4 ms·

I don't understand why you'd want a Mac unless you intended to run it's provided OS. With Linux you can get the same hardware for half the price from other man

I don't understand why you'd want a Mac unless you intended to run it's provided OS. With Linux you can get the same hardware for half the price from other manufacturers. EDIT: By 'same hardware' I mean 'hardware with comparable / equivalent performance'

kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
Maybe because the M1 is a powerful, low-power-consumption CPU and it is very hard to get powerful aarch64 CPUs outside of this? Not everyone likes macOS.
dagw 5y ago
With Linux you can get the same hardware for half the price from other manufacturers. That might have been true before, but today no one else is selling ARM laptops that can match the M1 Pro in performance and efficiency.
- mootzville 5y ago
  Agreed, but who will better take advantage of the CPI's architecture to utilize those gains, the same people making the hardware and native OS, or a Linux distro? Just because a CPU can do something does not mean every OS / kernel is going to use it. What I was getting at is if you want Linux, you can get a good Lenovo or Dell for about $1000-1200 that would seem / feel compararble to a $2000 macbook.
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    Some people just want Linux. Running it on Apple silicon (that is, aarch64) is exactly what they want–performance wise, it'll run circles around anything else in that price race.
- danlugo92 5y ago
  No one else is selling laptops period that can match the M1 Pro in performance and efficiency. Much less the M1 Max.
alimbada 5y ago
Except there's no current hardware that has comparable / equivalent performance to Apple Silicon chips. The tightly integrated SoC allows for optimisations that x86 chips can't even get close to in certain workloads like video editing. That's not to say that M1 can do it all, but for the workloads it excels at (and it excels at the majority) it is absolutely the best choice for those that need it. Even discounting the performance benefits of Apple Silicon, the reliability and longevity of Apple products in and of itself is reason enough for me to purchase them. I'm still using an early 2011 Macbook Pro as my personal laptop but I no longer get macOS upgrades; it's stuck on 10.13 and has been for some time so I'll be installing Linux on it at some point in the near future. And I say all this as someone who once hated Apple for their price premiums. I still find their prices hard to swallow even though I have the means now compared to back then. But their prices are easier to justify for me once you take all of the above into account.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  The only real attraction of the M1 Apple Silicon is the power saving it offers, especially on laptops where it means longer battery life. Other performance metrics are just temporary gains that AMD / Intel will match up with future CPUs. (Intel and AMD themselves used to compete similarly, with each bettering the other over the years, and it will be no different with Apple Silicons too). Everybody understands that with soldered RAM, SSD and a closed SoC the M1 Apple Silicon Macs are just one step away from being a completely closed system like the iPhone / iPad platform - all that Apple has to do is lock the boot-loader of the Mac, like on iPhones / iPads, and tighten SIP to prevent installation outside of its App Store. When (not if) they do this, the users will be effectively trapped into the Apple ecosystem, with them beholden to Apple's mercy on how effectively and how long they can use their system (planned obsolescence). This is why many with common sense have ignored the new Apple M1 systems, and continue to stick with the more open systems relying on AMD / Intel. Constant hyping of "Linux on M1" is meant to counter the perception of the closed-box macOS mono-culture, and give us the false hope that the M1 macs are just like any other Intel / AMD computer. Where as the reality is that unless Apple releases hardware documentation for it, all non-macOS operating systems on the M1 will always offer sub-par performance.
capableweb 5y ago
Prefacing this with that I'm not normally a Apple fan and use Linux on Intel and AMD CPUs as my daily driver. Apple does do incredible hardware, but their software is really crappy, from UX to reliability and being general useful. Since the M1 appeared, I've been looking at purchasing it only for the hardware, but then run something like Arch Linux on it, as that software experience is really hard to beat. So in short, the combination of Apple hardware but Open Source/Linux software makes a lot of sense and is a pleasure to work with. The hardware Apple been producing lately been kind of shit though, so it's not until now it starts being interesting again.
- josephg 5y ago
  Yeah I’ve been an apple fan for years. As of a couple of days ago my work desk has a M1 MacBook pro and a ryzen x5800 running Linux Mint. The CPUs are remarkably similar - same core count, and only slightly different single core performance. So the only main difference is software. I expected the MacBook to blow Linux out of the water - after all, their hardware and software integration is excellent. The trackpad drivers and consistent UI is fantastic. But watching CPU usage on both machines, Linux mint stays lean and quiet while the MacBook has all sorts of weird processes popping up to do who knows what. On macos the “WindowServer” process sometimes just pegs an entire core until I reboot. My usb-c Ethernet dongle doesn’t do hardware offload, so cpu usage goes way up when I use it. Firefox uses way more CPU on macos than it does on Linux. And there’s random processes all the time reporting things to apple or other garbage like that. I’ve been googling process names all day trying to figure out what all this crap does. Spotify alone uses 10% of a core on macos sometimes, even when it’s not even playing music. It was a pain to get Linux working how I want it to. But now that it’s mostly[1] set up, it feels snappier and more reliable than macos. When I don’t touch the computer, it settles at 0% CPU; just like it should. I suppose that’s what the desktop looks like without the last decade of macos features that nobody really cares about. I’m really surprised how close the competition feels between my two machines; though I miss Snow Leopard. [1] Keyboard shortcuts on are all over the place in Linux though. And I can’t even set keyboard shortcuts up how I’d like because intellij can’t use the meta key as a modifier. And the Linux trackpad drivers are nowhere near as well tuned as they are in macos. In linux the trackpad is way too sensitive. I’m sure there’s a way to fix it hiding in a config file somewhere.
messe 5y ago
> EDIT: By 'same hardware' I mean 'hardware with comparable / equivalent performance Where are you finding laptops with comparable displays at half the price?
- diffeomorphism 5y ago
  What do you want to compare about the display? - Resolution? There the macbooks are behind both in aspect ratio (worse than 3:2) and in pixels (4k or 4k+ vs...) - Contrast? Not OLED, so worse. - Refresh rate? Good enough, but far from top of the line. - Gamut? That is a point. But also available e.g. asus - Brightness? Outdoor viewable screens have been as bright as that or brighter since windows XP days, but fairly specialized. I guess I prefer contrast (OLED), but yeah, difficult to find outside a macbook. - Touch, wacom pen? Oh, none. It is a really great quality screen, but not "the best".
  - ArgyleSound 5y ago
    He suggested that you can't find a similar or better quality display for $1000, not that it's the best display that exists. At that price point you can find something that, at best, meets three of the criteria you've listed while heavily compromising on the rest.
  - qudat 5y ago
    link us with better alternatives please
    - diffeomorphism 5y ago
      Asus for example (oled, $600) Or huawei (ips, 3:2, touchscreen, $700 or so) Or having pen and touch at all.
      - the_lucifer 5y ago
        So, you just mentioned two different brands for features that a single laptop display has.

kaladin-jasnah 5y ago

Maybe because the M1 is a powerful, low-power-consumption CPU and it is very hard to get powerful aarch64 CPUs outside of this? Not everyone likes macOS.

dagw 5y ago

With Linux you can get the same hardware for half the price from other manufacturers. That might have been true before, but today no one else is selling ARM laptops that can match the M1 Pro in performance and efficiency.

mootzville 5y ago
Agreed, but who will better take advantage of the CPI's architecture to utilize those gains, the same people making the hardware and native OS, or a Linux distro? Just because a CPU can do something does not mean every OS / kernel is going to use it. What I was getting at is if you want Linux, you can get a good Lenovo or Dell for about $1000-1200 that would seem / feel compararble to a $2000 macbook.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  Some people just want Linux. Running it on Apple silicon (that is, aarch64) is exactly what they want–performance wise, it'll run circles around anything else in that price race.
danlugo92 5y ago
No one else is selling laptops period that can match the M1 Pro in performance and efficiency. Much less the M1 Max.

alimbada 5y ago

Except there's no current hardware that has comparable / equivalent performance to Apple Silicon chips. The tightly integrated SoC allows for optimisations that x86 chips can't even get close to in certain workloads like video editing. That's not to say that M1 can do it all, but for the workloads it excels at (and it excels at the majority) it is absolutely the best choice for those that need it. Even discounting the performance benefits of Apple Silicon, the reliability and longevity of Apple products in and of itself is reason enough for me to purchase them. I'm still using an early 2011 Macbook Pro as my personal laptop but I no longer get macOS upgrades; it's stuck on 10.13 and has been for some time so I'll be installing Linux on it at some point in the near future. And I say all this as someone who once hated Apple for their price premiums. I still find their prices hard to swallow even though I have the means now compared to back then. But their prices are easier to justify for me once you take all of the above into account.

webmobdev 5y ago
The only real attraction of the M1 Apple Silicon is the power saving it offers, especially on laptops where it means longer battery life. Other performance metrics are just temporary gains that AMD / Intel will match up with future CPUs. (Intel and AMD themselves used to compete similarly, with each bettering the other over the years, and it will be no different with Apple Silicons too). Everybody understands that with soldered RAM, SSD and a closed SoC the M1 Apple Silicon Macs are just one step away from being a completely closed system like the iPhone / iPad platform - all that Apple has to do is lock the boot-loader of the Mac, like on iPhones / iPads, and tighten SIP to prevent installation outside of its App Store. When (not if) they do this, the users will be effectively trapped into the Apple ecosystem, with them beholden to Apple's mercy on how effectively and how long they can use their system (planned obsolescence). This is why many with common sense have ignored the new Apple M1 systems, and continue to stick with the more open systems relying on AMD / Intel. Constant hyping of "Linux on M1" is meant to counter the perception of the closed-box macOS mono-culture, and give us the false hope that the M1 macs are just like any other Intel / AMD computer. Where as the reality is that unless Apple releases hardware documentation for it, all non-macOS operating systems on the M1 will always offer sub-par performance.

capableweb 5y ago

Prefacing this with that I'm not normally a Apple fan and use Linux on Intel and AMD CPUs as my daily driver. Apple does do incredible hardware, but their software is really crappy, from UX to reliability and being general useful. Since the M1 appeared, I've been looking at purchasing it only for the hardware, but then run something like Arch Linux on it, as that software experience is really hard to beat. So in short, the combination of Apple hardware but Open Source/Linux software makes a lot of sense and is a pleasure to work with. The hardware Apple been producing lately been kind of shit though, so it's not until now it starts being interesting again.

josephg 5y ago
Yeah I’ve been an apple fan for years. As of a couple of days ago my work desk has a M1 MacBook pro and a ryzen x5800 running Linux Mint. The CPUs are remarkably similar - same core count, and only slightly different single core performance. So the only main difference is software. I expected the MacBook to blow Linux out of the water - after all, their hardware and software integration is excellent. The trackpad drivers and consistent UI is fantastic. But watching CPU usage on both machines, Linux mint stays lean and quiet while the MacBook has all sorts of weird processes popping up to do who knows what. On macos the “WindowServer” process sometimes just pegs an entire core until I reboot. My usb-c Ethernet dongle doesn’t do hardware offload, so cpu usage goes way up when I use it. Firefox uses way more CPU on macos than it does on Linux. And there’s random processes all the time reporting things to apple or other garbage like that. I’ve been googling process names all day trying to figure out what all this crap does. Spotify alone uses 10% of a core on macos sometimes, even when it’s not even playing music. It was a pain to get Linux working how I want it to. But now that it’s mostly[1] set up, it feels snappier and more reliable than macos. When I don’t touch the computer, it settles at 0% CPU; just like it should. I suppose that’s what the desktop looks like without the last decade of macos features that nobody really cares about. I’m really surprised how close the competition feels between my two machines; though I miss Snow Leopard. [1] Keyboard shortcuts on are all over the place in Linux though. And I can’t even set keyboard shortcuts up how I’d like because intellij can’t use the meta key as a modifier. And the Linux trackpad drivers are nowhere near as well tuned as they are in macos. In linux the trackpad is way too sensitive. I’m sure there’s a way to fix it hiding in a config file somewhere.

messe 5y ago

> EDIT: By 'same hardware' I mean 'hardware with comparable / equivalent performance Where are you finding laptops with comparable displays at half the price?

diffeomorphism 5y ago
What do you want to compare about the display? - Resolution? There the macbooks are behind both in aspect ratio (worse than 3:2) and in pixels (4k or 4k+ vs...) - Contrast? Not OLED, so worse. - Refresh rate? Good enough, but far from top of the line. - Gamut? That is a point. But also available e.g. asus - Brightness? Outdoor viewable screens have been as bright as that or brighter since windows XP days, but fairly specialized. I guess I prefer contrast (OLED), but yeah, difficult to find outside a macbook. - Touch, wacom pen? Oh, none. It is a really great quality screen, but not "the best".
- ArgyleSound 5y ago
  He suggested that you can't find a similar or better quality display for $1000, not that it's the best display that exists. At that price point you can find something that, at best, meets three of the criteria you've listed while heavily compromising on the rest.
- qudat 5y ago
  link us with better alternatives please
  - diffeomorphism 5y ago
    Asus for example (oled, $600) Or huawei (ips, 3:2, touchscreen, $700 or so) Or having pen and touch at all.
    - the_lucifer 5y ago
      So, you just mentioned two different brands for features that a single laptop display has.