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I did. I moved over to linux mint for at-the-desk programming (though I still use a macbook while traveling). My linux desktop idles at 0% CPU, which is somethi

I did. I moved over to linux mint for at-the-desk programming (though I still use a macbook while traveling). My linux desktop idles at 0% CPU, which is something macos hasn't been able to deliver for 5+ years at this point. Current generation Intel / AMD desktop CPUs have similar performance to apple's M1/M2 chips. They just consume a lot more power. (Though apparently applying a slight underclock makes a huge difference.) I'm not sure how recent intel / AMD laptop performance compares, but a PC with an x86 chip is still a great choice.

MBCook 4y ago
> They just consume a lot more power This is the thing I’m stuck on. Computers are all roughly the same speed, for the point of this discussion. But there is no contest in power. If you’re in the Windows world you have no good choices. Fast and hot to very slow and cool. Where is the “pretty fast and nicely cool” choice? Someone proved it can exist. But it’s not there and people don’t seem to be very upset about that. And I’m surprised.
- hallway_monitor 4y ago
  Not upset but resigned I guess. Making do for now - typing this on my Macbook but my main desktop is Windows as is my work Laptop. Could Windows have better battery life? Probably only by dropping backward compatibility and moving to a Linux kernel or something radical.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    A lot of stuff on MacOS ran faster on an M1 with Rosetta 2 than it ran on the Intel chips Apple was selling the year before. For something not highly performance sensitive like office suite or line of business stuff you’d probably be fine with a half-decent ARM chip. So much of what we do these days is a web browser (ported) or a secret web browser (Electron/etc). I work in Java, that can be ported if it’s not already. I bet C#/CLR already are. It’s not perfect. It’s probably not ready for 3D rendering or 4k video editing. But a HUGE percentage of people could probably go ARM tomorrow if good chips were out there. MS has their own “Rosetta” already for running x86(-64?) on ARM. Is it slow? From my (very weak) understanding I have the impression the ARM stuff available is really cheap/slow. Not unlike the performance of the first netbooks compared to real laptops. Things that just aren’t powerful enough. Good for MS for making a dev machine. But a few good general purpose laptops with great battery life would probably move the needle a ton, even if only in the business market.
    - josephg 4y ago
      Yep. I'm curious if microsoft ever takes the reverse engineering work from Asahi linux and uses it to make a native Windows for Apple Silicon. Or just work with Apple like they did for Bootcamp and port the real Apple drivers to the windows driver model. Apparently there's nothing stopping M1 macs from dual-booting other operating systems. As strange as it sounds, Apple laptops might make the best windows laptops you can buy today, so long as you don't need a powerful GPU. It would be like a reverse hackintosh.

MBCook 4y ago

> They just consume a lot more power This is the thing I’m stuck on. Computers are all roughly the same speed, for the point of this discussion. But there is no contest in power. If you’re in the Windows world you have no good choices. Fast and hot to very slow and cool. Where is the “pretty fast and nicely cool” choice? Someone proved it can exist. But it’s not there and people don’t seem to be very upset about that. And I’m surprised.

hallway_monitor 4y ago
Not upset but resigned I guess. Making do for now - typing this on my Macbook but my main desktop is Windows as is my work Laptop. Could Windows have better battery life? Probably only by dropping backward compatibility and moving to a Linux kernel or something radical.
- MBCook 4y ago
  A lot of stuff on MacOS ran faster on an M1 with Rosetta 2 than it ran on the Intel chips Apple was selling the year before. For something not highly performance sensitive like office suite or line of business stuff you’d probably be fine with a half-decent ARM chip. So much of what we do these days is a web browser (ported) or a secret web browser (Electron/etc). I work in Java, that can be ported if it’s not already. I bet C#/CLR already are. It’s not perfect. It’s probably not ready for 3D rendering or 4k video editing. But a HUGE percentage of people could probably go ARM tomorrow if good chips were out there. MS has their own “Rosetta” already for running x86(-64?) on ARM. Is it slow? From my (very weak) understanding I have the impression the ARM stuff available is really cheap/slow. Not unlike the performance of the first netbooks compared to real laptops. Things that just aren’t powerful enough. Good for MS for making a dev machine. But a few good general purpose laptops with great battery life would probably move the needle a ton, even if only in the business market.
  - josephg 4y ago
    Yep. I'm curious if microsoft ever takes the reverse engineering work from Asahi linux and uses it to make a native Windows for Apple Silicon. Or just work with Apple like they did for Bootcamp and port the real Apple drivers to the windows driver model. Apparently there's nothing stopping M1 macs from dual-booting other operating systems. As strange as it sounds, Apple laptops might make the best windows laptops you can buy today, so long as you don't need a powerful GPU. It would be like a reverse hackintosh.