Rolling everything over to a new dev environment every 6 years is annoying but manageable. This way I took a…

> never, ever update the OS.

> took two airs for almost a decade from 10.4 to 10.10 or something

I’m curious, did macOS 10.4->10.10 not constitute an OS update? Or was this a time when you applied your rule differently?

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#902

Post by ryukoposting »

Folcon wrote: post #861
teiferer wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a little sluggish > surprised by how quick it felt Aren't these properties of the (G)UI rather than of the processor? I've been using systems 20 years ago that were super snappy. The same software would still be snappy today obviously. But the software has become bloated to the point that you need to run the latest generation of CPUs such that things are not sluggish. In principle you don't need 32-core GHz CPUs to…

I keep thinking this and maybe I'm missing something, but I'd love to be able to opt for something in this direction, some old school constraints, I feel like we should be able to do something pretty magical these days For example, is there a version of linux that I'm missing? I've not run a desktop linux box in over a decade, any suggestions would be great, or is everyone happily running ubuntu / fedora?

No distro is going to be perceptibly faster than another. It's all about user experience - what tools ship with it, package manager, etc.

I'd pump the brakes on Ubuntu, which nowadays is a perceptibly worse user experience than other mainstream distros. Snap is a disaster, and flatpak rocketed past it years ago thanks to Valve bucks.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#903

Post by flohofwoe »

d3Xt3r wrote: post #871
Folcon wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep thinking this and maybe I'm missing something, but I'd love to be able to opt for something in this direction, some old school constraints, I feel like we should be able to do something pretty magical these days For example, is there a version of linux that I'm missing? I've not run a desktop linux box in over a decade, any suggestions would be great, or is everyone happily running ubuntu / fedora?

No one uses Ubuntu any more (besides corporations), it's possibly the worst distro of the whole lot due to several bad decisions from Canonical (snap etc). Fedora is a decent alternative, but if you're really after performance, CachyOS is the way to go as they provide highly optimised (PGO/LTC etc) and CPU-family specific kernel, custom scheduler (BORE) and optimised binary packages (catering to x86-64-v3, x86-64-v4…

Tbh, Ubuntu/Kubuntu is fine if you're not a Linux die hard and just need a balanced OS that either feels more like macOS (in that case go for vanilla Ubuntu) or like Windows (in that case go for Kubuntu).

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#904

Post by reaperducer »

Gud wrote: post #858
reaperducer wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except in the 90s, I could wield my OS of choice on the hardware I bought. What OS could I have loaded onto my Macintosh SE/30 that wasn't from Apple?

NetBSD. Still supported, by the way. Does Apple support your Macintosh SE/30 still? I believe Linux was also supported. https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/mac68k/

NetBSD for the Mac didn't come out until after the SE/30 was already discontinued, and even then was little more than a crashy, unusable beta mess, not a real operating system. It was a tech demo, not something you could do work with.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#905

Post by flohofwoe »

ahoka wrote: post #886
teiferer wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a little sluggish > surprised by how quick it felt Aren't these properties of the (G)UI rather than of the processor? I've been using systems 20 years ago that were super snappy. The same software would still be snappy today obviously. But the software has become bloated to the point that you need to run the latest generation of CPUs such that things are not sluggish. In principle you don't need 32-core GHz CPUs to…

It's the property of the display refresh rate.

A high refresh rate is only a crutch/workaround to reduce latency caused by too many pipeline stages until an input action shows up on the screen. A better fix is too reduce complexity in the involved software layers.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#906

Post by flohofwoe »

pjmlp wrote: post #842
teiferer wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a little sluggish > surprised by how quick it felt Aren't these properties of the (G)UI rather than of the processor? I've been using systems 20 years ago that were super snappy. The same software would still be snappy today obviously. But the software has become bloated to the point that you need to run the latest generation of CPUs such that things are not sluggish. In principle you don't need 32-core GHz CPUs to…

This applies to the whole stack, even ignoring the GUI, you would not find systems with a gazillion of processes, doing OS IPC all over the place, because the hardware could not accommodate it. But hey, microservices and static linking are the future. /s

> But hey, microservices and static linking are the future. /s

Aren't those two things contradicting each other? ;)

I think macOS getting more sluggish in each release (which is objectively true) is just plain old bad software engineering and prioritising the wrong things. E.g. it's just Apple's version of "What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away.".

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#907

Post by noduerme »

mjochim wrote: post #901
noduerme wrote: post #897

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... my solution for the last 3 decades (with a grain of salt) has been to buy the most expensive decked out Apple laptop every 6 years and never, ever update the OS. This is in line with my philosophy about shoes: I only own 5 copies of one pair (4 in boxes in my closet until I wear the current ones out). Rolling everything over to a new dev environment every 6 years is annoying but manageable. This way I took a…

> never, ever update the OS. > took two airs for almost a decade from 10.4 to 10.10 or something I’m curious, did macOS 10.4->10.10 not constitute an OS update? Or was this a time when you applied your rule differently?

I'd have to check em, it was just a guess, but I have two airs from the last decade (2009 and 2015 I think) with their original operating systems and I think one is around 10.4 and the other 10.10ish.

Maybe I misunderstood your question... I never updated the OS on either of them. Or on any Mac I've owned since the mid 90s.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#908

Post by Dansvidania »

crakenzak wrote: post #791
Dansvidania wrote: post #788

I think I remember that at the 8nm architecture times there were talks about "reaching the physically possible limit" with the size of the transistors. These are 2nm. While normally pretty cynical, I am experiencing one of those "what a time to be alive" moments.

I hate to be that guy, but the nm number is completely unrelated to the actual size of the features printed on the chip. It’s become mainly a "chip manufacturing generation" label. But generation over generation, the features printed on the chips are becoming significantly more compact and advanced, so truly "what a time to be alive"! ;)

that is incredibly disappointing, but thanks for clarifying that for me.

why would the industry keep using the 'nm' unit when it no longer measure the actually etched features, how is the number even picked? :D

/facepalm

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#909

Post by biorach »

echelon wrote: post #767
plasticeagle wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M1 Pro 2021 16GB RAM Feels as snappy and impressive as the first day I got it. I never need to close apps, or reboot. I record multitrack audio on it without any perceptible latency. I write code on it. It's the best computer I've ever owned by a significant margin.

MacBook is great hardware, but I really hate MacOS. It feels perpetually cellophane wrapped, and I don't like any of the window management. Finder is particularly awful too. You should be able to deeply tweak how window management works, but Mac won't let you do that. I'd run Linux on the hardware if it wasn't a hack.

> I'd run Linux on the hardware if it wasn't a hack.

It's a hack in a good way and this is a really bad reason to not run Linux.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#910

Post by Applejinx »

noduerme wrote: post #897
teiferer wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a little sluggish > surprised by how quick it felt Aren't these properties of the (G)UI rather than of the processor? I've been using systems 20 years ago that were super snappy. The same software would still be snappy today obviously. But the software has become bloated to the point that you need to run the latest generation of CPUs such that things are not sluggish. In principle you don't need 32-core GHz CPUs to…

Yeah... my solution for the last 3 decades (with a grain of salt) has been to buy the most expensive decked out Apple laptop every 6 years and never, ever update the OS. This is in line with my philosophy about shoes: I only own 5 copies of one pair (4 in boxes in my closet until I wear the current ones out). Rolling everything over to a new dev environment every 6 years is annoying but manageable. This way I took a…

I do this! Interesting to see someone else advocating the practice. In my open source development I start work on a retro machine running Snow Leopard, specifically to be able to generate authentic retro binaries that'll work anywhere, and then I have a process to port to modern MacOS and signed Apple Silicon binaries, but the machine's a M1 Studio on Monterey and building for 11.1.

My worry is that they'll kill signing for people who aren't updating, though that shouldn't be a factor. I would have to simply get another machine to port to, because I don't trust that changes they make are always going to be good in any sense.

There might be a window for computing within which it's good: I find I'm not worried about adding new Linux machines and architectures to build for, but my Windows builds are 32 and 64 bit on Windows 7 with no attempt to modernize the build system, and I've got that two-stage Mac build process where it starts on a time capsule machine not connected to the internet, and continues on the M1 running Monterey. I'm anxious for the day Apple requires you use stuff that's constantly changed out from under you. I don't work like that.

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