9 ms·

That's a weird glitch, and generally I'm not a fan of apple hardware (I think it's overpriced, that their keyboards suck, that they don't have enough ports, and

• blinkingled 8y ago
  > You have to install a BIOS update. To be fair though even without S3 sleep it is easy to drop Linux power consumption on the X1C6 to ~2.5-3W with display off and no Linux user worth their salt is afraid of installing a BIOS update which literally adds a 'Linux' mode for sleep after which it's flawless. The BIOS update even installs without needing Windows now a days - LVFS even.
  • jes5199 8y ago
    ugh I need to install that update. My X1 doesn’t even sleep right in Windows
    • blinkingled 8y ago
      Well there is no sleep in Windows - it's connected standby - which puts everything in low power mode but running. I ran W10 on it few months but don't recall having issues with conn stdby. Yeah definitely update to the latest BIOS though - 1803 issues maybe sorted by the update.
      • nickflood 8y ago
        You can normally enable classic sleep in Windows by setting the CsEnabled key in registry to zero. That's how I'm doing it on my XPS 15 9570. Still trash of a laptop, but now it sleeps proprly :)
    • baybal2 8y ago
      > ugh I need to install that update. My X1 doesn’t even sleep right in Windows So, it is even Thinkpad guys who can't write proper bioses these days? Is there a single laptop out there where you can say the bios is truly flawless?
      • blattimwind 8y ago
        > Is there a single laptop out there where you can say the bios is truly flawless? Board firmware (laptops, desktops, servers) is pretty much always crap.
  • rienbdj 8y ago
    If only it actually did work flawlessly. YMMV
• mastazi 8y ago
  The article comes from CDM which is a music production website, MacBooks are very popular in that field, and basically all audio producers use external audio interfaces, it's not an uncommon use case. This is not the first time that this type of issues happens (from memory, last year an OSX update broke compatibility with Native Instruments Maschine, a very popular music software). So I think the point that the article is trying to make, is that music producers are one of the most Apple-leaning crowds, and yet they feel like they are being ignored by Apple. But at the same time I understand your point, this is a small market in the grand scheme of things.
  • iainmerrick 8y ago
    music producers are one of the most Apple-leaning crowds, and yet they feel like they are being ignored by Apple. [...] this is a small market in the grand scheme of things. This is the same point that’s often made about developers. But if it’s not developers and it’s not music producers, what is the large market for Macs that dwarfs everything else? And are they at least getting the products and features they want?
    • unmole 8y ago
      > what is the large market for Macs that dwarfs everything else? Hipsters?
      • StreamBright 8y ago
        You are mixing up artisan single origin drip coffee with Macs.
    • duado 8y ago
      The main market for Macs are people who want an expensive-looking, high perceived quality machine for emails, Facebook, and Slack.
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
• ajross 8y ago
  To be fair, a MacBook pro is the highest end premium product in this space being used with official software for a well-defined industry use case. That's hardly the same thing as a bunch of developers installing an aftermarket OS on a midrange laptop. And even then, "you have to install a BIOS update" is just shorthand for Lenovo fixed the problem, right?
  • komali2 8y ago
    > Midrange laptop I mean, a topped out x1 carbon is pretty much the non-macbook business laptop, so this is a bit unfair.
    • egeozcan 8y ago
      People have a special affection to soldered-on memory that tops out at 16GB?
      • patates 8y ago
        I think this is a good point against calling a computer professional device in 2019 - or was "business" meant from a pure quality/design /luxury perspective? I know we aren't talking about servers but not-self-serviceable hardware with strict limits is what I usually associate with mid-range, not professional users, not even prosumers. That laptop costs around 2000€ though. The price itself is enterprise-level indeed.
  • blinkingled 8y ago
    Not much different from having to install brew to get usably recent versions of basic developer utilities on macOS or installing WSL on Windows. Atleast with the Thinkpad I still have my arm and leg to get it done and I love the keyboard.
• i_am_proteus 8y ago
  Technically, nothing works for Linux on the X1C out of the box, because the X1C ships with Windows. Or "no OS" if you're a corporate buyer. I love that several distributions of Linux are basically turnkey solutions for most systems (I run Ubuntu on both of my Thinkpads!), but it's not quite fair to compare Lenovo hardware running a 3rd party OS with Apple's vaunted "it just works" hardware/software combination.
• sterlind 8y ago
  It's what integration tests are for! Have a lab full of machines running popular workflows on lots of existing applications. One would hope their rigs compare sound out the audio port with expected waveforms; they certainly have the budget for it.
• mnm1 8y ago
  So even though Macs are the de facto standard in the music industry and Apple makes software for music composition (logic pro) that supports all the external audio devices mentioned here, they couldn't plug one of these in to test? Are you kidding me? That's some atrocious testing process especially for a company whose slogan is "it just works". Clearly, this isn't the case anymore. The literally did not test their own software with their own hardware, yet we're supposed to excuse them? Like the article says, Apple's QA is basically non-existent. This is the most obvious testing scenario for the audio subsystem used by professionals I can think of. Apple should be ashamed of themselves. This is not an industry where even one audio skip can be tolerated. But it sure goes along with their new marketing strategy of bringing out garbage, untested, broken systems and pretending they are still pro equipment. This fiasco does away with that for the audio industry, that's for sure.
• alxlaz 8y ago
  > was that a connection that could have been made in a QA engineers mind? That's not a connection that should be made in a QA engineer's mind, it's a connection that should be made in an architect or team lead's mind, or better yet, one that should already exist as part of the internal documentation. You don't throw tarballs over the wall at the QA team yelling "you dudes, tell me if this breaks!". You know what's being developed and how, and you design your tests to validate that. Otherwise there are infinitely many tests to run. As for the connection: the article is low on technical details, and https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/anvufc/psa_2018_macs_with_t2_chip_unusable_with_external/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/anvufc/psa_2018_macs... suggests there might be several bugs at work here. That being said, if there were a list of top 5 things that could get screwed by date and time change, synchronous playback would definitely make it on that list. If anything, the output from one of the bug reports ( https://openradar.appspot.com/46918065 https://openradar.appspot.com/46918065 ) hints that one of the thing that happens as part of the update is pausing the audio engine. The person who introduced the bug may not have figured it out at the time (which is okay, we all make mistakes), but the whole thing should have gone through code review, at least one round of documentation, and a testing process that's built to spot new problems along with the old ones, based on knowledge about what's new in the code. With the right process in place, there's no way that hits the market without serious testing, not at a pro-oriented company anyway. Edit: tl;dr: IMHO, that's definitely a testing scenario that should have existed. By spending and commitment, the pro audio industry is probably 1/3rd of the Macbook Pro market, synchronous playback issues routinely creep up in software whenever time and clocking are brought into discussion, and (for at least one of the bugs) the source is not some strange interaction but a deliberate action in the code.
  • richardwhiuk 8y ago
    > the pro audio industry is probably 1/3rd of the Macbook Pro market Citation needed - I seriously doubt that the the professional audio market is large enough.
• rienbdj 8y ago
  with Linux you have chosen to step outside of the mainstream, and for support that means figuring it out yourself. the fact that lenovo released the patch actually goes beyond what we would expect. when you go with Apple, you are paying a premium so that everything "just works". they should be held to a higher standard.
  • komali2 8y ago
    The difference is Lenovo markets it as an "Ubuntu-ready" machine.
• goodwork 8y ago
  Last time I checked sunflower audio wasnt working either.
• jdietrich 8y ago
  Reliable low-latency audio is the reason why musicians buy Macs. Linux isn't an option, because the proprietary software we need generally isn't available for Linux. Windows is massively problematic because of the Deferred Procedure Call mechanism - badly written device drivers can steal priority from the audio device driver, causing dropouts and glitches in audio playback and recording. If you're going to use a Windows machine for pro audio use, you really need to buy from a specialist system integrator. Pro audio users have been loyal Apple customers through thick and thin, but a lot of us have lost faith in Apple's ability or willingness to serve creative professionals. The poor price-to-performance ratio of the trash can Mac Pro was a major source of frustration, especially given the loss of functionality compared to the "cheese grater" Mac Pro; it's really not fit for purpose without spending an extra $1500 on a Sonnet xMac rack kit. The complete lack of hardware updates since 2013 added insult to injury, leading a lot of people to defect to Windows out of sheer desperation. This bug isn't just a nuisance, it strikes at the heart of why musicians continue to pay a serious premium for hardware that often isn't particularly well suited to their needs. I think Apple are seriously underestimating the risk to their brand of losing creative professionals. The ubiquity of Macs in recording studios and edit suites and on DJ stages said something powerful about the kind of company Apple is and the kind of people who use Macs. It justified the status of Macs as the premium choice for serious creatives. It created an aspirational halo, even if you only really use your computer for web browsing, Google Docs and editing a few photos. Apple are haemorrhaging their most loyal and influential customers, because they don't seem to care about the Mac platform. That doesn't really matter right now, because they're still selling huge volumes of iPhones at healthy margins, but it could come back to haunt them in a few short years. Chinese smartphone manufacturers are stealing Apple's lunch in emerging markets and making a serious dent in the west; iPhone revenues are declining and it's entirely plausible that the decline could mark the start of a long-term trend. Apple have in effect become a luxury brand that happens to make phones, which has created the existential threat of simply falling out of fashion.
  • simonh 8y ago
    I rally don't think Apple don't care about the Mac. They invested huge amounts of money and R&D resources into it in recent years. The problem is it mostly backfired. Those ultra-slim butterfly keyboards didn't invent themselves. Likewise the Touch Bar. Not developing it and sticking with Fn keys would have been a heck of a lot cheaper and easier. All the things 'everyone' complains about took a huge amount of attention and investment to deliver. Even the jet engine Mac Pro took a lot of work to screw up so badly. They just seem to have got it wrong. Apple is constantly under pressure to innovate, from themselves as much as externally, so they just feel they can't sit still even when where they are is actually the best place to be. On the other hand I got a 5K iMAC when it came out and ... oh... m... g... is that thing gorgeous to use. But a lot of the very pretty, very well engineered, innovative bits and bobs they've come out with recently have just been wrong.
• computerex 8y ago
  There is no comparison between Apple and Lenovo. Apple is notorious for being a closed ecosystem company. They charge a premium price, control the app store, control the hardware, practice planned obsolescence all in the name of "providing a premium user experience". If they are going to overcharge me a "premium tax", they better earn it. Most linux users expect some problems when deciding to go the linux route. When you decide to use linux as your daily driver, you expect to sometimes get your hands dirty. Also, companies like system76 offer laptops created for running linux so you are bound to have a much much better experience out of the box.