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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 metr

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.

marcan_42 5y ago
> Apple Silicon Macs are just one step away from being a completely closed system like the iPhone / iPad platform Apple Silicon Macs are based on the iPhone / iPad platform. Apple chose to spend a significant amount of developer time adding the ability for users to securely load their own kernels, which is part of the new BootPolicy system that iDevices do not have, and a documented feature with multiple official tools to support it. There is a blog writen by Apple's head of XNU development detailing how to use it. If Apple wanted to lock these machines down they would've just not done any of that. As for soldered RAM, you would need 8 RAM sticks in individual channels to match the M1 Max's memory bandwidth, at a much higher power consumption. Modular RAM is no longer viable for low-power, high-performance laptops. Modular, low power, high performance: pick two. It's just the way the physics works. Carrying a 512-bit bus across a connector isn't free, it has a significant power/performance cost due to increased capacitance and decreased signal integrity. (Soldered SSDs, sure, that's a valid concern, but it has nothing to do with the OS.) > 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. Funny enough, we already have better VM performance than macOS thanks to supporting the M1's vGIC (which macOS does not use yet), and we've also figured out how to work around a USB death issue that affects macOS, and I'm already putting making simultaneous DisplayPort 1.4 + USB3 work if at all possible on my TODO list, because I just found out macOS can't do it. No documentation doesn't mean we can't beat Apple at their own game.
- mst 5y ago
  > Modular RAM is no longer viable for low-power, high-performance laptops. The fact that this is true makes me grumpy for all the obvious reasons, but even at my rather less informed level of understanding it's still obviously true. My "solution" here is basically to enjoy the better batter life while grumbling quietly to myself ;)
- webmobdev 5y ago
  Whatever you said doesn't at all change my assertion that the M1 is now just one step away from becoming a closed system - With the M1, Apple can now easily lock the bootloaders of M1 Macs any time and make it a completely closed platform like the iPhones / iPads. And it is evident that Apple has been planning this for years: 1. The first few Intel Mac Minis allowed you some level of customisation of both the hardware (change RAM or HDD / SSD) and software (install other full featured OS). 2. Then came the Mac Minis with soldered RAM and SSD. You could no longer customise the hardware. Software was still customisable and you could still install other OSes. (Recall that Apple even offered free drivers for another OS, i.e. Windows). 3. The current generation of M1 Mini now doesn't allow you to customise both the hardware (everything is soldered) and the software. Technically you can install other OSes, but the reality is that currently only crippled versions of Linux and xBSD is available and practically the only full-featured OS available for it is macOS. These are clear indicators of how Apple has been working slowly to lockdown the Mac platform like their ios platforms. (The strategy to keep you in denial - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog - has been working great for them). The reason for this is simple - BigTech are increasingly moving towards selling everything as a service. Services are more profitable because it means they create recurring income (even after the device is sold) which means more profits. and Apple's successful business model for this, that earns them billions of dollars, is the closed-platform model that is evident on iPhones / iPads. > Modular RAM is no longer viable for low-power, high-performance laptops. That is deliberately misleading and ignorant. Low Power DDR chips (that are soldered) were invented for mobile phones where every watt drawn matters. On laptops they offer only negligible power savings that doesn't really matter - yes, the power saving is negligible on a laptop as the difference in power used in modular RAM vs LPDDR is between 1 to 0.5 volt. That matters on phones because they have small batteries (5 - 15 Watt-hour), but that power saving is negligible on a laptop as it has bigger batteries (40 - 95 Watt-hour). It's as good as meaningless when you consider what you lose - soldered ram can't be upgraded and is hard to repair. The loss of this big benefit - repairability - hugely trumps the minor power savings. Apple, and others, know this very well - for them, the real attraction to using soldered RAM is that it allows for planned obsolescence. In fact, reasonable alternative ram chips like DDR3L (low voltage) and DDR3U (ultra low voltage) that offer lower power on modular RAM that were specifically created for servers and laptops, have been deliberately ignored by computer manufacturers, in favour of soldered LPDDR, and that is why the memory industry too is forced to do more R&D on them.

marcan_42 5y ago

> Apple Silicon Macs are just one step away from being a completely closed system like the iPhone / iPad platform Apple Silicon Macs are based on the iPhone / iPad platform. Apple chose to spend a significant amount of developer time adding the ability for users to securely load their own kernels, which is part of the new BootPolicy system that iDevices do not have, and a documented feature with multiple official tools to support it. There is a blog writen by Apple's head of XNU development detailing how to use it. If Apple wanted to lock these machines down they would've just not done any of that. As for soldered RAM, you would need 8 RAM sticks in individual channels to match the M1 Max's memory bandwidth, at a much higher power consumption. Modular RAM is no longer viable for low-power, high-performance laptops. Modular, low power, high performance: pick two. It's just the way the physics works. Carrying a 512-bit bus across a connector isn't free, it has a significant power/performance cost due to increased capacitance and decreased signal integrity. (Soldered SSDs, sure, that's a valid concern, but it has nothing to do with the OS.) > 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. Funny enough, we already have better VM performance than macOS thanks to supporting the M1's vGIC (which macOS does not use yet), and we've also figured out how to work around a USB death issue that affects macOS, and I'm already putting making simultaneous DisplayPort 1.4 + USB3 work if at all possible on my TODO list, because I just found out macOS can't do it. No documentation doesn't mean we can't beat Apple at their own game.

mst 5y ago
> Modular RAM is no longer viable for low-power, high-performance laptops. The fact that this is true makes me grumpy for all the obvious reasons, but even at my rather less informed level of understanding it's still obviously true. My "solution" here is basically to enjoy the better batter life while grumbling quietly to myself ;)
webmobdev 5y ago
Whatever you said doesn't at all change my assertion that the M1 is now just one step away from becoming a closed system - With the M1, Apple can now easily lock the bootloaders of M1 Macs any time and make it a completely closed platform like the iPhones / iPads. And it is evident that Apple has been planning this for years: 1. The first few Intel Mac Minis allowed you some level of customisation of both the hardware (change RAM or HDD / SSD) and software (install other full featured OS). 2. Then came the Mac Minis with soldered RAM and SSD. You could no longer customise the hardware. Software was still customisable and you could still install other OSes. (Recall that Apple even offered free drivers for another OS, i.e. Windows). 3. The current generation of M1 Mini now doesn't allow you to customise both the hardware (everything is soldered) and the software. Technically you can install other OSes, but the reality is that currently only crippled versions of Linux and xBSD is available and practically the only full-featured OS available for it is macOS. These are clear indicators of how Apple has been working slowly to lockdown the Mac platform like their ios platforms. (The strategy to keep you in denial - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog - has been working great for them). The reason for this is simple - BigTech are increasingly moving towards selling everything as a service. Services are more profitable because it means they create recurring income (even after the device is sold) which means more profits. and Apple's successful business model for this, that earns them billions of dollars, is the closed-platform model that is evident on iPhones / iPads. > Modular RAM is no longer viable for low-power, high-performance laptops. That is deliberately misleading and ignorant. Low Power DDR chips (that are soldered) were invented for mobile phones where every watt drawn matters. On laptops they offer only negligible power savings that doesn't really matter - yes, the power saving is negligible on a laptop as the difference in power used in modular RAM vs LPDDR is between 1 to 0.5 volt. That matters on phones because they have small batteries (5 - 15 Watt-hour), but that power saving is negligible on a laptop as it has bigger batteries (40 - 95 Watt-hour). It's as good as meaningless when you consider what you lose - soldered ram can't be upgraded and is hard to repair. The loss of this big benefit - repairability - hugely trumps the minor power savings. Apple, and others, know this very well - for them, the real attraction to using soldered RAM is that it allows for planned obsolescence. In fact, reasonable alternative ram chips like DDR3L (low voltage) and DDR3U (ultra low voltage) that offer lower power on modular RAM that were specifically created for servers and laptops, have been deliberately ignored by computer manufacturers, in favour of soldered LPDDR, and that is why the memory industry too is forced to do more R&D on them.