M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness • Hacker News Board

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#111

Post by AstralStorm » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 2:44 PM UTC

pmarreck wrote: post #73

hpaavola wrote: post #46

I don't care about any Apple products, but I really do hope that M1 will force all other manufacturers ship good ARM laptops. Or force Intel and AMD to pull a rabit out of their hat to match the performance/watt of ARM chips. I want long battery life, no fans and a lot of memory. Running Linux. If M1 is the catalyst to make it happen, then so be it.

> Or force Intel and AMD to pull a rabit out of their hat to match the performance/watt of ARM chips I believe I read an article the other day that explained why the M1 was so fast and efficient and basically the design it came up with is impossible to do on Intel, for many reasons including the fact that Intel instructions are variable-length (which means they need to be completely parsed every time to find the end…

Funny thing, you could make a constant length superset of x86-64 with backwards compatibility, and it's even going to run fast...

(The instruction decoder would become more of a translator.)

The bigger problem with x86 is the implicit hard synchronization barrier after most writes. This cannot be easily fixed without introducing new instructions altogether.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#112

Post by nickelcitymario » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 2:44 PM UTC

neogodless wrote: post #91

faitswulff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a suspicion upon reading Moorhead's review that he was trying to use familiar enterprise Windows software on the M1 instead of trying to use native apps: > So far, I have experienced application crashes in Microsoft Edge, Outlook, WinZip and Logitech Camera Control. I got installation errors with Adobe Reader XI, Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, a Samsung SSD backup application, and Xbox 360 Controller for Mac. What Ma…

To be a "Mac user" you have to give up the software you prefer, and use the software Mac prefers you to use. And you don't get to be unhappy if the software you prefer doesn't run OK? I am so happy to not be a Mac user, even if I'm sad I won't be trying out the great M1 CPU any time soon.

How is this different than any other OS? My preferred software is Mac or *nix based, so by your logic:

To be a "Windows user" you have to give up the software you prefer, and use the software Windows prefers you to use. And you don't get to be unhappy if the software you prefer doesn't run OK?

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#113

Post by perryizgr8 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 2:44 PM UTC

kelchm wrote: post #33

perryizgr8 wrote: post #2

I don't understand the comparison to the iphone and android situation. As far as I can see, android phones are highly competitive with iphone on everything. The longest battery isn't on an iphone, the best camera isn't on an iphone, the latest screen tech isn't on an iphone, etc. etc. Coming to the M1 laptops, they beat comparable Windows laptops in every single metric. It's literally just a matter of looking at the…

> In fact this makes me wonder: if Apple chips are so far ahead, why are iphones not the fastest, best smartphones by a wide margin? Apple has pretty consistently had the fastest SoCs for phones and tablets for a few years now, particularly in single core performance. Here are some benchmark results of the iPhone 12 versus some of it’s Android competitors [1]. Notice that last year’s iPhone 11 Pro Max still outperfor…

Yeah that's what puzzles me, why has chip superiority not translated into an objectively better phone? For laptops the M1 laptops are best in class in everything, battery and performance.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#114

Post by ghaff » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

faitswulff wrote: post #25

shawnz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to judge a book by it's cover, but mind-bogglingly his "preferred browser" for OSX is Edge. https://twitter.com/PatrickMoorhead/status/13296105698261319...

I guess my question then is whether he uses macOS (note: it's OS 11 now!) as a daily driver or if he's just transplanting familiar software from his Windows habits in order to test drive the M1?

It's still apparently macOS. But, yes, they did bump the major version number.)

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#115

Post by AstralStorm » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

barkingcat wrote: post #61

I think the missing part of the discussion is that the M1 can run fast and hot... It hasn't transcended physics - it's just not being pushed hard enough. Give it a 800% overclock and dunk it in liquid nitrogen and then we'll talk.

It will conk out at rather low clocks as the design is not using as many high frequency tricks such as local clocks, instead going for high efficiency.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#116

Post by gwbas1c » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

barkingcat wrote: post #61

I think the missing part of the discussion is that the M1 can run fast and hot... It hasn't transcended physics - it's just not being pushed hard enough. Give it a 800% overclock and dunk it in liquid nitrogen and then we'll talk.

Makes me wonder what's going to happen when we have ARM-based desktop computers and gaming rigs.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#117

Post by SloopJon » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 2:52 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #12

I'm not sure I see most of the disagreement here. As Gruber says, Moorhead is mostly complaining about software incompatibilities. But that's part of the total package--especially with Apple which is about selling the total experience. Personally I'll probably switch sooner rather than later especially given that I don't run a lot of native apps on my laptop. But it seems pretty reasonable to critique a new architect…

I read Gruber frequently even though he annoys me (he's sort of like John Dvorak that way), and this piece is kind of emblematic of why he does. To be clear, the ARM Macs are way more exciting than I expected, and I'll probably buy one at some point. I also do not think Moorhead's Fortune article was perfect, but Gruber's righteous indignation is grating.

These statements are pitted against each other, even though they are both very much true:

> emulating or translating apps ... is necessarily going to be ... somewhat incompatible at best ... But Apple’s Rosetta 2 ... is a technical marvel.

He's upset about this quote from Moorhead's review:

> there were some very positive things about the new laptop. The new M1 processor is impressive, but far from perfect — it has many warts

Moorhead perhaps punctuated this poorly, but I think it's reasonable to assume that the warts refer to "the new laptop" in general, not just "the new M1 processor" in particular. Yes, his problems are generally software related (although he cited fan noise as a complaint), but that's a huge part of the product. Lots of people would love to use an M1 Mac without macOS, including one particular Finn.

Gruber can say, "There is no 'Well, here’s the downside' with regard to the state of Apple Silicon," but that remains to be seen. How much of the M1's advantage is due to a trillion dollar company buying up every last bit of TSMC's 5nm production capacity? Can they scale the unified memory architecture much beyond 16 GB? If they can, great; they've truly lapped the field.

> There is no balance, if by balance, you’re looking for a story that says any PC hardware, ARM or x86, is competitive in any way with the M1 Macs for low-energy computing.

This review wasn't about "low-energy computing." It was about using a new Mac as a replacement for an old Mac. This is a real, shipping product, not a beta. You can snicker at Moorhead's Microsoft-centric workflow and choice of apps., but that's his perspective.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#118

Post by falcolas » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #93

faitswulff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a suspicion upon reading Moorhead's review that he was trying to use familiar enterprise Windows software on the M1 instead of trying to use native apps: > So far, I have experienced application crashes in Microsoft Edge, Outlook, WinZip and Logitech Camera Control. I got installation errors with Adobe Reader XI, Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, a Samsung SSD backup application, and Xbox 360 Controller for Mac. What Ma…

Wait, WinZip is available on a Mac? I know its not the point, but... what's the point of using WinZip on a mac when the OS has built in unzipping?

More granular control, more compression options.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#119

Post by nix23 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #100

I've never owned a Mac and don't intend to own one but I'm very happy with this M1 move, mainly for the reasons highlighted in the introduction to the article: >M1 Macs embarrass all other PCs — all Intel-based Macs, including automobile-priced Mac Pros, and every single machine running Windows or Linux. Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants. I think it's…

>Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants.

Not sure what shitty machine hes talking about, but my threadripper's are not impressed with some 4 core M1.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#120

Post by the_af » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #100

I've never owned a Mac and don't intend to own one but I'm very happy with this M1 move, mainly for the reasons highlighted in the introduction to the article: >M1 Macs embarrass all other PCs — all Intel-based Macs, including automobile-priced Mac Pros, and every single machine running Windows or Linux. Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants. I think it's…

> I want to believe.

If we can end up with superfast, supercool ARM-based Linux laptops, that'd be a huge deal :)