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

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

#301

Post by scarface_74 »

wubrr wrote: post #205
karolist wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an issue even if you say it is. Takes 1 minute to setup brew on a fresh Mac, third party or not who cares when it's open source, apt is also open-source and in the same sense a third party someone develops, you just get that with the base Debian like systems, if we start counting the minute wasted to setup brew then you waste more time to install Debian in the first place, Macs come pre-installed.

It literally is an issue, and the fact that you're pointing out a potential solution should make that obvious to you. Many software companies (including FAANGs) have basically given up trying to support building/running most of their software on mac for these exact reasons, and they have really tried - dedicating hundreds of experienced engineers to the problem.

This is total bullshit. Amazon and Microsoft both support the Mac thoroughly. From what I saw when I was there, most developers at Amazon use Macs.

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

#302

Post by wubrr »

karolist wrote: post #215
wubrr wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It literally is an issue, and the fact that you're pointing out a potential solution should make that obvious to you. Many software companies (including FAANGs) have basically given up trying to support building/running most of their software on mac for these exact reasons, and they have really tried - dedicating hundreds of experienced engineers to the problem.

I call BS on the FAANG statement. I work at FAANG and 80% SWEs use MBPs, actually if we go by literal meaning of FAANG company list, they do not even focus on desktop software and are mostly web companies and the tooling is all backend where SWE machines do not do any heavy lifting.

You work at FAANG and you can run your entire stack on MacOS? Which FAANG?

Or you mean, you work at FAANG and you can run your web application which is 0.01% of the stack on your mac?

> they do not even focus on desktop software and are mostly web companies and the tooling is all backend where SWE machines do not do any heavy lifting.

The web frontend/ui is a relatively small portion of the development that goes on at typical FAANG. And the reason the macs 'do not do any heavy lifting' is because they literally can't - most of the complex backend systems, low low level/high performance code, etc can't be run on macos.

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

#303

Post by freeAgent »

heyoni wrote: post #222
bloopernova wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this for my m1 pro: https://a.co/d/gD5q8G3 It uses the 6950 DisplayLink chip, which can do 4K@60Hz. It's 90 dollars and drives 2 screens. Software is less good. I had to enable Rosetta2 to get the pkg to install. Then you have to boot to recovery mode to allow signed 3rd party drivers. And you get a creepy notice that someone is watching your screen, which is how the display driver works. Performance is pretty…

Is that because the screen generation is software based? I noticed that when using display link and couldn’t bare the input lag or worse the compression from moving a window too rapidly. Switched to a monitor with thunderbolt output and my coworkers thought I was being a diva.

Yeah, it's definitely not as good as native, but it's not bad. One other significant restriction for DisplayLink is that it's unable to display DRMed video content.

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

#304

Post by freeAgent »

willseth wrote: post #235
masklinn wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the M3 has 55% more transistors than the M1, I'm sure they could have found some room for a third display controller, or a more capable one (one with MST support for instance), or just a more flexible one. They're selling a $1600 machine which can't drive two external displays, it's sad. Intel's HD Graphics have been doing better since 2012 and they're trash.

It’s a business decision. You don’t think Apple knows the demand for multiple external displays? If they thought it would sell more Macs, they would do it.

You can say, "it's a business decision," about nearly anything that a business does. That's not really an argument for or against something.

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

#305

Post by wubrr »

scarface_74 wrote: post #301
wubrr wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It literally is an issue, and the fact that you're pointing out a potential solution should make that obvious to you. Many software companies (including FAANGs) have basically given up trying to support building/running most of their software on mac for these exact reasons, and they have really tried - dedicating hundreds of experienced engineers to the problem.

This is total bullshit. Amazon and Microsoft both support the Mac thoroughly. From what I saw when I was there, most developers at Amazon use Macs.

You're completely wrong. I worked at Amazon (AWS) for years, yes developers generally use macs, but they generally cannot run their entire stacks on mac. Most of the actual software people work on is run on remote linux (AL2) ec2 instances after syncing the code from mac.

Running the entire AWS stack on macos is literally impossible at this point because major pieces aren't even built for macos (and can't be without major rewrites).

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

#306

Post by marmaduke »

musha68k wrote: post #290
astrange wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just upgraded to the iPhone 15 Pro Max because of the 8GB RAM This is a bad reason to upgrade. If you were supposed to know about it, it'd be in the specs. It's not there to improve performance or be more forward compatible, it's because the camera upgrades need it.

OOM kills are basically the sole reason for me to upgrade iPhones. Nothing more annoying than force-reloaded/lost state in/between apps while on-the-go and under tight time constraints. Also somewhat true: new lenses are amazing but “computational photography” defaults sometimes less compelling than my old iPhone X’s more “honest” output. I’m going to play around with RAW some more if I get the time for it though.

Just curious, I had a 2020 SE daily and never had a OOM, how do you do it?

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

#307

Post by ttoinou »

stetrain wrote: post #46
steve1977 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also more expensive than a M2 Max or M1 Max if I’m not mistaken.

14" MBP with the highest M2 Max configuration, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD was $3899. A new model with the same configuration is also $3899.

So, with inflation, the actual price got down

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

#308

Post by musha68k »

marmaduke wrote: post #306
musha68k wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OOM kills are basically the sole reason for me to upgrade iPhones. Nothing more annoying than force-reloaded/lost state in/between apps while on-the-go and under tight time constraints. Also somewhat true: new lenses are amazing but “computational photography” defaults sometimes less compelling than my old iPhone X’s more “honest” output. I’m going to play around with RAW some more if I get the time for it though.

Just curious, I had a 2020 SE daily and never had a OOM, how do you do it?

How does software do this usually? :) I guess it’s a combination of heavy multitasking / using it for work + private plus - again - constant-drum of increasingly bloaty websites and applications following whatever the current ceiling is. “Simple” apps like podcatchers come to mind, don’t know how often Overcast bailed on me with maybe 100 podcasts subscribed / updating? But again there are many more cases and sometimes not only third party.

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

#309

Post by scarface_74 »

jamespo wrote: post #236
shepherdjerred wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel/AMD chips don't approach the efficiency of what Apple makes.

I don't understand this pretence that the vast majority of the time laptops are plugged into the power anyway.

True. But when I was going to customer sites, it was really nice to plug in my MacBook Pro the night before and not have to think about battery life. It’s also nice not to have the fans going constantly and being able to work with it on my lap without the fear of never being able to have little Scarface’s.

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

#310

Post by freeAgent »

wtallis wrote: post #265
ChrisLTD wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's entirely Apple's choice to use the M chips in iPads. And if that means they need to compromise on laptop performance or features, they should change course.

Do you want Apple to drop some of their existing products, or do you want them to make more chip designs each generation with fewer economies of scale for each?

Apple still uses iPhone chips in the iPad and iPad Mini, and at this point I'd say they're more than fast enough. The iPad Air and Pro with M chips seem to me to be unnecessarily powerful for a device that runs iPadOS and therefore can only run apps from the App Store, etc. IMO, people don't buy iPad Airs and Pros over the standard iPad or Mini because they need the performance of the M chip. It's the rest of what's in the package.
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