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M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

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Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#41

I don't understand the comparison to the iphone and android situation. As far as I can see, android phones are highly competitive with iphone on everything. The longest battery isn't on an iphone, the best camera isn't on an iphone, the latest screen tech isn't on an iphone, etc. etc. Coming to the M1 laptops, they beat comparable Windows laptops in every single metric. It's literally just a matter of looking at the…

> I don't understand the comparison to the iphone and android situation.

Because articles like that are pure nonsense.

Take the initial paragraphs. We already knew that faster processors don't necessarily run hotter. People are simply conflating higher clock speeds with higher performance, while ignoring all of the ways CPU design optimizes computation. Likewise, we already knew that "emulation" doesn't imply that performance will be unbearably slow. There has been enormous amounts of research and development into the problem over the decades, to the point where much of our software is optimized at runtime.

None of this is meant to diminish what Apple has accomplished. They were clearly paying attention to details that have been largely ignored or at the very least rarely highlighted by their competitors. Now that it has happened, we will likely see more from the PC industry. Apple will likely have a hard time keeping up unless they have more up their sleeve.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#42
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I'm getting absolutely enormous memory leaks in stock Safari on my new M1 MBP after a few hours of use. It doesn't seem to be reclaiming memory when tabs are closed. https://imgur.com/a/HqxAspK There are growing pains, and they're not all in third-party apps. (It is hilarious to me, though, that WinZip a) exists for Mac and b) is used by anyone on a Mac.)

If you are using an ad block or other extensions, that is likely the cause. I can't find specific reference, but try turning those off. edit: https://twitter.com/hondanhon/status/1329132372034347009

A browser isn't viable to me without ad blocking and 1Password.

Firefox has issues currently on M1, as well - uBlock Origin won't load, for example. Thankfully, that particular issue is fixable by disabling javascript.options.wasm and javascript.options.wasm_trustedprincipals in about:config as a temporary solution.

I fully expect these to be fixed, but it's clear it's gonna be a few weeks/months before everything runs right. If I were a non-technical user, I'd be returning it for an Intel Macbook.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#43
post #27

I don't understand the comparison to the iphone and android situation. As far as I can see, android phones are highly competitive with iphone on everything. The longest battery isn't on an iphone, the best camera isn't on an iphone, the latest screen tech isn't on an iphone, etc. etc. Coming to the M1 laptops, they beat comparable Windows laptops in every single metric. It's literally just a matter of looking at the…

Flagship iPhone absolutely crushes any flagship Android phone in benchmarks its not even close. Has been like this for many years. It is also very common that people that like Android are not aware of this for some reason.

Can't speak for anyone else, but for me, the biggest sticking point is being able to side/load software and other app stores... not that I pull in much, but I don't want my device mfg tell me what I'm allowed to run on what I buy.

Sometimes this means the software is more clunky, less polished and isn't as fast... but I'm still using my now 3yo Pixel 2XL, which is still mostly acceptable (I really need a new battery).

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I'm getting absolutely enormous memory leaks in stock Safari on my new M1 MBP after a few hours of use. It doesn't seem to be reclaiming memory when tabs are closed. https://imgur.com/a/HqxAspK There are growing pains, and they're not all in third-party apps. (It is hilarious to me, though, that WinZip a) exists for Mac and b) is used by anyone on a Mac.)

Not running mac currently, but one of the things I hated was how the UX was for thinks like keka etc, vs 7-zip/winzip interfaces... they just didn't match how I was used to using the things, also having to extract an entire archive to pluck out the one or two files I was looking for is often a pain.

I don't disagree re: the GUIs for Mac compression apps.

Part of the reason for this IMHO is because your typical developer on a Mac has always used the command line tools for that sort of thing. So, Mac developers were never really motivated to build great GUI tools for certain things.

Compared to Windows, where the built in command prompt was lacking for so many years, and as a consequence 7zip/WinZIP/WinRAR gained really robust GUIs.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#46
I don't care about any Apple products, but I really do hope that M1 will force all other manufacturers ship good ARM laptops. Or force Intel and AMD to pull a rabit out of their hat to match the performance/watt of ARM chips.

I want long battery life, no fans and a lot of memory. Running Linux. If M1 is the catalyst to make it happen, then so be it.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#47

I don't understand the comparison to the iphone and android situation. As far as I can see, android phones are highly competitive with iphone on everything. The longest battery isn't on an iphone, the best camera isn't on an iphone, the latest screen tech isn't on an iphone, etc. etc. Coming to the M1 laptops, they beat comparable Windows laptops in every single metric. It's literally just a matter of looking at the…

Lol what are you smoking? iPhone as a whole has trounced Android repeatedly over the last few years. There really is no comparison aside from Android having some [random esoteric] hardware that iPhone doesn't for a particular year. None of this is focused on battery life, performance, and efficiency. It is window dressing on top of an inferior architecture. Also I fundamentally will not buy a piece of hardware that w…

What can you do on iphone that can't be done better on an android phone?

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#48
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is often about the experience of using it as opposed to raw compute performance benchmarks (even if M1 does excel in those). In many cases, be it because of integration, more care about design, or whatever, the apple experience feels more... snappy? Smooth? It's hard to put a finger on what exactly leads to this, and it may also be about the combination of many small details.

Apple phones are faster both in subjective experience and objective benchmarks.

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