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OK I love this, but I am pretty sure my chances of getting a mac in the future are zero. From which side should I expect the PC response? Intel? AMD? Microsoft?

OK I love this, but I am pretty sure my chances of getting a mac in the future are zero. From which side should I expect the PC response? Intel? AMD? Microsoft? ARM? Samsung? I think Apple willingly or not has just obliterated the whole consumer pc market.

flatiron 6y ago
The new Ryzen mobile processors should be interesting. Their GPU drivers (while not of the best code quality) are in the mainline Linux kernel. So it all should just “work”
- gnarbarian 6y ago
  Currently using a Renoir laptop. It's smoking fast but I had to install a bleeding edge kernel to get the display driver to work at all. That should be fixed in the next ubuntu release though.
  - threentaway 6y ago
    Weird, I had no issues with the built in display on Ubuntu 20.04, but I had to update the kernel to 5.8 to get display out over USB-C to work. Now that Ubuntu 20.10 is out and uses 5.8, I'm just using that so I don't have to mess with custom, unsigned kernels.
    - pedrocr 6y ago
      I just installed 20.04.1 on a 4750U Lenovo T14s and everything just works as far as I can tell.
  - imhoguy 6y ago
    5.10.x kernels are very stable and feature complete with AMD Ryzen Renoir - I update one almost weekly once new patch version is out on Ubuntu Kernel PPA. Here is nice script which makes the update trivial: https://github.com/pimlie/ubuntu-mainline-kernel.sh https://github.com/pimlie/ubuntu-mainline-kernel.sh
- unix_fan 6y ago
  The new mobile chips are basically a mix of new and old stuff, with them rebranding ryzen 2 parts. Kind of disappointing.
  - neogodless 6y ago
    But the slightly tweaked "old stuff" is relatively low-end - up to and including the 5700U. You'll find it in thin 'n light, budget and business laptops that will have more than enough power from a Zen 2 core. If you really absolutely need more power, you'll know it and you'll be shopping for a 5800H (or above). If you don't know enough about CPUs to even read reviews that compare the CPU to other CPUs, then you either don't need the extra IPC of Zen 3 (and you won't notice when you use your laptop day to day) or you just... don't care. If you care, get a 5600U/5800U or H line and it will never affect you. The laptops these come in should be priced accordingly.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  What I want is to take a mobile CPU and put it in a normal form factor for power saving and excellent integrated graphics. Why is this not possible?
  - philistine 6y ago
    The only company making mobile CPUs that are at all competitive in a laptop is Apple. We’ll have to wait to see what Qualcomm et al. manage to build.
yepthatsreality 6y ago
And Apple will court (allow) developers until competition shows up. Then they will shut it down and obfuscate. The fact that Apple refuses to provide FOSS drivers themselves indicates this.
- unix_fan 6y ago
  Apple has never provided drivers for other operating systems, including windows. The drivers used for BootCamp aren’t even developed by them.
  - floatboth 6y ago
    Well, they clearly at least commissioned them from someone else, since they are the ones distributing them.
    - wtallis 6y ago
      Intel Macs are literally PCs. The Windows drivers that Apple bundled up for Boot Camp were the same drivers that the respective component manufacturers provide for other PC OEMs to redistribute. In the entire history of Intel Macs, there have been very few components used by Apple for which there wasn't already an off-the-shelf Windows driver written by someone other than Apple for the sake of their non-Apple customers.
      - floatboth 6y ago
        They do include these too, but I'm mostly talking about stuff like the trackpads (before SPI, the protocol they ran over USB was also custom, not HID)
      - astrange 6y ago
        No, Macs have a lot of custom components, and the ones with Touch Bar or T2 added even more. Those have Apple developed Windows drivers.
devwastaken 6y ago
I'd be excited to see arm competition in the desktop space but I don't believe there are any arm chips that compete in performance to high end x86. Arm can do lots of cores which is very good for servers, but single threading performance is still a significant necessity on user end hardware. The M1 is great because it's low power with optimized performance, but on a desktop you can have well over 500W+ and that's normal. I don't see anyone else making only mobile arm chips for laptops other than trying to be like a Windows Chromebook. The software compatability will be a nightmare.
- zaptrem 6y ago
  M1 cores outperform Comet Lake cores and are basically tied with AMD Vermeer despite using a fraction of the power.
  - stefan_ 6y ago
    They are also on a different process shrug
    - unix_fan 6y ago
      Process node improvements don’ty bring that much performance.
      - stefan_ 6y ago
        Given the massive drop in power consumption and therefore heat, they seem to bring inordinate amounts of performance in a mobile chip.
        unix_fan 6y ago
        The apple a14 brought no improvements over the last generation despite being on a superior process node.
      - floatboth 6y ago
banana_giraffe 6y ago
The response from Intel seems to be betting on the Evo platform [1], with third parties announcing laptops like the XPG Xenia XE 1 https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/evo.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/evo.ht...
- andromeduck 6y ago
  That looks more like ultrabooks but not watered down again - I'm not impressed.
- AtlasBarfed 6y ago
  So they're announcing a "platform". Smacks of managerial bottom-covering. Almost like forming a committee to investigate the problem. - where was this 1/2/10 years ago? - how would this address the fundamental CPU performance gap? - Intel has no competitive GPU offering, yet another glaring failure on their part - why would OEMs go along with this when Ryzen is a better CPU, GPU, aside from getting Intel bribes and the usual marketplace branding momentum? - will this actually get ports migrated to laptops faster? It was criminal how long it took for HDMI 2.0 to hit laptops. I get Intel doesn't own the stack/vertical integration, but Intel could have devoted 1% of its revenue to a kickass Linux OS to keep Microsoft honest a long time ago and demonstrate its full hardware. Even if only coders/techies used it like Macbooks are standard issue in the Bay, it would have been good insurance, leverage, or demoware.
  - wg0 6y ago
    "I get Intel doesn't own the stack/vertical integration, but Intel could have devoted 1% of its revenue to a kickass Linux OS to keep Microsoft honest a long time ago and demonstrate its full hardware." Interesting point.. makes one wonder why didn't they do it while having a mountain of cash.
    - tambre 6y ago
      They do have something – Clear Linux [0]. Definitely not too mcuh investment, but they do differentiate by compiling packages for much newer instruction sets compared to other distros. [0]: https://clearlinux.org/ https://clearlinux.org/
MetaWhirledPeas 6y ago
They have bitten off an even bigger chunk of the meal they had nearly finished already: - Developers - Creatives - Dutiful citizens of The Ecosystem What they are no closer to biting off is gamers and hardware enthusiasts. Anyone who actually needs to open their PC for any purpose whatsoever. I know Apple wants to be the glossy Eve to all the PC market's Wall-E's, but I will continue to shun them forcefully as long as they remain hell-bent on stifling the nerdy half of all of their users. I assume the developer popularity is a result of the iPhone gold rush, which Apple exploited using exclusivity tactics. Therefore I consider it an abomination to see developers embrace the platform so thoroughly. iPhone development should feel shameful, and when there's no way to avoid it, it should be done on a dusty Mac Mini pulled from a cardboard box that was sitting in the closet ;)
- bonestamp2 6y ago
  > I assume the developer popularity is a result of the iPhone gold rush, which Apple exploited using exclusivity tactics. Therefore I consider it an abomination to see developers embrace the platform so thoroughly. That's not why most developers I know use macs. We use them because we got tired of spending a couple days a year (on average) unfucking our Windows machine after something goes wrong. When you're a developer, you're often installing, uninstalling and changing things... much more than the average personal or business user. That means there are a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong, and they do. Even most Google employees were using macs until they themselves started making high end Chromebooks; tens of thousands of google employees still use macs. Some users have moved on to linux, but most stay on mac because they want to spend time in the OS and not on the OS. I can appreciate both perspectives, there's no right answer for everyone. I share your wish that the hardware was more serviceable but everything is a compromise at the end of the day and that's the compromise I'm willing to take in exchange for the other benefits. Some complain about the price, but the high end macbook pros aren't even more expensive than windows workstation laptops. Our company actually saved several hundred dollars per machine when we switched from ThinkPads with the same specs. Not to mention, our IT support costs were cut almost in half with macs. So, aside from gaming or some specific edgecase requirements, it's hard for me to justify owning a PC. That said, I have one of those edgecase requirements with one of my clients so I have a ThinkPad just for them. But, it stays in a drawer when I'm not working on that specific thing.
tambourine_man 6y ago
> but I am pretty sure my chances of getting a mac in the future are zero Why?
- cambalache 6y ago
  Price for one, also I still consider PC and Linux (and god heavens even windows) more open than Mac. I also work with many windows-only automation software.
  - chrisweekly 6y ago
    sorry but what's "PC" above, given it's not windows?
    - cambalache 6y ago
      A generic term for hardware able to run linux and/or windows. Or any personal computer not build by Apple. You can have any combination of open/closed hardware and OS.
- monkmartinez 6y ago
  I cannot speak for OP, but software is the reason for me. I can not run Solidworks on MacOS without bootcamp or other tricks, for example. Photogrammetry apps? GIS apps? CNC CAM apps? I mean, compare the Mac[1] compatible apps to the catalog of Apps Autodesk has. The fact of the matter is GPU support on MacOS is just not there in the same way it is with windows. It is really hard to justify the price of Apple when you compare directly to Windows offerings spec for spec. When you compare the sheer volume of software available for Windows as compared to MacOS, especially if you need a discrete GPU there are really no comparisons. [1]https://www.autodesk.com/solutions/mac-compatible-software https://www.autodesk.com/solutions/mac-compatible-software
  - criddell 6y ago
    I'm always surprised when I see discussions about somebody dumping one operating system for another. Isn't your operating system choice dictated by the applications you want to run?
vbezhenar 6y ago
What exactly do you expect? x86 is quite competitive. M1 might be slightly better, but it's not like it's miles ahead.
- cambalache 6y ago
  I want a return to the status-quo when for 80% (it could be even less but let's not dwell in the number) of the price of an Apple laptop I could get a windows/linux machine matching or surpassing its specs(including stuff like battery life,energy consumption, screen dpi, noise, etc). This is not true now and I am not seeing an option in the short term.
  - shawnz 6y ago
    Perhaps it is still true, but Apple is somehow becoming the budget option in that equation?
  - astrange 6y ago
    That was never really possible, or certainly wasn't ever since the laptops went to HiDPI displays. There were just a lot of teenagers showing off their ability to make gamer PC parts lists and claim that it's better than a Mac, but the value of the display/trackpad/integration have been good for a long time. It's just now the quality of the SoC is that good.
    - other_herbert 6y ago
      I’ve had my m1 air for a few weeks now and going back to the trackpad on my Dell XP’s 15 feels like the stone ages... it’s amazing... and safari on the Mac even makes Jenkins and Jira fast...
- cwhiz 6y ago
  Fiddling around on an M1 MBA it felt faster than my 2020 16" MBP. It's half the weight, seems to get double the battery life, and costs less than 1/3. I just can't even imagine what the gap is going to look like when Apple really refines this down.
fossuser 6y ago
You might have to bite the bullet and get a mac - I don't see much promise from others in this space. Intel's CEO change may save them, but they're definitely facing an existential threat they've failed to adapt to for years. Amazon will move to ARM on servers and probably some decent design there, but that won't really reach the consumer hardware market (probably - though I suppose they could do something interesting in this space if they wanted to). Windows faces issues with third party integration, OEMs, chip manufacturers and coordinating all of that. Nadella is smart and is mostly moving to Azure services and O365 on strategy - I think windows and the consumer market matter less. Apple owns their entire stack and is well positioned to continue to expand the delta between their design/integration and everyone else continuing to flounder. AMD isn't that much better positioned than Intel and doesn't have a solution for the coordination problem either. Nvidia may buy ARM, but that's only one piece of getting things to work well. I'm long on Apple here, short on Intel and AMD. We'll see what happens.
- monkmartinez 6y ago
  Are you saying you don't see much promise for AMD, Intel and Nvidia in the GPU space or with computers in general? I had a hard time following your logic. Apple may own their stack, but there are a TON of use cases where that stack doesn't even form a blip on the radar of the people who purchase computer gear.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    My prediction is x86 is dead. External GPUs will remain and I think Nvidia has an advantage in that niche currently. The reason stack ownership matters is because it allows tight integration which leads to better chip design (and better performance/efficiency). Windows has run on ARM for a while for example, but it sucks. The reason it sucks is complicated but largely has to do with bad incentives and coordination problems between multiple groups. Apple doesn't have this problem. As Apple's RISC design performance improvements (paired with extremely low power requirements) become more and more obvious x86 manufacturers will be left unable to compete. Cloud providers will move to ARM chipsets of their own design (see: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/) and AMD/Intel will be on the path to extinction. I'd argue Apple's M1 machines are already at this level and they're version 0 (if you haven't played with one you should). This is an e-risk for Intel and AMD, they should have been preparing for this for the last decade, instead Intel doubled down on their old designs to maximize profit in the short term at the cost of extinction in the long term. It's not an argument about individual consumer choice (though that will shift too), the entire market will move.
altcognito 6y ago
Apple willingly or not increased their market share? Seriously, the AstroTurf in this thread is off the charts.
shmerl 6y ago
Hardly. Apple has nothing to offer for high end gaming and I don't think they care about it. For me it's Linux with AMD both for CPU and GPU.
littlestymaar 6y ago
> Apple willingly or not has just obliterated the whole consumer pc market. Apple probably has the best laptop out there as of today, but I don't think Apple sales performances are impacted that much by their hardware perf actually: around 2012-2015 or something they had several years with a subpar mobile phone, both on the hardware a and the software side, and it still sold very well. A few years later, they have the best phone on the market and… it didn't change their dynamic much: it still sells very well, as before. On the laptop market, they have been selling subpar laptops for a few years without much issue, and I guess it won't change much that they now have the best one. Apple customers will get a much better deal for their bucks, which is good for their long term business, but I don't think it will drive that many people out of the Windows world[1] just for that reason (especially with the migration/compatibility issues which are even worse now than they where running on Intel). Also, many people outside of HN just don't listen to Apple “revolutionary” announcement, they have used that card too much, for no good reason most of the time, so people just stopped listening (even my friends who are actually Apple customers). [1]: which is where most people are tbh, and I don't think that many Linux people would switch either.
- noizejoy 6y ago
  Agreed - since MacOS is even more of an entire eco-system, moving in and out of that is much more of a long-term commitment for most regular users. People who are multi-platform in daily life, are much more likely to switch - and that's a rather small percentage of computer users (and of course very much over-represented here at HN). > they have used that card too much you can never have enough "magic" :-)
- littlestymaar 6y ago
  Wow it looks like I really pissed off a bunch of Apple fans by saying that they have at some point sold subpar products…
ActorNightly 6y ago
> I think Apple willingly or not has just obliterated the whole consumer pc market. They definitely won the "general public use laptop" market (if you conveniently ignore the rest of the laptop and OSX, which are utter crap IMO), but its important to understand that they really didn't invent anything, they just optimized. And optimizing something like this means you make the stuff that is most commonly used better, while reducing the functionality of the rest. Compare the Asus Zephyrus RoG 14 laptop with the Macbook pro. G14 has the older Ryzen 9 4900HS chip, and while the single core performance of the MBP is better, the multi core is the same despite the 4900HZ being a last gen chip. G14 gets about 11 hours of battery time for regular use, MBP gets about 16, but the G14 also has a discrete GPU that is superior for gaming than the integrated GPU of the mac. Different configurations for different things. Then, even ignoring the companies decision to mix and match components, the reason why you can buy any windows based laptop and install Linux on it and have 99% of the functionality working right out of the box is because of the standardization of the cpu architecture. With the Apple M1, even though Rosetta is very well built, its support is not universal across all applications, some run poorly or not at all. And while modern compilers are smart, they have a long way to go before true cross operability with all the performance enhancements. Just look at any graphical linux distro, and the fact that all android devices out there run linux, but there isn't a way to natively run it on them without the chroot method that doesn't take advantage of the hardware. So in the end, if you are someone that just wants a laptop with good performance and great battery life, and don't care about any particular software since most of your time will be spent on the web or in the Apple Ecosystem software, the M1 machines are definitely the right choice. However, if you want something like a dev machine with Linux where you just want to be able to git clone software and it work without any issues, you are most likely going to be better off with the "windows" based laptops with traditional AMD/Intel chips for quite some time.
mr_toad 6y ago
The rest of the PC market has a chicken and egg problem. Software won’t be developed for a new CPU until it has market share, but a new CPU has little chance of getting market share without software.

flatiron 6y ago

The new Ryzen mobile processors should be interesting. Their GPU drivers (while not of the best code quality) are in the mainline Linux kernel. So it all should just “work”

gnarbarian 6y ago
Currently using a Renoir laptop. It's smoking fast but I had to install a bleeding edge kernel to get the display driver to work at all. That should be fixed in the next ubuntu release though.
- threentaway 6y ago
  Weird, I had no issues with the built in display on Ubuntu 20.04, but I had to update the kernel to 5.8 to get display out over USB-C to work. Now that Ubuntu 20.10 is out and uses 5.8, I'm just using that so I don't have to mess with custom, unsigned kernels.
  - pedrocr 6y ago
    I just installed 20.04.1 on a 4750U Lenovo T14s and everything just works as far as I can tell.
- imhoguy 6y ago
  5.10.x kernels are very stable and feature complete with AMD Ryzen Renoir - I update one almost weekly once new patch version is out on Ubuntu Kernel PPA. Here is nice script which makes the update trivial: https://github.com/pimlie/ubuntu-mainline-kernel.sh https://github.com/pimlie/ubuntu-mainline-kernel.sh
unix_fan 6y ago
The new mobile chips are basically a mix of new and old stuff, with them rebranding ryzen 2 parts. Kind of disappointing.
- neogodless 6y ago
  But the slightly tweaked "old stuff" is relatively low-end - up to and including the 5700U. You'll find it in thin 'n light, budget and business laptops that will have more than enough power from a Zen 2 core. If you really absolutely need more power, you'll know it and you'll be shopping for a 5800H (or above). If you don't know enough about CPUs to even read reviews that compare the CPU to other CPUs, then you either don't need the extra IPC of Zen 3 (and you won't notice when you use your laptop day to day) or you just... don't care. If you care, get a 5600U/5800U or H line and it will never affect you. The laptops these come in should be priced accordingly.
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
What I want is to take a mobile CPU and put it in a normal form factor for power saving and excellent integrated graphics. Why is this not possible?
- philistine 6y ago
  The only company making mobile CPUs that are at all competitive in a laptop is Apple. We’ll have to wait to see what Qualcomm et al. manage to build.

yepthatsreality 6y ago

And Apple will court (allow) developers until competition shows up. Then they will shut it down and obfuscate. The fact that Apple refuses to provide FOSS drivers themselves indicates this.

unix_fan 6y ago
Apple has never provided drivers for other operating systems, including windows. The drivers used for BootCamp aren’t even developed by them.
- floatboth 6y ago
  Well, they clearly at least commissioned them from someone else, since they are the ones distributing them.
  - wtallis 6y ago
    Intel Macs are literally PCs. The Windows drivers that Apple bundled up for Boot Camp were the same drivers that the respective component manufacturers provide for other PC OEMs to redistribute. In the entire history of Intel Macs, there have been very few components used by Apple for which there wasn't already an off-the-shelf Windows driver written by someone other than Apple for the sake of their non-Apple customers.
    - floatboth 6y ago
      They do include these too, but I'm mostly talking about stuff like the trackpads (before SPI, the protocol they ran over USB was also custom, not HID)
    - astrange 6y ago
      No, Macs have a lot of custom components, and the ones with Touch Bar or T2 added even more. Those have Apple developed Windows drivers.

devwastaken 6y ago

I'd be excited to see arm competition in the desktop space but I don't believe there are any arm chips that compete in performance to high end x86. Arm can do lots of cores which is very good for servers, but single threading performance is still a significant necessity on user end hardware. The M1 is great because it's low power with optimized performance, but on a desktop you can have well over 500W+ and that's normal. I don't see anyone else making only mobile arm chips for laptops other than trying to be like a Windows Chromebook. The software compatability will be a nightmare.

zaptrem 6y ago
M1 cores outperform Comet Lake cores and are basically tied with AMD Vermeer despite using a fraction of the power.
- stefan_ 6y ago
  They are also on a different process shrug
  - unix_fan 6y ago
    Process node improvements don’ty bring that much performance.
    - stefan_ 6y ago
      Given the massive drop in power consumption and therefore heat, they seem to bring inordinate amounts of performance in a mobile chip.
      - unix_fan 6y ago
        The apple a14 brought no improvements over the last generation despite being on a superior process node.
    - floatboth 6y ago

banana_giraffe 6y ago

The response from Intel seems to be betting on the Evo platform [1], with third parties announcing laptops like the XPG Xenia XE 1 https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/evo.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/evo.ht...

andromeduck 6y ago
That looks more like ultrabooks but not watered down again - I'm not impressed.
AtlasBarfed 6y ago
So they're announcing a "platform". Smacks of managerial bottom-covering. Almost like forming a committee to investigate the problem. - where was this 1/2/10 years ago? - how would this address the fundamental CPU performance gap? - Intel has no competitive GPU offering, yet another glaring failure on their part - why would OEMs go along with this when Ryzen is a better CPU, GPU, aside from getting Intel bribes and the usual marketplace branding momentum? - will this actually get ports migrated to laptops faster? It was criminal how long it took for HDMI 2.0 to hit laptops. I get Intel doesn't own the stack/vertical integration, but Intel could have devoted 1% of its revenue to a kickass Linux OS to keep Microsoft honest a long time ago and demonstrate its full hardware. Even if only coders/techies used it like Macbooks are standard issue in the Bay, it would have been good insurance, leverage, or demoware.
- wg0 6y ago
  "I get Intel doesn't own the stack/vertical integration, but Intel could have devoted 1% of its revenue to a kickass Linux OS to keep Microsoft honest a long time ago and demonstrate its full hardware." Interesting point.. makes one wonder why didn't they do it while having a mountain of cash.
  - tambre 6y ago
    They do have something – Clear Linux [0]. Definitely not too mcuh investment, but they do differentiate by compiling packages for much newer instruction sets compared to other distros. [0]: https://clearlinux.org/ https://clearlinux.org/

MetaWhirledPeas 6y ago

They have bitten off an even bigger chunk of the meal they had nearly finished already: - Developers - Creatives - Dutiful citizens of The Ecosystem What they are no closer to biting off is gamers and hardware enthusiasts. Anyone who actually needs to open their PC for any purpose whatsoever. I know Apple wants to be the glossy Eve to all the PC market's Wall-E's, but I will continue to shun them forcefully as long as they remain hell-bent on stifling the nerdy half of all of their users. I assume the developer popularity is a result of the iPhone gold rush, which Apple exploited using exclusivity tactics. Therefore I consider it an abomination to see developers embrace the platform so thoroughly. iPhone development should feel shameful, and when there's no way to avoid it, it should be done on a dusty Mac Mini pulled from a cardboard box that was sitting in the closet ;)

bonestamp2 6y ago
> I assume the developer popularity is a result of the iPhone gold rush, which Apple exploited using exclusivity tactics. Therefore I consider it an abomination to see developers embrace the platform so thoroughly. That's not why most developers I know use macs. We use them because we got tired of spending a couple days a year (on average) unfucking our Windows machine after something goes wrong. When you're a developer, you're often installing, uninstalling and changing things... much more than the average personal or business user. That means there are a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong, and they do. Even most Google employees were using macs until they themselves started making high end Chromebooks; tens of thousands of google employees still use macs. Some users have moved on to linux, but most stay on mac because they want to spend time in the OS and not on the OS. I can appreciate both perspectives, there's no right answer for everyone. I share your wish that the hardware was more serviceable but everything is a compromise at the end of the day and that's the compromise I'm willing to take in exchange for the other benefits. Some complain about the price, but the high end macbook pros aren't even more expensive than windows workstation laptops. Our company actually saved several hundred dollars per machine when we switched from ThinkPads with the same specs. Not to mention, our IT support costs were cut almost in half with macs. So, aside from gaming or some specific edgecase requirements, it's hard for me to justify owning a PC. That said, I have one of those edgecase requirements with one of my clients so I have a ThinkPad just for them. But, it stays in a drawer when I'm not working on that specific thing.

tambourine_man 6y ago

> but I am pretty sure my chances of getting a mac in the future are zero Why?

cambalache 6y ago
Price for one, also I still consider PC and Linux (and god heavens even windows) more open than Mac. I also work with many windows-only automation software.
- chrisweekly 6y ago
  sorry but what's "PC" above, given it's not windows?
  - cambalache 6y ago
    A generic term for hardware able to run linux and/or windows. Or any personal computer not build by Apple. You can have any combination of open/closed hardware and OS.
monkmartinez 6y ago
I cannot speak for OP, but software is the reason for me. I can not run Solidworks on MacOS without bootcamp or other tricks, for example. Photogrammetry apps? GIS apps? CNC CAM apps? I mean, compare the Mac[1] compatible apps to the catalog of Apps Autodesk has. The fact of the matter is GPU support on MacOS is just not there in the same way it is with windows. It is really hard to justify the price of Apple when you compare directly to Windows offerings spec for spec. When you compare the sheer volume of software available for Windows as compared to MacOS, especially if you need a discrete GPU there are really no comparisons. [1]https://www.autodesk.com/solutions/mac-compatible-software https://www.autodesk.com/solutions/mac-compatible-software
- criddell 6y ago
  I'm always surprised when I see discussions about somebody dumping one operating system for another. Isn't your operating system choice dictated by the applications you want to run?

vbezhenar 6y ago

What exactly do you expect? x86 is quite competitive. M1 might be slightly better, but it's not like it's miles ahead.

cambalache 6y ago
I want a return to the status-quo when for 80% (it could be even less but let's not dwell in the number) of the price of an Apple laptop I could get a windows/linux machine matching or surpassing its specs(including stuff like battery life,energy consumption, screen dpi, noise, etc). This is not true now and I am not seeing an option in the short term.
- shawnz 6y ago
  Perhaps it is still true, but Apple is somehow becoming the budget option in that equation?
- astrange 6y ago
  That was never really possible, or certainly wasn't ever since the laptops went to HiDPI displays. There were just a lot of teenagers showing off their ability to make gamer PC parts lists and claim that it's better than a Mac, but the value of the display/trackpad/integration have been good for a long time. It's just now the quality of the SoC is that good.
  - other_herbert 6y ago
    I’ve had my m1 air for a few weeks now and going back to the trackpad on my Dell XP’s 15 feels like the stone ages... it’s amazing... and safari on the Mac even makes Jenkins and Jira fast...
cwhiz 6y ago
Fiddling around on an M1 MBA it felt faster than my 2020 16" MBP. It's half the weight, seems to get double the battery life, and costs less than 1/3. I just can't even imagine what the gap is going to look like when Apple really refines this down.

fossuser 6y ago

You might have to bite the bullet and get a mac - I don't see much promise from others in this space. Intel's CEO change may save them, but they're definitely facing an existential threat they've failed to adapt to for years. Amazon will move to ARM on servers and probably some decent design there, but that won't really reach the consumer hardware market (probably - though I suppose they could do something interesting in this space if they wanted to). Windows faces issues with third party integration, OEMs, chip manufacturers and coordinating all of that. Nadella is smart and is mostly moving to Azure services and O365 on strategy - I think windows and the consumer market matter less. Apple owns their entire stack and is well positioned to continue to expand the delta between their design/integration and everyone else continuing to flounder. AMD isn't that much better positioned than Intel and doesn't have a solution for the coordination problem either. Nvidia may buy ARM, but that's only one piece of getting things to work well. I'm long on Apple here, short on Intel and AMD. We'll see what happens.

monkmartinez 6y ago
Are you saying you don't see much promise for AMD, Intel and Nvidia in the GPU space or with computers in general? I had a hard time following your logic. Apple may own their stack, but there are a TON of use cases where that stack doesn't even form a blip on the radar of the people who purchase computer gear.
- fossuser 6y ago
  My prediction is x86 is dead. External GPUs will remain and I think Nvidia has an advantage in that niche currently. The reason stack ownership matters is because it allows tight integration which leads to better chip design (and better performance/efficiency). Windows has run on ARM for a while for example, but it sucks. The reason it sucks is complicated but largely has to do with bad incentives and coordination problems between multiple groups. Apple doesn't have this problem. As Apple's RISC design performance improvements (paired with extremely low power requirements) become more and more obvious x86 manufacturers will be left unable to compete. Cloud providers will move to ARM chipsets of their own design (see: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/) and AMD/Intel will be on the path to extinction. I'd argue Apple's M1 machines are already at this level and they're version 0 (if you haven't played with one you should). This is an e-risk for Intel and AMD, they should have been preparing for this for the last decade, instead Intel doubled down on their old designs to maximize profit in the short term at the cost of extinction in the long term. It's not an argument about individual consumer choice (though that will shift too), the entire market will move.

altcognito 6y ago

Apple willingly or not increased their market share? Seriously, the AstroTurf in this thread is off the charts.

shmerl 6y ago

Hardly. Apple has nothing to offer for high end gaming and I don't think they care about it. For me it's Linux with AMD both for CPU and GPU.

littlestymaar 6y ago

> Apple willingly or not has just obliterated the whole consumer pc market. Apple probably has the best laptop out there as of today, but I don't think Apple sales performances are impacted that much by their hardware perf actually: around 2012-2015 or something they had several years with a subpar mobile phone, both on the hardware a and the software side, and it still sold very well. A few years later, they have the best phone on the market and… it didn't change their dynamic much: it still sells very well, as before. On the laptop market, they have been selling subpar laptops for a few years without much issue, and I guess it won't change much that they now have the best one. Apple customers will get a much better deal for their bucks, which is good for their long term business, but I don't think it will drive that many people out of the Windows world[1] just for that reason (especially with the migration/compatibility issues which are even worse now than they where running on Intel). Also, many people outside of HN just don't listen to Apple “revolutionary” announcement, they have used that card too much, for no good reason most of the time, so people just stopped listening (even my friends who are actually Apple customers). [1]: which is where most people are tbh, and I don't think that many Linux people would switch either.

noizejoy 6y ago
Agreed - since MacOS is even more of an entire eco-system, moving in and out of that is much more of a long-term commitment for most regular users. People who are multi-platform in daily life, are much more likely to switch - and that's a rather small percentage of computer users (and of course very much over-represented here at HN). > they have used that card too much you can never have enough "magic" :-)
littlestymaar 6y ago
Wow it looks like I really pissed off a bunch of Apple fans by saying that they have at some point sold subpar products…

ActorNightly 6y ago

> I think Apple willingly or not has just obliterated the whole consumer pc market. They definitely won the "general public use laptop" market (if you conveniently ignore the rest of the laptop and OSX, which are utter crap IMO), but its important to understand that they really didn't invent anything, they just optimized. And optimizing something like this means you make the stuff that is most commonly used better, while reducing the functionality of the rest. Compare the Asus Zephyrus RoG 14 laptop with the Macbook pro. G14 has the older Ryzen 9 4900HS chip, and while the single core performance of the MBP is better, the multi core is the same despite the 4900HZ being a last gen chip. G14 gets about 11 hours of battery time for regular use, MBP gets about 16, but the G14 also has a discrete GPU that is superior for gaming than the integrated GPU of the mac. Different configurations for different things. Then, even ignoring the companies decision to mix and match components, the reason why you can buy any windows based laptop and install Linux on it and have 99% of the functionality working right out of the box is because of the standardization of the cpu architecture. With the Apple M1, even though Rosetta is very well built, its support is not universal across all applications, some run poorly or not at all. And while modern compilers are smart, they have a long way to go before true cross operability with all the performance enhancements. Just look at any graphical linux distro, and the fact that all android devices out there run linux, but there isn't a way to natively run it on them without the chroot method that doesn't take advantage of the hardware. So in the end, if you are someone that just wants a laptop with good performance and great battery life, and don't care about any particular software since most of your time will be spent on the web or in the Apple Ecosystem software, the M1 machines are definitely the right choice. However, if you want something like a dev machine with Linux where you just want to be able to git clone software and it work without any issues, you are most likely going to be better off with the "windows" based laptops with traditional AMD/Intel chips for quite some time.

mr_toad 6y ago

The rest of the PC market has a chicken and egg problem. Software won’t be developed for a new CPU until it has market share, but a new CPU has little chance of getting market share without software.