22 ms·

Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control

232 points by _gtly 6y ago

pentae 6y ago
It was a masterclass in duping really. Step 1. Design the enclosure/thermals for a much lower TDP ARM chip, causing the Intel chips to thermal throttle and run hot as possible burning your lap and roasting your palms for years Step 2. Introduce the new powerful ARM chip which now runs much cooler and faster in the same enclosure Step 3. Profit! Worked on me, I just ordered mine
- ramraj07 6y ago
  That would hold water if people only compared it to intel Macs. Last I saw, most decent reviews compared it also to other mobile intel processors, so who exactly is in the group that's duping you?
  - pentae 6y ago
    Don't get me wrong it's an amazing chip, but the Intels were never given a proper chance on the previous machines especially the MBA. If my previous gen machine wasn't a toaster I wouldn't be upgrading
- zuhsetaqi 6y ago
  As if. Intel clearly failed to deliver what they claimed. That’s the reason why we had to deal with such overheating issues not only with MacBooks
  - pentae 6y ago
    I don't think it was Intels fault that they decided not to run a heat pipe to the fan on the previous gen MBA
- quantummkv 6y ago
  How is that a dupe? A dupe would be if the M1 chip was worse than Intel. If Apple can design a chip for those constraints and Intel can't, it's Intel's fault and problem
  - username90 6y ago
    It's Intel's fault but it is a problem for all of us. It isn't good when a company gets too big in too many areas and tightly couples everything.
  - yoz-y 6y ago
    Dupe is not a good word, but maybe disingenuous? Apple is touting silence now, but had the thermals of intel MacBooks been better they could be way less of hairdryers too. Apple could have also introduced better power controls for Intel Macs (now everybody runs Turbo Boost switcher). iMac Pro has shown that they can do better with same enclosure, I wonder if they could have done something with MacBooks too. They would probably have to sacrifice a few millimetres of thinness but I think the decreased noise and throttling would be more noticeable. That said, I don't believe there was any master plan behind this. They just originally prioritised thinness and battery size over everything else. With M1 they can have their cake and eat it too. Edit: Also they could have ditched Intel for AMD a generation or two ago and also improve on performance per watt.
Pesthuf 6y ago
I also think the marketing was genius. NOT labeling that graph they showed did exactly what they wanted. It was impressing the non tech people and the tech people ALL kept talking and talking about it - because it wasn't labeled. Apple's marketing is brilliant. It really gets the kind of people who think they are too smart to be marketed to AND the normies, all in one message.
- jchw 6y ago
  I consider myself a tech person and was immediately intrigued by the claims. Because I thought Apple could do it. And, after getting the Mac Mini in my hands as the only Apple computer in the house, I can mostly confirm it is quite astounding. Maybe adding to the mystique helped some sales from curious people; it would help explain why benchmarks have been kept quiet and vague for the most part, even though they are very impressive. I’ve witnessed single core performance on this device that I have not seen before and likely would need overclocking to hit if it can be done. For some workloads, it’s truly something. Even thinking about it, I do expect some of this move was about performance, especially performance per watt. I doubt any other mobile processor is holding a candle at the moment. The control grabs, I think, might be secondary.
- vvwvvwvvw 6y ago
  I was wondering why Gamer Nexus (a very rigorous YouTube review channel) didn't sent a M1 device, while those Apple fanboy channels got it. Probably the dude would've torn the M1 performance claims apart.
  - my123 6y ago
    Because those outlets never get Macs usually, and it isn't what they cover. Note that a laptop chip also isn't a gaming product, for obvious reasons.
    - fomine3 6y ago
      Thankfully AnandTech received Mac mini unit from Apple, Thanks Anand now at Apple?
Multicomp 6y ago
> At some point in the not too distant future, old x86 applications will cease to run on Macs, as emulation support won’t run forever One thing I can credit Android some, and Windows a lot (even 10 with all its manifold privacy and user-hostility problems) with is that they are backwards compatible. exceptions to every rule, etc., but I can run all old versions of Android apps on an Android 11 phone, same for Windows programs going back to 1996 or so with few tweaks, and can squeeze that back to 1993 if I fuss and cuss and so on. yes, this is arch to arch emulation, but the idea od taking that feature away in ~4 years vs Android's best effort continued compatibility or Microsoft's compatibility layers is a cost/benefit that I apparently disagree with Apple decision makers on.
- akmarinov 6y ago
  True, that's a good thing, but that's also where you get a lot of the cruft that slows things down. For example Apple no longer has to support OpenGL and it can just cut out relevant hardware on the SoC level, leaving more room for other things. On the smartphone front, Qualcomm can't do that, since it sells its chips to a broad base that have variable requirements. I guess it's a tradeoff.
  - terramex 6y ago
    > Apple no longer has to support OpenGL and it can just cut out relevant hardware on the SoC level, leaving more room for other things. Just for everyone who is scared by this statement - macOS on Apple Silicon still supports OpenGL and OpenCL, but it is emulated on top of Metal now.
    - soedirgo 6y ago
      Can you give a source for this? Also, is it still stuck at 4.1/1.2?
      - my123 6y ago
        Yep, still OpenGL 4.1 and OpenCL 1.1. It goes through AppleMetalGLRenderer on Apple Silicon Macs. You might want to look at: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Zink-macOS-OpenGL-Vulkan https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Zink-mac... though. Maybe there'll be more interest for a direct OpenGL to Metal layer not built by Apple in the future, for having a newer feature set.
square_usual 6y ago
While the point of Apple Silicon is undoubtedly for Apple to have more control over their ecosystem, this article doesn't make that point very well. For example: > However, there’s a clear nudge for developers to publish their recompiled apps to Apple’s store. That doesn't make any sense. Where is the "nudge" coming from? The article doesn't make any argument for how that works, given that you can share universal binaries outside the App store. Apple Silicon isn't changing anything that would "not so gently nudge" developers into the App Store. Similarly, old apps only compiled for x86 being compatible in the future is... not really about control. PowerPC apps aren't compatible with intel Macbooks; that's just an inevitable outcome of switching the ISA. There's nothing about platform control in that.
- ratww 6y ago
  > That doesn't make any sense. Where is the "nudge" coming from? I had the impression that the person that wrote the article believes that Universal Binaries are an AppStore-only feature.
  - square_usual 6y ago
    They mention a couple of lines before that you can "share or submit [them] to the Mac App Store", so they seem to be aware that you can share Universal Binaries.
rince 6y ago
Talking about platform control on a website that hijacks browser history. Give me a break.
formerly_proven 6y ago
In one of the older threads someone asked whether you'd eventually be able to run Linux on this, and someone responded that this would be annoying to do, since there aren't any docs. Is that actually true? The Apple A SoCs don't boot random kernels, so I would think the Apple M SoC does not, either, and requires bootloader/kernel to be signed by Apple, just like iPhone firmware.
- my123 6y ago
  They can be configured to boot other operating systems, see https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/macos-recovery-a-mac-apple-silicon-mchl82829c17/11.0/mac/11.0#mchl9b13cbdc https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/macos-recovery-a-ma....
  - Someone 6y ago
    From that page: “Review the following security options: Full Security: Ensures that only your current OS, or signed operating system software currently trusted by Apple, can run. This mode requires a network connection at software installation time. Reduced Security: Allows any version of signed operating system software ever trusted by Apple to run.” ⇒ it appears ‘other’ still requires OSes signed by Apple, but it allows you to run an OS even if Apple has no longer trusts it. Or am I misreading that? So, there might be Apple-signed Linuxes, but I wouldn’t hold my breadth for that.
    - my123 6y ago
      See this "option only appears when you run csrutil disable", which is the one that you need for third-party OSes, and doesn't impose any requirements on the OS that you boot.
      - EgoIncarnate 6y ago
        Looks like they removed "Permissive Security" mode from the support document in an update. You can still find it in https://web.archive.org/web/20201117164532/https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/macos-recovery-a-mac-apple-silicon-mchl82829c17/11.0/mac/11.0 https://web.archive.org/web/20201117164532/https://support.a.... Hope they don't remove this option in the firmware.
throw0101a 6y ago
¿Porque no los dos?
Tepix 6y ago
It will be interesting to see how long Rosetta-2 will be supported. macOS 10.15 took away 32bit apps, which was a sizeable chunk so clearly Apple is willing to alienate some of its users in the name of progress and slimlining.
- Bud 6y ago
  Is that even a serious criticism? Users had about ten years of warning before 32-bit went away. The real impact of that on real users is minimal.
  - _ph_ 6y ago
    Yes, there were warnings, but what can I as a user do about it? I am impacted by 32 bit going away and I cannot do anything about it. That is why I am running Mojava instead of Catalina. On the bright side, whenever I am going to buy a new Mac, the ARM processor effectively doesn't cause any additional troubles on the compatibility side, and that was probably the reason for Apple to kill 32 bit with Catalina.
    - Bud 6y ago
      But there is something you can do about it. You're already doing it. You can run Mojave. You want the platform to be weighed down with cruft forever because of a 0.01% use case? Do you want 8-bit support in there too, for the 68000?
      - sgerenser 6y ago
        68000 Mac apps were never 8 bit, the CPU had a 24-bit address space!
        Bud 6y ago
        I'm sorry. Thank you for the correction.
  - Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
nathancahill 6y ago
Maybe it was Intel that had platform control all along.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  With Intel there at least was AMD as an option: * https://amd-osx.com https://amd-osx.com * https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-hackintosh-system-appears-to-violate-apples-eula https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-hackintosh-syste...
  - my123 6y ago
    With Arm, maybe Hackintoshes that will be worth it (for VMs at least) will be possible in the future. If Windows 10 on Arm succeeds... to make that hardware widely available. SBCs do not count. (there's technically nothing preventing you of running macOS arm64 on non-Apple hardware in a VM)
    - hehetrthrthrjn 6y ago
      Yes there is: the lack of third party graphics drivers. That single issue has the potential to nobble any useable ARM based Hackintosh, though someone might step forward and implement a graphics driver, but that's quite hard.
      - my123 6y ago
        That issue is actually quite interesting. It's because if the GPU is reverse engineered enough, you can simulate an Apple GPU on another machine _and_ run other OSes with a proper GPU stack on those macs.
        hehetrthrthrjn 6y ago
        There's two parts to this issue: one is reverse engineering the Apple driver interface, the other is reverse engineering the third party target hardware interface. Most vendors of graphics hardware keep their interface secret, but not all. The problem is that the set of hardware that isn't secret won't overlap much with what people have or want to run, which is pretty central to what makes Hackintoshes attractive.
joshsyn 6y ago
Always one guy who shouts about control and submission. Don't like it don't buy it?
- yipbub 6y ago
  They're shouting at you not to buy it!
- newbie578 6y ago
  I bet there were people like you back when slavery was legal. If you don't like slavery, just don't buy slaves. Nothing wrong with that, right? YoU hAvE oPtIonS aS a CoNsuMer.
  - Veen 6y ago
    It is in extremely bad taste—not to mention ludicrously inaccurate—to compare your premium laptop ecosystem options with chattel slavery.
    - a_imho 6y ago
      Aren't Apple devices assembled in sweatshops? The comparison might be more accurate than intended.
      - newbie578 6y ago
        No, you see Foxconn is the one building them, Apple only pays them.. Lol.
      - valuearb 6y ago
        No, Apple has a code of conduct all their contractors are required to adhere to,, and pays substantially more than market. Their jobs are so coveted potential hires wait in lines for days just for a chance at getting an Apple job.
        a_imho 6y ago
cinbun8 6y ago
I don't understand why exerting better control over hardware + software would mean we are being duped. A more cohesive experience provided by Apple can only be a win for them and their customers.
- dandellion 6y ago
  As long as your interests align with Apple's, yes. But if they stop being aligned you basically have no control. So it's a double edged sword, it basically comes down to personal choice.
  - socialdemocrat 6y ago
    As long as there is an escape hatch which macOS has. The key problem IMHO with iOS is not the AppStore but the lack of an escape hatch. Running something from outside the AppStore should be an option. It could be a switch or toggle you could turn on with a warning.
- Tepix 6y ago
  One example is the right to repair that Apple is fighting.
- throwaway129013 6y ago
  > I don't understand why exerting better control over hardware + software would mean we are being duped So much for "Hacker" news.
spijdar 6y ago
> However, that marginal improvement hardly seems worth upsetting the entire Mac OS developer and consumer software ecosystem. Really? This entire article is really dismissive, but this line especially struck me. I'm not convinced the M1 chip is some strange alien tech bypassing the laws of physics, but it seems clearly superior at its specific niche (single processes with an emphasis on low power usage, using fewer cores but massive L1I and L1D caches with a shared L2 cache). Architecturally it looks like they're sacrificing expandability and raw multiprocessing power (like massively parallel database server multiprocessing) for a single minded focus on laptop chips. Why would it be surprising it'd excel in that domain? The author also makes the confusing suggestion that M1 is a ploy to get developers to publish to the App Store because ... Xcode produces fat mach-o's? Maybe I'm an idiot here, but all those third party apps are also made with xcode. Where is the correlation with the app store? Sure, apple has been pushing the app store, but how does "apple silicon" specifically push devs there? If there's anything apple has done to discourage 3rd party distribution, it's through Gatekeeper and strictly requiring notorized executables. If they wanted to make non app store distribution even less appealing, they could only allow notorization through the app store, or change the default to "only app store" ... Oh wait, they did that. On Intel. Apple has always had complete platform control. They've done a lot of crappy things -- but this article tries to dismiss the M1 for pretty absurd reasons IMO.
- Bud 6y ago
  The author clearly and obviously has no clue about M1. Calling its performance a "marginal improvement" is laughable. The entire article reads as a desperate attempt to distract people from the obvious advantages of the M1. I'd be desperate too if I were trying to pretend Android is a serious competitor performance-wise when the CPUs are 18-24 months behind and the gap is still widening.
  - holstvoogd 6y ago
    They're just jealous and need to write 'apple bad' blog to validate to themselves why they are years behind ;-)
auganov 6y ago
Never owned an Apple product and generally don't have too great of an opinion of this ecosystem. But the M1 MacBook Air is perhaps the first Apple product that really caught my attention. A fan-less (without overheating issues) ultrabook with crazy batter life outperforming every comparable offering out there for $1,000. Pretty much the best deal on the market, unless you have specific issues with it. Which in my case is the keyboard. And general dislike of the ecosystem, but I already see it as completely locked down, this one being more so doesn't change anything for me. If it had a trackpoint and a few more keys I would get it despite hating the platform.
- my123 6y ago
  Those butterfly keyboards are no longer shipped, they reverted to their prior designs.
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  > generally don't have too great of an opinion of this ecosystem. +1. > Pretty much the best deal on the market, unless you have specific issues with it. For example, if you try Linux or BSD, and you'll find none of the peripherals works, and the community reverse engineering efforts will take years before getting basic functionality, and even then, the battery will only last for 2 hours and nobody besides Apple knows how exactly the power management mechanism works, thus PM will forever be broken. I learned my lesson the hard way on Windows tablets. There was a time when "non-x86" is automatically developer/hacking-friendly (ancient examples are SPARC, MIPS, and those ARM Chromebooks were probably the last examples...), now the landscape has changed. I always want to use a non-x86 machine as my desktop, but perhaps it's time to abandon this idea.
  - barbacoa 6y ago
    AMD was originally going to release a desktop ARM CPU along with the x86 ryzen. The crazy part was they were meant to be pin compatible. AMD abandoned the idea due to complications and to focus on ryzen instead. We were so close to ARM desktops, probably wont see one for another 8 years. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/181867-amds-project-skybridge-new-arm-and-x86-chips-that-are-pin-compatible https://www.extremetech.com/computing/181867-amds-project-sk...
thih9 6y ago
> Today, similar pricing and innovation issues have reared their head with Intel. I’d also add difficulties with coordinating releases. It will still be difficult, but should become easier.
Veedrac 6y ago
Apple is about platform control. Apple Silicon is about performance and efficiency. A friendly, open-hardware Apple would have moved to their own chips too, though they'd have documented their GPU, and a walled-garden Apple without a competitive laptop chip would have locked the system down anyway, as, in fact, they were doing on Intel.
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  > Apple is about platform control. Apple Silicon is about performance and efficiency. [...] A friendly, open-hardware Apple would have moved to their own chips too Well said. But is it even possible to separate them anymore? What if they are practically both sides of the same coin? Apple uses its platform control to finance the development of Apple Silicon, which in turn strengthens its platform control. In an alternative universe, will the open-hardware friendly Apple even have the resources to develop a top-performance Apple Silicon (as seen in this universe) to begin with? I'm afraid that x86 vs ARM has become a "pick your poison" game, unless a serious competitor to Apple Silicon emerges... Well, if someone can show me that Linux or BSD runs perfectly on Mac w/ Apple Silicon with working periphrases and not-too-bad power management before the end of 2022, I may change my mind and buy one...
my123 6y ago
Apple Silicon Macs aren't any more locked down than x86 ones. Hopefully, the GPU and such will be reverse engineered, that's a lot of one-time effort that might take a year or more the first time but will be easier for future gens.
- Tepix 6y ago
  Now that the T2 chip has been hacked, that statement is no longer true.
  - my123 6y ago
    I'm part of the checkra1n team, and I can tell you that the difference doesn't really matter. We can do anything that we need on Apple Silicon macs, and will show something when we are ready. * you don't need to hack the SEP for anything here (consider it as a glorified TPM), and the AP is can be unlocked officially.
weego 6y ago
Yeah and don't be duped by the cost savings and reliability of SpaceX, they just want control. Product development is about control in some form. If Apple have genuinely just make a decades leap in performance then you just look at the trade offs. I'm not sure why I'm still typing, the article is such child-like faux insightfulness.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Weird comparison, SpaceX is not consumer hardware and few people make their living off of their services.
  - m4rtink 6y ago
    Also SpaceX is much more open than about any old school space launch company - and some new ones! (Blue Origin is secretive on the Apple level.)
coldtea 6y ago
>Don’t be duped by performance, Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control Yes. That's the biggest benefit, and another reason I'm buying it (on top of great performance for my NLE apps). I want the Mac to be it's own platform, and be under Apple's control and vision. If it's also made foul-proof and air-tight, so much the better. I don't want another lowest common denominator OS converging on the same point. If I didn't want platform control I'd buy some OEM device... That doesn't mean I approve of any and every restriction. But I'm ok with a "walled garden" -- better than an open garden full of junkies and garbage. Some of the best Japanese gardens and so on I've seen had walls around them... Of course an open garden that's beautifully maintained, respected by those in it, etc, would be even better, but that's hardly the case in real life, so that's where curation and walls come in. To me this brings me to the Amiga and Atari and Acorn and other alternative platforms of my youth. I don't want everything to be amd64 and Windows or the nth Linux distro. In any case, Apple doesn't force anyone's hand, if anything they make it more difficult to buy their stuff (more expensive, targeting the expensive end of the market, only 10% market share at best, different OS and now different CPU than the rest of the market, etc).
- sneak 6y ago
  The problems with this are more societal ones than technical or practical: It is impossible, for example, to install most popular apps for macOS without identifying yourself to Apple (and by extension the US government and military intelligence). You can't use the App Store (even for free apps) without an Apple ID, and you can't get an Apple ID without a phone number. (In many countries, you can't get a phone number without a government ID.) Similarly, if you wish to publish apps widely, you can do so with unsigned ones, but users won't ever figure out how to run those.[1] If you want your app to be widely used, you must ID yourself to Apple, who can deny/censor at will (or under state (or Hollywood) compulsion). It builds a world in which it is impossible to easily build or distribute tools that the state really doesn't want distributed or used, because Apple is too large to deny them their demands. I think the phrase used is "turnkey tyranny". Anonymous publishing is essential to the preservation of a free society. Imagine if there were one company who could remotely disable printing presses, or televisions/radios. For those of you who aren't yet worried about this possibility of state compulsion, I ask you this: Dubya is to Trump as Trump is to x? It's not a matter of if these remote censorship tools built by Apple will be used to abuse human rights en masse, but instead a matter of when. Apple is already compromising their crypto due to requests (not compulsion) from the federal police—today. [1]: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/unsigned.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/unsigned.html
sradman 6y ago
It is not ALL about platform control. ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture gives us full day battery browsing/video-playback using the efficient IceStorm cores as well as very competitive performance benchmark results using the FireStorm cores. Apple's System-on-a-Chip provides additional value-add (e.g. unified memory). Vertical integration of silicon does expand Apple’s walled garden but I’m not convinced this is the driving force.
- masklinn 6y ago
  > Apple's System-on-a-Chip provides additional value-add (e.g. unified memory). Both AMD and Intel support unified memory on their igp (and AMD at least is working on dGP unified memory).
klelatti 6y ago
> What Cupertino really wants more control. First over the development roadmap and inner working of its silicon. With in-house processors, Apple can drive integrated imaging, machine learning, and security features in the direction it wants. This is the real point about control - not about forcing anyone to use the App store which may or may not happen but could have happened with Intel CPUs too - and its about building more capable machines. The speed is in part as a result of that control. And I don't think anyone is being duped.
socialdemocrat 6y ago
The truth is somewhere in the middle, so while this article has some good points it is too colored by a strong dislike for all things Apple and borderline conspiratorial thinking. I don’t think there is anything that suggests Apple is going to stop people from installing Apps outside their App Store. Rather it is about making sure it is easy for regular users to get Apps in a safe manner without malware and Trojan horses. This isn’t just hype. We know for a fact that this is a much smaller problem on iOS than Android. I am happy that Android exists as a choice for users but let us not pretend there are no trade offs. It is a bit too conspiratorial to think Apple control is all about some dictatorship fetish. It is a choice Apple makes to improve user experience at the expense of flexibility.
- romanoderoma 6y ago
  > Rather it is about making sure it is easy for regular users to get Apps in a safe manner without malware and Trojan horses. I don't intend to sound dismissive, but this line of thinking has a name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternalism
  - newsclues 6y ago
    Does that not apply to the State and government?
    - criley2 6y ago
      The difference between the State and the Private Company is that citizens vote for the State, and Legislators (the "paternalizers") are directly installed by the voters. The iPhone buyer does not get a say in the development staff or direction at Apple. My government intends to be "Of the people, for the people, by the people". Imagine if Apple every single year had elections at every level of their company! Vote for your local support representatives. Vote for your local b+m store management. Vote for executive staff. Etc etc. But until Apple does that, there is literally no fair comparison with paternalism in state and private industry.
raverbashing 6y ago
If nVidia/ARM manages to put out a chip that competes with Intel (doesn't even have to be as fast as the M1) and have Windows on-board, it's probably over for Intel (Of course, unless they engage in some unfair competition, but I think the price difference will be so big it won't matter)
jmull 6y ago
What is it about Apple that makes people’s brains turn off? Apple silicon doesn’t change anything about Apple’s mac app store. Microsoft would need to release a native version of Windows, not Apple. He has a point with Rosetta 2, that it will very likely disappear (years from now), though that would affect software that isn’t being actively maintained (most of which failed to make the transition to x64 already). And suggesting a switch to AMD instead is just non-sense. I guess writing stuff like this about Apple is cynical way to boost page views.
- jb1991 6y ago
  It’s a general problem with the overall, wider polarization of modern culture. Whether it’s politics or tech, people really really really love to take sides in our world today, it it seems to have a blinding effect on perspectives and logic for many people on both sides of the argument.
  - matsemann 6y ago
    It's good that one has the enlightened centrists to tell everyone that both sides are equally bad, at least.
    - jb1991 6y ago
      I see what you did there!
    - Dirlewanger 6y ago
      It's better than shilling for your favorite tech company for free.
- jackpeterfletch 6y ago
  Craig Federighi make a statement the other day that made it seem like Windows ARM Natively supporting the M1, without virtualisation, was very much in Microsofts court.
nottorp 6y ago
Apple has been screwed by CPU manufacturers 3 times already, or do you think they changed architectures because they were having great fun doing that? In the past 3 years I've seen more and more people asking not for an Arm Mac, but for an AMD Mac. Because AMD is again cheaper and faster than Intel. But it appears Apple can now afford to build their own CPUs that are better and lower power than either AMD or Intel. Not to mention PowerPC, which is still around in some form at IBM :) It's a no brainer for them. No one can screw them over now except themselves.
- matwood 6y ago
  > In the past 3 years I've seen more and more people asking not for an Arm Mac, but for an AMD Mac I've seen the opposite. The people asking for an AMD mac were always thinking of it as a stop gap. Ever since the iPhone/iPad A series chips started blowing the doors off of benchmarks, people have been clamoring for a mac with a higher tdp A series chip. Now that the M1 is out, we can see why.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  > Apple has been screwed by CPU manufacturers 3 times already Arguably 4. Motorola abandoned m68k (at least as a desktop route; variants lived on for a very, very long time as an embedded thing). Then Motorola largely abandoned PPC, leaving IBM as the only desktop-y manufacturer. Then, unsurprisingly, IBM fell behind with it. And now Intel.
  - nottorp 6y ago
    Sounds right. I was counting PPC only once.
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      I suspect PPC definitely counts twice, at least in Apple's view. They treated G5/PPC970 as a major transition/new hope.
drej 6y ago
There's a huge green quote: "Apple has confirmed that Boot Camp support isn’t coming to Arm-based Macs." And it comes right after the same sentence is uttered in the article... and is followed by "unless". All in all, pretty weird form of journalism.
tannhaeuser 6y ago
Yes Apple is about platform control and monetization, and they're pretty good at it. They want you to buy-in into their ecosystem and stay loyal; even developers of iOS and Mac OS apps have to open Apple dev accounts (and the process of rolling out an app on the App Store is ... byzantine). They keep off copycat and privacy-invading apps that way, and their customers love that aspect of their platform (I even use a cheap iPhone to get away from the mass surveillance devices called Android phones). Apple's Silicon is a great success AFAICT, when Intel has just stagnated for years now. I love Apple innovations like that, and I think Apple Silicon is in principal orthogonal to the lock-in aspect so far, apart from the fact that there won't be alternative O/S on Apple Silicon due to lack of drivers; now of course, Apple could soon extend the ARM ISA in proprietary ways. However, as much as Apple produces shiny consumer laptops (despite their naming, I don't consider MBPs as "professional" devices due to lack of options), I'm probably staying away from Mac OS, because professionally I need to run (mostly) F/OSS apps such as compilers, databases, middlewares, VMs/containers, and backend tool chains. I also believe their notarization thing will kill F/OSS on Mac OS which makes it useless for me. And Apple has to take the piss here, as F/OSS is what Mac OS (Mac OS X) is built on, and what made it even remotely acceptable in 2002/3. If you're a developer of non-Mac OS, non-iOS apps, expect Mac OS to stop being an option even more so than it is already.
- efficax 6y ago
  > I don't consider MBPs as "professional" devices due to lack of options Counterpoint is the 10s of thousands of "professionals" (like me, senior software engineer at a Company You Know) who use them....
  - tannhaeuser 6y ago
    You got me wrong; I didn't mean to insult Apple users. What makes a notebook "pro" is having options for display, ports, memory, mass storage devices, docking, etc., plus the supply and delivery chain that go with it. Also, for eg music production, things like stable interfaces, timings, and apps to base larger investments on. When I bought my Powerbook, it came with a PCMCIA slot (that I used for a third FHD display), exchangeable battery, memory, optical storage, wired networking in addition to WLAN, commitment to support for Java development, POSIX certification. Many of these things may be uneccessary today, but MBP prices haven't changed or have even increased since. The MBP doesn't even have a std keyboard layout without touch bar and ties its design aesthetic to a glossy screen/screen-top. Feels like a rip-off to me even if I personally can afford it. Edit: and there's nothing "Pro" about the lack of perspective for both S/W development and music production on Mac OS
victorbstan 6y ago
Yours dearly, the competition.
blackrock 6y ago
To be honest, do most people even know or care what CPU Apple is using for their Macs? I’m assuming that people buy Macs for the software platform from Apple. I have a few Macs, and I never had any intention to install Linux on it. But admittedly I only used my Macs as a toy. I eventually gave up on it, since it didn’t do what I needed it to do.
karmakaze 6y ago
There are other benefits to the architecture change. A strong motivation is that profit margins can be increased by using more efficient in CPU size/speed, battery size, and amount of RAM to deliver the same performance compared to x86 Macs. Rather than pass these savings to consumers Apple can bank the difference. And the consumer wins with smaller/lighter devices and longer battery life. Expect that macOS will continue by adding background processing limit permissions etc.
- valuearb 6y ago
  MacOS is not iOS because a Mac is not a phone. Craig Federeghi has spoken about the differences multiple times recently, repeatedly saying they aren’t changing MacOS to be more like iPadOS or iOS. They use the Mac too, and need its separate use case. They got 20 hour battery life just by switching to Apple Silicon, they aren’t going to hobble Mac apps with any significant restrictions to try to eek out a few hours more.
taylodl 6y ago
Surprise, surprise - Apple wants to control the end-to-end computing experience on their Macs the way they do on their iDevices thus allowing them to differentiate themselves in a commodity market. Why wouldn't they do that?
dangus 6y ago
This article has decent points but is definitely just sort of coming from the perspective of being completely unfamiliar with the Mac platform. Worrying about the App Store taking over on the Mac is misguided. The Mac has never forced the App Store on anyone and the Mac App Store doesn’t even seem to be particularly popular. “Emulation” (it’s not emulation) is apparently this big problem, except that early M1 Macs show faster Rosetta performance with still-better battery life in many cases. And yes, Rosetta won’t be around forever, but we have been here before. It wasn’t a problem going from PowerPC to Intel either. If the authors at Android authority ever used a Mac they’d already know this. Anecdotal, but I can’t think of a single pre-Intel program that was lost to the Intel transition that I was using at the time. All the developers checked the box and recompiled, and the dinosaurs like Adobe eventually trudged along. For those of us who actually used Macs back in the PowerPC days and earlier, there was no such thing as Hackintosh or Boot Camp. The fact that those are going away is essentially inconsequential, especially now that the Mac platform is vastly more popular than it was in 2006. Why would I want to run Windows on my Mac? It’s been a shitty experience anyway, because even in Intel-land the hardware has been heavily macOS optimized including things like fan and power control. The trackpad driver on Windows was always worse, for example. And again why would you want to run Windows when you spent all this money to not run Windows? It doesn’t make sense especially since so many programs (e.g. 1Password) have their best versions on Mac.
- valuearb 6y ago
  When they repeatedly used the word “emulation” instead of translation in the article I knew they hadn’t done their homework.
TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
If you look at Intel's mediocre-at-best improvements over the last few years, it makes perfect sense that Apple want to move to their own silicon. They also could have moved to AMD, but they probably started thinking about this move before Ryzen happened, and given Apple already make great chips for iPads, it's no great stretch to put them in MacBooks too. Sure, it gives them more control, but they already had the ability to exercise platform control on x86. They could have disabled Boot Camp etc on the T2 chip Macs if they wanted to, it's not about the CPU.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
barnacled 6y ago
This is obviously about control. Apple's MO with every _smaller_ supplier has been: 1. Set up office down the road 2. Poach top engineers 3. Come up with some excuse to cancel use of supplier and integrate in house. The media and fanboys are remarkably complicit, coming up with excuses for apple's behaviour and giving very favourable coverage. In this case, intel are too big for this trick to work and apple already have loads of ARM talent so it makes perfect sense to transition. I wouldn't rule out apple trying on the whole 'we don't need a license' thing any more with Nvidia but it's probably unlikely given their size. I worked at imagination technologies who was bankrupted by Apple doing this technique and whose GPUs are still used by them so I saw this and people's remarkable lack of attention on the incredibly consistent pattern of control first hand. While all of this is obviously true, I actually think it's great that intel and AMD are receiving some serious ISA competition and it will net benefit non-apple consumers too long run. Congrats to apple for pretty impressive technical work but I do wish more would see apple for the ruthless control freaks they are. At the end of the day I think rather mundanely it's really more about money than anything else.
- klelatti 6y ago
  That's very sad to hear. Could you explain how close Apple's GPU is to Imagination's and why Imagination wasn't able to protect their IP?
  - barnacled 6y ago
    Their GPU _is_ imagination's GPU in my opinion. Heavily customised (they had a full ARM-like license to do so) but the fundamentals are all the same. Apple claimed that they'd completely reinvented a GPU that didn't rely on any hardware IP owned by IMG whatsoever, provided no evidence of that and recent phones have bug-for-bug compatibility (as far as I heard form a friend who ran some tests). I can't tell you 100% that it's not an entirely new GPU that was somehow completely reinvented from scratch but I can tell you I think that's highly unlikely. Imagination couldn't protect their IP because they couldn't afford the lengthily court case that would ensue. Note by the way Apple have quietly started licensing IP from IMG again, long after striking ~75% off the stock price and resulting in them being acquired by a private equity firm...
zepto 6y ago
Google Play Services is all about platform control.
pdimitar 6y ago
<rant> Even if everything the article claims is true, the open-source / libre software and hardware communities had at least 20 years to come up with a better model. So far, they have failed. Is it such a crime for a corporation to try and prioritize their users' identities safety and produce a variant that tries to compromise between monopoly and convenience? I fully recognize the possible dystopian futures here, mind you, and I am as distrustful towards corporations as most techies. But after being a commercial programmer for 19 years, I can't seem to find other agents who did better than Microsoft and Apple in this area. We all know the memes about them and I'll concede that 90% of them are true. But could somebody -- or something -- else do better? So far the answer seems to be "no", and that's the reality we are living in. What does it say about us if we are denying it? And don't get me wrong. Give me the same (or little less) performance on a 100% libre hardware and software and I'll switch tomorrow, even if a mere 13" laptop with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD costs $5000. I will, I kid you not. But there doesn't seem to be any choices that come close to Apple's laptop ergonomics, quality of screens, and (mostly) integrated and polished experience. And don't get me started with "if you do this bucket list of 37 tasks then Brand+Model laptop is very close to a MacBook". Truth is, there is nothing like a MacBook. I wish there was, but especially with release of the M1, there really isn't. </rant>
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
floatingatoll 6y ago
This article leaves two billion-dollar market opportunities on the table: Online testing and multiplayer gaming^. Apple’s recent announcement of a web authentication API includes if your system is booted in fully secure mode^ an attestation that the OS is in secure mode, crypto-signed by the secure kernel whose own signature is by Apple. This provides something that no desktop/laptop today can provide: certainty that the user isn’t tampering with the operating system to try and cheat. The entire stack, from hardware to UI, is signed and verified to have integrity, and modifying any component of the stack will result in the “secure” attestation being withheld. So instead of having to deal with insane anti-cheating spyware and kernel extensions and system monitoring, testing software and multiplayer game modes can simply require you to be in secure mode to login. This is available today, immediately, if anyone were to implement it. Of course no one has yet, because no one is thinking of the iOS and macOS platforms as tamperproof computing for the Internet world, and so Apple’s quiet announcement of this in a technical API footnote has gone unnoticed. Apple will probably always let you shut off anti-tampering on macOS with reboots and terminal commands, and then you can tamper to your heart’s content, but they will never allow your system to attest that it’s in tamperproof mode to third-parties, and that crypto signature can’t be spoofed since the Secure Enclave is involved in generating it. This ‘tamperproof’ market opportunity is worth billions of dollars, and Apple made it there first. I can’t wait to see what happens when all the industries that suffer undetectable tampering today realize this. ^ Multiplayer FPS developers have had little incentive to develop for Metal prior to now, but Apple Silicon has the capability to easily unseat 5950X/GTX3090 as peak PC gaming performance for a tiny fraction of the cost and heat. Someday the Apple TV will get an Apple Silicon chip that can run FPS games using Metal at 4K/60/HDR, which should noticeably alter that cost-benefit equation. ^ I believe this is signed-sealed OS partition, SIP enabled, kernel extensions disabled; though I may have missed one or two bits.
- nayuki 6y ago
  What about this scenario?: A gamer wishes to cheat. They run the game on an unmodified, tamperproof, attested computer as per your description. Then they attach the HDMI output to a video capture card on a secondary computer, run some artificial intelligence software, and send back automated commands using a USB mouse and keyboard. Given that this kind of attack/circumvention is possible, are you sure that an attestable computer is a worthwhile goal?
mlindner 6y ago
A website that's got "android" in the site name is saying false things about Apple, what a surprise. There's nothing in Apple M1 that is about platform control any more than x86 in Mac was about platform control. They could have locked down the x86 Mac and prevented you from installing other OSes trivially, but they didn't. In fact they already allow you to install other OSes on Mac, if those OSes had support for the M1.

232 points by _gtly 6y ago

It was a masterclass in duping really. Step 1. Design the enclosure/thermals for a much lower TDP ARM chip, causing the Intel chips to thermal throttle and run hot as possible burning your lap and roasting your palms for years Step 2. Introduce the new powerful ARM chip which now runs much cooler and faster in the same enclosure Step 3. Profit! Worked on me, I just ordered mine

ramraj07 6y ago
That would hold water if people only compared it to intel Macs. Last I saw, most decent reviews compared it also to other mobile intel processors, so who exactly is in the group that's duping you?
- pentae 6y ago
  Don't get me wrong it's an amazing chip, but the Intels were never given a proper chance on the previous machines especially the MBA. If my previous gen machine wasn't a toaster I wouldn't be upgrading
zuhsetaqi 6y ago
As if. Intel clearly failed to deliver what they claimed. That’s the reason why we had to deal with such overheating issues not only with MacBooks
- pentae 6y ago
  I don't think it was Intels fault that they decided not to run a heat pipe to the fan on the previous gen MBA
quantummkv 6y ago
How is that a dupe? A dupe would be if the M1 chip was worse than Intel. If Apple can design a chip for those constraints and Intel can't, it's Intel's fault and problem
- username90 6y ago
  It's Intel's fault but it is a problem for all of us. It isn't good when a company gets too big in too many areas and tightly couples everything.
- yoz-y 6y ago
  Dupe is not a good word, but maybe disingenuous? Apple is touting silence now, but had the thermals of intel MacBooks been better they could be way less of hairdryers too. Apple could have also introduced better power controls for Intel Macs (now everybody runs Turbo Boost switcher). iMac Pro has shown that they can do better with same enclosure, I wonder if they could have done something with MacBooks too. They would probably have to sacrifice a few millimetres of thinness but I think the decreased noise and throttling would be more noticeable. That said, I don't believe there was any master plan behind this. They just originally prioritised thinness and battery size over everything else. With M1 they can have their cake and eat it too. Edit: Also they could have ditched Intel for AMD a generation or two ago and also improve on performance per watt.

Pesthuf 6y ago

I also think the marketing was genius. NOT labeling that graph they showed did exactly what they wanted. It was impressing the non tech people and the tech people ALL kept talking and talking about it - because it wasn't labeled. Apple's marketing is brilliant. It really gets the kind of people who think they are too smart to be marketed to AND the normies, all in one message.

jchw 6y ago
I consider myself a tech person and was immediately intrigued by the claims. Because I thought Apple could do it. And, after getting the Mac Mini in my hands as the only Apple computer in the house, I can mostly confirm it is quite astounding. Maybe adding to the mystique helped some sales from curious people; it would help explain why benchmarks have been kept quiet and vague for the most part, even though they are very impressive. I’ve witnessed single core performance on this device that I have not seen before and likely would need overclocking to hit if it can be done. For some workloads, it’s truly something. Even thinking about it, I do expect some of this move was about performance, especially performance per watt. I doubt any other mobile processor is holding a candle at the moment. The control grabs, I think, might be secondary.
vvwvvwvvw 6y ago
I was wondering why Gamer Nexus (a very rigorous YouTube review channel) didn't sent a M1 device, while those Apple fanboy channels got it. Probably the dude would've torn the M1 performance claims apart.
- my123 6y ago
  Because those outlets never get Macs usually, and it isn't what they cover. Note that a laptop chip also isn't a gaming product, for obvious reasons.
  - fomine3 6y ago
    Thankfully AnandTech received Mac mini unit from Apple, Thanks Anand now at Apple?

Multicomp 6y ago

> At some point in the not too distant future, old x86 applications will cease to run on Macs, as emulation support won’t run forever One thing I can credit Android some, and Windows a lot (even 10 with all its manifold privacy and user-hostility problems) with is that they are backwards compatible. exceptions to every rule, etc., but I can run all old versions of Android apps on an Android 11 phone, same for Windows programs going back to 1996 or so with few tweaks, and can squeeze that back to 1993 if I fuss and cuss and so on. yes, this is arch to arch emulation, but the idea od taking that feature away in ~4 years vs Android's best effort continued compatibility or Microsoft's compatibility layers is a cost/benefit that I apparently disagree with Apple decision makers on.

akmarinov 6y ago
True, that's a good thing, but that's also where you get a lot of the cruft that slows things down. For example Apple no longer has to support OpenGL and it can just cut out relevant hardware on the SoC level, leaving more room for other things. On the smartphone front, Qualcomm can't do that, since it sells its chips to a broad base that have variable requirements. I guess it's a tradeoff.
- terramex 6y ago
  > Apple no longer has to support OpenGL and it can just cut out relevant hardware on the SoC level, leaving more room for other things. Just for everyone who is scared by this statement - macOS on Apple Silicon still supports OpenGL and OpenCL, but it is emulated on top of Metal now.
  - soedirgo 6y ago
    Can you give a source for this? Also, is it still stuck at 4.1/1.2?
    - my123 6y ago
      Yep, still OpenGL 4.1 and OpenCL 1.1. It goes through AppleMetalGLRenderer on Apple Silicon Macs. You might want to look at: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Zink-macOS-OpenGL-Vulkan https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Zink-mac... though. Maybe there'll be more interest for a direct OpenGL to Metal layer not built by Apple in the future, for having a newer feature set.

square_usual 6y ago

While the point of Apple Silicon is undoubtedly for Apple to have more control over their ecosystem, this article doesn't make that point very well. For example: > However, there’s a clear nudge for developers to publish their recompiled apps to Apple’s store. That doesn't make any sense. Where is the "nudge" coming from? The article doesn't make any argument for how that works, given that you can share universal binaries outside the App store. Apple Silicon isn't changing anything that would "not so gently nudge" developers into the App Store. Similarly, old apps only compiled for x86 being compatible in the future is... not really about control. PowerPC apps aren't compatible with intel Macbooks; that's just an inevitable outcome of switching the ISA. There's nothing about platform control in that.

ratww 6y ago
> That doesn't make any sense. Where is the "nudge" coming from? I had the impression that the person that wrote the article believes that Universal Binaries are an AppStore-only feature.
- square_usual 6y ago
  They mention a couple of lines before that you can "share or submit [them] to the Mac App Store", so they seem to be aware that you can share Universal Binaries.

rince 6y ago

Talking about platform control on a website that hijacks browser history. Give me a break.

formerly_proven 6y ago

In one of the older threads someone asked whether you'd eventually be able to run Linux on this, and someone responded that this would be annoying to do, since there aren't any docs. Is that actually true? The Apple A SoCs don't boot random kernels, so I would think the Apple M SoC does not, either, and requires bootloader/kernel to be signed by Apple, just like iPhone firmware.

my123 6y ago
They can be configured to boot other operating systems, see https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/macos-recovery-a-mac-apple-silicon-mchl82829c17/11.0/mac/11.0#mchl9b13cbdc https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/macos-recovery-a-ma....
- Someone 6y ago
  From that page: “Review the following security options: Full Security: Ensures that only your current OS, or signed operating system software currently trusted by Apple, can run. This mode requires a network connection at software installation time. Reduced Security: Allows any version of signed operating system software ever trusted by Apple to run.” ⇒ it appears ‘other’ still requires OSes signed by Apple, but it allows you to run an OS even if Apple has no longer trusts it. Or am I misreading that? So, there might be Apple-signed Linuxes, but I wouldn’t hold my breadth for that.
  - my123 6y ago
    See this "option only appears when you run csrutil disable", which is the one that you need for third-party OSes, and doesn't impose any requirements on the OS that you boot.
    - EgoIncarnate 6y ago
      Looks like they removed "Permissive Security" mode from the support document in an update. You can still find it in https://web.archive.org/web/20201117164532/https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/macos-recovery-a-mac-apple-silicon-mchl82829c17/11.0/mac/11.0 https://web.archive.org/web/20201117164532/https://support.a.... Hope they don't remove this option in the firmware.

throw0101a 6y ago

¿Porque no los dos?

Tepix 6y ago

It will be interesting to see how long Rosetta-2 will be supported. macOS 10.15 took away 32bit apps, which was a sizeable chunk so clearly Apple is willing to alienate some of its users in the name of progress and slimlining.

Bud 6y ago
Is that even a serious criticism? Users had about ten years of warning before 32-bit went away. The real impact of that on real users is minimal.
- _ph_ 6y ago
  Yes, there were warnings, but what can I as a user do about it? I am impacted by 32 bit going away and I cannot do anything about it. That is why I am running Mojava instead of Catalina. On the bright side, whenever I am going to buy a new Mac, the ARM processor effectively doesn't cause any additional troubles on the compatibility side, and that was probably the reason for Apple to kill 32 bit with Catalina.
  - Bud 6y ago
    But there is something you can do about it. You're already doing it. You can run Mojave. You want the platform to be weighed down with cruft forever because of a 0.01% use case? Do you want 8-bit support in there too, for the 68000?
    - sgerenser 6y ago
      68000 Mac apps were never 8 bit, the CPU had a 24-bit address space!
      - Bud 6y ago
        I'm sorry. Thank you for the correction.
- Doctor_Fegg 6y ago

nathancahill 6y ago

Maybe it was Intel that had platform control all along.

throw0101a 6y ago
With Intel there at least was AMD as an option: * https://amd-osx.com https://amd-osx.com * https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-hackintosh-system-appears-to-violate-apples-eula https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-hackintosh-syste...
- my123 6y ago
  With Arm, maybe Hackintoshes that will be worth it (for VMs at least) will be possible in the future. If Windows 10 on Arm succeeds... to make that hardware widely available. SBCs do not count. (there's technically nothing preventing you of running macOS arm64 on non-Apple hardware in a VM)
  - hehetrthrthrjn 6y ago
    Yes there is: the lack of third party graphics drivers. That single issue has the potential to nobble any useable ARM based Hackintosh, though someone might step forward and implement a graphics driver, but that's quite hard.
    - my123 6y ago
      That issue is actually quite interesting. It's because if the GPU is reverse engineered enough, you can simulate an Apple GPU on another machine _and_ run other OSes with a proper GPU stack on those macs.
      - hehetrthrthrjn 6y ago
        There's two parts to this issue: one is reverse engineering the Apple driver interface, the other is reverse engineering the third party target hardware interface. Most vendors of graphics hardware keep their interface secret, but not all. The problem is that the set of hardware that isn't secret won't overlap much with what people have or want to run, which is pretty central to what makes Hackintoshes attractive.

joshsyn 6y ago

Always one guy who shouts about control and submission. Don't like it don't buy it?

yipbub 6y ago
They're shouting at you not to buy it!
newbie578 6y ago
I bet there were people like you back when slavery was legal. If you don't like slavery, just don't buy slaves. Nothing wrong with that, right? YoU hAvE oPtIonS aS a CoNsuMer.
- Veen 6y ago
  It is in extremely bad taste—not to mention ludicrously inaccurate—to compare your premium laptop ecosystem options with chattel slavery.
  - a_imho 6y ago
    Aren't Apple devices assembled in sweatshops? The comparison might be more accurate than intended.
    - newbie578 6y ago
      No, you see Foxconn is the one building them, Apple only pays them.. Lol.
    - valuearb 6y ago
      No, Apple has a code of conduct all their contractors are required to adhere to,, and pays substantially more than market. Their jobs are so coveted potential hires wait in lines for days just for a chance at getting an Apple job.
      - a_imho 6y ago

cinbun8 6y ago

I don't understand why exerting better control over hardware + software would mean we are being duped. A more cohesive experience provided by Apple can only be a win for them and their customers.

dandellion 6y ago
As long as your interests align with Apple's, yes. But if they stop being aligned you basically have no control. So it's a double edged sword, it basically comes down to personal choice.
- socialdemocrat 6y ago
  As long as there is an escape hatch which macOS has. The key problem IMHO with iOS is not the AppStore but the lack of an escape hatch. Running something from outside the AppStore should be an option. It could be a switch or toggle you could turn on with a warning.
Tepix 6y ago
One example is the right to repair that Apple is fighting.
throwaway129013 6y ago
> I don't understand why exerting better control over hardware + software would mean we are being duped So much for "Hacker" news.

spijdar 6y ago

> However, that marginal improvement hardly seems worth upsetting the entire Mac OS developer and consumer software ecosystem. Really? This entire article is really dismissive, but this line especially struck me. I'm not convinced the M1 chip is some strange alien tech bypassing the laws of physics, but it seems clearly superior at its specific niche (single processes with an emphasis on low power usage, using fewer cores but massive L1I and L1D caches with a shared L2 cache). Architecturally it looks like they're sacrificing expandability and raw multiprocessing power (like massively parallel database server multiprocessing) for a single minded focus on laptop chips. Why would it be surprising it'd excel in that domain? The author also makes the confusing suggestion that M1 is a ploy to get developers to publish to the App Store because ... Xcode produces fat mach-o's? Maybe I'm an idiot here, but all those third party apps are also made with xcode. Where is the correlation with the app store? Sure, apple has been pushing the app store, but how does "apple silicon" specifically push devs there? If there's anything apple has done to discourage 3rd party distribution, it's through Gatekeeper and strictly requiring notorized executables. If they wanted to make non app store distribution even less appealing, they could only allow notorization through the app store, or change the default to "only app store" ... Oh wait, they did that. On Intel. Apple has always had complete platform control. They've done a lot of crappy things -- but this article tries to dismiss the M1 for pretty absurd reasons IMO.

Bud 6y ago
The author clearly and obviously has no clue about M1. Calling its performance a "marginal improvement" is laughable. The entire article reads as a desperate attempt to distract people from the obvious advantages of the M1. I'd be desperate too if I were trying to pretend Android is a serious competitor performance-wise when the CPUs are 18-24 months behind and the gap is still widening.
- holstvoogd 6y ago
  They're just jealous and need to write 'apple bad' blog to validate to themselves why they are years behind ;-)

auganov 6y ago

Never owned an Apple product and generally don't have too great of an opinion of this ecosystem. But the M1 MacBook Air is perhaps the first Apple product that really caught my attention. A fan-less (without overheating issues) ultrabook with crazy batter life outperforming every comparable offering out there for $1,000. Pretty much the best deal on the market, unless you have specific issues with it. Which in my case is the keyboard. And general dislike of the ecosystem, but I already see it as completely locked down, this one being more so doesn't change anything for me. If it had a trackpoint and a few more keys I would get it despite hating the platform.

my123 6y ago
Those butterfly keyboards are no longer shipped, they reverted to their prior designs.
segfaultbuserr 6y ago
> generally don't have too great of an opinion of this ecosystem. +1. > Pretty much the best deal on the market, unless you have specific issues with it. For example, if you try Linux or BSD, and you'll find none of the peripherals works, and the community reverse engineering efforts will take years before getting basic functionality, and even then, the battery will only last for 2 hours and nobody besides Apple knows how exactly the power management mechanism works, thus PM will forever be broken. I learned my lesson the hard way on Windows tablets. There was a time when "non-x86" is automatically developer/hacking-friendly (ancient examples are SPARC, MIPS, and those ARM Chromebooks were probably the last examples...), now the landscape has changed. I always want to use a non-x86 machine as my desktop, but perhaps it's time to abandon this idea.
- barbacoa 6y ago
  AMD was originally going to release a desktop ARM CPU along with the x86 ryzen. The crazy part was they were meant to be pin compatible. AMD abandoned the idea due to complications and to focus on ryzen instead. We were so close to ARM desktops, probably wont see one for another 8 years. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/181867-amds-project-skybridge-new-arm-and-x86-chips-that-are-pin-compatible https://www.extremetech.com/computing/181867-amds-project-sk...

thih9 6y ago

> Today, similar pricing and innovation issues have reared their head with Intel. I’d also add difficulties with coordinating releases. It will still be difficult, but should become easier.

Veedrac 6y ago

Apple is about platform control. Apple Silicon is about performance and efficiency. A friendly, open-hardware Apple would have moved to their own chips too, though they'd have documented their GPU, and a walled-garden Apple without a competitive laptop chip would have locked the system down anyway, as, in fact, they were doing on Intel.

segfaultbuserr 6y ago
> Apple is about platform control. Apple Silicon is about performance and efficiency. [...] A friendly, open-hardware Apple would have moved to their own chips too Well said. But is it even possible to separate them anymore? What if they are practically both sides of the same coin? Apple uses its platform control to finance the development of Apple Silicon, which in turn strengthens its platform control. In an alternative universe, will the open-hardware friendly Apple even have the resources to develop a top-performance Apple Silicon (as seen in this universe) to begin with? I'm afraid that x86 vs ARM has become a "pick your poison" game, unless a serious competitor to Apple Silicon emerges... Well, if someone can show me that Linux or BSD runs perfectly on Mac w/ Apple Silicon with working periphrases and not-too-bad power management before the end of 2022, I may change my mind and buy one...

my123 6y ago

Apple Silicon Macs aren't any more locked down than x86 ones. Hopefully, the GPU and such will be reverse engineered, that's a lot of one-time effort that might take a year or more the first time but will be easier for future gens.

Tepix 6y ago
Now that the T2 chip has been hacked, that statement is no longer true.
- my123 6y ago
  I'm part of the checkra1n team, and I can tell you that the difference doesn't really matter. We can do anything that we need on Apple Silicon macs, and will show something when we are ready. * you don't need to hack the SEP for anything here (consider it as a glorified TPM), and the AP is can be unlocked officially.

weego 6y ago

Yeah and don't be duped by the cost savings and reliability of SpaceX, they just want control. Product development is about control in some form. If Apple have genuinely just make a decades leap in performance then you just look at the trade offs. I'm not sure why I'm still typing, the article is such child-like faux insightfulness.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Weird comparison, SpaceX is not consumer hardware and few people make their living off of their services.
- m4rtink 6y ago
  Also SpaceX is much more open than about any old school space launch company - and some new ones! (Blue Origin is secretive on the Apple level.)

coldtea 6y ago

>Don’t be duped by performance, Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control Yes. That's the biggest benefit, and another reason I'm buying it (on top of great performance for my NLE apps). I want the Mac to be it's own platform, and be under Apple's control and vision. If it's also made foul-proof and air-tight, so much the better. I don't want another lowest common denominator OS converging on the same point. If I didn't want platform control I'd buy some OEM device... That doesn't mean I approve of any and every restriction. But I'm ok with a "walled garden" -- better than an open garden full of junkies and garbage. Some of the best Japanese gardens and so on I've seen had walls around them... Of course an open garden that's beautifully maintained, respected by those in it, etc, would be even better, but that's hardly the case in real life, so that's where curation and walls come in. To me this brings me to the Amiga and Atari and Acorn and other alternative platforms of my youth. I don't want everything to be amd64 and Windows or the nth Linux distro. In any case, Apple doesn't force anyone's hand, if anything they make it more difficult to buy their stuff (more expensive, targeting the expensive end of the market, only 10% market share at best, different OS and now different CPU than the rest of the market, etc).

sneak 6y ago
The problems with this are more societal ones than technical or practical: It is impossible, for example, to install most popular apps for macOS without identifying yourself to Apple (and by extension the US government and military intelligence). You can't use the App Store (even for free apps) without an Apple ID, and you can't get an Apple ID without a phone number. (In many countries, you can't get a phone number without a government ID.) Similarly, if you wish to publish apps widely, you can do so with unsigned ones, but users won't ever figure out how to run those.[1] If you want your app to be widely used, you must ID yourself to Apple, who can deny/censor at will (or under state (or Hollywood) compulsion). It builds a world in which it is impossible to easily build or distribute tools that the state really doesn't want distributed or used, because Apple is too large to deny them their demands. I think the phrase used is "turnkey tyranny". Anonymous publishing is essential to the preservation of a free society. Imagine if there were one company who could remotely disable printing presses, or televisions/radios. For those of you who aren't yet worried about this possibility of state compulsion, I ask you this: Dubya is to Trump as Trump is to x? It's not a matter of if these remote censorship tools built by Apple will be used to abuse human rights en masse, but instead a matter of when. Apple is already compromising their crypto due to requests (not compulsion) from the federal police—today. [1]: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/unsigned.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/unsigned.html

sradman 6y ago

It is not ALL about platform control. ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture gives us full day battery browsing/video-playback using the efficient IceStorm cores as well as very competitive performance benchmark results using the FireStorm cores. Apple's System-on-a-Chip provides additional value-add (e.g. unified memory). Vertical integration of silicon does expand Apple’s walled garden but I’m not convinced this is the driving force.

masklinn 6y ago
> Apple's System-on-a-Chip provides additional value-add (e.g. unified memory). Both AMD and Intel support unified memory on their igp (and AMD at least is working on dGP unified memory).

klelatti 6y ago

> What Cupertino really wants more control. First over the development roadmap and inner working of its silicon. With in-house processors, Apple can drive integrated imaging, machine learning, and security features in the direction it wants. This is the real point about control - not about forcing anyone to use the App store which may or may not happen but could have happened with Intel CPUs too - and its about building more capable machines. The speed is in part as a result of that control. And I don't think anyone is being duped.

socialdemocrat 6y ago

The truth is somewhere in the middle, so while this article has some good points it is too colored by a strong dislike for all things Apple and borderline conspiratorial thinking. I don’t think there is anything that suggests Apple is going to stop people from installing Apps outside their App Store. Rather it is about making sure it is easy for regular users to get Apps in a safe manner without malware and Trojan horses. This isn’t just hype. We know for a fact that this is a much smaller problem on iOS than Android. I am happy that Android exists as a choice for users but let us not pretend there are no trade offs. It is a bit too conspiratorial to think Apple control is all about some dictatorship fetish. It is a choice Apple makes to improve user experience at the expense of flexibility.

romanoderoma 6y ago
> Rather it is about making sure it is easy for regular users to get Apps in a safe manner without malware and Trojan horses. I don't intend to sound dismissive, but this line of thinking has a name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternalism
- newsclues 6y ago
  Does that not apply to the State and government?
  - criley2 6y ago
    The difference between the State and the Private Company is that citizens vote for the State, and Legislators (the "paternalizers") are directly installed by the voters. The iPhone buyer does not get a say in the development staff or direction at Apple. My government intends to be "Of the people, for the people, by the people". Imagine if Apple every single year had elections at every level of their company! Vote for your local support representatives. Vote for your local b+m store management. Vote for executive staff. Etc etc. But until Apple does that, there is literally no fair comparison with paternalism in state and private industry.

raverbashing 6y ago

If nVidia/ARM manages to put out a chip that competes with Intel (doesn't even have to be as fast as the M1) and have Windows on-board, it's probably over for Intel (Of course, unless they engage in some unfair competition, but I think the price difference will be so big it won't matter)

jmull 6y ago

What is it about Apple that makes people’s brains turn off? Apple silicon doesn’t change anything about Apple’s mac app store. Microsoft would need to release a native version of Windows, not Apple. He has a point with Rosetta 2, that it will very likely disappear (years from now), though that would affect software that isn’t being actively maintained (most of which failed to make the transition to x64 already). And suggesting a switch to AMD instead is just non-sense. I guess writing stuff like this about Apple is cynical way to boost page views.

jb1991 6y ago
It’s a general problem with the overall, wider polarization of modern culture. Whether it’s politics or tech, people really really really love to take sides in our world today, it it seems to have a blinding effect on perspectives and logic for many people on both sides of the argument.
- matsemann 6y ago
  It's good that one has the enlightened centrists to tell everyone that both sides are equally bad, at least.
  - jb1991 6y ago
    I see what you did there!
  - Dirlewanger 6y ago
    It's better than shilling for your favorite tech company for free.
jackpeterfletch 6y ago
Craig Federighi make a statement the other day that made it seem like Windows ARM Natively supporting the M1, without virtualisation, was very much in Microsofts court.

nottorp 6y ago

Apple has been screwed by CPU manufacturers 3 times already, or do you think they changed architectures because they were having great fun doing that? In the past 3 years I've seen more and more people asking not for an Arm Mac, but for an AMD Mac. Because AMD is again cheaper and faster than Intel. But it appears Apple can now afford to build their own CPUs that are better and lower power than either AMD or Intel. Not to mention PowerPC, which is still around in some form at IBM :) It's a no brainer for them. No one can screw them over now except themselves.

matwood 6y ago
> In the past 3 years I've seen more and more people asking not for an Arm Mac, but for an AMD Mac I've seen the opposite. The people asking for an AMD mac were always thinking of it as a stop gap. Ever since the iPhone/iPad A series chips started blowing the doors off of benchmarks, people have been clamoring for a mac with a higher tdp A series chip. Now that the M1 is out, we can see why.
rsynnott 6y ago
> Apple has been screwed by CPU manufacturers 3 times already Arguably 4. Motorola abandoned m68k (at least as a desktop route; variants lived on for a very, very long time as an embedded thing). Then Motorola largely abandoned PPC, leaving IBM as the only desktop-y manufacturer. Then, unsurprisingly, IBM fell behind with it. And now Intel.
- nottorp 6y ago
  Sounds right. I was counting PPC only once.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    I suspect PPC definitely counts twice, at least in Apple's view. They treated G5/PPC970 as a major transition/new hope.

drej 6y ago

There's a huge green quote: "Apple has confirmed that Boot Camp support isn’t coming to Arm-based Macs." And it comes right after the same sentence is uttered in the article... and is followed by "unless". All in all, pretty weird form of journalism.

tannhaeuser 6y ago

Yes Apple is about platform control and monetization, and they're pretty good at it. They want you to buy-in into their ecosystem and stay loyal; even developers of iOS and Mac OS apps have to open Apple dev accounts (and the process of rolling out an app on the App Store is ... byzantine). They keep off copycat and privacy-invading apps that way, and their customers love that aspect of their platform (I even use a cheap iPhone to get away from the mass surveillance devices called Android phones). Apple's Silicon is a great success AFAICT, when Intel has just stagnated for years now. I love Apple innovations like that, and I think Apple Silicon is in principal orthogonal to the lock-in aspect so far, apart from the fact that there won't be alternative O/S on Apple Silicon due to lack of drivers; now of course, Apple could soon extend the ARM ISA in proprietary ways. However, as much as Apple produces shiny consumer laptops (despite their naming, I don't consider MBPs as "professional" devices due to lack of options), I'm probably staying away from Mac OS, because professionally I need to run (mostly) F/OSS apps such as compilers, databases, middlewares, VMs/containers, and backend tool chains. I also believe their notarization thing will kill F/OSS on Mac OS which makes it useless for me. And Apple has to take the piss here, as F/OSS is what Mac OS (Mac OS X) is built on, and what made it even remotely acceptable in 2002/3. If you're a developer of non-Mac OS, non-iOS apps, expect Mac OS to stop being an option even more so than it is already.

efficax 6y ago
> I don't consider MBPs as "professional" devices due to lack of options Counterpoint is the 10s of thousands of "professionals" (like me, senior software engineer at a Company You Know) who use them....
- tannhaeuser 6y ago
  You got me wrong; I didn't mean to insult Apple users. What makes a notebook "pro" is having options for display, ports, memory, mass storage devices, docking, etc., plus the supply and delivery chain that go with it. Also, for eg music production, things like stable interfaces, timings, and apps to base larger investments on. When I bought my Powerbook, it came with a PCMCIA slot (that I used for a third FHD display), exchangeable battery, memory, optical storage, wired networking in addition to WLAN, commitment to support for Java development, POSIX certification. Many of these things may be uneccessary today, but MBP prices haven't changed or have even increased since. The MBP doesn't even have a std keyboard layout without touch bar and ties its design aesthetic to a glossy screen/screen-top. Feels like a rip-off to me even if I personally can afford it. Edit: and there's nothing "Pro" about the lack of perspective for both S/W development and music production on Mac OS

victorbstan 6y ago

Yours dearly, the competition.

blackrock 6y ago

To be honest, do most people even know or care what CPU Apple is using for their Macs? I’m assuming that people buy Macs for the software platform from Apple. I have a few Macs, and I never had any intention to install Linux on it. But admittedly I only used my Macs as a toy. I eventually gave up on it, since it didn’t do what I needed it to do.

karmakaze 6y ago

There are other benefits to the architecture change. A strong motivation is that profit margins can be increased by using more efficient in CPU size/speed, battery size, and amount of RAM to deliver the same performance compared to x86 Macs. Rather than pass these savings to consumers Apple can bank the difference. And the consumer wins with smaller/lighter devices and longer battery life. Expect that macOS will continue by adding background processing limit permissions etc.

valuearb 6y ago
MacOS is not iOS because a Mac is not a phone. Craig Federeghi has spoken about the differences multiple times recently, repeatedly saying they aren’t changing MacOS to be more like iPadOS or iOS. They use the Mac too, and need its separate use case. They got 20 hour battery life just by switching to Apple Silicon, they aren’t going to hobble Mac apps with any significant restrictions to try to eek out a few hours more.

taylodl 6y ago

Surprise, surprise - Apple wants to control the end-to-end computing experience on their Macs the way they do on their iDevices thus allowing them to differentiate themselves in a commodity market. Why wouldn't they do that?

dangus 6y ago

This article has decent points but is definitely just sort of coming from the perspective of being completely unfamiliar with the Mac platform. Worrying about the App Store taking over on the Mac is misguided. The Mac has never forced the App Store on anyone and the Mac App Store doesn’t even seem to be particularly popular. “Emulation” (it’s not emulation) is apparently this big problem, except that early M1 Macs show faster Rosetta performance with still-better battery life in many cases. And yes, Rosetta won’t be around forever, but we have been here before. It wasn’t a problem going from PowerPC to Intel either. If the authors at Android authority ever used a Mac they’d already know this. Anecdotal, but I can’t think of a single pre-Intel program that was lost to the Intel transition that I was using at the time. All the developers checked the box and recompiled, and the dinosaurs like Adobe eventually trudged along. For those of us who actually used Macs back in the PowerPC days and earlier, there was no such thing as Hackintosh or Boot Camp. The fact that those are going away is essentially inconsequential, especially now that the Mac platform is vastly more popular than it was in 2006. Why would I want to run Windows on my Mac? It’s been a shitty experience anyway, because even in Intel-land the hardware has been heavily macOS optimized including things like fan and power control. The trackpad driver on Windows was always worse, for example. And again why would you want to run Windows when you spent all this money to not run Windows? It doesn’t make sense especially since so many programs (e.g. 1Password) have their best versions on Mac.

valuearb 6y ago
When they repeatedly used the word “emulation” instead of translation in the article I knew they hadn’t done their homework.

TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago

If you look at Intel's mediocre-at-best improvements over the last few years, it makes perfect sense that Apple want to move to their own silicon. They also could have moved to AMD, but they probably started thinking about this move before Ryzen happened, and given Apple already make great chips for iPads, it's no great stretch to put them in MacBooks too. Sure, it gives them more control, but they already had the ability to exercise platform control on x86. They could have disabled Boot Camp etc on the T2 chip Macs if they wanted to, it's not about the CPU.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

barnacled 6y ago

This is obviously about control. Apple's MO with every _smaller_ supplier has been: 1. Set up office down the road 2. Poach top engineers 3. Come up with some excuse to cancel use of supplier and integrate in house. The media and fanboys are remarkably complicit, coming up with excuses for apple's behaviour and giving very favourable coverage. In this case, intel are too big for this trick to work and apple already have loads of ARM talent so it makes perfect sense to transition. I wouldn't rule out apple trying on the whole 'we don't need a license' thing any more with Nvidia but it's probably unlikely given their size. I worked at imagination technologies who was bankrupted by Apple doing this technique and whose GPUs are still used by them so I saw this and people's remarkable lack of attention on the incredibly consistent pattern of control first hand. While all of this is obviously true, I actually think it's great that intel and AMD are receiving some serious ISA competition and it will net benefit non-apple consumers too long run. Congrats to apple for pretty impressive technical work but I do wish more would see apple for the ruthless control freaks they are. At the end of the day I think rather mundanely it's really more about money than anything else.

klelatti 6y ago
That's very sad to hear. Could you explain how close Apple's GPU is to Imagination's and why Imagination wasn't able to protect their IP?
- barnacled 6y ago
  Their GPU _is_ imagination's GPU in my opinion. Heavily customised (they had a full ARM-like license to do so) but the fundamentals are all the same. Apple claimed that they'd completely reinvented a GPU that didn't rely on any hardware IP owned by IMG whatsoever, provided no evidence of that and recent phones have bug-for-bug compatibility (as far as I heard form a friend who ran some tests). I can't tell you 100% that it's not an entirely new GPU that was somehow completely reinvented from scratch but I can tell you I think that's highly unlikely. Imagination couldn't protect their IP because they couldn't afford the lengthily court case that would ensue. Note by the way Apple have quietly started licensing IP from IMG again, long after striking ~75% off the stock price and resulting in them being acquired by a private equity firm...

zepto 6y ago

Google Play Services is all about platform control.

pdimitar 6y ago

<rant> Even if everything the article claims is true, the open-source / libre software and hardware communities had at least 20 years to come up with a better model. So far, they have failed. Is it such a crime for a corporation to try and prioritize their users' identities safety and produce a variant that tries to compromise between monopoly and convenience? I fully recognize the possible dystopian futures here, mind you, and I am as distrustful towards corporations as most techies. But after being a commercial programmer for 19 years, I can't seem to find other agents who did better than Microsoft and Apple in this area. We all know the memes about them and I'll concede that 90% of them are true. But could somebody -- or something -- else do better? So far the answer seems to be "no", and that's the reality we are living in. What does it say about us if we are denying it? And don't get me wrong. Give me the same (or little less) performance on a 100% libre hardware and software and I'll switch tomorrow, even if a mere 13" laptop with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD costs $5000. I will, I kid you not. But there doesn't seem to be any choices that come close to Apple's laptop ergonomics, quality of screens, and (mostly) integrated and polished experience. And don't get me started with "if you do this bucket list of 37 tasks then Brand+Model laptop is very close to a MacBook". Truth is, there is nothing like a MacBook. I wish there was, but especially with release of the M1, there really isn't. </rant>

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

floatingatoll 6y ago

This article leaves two billion-dollar market opportunities on the table: Online testing and multiplayer gaming^. Apple’s recent announcement of a web authentication API includes if your system is booted in fully secure mode^ an attestation that the OS is in secure mode, crypto-signed by the secure kernel whose own signature is by Apple. This provides something that no desktop/laptop today can provide: certainty that the user isn’t tampering with the operating system to try and cheat. The entire stack, from hardware to UI, is signed and verified to have integrity, and modifying any component of the stack will result in the “secure” attestation being withheld. So instead of having to deal with insane anti-cheating spyware and kernel extensions and system monitoring, testing software and multiplayer game modes can simply require you to be in secure mode to login. This is available today, immediately, if anyone were to implement it. Of course no one has yet, because no one is thinking of the iOS and macOS platforms as tamperproof computing for the Internet world, and so Apple’s quiet announcement of this in a technical API footnote has gone unnoticed. Apple will probably always let you shut off anti-tampering on macOS with reboots and terminal commands, and then you can tamper to your heart’s content, but they will never allow your system to attest that it’s in tamperproof mode to third-parties, and that crypto signature can’t be spoofed since the Secure Enclave is involved in generating it. This ‘tamperproof’ market opportunity is worth billions of dollars, and Apple made it there first. I can’t wait to see what happens when all the industries that suffer undetectable tampering today realize this. ^ Multiplayer FPS developers have had little incentive to develop for Metal prior to now, but Apple Silicon has the capability to easily unseat 5950X/GTX3090 as peak PC gaming performance for a tiny fraction of the cost and heat. Someday the Apple TV will get an Apple Silicon chip that can run FPS games using Metal at 4K/60/HDR, which should noticeably alter that cost-benefit equation. ^ I believe this is signed-sealed OS partition, SIP enabled, kernel extensions disabled; though I may have missed one or two bits.

nayuki 6y ago
What about this scenario?: A gamer wishes to cheat. They run the game on an unmodified, tamperproof, attested computer as per your description. Then they attach the HDMI output to a video capture card on a secondary computer, run some artificial intelligence software, and send back automated commands using a USB mouse and keyboard. Given that this kind of attack/circumvention is possible, are you sure that an attestable computer is a worthwhile goal?

mlindner 6y ago

A website that's got "android" in the site name is saying false things about Apple, what a surprise. There's nothing in Apple M1 that is about platform control any more than x86 in Mac was about platform control. They could have locked down the x86 Mac and prevented you from installing other OSes trivially, but they didn't. In fact they already allow you to install other OSes on Mac, if those OSes had support for the M1.