Seems a bit dubious to claim M1 isn't ready for web browsers when all of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari have ARM-optimized green checkmarks. Vivaldi, Brave, and Microsoft Edge — who cares? Similarly, the "Finance" tab is 100% green checkmark and also says "Not yet!"
To be fair, I've been having serious trouble with Firefox. The public version (Rosetta 2) has been freezing up on me every third page load, and the nightly version (ARM compiled) has similar issues. But I'm optimistic that these issues will be resolved soon.
This web site feels to me like the Intel ARM knock-off websites that kept equating "the full internet experience" to "running flash" which was something Apple was studiously not doing on iOS.
Bad memories aside, tracking what worked before and is in progress to working again, is useful service. Back during the 68K -> PowerPC switch this kind of information was very helpful.
I thought that when I saw the site. Surely it should be "Are these software developers ready?". It's not as snappy or click-baity though. The truth is that this is a really useful site, despite its name.
In my small universe, this was the week of ARM. I submitted multiple PRs to OS projects to get ARM compilations working. I started moving AWS instances off of Intel instances to the new Graviton2 instances.
I'm still surprised there isn't more server takeup of ARM considering the incredible power numbers. Cloudflare announced their current builds and it's all Epyc2 and no ARM. What about Azure and Google Cloud? Are ARM servers easy to launch and superior on a cost/performance perspective?
The blog post that announces Cloudflare's current builds [1] says they "looked very seriously at ARM-based CPUs and continue to keep our software up to date for the ARM architecture so that we can use ARM-based CPUs when the requests per watt is interesting to us"
Performance on ARM is bad compare to intel on GCP / AWS. The "incrediable" numbers are on M1 for Apple only which cloud provider don't have, also on servers Intel / AMD are still faster, no one cares about power consuption when renting a server.
I did not realize AWS had its own ARM chipset, so thanks for bringing Graviton to my attention.
I was wondering how other companies will compete with Apple's data center advantage--presumably Apple will replace most x86 infrastructure with cheaper, lower power, faster Apple Silicon.
Even if Graviton2 work is far behind the M1, it seems like Amazon can catch up. Particularly if they are able to hire away engineers from Apple's team. Even if Amazon trails Apple by years in performance per watt, it can still likely offer a compelling change from what Intel or AMD may be able to accomplish in the same time period.
I totally thought this was going to be one of those static sites with a single answer in h1 fonts ("Is it snowing in San Francisco?" "No") but instead this is much more useful.
It's unfortunate that the middle status (warning triangle with a exclamation mark) has a green background rather than a yellow background like warning triangles everywhere else. Makes the table less clear.
I've been through enough Mac upgrades by now to learn that I'm going to have a better time waiting for M2. I'm not really interested in jumping on this particular early adopter train. As a developer, who knows what random tweaks and system behaviors I rely on to get my job done, but that will be completely broken on a new Mac.
I certainly am heartened by all the news about processing power improvements. I'll just join the rest of y'all young whippersnappers after you pay the early adopter tax for me.
Afaik only 365 and 2021 will be ARM native and 2019 won't be.
Also be aware that unlike the Windows Office, Mac Office is supported only for 5 years and for the 2019 release, 2 years are already gone (it will be supported till Oct 2023, Mac Office 2016 is already unsupported since last October).
Table suggests that Docker can run under Rosetta 2, but the Docker blog post that it links to suggests Rosetta is not enough. Can someone confirm if it’s actually possible to run Docker using Rosetta on M1 Macs?
Unrelated to the link but related to Apple's CPU foray:
Any thoughts or info on the security implications of a first generation CPU design? Is it safe to assume that a design focused on cutting edge performance may have compromised on security in some form? Does the fact that this is first gen indicate opportunity for hackers to discover low hanging fruit vulnerabilities possibly to the benefit of nation state or private actors?
I feel like the long term path for silicon will converge on extreme compartmentalization of general purpose computing hardware inside chips, designed from the ground up to achieve physical process isolation purpose built per task, with highly secure hardware IPC all on a single high perf die.
Interested to learn what Apple has done to build a "more secure" CPU design. edit: A quick web search yields relevant results on this topic already, e.g. work by Chinese based Tencent Security.
This isn't a first-generation CPU design. It's just another iteration of the ARM chips that Apple has been building since acquiring PA Semi 12 years ago.
I can only imagine the horror it must be to be maintaining mac x86 software that turns out to not work with Rosetta
(Like some of the examples listed).
I do windows desktop work and try to picture what would happen if our customers were suddenly moving to Win10 on Arm and expecting our software to work. We have dozens and dozens of third party binary dependencies, each of which could turn out to be the one that doesn’t translate. Not all of them could realistically be replaced or updated. The situation would basically be one where Microsoft had announced the death of our software and probably business.
Long-time Mac developers are familiar with these transitions, and everyone had the opportunity to pick up development hardware this summer, so while it’s certainly not something to treat lightly, everyone with customers should have known what they were up against by now.
I would think the apps will come and get optimised. That is just a matter of chicken and egg, sometimes you just have to release, and go from there.
What I am worried about is if the GPU is anything worthwhile. All the focus in the reviews is on the CPU, but the GPU seems where it mostly falls short. Not enough external screens for example, though that can be fixed in a newer generation. But is it faster than what Apple hardware included in Intel, with AMD graphics? Some people will feel the regression in speed and capabilities quite hard. I don't see much focus on that in media publications.
It’s a fair bet that it’s substantially inferior to a dedicated gpu at present. They didn’t release an M1 in any premium sku that would be head to head with a dgpu.
However, given the investment in both the neural engine and integrated gpu - I wouldn’t be surprised to see something interesting in 6-24 months.
It's amazing how fast applications are being transitioned to apple silicon. If this was any other company introducing a new architecture, I am sure adoption wouldn't have been this fast.
Apple has the advantage of a long track record of pulling the plug on old tech. No one thinks for a moment that they’re going to try to straddle the middle of the road by offering both platforms any longer than they have to.
Being a decisive, opinionated company means that you anger a lot of people, but it also means you’re predictable once you’ve announced something like this.
Very cool. Small suggestion: it would be nice to be able to filter by "all apps that have native support or work properly under Rosetta", and maybe also the inverse of that.
Weird that node is listed as not running under Apple Silicon, since I've been running node 15 compiled for Apple Silicon without problems for a while now :)
[+] [-] loeg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eugeniub|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|5 years ago|reply
Bad memories aside, tracking what worked before and is in progress to working again, is useful service. Back during the 68K -> PowerPC switch this kind of information was very helpful.
[+] [-] jane128|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sbuk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prh8|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] totalZero|5 years ago|reply
Also, Firefox isn't natively supported outside of beta.
[+] [-] gilrain|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bklyn11201|5 years ago|reply
I'm still surprised there isn't more server takeup of ARM considering the incredible power numbers. Cloudflare announced their current builds and it's all Epyc2 and no ARM. What about Azure and Google Cloud? Are ARM servers easy to launch and superior on a cost/performance perspective?
[+] [-] ajsfoux234|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/technical-details-of-why-cloudfl...
[+] [-] Thaxll|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bredren|5 years ago|reply
I was wondering how other companies will compete with Apple's data center advantage--presumably Apple will replace most x86 infrastructure with cheaper, lower power, faster Apple Silicon.
Even if Graviton2 work is far behind the M1, it seems like Amazon can catch up. Particularly if they are able to hire away engineers from Apple's team. Even if Amazon trails Apple by years in performance per watt, it can still likely offer a compelling change from what Intel or AMD may be able to accomplish in the same time period.
[+] [-] Xevi|5 years ago|reply
But as you can see at the end of the article, other providers are considering/using ARM more.
[+] [-] glup|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yyyk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jane128|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coryfklein|5 years ago|reply
I certainly am heartened by all the news about processing power improvements. I'll just join the rest of y'all young whippersnappers after you pay the early adopter tax for me.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|5 years ago|reply
If this was a brand new chip, yes, but Apple's chips have had years worth of proofing in iPads etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors
[+] [-] kowlo|5 years ago|reply
Great to see Office 2019 (not 365) works - was putting off picking up a license for that reason.
[+] [-] vetinari|5 years ago|reply
Also be aware that unlike the Windows Office, Mac Office is supported only for 5 years and for the 2019 release, 2 years are already gone (it will be supported till Oct 2023, Mac Office 2016 is already unsupported since last October).
[+] [-] ibraheemdev|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saagarjha|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gmaster1440|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsanheim|5 years ago|reply
some context: https://www.reddit.com/r/docker/comments/jxc1ge/docker_and_a...
[+] [-] benatkin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] speedgoose|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kccqzy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] musicale|5 years ago|reply
Presumably ARM docker images could run in an ARM Linux VM.
[+] [-] filmgirlcw|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xeeeeeeeeeeenu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jane128|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anupamchugh|5 years ago|reply
Seems like JetBrains still needs to get their softwares ready for Apple Silicon: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-2526
[+] [-] mandragon|5 years ago|reply
Any thoughts or info on the security implications of a first generation CPU design? Is it safe to assume that a design focused on cutting edge performance may have compromised on security in some form? Does the fact that this is first gen indicate opportunity for hackers to discover low hanging fruit vulnerabilities possibly to the benefit of nation state or private actors?
I feel like the long term path for silicon will converge on extreme compartmentalization of general purpose computing hardware inside chips, designed from the ground up to achieve physical process isolation purpose built per task, with highly secure hardware IPC all on a single high perf die.
Interested to learn what Apple has done to build a "more secure" CPU design. edit: A quick web search yields relevant results on this topic already, e.g. work by Chinese based Tencent Security.
[+] [-] stouset|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acwan93|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chadlavi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] alkonaut|5 years ago|reply
I do windows desktop work and try to picture what would happen if our customers were suddenly moving to Win10 on Arm and expecting our software to work. We have dozens and dozens of third party binary dependencies, each of which could turn out to be the one that doesn’t translate. Not all of them could realistically be replaced or updated. The situation would basically be one where Microsoft had announced the death of our software and probably business.
[+] [-] macintux|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mpol|5 years ago|reply
What I am worried about is if the GPU is anything worthwhile. All the focus in the reviews is on the CPU, but the GPU seems where it mostly falls short. Not enough external screens for example, though that can be fixed in a newer generation. But is it faster than what Apple hardware included in Intel, with AMD graphics? Some people will feel the regression in speed and capabilities quite hard. I don't see much focus on that in media publications.
[+] [-] lucian1900|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lumost|5 years ago|reply
However, given the investment in both the neural engine and integrated gpu - I wouldn’t be surprised to see something interesting in 6-24 months.
[+] [-] xyst|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] macintux|5 years ago|reply
Being a decisive, opinionated company means that you anger a lot of people, but it also means you’re predictable once you’ve announced something like this.
[+] [-] brundolf|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tosh|5 years ago|reply
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1er-NivvuIheDmIKBVRu3...
first results are impressive, there are reports of games that were unplayable on the 2020 Intel MacBook Air that now run well on the M1 MacBook Air
[+] [-] uvesten|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dawnerd|5 years ago|reply