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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 architectur

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.
    - Joel_Mckay 3y ago
      Keep in mind I ported a lot of glue code between Debian and MacOS ecosystems (and handling Apples interesting versions of CLI disk image mounting). When important people come into my office pissed they got misled by a sales clerk... I assure you no one is exaggerating the severity of the situation. The fact is Win11 and MacOS share far more paradigms now (ignoring Win11 being almost unusable even on a PC) And yes, ARM can be very nice when the graphics acceleration part also works. My point was one is going to have limited options from what they are used to on previous hardware (CAD, IDE, games, apps, etc.). The M1 and M3 cpubenchmark/passmark scores are respectable, if you luck out with a working port of your favorite program. And yeah, I also sampled a GIGABYTE/AORUS RTX 3070 Laptop I booted up about 10 times this year, while it sucks in every metric I need (I rate it worse than an Asus EEE on build quality)... it is very quiet and the CUDA performance is respectable for a mobile demo unit (its only redeeming quality). Your friend may have a bad SSD brand cooking away, or its very possible something fell off (wish I was joking here). BG3 is too scary for me to play, but it does look fun. =)

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.
  - Joel_Mckay 3y ago
    Keep in mind I ported a lot of glue code between Debian and MacOS ecosystems (and handling Apples interesting versions of CLI disk image mounting). When important people come into my office pissed they got misled by a sales clerk... I assure you no one is exaggerating the severity of the situation. The fact is Win11 and MacOS share far more paradigms now (ignoring Win11 being almost unusable even on a PC) And yes, ARM can be very nice when the graphics acceleration part also works. My point was one is going to have limited options from what they are used to on previous hardware (CAD, IDE, games, apps, etc.). The M1 and M3 cpubenchmark/passmark scores are respectable, if you luck out with a working port of your favorite program. And yeah, I also sampled a GIGABYTE/AORUS RTX 3070 Laptop I booted up about 10 times this year, while it sucks in every metric I need (I rate it worse than an Asus EEE on build quality)... it is very quiet and the CUDA performance is respectable for a mobile demo unit (its only redeeming quality). Your friend may have a bad SSD brand cooking away, or its very possible something fell off (wish I was joking here). BG3 is too scary for me to play, but it does look fun. =)