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M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

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Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#391

Post by outworlder »

j-pb wrote: post #311

My new M1 Macbook Air arrived today. The excitement was quickly replaced by sober frustration. Yes apple did a remarkable job with the M1, no they've still lost their mojo when it comes to high quality software. I've spend the last 3 hours trying the wipe and reinstall the thing, because their non-virgin-os migration assistant is simply unreliable. So far, I've had issues where the fused Data/OS drive would just spli…

> I've spend the last 3 hours trying the wipe and reinstall the thing, because their non-virgin-os migration assistant is simply unreliable

Did you try the migration assistant before nuking the machine? Maybe it didn't work for you in the past, is this still the case?

I mean, you have taken a perfectly usable system and decided to wipe and reinstall from scratch. That's not a normal user experience.

Most users are NOT going to wipe a brand new machine. Should anything break, they will reinstall from a Time Machine backup.

Or, worst case, they will Command + R on boot and reinstall from remote recovery. Why isn't that an option?

This can hardly be blamed on Apple. Before messing with the system, one should be prepared to spend time bringing it back up, including any mistakes made along the way. Last time I wiped a Windows 10 machine I had even more problems than that - made worse because Windows recovery is borderline useless (and can't install the OS from the internet). But hey, I knew what I was signing up for.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#392

Post by Hamuko »

outworlder wrote: post #381
_abox wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Has Intel really had any response even for Ryzen?

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#393

Post by egsmi »

altcognito wrote: post #372

This Gruber character is something else. No, the rules of physics and heat generation have not been repealed. You would think the fact you can’t crank out 100% performance on a Mac book air for too long before it throttles would be evidence enough that heat dissipation was still the prevailing reality, but not so for Gruber!

Can you be a bit more specific about what section of the article you're referring to? The claim I read is that it runs fast and cool, as perceived by touching the outside case. I didn't find any claim that no heat was generated at all and didn't read anything about throttling in this article.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#394

Post by dylan604 »

macintux wrote: post #181
ghaff wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure there's another company of Apple's size and influence which has consistently been so ready to dump legacy at least a beat before its customers were prepared for it. Headphone jack, 5 1/4" floppy, I'm sure a bunch of other things I'm forgetting. "I'm going to dump Apple over this!" "See ya. Don't let the door hit you on the way out!."

Pretty much every I/O port Apple has ever used they dropped before the rest of the industry. PS/2, parallel, serial, USB-A... Of course optical drives; that was a big step. Apple is ruthless at pruning old tech.

Does anyone miss floppies? CDs? What about SCSI or ADB? I can't think of one thing Apple dropped that caused such an uproar at the time that people regret now. Sure, I bitch about my laptop not having an SD reader, but Apple hasn't shown me what's next for its replacement other than thinner (meh). SCSI->USB/Firewire->USB2->USB3->USB-C this all made sense.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#395

Post by Koshkin »

daenney wrote: post #240
ekianjo wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I think the overarching point is true: now desktop and laptop makers can't just pretend that having a hot and/or slow, clunky, noisy x86-based architecture is just a fact of life. I hope and expect that it'll help create a new generation of ARM-based laptops and maybe even desktops that will run cool and smooth. Be careful what you wish for. X86 is the most open architecture right now. ARM, on the other hand, h…

> Be careful what you wish for. X86 is the most open architecture right now You might want to take a look at PowerPC/OpenPOWER. ARM not being very open is mostly because there's been limited development interest in it, aside from specialised devices, and those companies have no real need or interest to have open things. Doesn't mean ARM itself can't evolve past it.

> ARM not being very open is mostly because there's been limited development interest in it, aside from specialised devices

That's an extremely weird thing to say...

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#396

Post by spideymans »

rsanheim wrote: post #259
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But AMD did just that with the Ryzen 4000 series. I'm on a 3 month wait list right now to get an 8 core/16 thread AMD Thinkpad. Nobody else currently produces a sub-15W part with that much computational power. The major difference vs the M1 is that AMD's micro-PCB design scales in core count rather than producing a single dense power-efficient die.

> I'm on a 3 month wait list right now to get an 8 core/16 thread AMD Thinkpad. Nobody else currently produces a sub-15W part with that much computational power. This is a big part of the reason that the AMD mobile chip comparisons seem to be kinda besides the point for me. For a bunch of reasons, its almost impossible to get a high quality laptop today w/ the latest and greatest AMD chips that people love to compare…

>OEMs still largely prefer Intel for laptops for whatever reason, which sucks, and it seriously hampers the ability for AMD to compete in this market.

OEMs might prefer Intel because, unlike AMD, Intel is actually able to supply the CPUs to go in their notebooks. A slow CPU is better than no CPU. My understanding is that AMD is mainly focused on supplying the gaming console makers, so I don't know that the situation will improve over the next few years for laptop manufactures seeking AMD chips.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#397

Post by AsyncAwait »

ogre_codes wrote: post #386
AsyncAwait wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> There is a reason Dell ships a specific laptop for developers with Linux pre-installed.

And yet, even Windows DELL laptops are more likely to run mainline Linux than any average ARM SoC, even including the ones targeted at developers.

I am no fan of x86, but trading what we have now for an M1 is a net loss in terms of our ability to install anything we want as users, no question.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#398

Post by grecy »

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…

> With Zen3 on mobile, giving a similar 20% boost as it did on desktop, plus a jump from 7nm to to 5m, giving another 20%, next year might be a very good year for Ryzen laptops.

You're making the classic mistake of comparing what might be coming at some undetermined time in the future to what you can walk into the store and buy right now.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#399

Post by ebg13 »

klelatti wrote: post #385

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…

> 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."

It feels worse than that to me. Those people are actually saying "But Zen 4 in 2 years will be just as good!" because their claims depend on combining IPC improvements from Zen 3 _and_ a 5nm process that AMD has no plans to switch to for Zen 3. It's a weird bit of gymnastics in order to reach emotional parity with the M1 widely available right now today.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#400

Post by dylan604 »

fulafel wrote: post #216
aequitas wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get your hopes up. My prediction is, that yes, there will be a slew of new ARM laptop's. And even though the technically run ARM chips, it will only be a marketing selling point for new. They might even cram Snapdragon's or other mobile device CPU's in there, just to be able to put a ARM sticker on a plastic frame with an folding LCD panel and keyboard. They will sell it as beter than Intel, because that is wha…

Nitpick: The M1 is also essentially a mobile chip, very close to the iPad version.

What makes it mobile, the device it's in? If I have one in my desktop or Mac Mini, it's no longer mobile. The power draw? Everyone benefits from it using less power regardless of use. Form factor? Why does size physical size dictate small == mobile?
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