M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness • Hacker News Board

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#521

Post by read_if_gay_ » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 11:13 PM UTC

aequitas wrote: post #137

ghaff wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately, it's all about Windows. I know it's hard for many of us who basically hardly see anything other than Mac or Linux laptops to really grok, but something like 90% of the laptops out there run Windows (if you exclude Chromebooks which AFAIK are mostly used in education).

Indeed, this is why Apple is able to take this leap and the PC platform hasn't so far. They don't have to wait for as many partners to get along for the ride.

Apple took this leap because their CPUs are sufficiently fast. No one else has managed that.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#522

Post by rsanheim » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 11:13 PM UTC

spideymans wrote: post #396

rsanheim wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Sure, as I said, I think there are many reasons that AMD has largely not been able to make a dent in the laptop market.

I do find it amusing the continual retorts to M1 performance of "but wait until the Ryzen 4800/4900 laptops are out in force!" as if that were something that is realistic at all in the next year. AMD can't even keep up w/ demand for its graphics cards and console chips right now, unfortunately.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#523

Post by soylentcola » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 11:14 PM UTC

rgbrenner wrote: post #330

matwood wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laptops have outsold desktops every year for the last decade+. The M1, being a mobile friendly chip, is addressing the larger market. People may not care about power usage from the wall, but they do care about battery life. Also, the fact that the M1 is even being mentioned along with a desktop powerhouse like the threadripper says it all. The M1 is the lowest end mobile Apple Silicon. We know higher end mobile chips…

It's only being mentioned alongside threadripper because the article went overboard and claimed the M1 "embarrass all other PCs — ... including ... every single machine running Windows or Linux" This is a joke. The M1s performance is no where near the threadripper. Even on per-thread performance, new AMD cpus perform better than the M1... and they have many more cores. The M1 can only win these comparisons when we st…

That was sort of my takeaway as well. I use desktop computers for most of my more demanding work. Laptops are great and (like smartphones, tablets, etc) any improvement in their capabilities is to be welcomed--but there's a difference between a headline that reads "New laptop is the fastest computer ever!" and one that reads "New laptop faster than all previous laptops!"

I don't do the most intensive tasks on thin, battery-powered computers for a reason. I try to do those on the box that's always plugged into mains power with heatsinks and fans as needed, plenty of ports to plug things in, and a big monitor. A more performant portable computer is awesome, but until I can spend a similar amount to make my workstation smaller without losing capability, I'll likely keep using it for heavy lifting alongside a cheaper, less powerful laptop or tablet for lighter work or remoting in.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#524

Post by s1mon » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 11:15 PM UTC

_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…

I've read pretty much all of Gruber's blog posts for years. I'm very much an Apple person myself. I wouldn't call him a shill, but I do have to agree that he's become lazy about some of his opinions. He often bashes Facebook (which certainly deserves criticism) without ever using it. Many of his Apple reviews are very long-winded love letters to Apple about how great their products are. Every once in a while he will call out blatant Apple mistakes, but they have to be pretty bad.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#525

Post by p1necone » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 11:20 PM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #392

outworlder wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Depends on the price point. Largely Ryzen is winning at the moment but Intel has some compelling options at the low end. E.g. the 10100f looks pretty good if you're not wanting to spend much.

Of course AMD haven't released the 5000 series options on the low end yet, so you can only choose between it and a ryzen 3000 series CPU.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#526

Post by philsnow » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 11:21 PM UTC

jachee wrote: post #433

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…

> which will do wonders both for their and Arm's brand. Apple’s brand, yes, definitely. Arm’s brand? Not so much. Apple have made a very concerted effort to ensure that when the public thinks of the M1, that it is an Apple chip, and not an Arm chip. I imagine that Arm isn’t too thrilled with that.

Arm doesn't care. Their customers aren't end consumers, their customers are large integrators like Apple.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#527

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 11:25 PM UTC

om2 wrote: post #274

ceejayoz wrote: post #20

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.)

Wow, that’s a lot of memory use. Would you be willing to file a Feedback Assistant report with a sysdiagnose? Would like to see what’s up here. How many tabs is this?

This is after a couple hours of use. It stays high until quitting - closing all tabs doesn’t budge it.

Happy to file a report. Any special instructions to make sure it gets to you? edit: Filed one; FB8927230.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#528

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 11:27 PM UTC

alwillis wrote: post #501

ianhowson wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M1 is using standard LPDDRx. It's not "very high performance". It uses a different interconnect -- that's it. I guarantee that 64GB does not cost anything near EUR300. You might be thinking of HBM[2] which has a wider I/O path and costs more.

>M1 is using standard LPDDRx. >It's not "very high performance". AnandTech disagrees with you: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste... Besides the additional cores on the part of the CPUs and GPU, one main performance factor of the M1 that differs from the A14 is the fact that’s it’s running on a 128-bit memory bus rather than the mobile 64-bit bus. Across 8x 16-bit memory channels and at LPDD…

[deleted]

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#529

Post by wmf » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 11:29 PM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #392

outworlder wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Tiger Lake-H and Alder Lake sound pretty good but they haven't been released yet.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#530

Post by buzzerbetrayed » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 11:29 PM UTC

nvarsj wrote: post #470

simias wrote: post #100

I've never owned a Mac and don't intend to own one but I'm very happy with this M1 move, mainly for the reasons highlighted in the introduction to the article: >M1 Macs embarrass all other PCs — all Intel-based Macs, including automobile-priced Mac Pros, and every single machine running Windows or Linux. Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants. I think it's…

Such a silly argument. An M1 Mac embarrasses no one but prior Macbooks, as it only runs OS X. There is no useful comparison to Windows or Linux. It's as asinine as comparing a mobile phone performance to a desktop PC.

How are 2 laptops running different operating systems not comparable? The similarities of a Windows laptop and a Macbook far outweigh the differences.