4 ms·

How bad is that, though? The success and impressive performance, battery life, temperature of the Apple M1 suggests that this kind of integration can have outst

by jb1991 5y ago

How bad is that, though? The success and impressive performance, battery life, temperature of the Apple M1 suggests that this kind of integration can have outstanding results. So there are tradeoffs, at least.

beckman466 5y ago
Apple M1 didn't come out of nowhere, they learned from everything that came before. Your comment sort of implies that the innovations came solely from being developed behind closed doors (or in some kind of vacuum), which denies credit to workers who made the thousands of incremental breakthroughs that landed in the commons and which has helped us to arrive in the place we are now.
- ketzo 5y ago
  No, GP made a pretty specific point: that vertical integration can clearly provide some serious benefits in the realm of computer hardware. Now, the fact that vertical integration usually implies closed doors is relevant, yeah; but I don't think anyone is denying credit anywhere, and I think it's important to acknowledge upsides.
  - 8note 5y ago
    I think there's a stronger argument that breaking backwards compatibility allows for big increases in performance
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
What good are performance and battery life if you don't get to decide which apps you are permitted to run on this device? Does the recent removal of apps [1] from russian appstore ring some bells? [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/world/europe/russia-navalny-app-election.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/world/europe/russia-naval...
- jb1991 5y ago
  Assuming we are talking about the desktop, you can run whatever you’d like. The App Store is just one avenue for software distribution on the Mac. The situation is of course different on iOS.
  - sneak 5y ago
    > Assuming we are talking about the desktop, you can run whatever you’d like. Only sometimes. Have you ever tried unlocking a Pixelbook to run a different OS? It needs a custom cable and significant RE efforts by the community.
    - jb1991 5y ago
      Sorry, I thought the question was a critique of macOS, not the Pixelbook, and I offered a clarification that macOS is actually pretty open and you can run whatever app you like, in most cases.
      - sneak 5y ago
        For the moment. You also can't run any of the iOS apps (an advertised feature of macOS on M1) if you disable SIP, so this isn't really a true statement logically speaking.
    - linux_is_nice 5y ago
      For what it's worth, another option for disabling the write-protect is to temporarily remove the battery.
- ajconway 5y ago
  > What good are performance and battery life For the average consumer — everything. I'm kind of torn between the two opinions. I wish my iPhone would be able to run anything I want to run. I also recognize that nobody forced me to buy this iPhone. Mobile phones are mandated to have emergency calling functionality. Maybe in the future we'll have some "general purpose computing as a human right" law.
Jensson 5y ago
> impressive performance, battery life, temperature of the Apple M1 From my perspective Apple just made it so non Apple hardware couldn't get fast CPU's for another year. M1 is a 5nm CPU that is faster than 7nm low power CPU's, and uses less power than 7nm high power CPU's, but to me it isn't obvious that it will perform significantly better than others 5nm low power CPU's when those hits the market. Others 5nm will hit the market once Apples contracts to use all 5nm fabs runs out, but before then we are stuck with only Apple having that tech. You might think that this situation sounds great, but it doesn't look that great to me. I'd prefer if Apple didn't work to lock in hardware components and tech as they do.
- yazaddaruvala 5y ago
  I feel you’re missing the fact that Apple fund’s TSMC to build 5nm and now 3nm at scale. Yes without Apple’s money TSMC would have still built 5nm, but likely a few years later. ex. https://wccftech.com/apple-secures-3nm-tsmc-chip-production/ https://wccftech.com/apple-secures-3nm-tsmc-chip-production/
  - Jensson 5y ago
    Ok, but I still don't see how M1 performance is evidence that this kind if integration is a great thing? Rather M1 is evidence that excessive money from one area can be used to expand your influence in other areas. Rather, the "tight integration" here has nothing to do with technical bits but instead economic, Apple can guarantee funds for them since they have money from other parts of the stack. Funds of that scale doesn't exist for many other companies, except Google. Google could also do something like that and compete with Apple, which might be why Google is now entering this space?
    - yazaddaruvala 5y ago
      > Ok, but I still don't see how M1 performance is evidence that this kind if integration is a great thing? Because humanity and every company now has access to 5nm infrastructure? Because Apple created the greatest marketing campaign TSMC ever benefited from? Because Apple proved that custom silicon design is no longer fools gold and can be profitable and competitive? Because Apple showcased that more instruction parallelism, heterogeneous core types, co-processors, etc are all beneficial design choices and every competing company can take advantage of them? Because Intel is now competing with TSMC? Because AMD and Intel might lose the monopoly on x86 and need to compete? Because Rosetta 2 and universal binaries pave the way for Apple to invest and eventually transition to RISC-5 or …? Do you not see any of these points as great? If not, why not? I’ll use your reasons to try to come up with better examples.
fendy3002 5y ago
If only they make them vendor locked and not following specification. I guess that spareparts are harder to get and third party repairing will be almost non existent. It'll also make new competitors with good concepts harder to come into industry (steam deck, framework laptop). Imagine if every car vendor (bmw, mercedes, toyota, etc) start making a very specific tire that can only be used by their own model.

by jb1991 5y ago

beckman466 5y ago

Apple M1 didn't come out of nowhere, they learned from everything that came before. Your comment sort of implies that the innovations came solely from being developed behind closed doors (or in some kind of vacuum), which denies credit to workers who made the thousands of incremental breakthroughs that landed in the commons and which has helped us to arrive in the place we are now.

ketzo 5y ago
No, GP made a pretty specific point: that vertical integration can clearly provide some serious benefits in the realm of computer hardware. Now, the fact that vertical integration usually implies closed doors is relevant, yeah; but I don't think anyone is denying credit anywhere, and I think it's important to acknowledge upsides.
- 8note 5y ago
  I think there's a stronger argument that breaking backwards compatibility allows for big increases in performance

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

What good are performance and battery life if you don't get to decide which apps you are permitted to run on this device? Does the recent removal of apps [1] from russian appstore ring some bells? [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/world/europe/russia-navalny-app-election.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/world/europe/russia-naval...

jb1991 5y ago
Assuming we are talking about the desktop, you can run whatever you’d like. The App Store is just one avenue for software distribution on the Mac. The situation is of course different on iOS.
- sneak 5y ago
  > Assuming we are talking about the desktop, you can run whatever you’d like. Only sometimes. Have you ever tried unlocking a Pixelbook to run a different OS? It needs a custom cable and significant RE efforts by the community.
  - jb1991 5y ago
    Sorry, I thought the question was a critique of macOS, not the Pixelbook, and I offered a clarification that macOS is actually pretty open and you can run whatever app you like, in most cases.
    - sneak 5y ago
      For the moment. You also can't run any of the iOS apps (an advertised feature of macOS on M1) if you disable SIP, so this isn't really a true statement logically speaking.
  - linux_is_nice 5y ago
    For what it's worth, another option for disabling the write-protect is to temporarily remove the battery.
ajconway 5y ago
> What good are performance and battery life For the average consumer — everything. I'm kind of torn between the two opinions. I wish my iPhone would be able to run anything I want to run. I also recognize that nobody forced me to buy this iPhone. Mobile phones are mandated to have emergency calling functionality. Maybe in the future we'll have some "general purpose computing as a human right" law.

Jensson 5y ago

> impressive performance, battery life, temperature of the Apple M1 From my perspective Apple just made it so non Apple hardware couldn't get fast CPU's for another year. M1 is a 5nm CPU that is faster than 7nm low power CPU's, and uses less power than 7nm high power CPU's, but to me it isn't obvious that it will perform significantly better than others 5nm low power CPU's when those hits the market. Others 5nm will hit the market once Apples contracts to use all 5nm fabs runs out, but before then we are stuck with only Apple having that tech. You might think that this situation sounds great, but it doesn't look that great to me. I'd prefer if Apple didn't work to lock in hardware components and tech as they do.

yazaddaruvala 5y ago
I feel you’re missing the fact that Apple fund’s TSMC to build 5nm and now 3nm at scale. Yes without Apple’s money TSMC would have still built 5nm, but likely a few years later. ex. https://wccftech.com/apple-secures-3nm-tsmc-chip-production/ https://wccftech.com/apple-secures-3nm-tsmc-chip-production/
- Jensson 5y ago
  Ok, but I still don't see how M1 performance is evidence that this kind if integration is a great thing? Rather M1 is evidence that excessive money from one area can be used to expand your influence in other areas. Rather, the "tight integration" here has nothing to do with technical bits but instead economic, Apple can guarantee funds for them since they have money from other parts of the stack. Funds of that scale doesn't exist for many other companies, except Google. Google could also do something like that and compete with Apple, which might be why Google is now entering this space?
  - yazaddaruvala 5y ago
    > Ok, but I still don't see how M1 performance is evidence that this kind if integration is a great thing? Because humanity and every company now has access to 5nm infrastructure? Because Apple created the greatest marketing campaign TSMC ever benefited from? Because Apple proved that custom silicon design is no longer fools gold and can be profitable and competitive? Because Apple showcased that more instruction parallelism, heterogeneous core types, co-processors, etc are all beneficial design choices and every competing company can take advantage of them? Because Intel is now competing with TSMC? Because AMD and Intel might lose the monopoly on x86 and need to compete? Because Rosetta 2 and universal binaries pave the way for Apple to invest and eventually transition to RISC-5 or …? Do you not see any of these points as great? If not, why not? I’ll use your reasons to try to come up with better examples.

fendy3002 5y ago

If only they make them vendor locked and not following specification. I guess that spareparts are harder to get and third party repairing will be almost non existent. It'll also make new competitors with good concepts harder to come into industry (steam deck, framework laptop). Imagine if every car vendor (bmw, mercedes, toyota, etc) start making a very specific tire that can only be used by their own model.