4 ms·

That is all well and good. Great actually. And it makes sense. The high efficiency reduced instruction set computer has highly optimized architecture to improve

That is all well and good. Great actually. And it makes sense. The high efficiency reduced instruction set computer has highly optimized architecture to improve efficiency. But we all knew that deep down. It's like the Ford Tempo. A mere 80 horsepower mated to a well designed and highly optimized transmission gave levels of performance that were higher than other cars in the same market. What I can't stand are all the people saying the M1 is capable of replacing high end x86 computers. It's like owning a Tempo and mistakenly thinking your highly specialized transmission means you can walk up and challenge a 6.7L Dodge Challenger to a race. It's completely ridiculous and demonstrates a stunning lack of self awareness.

proxyon 5y ago
I think you're right on this. I've also been irritated at the "eGPUs / dGPUs are no longer necessary" crowd. If an SoC GPU with the performance / size of an RTX could fit into a notebook we'd actually have them in notebooks... but we don't. The fact of the matter is that this technology doesn't exist. So the allegations that GPUs are no longer necessary because SoCs have already wholesale replaced them are comical.
riggsdk 5y ago
I'm curious what you think of all the benchmarks that sais otherwise. In a race between a motorized lawn mower and a racecar - if the lawn mower wins which one is ultimately the best "racecar"?
- steve76 5y ago
  More like, I need a racecar, because I live in a Mad Max death race. vs I ride a quiet lawn mower at dawn and do my chores in a happy culture where people help each other. My computer is 10 years old. I paid $100 for it when I bought it used. It runs fine because I know what I'm doing, and now I feel guilty about that. I wished I would run slack now. I bought it because of 4K streaming, but then shortly after all the home theater devices came out. Should we really be encouraging borrowing and debt so people can buy new TVs and phones they throw away every year? Wouldn't that capital be better spent on something like medical research? You can borrow all the money you want. Good luck getting a job with them.
spideymans 5y ago
>What I can't stand are all the people saying the M1 is capable of replacing high end x86 computers. Whether or not this is possible completely depends on their unique workload. The M1 could probaly obviate any x86 chip for the average programmers. But that wouldn't be the case for gamer workloads, for example.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  I was thinking hard about getting an m1 mini but the upgrade pricing for ssd/ram is offensive and you can't upgrade them later. I will likely end up getting a newer ryzen system but it will end up costing much more for the cpu+motherboard, but will have access to dedicated graphics and I can actually just move my current 32gb of ddr4, video card, and SSDs over.
- zelon88 5y ago
  Is it really about workload though? A high end gaming PC will compile typescript, play games with high quality graphics, and run your 100 browser tabs. Let's be honest, an Intel Core 2 Duo would obviate most programmer workloads just fine. By your logic the Apple M1 is comparable to a high-end x86 chips, but you go on in the same breath with the disclaimer that it is "only certain workloads." That is my point. A high end PC doesn't care about your workload. It is unobjectively fast. Period. You are the Tempo driver claiming that you would have beaten that Challenger if the temperature of the drag strip were just a little bit hotter.... But that Challenger doesn't care about operating conditions or workload or whatever. It will win today, tomorrow, and the next day while you're claiming that the Tempo is "comparable in the snow on Tuesdays."
  - spideymans 5y ago
    >Let's be honest, an Intel Core 2 Duo would obviate most programmer workloads just fine. That's absolutely not the case. At least for my workflows. My work-issued five year old Intel i5 XPS would get incredibly slow, and incredibly hot when running unit tests or compiling code in Angular. Goes without saying that a Core 2 Duo would be simply unusable. My personal machine was a 2018 i5 MacBook Pro. On that machine I could open just one iOS Simulator or Android Emulator and expect to have merely decent performance. And by decent, I mean the system would be running hot, the fans would be loud and the system would be noticeably slower. Having multiple simulators or emulators open is simply not a thing this Intel notebook was willing to do. Meanwhile on my M1, I've ran six iOS Simulators / Android Emulators at once, and the system did not slow down, at all (for reasons discussed in this article). In a futile attempt to push my M1 to its limits in a dev workflow, I even trained TensorFlow models on it. Surprise, surprise: not only was the model trained in a decent time (for a notebook without a dGPU; I wasn't expecting miracles), but it did all this without any perceptible slowdown in system performance. The absolute worse thing I could have said about the M1s performance here was that the MacBook Air's chassis got a little hot. And keep in mind that when I way a little hot, I mean that it still produced less heat than my Intel notebooks often produce when watching a 4K YouTube video (and it does this all without a fan!). So in short, no, the Intel Core 2 Duo would absolutely not be fine for my programmer workloads. And, yes, the M1 has pretty much obviated Intel's lineup for my work. Dare I say, the M1 MacBook Air has been the single biggest quality-of-life upgrade I've had as a developer. It's the first notebook I've used where I've never been bottlenecked by system performance. It's a fantastic machine through and through.
agloeregrets 5y ago
...This is partially true in that the M1 is overhyped by some... But the M1 is also literally, by the numbers, the fastest machine in the world for some workloads. For us, my M1 Macbook Air compiles our large TypeScript Angular app in half the time of a current i9 with 64Gb ram on node v15. These are real-world, tested, and validated results. Nothing comes close..because the chip is designed to run JS as fast as physically possible. It's insanely fast at some workloads. Not all of them of course, but it's no Tempo. I would say it's more like a Tesla, faster than it should be considering the HP (a model S is much faster than cars with way more HP) but faster due to 'How' it makes the power rather than how much. That said, I replaced a $2000 iMac 4K with a base model Macbook Air and it was a huge upgrade for my day to day work. It really is perfectly fine to replace some workstations.
- postalrat 5y ago
  What environment you compiling your large typescript app in? Windows with WSL on a 7400 rpm disk drive? I think you have other things going on that's slowing down the compilation on the i9. Maybe if run linux and install a fast SSD your i9 will be faster than your m1. Then by your logic you should ditch the m1.
  - agloeregrets 5y ago
    Ironically it was a Samsung Pci-E drive in non-WSL Windows. A 16 inch Macbook Pro i9 also put out roughly alike times in MacOS. Node compile is a single-core workload with a very strong focus on small fast translated instructions, the M1 is actually that fast at that specific task.
    - postalrat 5y ago
      https://doesitarm.com/tv/m1-macbook-vs-intel-i9-in-continuous-typescript-build-test-dell-with-intel-i7-the-real-winner-i-8zuoeh5dwm/ https://doesitarm.com/tv/m1-macbook-vs-intel-i9-in-continuou... That dude says both his intels are faster.
- king_magic 5y ago

proxyon 5y ago

I think you're right on this. I've also been irritated at the "eGPUs / dGPUs are no longer necessary" crowd. If an SoC GPU with the performance / size of an RTX could fit into a notebook we'd actually have them in notebooks... but we don't. The fact of the matter is that this technology doesn't exist. So the allegations that GPUs are no longer necessary because SoCs have already wholesale replaced them are comical.

riggsdk 5y ago

I'm curious what you think of all the benchmarks that sais otherwise. In a race between a motorized lawn mower and a racecar - if the lawn mower wins which one is ultimately the best "racecar"?

steve76 5y ago
More like, I need a racecar, because I live in a Mad Max death race. vs I ride a quiet lawn mower at dawn and do my chores in a happy culture where people help each other. My computer is 10 years old. I paid $100 for it when I bought it used. It runs fine because I know what I'm doing, and now I feel guilty about that. I wished I would run slack now. I bought it because of 4K streaming, but then shortly after all the home theater devices came out. Should we really be encouraging borrowing and debt so people can buy new TVs and phones they throw away every year? Wouldn't that capital be better spent on something like medical research? You can borrow all the money you want. Good luck getting a job with them.

spideymans 5y ago

>What I can't stand are all the people saying the M1 is capable of replacing high end x86 computers. Whether or not this is possible completely depends on their unique workload. The M1 could probaly obviate any x86 chip for the average programmers. But that wouldn't be the case for gamer workloads, for example.

LegitShady 5y ago
I was thinking hard about getting an m1 mini but the upgrade pricing for ssd/ram is offensive and you can't upgrade them later. I will likely end up getting a newer ryzen system but it will end up costing much more for the cpu+motherboard, but will have access to dedicated graphics and I can actually just move my current 32gb of ddr4, video card, and SSDs over.
zelon88 5y ago
Is it really about workload though? A high end gaming PC will compile typescript, play games with high quality graphics, and run your 100 browser tabs. Let's be honest, an Intel Core 2 Duo would obviate most programmer workloads just fine. By your logic the Apple M1 is comparable to a high-end x86 chips, but you go on in the same breath with the disclaimer that it is "only certain workloads." That is my point. A high end PC doesn't care about your workload. It is unobjectively fast. Period. You are the Tempo driver claiming that you would have beaten that Challenger if the temperature of the drag strip were just a little bit hotter.... But that Challenger doesn't care about operating conditions or workload or whatever. It will win today, tomorrow, and the next day while you're claiming that the Tempo is "comparable in the snow on Tuesdays."
- spideymans 5y ago
  >Let's be honest, an Intel Core 2 Duo would obviate most programmer workloads just fine. That's absolutely not the case. At least for my workflows. My work-issued five year old Intel i5 XPS would get incredibly slow, and incredibly hot when running unit tests or compiling code in Angular. Goes without saying that a Core 2 Duo would be simply unusable. My personal machine was a 2018 i5 MacBook Pro. On that machine I could open just one iOS Simulator or Android Emulator and expect to have merely decent performance. And by decent, I mean the system would be running hot, the fans would be loud and the system would be noticeably slower. Having multiple simulators or emulators open is simply not a thing this Intel notebook was willing to do. Meanwhile on my M1, I've ran six iOS Simulators / Android Emulators at once, and the system did not slow down, at all (for reasons discussed in this article). In a futile attempt to push my M1 to its limits in a dev workflow, I even trained TensorFlow models on it. Surprise, surprise: not only was the model trained in a decent time (for a notebook without a dGPU; I wasn't expecting miracles), but it did all this without any perceptible slowdown in system performance. The absolute worse thing I could have said about the M1s performance here was that the MacBook Air's chassis got a little hot. And keep in mind that when I way a little hot, I mean that it still produced less heat than my Intel notebooks often produce when watching a 4K YouTube video (and it does this all without a fan!). So in short, no, the Intel Core 2 Duo would absolutely not be fine for my programmer workloads. And, yes, the M1 has pretty much obviated Intel's lineup for my work. Dare I say, the M1 MacBook Air has been the single biggest quality-of-life upgrade I've had as a developer. It's the first notebook I've used where I've never been bottlenecked by system performance. It's a fantastic machine through and through.

agloeregrets 5y ago

...This is partially true in that the M1 is overhyped by some... But the M1 is also literally, by the numbers, the fastest machine in the world for some workloads. For us, my M1 Macbook Air compiles our large TypeScript Angular app in half the time of a current i9 with 64Gb ram on node v15. These are real-world, tested, and validated results. Nothing comes close..because the chip is designed to run JS as fast as physically possible. It's insanely fast at some workloads. Not all of them of course, but it's no Tempo. I would say it's more like a Tesla, faster than it should be considering the HP (a model S is much faster than cars with way more HP) but faster due to 'How' it makes the power rather than how much. That said, I replaced a $2000 iMac 4K with a base model Macbook Air and it was a huge upgrade for my day to day work. It really is perfectly fine to replace some workstations.

postalrat 5y ago
What environment you compiling your large typescript app in? Windows with WSL on a 7400 rpm disk drive? I think you have other things going on that's slowing down the compilation on the i9. Maybe if run linux and install a fast SSD your i9 will be faster than your m1. Then by your logic you should ditch the m1.
- agloeregrets 5y ago
  Ironically it was a Samsung Pci-E drive in non-WSL Windows. A 16 inch Macbook Pro i9 also put out roughly alike times in MacOS. Node compile is a single-core workload with a very strong focus on small fast translated instructions, the M1 is actually that fast at that specific task.
  - postalrat 5y ago
    https://doesitarm.com/tv/m1-macbook-vs-intel-i9-in-continuous-typescript-build-test-dell-with-intel-i7-the-real-winner-i-8zuoeh5dwm/ https://doesitarm.com/tv/m1-macbook-vs-intel-i9-in-continuou... That dude says both his intels are faster.
king_magic 5y ago