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M1 Macs Review

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131–140 of 391 posts

Re: M1 Macs Review

#131

Post by my123 »

kzrdude wrote: post #127
easton wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still disable secure boot just fine, just run “csrutil disable” from recovery and the option magically appears. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/macos-recovery-a-ma...

Is it durable or can it be forgotten as a setting? I would be looking at plain Linux boot and erasing Mac os, so any dependency on Mac tools would be nonideal.

At this point, it's very much preferable to keep macOS. The bringup for the drivers for that SoC will take a while. It won't all be available instantly.

Note on those Macs that the security settings are boot volume specific, so that you can have a volume with all security off for fun, and still have a completely secure macOS install selectable via dual-boot.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#132

Post by unicornporn »

coldtea wrote: post #88
em500 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The locked bootloader will only run Apple signed operating systems (a la Chromebook, without the Chromebook Developer mode escape hatch). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23640746

Actually that's not the case. This post is misinformed (and 4 months old). There was a breakdown from an official Apple page how to boot alternative systems on an M1.

> There was a breakdown from an official Apple page how to boot alternative systems on an M1.

Link please.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#133

Post by pdpi »

Droobfest wrote: post #52
jstummbillig wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are looking at, tho, is not the pure hardware perspective, but the pure hardware numbers perspective, which excludes ergonomics, design, build quality and hardware/software integration as well as stuff like speakers and screens which might not be comparable because no other vendor does them exactly alike. I always found this strange, when looking at personal computers – or, in fact, most anything in life. As…

If we’re talking about hardware ergonomics the lack of a del key and placement of the fn key alone make me never buy a macbook again. I also hate the difference in cmd, alt and ctrl keys from other keyboards.

> I also hate the difference in cmd, alt and ctrl keys from other keyboards.

It's a matter of habit, and super easy to configure from the keyboard preferences in macOs. The trade-off is that ctrl is almost exclusively used for unix-y thing, and all the usual GUI-y things use Cmd. Using a shell is just painful for me in anything other than macOS for that reason alone.

Incidentally, because of the pervasive support for readline shortcuts in all text inputs, del is just ctrl-D.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#134

Post by Geee »

Toutouxc wrote: post #49
m0zg wrote: post #38

Reviews (including this one) all say webcam sucks pretty bad though. Why Apple chose to release a laptop with a subpar webcam in 2020 is a mystery to me. This isn't even hard or expensive. Spend a couple dollars more on that webcam, Apple, don't be so greedy.

Can't it be because MacBook lids are absurdly thin? How thick are the lids of comparable machines (the XPS etc.)?

They should probably add 2 or more cameras there and combine them into a superresolution image. There's lots of space for that. You could do cool 3D effects too.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#135

Post by FireBeyond »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #91

The benchmark that's blown me away most so far: Marco Arment on Accidental Tech Podcast says the new Macbook Air is significantly faster to compile Overcast (a pretty big iOS app) than his 10 core $6000+ iMac Pro with 64GB RAM and a 160W CPU. https://overcast.fm/+R7DWXqqm0/1:08:11

One thing to factor in here is that the MBA isn't cross-compiling. It's a RISC compiler writing RISC code.

To be clear though, it doesn't matter in the end if the _result_ is more productivity. But it is worth noting that under the hood, the comparison is not entirely apples to apples.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#136

Post by [deleted] »

coldtea wrote: post #88
em500 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The locked bootloader will only run Apple signed operating systems (a la Chromebook, without the Chromebook Developer mode escape hatch). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23640746

Actually that's not the case. This post is misinformed (and 4 months old). There was a breakdown from an official Apple page how to boot alternative systems on an M1.

[deleted]

Re: M1 Macs Review

#137

Post by holstvoogd »

cowmoo728 wrote: post #118
cuillevel3 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wondered about that, doesn't it get hot and throttle performance?

According to Dave2D's youtube review the Air will throttle after 8 minutes of full load. The Pro never throttles. https://youtu.be/XQ6vX6nmboU

Wow. That is pretty amazing. I have 15" 2018 mbp and it throttles if I look at it wrong ;-)

Re: M1 Macs Review

#138

Post by my123 »

unicornporn wrote: post #132
coldtea wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually that's not the case. This post is misinformed (and 4 months old). There was a breakdown from an official Apple page how to boot alternative systems on an M1.

> There was a breakdown from an official Apple page how to boot alternative systems on an M1. Link please.

That's the kmutil manpage section about it: https://twitter.com/comex/status/1328800304318603265?s=20

That work doesn't seem to be complete yet however in the latest beta.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#139

Post by jandrese »

Toutouxc wrote: post #49
m0zg wrote: post #38

Reviews (including this one) all say webcam sucks pretty bad though. Why Apple chose to release a laptop with a subpar webcam in 2020 is a mystery to me. This isn't even hard or expensive. Spend a couple dollars more on that webcam, Apple, don't be so greedy.

Can't it be because MacBook lids are absurdly thin? How thick are the lids of comparable machines (the XPS etc.)?

Apple has no problem with the camera bump on an iPhone, but won’t do it for the MacBook. I wouldn’t even mind it on the laptop.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#140

Post by rsanheim »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #3

After 6 years away from being "all in" on Apple, yesterday my base spec MacBook Air M1 arrived. Battery life is the key takeaway for me. Performance is fine but I'm used to a powerful desktop so it's not blowing me away but the battery life definitely is blowing me away. To run things under rosetta there's an arch command: e.g. arch -x86_64 brew install xxx - the arch preference is inherited by sub processes. I'm kin…

Yeah so far the performance is very close to my 10 core iMac Pro I use for day to day development. This is on a MacBook Air with no fan, and so far I haven't felt the machine even get warm even when compiling _and_ also running tests or importing data in other processes.

This is when running a decently sized Rails monolith w/ PostgreSQL & Redis, so a fairly typical modern Rails setup.

It's seriously impressive.

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