5 ms·

> If all Apple cared about was faster chips Everybody _wants_ faster chips, but for most people, the chip is in idle state 99% of the time. Outside of the dat

by OldHand2018 6y ago

> If all Apple cared about was faster chips Everybody _wants_ faster chips, but for most people, the chip is in idle state 99% of the time. Outside of the data center and serious gamers, chip speed has been fairly irrelevant for years.

jeromegv 6y ago
This hasn't been irrelevant for years on mobile.
- Grazester 6y ago
  It absolutely is on phones.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> chip speed has been fairly irrelevant for years. When you are emulating another architecture, speed often becomes a much bigger factor. Particularly since Apple caters to a lot of markets where performance is more important. Developers, video & audio pros, animators, photographers, and other pro users are a big part of what makes Apple's higher end systems move. Even if your CPU is idle 90% of the time, when you run a build you want it to go fast.
- paranoidrobot 6y ago
  I'd argue that while Apple serves those markets, it hasn't catered to them for a long time, and it would be fair to say that in many cases it's downright neglected them. There's a whole lot of people who are in the 'pro user' market who are incredibly frustrated with Apple - slow on hardware refreshes, generally way behind on chip generations, and a focus on design over reliability or performance. The thing that stops a lot of people from migrating away is a lack of better options. Some are tied to the Apple Ecosystem, and so there's no legit way of running OSX on non-Apple hardware. Others don't need to use Apple, but Microsoft in the Windows 10 era is arguably worse, and they still haven't figured out that they need to fire all those people who keep pushing user-unfriendly choices like changing defaults on already installed systems, pushing app store apps down people's throats, etc. For those who could move to Linux - there's a lack of nicely designed hardware that has all the modern bells & whistles, and that doesn't have weird software quirks. Particularly in the mobile space, but also to an extent in the desktop space, too. Even when you look at a PC builder like System76's systems, their laptops still look like something out of a catalogue from 10 years ago, with none of the clean aesthetic and polish of Apple, or even premium Windows laptops. The desktops are better on that front. Sure, you could, like I have, run a modern Linux distro on say a Lenovo X1 Carbon, or a HP Spectre X360 if you want something that looks pretty decent and has good performance, but even they have weird hardware quirks. Sound, for instance, is amazingly frustrating, and something I have to mess around with regularly, sometimes multiple times a day. It makes me look like an incompetent idiot when I'm talking away on a conference call to discover that for some bizzare reason, between Firefox/Chrome/Chromium and the System sound settings - what was working just fine not 30 minutes ago has decided that it no longer wants to cooperate, and has switched, yet again to a profile I don't want and don't need. On the desktop side is no better - the few companies selling desktops, are mostly selling overpriced garbage aimed at Windows users, so you need to go through a Custom PC Builder using enthusiast equipment, which means spending half your time trying to find out if the 50W of RGB LEDs that the damn device comes with can be switched off (Answer: Probably not, unless you run Windows, or are willing to pull out a soldering iron. Which makes for a great discussion if you need warranty support on something).
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    > I'd argue that while Apple serves those markets, it hasn't catered to them for a long time, and it would be fair to say that in many cases it's downright neglected them. This comment is dated. They had a stretch where they'd lost their way, but Apple's Mac lineup has been in pretty good shape for the past ~2 years. With them fixing the MacBook keyboard, they have a lineup which is more or less solid across the board. A lot of their processor issues revolved around using specific CPUs which Intel was slow to update... an issue they won't have when they move to their own silicon.
    - fomine3 6y ago
      Absent of AMD processors for desktop is recently become a problem for performance. Absent of NVIDIA GPU has been also a problem for performance and CUDA availability.
CarbyAu 6y ago
I agree with you. My frustrations centre around wait times after starting an app. Am I waiting for CPU? No. Storage? No. I am waiting for some friggin call-home/update-check/irrelevant network request. Edit:brevity, removal of profane words.
- perryizgr8 6y ago
  > I am waiting for some friggin call-home/update-check/irrelevant network request. Is that right? Any examples? I feel most of the times I'm waiting is for the network because everything is online now. Even my work is all done on a remote VM in a data center. I connect using vscode over ssh. And the app is snappy af except when it needs to do a network opeation.
  - CarbyAu 6y ago
    For some basic apps: Notepad++ annoys me most. Modern, updated regularly. But wants to update plugins before even appearing it seems?!? iTunes(thanks to iWife) annoys me with it's updates. It checks for updates after you've started the program, pops up to get in your way and doesn't give you an "Install on exit" option. Paint.Net does it right. Opens up, lets you get things done, checks for an update, gives you the option to install on exit. More should be done this way. Playing games, Steam and all the many games with their own servers etc. Example of bad, It takes me roughly 2 mins to get into GhostRecon:Breakpoint.(not that good a game really but that's another day). Example of good, Rocket League. Starts up, gets you going. (Disappointingly not a League of actual Rockets but good fun anyway. :-))

jeromegv 6y ago

This hasn't been irrelevant for years on mobile.

Grazester 6y ago
It absolutely is on phones.

ogre_codes 6y ago

> chip speed has been fairly irrelevant for years. When you are emulating another architecture, speed often becomes a much bigger factor. Particularly since Apple caters to a lot of markets where performance is more important. Developers, video & audio pros, animators, photographers, and other pro users are a big part of what makes Apple's higher end systems move. Even if your CPU is idle 90% of the time, when you run a build you want it to go fast.

paranoidrobot 6y ago
I'd argue that while Apple serves those markets, it hasn't catered to them for a long time, and it would be fair to say that in many cases it's downright neglected them. There's a whole lot of people who are in the 'pro user' market who are incredibly frustrated with Apple - slow on hardware refreshes, generally way behind on chip generations, and a focus on design over reliability or performance. The thing that stops a lot of people from migrating away is a lack of better options. Some are tied to the Apple Ecosystem, and so there's no legit way of running OSX on non-Apple hardware. Others don't need to use Apple, but Microsoft in the Windows 10 era is arguably worse, and they still haven't figured out that they need to fire all those people who keep pushing user-unfriendly choices like changing defaults on already installed systems, pushing app store apps down people's throats, etc. For those who could move to Linux - there's a lack of nicely designed hardware that has all the modern bells & whistles, and that doesn't have weird software quirks. Particularly in the mobile space, but also to an extent in the desktop space, too. Even when you look at a PC builder like System76's systems, their laptops still look like something out of a catalogue from 10 years ago, with none of the clean aesthetic and polish of Apple, or even premium Windows laptops. The desktops are better on that front. Sure, you could, like I have, run a modern Linux distro on say a Lenovo X1 Carbon, or a HP Spectre X360 if you want something that looks pretty decent and has good performance, but even they have weird hardware quirks. Sound, for instance, is amazingly frustrating, and something I have to mess around with regularly, sometimes multiple times a day. It makes me look like an incompetent idiot when I'm talking away on a conference call to discover that for some bizzare reason, between Firefox/Chrome/Chromium and the System sound settings - what was working just fine not 30 minutes ago has decided that it no longer wants to cooperate, and has switched, yet again to a profile I don't want and don't need. On the desktop side is no better - the few companies selling desktops, are mostly selling overpriced garbage aimed at Windows users, so you need to go through a Custom PC Builder using enthusiast equipment, which means spending half your time trying to find out if the 50W of RGB LEDs that the damn device comes with can be switched off (Answer: Probably not, unless you run Windows, or are willing to pull out a soldering iron. Which makes for a great discussion if you need warranty support on something).
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > I'd argue that while Apple serves those markets, it hasn't catered to them for a long time, and it would be fair to say that in many cases it's downright neglected them. This comment is dated. They had a stretch where they'd lost their way, but Apple's Mac lineup has been in pretty good shape for the past ~2 years. With them fixing the MacBook keyboard, they have a lineup which is more or less solid across the board. A lot of their processor issues revolved around using specific CPUs which Intel was slow to update... an issue they won't have when they move to their own silicon.
  - fomine3 6y ago
    Absent of AMD processors for desktop is recently become a problem for performance. Absent of NVIDIA GPU has been also a problem for performance and CUDA availability.

CarbyAu 6y ago

I agree with you. My frustrations centre around wait times after starting an app. Am I waiting for CPU? No. Storage? No. I am waiting for some friggin call-home/update-check/irrelevant network request. Edit:brevity, removal of profane words.

perryizgr8 6y ago
> I am waiting for some friggin call-home/update-check/irrelevant network request. Is that right? Any examples? I feel most of the times I'm waiting is for the network because everything is online now. Even my work is all done on a remote VM in a data center. I connect using vscode over ssh. And the app is snappy af except when it needs to do a network opeation.
- CarbyAu 6y ago
  For some basic apps: Notepad++ annoys me most. Modern, updated regularly. But wants to update plugins before even appearing it seems?!? iTunes(thanks to iWife) annoys me with it's updates. It checks for updates after you've started the program, pops up to get in your way and doesn't give you an "Install on exit" option. Paint.Net does it right. Opens up, lets you get things done, checks for an update, gives you the option to install on exit. More should be done this way. Playing games, Steam and all the many games with their own servers etc. Example of bad, It takes me roughly 2 mins to get into GhostRecon:Breakpoint.(not that good a game really but that's another day). Example of good, Rocket League. Starts up, gets you going. (Disappointingly not a League of actual Rockets but good fun anyway. :-))