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M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

• perryizgr8 6y ago
  I don't understand the comparison to the iphone and android situation. As far as I can see, android phones are highly competitive with iphone on everything. The longest battery isn't on an iphone, the best camera isn't on an iphone, the latest screen tech isn't on an iphone, etc. etc. Coming to the M1 laptops, they beat comparable Windows laptops in every single metric. It's literally just a matter of looking at the numbers and realizing how M1 has every Intel chip beat (in this category). In fact this makes me wonder: if Apple chips are so far ahead, why are iphones not the fastest, best smartphones by a wide margin?
  • orestis 6y ago
    Camera and screen have nothing to do with CPUs, right? And battery is also compared to size, so difficult to compare. AFAIK, iPhones do have the fastest benchmarks (and the smoothest experience) across all phones.
  • genghizkhan 6y ago
    I don't know about the other metrics you talk about, but iPhones _are_ the fastest. In general, I find iPhones better than Android for general use - but that's a subjective opinion. Apple provides the best overall package, even as the only thing they beat everyone else on is speed (to the best of my knowledge).
    • bschne 6y ago
      I think this is often about the experience of using it as opposed to raw compute performance benchmarks (even if M1 does excel in those). In many cases, be it because of integration, more care about design, or whatever, the apple experience feels more... snappy? Smooth? It's hard to put a finger on what exactly leads to this, and it may also be about the combination of many small details.
      • user-the-name 6y ago
        Apple phones are faster both in subjective experience and objective benchmarks.
        • perryizgr8 6y ago
          In my experience that's not true. A Note20 ultra feels much faster and smoother to use than Iphone 12 pro.
          • deleted 6y ago
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        • jeswin 6y ago
          Snapdragon 8x5 CPUs have been fast enough for a while now, and you wouldn't notice a difference as long as you run a decent flavor of Android. However you can notice a faster screen refresh rate, and high end Android wins there. I wouldn't trade 90 (or 120hz) screens for a faster CPU.
          • user-the-name 6y ago
            But crucially, nowhere near as fast as iPhones: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/iphone-12-benchmarks-this-destroys-every-android-phone https://www.tomsguide.com/news/iphone-12-benchmarks-this-des...
        • haunter 6y ago
          .
          • deleted 6y ago
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      • tracker1 6y ago
        I think it's a bit of both... I don't doubt for a second that Apple creating both the CPU and Software together are why the X86 emulation is as good as it is. I'm actually thinking about getting one of these as I've been without a personal laptop for a while now. That said, I'm waiting for Docker support to get flushed out a bit more as I wouldn't mind getting work done. I am interested on how the really high performance ram effects my workflows, as I've often gone over 16gb as a sticking point, got my work laptop upgraded to 32gb earlier in the year and my personal desktop is at 64gb. I'm not sure it will replace my r9-3950X desktop for getting things done, but it's absolutely compelling for its' space. I swore off macs for a while now, and this might pull me back in.
    • perryizgr8 6y ago
      I have used the latest iphone and the latest galaxy note and honestly the note feels faster. Maybe because of the screen refresh? But then the same question: what use is a faster chip when the end result feels slower?
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • mojzu 6y ago
      Plus they seem to last a lot longer than your average android smartphone in terms of longer term performance/updates. I'm holding out a (faint) hope that they'll make at least one generation with USBC before going port-less as that's the main thing stopping me from switching
    • damnencryption 6y ago
      I don't know that's true anymore. Overall experience feels better on android. Few things that make difference for me. 1. Notifications are leagues ahead of anything on iOS. 2. Little accessibility features like sound search, automatic caption, text selection from any screen/pictures, better integration with google assistant adds up. 3. Customizability. Yes, even now iPhone is super limited in the layout you can have on home screen or the new app launcher. You can't group things or put them wherever you want on the screen. This is ridiculous. 4. Android phones have higher refresh rates. Almost any flagship in 2020. The punch hole camera feels better than the notch. Face ID = problematic in the pandemic with masks. Though, I like it generally but apple could have given touch ID on the same device as well. 5. For tinkerers, it has better support again. Youtube vanced, tachiyomi, advanced adblockers, "real" firefox with extensions, etc are only available on android. The best part is you can get the pixel 4a for $300 with some carriers. 3 years of updates which is what typical upgrade cycle looks like for iPhone users even if they get "updates" for longer. Source: Own both.
      • genghizkhan 6y ago
        You're not wrong, but things like a unified clipboard, continuity, the peace of mind which comes from knowing that there's a very small chance of malware coming in from the App Store, and (again my opinion) more polished indie apps like Ulysses, Things, Fantastical etc. keep the iPhone ahead in my book. I think notifications are perfectly fine on iPhones. I've not used android for 4 years now, but if their notifications are the same as they were in 2016 (or just marginally different) then I don't miss much. I confess point 2 sounds very appealing. I do use custom DNS for adblocking, so I don't think I miss it on the iPhone, and tbh I've fallen in the rabbit hole of tinkering with my phone enough that I feel more productive without a phone I can tinker with.
        • damnencryption 6y ago
          No, notifications have changed a lot in the recent years. And you can get unified clipboard by installing app for your OS (windows or linux) through playstore. You should try a new pixel device to see the improvement. Some apps are better on iOS but it's not a big difference because some apps are better on android as well. People care about different apps in the end.
  • jb1991 6y ago
    There is quite a significant difference between iOS and android devices, there is no android device that competes with the performance of iOS right now. Heck, most laptops don’t even compete with iPads these days.
  • grobibi 6y ago
    https://www.tomsguide.com/news/iphone-12-benchmarks-this-destroys-every-android-phone https://www.tomsguide.com/news/iphone-12-benchmarks-this-des...
  • swiley 6y ago
    An Android could have amazing hardware but everyone knows the OS isn't going to get updated and you're going to have to pay to replace it in 2-3 years.
  • chokeartist 6y ago
    Lol what are you smoking? iPhone as a whole has trounced Android repeatedly over the last few years. There really is no comparison aside from Android having some [random esoteric] hardware that iPhone doesn't for a particular year. None of this is focused on battery life, performance, and efficiency. It is window dressing on top of an inferior architecture. Also I fundamentally will not buy a piece of hardware that will cease receiving security updates within 36 months of purchase. That's insane, and frankly a major fuck you to anyone considering buying your product.
    • perryizgr8 6y ago
      What can you do on iphone that can't be done better on an android phone?
      • deleted 6y ago
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      • chokeartist 6y ago
        You have reduced the scope of the argument. It is a question of efficiency, performance, and battery life. iPhone beats Android in all over those categories. Of course iPhone and Android can do all the same tasks. One just does it a lot better efficiency and power wise.
        • perryizgr8 6y ago
          How does iPhone beat Note20 in battery life if the Note lasts longer? How does the chip performance matter if the Note feels faster in opening apps and scrolling due to the refresh rate? How does efficiency matter if the Note holds more apps in memory for faster task switching? How does a faster chip matter if the image processing is way superior in the Note so your photos almost always come out better? The difference is subjective. I would have expected it to be objective like in the M1 laptop. The new air and pro absolutely obliterate other comparable systems in every metric.
      • dhosek 6y ago
  • akmarinov 6y ago
    The whole isn't the fastest, the biggest comes up with big caveats. For example the iPhones don't have the longest battery, but the phone that has the longest battery has two times the amount of battery, while having a much higher consumption than iPhones. If Apple decides to stick a 5000+ mah battery in an iPhone - Android phones would have no way of catching up to its battery life. Another big thing being the latest screen tech - Apple can't afford to do an OLED screen on the iPad, since Samsung and LG can't possibly manufacture enough OLED screens to meet demand. Where Samsung is perfectly fine doing it, when they won't sell enough tablets to matter. In the end it's not that the iPhone is clearly inferior to Androids, it's mostly that Apple has some numbers in mind that they consider optimal and going beyond those won't increase their sales (certain amount of battery, certain screens, etc).
  • bni 6y ago
    Flagship iPhone absolutely crushes any flagship Android phone in benchmarks its not even close. Has been like this for many years. It is also very common that people that like Android are not aware of this for some reason.
    • tracker1 6y ago
      Can't speak for anyone else, but for me, the biggest sticking point is being able to side/load software and other app stores... not that I pull in much, but I don't want my device mfg tell me what I'm allowed to run on what I buy. Sometimes this means the software is more clunky, less polished and isn't as fast... but I'm still using my now 3yo Pixel 2XL, which is still mostly acceptable (I really need a new battery).
    • chungus_khan 6y ago
      It also basically doesn't matter for 99% of people. Most people just need their phone to be fast enough to run common applications responsively. Benchmarks are irrelevant to the average user, and are mostly a dick measuring contest. People tend to prefer mobile platforms on the basis of features that they offer, practical hardware traits like battery and connectivity, and familiarity.
      • spaceisballer 6y ago
        Completely agree with your sentiment. But a lot of people are used to thinking about performance like it much matters anymore. You’d be hard pressed to find much of a difference between yearly updates of the same model phone. But I think a lot in this community will look at those numbers, I mean that’s how most people grew up when thinking about PCs and seems to be how Android devices have also marketed to people. I think now the majority of people just upgrade to the latest phone of the OS they prefer. I mean personally after deleting social media and a lot of other items off my phone I wonder what I really use my phone for other than texting, taking pictures and checking email and my calendar. I could easily get by with some basic phone (honestly contemplated getting some e ink phone with basic capabilities). But there are plenty of people out there that use their phone constantly and for a host of things. All that to say I feel like phones won’t have another large advance for some time, small iterative changes. That jump from the original iPhone to the iPhone 3G seemed gigantic. Sure there have been form factor changes but even on the android front there have been changes but not things that are revolutionary to the majority of users.
  • kelchm 6y ago
    > In fact this makes me wonder: if Apple chips are so far ahead, why are iphones not the fastest, best smartphones by a wide margin? Apple has pretty consistently had the fastest SoCs for phones and tablets for a few years now, particularly in single core performance. Here are some benchmark results of the iPhone 12 versus some of it’s Android competitors [1]. Notice that last year’s iPhone 11 Pro Max still outperforms Android phones from this year as well. I think part of the reason this isn’t a major differentiator (for phones at least) is that phones have been “fast enough” for several years now. Given the very aggressive throttling that is utilized on these types of devices, I think the primary difference ends up being battery life / efficiency rather than raw performance. It’s also worth noting that while the performance / efficiency gap between x86 and ARM seems to be pretty sizable at this point, the gap between various current generation ARM CPUs isn’t nearly as drastic. 1: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/iphone-12-benchmarks-this-destroys-every-android-phone https://www.tomsguide.com/news/iphone-12-benchmarks-this-des...
    • perryizgr8 6y ago
      Yeah that's what puzzles me, why has chip superiority not translated into an objectively better phone? For laptops the M1 laptops are best in class in everything, battery and performance.
      • wrsh07 6y ago
        I honestly don't know why you're being downvoted. I think for some people (eg my oldest brother), the iPhone is "the best." He's not a tech person - and that might be perspective that you're missing. I tend to agree that there are great androids that seem competitive with iPhones (disclosure: I haven't really owned a flagship phone for a while; this is one of android's issues! The flagships aren't that much better than the $300-400 phones) But I know a lot of people who think the iPhone is the premium phone experience, and if they're going to spend over a thousand dollars on a phone, it'll be an iPhone. My point here is that for many people, the iPhone is objectively better.
        • Yetanfou 6y ago
  • II2II 6y ago
    > I don't understand the comparison to the iphone and android situation. Because articles like that are pure nonsense. Take the initial paragraphs. We already knew that faster processors don't necessarily run hotter. People are simply conflating higher clock speeds with higher performance, while ignoring all of the ways CPU design optimizes computation. Likewise, we already knew that "emulation" doesn't imply that performance will be unbearably slow. There has been enormous amounts of research and development into the problem over the decades, to the point where much of our software is optimized at runtime. None of this is meant to diminish what Apple has accomplished. They were clearly paying attention to details that have been largely ignored or at the very least rarely highlighted by their competitors. Now that it has happened, we will likely see more from the PC industry. Apple will likely have a hard time keeping up unless they have more up their sleeve.
    • alwillis 6y ago
      Likewise, we already knew that "emulation" doesn't imply that performance will be unbearably slow. Apple’s Rosetta 2 doesn't do emulation; it translates the x86 code into ARM code on the fly and runs it, which is why most apps run faster on M1 Macs than they do on Intel Macs--and comparably priced PCs. Now that it has happened, we will likely see more from the PC industry. Probably not. If Intel and AMD were capable of this kind of performance per watt, they’d already be doing it. Years ago. Because the latest x86 chip has to be backwards compatible with 40 years of legacy code, there are certain limitations Intel and AMD just have to live with. Apple will likely have a hard time keeping up unless they have more up their sleeve. It's ironic that it's Apple that will have a hard time keeping up when they've already disrupted Intel and AMD. Remember, it's not just a processor; it's a system on a chip that contains an 8-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine for machine learning tasks and other components. This has obviously been in the works for several years; Apple wouldn't have gone down this path if they didn't believe it would give them a sustainable competitive advantage for years to come. Even with its ridiculous performance, the M1 is the entry-level consumer version of the M series suitable for (in Apple's lineup) entry-level consumer hardware. The M1-based MacBook Air doesn't have a fan and it's faster and more capable now than many (most?) PCs that cost more and run hotter. One thing we know: the M2 will be faster and more capable than the M1 and won't be limited to 16 Gb. We'll probably see M2-based Macs by the summer of 2021.
  • mrmonkeyman 6y ago
    > The longest battery isn't on an iphone, the best camera isn't on an iphone, the latest screen tech isn't on an iphone, etc. etc. It is not on any single Android model either. Fragmentation is a thing.
• Jemm 6y ago
  Apple is a company that really cares about their product but not their customers. Very frustrating.
• s1k3s 6y ago
  > M1 Macs embarrass all other PCs — all Intel-based Macs, including automobile-priced Mac Pros, and every single machine running Windows or Linux. Nah, it doesn't. Source: I've got all of them
  • akmarinov 6y ago
    Look up truthiness
  • YetAnotherNick 6y ago
    Frankly I don't care that much about entry level macbook's absolute performance. But the utility of 20 hours 4k video play(3rd party tests even exceeded this number) can't be understated.
    • ladyanita22 6y ago
      You sure watch a ton of movies.
      • wrsh07 6y ago
        While it's not super relevant (for countries with high covid cases) now, not needing to worry about charging in the car, at the airport, on a plane -- those are real wins. Traveling for the weekend and forgetting your charger and... being fine. Have you ever had your laptop on a train or bus and then found out the outlets aren't powered? It's stressful!
• ghaff 6y ago
  I'm not sure I see most of the disagreement here. As Gruber says, Moorhead is mostly complaining about software incompatibilities. But that's part of the total package--especially with Apple which is about selling the total experience. Personally I'll probably switch sooner rather than later especially given that I don't run a lot of native apps on my laptop. But it seems pretty reasonable to critique a new architecture laptop for (unsurprisingly) having some growing pains related to, especially, third-party software. Because people use a laptop to run software, not in isolation.
  • faitswulff 6y ago
    I had a suspicion upon reading Moorhead's review that he was trying to use familiar enterprise Windows software on the M1 instead of trying to use native apps: > So far, I have experienced application crashes in Microsoft Edge, Outlook, WinZip and Logitech Camera Control. I got installation errors with Adobe Reader XI, Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, a Samsung SSD backup application, and Xbox 360 Controller for Mac. What Mac user tries to use Edge and WinZip? A Samsung backup application? Xbox 360? Such a bizarre collection of software that snubs macOS's native browser.
    • ceejayoz 6y ago
      To be fair, I'm getting absolutely enormous memory leaks in stock Safari on my new M1 MBP after a few hours of use. It doesn't seem to be reclaiming memory when tabs are closed. https://imgur.com/a/HqxAspK https://imgur.com/a/HqxAspK There are growing pains, and they're not all in third-party apps. (It is hilarious to me, though, that WinZip a) exists for Mac and b) is used by anyone on a Mac.)
      • tracker1 6y ago
        Not running mac currently, but one of the things I hated was how the UX was for thinks like keka etc, vs 7-zip/winzip interfaces... they just didn't match how I was used to using the things, also having to extract an entire archive to pluck out the one or two files I was looking for is often a pain.
• Macha 6y ago
  > because iPhones and iPads run fast and cool For certain values of "cool", for certain tasks.
  • tracker1 6y ago
    The laptops have a lot more surface to dissipate heat than a phone, and less likely to operate wrapped in an insulating case. Also, that some models have active cooling can make a difference here.
  • madeofpalk 6y ago
    Well, where "hot" means "needs a fan". iPhones and iPads sure can run quite warm when charging and doing intensive things on them.
    • falcolas 6y ago
      A vast understatement, IMO. I've gotten my iPad pro hot enough you couldn't hold it in your hands (well, I couldn't) while running graphics intensive hardware.
• croes 6y ago
  Fast and hot and slow and cool is still valid. The M1 is as fast or faster as other CPU but could surely run faster. But then it's getting hot.
  • ben-schaaf 6y ago
    Exactly: Apple's own slide in the article demonstrates this.
  • tootie 6y ago
    IDK how it actually went down at Apple HQ but I can imagine. They are so, so keen on sleek, quiet machines that it tops all other concerns. When the hardware engineers said "more performance is going to require a fan or two" the leadership said "nah, let's design and fab our own CPUs".
    • kzrdude 6y ago
      Well, and who's laughing now? :)
    • spideymans 6y ago
      More likely that they realized their iPad chips were faster than their Intel notebooks, and really had no choice but to move to their own chips on the Mac.
    • mrtksn 6y ago
      I applause all the fellow misophoniacs in cupertino! No constant or repeating sound is too silent to be ignored.
    • machello13 6y ago
      I have to imagine this is a joke or do you actually think the only advantage of the M1 is that you need 1 less fan in your machine?
      • tootie 6y ago
        Joke with a kernel of truth. I'm not saying they didn't do a great job with the M1. I'm just saying it's an unusual direction for their business to take unless it was initiated to serve their core strategy of delivering visually appealing devices with nice software.
• tambourine_man 6y ago
  I submitted the same exact link 8 hours earlier. This HN behavior is very frustrating. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25285489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25285489
  • ceejayoz 6y ago
    Timing of HN submissions seems to matter a lot. And a little luck.
    • IndySun 6y ago
      Is there a timing infographic? Or luck chart, for that matter?
      • ceejayoz 6y ago
        I feel like you might be unclear on the definition of luck.
      • simias 6y ago
        I think the trick is to post when west-coast America wakes up, more or less.
        • soneil 6y ago
          That's my impression too. The previous post currently says 11 hours ago, so by my count that's midnight NYC, 5am London. I know Australia exists, but overall that just gives it most the night to slide down the page before the majority wake up.
    • tambourine_man 6y ago
      There should at least be a 24h window separating submissions of the same link.
      • xenocratus 6y ago
• hpaavola 6y ago
  I don't care about any Apple products, but I really do hope that M1 will force all other manufacturers ship good ARM laptops. Or force Intel and AMD to pull a rabit out of their hat to match the performance/watt of ARM chips. I want long battery life, no fans and a lot of memory. Running Linux. If M1 is the catalyst to make it happen, then so be it.
  • vbezhenar 6y ago
    I agree. Competition is awesome for consumers. I don't care much about macs either (although I'm really interested about Mac Pro Mini rumours), but I know that Intel and AMD will invest lots of money into research right now as not to become obsolete.
  • aequitas 6y ago
    Don't get your hopes up. My prediction is, that yes, there will be a slew of new ARM laptop's. And even though the technically run ARM chips, it will only be a marketing selling point for new. They might even cram Snapdragon's or other mobile device CPU's in there, just to be able to put a ARM sticker on a plastic frame with an folding LCD panel and keyboard. They will sell it as beter than Intel, because that is what people who can afford an Apple will tell them is so great about their new laptop. In the long run, due to this, the Windows ecosystem might adapt to embrace ARM as a whole and then we will start to see competetive ARM PC's. But it will take a while.
    • ghaff 6y ago
      Ultimately, it's all about Windows. I know it's hard for many of us who basically hardly see anything other than Mac or Linux laptops to really grok, but something like 90% of the laptops out there run Windows (if you exclude Chromebooks which AFAIK are mostly used in education).
      • aequitas 6y ago
        Indeed, this is why Apple is able to take this leap and the PC platform hasn't so far. They don't have to wait for as many partners to get along for the ride.
• mark_l_watson 6y ago
  I have a four year old MacBook that I am still happy with, but when LispWorks supports M1, I think that I will get the small M1 MacBook Pro - I can live with an extra pound of weight. I use my iPad Pro for just about everything except programming, so laptop selection is not as important to me as it used to be.
• barkingcat 6y ago
  I think the missing part of the discussion is that the M1 can run fast and hot... It hasn't transcended physics - it's just not being pushed hard enough. Give it a 800% overclock and dunk it in liquid nitrogen and then we'll talk.
  • gwbas1c 6y ago
    Makes me wonder what's going to happen when we have ARM-based desktop computers and gaming rigs.
    • KSteffensen 6y ago
      Maybe we'll finally be able to run Crysis at max settings
  • AstralStorm 6y ago
    It will conk out at rather low clocks as the design is not using as many high frequency tricks such as local clocks, instead going for high efficiency.
  • hinkley 6y ago
    No device this is going in has a large TDP budget. A unit tuned for a desktop heat sink will put in some interesting numbers. I'm curious to see when they put out a Mac Pro with an M-series chip. Or if server is ever coming back.
  • kmano8 6y ago
    The distinction here is between "fast" and "fast_er_". It isn't that it can't run faster and hot (because of course it could) .. but that it's able to achieve fast performance relative to the competition without having to get "hot".
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • fctorial 6y ago
• CoolGuySteve 6y ago
  I feel like the M1 hype is getting out of hand. Apple bought up TSMC’s entire 5nm manufacturing capacity so of course it’s going to pack more transistors and use less power than AMD’s 7nm TSMC process or Intel’s 10nm process (which is effectively similar to 7nm TSMC). The M1 is a great and well-refined design but when compared to AMD’s similarly priced 4750U in multi core benchmarks, the performance per watt is better but not by much more than the improved process would suggest. And that’s without the IPC improvements that mobile Zen 3 will bring. And when compared to last gen 14nm Intel MacBooks, a 5nm TSMC part is going to blow the doors off just by virtue of feature size alone.
  • marricks 6y ago
    It very well may be over hyped but with the breakdown of Dennard scaling[1] the gains we've seen in CPUs has been pretty minor generation to generation. I think that could also be the reason it is getting so hyped, it is a tangible improvement over other CPUs. 50% more battery life, better performance in some case, what's the last CPU generation we saw such gains? Probably pretty far back to when Dennard sclaing was still a thing? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennard_scaling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennard_scaling
    • cpgxiii 6y ago
      We have seen massive improvements in power envelope in CPUs in fairly recent generations, to say nothing of the power improvements seen in some generation->generation GPU improvements. For example, with an improvement to the 14nm process and not a die shrink, Kaby Lake->Whiskey Lake saw low power processors double in core counts (2C/4T->4C/8T) in essentially the same power/thermal envelope. Basically every thin laptop/ultrabook family doubled its core count.
      • ianhowson 6y ago
        Well... yeah... but they also dropped clock rate from 2.5GHz-ish to 1.7GHz-ish. That could equally well explain the increase in core count at the same TDP. You're gaining about 15% IPC improvement from Kaby->Whiskey [1]. It's an overall improvement, but not as dramatic as "2x cores for 2x perf at the same power" [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/14514/examining-intels-ice-lake-microarchitecture-and-sunny-cove/10 https://www.anandtech.com/show/14514/examining-intels-ice-la...
• superzamp 6y ago
  > It was a fundamental trade-off inherent to PC computing, and now we don’t have to make it I wonder how many of the currently accepted trade-offs are actually false. At low levels it's kind of easy to prove, like you can store either more or bigger packages in a truck but not both. But the higher you go, the farther from physics, the more difficult it becomes to know if you're making decisions on what is essentially a flaky trade-off.
• feelix 6y ago
  It turns out that the benchmarks for M1 vs latest generation Intel & AMD CPU's are indeed overblown, and it is an incremental improvement more than a great leap forward. The source of the confusion has been the benchmarking software. To saturate one core on an Intel processor you need to run two threads, because that's the way they are designed. So the single thread benchmarks that have been used so far have been using 50% of the capacity of an Intel CPU core and comparing it with 100% of the capacity of an M1 CPU core. This article breaks it down fully: https://wccftech.com/why-apple-m1-single-core-comparisons-are-fundamentally-flawed-with-benchmarks/ https://wccftech.com/why-apple-m1-single-core-comparisons-ar...
  • gjsman-1000 6y ago
    Have you read the comments on that article? That article is not nearly of a smoking gun as the possibly clickbait title. More discussion: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1276532-exclusive-why-apple-m1-single-core-comparisons-are-fundamentally-flawed-with-benchmarks/ https://linustechtips.com/topic/1276532-exclusive-why-apple-...
    • feelix 6y ago
      I didn't until you linked to it, but having read it it still does appear that comparing single thread to single thread is not very accurate. Neither would core to core considering single thread does hold some weight compared to real world workloads. I guess at the very least CPU benchmarking software should have a "thread to thread" benchmarker alongside a "core to core" benchmarker, or something along those lines. That would be in the spirit of having benchmarks indicate real world usage
  • Jonnax 6y ago
    That article makes no sense whatsoever. And whoever wrote it doesn't not understand what they're talking about. SMT is designed to boost performance in multitreaded workloads. It can be thought as multitasking for a CPU core. Using two threads for one benchmark and use one thread for another, it is not comparing single core performance. Because why wouldn't that CPU schedule the load on other cores?
• simias 6y ago
  I've never owned a Mac and don't intend to own one but I'm very happy with this M1 move, mainly for the reasons highlighted in the introduction to the article: >M1 Macs embarrass all other PCs — all Intel-based Macs, including automobile-priced Mac Pros, and every single machine running Windows or Linux. Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants. I think it's a bit unfair to lump Linux in there since it's been running on ARM and other embedded, low-power devices basically forever, but it is true that few of us run our Linux desktop on an ARM board. But I think the overarching point is true: now desktop and laptop makers can't just pretend that having a hot and/or slow, clunky, noisy x86-based architecture is just a fact of life. I hope and expect that it'll help create a new generation of ARM-based laptops and maybe even desktops that will run cool and smooth. I want to believe.
  • nix23 6y ago
    >Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants. Not sure what shitty machine hes talking about, but my threadripper's are not impressed with some 4 core M1.
    • trinix912 6y ago
      This is not a completely fair comparison, your threadrippers surely use more energy and produce more heat than the M1 chip.
      • hajile 6y ago
        Add 50 more PCIe lanes, double the bus width, 270mb of cache, 60 cores and a communication protocol then get back to me. Anandtech ran the numbers a couple years ago and an EPYC processor spent around 60% of its budget on Infinity Fabric (up to 90% of used power with only a couple cores being used). An M2 based chip might get more done, but it won't use much less power. In truth, I'd guess there's a good chance it bottlenecks on the IO and performance doesn't increase as expected (without widening IO further with all the extra power costs).
      • 6y ago
• spamizbad 6y ago
  I wish Gruber would just let modest criticisms like this stuff fly rather than pen an overwrought argument like this. I think it’s perfectly legitimate to raise concerns around Apple software because it’s one area where Apple has faced sustained criticism from its users and has done very little to remedy the situation. So if the software that runs on top of the M1 is shakey, it’s entirely realistic to expect these “warts” to be with the platform for a while.
  • dhagz 6y ago
    Eh, I get his coming down on criticisms this time. It doesn't make sense to criticize the hardware for software issues. I'm not going copy a binary compiled for x86 over to a RPi and complain about ARM chips being inadequate. If there are software issues, address them as such.
    • spamizbad 6y ago
      But when you purchase an Apple product you're not buying one or the other: You're buying the complete package. They are one.
      • danaris 6y ago
        Software can—and will—be updated. If the problem is with the M1, it's going to be a problem for the life of the laptop.
      • ravi-delia 6y ago
        I think a lot of his frustration seems to come from people using Apple software to write off ARM hardware overall. In the M1 specifically the software may hold it back, but using that to justify claims of x86 systems being fundamentally superior.
• username3 6y ago
  There are no honest 8GB reviews. Gruber is selling 8GB Macs based on 16GB review units. This is the iPad 1 with 256MB all over again.
  • whywhywhywhy 6y ago
    The justification that 16GB is "enough" from the Apple blogger clique like Gruber is ridiculous. Even if it is "enough" it's still what my MacBook Pro I bought 6 years ago shipped with for several hundred dollars less than this one. Why are we giving Apple a pass on RAM being stuck at 8GB and SSD being stuck at 128GB (only very recently bumping to 256) for almost a decade. Not to mention some of us get stuck on 8GB 128GB machines because our workplaces only buy the base "Pro" machines, refusing the drop the extra few hundred to make it what Gruber considers the base level. SSDs are no longer expensive, go on Amazon and see how much 1TB M2s cost these days.
    • saagarjha 6y ago
      It’s enough for many of the people who actually buy Macs.
    • machello13 6y ago
      If you need more than 16GB just... buy one of the other MacBook Pros? I really don't see what the problem is.
      • wmf 6y ago
        Some people wish they could get the performance of M1 and 32GB RAM and four Thunderbolt ports. They will get it eventually but it's a shame it's not available yet.
    • jb1991 6y ago
      For the vast majority of users (who are not developers or doing production video work, etc), 16 GB is plenty. That's why.
      • 6y ago
• StillBored 6y ago
  I want a "hot" M1, one that runs at 5Ghz and burns 120W (or whatever) at load because it will be even faster. That is how this works, the reason your seeing "fast and cool" is because the target is 15W. If that becomes 25W then there is budget for more cores, or faster clocks (or whatever) and the the result is a faster machine. Which is why a lot of people are holding out for the M2 (again or whatever) the next version they put in the bigger machines because it should be even more impressive if apple can scale it.
  • oezi 6y ago
    I guess that is what is coming: M2 will be 40% faster, still be 10W but come in 1x for Air and 2x configuration for MBP 16 and desktop Macs. I think this is just the beginning of a growing wave lapping the x86 space.
• wayneftw 6y ago
  > M1 Macs embarrass all other PCs... Sure, if you can bear living in a prison complex that has shitty window management and a petty tyrant of a warden.
  • arminiusreturns 6y ago
    I am willing to bet if mods did some data munging they would find sockpuppetry of a hail corporate type at work, because if hn is really this brainwashed about macs it makes me sad.
    • ascagnel_ 6y ago
      Apple has always operated with a more closed-off ecosystem that sacrifices openness for tighter control on the user experience, and that's always been at odds with the "I want access to everything so I can tinker" mindset on HN. I expect any HN discussion about Apple to be a mess, because the average HN commenter/reader wants something very different than what Apple sells.
      • wayneftw 6y ago
        I think something like 80% of Silicon Valley tech workers are using Macs and tons of them hang out on HN. I have always seen the HN crowd as being mostly pro-Apple. Maybe I'm wrong though - it might depend on the thread. Whenever I put out an anti-Apple sentiment on a pro-Apple article thread I usually get massive amounts of disagreement. My own dislike for Apple goes way beyond their protectionist policies. Maybe if I didn't hate the Mac UI with that hideous global menu bar and horrid window management, I could be more forgiving towards their politics. Heck, I used Windows as my main OS for decades until I finally switched to Manjaro and XFCE for the sheer convenience of running Docker and npm/yarn smoothly without all the Windows cruft slowing me down all the time. It's funny though - I do less tinkering on my Linux desktop than I ever did on Windows (or my Mac), since everything just works the way I want it to in Manjaro. I think my first week using it, I had to figure out how to write an xdotools script to get window snapping in XFCE. Never had to touch it since. My Mac has broken things like Karabiner, Better Touch Tool, Little Snitch and so forth after many updates - so much so that I just stopped reinstall them. Luckily, I only have to use it once in a while for doing the occasional Mac/iOS thing.
• uniqueid 6y ago
  I don't doubt Apple's CPUs are great, but they coincide with the Mac's transition into a product I, otherwise, no longer wish to use. I want access to my boot volume. I don't want cloud anything. So Apple's technical prowess now makes me sad. I can either use an OS that doesn't head further every year in a direction I hate, or I can have a fast computer.
  • higerordermap 6y ago
    Are M1 macs faster by significant factor for dev purposes though? I remember reading compiles are slow on MacOs, but don't remember what was the reason.
    • PartiallyTyped 6y ago
      Many reviews show the M1 chips offering double the compilation speed of intel based macs.
    • saagarjha 6y ago
      They’re faster than other Macs.
  • ravi-delia 6y ago
    I'm also pretty bummed that I can't use the magic ARM machine yet, but this is just the beginning. Apple currently has an advantage, but I suspect its more of a market advantage than a technical advantage. Snapdragons are getting really fast too, and a lot of the difference in power comes down to a lack of demand. Now that ARM has been shown to be this good, more and similarly powered chips will be made.
  • x87678r 6y ago
    Agreed, I looked at the M1 and went out and bought an XPS15. MacOS scares me, wont be long before everything has to be bought from the app store.
• brundolf 6y ago
  > I actually discovered that I’ve had an instinct of measuring my MacBook’s CPU usage by feeling the heat on the strip of aluminum right above the Touch Bar, and I can’t even do that anymore now. Market opportunity here for a peripheral that's just an adhesive strip you put above your touch bar, and it outputs heat corresponding to CPU usage ;)
  • mpalmer 6y ago
    https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
    • spideymans 6y ago
      lol didn't even have to click the link to know the joke
  • DonHopkins 6y ago
    Good lord, don't touch there! You're risking burning your fingerprints off, then you won't be able to easily unlock your computer and phone!
• giorgioz 6y ago
  Windows Bootcamp can't run on M1. So there you go there is a wart that all the 100% positive reviews aren't mentioning.
• giorgioz 6y ago
  The fact that reviewers of M1 chips are also saying things like "Safari is faster than Chrome" or "iOS is faster than Android" do make the other statements on M1 lose credibility. "Safari is faster than Chrome" NOPE Now that IE is gone, Safari is the new IE by being the last not-ever-green browser always behind in features. So many benchmarks again and again proved Chrome and Firefox to be faster than Safari. "iOS is faster than Android" NOPE It just depends on the device. Of course the latest iPhone is faster than a 300$ mid-low range Android device. Pick the top Android devices vs iPhones and you will see it's a tough race with no clear winner.
  • Miraste 6y ago
    > So many benchmarks again and again proved Chrome and Firefox to be faster than Safari. In the benchmarks I've seen (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/google-chrome-is-available-as-an-apple-m1-native-app-today/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/google-chrome-is-ava...) and the ones I've run myself, Safari annihilates Chrome. > Pick the top Android devices vs iPhones and you will see it's a tough race with no clear winner. No, all Android phones are clearly slower than the iPhone. https://www.tomsguide.com/news/iphone-12-benchmarks-this-destroys-every-android-phone https://www.tomsguide.com/news/iphone-12-benchmarks-this-des...
• ineedasername 6y ago
  TLDR: Author believes (perhaps rightfully) that the M1 review from perenial Apple skeptic Patrick Moorhead is wrong.
• _benj 6y ago
  I'm now hoping to be surprised by a similar disruption in web browsers! (although I'm not holding my breath...)
• liminal 6y ago
  Can someone please ELI5 why the M1 is so much faster than every other ARM chip?
  • cacozen 6y ago
    Far from "like I'm 5", but here is a technical explanation: https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-3262b158cba2 https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-32...
    • chris_wot 6y ago
      An excellent article.
  • joncp 6y ago
    1. They took all the different chips and crammed more of them onto one chip. Now the different parts of the computer can talk to each other faster without any more work. 2. The new chip does lots of little things waaaay faster than the old chip does a handful of big things. 3. Apple figured out how to do a lot more things before they need to. Like if you did all of the math problems in your textbook ahead of time and then when the teacher eventually gives you the assignment you hand in the ones they asked for.
  • kissiel 6y ago
    The processor looks at the future instructions it will run, can see that some things can be run ahead of time, and can run multiple multiple instructions in parallel (on the same core). You could run individual multiplications in parallel. Most of those things other ARM processors can do that too, but M1 is bigger in some of those sizes, like how many instructions ahead it looks at, how many things can run at once etc.
  • chris_wot 6y ago
    Isn't it because it is a SoC? I found the following article enlightening: https://screenrant.com/apple-silicon-m1-mac-macbook-chip-soc-explained/ https://screenrant.com/apple-silicon-m1-mac-macbook-chip-soc... Edit: ignore that previous link, way better is the one mentioned by another poster: https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-3262b158cba2 https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-32...
• 6d65 6y ago
  The author is bashing another author for not doing measurements, yet himself declares that m1 beats all the other CPUs, without providing any measurements. With regards to the M1, I'm grateful for a good competition. As this will likely push premium laptop manufactures (Razer, Dell) towards ryzen CPUs, as opposed to using them in cheaper models. Loosening the grip that intel has on them. With Zen3 on mobile, giving a similar 20% boost as it did on desktop, plus a jump from 7nm to to 5m, giving another 20%, next year might be a very good year for Ryzen laptops. Looking forward to a Ryzen 6000 XPS 13. The other thing I'm grateful for M1 is that will most likely push the laptop manufactures to pay attention to thermals and noise. The unpleasant thing, is that most likely Apple will be a process node ahead, with them most likely getting TSMC 3nm in 2022, and everyone else a year later. With a competitive year in-between. I'm looking forward to next year, to upgrading to a Ryzen 6000(5nm) cpu, if it's good. And I'm looking forward for the more beefy apple arm chips and comparison between them. Also, maybe someone would compare a Ryzen 6000 hackintosh with an arm mac while it will be possible. Also looking forward at Intel's response, be it a partnership with TSMC, or fixing their nodes, and, fingers crossed, a completely new risc-v cpu. Anyway, interesting stuff.
  • GekkePrutser 6y ago
    Yeah John Gruber has really become a shill over the last few years. His article reads like an Apple keynote transcript, everything is magical and amazing, a marvel and mindbogglingly great. No wonder they throw him so many exclusives ;) Yes M1 is great. But it's a closed system (no booting Linux or Windows at this time) and even under macOS you're having even less access to the system's internals than before. Also, Apple performs many tricks to get such long battery life, such as putting apps to sleep when you're not looking at them (app nap). I find this extremely irritating when working with my Mac but I can't turn it off completely even though I have a mini and thus battery life is not a factor at all. My work MacBook spends it entire life docked with the screen closed too. M1 is a solid platform for sure, better for laptops than intel/amd's offerings. I agree. But I'm getting enough of Apple's (and Gruber's) hypey marketing. It's not magic, just good engineering. I stopped watching their keynotes for the same reason.
    • 6y ago
• j-pb 6y ago
  My new M1 Macbook Air arrived today. The excitement was quickly replaced by sober frustration. Yes apple did a remarkable job with the M1, no they've still lost their mojo when it comes to high quality software. I've spend the last 3 hours trying the wipe and reinstall the thing, because their non-virgin-os migration assistant is simply unreliable. So far, I've had issues where the fused Data/OS drive would just split apart, with no clear way on how to properly format the drive back to an installable state. Disk utility giving no indication whatsoever on which level of nested APFS concepts a wipe should even occur. And with absurd error messages like "can't install MacOs, no admin user found" - 'yeah no shit', during install. I really really really wanna like this machine, but MacOs is stuck in this limbo of not wanting to give you any control, yet not taking over those functions for you, so you constantly have to guess what's doable and expected. Update: Right now I'm trying to reinstall Mac Os via a bootable USB drive, which is actually what's recommended by apple support. (hello mid 2000s) This is basically my last option, before having to bring it into an apple store. The previous method apple recommended involved downloading Big Sur via the command line, which didn't work for me, becaue curl failed to write to disk. I mean, how do you even manage to break curl... Feels just as much work as setting up a linux laptop... Final update: Yep, it's dead jim. Apple support suspects a hardware failure. Back to the store you go. I'm gonna spend that money on 4 DevTerm and a box full of beer. cheers
  • btilly 6y ago
    You have demonstrated exactly why I don't care how fast the M1 runs, I'm not buying Apple hardware. Not until I start hearing that they have done something about their long quality slide. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25238688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25238688 for the last time that I expressed this opinion on HN.
    • jakeva 6y ago
      Comments like these always make me wonder if I'm the only person in the world still delighted by Apple products. I mean I alone can not be responsible for their sales volume. And then I start to wonder if I should be more critical of Apple, so I fire up my Windows machine and think silently "No, this is still a worse experience". So I fire up my Ubuntu and have the same reaction. I just don't understand the vitriol some people have for Apple, to me it is hands down always the better platform.
• samizdis 6y ago
  I get the "fast and hot" v "slow and cold" history of devices, and am pleased to be told that the M1 has broken this. However, and it may well be that I haven't understood complexities here, a recent Ars review [1] (glowing, by the way) of the M1 MacBook Air, contained this passage: According to Apple, the MacBook Air's M1 is voltage-limited in order to function within the fanless design's thermal envelope. iFixit's teardown shows in detail that the Air's M1 cooling setup is an entirely passive affair, with just a heat transfer plate in between the M1 CPU and the aluminum body. I was expecting performance similar to but perhaps a bit lower than the M1-powered Mac mini, and that's more or less what I got. However, the Air's M1 is good for at least a few solid minutes of full-bore Firestorm core performance before it throttles back. In benchmarking, I noticed that subsequent runs of the Final Cut Pro export would slow down dramatically—the first export would complete in about 1 minute and 19 seconds, but if I immediately repeated the export it would take a bit under 2.5 minutes—and the Air would be quite warm to the touch. After closing the lid to hibernate until the Air was cool and then repeating the export, the time was once again in the 1:20-ish range. To create some more sustained load, I cloned the source video three times and then repeated the export process. Starting from a cold startup with the MBA's chassis at ambient temperature gave a result of 4 minutes, 21 seconds. This time, I opened Activity Monitor's CPU graph to spy on the core utilization. All eight cores were engaged until about 2:56, at which time half of the cores—presumably the high-performance Firestorm cores—dropped to less than 50-percent usage and stayed there until the run completed. A second run immediately after that took 7:37—not quite twice as long, but heading in that direction. Activity Monitor's CPU usage graph showed half of the cores (presumably the high-performance Firestorm cores) at half utilization for the entire run. Further testing—including several runs after letting the MBA sit powered off for about an hour to make absolutely sure it was cooled to ambient—failed to produce anything resembling a precise, repeatable time interval for when throttling starts. The best I can do is to say that it seems that when you throw a heavy workload at the MBA, it runs at full-bore until the Firestorm cores become too toasty, which seems to take anywhere from 3-ish to 6-ish minutes. Then it backs the Firestorm cores off until they show about 50-percent utilization, and the amount of heat generated at that level seems to be within the sustained thermal capacity of the design. My amateur reading of this was that, yes, the M1 is incredibly fast when cold, but when it warms up it becomes measurably slower because of throttling - even if still fast by comparison to previous Air models. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/apples-m1-macbook-air-has-that-apple-silicon-magic/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/apples-m1-macbook-ai...
• Thaxll 6y ago
  M1 is fast but also very much completely closed, impossible to extend / change anything, on my PC I can buy more ram, I can buy a new graphic card every 2-3 years, it's a very different constrains than AMD / Intel supporting a million of different configuration + legacy.
• jgrant27 6y ago
  It's just not true. Ryzen laptops have been available for months for a fraction of the price of a macbook that are just as impressive. https://imagine27.com/rise-of-the-mac-serial-killers https://imagine27.com/rise-of-the-mac-serial-killers
  • klelatti 6y ago
    By just as impressive you mean 40% slower based on these benchmarks.
    • ebg13 6y ago
      And also 50% of the battery life.
• altcognito 6y ago
  This Gruber character is something else. No, the rules of physics and heat generation have not been repealed. You would think the fact you can’t crank out 100% performance on a Mac book air for too long before it throttles would be evidence enough that heat dissipation was still the prevailing reality, but not so for Gruber!
  • snazz 6y ago
    What's crazy about the M1 is that you can run the MacBook Air at 100% for a little under 10 minutes before it throttles. That's a breakthrough compared to Intel chips.
  • egsmi 6y ago
    Can you be a bit more specific about what section of the article you're referring to? The claim I read is that it runs fast and cool, as perceived by touching the outside case. I didn't find any claim that no heat was generated at all and didn't read anything about throttling in this article.
    • altcognito 6y ago
      Can you be a bit more specific? I didn't find any claim "no heat was generated" wasn't stated anywhere. The first paragraph talks about "fast computers should run hot." In an article titled "truth and truthiness", it should be commended for "truth in labeling" because vague usage of "hot and fast" is one way to make the truth difficult to pin down.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • egsmi 6y ago
        This is reasonable enough but I’m not sure how it relates to the parent comment which brings up the possibility of laws of physics being repealed. A more complete paraphrase of the first paragraph is, people believed fast computers should run hot. And that certainly matches my experience to date.
• klelatti 6y ago
  The discussion seems to have settled down to "M1 is great! But you'll soon be able to get a Zen 3 CPU that's just as good." Which may or may not be true, but: - Apple has a material (and apparently perceptible) performance advantage against the majority of the laptop market - which will do wonders both for their and Arm's brand. - The M1 has killed the idea (which I've heard a lot) that you can't get performance out of an Arm core. - There is now a credible desktop platform on which to develop for Arm in the cloud. I think the real impact of this will be in 2-3 years and it's not good for Intel.
  • ebg13 6y ago
    > The discussion seems to have settled down to "M1 is great! But you'll soon be able to get a Zen 3 CPU that's just as good." It feels worse than that to me. Those people are actually saying "But Zen 4 in 2 years will be just as good!" because their claims depend on combining IPC improvements from Zen 3 _and_ a 5nm process that AMD has no plans to switch to for Zen 3. It's a weird bit of gymnastics in order to reach emotional parity with the M1 widely available right now today.
    • klelatti 6y ago
      Without commenting on the gymnastics (I'm not qualified) the big issue for me is about actually having the machines in the market. Some of the Ryzen laptops seem to be impossible to buy and who knows how much TSMC capacity AMD has (after the Xbox and PS cores) plus how much and for how long have the PC laptop manufacturers already committed to Intel.
  • sneak 6y ago
    > The discussion seems to have settled down to "M1 is great! But you'll soon be able to get a Zen 3 CPU that's just as good." Which may or may not be true Even if it is, I doubt there will be a Zen 3 laptop out that has the screen, keyboard, trackpad, and case quality of the MBAir. Even if it were slower, literally no one is building machines of that physical quality. Some are attempting to compete, like the Dell XPS, but they're still falling short. They're high quality laptops, yes, but people who think they're "just as good" need to take a better look at the current MBAir - and this has 0% to do with the chip. Nobody is making laptops this nice. I'm actually thinking about picking up an Intel MBAir (the one that just got discontinued) as it's likely the single best Linux-able laptop (no longer) on the market, even if it needs to do an opaque, closed-source, online activation each time you wipe the disk (to reactivate the T2).
• sroussey 6y ago
  I'll wait, unfortunately. I need docker today. I need my imagePROGRAF printer drivers for photography today. I need Luminar AI plugin for Photoshop today. Etc. But I am excited to pay for v2 of a MacBook Pro 14. So maybe 18 months. It will be a long wait... :/
• thefrog 6y ago
  John Gruber isn't wrong, but he's still a fucking idiot ivory tower moron.
• PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  Gruber notes midway: "Perversely, developers, who by nature of their profession best understand exactly what an architecture transition like this entails, might be among the few professions who can’t yet move their primary computing to an Apple Silicon device by nature of the software tools they depend upon. (Some developers can move now, and — because Xcode running on the M1 compiles code so much faster than any Intel MacBook — are rejoicing.)" I know that HN has many more active/vocal webdevs than native software developers, and so the point may be lost on some. I suspect that Gruber doesn't understand why his point is actually so completely accurate. Developers (native ones at least) need to compile, a lot. Compilation is an embarrassingly parallel task: if you've got N cores, you can use N cores and get a linear speedup for every expansion in N you are offered. The M1 seems like an awfully nice system for people concerned about CPU/Watt, and an awfully nice system who want a very powerful bit of hardware to run macOS on. What it remains is a less-than-top-of-the-line system for people who care about CPU/$ or just maxCPU. No doubt if you're used to building native code on existing MacBook Pro or even a Mini, the M1 systems will seem incredible. But I'm building my software on a 12 core, 32GBM VM running on a threadripper, while still able to read Hacker News and listening to Soma FM in the Linux/Debian host environment, and for people like me (especially the even tinier set who also are net-zero for electrical supply thanks to solar PV), the M1 systems are just not interesting so far. But then, as Gruber said, I'm a developer, and this mismatch is caused by the set of tools I use.
  • UberMouse 6y ago
    > Compilation is an embarrassingly parallel task: if you've got N cores, you can use N cores and get a linear speedup for every expansion in N you are offered. Somebody should let the Javascript world know that. Both Webpack and TypeScript are single threaded by default and it's a pain in the ass to get them to use more threads. So my 12 core CPU mostly sits around twiddling it's thumbs while I compile code for work.
  • joakleaf 6y ago
    I disagree. I compile a lot. Every day. Almost daily in Java, Objective C, and C++ (Yes, I work actively on all three languages these months). 90% of the time I compile one file (the one I just changed) and then I link. Linking is not parallel and it takes about 4-15 seconds (dep. on the project/lang.). I use an i9 with 8 cores, but I suspect that a CPU with fewer cores, that go really fast for seconds before throttling would be quite good for most of what I do during the day. Including testing+debugging the executable. Recompiling everything takes minutes. It happens maybe once per hour, and I often combine the recompile with a coffee-break. So since it happens rarely it doesn't matter if that takes 0.5-5 minutes (dep. on project). I don't mind waiting for the recompile, but I hate changing a few lines, compiling, waiting for 20 seconds, and then testing. I find that hose medium length waits destroy flow and creativity during the day. I would definitely prefer fast single-file compilation + linking + testing, over fast full project recompiles. In summary, I think these M1 devices will actually be great for developers using compiled languages.
• eldavido 6y ago
  One of my best friends was high up in the M1 project (don't want to get too specific, but he works at Apple). I am not surprised about the M1 performance numbers at all. Granted, I have a degree in this area (silicon design) and many friends in the industry. But it's the sort of thing where if you're paying any attention, it's just inevitable. (1) Intel has been a mess for a while. Multiple canceled high-profile projects (not announced publicly), some high-profile process technology missteps, and frankly...they just feel kind of rudderless. A lot of my more career-minded friends have jumped ship. There just doesn't seem to be a concrete goal they're pursuing. They've had what, three CEOs in the last few years? (2) Apple's semiconductor team is really good. REALLY good. It was a Steve Jobs-level initiative that started with the acquisition of PA Semi and they've assembled a lot of the best people in the industry. (3) Apple sells something like 10-100x as many phones as computers each year. This means there's much, much more scope for high-budget R&D on the phones. And in this case, they took a lot of what they learned about system-on-chips, which are used in phones, and brought it back to PCs. (4) It's pretty obvious the architecture of PCs was overdue for a bit of a rethink. Just look at a PC mainboard. There's all kinds of shit on there, lots of clocked digital electronics, BIOS chips, memory controllers, real-time timers, a giant energy-eating PCI bus, etc. If you stop and think about it, we've probably reached the point where the whole thing needed to be repackaged into a single part. With the exception of overclockers and hardcore gamers, most people don't upgrade their CPU, or memory, so right there, you can remove a bunch of clunky edge connectors and all their bus logic. This means the whole thing can run on fewer synchronous clocks, which dramatically improves power efficiency and also (I'm not sure about this, but it stands to reason) performance. There's also a completely unified memory model--one giant flat RAM between CPU and GPU--so no schlepping all the things back and forth from GPU to CPU memory. Huge performance improvement right there, just by eliminating stupid legacy bullshit we don't need anymore. As a software guy, it's like they just ripped out a bunch of legacy stuff and got rid of all the unnecessary and complex silicon. No less important, there was a movement in academia about ten years ago toward using FPGAs (basically reprogrammable silicon) to do various special-purpose tasks like image processing, DSP, and GPU. Custom silicon is way more efficient (both power and performance) than general-purpose CPU silicon. If you look at the M1 design, they bundled a bunch of custom stuff into a single package, so that rather than having a CPU, you get a CPU, memory controller, GPU, image processor, etc. on a single piece of silicon. (5) And finally, they did a bunch of sensible things with the ARM CPU that anyone with an undergraduate degree in computer engineering wouldn't be surprised by. I read something about large reodering buffers and a few other things. I'm not in any way minimizing this achievement. It is a very big deal. But like a lot of what Apple does, it's just a realtively straightforward idea, executed to a very, very high level of excellence by a very good team. And it's interesting how all these little 5% improvements here, there, and everywhere culminated into a much larger, qualitative degree of excellence. It all feels very "Apple".
• zarkov99 6y ago
  This is good. We have a problem of accountability in our media. Spewing nonsense for years should come with consequences even if it gets you clicks.
• jaimex2 6y ago
  Apple propaganda and not worth your time reading. We got an M1 on pre-order and so far it seems pretty half baked. Some apps work reliably, others outright don't. I'd wait another year at least for the kinks to be worked out. Some notable apps that either dont work or break on use: Anything from Adobe, Google sync, MS Office.
• singhrac 6y ago
  I hear a lot of "all PC laptops are now comparatively a bad deal", which is a real bummer since it's always good for Apple to have competition. If Apple is reserving all of TSMC's 5nm (and probably 3nm) node output, is Samsung a viable competitor? Does the world of ultra-cheap (i.e. <$500) laptops come back to ARM Chromebooks? Qualcomm be able to mimic Apple's design success? I'm kind of with Gruber that this is a game changer, but what does it mean for the ecosystem?
  • Mandatum 6y ago
    Competition. And I'm excited.
• lern_too_spel 6y ago
  The biggest wart with the M1 Macs is that you're stuck running MacOS, which just feels like molasses every time I use it. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=macos1015-win10-ubuntu&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=macos101... It's the same problem with A14 iPhones. You're stuck running iOS, which is not only too restricted to be of any use, but also too slow to showcase the hardware. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emPiTZHdP88 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emPiTZHdP88 https://youtu.be/hPhkPXVxISY https://youtu.be/hPhkPXVxISY https://youtu.be/B5ZT9z9Bt4M https://youtu.be/B5ZT9z9Bt4M
• p1necone 6y ago
  A lot of the arguments here seem to come from people thinking laptops are the only game in town. When someone makes unqualified claims about the m1 beating "all the other PC cpus" of course people are going to compare it to desktop chips. Even Apple themselves advertised it as the "worlds fastest CPU core" when they announced it, which is blatantly untrue. People aren't saying that this isn't a very compelling CPU, they're just annoyed by the bullshit marketing, and the people blindly repeating it.
  • xvector 6y ago
    > Even Apple themselves advertised it as the "worlds fastest CPU core" when they announced it, which is blatantly untrue. Is it? In Geekbench the M1 was outperforming the 5950X in single-core. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/jspnhp/apple_new_m1_chip_single_core_is_faster_than_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/jspnhp/apple_new_m1_ch... EDIT: Looks like that post is comparing 2 different Geekbench versions. Newer Geekbench versions have optimizations for Zen 3, putting it back at the top.
    • p1necone 6y ago
      Highest Geekbench 5 single core score is apparently 2239 on a 5800x (https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/singlecore?page=1 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/singlecore?page=1) Highest m1 single core score is 1716 (https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?q=Apple+M1 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?q=Apple+M1) (Of course they're likely overclocked past factory settings, but if we ignore those results that's not the fastest CPU core in the world, is it?) Geekbench has also not traditionally been a benchmark used for x86 desktop chips, it's more commonly used to compare android and apple phones.
      • armadsen 6y ago
        > Geekbench has also not traditionally been a benchmark used for x86 desktop chips, it's more commonly used to compare android and apple phones. This isn’t really true. Geekbench started out as a desktop (Mac) app. Originally it was calibrated so that Power Mac G5 would get a score of 1000. They’ve recalibrated since then and added mobile versions, but it has its roots in desktop benchmarking.
• YesThatTom2 6y ago
  Patrick Moorhead is a stock analyst for the chip industry. In Wall Street terms, he is aligned with Intel others who are shaking in their boots right now. He's not going to say that the M1 is great until Intel/NVidia/etc. allow him to. These pundits know which side of his bread is buttered. He knows that his clients were caught off-guard by the M1 announcement. He needs to give his clients enough time to sell their Intel stock before it becomes conventional wisdom that the legacy chip makers have a business model that doesn't work. The history of the tech industry is dotted with pundits nay-saying anything new from companies they aren't in bed with. Eventually they can't deny reality any longer. Through the magic of the media's short-term memory they change their song and deny they've every said anything else. I remember in the 1980s when the top pundit of the industry was John C. Dvorak. Everyone read his column. EVERYONE. The Amiga was a potential threat to John, who was aligned with the MS-DOS world. He wrote many columns about how multitasking was stupid because "your desk can't fit more than one keyboard and mouse". Yeah, that was his reason. Of course, once MS-Windows arrived, suddenly his column was about how multitasking is this new thing, the best thing, the thing everyone should have. If you don't have it, you're an ignorant loser. I remember telling my friends that I wish I had saved his old, anti-Amiga/anti-multitasking, columns because I want to show up at one of his public appearances to ask how MS-Windows allows you to fit so many keyboards on his desk.
  • blunte 6y ago
    Is Intel really so blind that they didn't see this coming or even have detailed inside info about it? I would wager that they knew, but execs chose to protect their personal short term interests overt those of the company and its long term shareholders. This is typical modern US publicly traded company behavior.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • detaro 6y ago
      What would have been the choice they should have made that was not protecting their short term interests and better for the company?
• tomxor 6y ago
  Since this annoying article is really all about intel... I wonder if anyone could answer me this: How practical would it be for Intel to pivot away from the deficiencies of their ISA, e.g to be able to make improvements in OoO comparable to the M1? It's well understood such a move would completely remove the advantage of high backward compatibility for intel - but assuming the market is open to such a change - how technically feasible would it be, e.g is the micro-architecture and ISA more tightly coupled than one might expect? does such an endeavor mean scrapping most of it, or is a significant portion of the technology under that ISA layer flexible enough to be adapted without ending up with the same limitations in current intel chips?
• harikb 6y ago
  > emulating or translating apps compiled for a different architecture is necessarily going to be irritatingly slow and somewhat incompatible at best While it wasn't as popular, Palm OS did this beautifully when going from Motorola 68k based device to ARM. Granted the executables are tiny (usually 10 to 64k in size or smaller), but the execution was flawless. In this comparison, I am not nitpicking on emulation vs translation vs JIT. Whatever it is, the 68k binary ran on ARM without a recompilation.
• fuckthemachine 6y ago
  I'd like to read this article but the text/background colour combo is headache inducing after a few minutes.. anyone else ?
  • elicash 6y ago
    Doesn't bother me, but if you're using Safari, try switching to Reader view.
• Nition 6y ago
  This article covers the fact that the M1 is both cool and very fast. My question is: Could Apple now clock up the M1 so that's it's as hot as other chips, but insanely fast?
• thewileyone 6y ago
  The M1 sounds great and the fundamental changes in the architecture makes so much sense that you wonder why Intel and AMD didn't think of it. However, only macos can run on the M1 because these fundamental changes require a huge OS overhaul. Yes, a lot of work like a hypervisor type layer must have been put in so that existing 3rd party apps can run. But the M1 is optimized to Apple's common denominator, not anyone else's. Ultimately, the real question is whether the M1 will be opened for Windows or Linux to build on. I doubt it. Intel and AMD will just have to build their own heterogeneous processor and Windows and Linux will have to build a hypervisor layer or just go native.
• anta40 6y ago
  I mostly work on Android apps (and ocasionally backend). Just started learning iOS dev. I think overall the responses from software developers about M1 is positive. Yes, I also have read steipete's post: https://steipete.com/posts/apple-silicon-m1-a-developer-perspective/ https://steipete.com/posts/apple-silicon-m1-a-developer-pers... Perhaps next year the ARM port of Android Studio is already available? :D
• desmap 6y ago
  A naïve question: Couldn't other ARM licensees just integrate RAM into the SoC like Apple did and come easily close to M1' performance? With easily I mean in a doable manner within 1-2 years. I know there are more tricks/magic involved but just to start somewhere.
• lta 6y ago
  Too bad their OS is unusable...
• WhyNotHugo 6y ago
  TBH, I think that most experts who didn't see this coming were simply in denial. Disqualifying benchmarks because... it's mobile? Disregarding performance and cooling differences with an iPad because... it's an iPad? They all sound like excuses to disregard the obvious results. Synthetic benchmarks can lack fine grained precision. They might be bad at determining who's on top when there's a very small gap. But they provide valid results for determining if two products are in the same LEAGUE. Sure, I an iPad could't run Linux, gcc or StarCraft,, but that's mostly an ecosystem issue, not a hardware performance one. We've seen this coming for years now. Both the big obvious signs, and the little signs, like Apple continuously unifying code and APIs across platforms.
• stefanv 6y ago
  The only real (but small) downside (and just for some of us) is that you can't daisy chain two external monitors to the new M1 laptops. It's true that the mini can use two external monitors connected to separate ports or that you can jump through hoops and use more than two external monitors and that is why it's not such a big deal.
• account42 6y ago
  > We knew this to be true because that was the way things were. But now, with the M1 Macs, it’s not. M1 Macs run very fast and do so while remaining very cool and lasting mind-bogglingly long on battery. It was a fundamental trade-off inherent to PC computing, and now we don’t have to make it. What a pile of horseshit. The tradeoff between heat and performance was always within a generation - "fast" is always relative. It's just the baseline that has moved, same as it has with every Intel/AMD generation, not a fundamental change.