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M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

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Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#381

Post by outworlder »

_abox wrote: post #315
6d65 wrote: post #297

The author is bashing another author for not doing measurements, yet himself declares that m1 beats all the other CPUs, without providing any measurements. With regards to the M1, I'm grateful for a good competition. As this will likely push premium laptop manufactures (Razer, Dell) towards ryzen CPUs, as opposed to using them in cheaper models. Loosening the grip that intel has on them. With Zen3 on mobile, giving a…

Yeah John Gruber has really become a shill over the last few years. His article reads like an Apple keynote transcript, everything is magical and amazing, a marvel and mindbogglingly great. No wonder they throw him so many exclusives ;) Yes M1 is great. But it's a closed system (no booting Linux or Windows at this time) and even under macOS you're having even less access to the system's internals than before. Also, A…

> Yes M1 is great. But it's a closed system

It doesn't matter. Sure, that might mean that an Apple system is not for you.

But the crux of the matter is: Apple did something truly revolutionary. How is the rest of the market going to respond? Specifically, how are Intel, AMD and Microsoft going to respond? Microsoft, at least, has Windows running on ARM, but it doesn't have Rosetta. Intel and AMD have nothing remotely comparable.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#382

Post by spideymans »

mpalmer wrote: post #250
brundolf wrote: post #238

> I actually discovered that I’ve had an instinct of measuring my MacBook’s CPU usage by feeling the heat on the strip of aluminum right above the Touch Bar, and I can’t even do that anymore now. Market opportunity here for a peripheral that's just an adhesive strip you put above your touch bar, and it outputs heat corresponding to CPU usage ;)

https://xkcd.com/1172/

lol didn't even have to click the link to know the joke

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#383

Post by bjoli »

jakeva wrote: post #343
btilly wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have demonstrated exactly why I don't care how fast the M1 runs, I'm not buying Apple hardware. Not until I start hearing that they have done something about their long quality slide. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25238688 for the last time that I expressed this opinion on HN.

Comments like these always make me wonder if I'm the only person in the world still delighted by Apple products. I mean I alone can not be responsible for their sales volume. And then I start to wonder if I should be more critical of Apple, so I fire up my Windows machine and think silently "No, this is still a worse experience". So I fire up my Ubuntu and have the same reaction. I just don't understand the vitriol s…

I have had too many issues that were too complicated to solve. Add to that weird hardware issues (the touch-ic debacle hit me and apple was shitty about it, 2 failed SATA cables (WTF!!) and the apple store wanted to charge me $500 and burn my data. What was the chip that magically became desoldered in newer macbooks? I had that. Apple fixed it not by resoldering, but by putting a rubber thing on the chip that made the chassi push it in place. For that they 1. deleted all my data and 2. claimed warranty didn't cover it. I ended up having to go through the Swedish consumer agency.

I think they make decent stuff but are quite possibly the worst company I have ever dealt with. I will never buy an apple product ever again. It was like an abusive relationship.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#384

Post by bfgoodrich »

6d65 wrote: post #297

The author is bashing another author for not doing measurements, yet himself declares that m1 beats all the other CPUs, without providing any measurements. With regards to the M1, I'm grateful for a good competition. As this will likely push premium laptop manufactures (Razer, Dell) towards ryzen CPUs, as opposed to using them in cheaper models. Loosening the grip that intel has on them. With Zen3 on mobile, giving a…

Intel's 10nm is approximately equal to TSMC's 7nm (even having advantages in some areas). The A-chips at 7nm (the A13) were already significantly ahead of Intel's offerings in efficiency and instructions per cycle. Intel went all in on a design that relegates performance to power gobbling turbo boost and here we are.

Just generally too much is made about node size. It isn't a magic pixie dust that you can sprinkle on a chip.

I certainly don't want to engage in chip advocacy wars, but it has been interesting seeing the goalposts moving. Last year it was just that Apple had some easily replicated, lazy big cache that was their key to performance, that's if you accept that it's actually high performance because Something Something Geekbench is a big lie and they're actual miserable performers. Now it's just node size. Super simple, trivial things that somehow discount what they're delivering.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#385

Post by klelatti »

The discussion seems to have settled down to "M1 is great! But you'll soon be able to get a Zen 3 CPU that's just as good." Which may or may not be true, but:

- Apple has a material (and apparently perceptible) performance advantage against the majority of the laptop market - which will do wonders both for their and Arm's brand.

- The M1 has killed the idea (which I've heard a lot) that you can't get performance out of an Arm core.

- There is now a credible desktop platform on which to develop for Arm in the cloud.

I think the real impact of this will be in 2-3 years and it's not good for Intel.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#386

Post by ogre_codes »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #336
ogre_codes wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lousy use of the word "Open" in a discipline where Open has a fairly specific meaning. I mentioned that as well though. Using your goofy definition of Open, x86 is no more "Open" than ARM. Pinebook and Raspberry Pi both use no bullshit ARM setups. With ARM, how accessible the architecture is is 100% dependent on the implementation which vary greatly by manufacturer.

> Using your goofy definition of Open If I buy any x86 PC, chances are I can install mainline Linux on it. Picking up any particular recent ARM SoC and the chance of doing so is much, much less. The M1 included, after all. > Pinebook and Raspberry Pi both use no bullshit ARM setups. Both of these took considerably longer to get mainline support that your average x86 hardware needs.

> Both of these took considerably longer to get mainline support that your average x86 hardware needs.

Not sure what you are thinking here. It's taken 25 years so far and we still have tons of x86 hardware which isn't supported well in Linux. There is a reason Dell ships a specific laptop for developers with Linux pre-installed.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#387

Post by kmano8 »

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.

The distinction here is between "fast" and "fast_er_". It isn't that it can't run faster and hot (because of course it could) .. but that it's able to achieve fast performance relative to the competition without having to get "hot".

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#388

Post by tambourine_man »

xenocratus wrote: post #108
tambourine_man wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should at least be a 24h window separating submissions of the same link.

Why? Is it more important for the "first person" to post it to get more internet points, or for more people to actually see the link?

Both can happen at the same time if submissions within a window of 24h count as points to the original one.

Try to submit this same link now and that's what will happen. This feature already exists, it's just that it seems too narrow of a window if it's only a few hours long.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#389

Post by throwaway894345 »

buran77 wrote: post #300
throwaway894345 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know very little about this space, but presumably that will change if/when a significant portion of the laptop space (and probably the server space as well) moves from x86 to ARM? It might be painful for early adopters for a few years, but I would expect this stuff to get ironed out in time, no?

No, that ship has sailed. Anything new that comes now can be built according to the expectations smartphones have set over the past decade and a half. Closed systems that are treated like disposable items. Even PCs in their mobile incarnation are now far less open and flexible than they used to be. The reason PCs are still open is historical, they started like this and people can't really see PCs any other way but th…

Sadly, I find this persuasive.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#390

Post by thr0w3345 »

mikestew wrote: post #170
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…

What Mac user tries to use Edge...? This Mac user, having just discovered that there's a macOS version of Edge. TIL... EDIT: well, you're off to a good start, Microsoft: https://imgur.com/a/IWZMlMl Instead of a browser, I guess I installed demons. I wish they'd get this shit right. MS Teams always has this notification window hiding in the background so that whenever one alt-tabs to Teams the window doesn't actually…

Gah, the exact same thing started happening for me with teams this week and it’s been driving me crazy.

I guess I’ll have to rm it, all its junk in ~/Library and see if it gtfo’s and starts behaving again..

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