Apple M1 Mac Mini vs. AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX Mini PC Benchmark

> the Ryzen 9 processor really flexed some impressive muscles ... this is at a considerable power cost as the Apple chip uses 15 W and the AMD part relies on up to 65 W

This seems kind of irrelevant given both are desktop machines, although those would kill it in a server farm

The only reason to buy an ARM processor is for its power efficiency. Otherwise it's all minor differences in performance that one CPU manufacturer or the other leads in some time or the other - we've seen this in the past with Intel vs AMD, and now it is between Apple vs AMD vs Intel. Today Apple may lead, tomorrow somebody else. (It is undeniable though that Apple engineers have done a fantastic job in bringing ARM to the desktop.)

Nevertheless I would never recommend the Mac M1 to anyone currently for the following reason:

1. It is a completely locked down machine which forces you to sacrifice your computing freedom - it can only run macOS on it by design. (Two reasons why I am skipping Apple Silicon Macs - https://medium.com/the-shadow/two-reasons-why-i-am-skipping-... ).

2. You sacrifice your privacy - Apples suggests that if you want to run another OS on it, you can run it on macOS using virtualisation. The idea is to keep users hostage to macOS, to have access to your private data one way or the other.

3. You sacrifice your right to repair. There is no future upgrade path - RAM and SSD are built into the SoC / Motherboard and hence you cannot upgrade either to increase the life of your device.

4. The locked black-box nature of the M1 indicates clearly that the future of the Mac Desktop is bleak - it will be slowly morphed into a highly restricted and controlled platform like ios / iPad OS.

Whenever I have voiced these criticisms, many Apple fans take a lot of offence with my description of the M1 as a "locked black box". They claim that the M1 isn't a locked down machine and compare it with the ios / iPad OS platform as proof of their argument. After all, iPhones and iPads have locked bootloaders that prevent you from even running any other OS, while this is not so with the M1.

Not yet, I say - the frog is boiling slowly - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog - Just look at the previous generation of Intel mac:

- In the beginning you could customise both hardware (change RAM or HDD / SSD) and software (install other full featured OS).

- Then the minis started coming with soldered RAM and SSD. You could no longer upgrade the hardware. Software was still customisable and you could still install other OSes. (Recall that Apple even offered free drivers for another OS).

- The current generation M1 mini now doesn't allow you to customise both the hardware (everything is soldered) and software. While technically you can install other OSes, the reality is that currently only crippled versions of Linux and *BSD is available (so there are no viable alternate OS due to the black box nature of the M1, and there won't be for a long time.)

If you want Apple to open up the M1 so that other viable OSes can fully support it, boycott it and don't buy it in its current form. Developers should also not develop any software for it. Apple will then be forced to stop locking down the mac desktops any more because it has bet its whole future on its ARM processors.

But it compiles and links my code twice as fast as my previous 16" MacBook Pro with an i9.

HN has a strlen limit on submission titles.

Also, the submitted title is less inflammatory, which is appropriate for this site. Just the facts, please. We readers want to have our own opinions. :-)

> The new platform has _explicit+ support for running other operating systems.

Technically, you are right, and I should have said "nearly fully locked down", instead of "completely". Not having a locked bootloader gives Apple enough deniability for PR to claim the M1 isn't a locked system, even though it only supports macOS (the only full featured desktop available for it) and is just one step away from becoming like iPhones / iPad.

If you are going to cite the reverse engineering effort of running Linux and *BSD on the M1, remember that they are crippled versions of their full featured desktop versions. And it will remain crippled for a long time - without the hardware reference literature or drivers for other OSes (closed or open source) from Apple, Apple has placed enough technical hurdles to ensure that only macOS will run on it for the for seeable future.

That is why I believe the M1 is as good as a locked down system and gravely compromises our computing freedom.