2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test • Hacker News Board

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#431

Post by foldr » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 7:17 PM UTC

abainbridge wrote: post #250

foldr wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't make a huge amount of sense to buy a Mac if you're not going to use Mac OS as your daily driver. A lot of the benefits (e.g. battery life, touchpad quality) are dependent on software as well as hardware, and are greatly diminished on Windows or Linux.

I've never been that impressed with the Mac Mini's battery life or touchpad :-)

Touché. But seriously, most people who want to run Linux on Mac want to do it because they like Apple's laptop hardware. If you want a compact Linux desktop then a NUC should probably serve you just as well. Or at least, this was the case while Apple was still using Intel chips. If Apple Silicon lives up to expectations then I suppose there could finally be a compelling reason for running Linux on a Mac desktop.

To be clear, I'm not saying that there couldn't possibly be any good reason for wanting to run Linux on a Mac desktop. But desktops are already a niche product for Apple, and people who want to run Linux on Mac desktops are arguably a tiny niche within a niche.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#432

Post by throwaway894345 » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 7:17 PM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #393

nwlieb wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a 1-1 comparison? If the ARM compile is compiling to ARM binaries then there might be less work/optimizations since it is a newer architecture. Seems like a test with two variables that changed. Would be interesting to see them both cross-compile to their respective opposite archs.

Maybe not, but A) it's close-- most of the work of compiling is not microarchitecture-level optimizations or emitting code, and B) if you're a developer, even if some of the advantage is being on an architecture that it's easier to emit code for... that's still a benefit you realize. It's worth noting that cross-compiling is definitely harder in many ways, because you can't always evaluate constant expressions easily…

As someone who knows relatively little about this, I'm very curious why this is downvoted. It seems like a rebuttal would be enlightening.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#433

Post by Hamuko » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 7:22 PM UTC

StreamBright wrote: post #384

JAlexoid wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's time for Intel and x86 to die. But I would also be a little wary, because ARM systems are way more locked down than x86 systems today.

Absolutely not. We need more competition because the #1 reason we got to this situation is mono culture and a single platform (x86). We need Apple to succeed of creating an alternative ARM based desktop/laptop platform and for more competition we could add in Mips64 from China to the mix. I am really hoping that by 2025 we are going to have 3 major platforms available for end customers, so that there is real competit…

Isn't having a whole bunch of different processor architectures at the same time kind of bad for end-users?

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#434

Post by josteink » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #165

aero-glide wrote: post #90

I hope Apple allows us to install the OS of our choice. The battery life is impressive but I refuse to not use Linux.

If you want to use Linux for the tools, then just use a VM. But if you want full control over your hardware... Apple isn't the way to go. I'm not even sure what the "OS of our choice" means when we're talking about a custom-designed SoC. The amount of reverse-engineering required to get any other OS to work would be staggering, no? If you want to run a custom OS natively, you need to buy a laptop with a commodity chi…

ARM actually has a defined architecture and UEFI equivalent, which would have worked wonders here.

If Apple had decided to support it, that is.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#435

Post by JAlexoid » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

StreamBright wrote: post #384

JAlexoid wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's time for Intel and x86 to die. But I would also be a little wary, because ARM systems are way more locked down than x86 systems today.

Absolutely not. We need more competition because the #1 reason we got to this situation is mono culture and a single platform (x86). We need Apple to succeed of creating an alternative ARM based desktop/laptop platform and for more competition we could add in Mips64 from China to the mix. I am really hoping that by 2025 we are going to have 3 major platforms available for end customers, so that there is real competit…

And where are those chips going to be made? The issue with Intel's dominance is it's complete dominance on the supply side as well.

You fail to realize that this isn't like 3D printing, or other low volume manufacturing. You can't just setup a 100nm Si lithography lab in your spare room and churn out RISC-V chips.

In 5 years - realistically we will have a few high performance(non-mobile) ARM chips manufactured at economic scale. Any other type of disruption would require Intel and AMD to fail and relinquish the supply side capacity... or China investing billions into new chipmaking facilities now.(it takes a few years to build that capacity)

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#436

Post by elteto » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

JAlexoid wrote: post #349

tonyhb wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really the 12th generation of Apple's own chips, though - and the third of this particular design, if I recall correctly.

Are you claiming that A1 is in the same category as M1? If so... then Intel's latest chip generations should be traced back to 8088 in 1979.

Intel CPUs _literally_ boot pretending to be 8088s [0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_mode

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#437

Post by nottorp » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 7:26 PM UTC

faitswulff wrote: post #258

joshstrange wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh, if you are going to game you are going to want the Pro at a minimum but honestly the mac gaming scene is still sparse. It all really comes down to what type of game you want to play I guess but even if all the games you want are on mac then I'd still say you want the fan in the MBP.

I’m still playing nearly decade old games. I just need some thing competitive in decade old gaming so that my wife and I can play together.

Not Apple then. They ditched 32 bit applications and in 2 years they'll ditch 64 bit x86 applications.

You want your old games to run forever, you sadly have to do that on x86 Windows (or maybe Linux with more or less of a headache setting them up).

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#438

Post by lowbloodsugar » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 7:26 PM UTC

dukeofdoom wrote: post #209

Macbook air: $999 (2 ports, no hdmi) vs $699 mac mini (2 ports + hdmi) + ipad $329 = $1029 Thinking of upgraing, my current macbook 2013 sits in a drawer 99% of the time connected to a monitor and keyboard. That 1% of the time when I travel, the macbook is too large to use comfortably on an airplane seat. The ipad would work better for this use. macbook air also only has two ports, so one would be used for external m…

I use a CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 doc on my macbook pro. Website says it works with M1 macs, but you only get one screen. It delivers power (87W), network, and has a bunch of ports, including allowing thunderbolt daisy-chaining. It has a 10Gb/s usb-c port, and five 5Gb/s usb ports. That uses a single port. So if you had, e.g. two TB3 external drives, you could plug one into the dock, and one into the other port on the Mac. This dock might be overkill for you (its $250), but I used it to get dual external screens on my MBP before I said "fuck it" and bought an eGPU.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#439

Post by wenc » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

JAlexoid wrote: post #307

ogre_codes wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really get this. I switched to MacOS because it's fundamentally BSD with a nice/ well integrated GUI. Almost all of the good OSS I love is supported nearly perfectly. Perhaps I'm a bit jaded after running into too much bullshit trying to get Linux running well on laptops in the 90s and 00s. Since I made the move I never wax nostalgic for the "Good Ole Days" of fighting for hours to get Wifi working properly.…

Well... That's why I have a ThinkPad, that is certified on Linux. (So your prejudice is dated) I'm literally trying to figure out how to install Python 3.6 alongside 3.9 in MacOSX .... right now, and it's not a one line command. So... No. It has massive issues with developer friendliness. New OSX stalls with bluetooth mice and randomly locks my keyboard(MBP 2020). The only thing I can commend OSX on - battery life on…

Python: another way to do this is to install Anaconda and then spin up virtual environments with specific Python versions.

  conda create -n myenv python=3.6

Having multiple versions of system Pythons can be complicated. I've learned not to touch the system Python.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#440

Post by karteum » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 7:28 PM UTC

matvore wrote: post #80

GiorgioG wrote: post #38

I'm not buying into Apple's eventually-closed desktop computer systems - I don't care what the performance is. They've been slowly marching towards iOS's closed ecosystem model on the Mac and with an in-house CPU, they can effectively lock users out of alternate OS choices on their hardware. Buyer beware.

I get why this idea of becoming iOS-like is uncomfortable for a lot of people, but will they take away the POSIX-ness of the OS? What about all the people that spend all their time in Vim, TMUX, Emacs, and/or zsh? I think these people will continue to be pretty happy on macOS if they already are. In my experience, installing alternate OS's on Mac hardware has never been frictionless or satisfying anyway.

> will they take away the POSIX-ness of the OS?

It's not only about POSIX. After the X years of planned lifetime (with proper software/OS updates), will there be any solution to extend the lifetime (which is what I used Linux for, on > 10 years-old laptops) ? I guess there will be no solution against planned obsolescence...

And with regards to control and privacy : will Apple finally give-up their policy of deciding (and tracking) "for your own good" which apps you are allowed to install and launch ?