Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#291

Post by jdsully » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

oarsinsync wrote: post #221

matwood wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Apple could be lying, but they (top executives) have stated multiple times that the mac is not an iDevice. They have also stated they have no plans to only allow installs from app store, and they understand the value of tools like brew etc...They are what makes the mac popular with developers. This could all change, but until it does articles like this feel a lot like FUD. Additionally, completely dismissing…

Apple have a history of denying anything until it's ready, and then they flip the script. While the article is clearly biased, it would be foolish to believe that Apple is a company that doesn't change course, going as far as total U-turns on public statements, as long as it's in their interests to do so. > They are what makes the mac popular with developers Developers believe that they're Apple's priority when it co…

For a product not aimed at developers they spent a lot of time talking about how fast things compile during the M1 launch.

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#292

Post by bfgoodrich » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

Tade0 wrote: post #282

bfgoodrich wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The 2080 Max-Q in my laptop is fairly underpowered" The 2080 Max-Q only exists in ~$3000 gaming laptops. Poor battery life, 4lb+ laptops. There is no universe where that is "fairly underpowered" unless we've moved the goal posts to pretend that everyone is rolling with a GTX 3080 and anything less is unbearable. In the real world you have to go to the seriously compromised "gaming" tier to get better graphics perfor…

The 2080 Max-Q only exists in ~$3000 gaming laptops. Poor battery life, 4lb+ laptops. I have an ASUS Zephyrus G14. 1680g(3.7lb) as checked just a minute ago using a kitchen scale. I don't know about battery life because I capped the charging at 80% and it still lasts a whole day of normal usage if need be. MSRP ~$1,500 in the US. I don't think it's remotely so simple. If you compare it to the Ryzen 4xxx mobile CPUs i…

A disclaimer on your battery life: that is doing literally nothing with the 2080. Effectively turning it off and carrying it around as an extra cost/weight for nothing.

Because the moment you use that 2080, your battery life will be South of 3 hours with a 100% charge and a factory new battery. You'll also have a jet engine fan and a leg burning device.

Which is the point.

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#293

Post by appleflaxen » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #113

appleflaxen wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ben Franklin quote that "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." seems particularly apt, here. Rhetorically: how much do you care about privacy as an issue? Because this is the trade you're making, and you should do it with your eyes open. I personally don't think the trade-off is worth it, but I also really really hope I'm wrong. My b…

> The Ben Franklin quote that "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." seems particularly apt, here. On the other hand, I'm a European, could not care less for Ben Franklin (or the Founding Fathers for that matter), and don't consider them some great sages of the centuries. Nor is their word gospel. I say that because I see such supposed "…

I wasn't making any assumptions about your nationality; it seems irrelevant regarding the truth or falsity of an idea. Like different countries responding to COVID: truth doesn't really care how special the US/Sweden/Japan/wherever thinks they are.

I read your link but I don't understand the point that the Brookings institution is trying to make about the context of the quote. I'm open minded, but miss the point they are making; perhaps because it's a transcribed interview.

Nevertheless: quotes are nice because they distill an idea down to an elemental form. They might be wise or they might be dumb, but the simple idea expressed in the phrase (regardless of who uttered it, or what they meant at the time) seems wise to me as we consider the tradeoffs between a walled garden vis-a-vis privacy.

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#294

Post by barnacled » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

klelatti wrote: post #281

barnacled wrote: post #258

This is obviously about control. Apple's MO with every _smaller_ supplier has been: 1. Set up office down the road 2. Poach top engineers 3. Come up with some excuse to cancel use of supplier and integrate in house. The media and fanboys are remarkably complicit, coming up with excuses for apple's behaviour and giving very favourable coverage. In this case, intel are too big for this trick to work and apple already h…

That's very sad to hear. Could you explain how close Apple's GPU is to Imagination's and why Imagination wasn't able to protect their IP?

Their GPU _is_ imagination's GPU in my opinion. Heavily customised (they had a full ARM-like license to do so) but the fundamentals are all the same. Apple claimed that they'd completely reinvented a GPU that didn't rely on any hardware IP owned by IMG whatsoever, provided no evidence of that and recent phones have bug-for-bug compatibility (as far as I heard form a friend who ran some tests).

I can't tell you 100% that it's not an entirely new GPU that was somehow completely reinvented from scratch but I can tell you I think that's highly unlikely.

Imagination couldn't protect their IP because they couldn't afford the lengthily court case that would ensue.

Note by the way Apple have quietly started licensing IP from IMG again, long after striking ~75% off the stock price and resulting in them being acquired by a private equity firm...

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#295

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #136

socialdemocrat wrote: post #68

The truth is somewhere in the middle, so while this article has some good points it is too colored by a strong dislike for all things Apple and borderline conspiratorial thinking. I don’t think there is anything that suggests Apple is going to stop people from installing Apps outside their App Store. Rather it is about making sure it is easy for regular users to get Apps in a safe manner without malware and Trojan ho…

Agreed. Apple could be lying, but they (top executives) have stated multiple times that the mac is not an iDevice. They have also stated they have no plans to only allow installs from app store, and they understand the value of tools like brew etc...They are what makes the mac popular with developers. This could all change, but until it does articles like this feel a lot like FUD. Additionally, completely dismissing…

> Additionally, completely dismissing the M1 as a 'marginal improvement' shows a level of anti-Apple that is clearly clouding the authors judgement.

Is there somewhere I can find some evidence that it isn't a marginal improvement?

Apple timed the release perfectly to create the impression that it was more, because its obvious competition will be Zen 3 laptops, which are right around the corner but not actually out yet. So then you get benchmarks comparing it to 14nm Intel processors based on 5-year-old technology, and 10nm Intel processors with half as many cores as the M1 because Intel's 10nm yields are so bad they can't make high core count processors, and Zen 2 laptops when the Zen 3 ones it will actually be competing with in a couple months are expected to be 20% faster. And Zen 3 desktops, which the M1 loses to badly on multi-threaded tests, but is competitive with on single threaded tests -- as expected, since modern mobile processors actually have single-thread performance which is competitive with desktops in general, but manages to amaze anyone who doesn't know that.

Which isn't to say they've done a bad job. Making something which is even competitive with modern x86-64 processors is no small feat. But the fanboys are making it out to be some kind of coup when it does, in practice, appear to be a marginal improvement. And we still don't even have many real-world benchmarks because most of the real-world applications haven't actually been ported yet.

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#296

Post by drieddust » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #234

drieddust wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife was an apple fan until she bought an iPhone and got locked out when she forget the password. Apple support refused to cooperate despite repeated cries of help. M1 feels like a stepping stone in the same direction on laptops. Personally it feels wrong to pay for a device someone can lock you out of and then refuse to unlock. It's like paying ransom without getting kidnapped.

As someone who had their bank account compromised by a successful social engineering attack on the account representatives, I'm okay with Apple giving us a technical solution that even they cannot break. It's up to me to remember the key, of course, but I like knowing that even Apple can't break into my device if they want.

That's an apples to oranges comparison (pun intended). If I forget passcode my device, why I shouldn't be allowed to reset and configure it from scratch if I am willing to lose my data? There can be numerous situations in which this can happen like a child trying passcode repeated.

You will be happy if apple bricks your M1 laptop if you forgot the password due to any reason. What happened to spirit of HN culture?

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#297

Post by drieddust » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #203

drieddust wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife was an apple fan until she bought an iPhone and got locked out when she forget the password. Apple support refused to cooperate despite repeated cries of help. M1 feels like a stepping stone in the same direction on laptops. Personally it feels wrong to pay for a device someone can lock you out of and then refuse to unlock. It's like paying ransom without getting kidnapped.

Why did she put a passcode on it if she didn’t want it to be secure? You can use an iPhone with no passcode at all. Blaming Apple for “locking you out” when you were the one who locked the door and lost the key is silly.

If I lose the keys to my home, I can break the lock or if required break the door and get into my house so why I can't reset and reconfigure my iPhone?

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#298

Post by calyth2018 » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

Bud wrote: post #63

spijdar wrote: post #22

> However, that marginal improvement hardly seems worth upsetting the entire Mac OS developer and consumer software ecosystem. Really? This entire article is really dismissive, but this line especially struck me. I'm not convinced the M1 chip is some strange alien tech bypassing the laws of physics, but it seems clearly superior at its specific niche (single processes with an emphasis on low power usage, using fewer…

The author clearly and obviously has no clue about M1. Calling its performance a "marginal improvement" is laughable. The entire article reads as a desperate attempt to distract people from the obvious advantages of the M1. I'd be desperate too if I were trying to pretend Android is a serious competitor performance-wise when the CPUs are 18-24 months behind and the gap is still widening.

It might be a marginal improvement for some apps running on Rosetta 2.

Benchmarks from relatively trusted sites, such as Anandtech, suggests that strong native performance on most benchmarks, and at least competitive, if not slightly better, when emulating.

The article is a bad argument to a conclusion that we already know, something that they can already do without putting out their own chips.

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#299

Post by 7786655 » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #229

Hamuko wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google allows third-party app stores and most of the source code for Android is out there in the open. I don't know how Google "practically owns" your device considering Apple asserts a much more complete control over your device.

> most of the source code for Android Except for everything related to the Play Store, correct? And that is a critical part of Android at this point. Google is progressively closing Android.

You can absolutely use Android without having the Play Store installed.

Re: Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

#300

Post by klelatti » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

barnacled wrote: post #294

klelatti wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very sad to hear. Could you explain how close Apple's GPU is to Imagination's and why Imagination wasn't able to protect their IP?

Their GPU _is_ imagination's GPU in my opinion. Heavily customised (they had a full ARM-like license to do so) but the fundamentals are all the same. Apple claimed that they'd completely reinvented a GPU that didn't rely on any hardware IP owned by IMG whatsoever, provided no evidence of that and recent phones have bug-for-bug compatibility (as far as I heard form a friend who ran some tests). I can't tell you 100% t…

Thanks - that's dreadful. It always seemed remarkable that Apple was able to come up with a leading GPU architecture without in some way infringing someones' IP (and that would be most likely to be Imagination's given the circumstances).

I guess taking your biggest (ex)customer to court isn't something that any company would do lightly especially when that company has the deepest pockets in the world and you're not in the best financial position yourself.

It's a shame that more light can't be shed in the press - if Apple cares about one thing it's their brand.