7 ms·

In your quest to avoid almost-religious overhyping of everything Apple, I'd contend that you're presenting the inverse: almost-religious anti-hyping of everythi

In your quest to avoid almost-religious overhyping of everything Apple, I'd contend that you're presenting the inverse: almost-religious anti-hyping of everything Apple. We can criticise them for their seemingly blinkered focus on casual consumers and end-users at the expense of developers and technologists without finding ways to rationalise away anything good Apple does. Attributing the positive aspects of M1 to the ARM micro-architecture is contemporary revisionism. If micro-architecture was the key differentiator, Microsoft Surface RT would have been a runaway success and Qualcomm would have taken over the notebook CPU market by now. Little of what makes the M1 so impressive has anything to do with the ARM instruction set. The impressive parts are things like the entirely in-house GPU and the mild hardware acceleration of Rosetta 2. It's also worth noting that Apple has been deeply involved in ARM since the late 1980s. They were a co-founder of Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. along with Acorn and VLSI. Apple were deeply involved in development of the ARM6 architecture and the Apple Newton was one of the first major commercial applications. So even if you limit your amazement to the ARM architecture, a portion of that credit goes to Apple anyway.

Zancarius 6y ago
I appreciate the correction. > In your quest to avoid almost-religious overhyping of everything Apple, I'd contend that you're presenting the inverse I must point out that I believe you misinterpreted my intent. I'm largely indifferent to Apple. I'm not entirely sure if you'd find that more offensive or less since I'm interpreting this response as one of annoyance (I'd appreciate a clarification to this end). I don't use Apple products. And you're absolutely right, the M1 is an impressive feat.
- sjwright 6y ago
  Understood. Intent is often difficult to robustly convey without being neurotically verbose. I promise my response was not borne of annoyance. I just got the impression that you wanted to focus credit on the one thing about the A1 SOC which could plausibly attributed to anyone other than Apple. That seemed a stretch, is all.
  - Zancarius 6y ago
    > without being neurotically verbose Unfortunately, I know what you mean. I have a tendency toward verbosity that makes it feel that every time I write a post I'm crafting a treatise that might make the great statesmen of old blush (with the exception that I'm far too stupid to make it as interesting or entertaining). And yes, intent is difficult to convey through text even if you're afforded a great deal of time and effort. > you wanted to focus credit on the one thing about the A1 SOC No, not at all. The ML cores and other, err, accessory CPUs they've added are incredibly fascinating. Mostly I was thinking of the ARM portion of the hardware. Truthfully, I confess that part of my excitement lending itself to ARM is because I genuinely want to see more vendors follow Apple's footsteps and either a) craft their own designs or b) build out ARM-based platforms that will lead toward greater competition in the desktop/laptop markets (or both?). Fortunately, Apple's tendency toward setting market trends gives me some hope that we'll see noteworthy contributions that embarrass x86 and upend the idiotic convention that I think M1 has finally broken. Namely that you can have a chip that works on an incredibly tiny power budget or you can have performance. Apple's proven we can have both, and I think that's a good step forward. It excites me that we may actually see viable competition this decade, and if we do, I'll absolutely credit Apple with upending conventional wisdom and proving that our fixation on x86 for "performance" was myopic and unnecessary. Maybe that explains my reasoning a bit more. At the expense of being unnecessarily verbose (though you may appreciate that). :) Also, I owe you an apology. I wrote my reply out of some frustration last night. Regrettably I allowed myself to get sucked into a "discussion" with someone I didn't know was an antivaxxer until I realized their refusal to listen to an explanation of microbiology wasn't born out of lack of interest but rather suspicion. When I saw your post, I genuinely believe I unfairly took some of that frustration out on you. I'm truly sorry about that.
    - sjwright 6y ago
      The explanation is appreciated. We’re all human and passions drive us in weird, occasionally unpredictable ways. I’m undoubtedly as guilty of it as anyone. Also, fuck those anti-vaxxers.
      - 6y ago

Zancarius 6y ago

I appreciate the correction. > In your quest to avoid almost-religious overhyping of everything Apple, I'd contend that you're presenting the inverse I must point out that I believe you misinterpreted my intent. I'm largely indifferent to Apple. I'm not entirely sure if you'd find that more offensive or less since I'm interpreting this response as one of annoyance (I'd appreciate a clarification to this end). I don't use Apple products. And you're absolutely right, the M1 is an impressive feat.

sjwright 6y ago
Understood. Intent is often difficult to robustly convey without being neurotically verbose. I promise my response was not borne of annoyance. I just got the impression that you wanted to focus credit on the one thing about the A1 SOC which could plausibly attributed to anyone other than Apple. That seemed a stretch, is all.
- Zancarius 6y ago
  > without being neurotically verbose Unfortunately, I know what you mean. I have a tendency toward verbosity that makes it feel that every time I write a post I'm crafting a treatise that might make the great statesmen of old blush (with the exception that I'm far too stupid to make it as interesting or entertaining). And yes, intent is difficult to convey through text even if you're afforded a great deal of time and effort. > you wanted to focus credit on the one thing about the A1 SOC No, not at all. The ML cores and other, err, accessory CPUs they've added are incredibly fascinating. Mostly I was thinking of the ARM portion of the hardware. Truthfully, I confess that part of my excitement lending itself to ARM is because I genuinely want to see more vendors follow Apple's footsteps and either a) craft their own designs or b) build out ARM-based platforms that will lead toward greater competition in the desktop/laptop markets (or both?). Fortunately, Apple's tendency toward setting market trends gives me some hope that we'll see noteworthy contributions that embarrass x86 and upend the idiotic convention that I think M1 has finally broken. Namely that you can have a chip that works on an incredibly tiny power budget or you can have performance. Apple's proven we can have both, and I think that's a good step forward. It excites me that we may actually see viable competition this decade, and if we do, I'll absolutely credit Apple with upending conventional wisdom and proving that our fixation on x86 for "performance" was myopic and unnecessary. Maybe that explains my reasoning a bit more. At the expense of being unnecessarily verbose (though you may appreciate that). :) Also, I owe you an apology. I wrote my reply out of some frustration last night. Regrettably I allowed myself to get sucked into a "discussion" with someone I didn't know was an antivaxxer until I realized their refusal to listen to an explanation of microbiology wasn't born out of lack of interest but rather suspicion. When I saw your post, I genuinely believe I unfairly took some of that frustration out on you. I'm truly sorry about that.
  - sjwright 6y ago
    The explanation is appreciated. We’re all human and passions drive us in weird, occasionally unpredictable ways. I’m undoubtedly as guilty of it as anyone. Also, fuck those anti-vaxxers.
    - 6y ago