> Spotify, Slack, Discord, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, all the annoying bloated websites, which I used to hate so much for the past months, now run like if they were the most optimized websites on the internet.
This is just going to encourage bloat and inefficiency, isn't it? Note: this has nothing to do with specifically Apple Silicon but just any computing improvements in general.
Yes, but that's pretty much how it goes. Jonathan Blow had a rant on release of the M1 Macs saying it literally didn't matter because computers were already really fast and the problem has been, and will continue to be, that if the processor/system is faster then software will be written slower to hit the magical response time expected.
Similar to how taser training for law enforcement involves being tased themselves, I think Electron developers should have to use old computers for an extended period of time as their Electron development machines, just so they get an idea of what it feels like to be a user of their apps.
> This is just going to encourage bloat and inefficiency, isn't it?
Same as it ever was:
> Wirth's law is an adage on computer performance which states that software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is becoming faster.
> The adage is named after Niklaus Wirth, who discussed it in his 1995 article "A Plea for Lean Software".[1][2]
[…]
> Other common forms use the names of the leading hardware and software companies of the 1990s, Intel and Microsoft, or their CEOs, Andy Grove and Bill Gates, for example "What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away"[7] and Andy and Bill's law: "What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away".[8]
> Visual Studio Code is now optimized for Apple Silicon… and it works and it's snappy. I hated that app on my last laptop, it was very slow and bloated
I was thinking the same thing as I read this bit. I’m still on an Intel Mac and recently switched from VSC to Panic’s Nova editor, highly polished and 100% native.
If bloated code runs fast on an M1, imagine how native code performs? I’m trying very hard to excise as much Electron garbage from my life as possible.
If, in a year or two, everyone at a tech company is building and testing on Apple Silicon machines, it could very well lead to major performance blindspots.
While you can profile performance in any web inspector, I think a good product team should keep a base-spec Windows laptop on hand to see how it all comes together for users who may not have the kind of hardware they design and develop on.
Back in 1989 I ran an application called GeoWorks on my Commodore 64. It had a paint program and WYSIWYG word processor and both applications and documents ran in the C64's available RAM of... 38k?
Roughly 1/100000 of what's on a low end computer today. On a CPU that ran at 1MHz and took many clock cycles per instruction.
The sad part is that most developers will be using these faster machines and to them their software will seem super snappy. But the poor folks with non-state of the art machines will experience much slower experiences. It creates a dynamic where other users are forced to upgrade just to use basic software.
In the past, I developed on old hardware (or at least tested on old hardware). If the software was performant on my old machine, it was bound to be fine for most others.
I've enjoyed high level programming so far (think Java, Swift). But for the sake of argument, I'm gonna say this: high level languages (& their runtime environments) take control over the code that the programmer writes. Speaking of "computing environments", I'm unease with the fact that I don't really know that my Swift program is doing in the background, and more so, the fact that the vendor (Oracle, Google, Apple etc) tries so hard to prevent me from finding out.
>> This is just going to encourage bloat and inefficiency, isn't it? Note: this has nothing to do with specifically Apple Silicon but just any computing improvements in general.
If it does, Wintels are not going to be pleasant environments for users. Wintel laptops would need to up to 32gb/64gb RAM
> Given the little chance Intel or anyone else is going to keep up with this new level of performance, I believe this new laptop could be with me perhaps even longer, unless everyone else in the world buys it and developers start to create 10x bloated apps compared to today.
That's naive and wrong. The M1 seems to be an excellent processor with good performance. It's not worlds better than a Ryzen 5 5600X or its mobile variant.
> I decided I don't need more RAM than 8 GB, because nobody from the first reviewers managed to give the RAM a hard time. It seemed to me it's a different beast altogether and it doesn't make sense to just compare numbers and say that more is better.
The processor is not a magical thing that changes how much memory is needed for workloads. When the first reviewers did not look at your workload it's meaningless that they did not complain.
Your memory requirements completely depend on your workload. It's quite possible you do not use more than 8GB, but I had IDEs and GIMP use more than that. And it's of course (it's Apple) not upgradeable, 8GB will not be enough if your usage changes, and then that laptop will just be expensive garbage for you.
--
I decided I don't need more RAM than 8 GB, because nobody from the first reviewers managed to give the RAM a hard time. It seemed to me it's a different beast altogether and it doesn't make sense to just compare numbers and say that more is better. Apple allows you to buy a computer with more than 8 GB RAM, but I think it's just a trap how to satisfy and charge those who don't believe the reviews and just want more RAM whatever it takes.
--
I think the reason I would always buy more RAM is not because it needs it today, but because it may need it in 2 or 3 years, as app inevitably eat into the performance gains with bloat.
I want a no commentary, no sound, video of the M1 Mac usage. Like show me how it runs YouTube on Chrome for example. So tired of these reviews that don't show anything other than the opinion of some fellow that is either Apple-biased or doesn't cover my field of usage at all.
This is my first time hearing Apple refurbished meaning old store display model. I always thought refurbished machines were products that other people bought new and returned, and then Apple restored them to like-new condition. There seem to be a lot more refurbs available than I would imagine there are old display models. Now I'm curious, though, does anyone know more about how (Apple official) refurbs are sourced?
I usually try to avoid "first gen" Apple products. There usually seems to be a big jump in quality with the next iteration. Did that factor in your decision? do you think it is worth the wait for their 2nd try?
I ordered a 16GB mini for the kids, it won't make it here by Christmas.... We just need it for the virtual schooling.
Anyhow, I expect that ARM9 will be the hotness and this first generation will lose support a little more quickly and next years models. I guess it depends on ARM9 though.
This is old physical hardware, and the CPU itself has been around in some form for a while (I don't think they've done a big micro architectural change since the A12 or so), so it's probably not as risky as usual.
What I find a bit wild is that the author was using a laptop newer than my late 2013 MacBook Pro, and said everything was sluggish. My maxed 2013 pro is still super fast, but it seems like all the USB-C MacBooks that came afterwards sacrificed performance for.. what, thickness?
I have learned to stop trusting people who say their old computer is “super fast”. No, your computer from 2013 isn’t super fast. You’ve gotten used to the slowness.
Hi, I'm the author. My old machine is Macbook 12". Not Macbook Air, neither Macbook Pro. It's the small, portable Macbook 12" with low performance, low memory, and no fan. In other words, the machine was kind of underpowered already when released, for the trade-off of getting excellent portability and silence.
I had a laptop running Linux from 2013 too and it was always snappy. The only reason I switched was because of how noisy the fans are.
Work also gave me a 2015 Mac and now Linux is running on it. It's pretty fine and far from sluggish. No idea what the author is doing to have problems.
> Apple allows you to buy a computer with more than 8 GB RAM, but I think it's just a trap how to satisfy and charge those who don't believe the reviews and just want more RAM whatever it takes.
Just spitballing here, but I’m guessing the OP doesn’t spend much time using DAW sample libraries or editing video.
You are probably right. The problem is that it is all grey. Some people do work with large datasets that absolutely perform much better with larger RAM. Some people had bad experiences in the past with slow swap systems and now always believe they need more RAM. Some people look at monitor apps and see that programs allocated large virtual blocks (because they can) and assume they need more physical RAM. Some people had 16 GB systems in the past that they really didn't need and now run an M1 system with 8 GB and find that everything runs fine.
What we need are concrete A/B tests. Two identical (other than RAM size) x86 systems running large data set memory hungry tasks that performs significantly better on a 16 GB system than a 8 GB system. Then the same tasks (running native ARM code) on 8 and 16 GB M1 systems with the identical OS version. Ideally a sequence of tests with varying memory demands. Tests like that would at least get in the ballpark of revealing if the M1 systems are somehow more capable with less memory. The rest is just anecdotal.
I suspect that M1 systems might handle light swapping a bit more efficiently than the latest x86 systems, but tasks with truly large datasets will ultimately be limited by SSD access rates. Of course, that is just another useless opinion until reasonable test data is available.
Hi, I'm the author. I don't know what DAW is and I don't spend time editing video. I made my first video in iMovie ever just a few days after I've got the M1 :)
Work bought me a new M1 Mac Pro with 16GB RAM and I’m not feeling the speed whatsoever. My dock causes repeatable crashes waking from sleep. Browsing feels slow and laggy, with things like the 1password add-on visibly loading in parts when opened.
The only things I can think of are that it’s because I used the Migration Assistant to go from my old MacBook Air to this, or that I’ve somehow acquired a lemon. I’m going to try wiping it clean and starting fresh, but beyond that it’s in refund territory.
I really want to be wrong about it, but I’m sceptical of the good press at this point given my own experience.
Although I am obviously very impressed with Apple's new Silicon, is there a "I only buy Apple" effect here where people are basically impressed with their laptop being even feeling ridiculously fast because previous Apple products have generally been expensive and not particularly fast relative to the competition (i.e. I see people saying "Wow I can finally game on my laptop" and it's unthinkable staying in an ecosystem like that)?
I have a Mac mini M1. I’m leaning towards returning it and getting a 16GB but the 16GB had the longest delivery time. Interestingly enough, I do run some “heavy loading” stuff and I just scratch 6GB or so. I am curious what the longevity issues are with the large swap partition.
I should note I run everything (besides Firefox) on arm build (vscode insiders is super glitchy but it's the price to pay for nightly builds).
“ I also decided I want 512 GB drive, as I'm used to that size and I didn't want to downgrade” my 512gb MBA gets ~2800/2700 MBs read/write versus the standard benchmarks of ~2000. I’ve been curious for benchmarks of the higher capacities but haven’t found any. Seems capacity still increases performance like it did earlier generations with ssds.
There are a number of errors in this article. For example, the brew packages for Spotify and VS Code are not ARM-native. There's a beta for Spotify and VS Code floating around, but these instructions will not install it.
But, my experience with M1 thus far says that this is probably a good scheme to run dual Homebrews. Better than the Soffe method.
Hi, I'm the author. Thanks for the correction. Do you know how to install the ARM-native ones, then? Or how does it work? I thought a brew installed as native would install native apps.
Replaced mbp 13" 2016 16gb with mba 8gb m1 and the difference is huge. Made me move to VS Code remote because homebrew is broken. Really digging it as a setup. Drives my LG 5k smoothly.
"Having TouchID as part of the computer is a nice surprise." my thought exactly (besides other aspects) about my 2019 Macbook Pro. Having to just press a "key" is a widely different experience compared to having to type yet-another password. Although... my mid-2017 OnePlus 5 smartphone is far more reliable and rapid than my laptop. Did aPPLe fillany braught back touhc IDz to a larger device but failed mizerably? I bet it was them different teams phenomenon.
[+] [-] Apocryphon|5 years ago|reply
This is just going to encourage bloat and inefficiency, isn't it? Note: this has nothing to do with specifically Apple Silicon but just any computing improvements in general.
[+] [-] 0xCMP|5 years ago|reply
Kind of a cynical take... but is he wrong?
[+] [-] heavyset_go|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw0101a|5 years ago|reply
Same as it ever was:
> Wirth's law is an adage on computer performance which states that software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is becoming faster.
> The adage is named after Niklaus Wirth, who discussed it in his 1995 article "A Plea for Lean Software".[1][2]
[…]
> Other common forms use the names of the leading hardware and software companies of the 1990s, Intel and Microsoft, or their CEOs, Andy Grove and Bill Gates, for example "What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away"[7] and Andy and Bill's law: "What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away".[8]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law
[+] [-] Eric_WVGG|5 years ago|reply
I was thinking the same thing as I read this bit. I’m still on an Intel Mac and recently switched from VSC to Panic’s Nova editor, highly polished and 100% native.
If bloated code runs fast on an M1, imagine how native code performs? I’m trying very hard to excise as much Electron garbage from my life as possible.
[+] [-] basicneo|5 years ago|reply
We simply wouldn't have the services we have today at their low price if our hardware didn't offer them more breathing room.
As inefficiency tips more towards degradation in machines, more emphasis will be given to efficiency.
[+] [-] mortenjorck|5 years ago|reply
While you can profile performance in any web inspector, I think a good product team should keep a base-spec Windows laptop on hand to see how it all comes together for users who may not have the kind of hardware they design and develop on.
[+] [-] svachalek|5 years ago|reply
Roughly 1/100000 of what's on a low end computer today. On a CPU that ran at 1MHz and took many clock cycles per instruction.
In other words, yes but that's nothing new.
[+] [-] psadri|5 years ago|reply
In the past, I developed on old hardware (or at least tested on old hardware). If the software was performant on my old machine, it was bound to be fine for most others.
[+] [-] teabee89|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yumraj|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s1k3s|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Triv888|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sorokod|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] megablast|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] threeseed|5 years ago|reply
They are cross-platform apps which still need to run well on the 95% of other computers which don't have the M1 chip.
[+] [-] TuringNYC|5 years ago|reply
If it does, Wintels are not going to be pleasant environments for users. Wintel laptops would need to up to 32gb/64gb RAM
[+] [-] onli|5 years ago|reply
That's naive and wrong. The M1 seems to be an excellent processor with good performance. It's not worlds better than a Ryzen 5 5600X or its mobile variant.
> I decided I don't need more RAM than 8 GB, because nobody from the first reviewers managed to give the RAM a hard time. It seemed to me it's a different beast altogether and it doesn't make sense to just compare numbers and say that more is better.
The processor is not a magical thing that changes how much memory is needed for workloads. When the first reviewers did not look at your workload it's meaningless that they did not complain.
Your memory requirements completely depend on your workload. It's quite possible you do not use more than 8GB, but I had IDEs and GIMP use more than that. And it's of course (it's Apple) not upgradeable, 8GB will not be enough if your usage changes, and then that laptop will just be expensive garbage for you.
[+] [-] mesh|5 years ago|reply
I think the reason I would always buy more RAM is not because it needs it today, but because it may need it in 2 or 3 years, as app inevitably eat into the performance gains with bloat.
[+] [-] s1k3s|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksml|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mick_schroeder|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheCondor|5 years ago|reply
Anyhow, I expect that ARM9 will be the hotness and this first generation will lose support a little more quickly and next years models. I guess it depends on ARM9 though.
[+] [-] rsynnott|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tekstar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buzzerbetrayed|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ogre_codes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] honzajavorek|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LockAndLol|5 years ago|reply
Work also gave me a 2015 Mac and now Linux is running on it. It's pretty fine and far from sluggish. No idea what the author is doing to have problems.
[+] [-] lmedinas|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Technically|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] tomcam|5 years ago|reply
Just spitballing here, but I’m guessing the OP doesn’t spend much time using DAW sample libraries or editing video.
[+] [-] dev_tty01|5 years ago|reply
What we need are concrete A/B tests. Two identical (other than RAM size) x86 systems running large data set memory hungry tasks that performs significantly better on a 16 GB system than a 8 GB system. Then the same tasks (running native ARM code) on 8 and 16 GB M1 systems with the identical OS version. Ideally a sequence of tests with varying memory demands. Tests like that would at least get in the ballpark of revealing if the M1 systems are somehow more capable with less memory. The rest is just anecdotal.
I suspect that M1 systems might handle light swapping a bit more efficiently than the latest x86 systems, but tasks with truly large datasets will ultimately be limited by SSD access rates. Of course, that is just another useless opinion until reasonable test data is available.
[+] [-] honzajavorek|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Schwolop|5 years ago|reply
The only things I can think of are that it’s because I used the Migration Assistant to go from my old MacBook Air to this, or that I’ve somehow acquired a lemon. I’m going to try wiping it clean and starting fresh, but beyond that it’s in refund territory.
I really want to be wrong about it, but I’m sceptical of the good press at this point given my own experience.
[+] [-] jokull|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhh__|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] syntaxing|5 years ago|reply
I should note I run everything (besides Firefox) on arm build (vscode insiders is super glitchy but it's the price to pay for nightly builds).
[+] [-] jfk13|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shepherdjerred|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianai|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _gmnw|5 years ago|reply
I wasn't sure which one to get but after upgrading the memory to 16GB the cost difference is pretty inconsequential between the two.
[+] [-] emptyparadise|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runjake|5 years ago|reply
But, my experience with M1 thus far says that this is probably a good scheme to run dual Homebrews. Better than the Soffe method.
[+] [-] honzajavorek|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cylim|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokull|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] naboavida|5 years ago|reply