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M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

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Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#731

Post by hsitz »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #616
hsitz wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When iPhone came out in 2007, Android was still an OS for BlackBerry like devices. When iPhone came out in 2007, Android did not even exist. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)

Your own source contradicts you.

I'm not sure how. iPhone was available in June 2007. Android went into public beta in November 2007, and reached 1.0 and was first released in a commercial device in September 2008. [1]

I guess Android, or what morphed into Android, was probably being developed, in a pre-beta state, when iPhone was announced in January 2007. Okay. It sounded to me like someone was saying that Android was released on Blackberry-like phones at the time iPhone came out. That was only thing i was objecting to. Sorry, a small point I almost didn't even bother to make, and probably not helpful to anybody, anyway.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#732

Post by sjwright »

Zancarius wrote: post #709
sjwright wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your quest to avoid almost-religious overhyping of everything Apple, I'd contend that you're presenting the inverse: almost-religious anti-hyping of everything Apple. We can criticise them for their seemingly blinkered focus on casual consumers and end-users at the expense of developers and technologists without finding ways to rationalise away anything good Apple does. Attributing the positive aspects of M1 to th…

I appreciate the correction. > In your quest to avoid almost-religious overhyping of everything Apple, I'd contend that you're presenting the inverse I must point out that I believe you misinterpreted my intent. I'm largely indifferent to Apple. I'm not entirely sure if you'd find that more offensive or less since I'm interpreting this response as one of annoyance (I'd appreciate a clarification to this end). I don't…

Understood. Intent is often difficult to robustly convey without being neurotically verbose.

I promise my response was not borne of annoyance. I just got the impression that you wanted to focus credit on the one thing about the A1 SOC which could plausibly attributed to anyone other than Apple. That seemed a stretch, is all.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#733

Post by seabrookmx »

toast0 wrote: post #729
rmrfrmrf wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it has less to do with everyone switching to Apple silicon and more to do with the clarification of viable business models: you either become an IP company and outsource production (AMD) or you go completely vertical and design and produce custom-designed SoCs to be used exclusively in your consumer products (Apple). The Intel model of designing and producing all-purpose commodity CPUs seems to have hit a wal…

The (apparent) lack of demand for intel chips is because their manufacturing problems have disrupted their roadmaps. Because their 10 nm process is still not really working, and they were working on multiple releases assuming the process would be there when the design was, they're in a bad place. From public statements, it seems like they've thought 10 nm was going to work soon for the whole time since 2018 that it's…

Atom underperformed too though.

There was a Lenovo Zenfone that shipped with an atom and even in Java apps or running the few Android NDK apps that shipped x86 APK's, they weren't fast.

Fun fact, Android used libhoudini (basically, reverse Rosetta2) allowing arm NDK apps to run (but they were pretty rough).

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#734

Post by fastball »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #506
__d wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested to see what Apple comes out with for the higher-end MacBook Pros, iMac Pro, and Mac Pro. I expect to see the M1 used in the iMacs, although ... That could be a single higher-end chip, with possible multi-socket support for the Mac Pro? Or it could be two chips: one for the iMac and laptops, and a beefier one for the Pro desktops? Either way, they absolutely need to compete with Zen3 on highly parallel…

Laptops are almost always going to weight CPU/Watt fairly strongly. As a developer, I don't give a damn about CPU/Watt, I care only about maxCPU, for a given budget. I don't know why any company would build a laptop that focused on maxCPU. Gaming laptops are perhaps the exception, but Apple has historically not really participated in this subset. >for many devs, basic CPU core counts and high I/O speeds are the winne…

You're talking a lot about different types of devs, but it sounds to me like you are just "not a laptop user".

That's fine. But it really has nothing to do with what type of dev you are. Many more than just webdevs are happy to compile code on a laptop.

So yes, these laptops and intro level desktop are not for you.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#735

Post by fastball »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #410
jb1991 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the vast majority of users (who are not developers or doing production video work, etc), 16 GB is plenty. That's why.

"Pro" machine isn't for the "vast majority of users" it's for people who are developers and do video production work.

According to whom?

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#736

Post by fulafel »

dylan604 wrote: post #400
fulafel wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I was responding to a post that talked about putting Snapdragon or similar ARM chips in laptops in a deprecating tone, and was making this point exactly.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#737

Post by redler »

rsfinn wrote: post #647
adkadskhj wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? Because i have yet to see any numbers that aren't clearly the result of a massively streamlined SoC. Yes the ARM chip is great, but the RAM is blazing, tiny, and more close to the ARM chip than anything out there for x86, right? I'll be interested to see if Apple can keep this up with 128GiB of RAM and a beefy GPU. So far to me M1 is great, ARM is great, but comparing a tiny amount of RAM soldered onto the C…

I know I'm probably older than most people here, but the notion that 16 GiB is "a tiny amount of RAM" is tremendously amusing to someone who paid $740 in 1986 (with a developer's discount) for 2 "MB" of RAM (we didn't have MiB back then)...

To be fair, we sort of still don't have MiB even now.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#738

Post by redler »

shawnz wrote: post #703
LeoPanthera wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy is a tech reporter? But he doesn't know how to take a screenshot. Says a lot.

To be fair, the shortcut on Windows is a lot easier to remember.

Spotlight search "screenshot" is how I "remember". You get a little widget that offers all the options.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#739

Post by innagadadavida »

asveikau wrote: post #726
innagadadavida wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all GNU user land tools and libraries work on BSD and you can install them fairly easily with brew. Unless you are doing Linux kernel development, there is little you’ll miss out on.

I'm typing this on FreeBSD. If the most interesting part of a Mac to you is the BSD layer ... Well, I doubt that. People like Mac for the UI and Cocoa stuff, plus hardware and integration thereof. The way you've substituted "BSD" for macOS really doesn't make sense. Yes, there is BSD code in MacOS, quite a bit of it in fact. But they're not the same thing.

You are right that people that buy a Mac don’t get it for the FreeBSD kernel. However, most people that complain about not being able to run Linux on a M1 can be just as productive with the alternatives on macOS.

For 99% of other things that run in a terminal, you can get it to work in FreeBSD/macOS. Also, for Python folks, there is anaconda distribution that is agnostic to the underlying OS. Ditto for node or ruby development. Also Gui Emacs and vi have decent ports to macOS.

That said, I guess if you are doing some custom server side development that really needs Linux, you will have a hard time with M1 - virtualization and emulation don’t mix and your code might not be portable enough.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#740

Post by bayindirh »

kergonath wrote: post #584
bayindirh wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I’m really excited about it. Using a different CPU architecture is always exciting. :) Using Mac is like driving an Audi S8. Comfortable, smooth, powerful. However, it's not your hand tuned Impreza which can read your mind while going above 200Km/h. Even an Intel MacBook pro can go a long time on battery (I have a personal Mid2014, configured all-out). I've developed some system-abusing scientific code on…

> I know macTeX. It doesn't play nice with newer macOS, due to Apple's locks on the OS I’ve been using LaTeX from /opt/local with zero integration issue, even on Big Sur. What are the issues you’re alluding to? Otherwise, I agree with your take in general, except that I do everything you do in a Linux VM directly in macOS. I develop and run my codes on a Linux workstation and an iMac, and going back and forth improve…

In the past, MacTeX team had a problem with a particular OS release (when SIP was released and enabled) and, I was in the middle of my Ph.D. At that time, had no time to wait for problems to resolve. I got VMWare, installed Linux, tuned my LaTeX environment and never looked back.

I'm sure that all the problems are resolved by now but, my workflow is mature now and everything is working flawlessly. Considering I'm going to need Linux anyway, did no efforts to move my LaTeX workflow back to macOS again.

Since the code I'm developing is going to be used in a lot places, I'd rather develop it in two distinct environments and run tests on each. Also, I like to experiment with different development tools on different environments. Experimenting and experiencing each environment broadens my horizon. Also it's more enjoyable IMHO.

Didn't play with Macports TBH. I don't think I'm going to use it but, will take a look to it.

Another thing is, I don't customize/change my terminals much. When you manage 1000+ servers with a team, customizing each terminal to your liking is not feasible so, I can work pretty fast with stock bash or anything. I'm old school and don't like flashy console setups anyway. :D

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