5 ms·

Thai kind of opinion is pretty common and has been around since before the iPhone, when Apple's computers were considered overpriced luxury items to flex on the

Thai kind of opinion is pretty common and has been around since before the iPhone, when Apple's computers were considered overpriced luxury items to flex on the poor. Heck, I had this opinion back in 2008 or so. The problem is that it's a thought terminating cliche. Once you've assigned apple customers into the rich/dumb/cultist category you become blind to the actual reasons why Apple is successful. My own take, after using Apple stuff for 15 years now, is it's the attention to detail. It still shocks me that macOS has better support for using EMacs style text shortcuts (^A, ^E, ^K, etc) in basically any applications text field than Linux does.

fluoridation 2y ago
"Gravity is caused by the bending of space-time" is a thought-terminating cliché. Once you've assigned gravity to the space-time-bend category you become blind to the actual reasons why things fall down. There is such a thing as a satisfying explanation. Personally, I like Apple's hardware in general. The 2005 Mac Pros in particular are beautiful machines, possibly the nicest-looking desktop computers I've seen, inside and outside. I would still not pay what Apple asks for, when for the same money I could buy a more powerful non-Apple computer. That leads me to conclude that the people who buy Apple products have more money than me and care more about aesthetics and less about performance than me.
- paulmd 2y ago
  Apple M3 silicon has about 3-4x the perf/w in light workloads as the leading AMD chips on 5nm, despite a slight node disadvantage, let alone the comparisons against generic android phone SOCs. This is a huge part of what gives them their battery life - it’s not the OS, it’s not the node, it’s not the accelerators, it’s that they pull 1/3 the power running a browser/electron app or a word processor as x86 does. https://i.imgur.com/Kcwo1OM.png https://i.imgur.com/Kcwo1OM.png https://i.imgur.com/IP6vBqk.png https://i.imgur.com/IP6vBqk.png https://i.imgur.com/1pTFnRj.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/1pTFnRj.jpeg Again, you’ve volunteered to self-identify as someone who is doing precisely what GP said: you’ve made your little box and you’ve put people into it and you’ve closed your mind to any alternative possibilities.
  - alt227 2y ago
    As usual, all the charts only show single core workloads.
    - paulmd 2y ago
      Yes, x86 does ok in bulk vector computations, but performance really falls off in 1T or light-load scenarios. So they have to boost super high to keep up, which tanks performance. That’s the major difference right now. Presumably this is because decoding x86 is quite difficult and x86 chips lean really heavily on SMT to keep the cores filled as a result. I’m excited to see how Arrow Lake/Lunar Lake end up working out and if efficiency is improved, but right now it’s not good, some would say objectively bad (60w peak for a literal single thread on AMD, 50w+ on intel, for scores that are +/- 5% from apple and Qualcomm). If you feel like this is brought up a lot: consider that efficiency under light mixed workloads is pretty much the primary consideration for a large number of laptop buyers. I have a 9900k and epyc systems if I want something beyond what a laptop will deliver (and M1 Max isn’t exactly a lightweight to begin with) so this complements each other quite well. It's also very helpful to have proper first-party driver support. Linux is a mess and not getting better. HDMI 2.1 still isn't upstreamed even 4 years after AMD started trying, for example. Windows is (ineptly) doing an ARM-to-Windows switchover and (ineptly) doing a big "AI PC" push too, in ways that are much more adversarial than apple. Hard to enunciate the difference, but it's really the same classic "you're the product, not the customer" whereas with apple that's never really in question. I do really enjoy never having to fight bluetooth drivers and whatnot. Linux is great for server PCs etc, but "year of linux on the desktop" is a meme for a reason... and "year of linux on the laptop" is even farther away. And before you say framework... framework laptops actually do not have very good battery life at all, even among x86 laptops. That's sort of the problem in general: there isn't a turnkey "just buy this and linux works and it's just as good as a macbook" option for x86, at any price, even ignoring the 1T efficiency problems. For example even the latest AMD laptops still have broken HDMI support under linux. That's unacceptable on a big-ticket purchase. Make a decent x86 laptop and I'll consider it, but right now the AMD and Intel offerings just aren't there. Far from your original claim, to me it's the exact opposite and people are constantly pushing you to buy x86 and overlook all the problems and defects and shortcomings. Offer me something comparable and I'll consider it, but for now I am not going back at least on my laptop.
exe34 2y ago
I've got a 12 year old Mac book air that just refuses to die or grow obsolete. I've never been rich or wanted to flex - it was the only thing with the weight, size, and specs from the time and it remains my favourite laptop ever. I hate to think of what I'll have to get next time.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- alt227 2y ago
  Thats the only good thing about Apple products, they never change. So when you finally do want to upgrade, there will be a nice new shiny version of the same macbook air ready for you to buy.
  - exe34 2y ago
    unfortunately I'll want to wait until asahi is sufficiently supported before considering it. I gave up on os x when they made me reboot to disable nanny mode.
    - alt227 2y ago
      Genuinely interested, whats Nanny mode?
      - exe34 2y ago
        https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/disabling_and_enabling_system_integrity_protection https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/disabling...
robenkleene 2y ago
Similar to the Emacs bindings, in being something where Apple's products are far ahead in ways that are only leveragable for the upper fraction of a percent of technical users, is AppleScript (and to a lesser extent Shortcuts), where to this day, even with AppleScript on the decline, Apple GUI applications are far more scriptable than applications on other platforms. Note this is not the same as CLI script-ability (which the Apple ecosystem is also excellent at) because AppleScript understands data types, e.g., you can iterate through the todos in a list and act on only the ones from the last week, or save the media assets attached to each todo to a file.
robenkleene 2y ago
Another note about the Emacs bindings, it's always applications that are highly regarded by the technical community where these stop working, like Blender. It always makes me wonder if on Linux and Windows do folks just live without movement by word, and delete backwards word in file dialogs? Or are there just other bindings for those that work across the OS on Linux and Windows?
- alt227 2y ago
  > Movement by word ctrl+left or right arrow > delete backwards word ctrl+backspace Works globally in windows.
  - robenkleene 2y ago
    Thanks for the reply! I'll have to try this in Blender, I'd love it if someone could chime in similarly for Linux, I'm super curious about the bindings support on other platforms.
    - alt227 2y ago
      You're welcome. In fact I only discovered this recently myself, I have no idea how long it has been backeed into windows.
      - Vampiero 2y ago
        I don't know but I'm pretty sure it's been there since at least 2000
- fluoridation 2y ago
  FYI, the reason they don't work on Blender is because Blender, presumably for cross-platform consistency, manually draws its entire UI as well as handles its own events. The OS has no involvement in the UI, except to provide system resources. Most applications use standard dialogs for things like opening files, that are implemented in a central system DLL, so the behavior is consistent system-wide, and any improvement MS makes to those dialogs is automatically applied to all applications that use them.
Freedom2 2y ago
> My own take, after using Apple stuff for 15 years now, is it's the attention to detail. I fail to see how this applies to the mouse where you can't use it while charging, let alone the whole Vision Pro thing.

fluoridation 2y ago

"Gravity is caused by the bending of space-time" is a thought-terminating cliché. Once you've assigned gravity to the space-time-bend category you become blind to the actual reasons why things fall down. There is such a thing as a satisfying explanation. Personally, I like Apple's hardware in general. The 2005 Mac Pros in particular are beautiful machines, possibly the nicest-looking desktop computers I've seen, inside and outside. I would still not pay what Apple asks for, when for the same money I could buy a more powerful non-Apple computer. That leads me to conclude that the people who buy Apple products have more money than me and care more about aesthetics and less about performance than me.

paulmd 2y ago
Apple M3 silicon has about 3-4x the perf/w in light workloads as the leading AMD chips on 5nm, despite a slight node disadvantage, let alone the comparisons against generic android phone SOCs. This is a huge part of what gives them their battery life - it’s not the OS, it’s not the node, it’s not the accelerators, it’s that they pull 1/3 the power running a browser/electron app or a word processor as x86 does. https://i.imgur.com/Kcwo1OM.png https://i.imgur.com/Kcwo1OM.png https://i.imgur.com/IP6vBqk.png https://i.imgur.com/IP6vBqk.png https://i.imgur.com/1pTFnRj.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/1pTFnRj.jpeg Again, you’ve volunteered to self-identify as someone who is doing precisely what GP said: you’ve made your little box and you’ve put people into it and you’ve closed your mind to any alternative possibilities.
- alt227 2y ago
  As usual, all the charts only show single core workloads.
  - paulmd 2y ago
    Yes, x86 does ok in bulk vector computations, but performance really falls off in 1T or light-load scenarios. So they have to boost super high to keep up, which tanks performance. That’s the major difference right now. Presumably this is because decoding x86 is quite difficult and x86 chips lean really heavily on SMT to keep the cores filled as a result. I’m excited to see how Arrow Lake/Lunar Lake end up working out and if efficiency is improved, but right now it’s not good, some would say objectively bad (60w peak for a literal single thread on AMD, 50w+ on intel, for scores that are +/- 5% from apple and Qualcomm). If you feel like this is brought up a lot: consider that efficiency under light mixed workloads is pretty much the primary consideration for a large number of laptop buyers. I have a 9900k and epyc systems if I want something beyond what a laptop will deliver (and M1 Max isn’t exactly a lightweight to begin with) so this complements each other quite well. It's also very helpful to have proper first-party driver support. Linux is a mess and not getting better. HDMI 2.1 still isn't upstreamed even 4 years after AMD started trying, for example. Windows is (ineptly) doing an ARM-to-Windows switchover and (ineptly) doing a big "AI PC" push too, in ways that are much more adversarial than apple. Hard to enunciate the difference, but it's really the same classic "you're the product, not the customer" whereas with apple that's never really in question. I do really enjoy never having to fight bluetooth drivers and whatnot. Linux is great for server PCs etc, but "year of linux on the desktop" is a meme for a reason... and "year of linux on the laptop" is even farther away. And before you say framework... framework laptops actually do not have very good battery life at all, even among x86 laptops. That's sort of the problem in general: there isn't a turnkey "just buy this and linux works and it's just as good as a macbook" option for x86, at any price, even ignoring the 1T efficiency problems. For example even the latest AMD laptops still have broken HDMI support under linux. That's unacceptable on a big-ticket purchase. Make a decent x86 laptop and I'll consider it, but right now the AMD and Intel offerings just aren't there. Far from your original claim, to me it's the exact opposite and people are constantly pushing you to buy x86 and overlook all the problems and defects and shortcomings. Offer me something comparable and I'll consider it, but for now I am not going back at least on my laptop.

exe34 2y ago

I've got a 12 year old Mac book air that just refuses to die or grow obsolete. I've never been rich or wanted to flex - it was the only thing with the weight, size, and specs from the time and it remains my favourite laptop ever. I hate to think of what I'll have to get next time.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
alt227 2y ago
Thats the only good thing about Apple products, they never change. So when you finally do want to upgrade, there will be a nice new shiny version of the same macbook air ready for you to buy.
- exe34 2y ago
  unfortunately I'll want to wait until asahi is sufficiently supported before considering it. I gave up on os x when they made me reboot to disable nanny mode.
  - alt227 2y ago
    Genuinely interested, whats Nanny mode?
    - exe34 2y ago
      https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/disabling_and_enabling_system_integrity_protection https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/disabling...

robenkleene 2y ago

Similar to the Emacs bindings, in being something where Apple's products are far ahead in ways that are only leveragable for the upper fraction of a percent of technical users, is AppleScript (and to a lesser extent Shortcuts), where to this day, even with AppleScript on the decline, Apple GUI applications are far more scriptable than applications on other platforms. Note this is not the same as CLI script-ability (which the Apple ecosystem is also excellent at) because AppleScript understands data types, e.g., you can iterate through the todos in a list and act on only the ones from the last week, or save the media assets attached to each todo to a file.

robenkleene 2y ago

Another note about the Emacs bindings, it's always applications that are highly regarded by the technical community where these stop working, like Blender. It always makes me wonder if on Linux and Windows do folks just live without movement by word, and delete backwards word in file dialogs? Or are there just other bindings for those that work across the OS on Linux and Windows?

alt227 2y ago
> Movement by word ctrl+left or right arrow > delete backwards word ctrl+backspace Works globally in windows.
- robenkleene 2y ago
  Thanks for the reply! I'll have to try this in Blender, I'd love it if someone could chime in similarly for Linux, I'm super curious about the bindings support on other platforms.
  - alt227 2y ago
    You're welcome. In fact I only discovered this recently myself, I have no idea how long it has been backeed into windows.
    - Vampiero 2y ago
      I don't know but I'm pretty sure it's been there since at least 2000
fluoridation 2y ago
FYI, the reason they don't work on Blender is because Blender, presumably for cross-platform consistency, manually draws its entire UI as well as handles its own events. The OS has no involvement in the UI, except to provide system resources. Most applications use standard dialogs for things like opening files, that are implemented in a central system DLL, so the behavior is consistent system-wide, and any improvement MS makes to those dialogs is automatically applied to all applications that use them.

Freedom2 2y ago

> My own take, after using Apple stuff for 15 years now, is it's the attention to detail. I fail to see how this applies to the mouse where you can't use it while charging, let alone the whole Vision Pro thing.