Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

eclecticlight.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 419 posts

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#291

Post by astrange »

alpaca128 wrote: post #54
stuff4ben wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8GB of RAM ought to be enough for anybody right? I'm hoping that's true for someone who spends most of their time in Google Docs or Word and the occasional light web browsing. This MBA replaced a Chromebook which really was on its last legs.

I'm using an M2 Air with 16GB and M1 Mini with 8GB. On the 8GB machine I have to restart Firefox every few days because otherwise it completely fills up RAM + Swap and the entire system starts getting sluggish. It's a very noticeable bottleneck while on the 16GB Macbook I don't really think about memory usage. I would not recommend the 8GB variant to anyone who plans on using it for more than a couple browser tabs an…

Check about:memory in Firefox. It's not reasonable to run out of swap; that means it's trying to keep something like 40GB in there after compression. You might have an extension or something leaking.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#292

Post by astrange »

flashback2199 wrote: post #134
larkost wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the argument that this might not be great in the long run is worth considering, but in the short run I think that their results over the last few years are nothing short of astonishing. Specifically their laptops, especially when not plugged into a power source, have both stunning performance and battery life at the same time. Yes there are competitor chips from AMD and the like that are faster when plugged i…

They are making themselves more different from the rest of the market instead of "the same but better" which brought people back to the mac in the first place. It used to be as a normal person you bought the latest Mac and it came with the latest i7 and you didn't even think about it and none of your friends on PC could say anything bad about it because it was the same chip they had. Now it's like woo M chip is so di…

Why are you arguing about PC performance with your friends? Don't you have something better to do?

The biggest advantage of ARM over x86 is security, efficiency is second. Performance is nice to have but is kind of coincidental (depending on workload) and I'd expect everyone else to catch up.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#293

Post by pram »

fredgrott wrote: post #206

For context, a desktop intel 13900 to 1400 combined with at least a NVIDIA 4060 beats it...System76 Thelio Mira for example. Both in Single and Multicores and GPU memory bandwidth

This is my favorite genre of Apple Silicon posts. Someone who can’t tell the difference between a laptop and a 30lb desktop.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#294

Post by matwood »

willseth wrote: post #258
masklinn wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s a business decision. That doesn't make it less frustrating. > If they thought it would sell more Macs, they would do it. It's short term thinking, it generates bad feeling of nickel and diming and unnecessary upsells: on M3 you need to pay $2000 to be able to use two external displays, and $3200 for 3, even if you have no need for the rest of the processing power. Not only that but they managed to create more…

What you describe is only considered by a vanishingly small number of their customers. The vast majority don’t care or even own an external display. You could be right about range confusion, but I doubt it simply because, like everything else, Apple is so disciplined about market research. Time will tell

> The vast majority don’t care or even own an external display.

Or more than 1 external display. The vast majority own none or a single. Few people have multiples, and those people are generally enthusiasts who will also tend to pay more.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#295

Post by wredue »

foldr wrote: post #251
wredue wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does brew still require mangling OS permissions?

No. This is answered on the Homebrew installation page: https://docs.brew.sh/Installation

That page appears to very much describe that it does, in fact, still fuck your systems permissions…

I’ll never install homebrew as long as the dev continues this amateur hour bullshit.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#296

Post by wubrr »

jlokier wrote: post #209
wubrr wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. As a single example - macos comes with an extremely outdated version of GNU bash (3.2) from 2007. And yes, this has consequences in that many modern bash scripts depend on bash 4+ (current latest GNU bash is 5.2+).

> Why? Why do I need to use 3rd party package managers, or manual installations from 3rd party sources to install common tools that aren't a decade+ outdated? There actually is a reason. It's not lack of maintenance. It's because Bash 3.2 is the last version licensed as GPLv2. Bash 4.0 and later changed license to GPLv3. Apple decided it's not safe for them to ship any software with GPLv3 with macOS, because of stron…

> However, this is not due to old tools. Those differences are just how up current (up to date) BSD commands work. They are just a different unix lineage than Linux.

What up-to-date BSD are you referring to? The commands on different forks of BSD like FreeBSD vs OpenBSD are not the same. And quickly looking at the man pages of latest FreeBSD vs MacOS versions of ls, for example - they are not the same.

> These days, even if Apple decided it's worth the technical fallout of switching from BSD command line tools to GNU, they wouldn't do it for the same legal reason as what keeps Bash at 3.2: The current GNU tools are licensed as GPLv3.

What actually prevents them from including GPLv3 software?

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#297

Post by wubrr »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #204
wubrr wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple provided CLI tools should only be used to download the tools and versions of tools that you actually want. Why? Why do I need to use 3rd party package managers, or manual installations from 3rd party sources to install common tools that aren't a decade+ outdated? > When the OS version is tied to the version of so many other tools, it's a nightmare. It doesn't need to be tied to anything. If the OS needs speci…

Because the newer tools changed the licensing terms, and the corporate lawyers won’t let anything under GPL3 anywhere near anything if they can help it. GPL2 was viral, but the terms were easier to stomach. Apple is allergic to GPLv3 code because there is a clause in the license requiring you provide a way to run modified version of the software which would require Apple to let users self sign executables. This is a…

> Apple is allergic to GPLv3 code because there is a clause in the license requiring you provide a way to run modified version of the software which would require Apple to let users self sign executables.

Does that really add up though? You can install and run 3rd party software on macos without any signing needed.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#298

Post by wubrr »

toast0 wrote: post #247
jamespo wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not talking about keeping up to date with the latest revision of python / java here, it's a shell that's woefully out of date. Apple is not RHEL backporting fixes so binaries continue to run for 10 years - in fact they seem quite cavalier about backwards compatibility.

Upstream changed the license. Apple doesn't distribute GPLv3 software. Apple's not going to distribute a newer version. That's how license changes work. The old version continues to work as well as it always did; scripts written for the new version don't work, but why would you write a bash4 script for macOs? Not that they were going to update bash regularly anyway. So if you needed a new version in the base, you'd n…

> The old version continues to work as well as it always did; scripts written for the new version don't work,

Right, so scripts written for bash4+ don't work - which is most of modern bash scripts..

> but why would you write a bash4 script for macOs?

The problem is that you have to write special scripts (among other things) just for macos. This is very real problem because most modern software companies run their stuff on linux, while the dev laptops/workstations are often macos.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#299

Post by fh9302 »

fredgrott wrote: post #206

For context, a desktop intel 13900 to 1400 combined with at least a NVIDIA 4060 beats it...System76 Thelio Mira for example. Both in Single and Multicores and GPU memory bandwidth

They are basically equal while the Intel CPU uses significantly more power.

https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-core-i9-13900... https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/3364975

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#300

Post by wubrr »

BigJ1211 wrote: post #239
wubrr wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple provided CLI tools should only be used to download the tools and versions of tools that you actually want. Why? Why do I need to use 3rd party package managers, or manual installations from 3rd party sources to install common tools that aren't a decade+ outdated? > When the OS version is tied to the version of so many other tools, it's a nightmare. It doesn't need to be tied to anything. If the OS needs speci…

Maybe I’m and oddball, but I download third party package managers (or wrappers) on literally every OS I use. Scoop, Chocolatey on Windows. Brew on MacOS. Amethyst on Arch. Linux package managers eviscerate whatever is available on MacOS and Windows by a long shot. Frankly if there’s one thing I want my OSes (excluding Linux) to keep their greasy paws off of, it would be my CLI and build environments. I want to insta…

Linux and MacOS package management is very different, because linux distros generally have first-class supported package management that comes with the OS.

> I want to install and manage what I need

Good luck installing what you need if someone hasn't made a port explicitly for macos.

Post reply on HN