4 ms·

You know what did change, is sales people straight up lying to customers faces about M3/ARM software support. The M3 might be nice silicon, but robbing existin

You know what did change, is sales people straight up lying to customers faces about M3/ARM software support. The M3 might be nice silicon, but robbing existing customers of what they had before is borderline bait-and-switch. The only reason people even cared about the proprietary M3 was Apples name is in front of it. Apple might be able to draw in more performance software ports, but so far the end users either love the M3... or were very annoyed to lose a chunk of their daily workflow. Hopefully it gets better with time, but some Apple fans were sure surprised how fast the ecosystem shrank on ARM. =)

wmf 3y ago
What specific software did you lose?
- Joel_Mckay 3y ago
  The M3 does amazing in many perf, but virtualization of x86 like the old intel cpu units is SOL performance wise. Other options are also technically illegal to deploy (win11 ARM emulation of x86 is patchy/grey-area given licenses) in commercial settings. Note, 86box for M3/ARM is a lifesaver for many (backup/dump hardware configuration), and just reminded me to donate something nice to their coffee fund. =) The FOSS tool ports are often on ARM, but a lot of small/mid sized projects just don't bother to keep up with Apples evolving whimsical ecosystem. Feels like we are getting haunted by PowerPC. =)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
dd_xplore 3y ago
Yes! Behind all the hype, I was really surprised when Apple launched the M series. I was wondering how such a huge company can remove support for an architecture in such a small span of time(MS's legacy support has ruined us all?)
- Joel_Mckay 3y ago
  It wasn't just Virtualization that got jettisoned, but simple interoperability like default NTFS write support. They made it very unfriendly for users to figure out, and vendors would only give product specific driver support. Also, poof! what happened to Pantone calibrated standards... lol.. MacOS is now losing features, but maybe 3rd party utilities can keep the OS un-Nerf'd long enough to be useful. Don't get me wrong, some users seem happy sandboxed with fewer options... other folks... not so much. =)
- dimask 3y ago
  Rosetta, plus the fact that M-series was so much better than intel macs, made the transition period relatively painless until native ARM support became standard (almost). Also, the tight control of its ecosystem allows Apple to do things like that more easily. Plus that, basically, they had enough experience already with iPhones' SoCs and OS (the macs' SoC were based on the iPhones' ones).
  - Joel_Mckay 3y ago
    Exactly which use-case did you find "better" on the M3, because I am genuinely biased to believe only information appliance users are enjoying the ecosystem. i.e. functionally equivalent to a phone or iPad, and shouldn't cost like a high-end laptop given it is functionally a Chromebook.
    - dimask 3y ago
      I think you are exaggerating a bit, but tbh I had a very similar attitude towards macs before, because at work we were forced to use some mac computers which I found insufferable at the time. Hardware-wise we had some pretty much ridiculous iMacs with HDD bought in like 2019 - internal HDDs as main drives should have been banned at that point. Software-wise, issues with OS updates, library versions, and too bloated interface. It was only once I got my M1 air that I realised that macos was not the problem, but rather how the computers were configured, shared between people and used. Eg I just share my shell configurations and tools with my linux systems, iterm is great, homebrew is pretty fine for me, tools like rectangle making the window interface much more usable. There are occasional issues, annoying security restrictions that you have to manually waive all the time, OS updates that break things, but at least it does not force you to update in the middle of you having to run something important like windows do. And the default macos office apps are lightweight, and decent enough that I do not need to some bloated office software. Work-wise, all the computational software I use runs fine, and only if I need to use intense and long parallelised computations I may use my desktop (or cloud). I am pretty sure an ipad or an iphone would run a lot of stuff pretty ok, if they were not limited by their OS and peripheral support. In any case, the main reason I got into macs anyway was the lack of fan noise. I do not think I can go back to any other laptop that makes so much noise again. I share my office with others and get constant reminder how it sounds like. Heck I am playing BG3 on my M1 macbook air. I can't do that on a chromebook, and neither anywhere else without a fan. My friend has a laptop with rtx 3070 and it sounds like a jet engine when we play together.
lightedman 3y ago
"or were very annoyed to lose a chunk of their daily workflow." That is the current experience of the 3 engineers with M3 laptops at my work. Two apps they usually use are not working properly or at all. One's already pulled out their old M2 and gotten back to work.
- Joel_Mckay 3y ago
  You have my sympathy, and I hope the project artifacts folder is still exportable. Best regards =)

wmf 3y ago

What specific software did you lose?

Joel_Mckay 3y ago
The M3 does amazing in many perf, but virtualization of x86 like the old intel cpu units is SOL performance wise. Other options are also technically illegal to deploy (win11 ARM emulation of x86 is patchy/grey-area given licenses) in commercial settings. Note, 86box for M3/ARM is a lifesaver for many (backup/dump hardware configuration), and just reminded me to donate something nice to their coffee fund. =) The FOSS tool ports are often on ARM, but a lot of small/mid sized projects just don't bother to keep up with Apples evolving whimsical ecosystem. Feels like we are getting haunted by PowerPC. =)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

dd_xplore 3y ago

Yes! Behind all the hype, I was really surprised when Apple launched the M series. I was wondering how such a huge company can remove support for an architecture in such a small span of time(MS's legacy support has ruined us all?)

Joel_Mckay 3y ago
It wasn't just Virtualization that got jettisoned, but simple interoperability like default NTFS write support. They made it very unfriendly for users to figure out, and vendors would only give product specific driver support. Also, poof! what happened to Pantone calibrated standards... lol.. MacOS is now losing features, but maybe 3rd party utilities can keep the OS un-Nerf'd long enough to be useful. Don't get me wrong, some users seem happy sandboxed with fewer options... other folks... not so much. =)
dimask 3y ago
Rosetta, plus the fact that M-series was so much better than intel macs, made the transition period relatively painless until native ARM support became standard (almost). Also, the tight control of its ecosystem allows Apple to do things like that more easily. Plus that, basically, they had enough experience already with iPhones' SoCs and OS (the macs' SoC were based on the iPhones' ones).
- Joel_Mckay 3y ago
  Exactly which use-case did you find "better" on the M3, because I am genuinely biased to believe only information appliance users are enjoying the ecosystem. i.e. functionally equivalent to a phone or iPad, and shouldn't cost like a high-end laptop given it is functionally a Chromebook.
  - dimask 3y ago
    I think you are exaggerating a bit, but tbh I had a very similar attitude towards macs before, because at work we were forced to use some mac computers which I found insufferable at the time. Hardware-wise we had some pretty much ridiculous iMacs with HDD bought in like 2019 - internal HDDs as main drives should have been banned at that point. Software-wise, issues with OS updates, library versions, and too bloated interface. It was only once I got my M1 air that I realised that macos was not the problem, but rather how the computers were configured, shared between people and used. Eg I just share my shell configurations and tools with my linux systems, iterm is great, homebrew is pretty fine for me, tools like rectangle making the window interface much more usable. There are occasional issues, annoying security restrictions that you have to manually waive all the time, OS updates that break things, but at least it does not force you to update in the middle of you having to run something important like windows do. And the default macos office apps are lightweight, and decent enough that I do not need to some bloated office software. Work-wise, all the computational software I use runs fine, and only if I need to use intense and long parallelised computations I may use my desktop (or cloud). I am pretty sure an ipad or an iphone would run a lot of stuff pretty ok, if they were not limited by their OS and peripheral support. In any case, the main reason I got into macs anyway was the lack of fan noise. I do not think I can go back to any other laptop that makes so much noise again. I share my office with others and get constant reminder how it sounds like. Heck I am playing BG3 on my M1 macbook air. I can't do that on a chromebook, and neither anywhere else without a fan. My friend has a laptop with rtx 3070 and it sounds like a jet engine when we play together.

lightedman 3y ago

"or were very annoyed to lose a chunk of their daily workflow." That is the current experience of the 3 engineers with M3 laptops at my work. Two apps they usually use are not working properly or at all. One's already pulled out their old M2 and gotten back to work.

Joel_Mckay 3y ago
You have my sympathy, and I hope the project artifacts folder is still exportable. Best regards =)