5 ms·

I find it interesting that the mbp garnered so much attention from tech folk. Perf AVG, build eh. Ethos...terrible. yet still. Gets people in the door to buy it

I find it interesting that the mbp garnered so much attention from tech folk. Perf AVG, build eh. Ethos...terrible. yet still. Gets people in the door to buy it. Humans are wack.

adamrt 5y ago
Perf Avg? I thought the M1 was absurdly fast, no?
- derbOac 5y ago
  I have a macbook and am happy with it, so not a hater, but... A lot of outlets have pointed out that the M1 chip came out in this kind of interim period between Intel and AMD releases, so performance comparisons were a little misleading. If you compare M1 chips to more recent AMD chips (I'm less clear about Intel), they're more similar. There's differences in power use and singlecore versus multicore attributes but overall they're much more similar than you'd conclude based on when M1 first came out. M1 is still very nice and efficient, but not absurdly better, or maybe even better at all. There's a lot of issues with memory use (leaks, excessive use) on M1 laptops. There was just a post about this here on HN. The issue is sometimes raised without awareness of it as a general trend, but it keeps coming up over and over. So far I haven't seen any explanation for why it happens or how to avoid it, but it's real. Just Google "macbook memory leaks" and you'll see plenty of discussion. As far as I know, there's been some red herring solutions but no actual resolution.
- ashton314 5y ago
  Opening my Emacs config on a top i9 mbp takes an average of 3–4 seconds. On an M1: <1s.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Sholmesy 5y ago
    Not to stir the eternal debate, but if my Vim config takes > 100ms, I start debugging what's going on/figuring out the responsible plugin. 3-4seconds would drive me insane :O
    - ashton314 5y ago
      Nah, that's fair. I've got about runs ls -l | wc -l 143 packages that I load. My Emacs config is pretty heavy. I keep trying to trim it down a bit. Though, sometimes I have edit sessions that last several weeks, so it's not that bit a deal. But still.
      - earthscienceman 5y ago
        Two things. Emacs as a daemon! And. Emacs 28 native compilation. Absolute game changer for speed in a million ways. Scrolling a 5000 line python source file with all the packages, syntax highlighting, etc etc, is buttery smooth: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GccEmacs https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GccEmacs
        ashton314 5y ago
        Yeah… I should probably set up the daemon sometime. I just tweak my config so much (it's Emacs, c'mon) that it's just been simpler for me for some reason to just launch it fresh for forever. native-comp doesn't do anything for start up. Good tip though—I've been running bleeding-edge Emacs for a while now. ;-) I ran `esup` and figured out most of the slowdown is from the otherwise excellent straight.el [1] package manager. I put (setq straight-check-for-modifications '(check-on-save find-when-checking)) in my init, and now everything is really speedy! [1]: https://github.com/raxod502/straight.el#my-init-time-got-slower https://github.com/raxod502/straight.el#my-init-time-got-slo...
        earthscienceman 5y ago
        Native comp doesn't do anything for for startup implicitly, absolutely. There are no startup optimizations or anything like that. However, the speed with which elisp runs on native comp seems to be between 1.5 and 10 times faster. I run emacs on a lot of underpowered arm devices (think rpi zero) and use my full config. And the decrease in startup time on those machines was astonishing.
wilmore 5y ago
> Perf AVG, build eh What kind of MBP have you looked at? I agree with the ethos part, but the current M1 devices are pretty unique in the laptop space.
- gtvwill 5y ago
  Pro. It perfs incredibly well in a bunch of areas it was expected to. Con. It can't even run code from a whole segment of apps because of archi it's built on. Result - Perf was nothing out of line with expected results from what you'd expect the market to come up with for the next range of products. It's really nothing special from the user end of things.
  - outside1234 5y ago
    The MacBook Pro 2021 M1? It is totally something special: 1) The hardware is first class. Everything is back where it should be and improved. You can't get hardware like this anywhere else. 2) It is extremely fast. Nothing ever slows down. I can't figure out anything to throw at this thing that will turn on the fan even. 3) It just works. No drama. This is very valuable if your real value is writing code and not doing sys admin.
    - noahtallen 5y ago
      Seriously. No other laptop on the market can do all of: - have an insanely long battery life - stay completely silent - have excellent performance The other laptops which can theoretically beat the MBP at some tasks utterly fail at being silent or having long battery life under load. And the other silent laptops (chromebook maybe) can’t manage heavy workloads. So it is very unique in the laptop space.
      - TranquilMarmot 5y ago
        I use an M1 Macbook for work and I also have a Framework for personal use and... yeah. I adore the Framework but I really wish there was a REAL non-Apple competitor in the laptop space. The M1 is just _so_ quiet and fast, I really have to try hard to get the fan to spin up. Can't really speak for battery life since it never leaves my desk where it's plugged in haha. It's a shame I despise macOS so much or else I'd use this work laptop for personal stuff more often.
tomcam 5y ago
How do you research the ethos of products you buy? All of them or just selected ones?
throwawaymsft 5y ago
Yeah, it’s wack how people want to buy the laptop with the best perf per watt ever.

I find it interesting that the mbp garnered so much attention from tech folk. Perf AVG, build eh. Ethos...terrible. yet still. Gets people in the door to buy it. Humans are wack.

adamrt 5y ago

Perf Avg? I thought the M1 was absurdly fast, no?

derbOac 5y ago
I have a macbook and am happy with it, so not a hater, but... A lot of outlets have pointed out that the M1 chip came out in this kind of interim period between Intel and AMD releases, so performance comparisons were a little misleading. If you compare M1 chips to more recent AMD chips (I'm less clear about Intel), they're more similar. There's differences in power use and singlecore versus multicore attributes but overall they're much more similar than you'd conclude based on when M1 first came out. M1 is still very nice and efficient, but not absurdly better, or maybe even better at all. There's a lot of issues with memory use (leaks, excessive use) on M1 laptops. There was just a post about this here on HN. The issue is sometimes raised without awareness of it as a general trend, but it keeps coming up over and over. So far I haven't seen any explanation for why it happens or how to avoid it, but it's real. Just Google "macbook memory leaks" and you'll see plenty of discussion. As far as I know, there's been some red herring solutions but no actual resolution.
ashton314 5y ago
Opening my Emacs config on a top i9 mbp takes an average of 3–4 seconds. On an M1: <1s.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Sholmesy 5y ago
  Not to stir the eternal debate, but if my Vim config takes > 100ms, I start debugging what's going on/figuring out the responsible plugin. 3-4seconds would drive me insane :O
  - ashton314 5y ago
    Nah, that's fair. I've got about runs ls -l | wc -l 143 packages that I load. My Emacs config is pretty heavy. I keep trying to trim it down a bit. Though, sometimes I have edit sessions that last several weeks, so it's not that bit a deal. But still.
    - earthscienceman 5y ago
      Two things. Emacs as a daemon! And. Emacs 28 native compilation. Absolute game changer for speed in a million ways. Scrolling a 5000 line python source file with all the packages, syntax highlighting, etc etc, is buttery smooth: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GccEmacs https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GccEmacs
      - ashton314 5y ago
        Yeah… I should probably set up the daemon sometime. I just tweak my config so much (it's Emacs, c'mon) that it's just been simpler for me for some reason to just launch it fresh for forever. native-comp doesn't do anything for start up. Good tip though—I've been running bleeding-edge Emacs for a while now. ;-) I ran `esup` and figured out most of the slowdown is from the otherwise excellent straight.el [1] package manager. I put (setq straight-check-for-modifications '(check-on-save find-when-checking)) in my init, and now everything is really speedy! [1]: https://github.com/raxod502/straight.el#my-init-time-got-slower https://github.com/raxod502/straight.el#my-init-time-got-slo...
        earthscienceman 5y ago
        Native comp doesn't do anything for for startup implicitly, absolutely. There are no startup optimizations or anything like that. However, the speed with which elisp runs on native comp seems to be between 1.5 and 10 times faster. I run emacs on a lot of underpowered arm devices (think rpi zero) and use my full config. And the decrease in startup time on those machines was astonishing.

wilmore 5y ago

> Perf AVG, build eh What kind of MBP have you looked at? I agree with the ethos part, but the current M1 devices are pretty unique in the laptop space.

gtvwill 5y ago
Pro. It perfs incredibly well in a bunch of areas it was expected to. Con. It can't even run code from a whole segment of apps because of archi it's built on. Result - Perf was nothing out of line with expected results from what you'd expect the market to come up with for the next range of products. It's really nothing special from the user end of things.
- outside1234 5y ago
  The MacBook Pro 2021 M1? It is totally something special: 1) The hardware is first class. Everything is back where it should be and improved. You can't get hardware like this anywhere else. 2) It is extremely fast. Nothing ever slows down. I can't figure out anything to throw at this thing that will turn on the fan even. 3) It just works. No drama. This is very valuable if your real value is writing code and not doing sys admin.
  - noahtallen 5y ago
    Seriously. No other laptop on the market can do all of: - have an insanely long battery life - stay completely silent - have excellent performance The other laptops which can theoretically beat the MBP at some tasks utterly fail at being silent or having long battery life under load. And the other silent laptops (chromebook maybe) can’t manage heavy workloads. So it is very unique in the laptop space.
    - TranquilMarmot 5y ago
      I use an M1 Macbook for work and I also have a Framework for personal use and... yeah. I adore the Framework but I really wish there was a REAL non-Apple competitor in the laptop space. The M1 is just _so_ quiet and fast, I really have to try hard to get the fan to spin up. Can't really speak for battery life since it never leaves my desk where it's plugged in haha. It's a shame I despise macOS so much or else I'd use this work laptop for personal stuff more often.

tomcam 5y ago

How do you research the ethos of products you buy? All of them or just selected ones?

throwawaymsft 5y ago

Yeah, it’s wack how people want to buy the laptop with the best perf per watt ever.