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The fact that many people reading this post title (including me) look at it with sarcasm is telling on how apple scored big points with its new cpu. Keeping up

• driverdan 6y ago
  > That future looks extremely scary. What can we do, now, as developers ? Stop buying, using, and supporting the Apple ecosystem. Vote with your money. The new chips are faster. So what? The laptop you have today works fine, you don't need the latest and greatest hardware.
  • bsaul 6y ago
    i code iOS (native) app for a living. I'm already stuck developing for the app store, using xcode to sign and deploy, using a programming language (that i love) swift that only really works on mac OS. My personal situation isn't going to change anytime soon unfortunately. I was about to dump my iphone next time i had to pick one (and keep my current one for testing), however my laptop is my work computer. I think "stop being part of the ecosystem" isn't realistic for many of us. We don't want to work on crap hardware, with a crap OS because that would make us unhappy and unproductive (or in my case, would simply not be an option at all). However, we can use this current hardware /software to try and build the next generation of tools we would happily be using. My question now being : where to start ?
    • jason0597 6y ago
      >We don't want to work on crap hardware, with a crap OS because that would make us unhappy and unproductive (or in my case, would simply not be an option at all). You consider a Thinkpad with Linux installed and configured properly as "crap hardware, with a crap OS"? Really?
    • fsflover 6y ago
      > My personal situation isn't going to change anytime soon unfortunately. It's enough if you just start to seek a way out. Even if it takes years, after you eventually do it, it will be worth it.
    • riquito 6y ago
      Stopping saying that the rest is crap would be a start
    • pantulis 6y ago
      "What can we do, now, as developers ?" "i code iOS (native) app for a living." I think you answered yourself. I am not anti-Apple myself and think it's fine being in the Apple world and buying their crap but if you have doubts about Apple's overarching impact on technology in general, you should beging by ending your relationship with that ecosystem as soon as possible.
    • thotsBgone 6y ago
      > How can we stop the nazis? P.S. I work as a nazi for a living. How about find another way to make a living which lines up with your ethics? (P.S. this comment does not compare Apple to nazis)
      • dang 6y ago
        Please don't do this here.
    • driverdan 6y ago
      If you choose to work in their ecosystem of course you're going to be stuck with whatever Apple does. If you're capable of building iOS apps you're capable of learning other languages and working on something else. There isn't much you can do other than sucking up what they feed you or getting a new job. If there's a 3rd option I'd love to hear it.
    • nitrogen 6y ago
      My question now being : where to start ? IMO what an alternative needs is momentum, mindshare, and a reality distortion field of its own. Find out how to get a million prople to believe in the need for a next thing, and convince them to cooperatively choose the same next thing. And somehow keep that thing from being mangled in the process.
    • midrus 6y ago
      Make an extra effort to learn something else and move away. If you are already making a living by building ios apps, you're smart enough to be a developer in any other ecosystem. I have a co-worker that was in your exact same situation and just by showing interest in the devops world and sitting next to them and expressing his interest in that area he managed to just move there and now he loves it. You might find something similar, it just takes will, courage and effort.
    • cageface 6y ago
      After ten years doing iOS apps I switched back to web development and I only wish I’d done it sooner. I feel like I escaped a long, abusive relationship. In hindsight I marvel that I ever allowed a single corporation to have absolute control over whether or not I’m allowed to publish my work to users.
    • ekianjo 6y ago
      > with a crap OS So anything that is not macOS is crap now?
  • FpUser 6y ago
    >"The new chips are faster. So what?" I am curious if it will be faster on sustained loads comparatively to some gaming grade laptops.
    • npunt 6y ago
      That's already been answered by reviews, the answer is there's a dip in sustained performance for the fanless Air but not on the Pro and Mini, and the fan noise on those is almost imperceptible.
  • maxk42 6y ago
    AMD's been making some pretty fast chips, lately.
  • michaelmrose 6y ago
    It's not even necessarily faster so much as liable to have a better battery life.
    • stjohnswarts 6y ago
      My guess from what I've seen 2X any other laptop of "similar" size and capabilities. It looks great from a technical standpoint.
• mettamage 6y ago
  I don’t look at it with sarcasm. I have an issue that laptops and PCs are not having the same ISA.
  • snazz 6y ago
    I expect that the x86_64 instruction set will stick around for a very long time. Rosetta is super smooth and very fast on M1 Macs, so legacy apps still work just fine for the time being.
• mrspeaker 6y ago
  Freedom is less important than convenience. People will put up with all sorts of draconian control as long as they can have smoother scrolling, or a nicer feeling trackpad.
  • least 6y ago
    This implies that people are giving up significant control of their devices, which isn't true.
    • cercatrova 6y ago
      Aren't they? Look at the Epic vs Apple opinions online, people with iPhones say they actually want to be locked down to just one app store without any consumer choice.
      • fendy3002 6y ago
        Until some good / popular apps aren't available, or isn't compatible with Apple's terms and conditions. I know this is unlikely scenario since almost every companies want Apple's market share, however things happened with IE, so it's possible to happen again with ios.
        • cercatrova 6y ago
          Yeah that's what I mean, people are making themselves beholden to the whims of Apple, and I think it's just ridiculous.
• ur-whale 6y ago
  Help port Linux to M1
  • fabianhjr 6y ago
    Apple M1 processor is an ARMv8-a processor which is commonly known as AArch64. There are many distros that support AArch64. If Apple had created their own proprietary ISA then it is likely that almost nothing would be ported from the get go.
    • Cu3PO42 6y ago
      I imagine the post you are replying to is referring to actually getting the Linux kernel to boot (since there is no BIOS, UEFI, etc.) and writing drivers for all the possibly specialized hardware Apple put in there.
      • fabianhjr 6y ago
        The main issue might be video drivers and other non-standard hardware. There are many reports of people being able to boot into linux on the new M1 by tweaking secure boot.
        • Cu3PO42 6y ago
          The way I understand these reports is "it's most likely possible, but we still need to actually make it work". In particular, it seems there's not a complete boot loader. Or at least this is what this thread implies: https://twitter.com/never_released/status/1327398102983176192 https://twitter.com/never_released/status/132739810298317619...
• Aperocky 6y ago
  I got the new mac. I don't have any intention to contribute to the mac ecosystem. I still hog in what I like best - the terminal. I treat the mac as a client - web+cloud is my backend. The client should feel good to me with decent battery life and snappy experience, and maybe some gaming. But I don't care much else about it.
  • freedomben 6y ago
    You might would love a Chromebook. There are some really nice ones out there, and you can run apps packaged for Debian really easily. Chromebook hardware works flawlessly (suspend/resume/etc) and battery life is incredible. I'll never give up my Fedora ThinkPad, but if I was forced to I could do all my development on a Chromebook with Linux.
    • wing-_-nuts 6y ago
      Disk space is the thing that kills chromebooks for me. Instead, I spent like 800 on an xps 13, swapped out for a 1tb ssd, and man, it is nice
      • freedomben 6y ago
        Yeah great point, disk space on most chromebooks sucks. I used an SD card in one for a while but SD cards wear out so fast. Now I have a USB drive constantly plugged in, but that's not great either.
    • sea6ear 6y ago
      Do you install linux on the Chromebook, or do you use one of the methods of running a linux userspace under ChromeOS? I've been using a Chromebook for linux stuff with Crostini for a while (before that I used Crouton). With some frequency something (me or an update) manages to bork things up and have to reinstall the Crostini subsystem, which wipes out all my stuff (things that I care about are usually backed up). It happens often enough that I'm thinking about going back to a dedicated linux machine, since I think probably that would be more stable for me.
• horsawlarway 6y ago
  Don't buy their shit. Period. Wayland already has trackpad support that's nearly identical to macOS. Gnome with a dock is basically the same desktop experience - Pick a distro of your choice. I can honestly say I prefer my linux XPS to my work macbook, by a large margin. Plus - It doesn't spy on me. I actually own it. I can release software through channels that aren't entirely abusive. Basically - The only thing Apple does truly well at this point, in my opinion, is marketing how great Apple is. But it turns out they just aren't all that great. Don't buy their shit.
  • je42 6y ago
    it depends on your hardware, and your requirements i have now Manjaro Linux on a HP Spectre. (Debian installer crashed .... ) - 4K support is pretty bad for a lot of games. usually some tweaking is required to get the text size - to a readable level. - Internal Sound-card doesn't work. - Wifi - had to switch iwd to get stable network. (had lots of packetloss with with wpa-supplicant) - Getting the Geforce and Intel card working was a pain. - Touch screen doesn't support reading pressure levels. - Terminator is misses a bunch of feature that iTerm2 has. - Last manjaro upgrade disabled the Nvidia graphics card, without warning. (had to restore a previous timeshift backup) - external monitor doesn't work yet. - listening to music while lock screen is on doesnt work - fingerprint scanner doesn't work. - have to restart bluetooth swith medium probability because it fails to connect to my airpods. - the UI to unlock your encrypted harddisk at boottime looks also really bad. only text mode. and the text is also not very friendly. almost all issue, i don't have on the same hardware with windows, but since i really want use linux i accepted it that the HW support is crappy.
  • ainiriand 6y ago
    THIS. I have recently switched back to Ubuntu after a long period of time working for a big corp under a Microsoft ecosystem. I feel like my computer is mine back again.
  • DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    > Wayland already has trackpad support that's nearly identical to macOS. I never really understood how input-driver responsibilities are divided between the Linux kernel and X/Wayland. If you're talking about Macbook's reputation for a pleasant trackpad experience, are you saying that in Linux the relevant code resides within Wayland but not X?
• cesarb 6y ago
  > What can we do, now, as developers ? Develop for open systems. If you write a program for Windows, make it also available on Linux, or at least make sure it works well on Wine. If you develop for the web, make sure it also works well on Firefox. If you develop for smartphones, make also an Android version, and make sure it also works on AOSP without the Google libraries (or with an alternative replacement). And so on. That way, if these ecosystems become too closed, users will have an alternative; and the existence of that alternative might even help prevent these ecosystems from becoming too closed in the first place.
• hacknat 6y ago
  IDK, the CPU has never been my bottle neck for work. I know it is for some use cases, but for general software development memory has always been my main bottleneck.
  • renw0rp 6y ago
    I've seen 16GB laptop sticks for 40 quid on Amazon today (OOS now though); I've had 32GB in my 14" EliteBook for a long time now, but paid much more for it. It's probably enough for my needs for some time.
• fidelramos 6y ago
  > What can we do, now, as developers ? Don't buy Apple products. Don't use Apple products. Don't support Apple products. Don't develop for Apple products. Raise awareness among those who would listen.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • Aeolun 6y ago
    But my company only gives me the option between mac and windows.
    • pfranz 6y ago
      Depending on how you feel that sounds like a reason to look for another job. I greatly prefer not using Windows and macOS is rarely an option for my line of work. OS comes up very early in my job seeking process.
    • bartvk 6y ago
      I also worked at a company that gave me one option: Windows. So I took it, and installed Linux on it. First in a VM and later, I just blew the resident OS away.
      • Aeolun 6y ago
        Did that too, but it only works while in the office since the VPN software disallows connecting from a Linux machine.
• cafed00d 6y ago
  If you think about it, _thats_ always been Apple’s MO. Back when they had 10% marketshare with macs in the ‘90s or even with 70% marketshare with iPods in the ‘00s. The forcing function, for all the attributes you listed, over the last 10 years has been the iPhone. Even the headway’s in 3rd app support that the Mac will get now, is funnily because of the iPhone. Can you imagine what it must look like to Bill Gates from 2003? “Wait you’re telling me that a not yet built device with zero support for existing apps is going to magically make macs have the most abundant catalog of apps in 17 years?!!” There’s only way counter action to those problems — stop buying apple products. /disclaimer: I love apple products. But I didn’t mean any of the above with sarcasm.
• pantalaimon 6y ago
  > Keeping up with mac OS and the trackpad was already quite hard, but CPU could be the killing blow. The CPU is good, but it's not a miracle. Ryzen is still faster, what makes waves is that this is the first time an ARM CPU has beat Intel.
• rched 6y ago
  Your fears seem to come down to the idea that Apple will eventually try to force apps to go through the mac app store. I can understand why people would feel that way seeing what they have done on their mobile platforms but I don't actually think there is any evidence to suggest they want to do that on the mac. I am not at all convinced Apple wants to go that route so the future of the mac doesn't look scary to me it looks pretty great.
  • marcus_holmes 6y ago
    I have no idea why you think this, when Apple are clearly clamping down on what software gets on "their" machines. They have to tread carefully because anti-trust, and they'll make all the relevant noises, but I think it's clear that the end-goal is only allowing app store apps to be installed. But tbh the same is true of Windows. They're further away, because history, but they've already played with this once and will do so again.
    • dwaite 6y ago
      They really don't have motivation to lock down the Mac in that way. Instead, they'll push iPad to be usable as a laptop alternative for more people.
    • chongli 6y ago
      Apple only has about 10% marketshare with macOS. There is no judge in the US that would rule against them in an anti-trust case over that. It's another story with iOS but that's not what we're talking about here. Apple has no reason to turn the Mac into a total walled garden. They already have that in the iPad. Walling off macOS would mean getting rid of the Terminal and all of the other developer tools. For what? They would be cutting off their nose to spite their face.
  • 1over137 6y ago
    >I don't actually think there is any evidence to suggest they want to do that on the mac Gatekeeper, requiring Developer ID, deprecating kexts, T2 chip, deprecation of the inclusion of Tk/python/PHP. We are slowly boiling frogs here. It's being squeezed into the direction of iOS.
• ChrisLTD 6y ago
  > In Q3 2020, Apple had an 8.5% share of the market, up from 7% in Q3 2019. Apple ranks as the fourth largest PC maker, behind Lenovo, HP and Dell but ahead of Acer. https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/10/12/apples-mac-sees-strong-growth-amid-coronavirus-fueled-pc-market-boom https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/10/12/apples-mac-sees-s... The new Macs are fast and have great battery life, but I wouldn't worry about them taking over the market. Windows machines and Chromebooks are arguably better versus Macs now than in 2015 when you couldn't find a laptop outside of a Macbook with a decent trackpad or high resolution screen.
• ozmbie 6y ago
  > What can we do, now, as developers ? Get a job at one of Apple's competitors, and make those competing products better. Apple beats competitors because their product lineup is simpler and their products don't generally suck as much. Look at Microsoft's attempt at ARM notebooks a few years ago compared to Apple's now. The difference is staggering. If we want to see people move away from Apple, they need worthy competitors.
• amelius 6y ago
  > That future looks extremely scary. What can we do, now, as developers ? Write blogs about how Apple's business practices threaten the profession of developers, how they can hamper innovation, and how they work against the interest of the consumer (see e.g. IDFA). Also discuss the idea of breaking up Apple in a hardware and a software company, and how this would help improve the market and provide a brighter future for general purpose computing. And then there are basic things, discussed also by others, like not supporting Apple in any way, i.e. not buying their hardware, not developing for that hardware, and not recommending friends and family to buy Apple products. More harsh things you could do are: buying an Apple laptop and returning it (your right as a consumer; make sure you state a reason), or putting a license on your FOSS software that is more restrictive on Apple's closed hardware.
• chii 6y ago
  > What can we do, now, as developers ? create a killer app for the average person that _only_ works on linux, and force users to move. If your app is attractive enough, and there is enough developers doing this, it will force users to slowly migrate. To compete, walled-gardens will court you, and you can then negotiate conditions to make it better (instead of taking just money that they will offer).
• intricatedetail 6y ago
  Don't forget about sentencing your customers to Apple Sur(veillance).