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M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

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Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#471

Post by valuearb »

Shivetya wrote: post #459
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…

Well that big impact will only materialize if Apple can convince developers to make apps for this platform, something they have not been doing well as it is. (with intel offerings) They need to stop ceding the desktop game market to windows/amd/intel. When Catalina dropped it remove a lot of software, productivity, utility, and games, had many examples where they no longer ran. Worse some developers just wrote off th…

If 32 bit devs wrote off the platform, good riddance to them.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#472

Post by hsitz »

ficklepickle wrote: post #175
the_af wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want to believe. If we can end up with superfast, supercool ARM-based Linux laptops, that'd be a huge deal :)

This is it. I'm excited because Apple just showed what is possible. Other companies are going to have to try to match it. I have wanted a powerful "enough" fanless laptop for many years. I got excited about 4 years ago with Intel's short-lived M line and I bought an Asus ux305. It served me well for front end web dev (had to use a cooler stand under sustained high load though). Great Linux support and battery life (a…

I've had same desire for a lightweight, fanless laptop for many years, also had (and still have and use) an Asus ux305, which I used for Linux development.

My main use machine now and for last couple years has been a Google Pixelbook. Lightweight (2.4 lbs) and fanless, solid 8+ hours on a charge, great for general use on chromeos, okay for Linux with built-in Crostini container.

I've had an iPad, but have never had any other Apple product. I've been pretty much anti-Apple since 1979, when as a 15-year-old I bought a Radio Shack TRS-80 over the much more expensive and glitzier Apple IIe.

I now have a Macbook Air M1 on order. We'll see how it goes. I'm sensitive to weight, prefer very light laptops. At 2.9 lbs it will be a noticeable step back from the ux305 (2.6 lbs) and Pixelbook (2.4 lbs). If I end up not bonding with the Macbook I plan to sell it; Apple's generally high resale value is a factor in giving the M1 a try.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#473

Post by walshemj »

zionic wrote: post #126
nix23 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants. Not sure what shitty machine hes talking about, but my threadripper's are not impressed with some 4 core M1.

Wait for an 8-core (or the rumored 12 core) variants. Those will embarrass your threadripper.

Then there will be 64/128 5990x parts out

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#474

Post by valuearb »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #452

Gruber notes midway: "Perversely, developers, who by nature of their profession best understand exactly what an architecture transition like this entails, might be among the few professions who can’t yet move their primary computing to an Apple Silicon device by nature of the software tools they depend upon. (Some developers can move now, and — because Xcode running on the M1 compiles code so much faster than any Int…

The M1 is their entry level CPU and it's compiling software as fast as a fast i7 or i9. They don't have very far to go to catch ThreadRippers, 24 Firestorm cores should more than do it.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#475

Post by klelatti »

Shivetya wrote: post #459
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…

Well that big impact will only materialize if Apple can convince developers to make apps for this platform, something they have not been doing well as it is. (with intel offerings) They need to stop ceding the desktop game market to windows/amd/intel. When Catalina dropped it remove a lot of software, productivity, utility, and games, had many examples where they no longer ran. Worse some developers just wrote off th…

Adding up to 1.8m (!!!) iOS and iPad apps (including games) to the platform was probably one of the biggest changes as a result of the M1.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#476

Post by fgonzag »

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…

What is revolutionary about it? We still haven't seen Zen in the same node as the M1. Zen still scores higher in absolute terms (albeit at higher power).

It's evolutionary. The power efficiency is great, and the core design is great (wouldn't expect less from those who were Intel's and Qualcomms most talented staff), but calling it revolutionary is an overstatement.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#477

Post by mirthflat83 »

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…

You are not alone. Apple products are the best

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#478

Post by fctorial »

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.

    for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8; do

        cat /dev/urandom > /dev/null &

    done

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#479

Post by pgt »

matwood wrote: post #446
_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…

> John Gruber has really become a shill over the last few years. I think it's important to read Gruber and understand he's an Apple person. Not a shill, as much as his world is all Apple. Sure, he checks out an Android phone every couple of years, but for the most part he doesn't care what's going on outside the Apple ecosystem. And, that's fine. As a reader of Gruber, I read for his takes about Apple.

Live by the sword, die by the sword. Fully-committed shills are not shills.

Edit to clarify: I meant that a shill with skin in the game is less of a shill. Of course a shill can be "fully commited" to shilling, but if they are fully committed to the thing which they are promoting, then they are not a shill in my eyes.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#480

Post by valuearb »

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'm shocked that Apple hardware isn't 100% failure proof, like Dell, HP, Lenova, Surface, etc. I wonder which of those brands has the highest customer satisfaction?
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