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Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

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Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#941

Post by teiferer »

Closi wrote: post #879
teiferer wrote: post #794

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…

> In principle you don't need 32-core GHz CPUs to move a window around on a screen without it feeling sluggish I think the snappiness is less this, and more about the speed to open a file, how quickly chrome pops open when you open it etc. I assume this is a combination of hardware and how fast SSD->RAM is due to the SOC, but software will certinaly play a big part too.

> I assume this is a combination of hardware and how fast SSD->RAM is due to the SOC, but software will certinaly play a big part too.

That is exactly what I'm talking about. Sorry, you are completely off. My machine 20 years ago was not an SOC and didn't have an SSD either. It was fast as lightning to open a window.

What does this have to do with SSD? Or an SOC? It's all because the software is incredibly bloated, and as your comment indicates, the young generation doesn't even know this and thinks the hardware is to blame because it's 2 gens behind state of the art (so, 3.5 years old).

This is very sad and exactly why things are the way they are.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#942

Post by SloopJon »

darreninthenet wrote: post #785
SloopJon wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I happily booted and ran an Intel Mac mini using a 4TB drive in a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure, and I do the same for an M4 Max Mac Studio using an 8TB drive in a USB4v2 enclosure (OWC Express 1M2 80G). You'll just have to be careful to match the enclosure to the ports on the system. The base-model M6 Mac mini still uses Thunderbolt 4, so a USB4v2 enclosure would be wasted.

Funnily enough I do the same with my Intel iMac... I have a 2TB Thunderbolt 3 Glyph drive as my primary and boot drive and it works a dream... if I got one of these new Mac minis without upgrading the drive, presumably I could just plug this straight into it and apple will do its magical migration thing?

These Macs are reportedly shipping with macOS 27 Golden Gate. You'd have two incompatible constraints: Macs don't like to run a version older than what they shipped with, and Golden Gate doesn't support the Intel iMac.

You might be able to boot from the internal drive, install/upgrade the external drive, then boot from it.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#943

Post by teiferer »

ahoka wrote: post #888
teiferer wrote: post #794

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.

Yeah tell that to the chrome instance that takes 3.5 seconds to open an new tab. Because it needs to suspend one of the other tabs that are taking 5 GB of ram each.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#944

Post by teiferer »

flohofwoe wrote: post #908
pjmlp wrote: post #844

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.".

It's maybe a combination of incentives. Give the devs the latest shiniest model, give them a list of barely manageable feature requests , and nobody will spend the time to consider performance issues that you'd get on hardware from 10 years ago if you take approach X, Y, Z if you don't notice a difference on your formula 1 setup.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#945

Post by tomaskafka »

alluro2 wrote: post #527

I was blown away by M1 Pro, and used it for 4 years before it became a little sluggish, and replacing it with an Asus S16 running on Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (an excellent laptop). One of the main reasons was missing my old Linux setup. I've briefly tested M5 Pro in an Apple store and was surprised by how quick it felt and did anything. A tangible and significant difference, and I really feel it would be good getting it, or…

> for 4 years before it became a little sluggish

Weird, I didn't know silicone degrades in this way. Perhaps it was rather the macOS and Mac apps that were getting progressively worse?

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#946

Post by WillAdams »

dainank wrote: post #890
xiphias2 wrote: post #97

Apple still has the best hardware so I moved to it for the last few years, but the closed software ecosystem is terrible for taking advantage of it. I wasn't able to debug network errors (restartin my Mac worked), Metal was missing low level disassembly / debugging tools (there is some hard to use UI), but the worst thing was the inflexible windowing system. Even getting all the window handles on all screens/desktops…

I think the worst is the lack of support for 'click-through' behavior on MacOS. This is that you have to select a window first with left-click before being able to select UI elements within that window with left-click. The amount of time lost with extra clicks is incredible. It is even more frustrating that this behavior is somewhat inconsistent, with some applications allowing this and others not (although it is mor…

The clickthrough behaviour used to be the default in NeXTstep (and it was one of the things which I misliked not having when switching from my Cube to my work Mac and ThinkPad portable ages ago).

The apps it works in are probably written in Cocoa née "Yellow Box" (allegedly so named because Bill Gates stated that rather than write apps for NeXT APIs he would instead....)

The way I fix it when using my Mac these days is to only use apps written using Objective-C and so forth.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#947

Post by jodrellblank »

teiferer wrote: post #794
alluro2 wrote: post #527

I was blown away by M1 Pro, and used it for 4 years before it became a little sluggish, and replacing it with an Asus S16 running on Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (an excellent laptop). One of the main reasons was missing my old Linux setup. I've briefly tested M5 Pro in an Apple store and was surprised by how quick it felt and did anything. A tangible and significant difference, and I really feel it would be good getting it, or…

> 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…

> "the software has become bloated"

Casey Muratori has a 20 minute talk on YouTube called "Clean code, horrible performance"[1]. Using an oft-repeated example in C++ he rewrites it uncleanly and then benchmarks.

Removing Classes/subclasses/polymorphism: 1.5x faster. That overhead was like reducing an iPhone 14 to an iPhone 11 performance.

Replacing Encapsulation with a table-driven calculation: 10x faster. That overhead was like reverting an average desktop CPU from 2023 back to 2010 performance.

Adding basic SIMD: 20x faster.

His position is that the principles of Clean Code wiped out 15 - 20 years of hardware progress, for a subjective ideal of maintainability, and even if they deliver on that, the cost is too high. It shouldn't/cannot cost a decade of hardware performance to make programmer's lives easier.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD5NrevFtbU

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#948

Post by topato »

teiferer wrote: post #941
Closi wrote: post #879

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In principle you don't need 32-core GHz CPUs to move a window around on a screen without it feeling sluggish I think the snappiness is less this, and more about the speed to open a file, how quickly chrome pops open when you open it etc. I assume this is a combination of hardware and how fast SSD->RAM is due to the SOC, but software will certinaly play a big part too.

> I assume this is a combination of hardware and how fast SSD->RAM is due to the SOC, but software will certinaly play a big part too. That is exactly what I'm talking about. Sorry, you are completely off. My machine 20 years ago was not an SOC and didn't have an SSD either. It was fast as lightning to open a window. What does this have to do with SSD? Or an SOC? It's all because the software is incredibly bloated, a…

“Old man yells at cloud” lol, but seriously, you’re definitely correct. Bloated binaries and unnecessary frameworks (electron and soon, tauri). Everything is built for the web, then forced into a broken and bloated mobile app and desktop binary. Zero platform optimization anymore.

I keep my chromium and chromium profile loaded into a ram drive, and it’s still slow and sluggish. Tech debt and a growing monorepo has damaged it beyond recovery. I really hope those two new browser engines reach a usable state soon. Chromium, WebKit, gecko have been doing for too long without a full foundational overhaul.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#949

Post by temporallobe »

alluro2 wrote: post #527

I was blown away by M1 Pro, and used it for 4 years before it became a little sluggish, and replacing it with an Asus S16 running on Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (an excellent laptop). One of the main reasons was missing my old Linux setup. I've briefly tested M5 Pro in an Apple store and was surprised by how quick it felt and did anything. A tangible and significant difference, and I really feel it would be good getting it, or…

This eventual sluggishness is due to inevitable OS rot. I bought a brand new MBP in 2017 and it was snappy as hell. Booted up instantly, breezed through complex tasks, and ran GarageBand and Logic Pro X very smoothly. Every OS update seemed to take it down a notch and eventually Logic Pro X - my main production tool - was unusable. I happed to be talking about this to a professional music producer friend of mine and he said that everyone in his industry NEVER updates their OS. Basically they install everything, disconnect from the internet, and don’t touch the OS ever again because it can break delicate plugin ecosystems and drivers. That’s essentially what I ended up doing. I installed a different DAW (UA Luna) and have not updated the OS for about 5 years now and it’s still chugging along. I don’t use that system for any other purpose however I do keep it connected to the internet for ease of access to icloud. One day the hardware will die, but my next audio production system will likely be a Mac Studio that I set up and don’t touch for 10 years.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#950

Post by temporallobe »

jodrellblank wrote: post #947
teiferer wrote: post #794

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…

> " the software has become bloated " Casey Muratori has a 20 minute talk on YouTube called "Clean code, horrible performance"[1]. Using an oft-repeated example in C++ he rewrites it uncleanly and then benchmarks. Removing Classes/subclasses/polymorphism: 1.5x faster. That overhead was like reducing an iPhone 14 to an iPhone 11 performance. Replacing Encapsulation with a table-driven calculation: 10x faster. That ove…

I have found these same principles to be true in my own projects. More modern, “cleaner” implementations usually end up with a larger code base but a noticeable reduction in performance. Bloat ruins everything.
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