6 ms·

Sounds like the consensus here is that the M1 feels faster, and is actually faster, for a lot of tasks. So, for a lot of engineers, the M1 is the better choice

Sounds like the consensus here is that the M1 feels faster, and is actually faster, for a lot of tasks. So, for a lot of engineers, the M1 is the better choice over Intels. (Faster compile times are a good thing for devs, among other things) In that regard, the moment feels similar to the mid 2000s, when you suddenly saw a huge uptick in Macbooks at technical conferences: software developers seemed to gravitate in droves to the Mac platform (over windows or linux). Over the last 5+ years, that's cooled a bit. But I wonder if the M1 will solidify or grow Apple's (perceived) dominance among developers?

artursapek 5y ago
I switched away from Macs to Thinkpads when the butterfly keyboards came out. Just happily switched back to Macs and loving my M1 Air.
- simondotau 5y ago
  It’s amazing how much of a dumpster fire the butterfly keyboard was, but perhaps more bewilderingly how long they persisted with it. That keyboard might well have done more than any other product design decision in the last decade to push people away from the Mac platform.
  - artursapek 5y ago
    I think it did, and the touch bar was a close second. Thankfully, whoever was in charge of those decisions seems to have lost decision-making power and Apple has walked back both.
    - totalZero 5y ago
      > whoever was in charge of those decisions seems to have lost decision-making power I guess we're both speculating here, but even if the same people were in charge, I think they breathed a sigh of relief when they realized that the personal computing segment had spiced up again. From about 2014 to 2019, Mac revenue basically plateaued in line with the entire laptop market. People were crazy about phones but laptops had hit a wall. When you have to sell laptops to people whose yesteryear laptops do everything they need, you start adding random bullshit to the product because you have to capture the market's attention somehow. I think this is how we ended up with the touch bar. It's a step backward, but it's flashy and made the product look fresh(er) despite the form factor being identical to what they were selling in 2013.
    - dustyharddrive 5y ago
      the touch bar still ships with every current-gen MBP though; the Air never had one
      - artursapek 5y ago
        It's going away though
  - buu700 5y ago
    If the M1 MBA (or early 2020 Intel MBA) didn't exist, when my 2013 MBP started dying last month I would have dropped Apple for an Ubuntu XPS. I don't understand how a company of that size kept up a blunder of that magnitude for half a decade, but a half-broken keyboard with an entire missing row of keys was just a nonstarter.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  That really confused me until I discovered that Macs had something called a "butterfly keyboard" as well. At first I thought you switched to Thinkpads in the mid 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ThinkPad_701 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ThinkPad_701
smoldesu 5y ago
> So, for a lot of engineers, the M1 is the better choice over Intels. I don't know which engineers you hang out with, but the only "engineer" I know who uses an M1 Mac does web design. Besides that, the M1 doesn't support most of the software that most engineers are using (unless you're working in a field already focused on ARM), and the fragility of a Macbook isn't really suited for a workshop environment. Among them, Thinkpads still reign supreme (though one guy has a Hackintosh, so maybe you were right all along?) > But I wonder if the M1 will solidify or grow Apple's (perceived) dominance among developers? Developers are going to be extremely split on this one. ARM is still in it's infancy right now, especially for desktop applications, so unless your business exclusively relies on MacOS customers, there's not much of a value proposition in compiling a special version of your program for 7% of your users. Because of that, MacOS on ARM has one of the worst package databases in recent memory. Besides, there's a lightning round full of other reasons why MacOS is a pretty poor fit for high-performance computing: - BSD-styled memory management causes frequent page faults and thrashes memory/swap - Quartz and other necessary kernel processes consume inordinate amounts of compute - MacPorts and Brew are both pretty miserable package managers compared to the industry standard options. - Macs have notoriously terrible hardware compatability - Abstracting execution makes it harder to package software, harder to run it, and harder to debug it when something goes wrong ...and many more! In other words, I doubt the M1 will do much to corroborate Apple's perceived superiority among the tech-y crowd. Unless people were really that worried about Twitter pulling up a few dozen milliseconds faster, I fail to see how it's any better of an "engineering" laptop than it's alternatives. If anything, it's GPU is significantly weaker than most other laptops on the market.
- 8fGTBjZxBcHq 5y ago
  This is a lot of really well expressed information that completely fails to grapple with the fact that most developers write code for the web and apple computers are extremely popular among web developers. All of the things you mentioned are also true of intel macs, which again are wildly popular among web devs of all kinds. If you can't explain the popularity of those machines in spite of those limitations, I don't see why I should accept those as reasons why apple arm computers won't be popular.

artursapek 5y ago

I switched away from Macs to Thinkpads when the butterfly keyboards came out. Just happily switched back to Macs and loving my M1 Air.

simondotau 5y ago
It’s amazing how much of a dumpster fire the butterfly keyboard was, but perhaps more bewilderingly how long they persisted with it. That keyboard might well have done more than any other product design decision in the last decade to push people away from the Mac platform.
- artursapek 5y ago
  I think it did, and the touch bar was a close second. Thankfully, whoever was in charge of those decisions seems to have lost decision-making power and Apple has walked back both.
  - totalZero 5y ago
    > whoever was in charge of those decisions seems to have lost decision-making power I guess we're both speculating here, but even if the same people were in charge, I think they breathed a sigh of relief when they realized that the personal computing segment had spiced up again. From about 2014 to 2019, Mac revenue basically plateaued in line with the entire laptop market. People were crazy about phones but laptops had hit a wall. When you have to sell laptops to people whose yesteryear laptops do everything they need, you start adding random bullshit to the product because you have to capture the market's attention somehow. I think this is how we ended up with the touch bar. It's a step backward, but it's flashy and made the product look fresh(er) despite the form factor being identical to what they were selling in 2013.
  - dustyharddrive 5y ago
    the touch bar still ships with every current-gen MBP though; the Air never had one
    - artursapek 5y ago
      It's going away though
- buu700 5y ago
  If the M1 MBA (or early 2020 Intel MBA) didn't exist, when my 2013 MBP started dying last month I would have dropped Apple for an Ubuntu XPS. I don't understand how a company of that size kept up a blunder of that magnitude for half a decade, but a half-broken keyboard with an entire missing row of keys was just a nonstarter.
aidenn0 5y ago
That really confused me until I discovered that Macs had something called a "butterfly keyboard" as well. At first I thought you switched to Thinkpads in the mid 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ThinkPad_701 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ThinkPad_701

smoldesu 5y ago

> So, for a lot of engineers, the M1 is the better choice over Intels. I don't know which engineers you hang out with, but the only "engineer" I know who uses an M1 Mac does web design. Besides that, the M1 doesn't support most of the software that most engineers are using (unless you're working in a field already focused on ARM), and the fragility of a Macbook isn't really suited for a workshop environment. Among them, Thinkpads still reign supreme (though one guy has a Hackintosh, so maybe you were right all along?) > But I wonder if the M1 will solidify or grow Apple's (perceived) dominance among developers? Developers are going to be extremely split on this one. ARM is still in it's infancy right now, especially for desktop applications, so unless your business exclusively relies on MacOS customers, there's not much of a value proposition in compiling a special version of your program for 7% of your users. Because of that, MacOS on ARM has one of the worst package databases in recent memory. Besides, there's a lightning round full of other reasons why MacOS is a pretty poor fit for high-performance computing: - BSD-styled memory management causes frequent page faults and thrashes memory/swap - Quartz and other necessary kernel processes consume inordinate amounts of compute - MacPorts and Brew are both pretty miserable package managers compared to the industry standard options. - Macs have notoriously terrible hardware compatability - Abstracting execution makes it harder to package software, harder to run it, and harder to debug it when something goes wrong ...and many more! In other words, I doubt the M1 will do much to corroborate Apple's perceived superiority among the tech-y crowd. Unless people were really that worried about Twitter pulling up a few dozen milliseconds faster, I fail to see how it's any better of an "engineering" laptop than it's alternatives. If anything, it's GPU is significantly weaker than most other laptops on the market.

8fGTBjZxBcHq 5y ago
This is a lot of really well expressed information that completely fails to grapple with the fact that most developers write code for the web and apple computers are extremely popular among web developers. All of the things you mentioned are also true of intel macs, which again are wildly popular among web devs of all kinds. If you can't explain the popularity of those machines in spite of those limitations, I don't see why I should accept those as reasons why apple arm computers won't be popular.