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>Even in the higher end products like the MacBooks you see a lot of professionals (engineers included) who choose it because of its price-performance-value, and

>Even in the higher end products like the MacBooks you see a lot of professionals (engineers included) who choose it because of its price-performance-value, and who don’t give a shit about luxury. Most CS professionals who write code have no idea what it takes to build a desktop, so the hardware that they chose is pretty much irrelevant because they aren't specifically choosing for hardware. The reason Apple gets bought is mostly by anyone, including tech people, is because of ecosystem. The truth is, nobody really care that much about actual specs as long as its good enough to do basic stuff, and when you are indifferent to the actual difference but all your friends are in the ecosystem, the choice is obvious. You can easily see this yourself: ask these "professionals" about the details of the Apple Neural engine, and its a very high chance that they will repeat some marketing material, while failing to mention that Apple does not publish any real docs for ANE, you have to sign your code to run on ANE, and you have to basically use Core ML to utilize the ANE. I.e if they really cared about inference, all of them would be buying laptops with discrete 4090s for almost the same price. Meanwhile, if you look at people who came from EE/ECE (who btw on the average are far better coders than people with CS background, based on my 500+ interviews in the industry across several sectors), you see a way larger skew towards Android/custom built desktops/windows laptops running Linux. If you lived and breathed Linux and low level OS, you tend appreciate all the power and customization that it gives you because you don't have to go learn how to do things.

daviddever23box 2y ago
Coming from both environments, I'd be wary of making some of these assertions, especially when you consider that any ecosystem that optimizes software and hardware together (from embedded devices all the way to general-purpose computing machines) is generally going to perform well, given the appropriate engineering focus. This applies regardless of (RT)OS / hardware choice, i.e., it's simply common sense. The signing of binaries is a part of adult developer life, and is certainly required for the platforms you mention as well. Unquestionably, battery life on 4090-based laptops sucks on a good day, and if you're working long hours, the last thing you want to have to do is park yourself next to your 350W adapter just to get basic work done.
- ActorNightly 2y ago
  >specially when you consider that any ecosystem that optimizes software and hardware together (from embedded devices all the way to general-purpose computing machines) is generally going to perform well, given the appropriate engineering focus. Very much not true. Not to make this personal, but this is exactly what Im talking about Apple fans not understanding hardware. Linux has been through the ringer of fighting its way to general use, and because of its open source nature and constant development. So in terms of working well, it has been optimized for hardware WAY further than Apple, which is why you find it on servers, personal desktops, phones, portable gaming devices, and even STM32 Cortex bldc control boards, all of which run different hardware. Apple doesn't optimize for general use, it optimizes for a specific business case. In the case of Apple silicon, it was purely battery life which brings more people in to the ecosystem. Single core performance is on par with all the other chips, because the instruction set doesn't actually matter (https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/07/13/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-matter/ https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/07/13/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-...), multi core is behind, Mac Os software is still a pile of junk (Rosetta still isn't good across the board), computers are not repairable, you have no privacy since Apple collects a shitload of telemetry for themselves, e.t.c and so on. And, Apple has no incentive to make any of this better - prior to Apple Silicon, people were still buying Intel Macs with worse specs and performance for the same price, all for the ecosystem and vanity. And not only was the Macos still terrible (and much slower), you also had hardware failures like plugging in a wrong USBC hub would blow the chip and brick your Mac, butterfly keyboards failing, and questionable decisions like virtual esc keys. >The signing of binaries is a part of adult developer life, ...for professional use, and the private key holder should be the person who wrote that software. I hope you understand how ridiculous it is to ask a developer to sign code using the manufacturers key to allow them to run that code on a machine that they own. >Unquestionably, battery life on 4090-based laptops sucks on a good day, Well yea, but you are not buying that laptop for battery life. Also, with Ryzen cpus and 4090s, most get like 6-8 hours depending on use due to Nvidia Prime, which is pretty good for travel, especially if you have a backpack with a charging brick. If you want portability, there are plenty of lighter weight option like Lenovo Yoga which can get 11-12 hours of battery life for things like web browsing.

daviddever23box 2y ago

Coming from both environments, I'd be wary of making some of these assertions, especially when you consider that any ecosystem that optimizes software and hardware together (from embedded devices all the way to general-purpose computing machines) is generally going to perform well, given the appropriate engineering focus. This applies regardless of (RT)OS / hardware choice, i.e., it's simply common sense. The signing of binaries is a part of adult developer life, and is certainly required for the platforms you mention as well. Unquestionably, battery life on 4090-based laptops sucks on a good day, and if you're working long hours, the last thing you want to have to do is park yourself next to your 350W adapter just to get basic work done.

ActorNightly 2y ago
>specially when you consider that any ecosystem that optimizes software and hardware together (from embedded devices all the way to general-purpose computing machines) is generally going to perform well, given the appropriate engineering focus. Very much not true. Not to make this personal, but this is exactly what Im talking about Apple fans not understanding hardware. Linux has been through the ringer of fighting its way to general use, and because of its open source nature and constant development. So in terms of working well, it has been optimized for hardware WAY further than Apple, which is why you find it on servers, personal desktops, phones, portable gaming devices, and even STM32 Cortex bldc control boards, all of which run different hardware. Apple doesn't optimize for general use, it optimizes for a specific business case. In the case of Apple silicon, it was purely battery life which brings more people in to the ecosystem. Single core performance is on par with all the other chips, because the instruction set doesn't actually matter (https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/07/13/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-matter/ https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/07/13/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-...), multi core is behind, Mac Os software is still a pile of junk (Rosetta still isn't good across the board), computers are not repairable, you have no privacy since Apple collects a shitload of telemetry for themselves, e.t.c and so on. And, Apple has no incentive to make any of this better - prior to Apple Silicon, people were still buying Intel Macs with worse specs and performance for the same price, all for the ecosystem and vanity. And not only was the Macos still terrible (and much slower), you also had hardware failures like plugging in a wrong USBC hub would blow the chip and brick your Mac, butterfly keyboards failing, and questionable decisions like virtual esc keys. >The signing of binaries is a part of adult developer life, ...for professional use, and the private key holder should be the person who wrote that software. I hope you understand how ridiculous it is to ask a developer to sign code using the manufacturers key to allow them to run that code on a machine that they own. >Unquestionably, battery life on 4090-based laptops sucks on a good day, Well yea, but you are not buying that laptop for battery life. Also, with Ryzen cpus and 4090s, most get like 6-8 hours depending on use due to Nvidia Prime, which is pretty good for travel, especially if you have a backpack with a charging brick. If you want portability, there are plenty of lighter weight option like Lenovo Yoga which can get 11-12 hours of battery life for things like web browsing.