Apple’s M1 silicon is all about platform control
androidauthority.com
androidauthority.com
I don’t think there is anything that suggests Apple is going to stop people from installing Apps outside their App Store. Rather it is about making sure it is easy for regular users to get Apps in a safe manner without malware and Trojan horses.
This isn’t just hype. We know for a fact that this is a much smaller problem on iOS than Android. I am happy that Android exists as a choice for users but let us not pretend there are no trade offs.
It is a bit too conspiratorial to think Apple control is all about some dictatorship fetish. It is a choice Apple makes to improve user experience at the expense of flexibility.
This could all change, but until it does articles like this feel a lot like FUD. Additionally, completely dismissing the M1 as a 'marginal improvement' shows a level of anti-Apple that is clearly clouding the authors judgement.
> They are what makes the mac popular with developers
Developers believe that they're Apple's priority when it comes to hardware, especially the Mac, in large part due to the perfect intersect that was the MBP for many years. That tide already turned in 2016 with the new keyboard, followed by the touch bar. Like the joke that the 'S' in IoT stands for security (the joke being there is no S, and there is no security), there is no 'D' for developer in MBP. Apple have been consistently clear that 'professional developers' are not the primary target of their 'Pro' lineup across the board.
Someone else made a comment on this forum that got my attention recently, that we're all so used to being courted as customers by (mostly free) services that we've forgotten that we're not always the target customer. Similarly, developers are only welcome in Apple's ecosystem if they play by Apple's rules. Like we've seen with the App Store, Apple will frequently alter the terms of the deal. All you can do is pray they do not alter them any further.
None of this should diminish the extraordinary results that can be delivered by the M1. That is amazing.
As someone who uses an MBP for development for 8-10 hours a day for work and another one for 4-6 hours a day for school, I'm pretty happy with them for development purposes
So does any company that paid attention in marketing & sales 101. An established hardware company has to sell what it has, and shouldn’t try to sell what it doesn’t have (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect is the classical example of why not to sell what you don’t have (yet))
(if you don’t have anything to sell yet, selling what you don’t have is fine. See Kickstarter and early Tesla)
I think the reason people think Apple is special at this is that Steve Jobs was very good at selling what he had and downplaying what he didn’t have.
Similar story with Apple Sign In (though no judge order there).
1. I'm paraphrasing
Of course Apple did a 180 soon after and introduced the iOS SDK.
Not so sure if that was flipping the script when they were ready or that Apple had hoped to not have to open the OS but bent to the developer outcry (or saw that there might be some merit for growing the platform in opening it up).
Other examples of Apple reversing course would be "No stylus on iDevices", no use of intel chips, no switch back to scissor-type keyboards.
Word of mouth is the best form of advertising. If you're most vocal work of mouth folks turn than this would be bad for sales.
I'm just genuinely confused as to why people seem to think that [a] Apple is planning to switch to a locked down ecosystem on their notebooks and [b] Apple has been somehow limited in doing this until they had their own "silicon".
Is there somewhere I can find some evidence that it isn't a marginal improvement?
Apple timed the release perfectly to create the impression that it was more, because its obvious competition will be Zen 3 laptops, which are right around the corner but not actually out yet. So then you get benchmarks comparing it to 14nm Intel processors based on 5-year-old technology, and 10nm Intel processors with half as many cores as the M1 because Intel's 10nm yields are so bad they can't make high core count processors, and Zen 2 laptops when the Zen 3 ones it will actually be competing with in a couple months are expected to be 20% faster. And Zen 3 desktops, which the M1 loses to badly on multi-threaded tests, but is competitive with on single threaded tests -- as expected, since modern mobile processors actually have single-thread performance which is competitive with desktops in general, but manages to amaze anyone who doesn't know that.
Which isn't to say they've done a bad job. Making something which is even competitive with modern x86-64 processors is no small feat. But the fanboys are making it out to be some kind of coup when it does, in practice, appear to be a marginal improvement. And we still don't even have many real-world benchmarks because most of the real-world applications haven't actually been ported yet.
While your story about raw computing performance holds, there are two reasons why apple's M1 release is significant (i.e.: not marginal):
1. This is the first time in decades that we see a serious non-x86 competitor for general purpose consumer-level computing. This is significant in and of itself.
2. Power consumption. These things seem to consume 2/3rds as many watts to offer the same performance levels than their x86 counterparts. This is big in the laptop space.
I feel like this would be a lot more significant if you could buy the chip on its own. When you can only buy it as part of a Mac, you're really not buying the chip, you're buying a Mac with all that entails. Then who makes the chip in your Mac doesn't really change much because you buy it from Apple either way.
> Power consumption. These things seem to consume 2/3rds as many watts to offer the same performance levels than their x86 counterparts. This is big in the laptop space.
But that's much the same issue where you're comparing it to Zen 2 when Zen 3 is expected to be 20% faster at the same power, and close a lot of that gap.
It's also hard to compare this in general, for two reasons. The first is that the M1 is 5nm, so then the question is how much of the efficiency is due to that (and will accrue to AMD next year) and how much, if any, is the design?
And the second is that the M1 is big.LITTLE. The small cores are more power efficient, so when you average them in, the overall result should be more power efficient than entirely big cores. But x86-64 processors with a similar configuration are sparse, so what do you compare to? It will be interesting to see the result when there are some (both Intel and AMD have some planned).
Oh, totally. I'm not buying into apple (again) anytime soon, so the only bad thing about M1's for me is that I just won't have them, no matter how good they are.
> But that's much the same issue where you're comparing it to Zen 2 when Zen 3 is expected to be 20% faster at the same power, and close a lot of that gap.
I expect next-gen AMD laptop processors to close the gap either in performance or in power consumption, but not both. Also, power consumption of a laptop is very much a whole-package deal, and Apple really shines here.
To be clear, I dislike apple for who they are and where are they leading the personal computing industry, so I won't buy from them. Nonetheless, I have to acknowledge that they make some damn fine machines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxSI45eeAts
Not to mention the ergonomic factor of being cooler and quieter.
This review appears to be comparing a dual core Intel i3 to the 4+4 core M1, which are only the same price because Apple doesn't sell any laptops for less than $999 even when they're a dual core Intel i3.
I hope you’re right, but personally, I don’t trust Apple to allow me to do what I wish anymore.
I would hope they didn’t kill off eGPUing Radeon cards, but I haven’t kept track of the new hardware other than M1 being really good.
Of course there are things that suggest this, such as, that is how iphones and ipads work, and its become increasingly difficult over time to do it on a mac.
In what way was it made "more difficult" than that?
What exactly suggests it is "becoming (even?) more difficult"?
Then they introduced Gatekeeper, but you had the option to disable the Gatekeeper check for all applications.
Then they removed the option to disable the check for all applications. You now only have the options "App Store" and "App Store and identified developers".
They have definitely made the whole thing harder and harder during these past 10 years. Now if you don't want to pay Apple for a developer license, or you're just otherwise ousted by Apple (like Epic Games), you need to teach your users on how they can circumvent Apple's restrictions.
The courts have agreed that the reason their apps are not in the store is of their own doing, which is why they have not granted an injunction.
Whatever the outcome of their case, they are not an example of some general trend of Apple ‘ousting’ developers.
The first time you "RMB -> Open", as you put it, it won't allow you to open the app at all. You have to do it twice, only the second time does the button to actually open the app appear.
Both times the dialog boxes mention "malware". Both times the default button is "move to trash".
Android is not a choice for iOS users, it's not a seamless switch. The solution as I see it is that apple could still very well protect users from "trojans" but have an opt-in for 3p app installation. A button that says "I want to install apps from anywhere, I know the risks".
If I pay for the hardware, as a customer, I should be able to do whatever I want with it. With the iPhone, it feels like I'm renting rather than owning. I worry that's the direction apple is taking Macs in with the M1.
If you want a different ecosystem there are choices available to you. Why exactly are you complaining when it is clear no one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to use Apple products?
We'd like to use the best available software, running on the best available hardware.
Criticizing Apple's software censorship choices is thus the natural logical target. Otherwise, we have to use things like the PinePhone for the next 10-15 years until someone makes something comparable to an iPhone 6 that can run whatever software the owner wants.
Except for everything related to the Play Store, correct? And that is a critical part of Android at this point. Google is progressively closing Android.
One example is how in newer phones it will be impossible for apps to bypass root detection. I don't know why it should be anyone's business whether I want to run my banking app on a rooted phone or not, but this is the state of modern technology unfortunately...
Is that true though? I though pretty much all of the Google services and vendor-specific skins and OS modifications are just as closed as iOS? Last time I heard vanilla AOSP is pretty much unusable because besides the core OS functions everything is grossly outdated? Is anyone using Android phones without any of the Google services?
Yes I have a couple of phones running LineageOS without GApps. The apps are installed through FDroid or direct from the vendor ( e.g. WhatsApp.apk from their website, which also manages its own updates ).
I mean I've worked with Windows for multiple generations of the operating system, and once the internet became a thing it was just complete shit. I had a side job fixing computers for people, and it was always adware, viruses, etc messing things up.
That was caused by an insecure operating system on the one hand - which can and has been fixed by core operating system mechanics - but a big factor was both freedom and lack of expertise from users. They're easily tempted by e.g. "install this browser bar for dank discounts" without understanding the consequences. They may not even really register what's going on because so much is going on.
99% of users need to be protected from themselves. And developers need to work with that.
Apple has already proven how a closed ecosystem is ultimately beneficial for the consumer - how many security incidents has the iphone had, ever? I can't think of ANY to be honest, outside of the odd scummy app slipping through that is a bit too liberal with user's data. But they have never compromised a user's system. Mobile banking apps became a thing while I was an app developer, and that would never have flown on an unconstrained system. Pretty sure they had a lot more trouble with the Android version as well in that regard.
Tl;dr, 99% of users will never know any better and will not care, they just want to hit install and for things to Just Work.
Windows 10 isn't perfect but it's a much different time than multiple generations ago with Windows 95 / 98, XP or even 7.
Back then you could visit a site and end up needing to format because of a virus, even if you were very much into tech.
Nowadays even if you disable Windows Defender and any active AV tool, it's pretty unlikely you'll get yourself to the point where you need to format due to a virus or some adware.
This is speaking from the perspective of someone who has been using Windows since the mid 1990s.
Maybe those are two things separate, hardware post-purchase support and software user experience, but I can't as a consumer separate those two.
> It is a bit too conspiratorial to think Apple control is all about some dictatorship fetish
So much for "Hacker" News.
I think its funny that most people here wouldent trust a website with no certificate, but for applications the idea seems to be considered abhorrent.
The "ordinary" certificates we use just are meant to prove the website you are talking to is the authorized owner of the domain you mean to be talking to... I'm not sure if there's really an analogy with installing apps, that kind of cert is I think maybe meant to protect against a kind of attack only relevant to network communications, not app installs.
That said, the M1 is one damned good chip. And the Macbooks are hands down the laptops with the best feel and build quality.
It is already exceptionally difficult to distribute apps produced outside of their developer program.
Without Apple providing a HAL FLL for the windows executive and device drivers along with a special bootloader shim (the marketing guys call this package "Bootcamp"), Windows would not work on Intel Macs. Microsoft or some third party would have to reverse engineer the device drivers, and they're definitely not making that investment.
Not to mention more basically that Apple has to sign the NT kernel for it to load on Macs without disabling the equivalent of SecureBoot.
Apple could, obviously, prevent people from installing Windows on Intel Macs if it wanted to.
I don't intend to sound dismissive, but this line of thinking has a name
I consider myself a pragmatic and I think that the only way to actually be sure there is no poison in your food is to literally produce it yourself.
Someone who's not even telling me the recipe is not a trusted source of premium food.
There is also no poison waiting outside of Apple ecosystem.
There is no offloading decision to someone else involved, you simply have the option or you don't, it doesn't mean you have to go full in one way or the other
You don't have to deep dive every app either, it's a straw man IMO
The argument is the same for picking mushrooms in the woods: you don't pick all of them, put them in the same basket, and then test them for venom one by one, you only pick those that you already know as safe, and you're absolutely sure about it.
Nobody in their right mind would do otherwise.
I'm ok with people trusting Apple more than their parents, what I find disturbing is the idea that if I trust my parents to use the same 3 apps that everybody else in the World uses (WhatsApp, FB and Google Maps) and are certified good, I'm putting them in danger.
It is not true.
It's a false premise.
Also the idea that people will go and install every app they see it's false.
They see a warning, they usually stop right there.
My father used to turn off the phone when he saw the red alert of a missing call, thinking of a malfunction.
There's no risk he's gonna install something by chance.
Also, if iOS is on 25% of the devices in Europe, while Android is on 3/4 of them does it mean that 75% of the 700 million European citizens are not pragmatic?
The former helps grandma get her tasks done and lets the power user go the extra mile.
The latter helps grandma get her tasks done, tells the power user he's not worth supporting and blames grandma for it.
It can also be very bad or the very opposite of what Apple does and also be the best around and still let people free to explore all the options available.
There is nothing specific in what Apple does that can be reduced to simply UX.
Maybe ergonomics is more correct to define what Apple tries to do with their human interfaces, but the Apple store or the locked down platform have nothing to do with either UX or ergonomics.
What Apple does is to remove electric plugs from the walls because someone could put a fork inside them and experience an electric shock.
And I am not the one saying it, I was answering to "Apple removed trojan and viruses to help people who don't know better".
That's paternalism.
Second point, though weaker on its own merit, is that the State's primary objective is to improve the commonwealth by acting as proxy to the collective effort, regulating compromise etc which are paternalistic without a doubt.
Private corporations exist for entirely different reasons though this probably wasn't always the case. In our world, corporations can make massive losses, have no working product, or be of such marginal value and yet be valued for billions by speculators in the free market. Its all random and irrational. States cannot operate like that.
The iPhone buyer does not get a say in the development staff or direction at Apple.
My government intends to be "Of the people, for the people, by the people". Imagine if Apple every single year had elections at every level of their company! Vote for your local support representatives. Vote for your local b+m store management. Vote for executive staff. Etc etc.
But until Apple does that, there is literally no fair comparison with paternalism in state and private industry.
Apple has a certain awareness of public opinion and user mood. It isn't obliged to pay attention to either, and of course it also tries to control both through PR efforts.
But if it ignores or irritates its users too much there are financial consequences.
Meanwhile you can be sure forums like HN are monitored for sentiment.
I believe they very much know what their users want and are giving it to them
That's why they are so successful.
And what their users want is a device to support their paternalism.
I've never witnessed so many judgments against elderly or people that are a bit of techno illiterate (a bit is enough) as I have in discussions about Apple.
The baseline is always of two types:
- they are easy to operate, so even my [insert moms, dads, granpas etc here] can use them
- I would never let my [insert moms, dads, granpas etc here] use an open device where they can get viruses that then I have to fix (like fixing something for your family is some kind of punishment, they did it for me repeateadly when I was younger!)
And i think it's a bit naive to think that people supporting the idea that Apple knows better are in good faith and are not doing it because they like the control too and to be "influencers" (with many quotes) in their inner circles.
I would never think that my parents who raised me and made me what I am are incapable of understanding basic safety rules on the Internet once explained to them (safety rules that anyway protect them from something that don't kill people, it simply kills the battery of the device)
> Meanwhile you can be sure forums like HN are monitored for sentiment.
I'm sure they do.
One interesting other thing that we can be sure and I didn't think possible is that there are people monitoring this forums as well with enough karma to downvote, that not only downvote your posts in a discussion, but go back to yout history and downvote older posts as well.
It just happened to me, I had posts from yesterday and two days ago downvoted right now by the same people that downvoted me in this thread.
I don't know if HN can do something about it or not, but for starter disallowing voting on older submissions that users have not shown interest on could help (it should be easy to check which submissions users have opened, when, how many times and for how long to establish if they are genuinely interested in the topic)
When we go to the polls, we are literally making decisions about what you call "paternalism". Who should write our laws? Who should manage our criminal justice system? Who should regulate our industries? These are pretty direct decisions to make.
But when we go to Best Buy or Apple Store to buy an iDevice, almost all consumer are not making a decision about the "paternalistic" decisions of Apple, who they employ, etc. They are buying a shiny object that makes their brain give them the happy juice.
I fear for our society if these two actions become one and the same.
It was 6 centuries ago, when it was first invented, it has a much broader meaning now.
Anyway Apple is State and Government in Apple ecosystem
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paternalism/#Intr
> The civil law does not allow the enforcement of certain kinds of contracts, e.g., for gambling debts. It requires minors to have blood transfusions even if their religious beliefs forbid it. Persons may be civilly committed if they are a danger to themselves.
Doctors do not tell their patients the truth about their medical condition. A physician may tell the wife of a man whose car went off a bridge into the water and drowned that he died instantly when in fact he died a rather ghastly death.
A husband may hide the sleeping pills from a depressed wife. A philosophy department may require a student to take logic courses.
A teacher may be less than honest about telling a student that he has little philosophical ability.
All of these rules, policies, and actions may be done for various reasons; may be justified by various considerations. When they are justified solely on the grounds that the person affected would be better off, or would be less harmed, as a result of the rule, policy, etc., and the person in question would prefer not to be treated this way, we have an instance of paternalism.
As the examples indicate the question of paternalism is one that arises in many different areas of our personal and public life
M1 feels like a stepping stone in the same direction on laptops.
Personally it feels wrong to pay for a device someone can lock you out of and then refuse to unlock. It's like paying ransom without getting kidnapped.
You will be happy if apple bricks your M1 laptop if you forgot the password due to any reason. What happened to spirit of HN culture?
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204306
and Apple isn’t changing anything about how M1 Macs are secured over other Macs, and certainly not bricking them for lost passwords.
It is somewhat difficult to lock your own device so that you cannot factory reset it. You wouldn't just have to lose the passcode, you would also need to lose the credentials to your iCloud account as well as your purchase receipt for the phone. Then you become indistinguishable from a thief.
I am okay with Apple's choice on this, as I prefer the security and the theft deterrence. I keep several methods for recovering my iCloud account, and I keep the receipt for my expensive devices.
Does activation lock even apply to Macbooks?
Blaming Apple for “locking you out” when you were the one who locked the door and lost the key is silly.
Sorry but I had to LOL (combined with grey-haired head shaking). I've been a "technologist" for over 25 years. Every time some corporate entity or government body adds similar "security" they trot out this same cliche line. "Oh no no no it's not so we can CONTROL you, is so we can PROTECT you". Yeah, sure buddy.
> However, that marginal improvement hardly seems worth upsetting the entire Mac OS developer and consumer software ecosystem.
Architecturally it looks like they're sacrificing expandability and raw multiprocessing power (like massively parallel database server multiprocessing) for a single minded focus on laptop chips. Why would it be surprising it'd excel in that domain?
The author also makes the confusing suggestion that M1 is a ploy to get developers to publish to the App Store because ... Xcode produces fat mach-o's? Maybe I'm an idiot here, but all those third party apps are also made with xcode. Where is the correlation with the app store? Sure, apple has been pushing the app store, but how does "apple silicon" specifically push devs there?
If there's anything apple has done to discourage 3rd party distribution, it's through Gatekeeper and strictly requiring notorized executables. If they wanted to make non app store distribution even less appealing, they could only allow notorization through the app store, or change the default to "only app store" ... Oh wait, they did that. On Intel.
Apple has always had complete platform control. They've done a lot of crappy things -- but this article tries to dismiss the M1 for pretty absurd reasons IMO.
I'd be desperate too if I were trying to pretend Android is a serious competitor performance-wise when the CPUs are 18-24 months behind and the gap is still widening.
I open WhatsApp on an iPhone XR. It launches instantly.
I open WhatsApp on a five year old Oneplus. It launches instantly.
Honestly who cares unless you have some niche use case or play mobile games. Having a class leading CPU isn't an advantage if it offers an indiscernible performance increase.
What I do care about though is having a respectable battery life and useful features like a headphone jack. A brand new phone (iPhone SE) should not have worse battery life than a phone from 2015 with its original battery that cost half its price.
A friend of mine got some Samsung flagship(don't remember which one but something new and expensive) from this year, she's into Instagram filters whan she showed me some fun ones she likes I noticed that these filters have significantly slow FPS on live preview - something I am not used to see on an iPhone. I tried the same filters on the lowest end iPhone I have access to, which is iPhone 6s, and that device gave much much better FPS on the live filters of Instagram.
This got me thinking, maybe the Andoid ecosystem is degrading the iPhone experience too? Probably Facebook is holding back on filter capabilities in the name of having the same features on all the platforms? If this Samsung flagship is not better than iPhone 6 in Instagramming, god knows what's the experience on lower end devices.
BTW, TikTok filters have superior face tracking in my experience with excellent iPhone 6s performance. I don't know what's the Andorid situation on TikTok.
Benchmarks from relatively trusted sites, such as Anandtech, suggests that strong native performance on most benchmarks, and at least competitive, if not slightly better, when emulating.
The article is a bad argument to a conclusion that we already know, something that they can already do without putting out their own chips.
I've also found many Apple fans have an unhealthy obsession with Apple bordering on mental disorder, but my anecdote is about as pointless as yours here.
There are also plenty of people in both "camps" who just want a device to go about their business and, as is their choice, don't care much beyond "what costs less" (however they might define that), or what their friends/family use or recommend, or maybe just what fits a very specific use case of theirs.
I've used both types of devices, and there are some things Apple/iOS does better and some things Google/Android does better, and certainly some things neither does well. The specifics of that will always be a subject of disagreement depending on who you ask.
I find the hate part to be very unhealthy. Seriously annoying people, they wouldn't just defend their camp, they would just be evangelists of Andoroid, they are also on a quest to bring down anything else. They even branch between themselves and have fractions of purists, Samsungers, xiaomiens ands so on and they will constantly try to bring down each another too.
Case in point: Your labeling of users of other platforms.
I admittedly do have an obsession with ranting about Android, but I find that there are fewer reasons to rant than five years ago. So I rant less.
As the Android platform has improved over the years, I find that the main reason I don't want people around me to use Android is the ridiculously short product lifecycle of many Android phones, and the risk of non-techies using unpatched devices.
I honestly think Apple's recent 5-6 years is unsustainable, but the three-year(?!) promise that seems to be a best case for Android is just obscene.
Someone at work said it's partially due to SoC manufacturers not providing drivers for new Android kernels for very long, but I might have misunderstood.
The average lifespan of their phones is kind of sad. Most people keep their iPhones for many, many years. But if you try to do that on the Android side you're putting up with a lot of hardware pains or putting yourself at risk using a device that's no longer getting security patches.
Totally understand that people have different cosmetic preferences in operating system, or even philosophically just prefer the Android approach. But it's this fundamental disposability of Android that seems so wrong in comparison to how Apple dutifully designs their phones for long haul support.
iPhones have actual resell value, too.
I switched to iPhone in 2012 after I got super annoyed about the poor quality of and lack of software support my HTC Desire Z was receiving. Since then, every phone I've had, has served out its full 5 or 6 year lifecycle with family members.
I generally switch iPhones every two years, and as of late, the only reason I do it is to prevent family members from ending up with garbage Androids. From iPhone 6s forward, I feel that the 'useful lifespan' of these products for someone who wants something snappy, has only increased.
Here in Finland, one can buy phones from carriers unsubsidized, but with years of interest-free installment. After two years, the market price of my old phone is pretty close to the remainder of my installment.
The reason I've stuck with Android has got very little to do with the software.
this happens (for better or worse) all over the place, with fast-food, cars, fashion, electronics etc
I don't see that there's any hard evidence they're doing that; there's no obvious reason that they can't just shove in more cores for an M1X or whatever (very much Intel's approach these days, say), and they're not (at least technologically) married to the on-package RAM thing.
Everything comes with a cost when you're working in silicon. You can add more cores, yes, but to do so, you either must make each core smaller, or increase the maximum distance between two cores.
This is important, because the longer the distance, the harder it is to maintain e.g. cache coherency between all cores. There's a physical limit to the speed electrons travel, and you have to account for that.
Intel's designs rely on pretty teeny cores with small L1{I,D} caches and small private L2 caches on a ring bus topology, with the iGPU on one polar end, and the system agent/memory controllers on the other ends. [0] [1]
Zen takes a slightly different approach, using individual ICs with four cores on a single IC complex, sharing a single, relatively slow L3 cache, with small private L2 caches per core. The "chip complexes" are contained on a carrier chip which takes care of PCIe and the memory controller, similar to Intel's system agent, but farther from every core. [2] [3]
Apple has instead opted for all the cores to, instead, share a single large L2 cache, with enormous L1 caches. Both the GPU and CPU appear to have point-to-point connections to the memory controller and to the other peripherals.
Because they use 1) large caches and 2) squash everything together, they've managed to achieve ridiculously high memory bandwidth with teeny L1 latency.
For example, while Intel's latest uarch requires 5 CPU cycles to read L1D cache, M1 can do so in 3 cycles. Zen requires either 4 or 5 cycles.
There's no free lunch here, and I doubt they could maintain this same architecture while adding many more cores. They're missing the interconnects and necessary silicon to do so, and adding it would add latency and/or shrink existing caches. The design seems to be predicated on being small with minimal distance between components.
Caveat emptor, I'm not an engineer, this is all idle speculation.
[0] https://en.wikichip.org/w/images/thumb/c/cf/coffee_lake_over...
[1] https://en.wikichip.org/w/images/5/53/coffee_lake_die_%28oct...
[2] https://en.wikichip.org/w/images/a/a7/amd_zen_ccx_2_%28annot...
[3] https://en.wikichip.org/w/images/7/75/amd_zen_octa-core_die_...
App Store has smart deploy features so it only sends you what you need. So maybe that's it. But still.. it's a pretty weak argument.
One thing I can credit Android some, and Windows a lot (even 10 with all its manifold privacy and user-hostility problems) with is that they are backwards compatible.
exceptions to every rule, etc., but I can run all old versions of Android apps on an Android 11 phone, same for Windows programs going back to 1996 or so with few tweaks, and can squeeze that back to 1993 if I fuss and cuss and so on.
yes, this is arch to arch emulation, but the idea od taking that feature away in ~4 years vs Android's best effort continued compatibility or Microsoft's compatibility layers is a cost/benefit that I apparently disagree with Apple decision makers on.
One result I see from this is that MS keep creating new APIs whole old ones languish in obscurity.
On Macs in contrast Cocoa is part of a lineage all the way back to the 1980s. I can still use Objective-C skills I learned even before macOS X was released.
The same cannot be said for Windows. Nobody in their right mind writes Win16 or Win32 apps today.
So ironically the backwards compatibility MS offers it users come at the expense of backwards compatibility for developer skills.
When you ban breaking changes in an API you also stop that API from modernizing and staying relevant.
.NET 5 was also only released for Win32, Linux and macOS, UWP will get an update only later next year, if ever.
im not sure this follows necessarily: whats to prevent ms from say, writing a wrapper that packages up said legacy apps and supplies the libraries they need, so they can keep running and ms can still dump thier old frameworks and stop supportimg them in newer os's?
basically, what im saying is, for legacy apps, they can be "bottled up" and still run on newer systems without harming developer compatibility and modernizing (wine proves this imo)
but maybe im missing some important detail...
For example Apple no longer has to support OpenGL and it can just cut out relevant hardware on the SoC level, leaving more room for other things.
On the smartphone front, Qualcomm can't do that, since it sells its chips to a broad base that have variable requirements.
I guess it's a tradeoff.
Just for everyone who is scared by this statement - macOS on Apple Silicon still supports OpenGL and OpenCL, but it is emulated on top of Metal now.
You might want to look at: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Zink-mac... though. Maybe there'll be more interest for a direct OpenGL to Metal layer not built by Apple in the future, for having a newer feature set.
Ah. This comment seems off the cuff and not well thought out.
I think you may be underestimating the scope and scale at which Windows OS operates[0]. Outside of cool techie agencies and SV type companies, the default OS for any organization from churches to charities to governments to schools, the world over, is Windows. MacOS may be sleek and shiny apex predator but our world would grind to a halt, an absolute standstill if WindowsOS suddenly got wiped. It's not a whale. It's the ocean itself.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_sys...
For me, there is no reason to use Windows over any of the more modern lean and mean operating systems available, and I know a ton of blue collar workers in the U.S. who only have a smartphone and maybe a tablet.
Windows is just not very easy to use by 2020 standards because of all its baggage and consumers care a lot more about that kinda thing compared to organizations. Most of Microsofts attempts to modernize (Microsoft Store, UWP, sandboxing, etc.) seem to have stalled or failed unfortunately.
Honestly, at this point it might make more sense for Microsoft to just milk Windows for as long as possible while minimizing costs and investing in their other businesses (like Azure). Trying to modernize Windows would be like trying to modernize Edge to be competitive with Chrome.
I know how pervasive Windows is, I've made my living writing software for it for the last twenty five years. That is why I know that it is a bloated and over complicated mess.
The reality for most corporates is the only software they want on their desktops is Office and a web browser. This has been the case for a long time. There are laggards of course but taking too much notice of them has crippled the system.
To be clear, this isn't really up to them. It's what market forces have dictated.
Tons of old corp apps exist all over the place that necessitate this level of backwards compatibility.
This would anger some of their corporate customers. Possibly even enough that they could get together and fund some kind of Windows Legacy effort. But realistically, if Microsoft decided to stop being backwards-compatible, where are their customers who are stuck with ancient Windows software going to go? Macs? Linux? Neither of those will have the kind of guarantees their purchasing departments require for compatibility.
Maybe, just maybe, if Microsoft stopped supporting everything ever written for one of their OSes, some of the godawful legacy cruft would actually have to be replaced by new software, and some poor corporate IT people's lives would improve immensely...
This is a symmetric process. Microsoft chose its marker and set its customers’ expectations. That influences both who buys its products and how they structure their own dependencies.
On some Windows update, the application no longer worked. But since Microsoft wanted to ensure a seamless transition during upgrades, they changed their OS code to perpetuate the bug from that application, to allow it to continue working.
Kudos to them for doing so.
In the long run, clear specification and implementation is a lot more desirable, than needing to support various hacks and workarounds for 3rd party software.
Honestly wouldn't be surprised - actually I AM surprised this isn't a thing yet - that they would run older Windows apps in a VM / emulator. Actually they may already do this but I'm just not aware of it.
One thing they have been doing is turn Windows into an evergreen operating system (together with Edge), so that few people will still be running older versions of their operating system.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=800...
> It uses virtualization technology such as Windows Virtual PC to provide a Virtual Windows XP environment for Windows 7.
Mostly. They've done a pretty good job of maintaining backwards compatibility but it isn't perfect. E.g. there's no way to access the old hardware options button anymore. You also get a warning popup if you try to run old apps.
I just tried running an old app I wrote and it freaked out a bit with the layout, jittering all over the place initially. But other than that it mostly worked.
> However, there’s a clear nudge for developers to publish their recompiled apps to Apple’s store.
That doesn't make any sense. Where is the "nudge" coming from? The article doesn't make any argument for how that works, given that you can share universal binaries outside the App store. Apple Silicon isn't changing anything that would "not so gently nudge" developers into the App Store.
Similarly, old apps only compiled for x86 being compatible in the future is... not really about control. PowerPC apps aren't compatible with intel Macbooks; that's just an inevitable outcome of switching the ISA. There's nothing about platform control in that.
I had the impression that the person that wrote the article believes that Universal Binaries are an AppStore-only feature.
Apple silicon doesn’t change anything about Apple’s mac app store. Microsoft would need to release a native version of Windows, not Apple. He has a point with Rosetta 2, that it will very likely disappear (years from now), though that would affect software that isn’t being actively maintained (most of which failed to make the transition to x64 already). And suggesting a switch to AMD instead is just non-sense.
I guess writing stuff like this about Apple is cynical way to boost page views.
In the past 3 years I've seen more and more people asking not for an Arm Mac, but for an AMD Mac. Because AMD is again cheaper and faster than Intel.
But it appears Apple can now afford to build their own CPUs that are better and lower power than either AMD or Intel. Not to mention PowerPC, which is still around in some form at IBM :)
It's a no brainer for them. No one can screw them over now except themselves.
Arguably 4. Motorola abandoned m68k (at least as a desktop route; variants lived on for a very, very long time as an embedded thing). Then Motorola largely abandoned PPC, leaving IBM as the only desktop-y manufacturer. Then, unsurprisingly, IBM fell behind with it. And now Intel.
I've seen the opposite. The people asking for an AMD mac were always thinking of it as a stop gap. Ever since the iPhone/iPad A series chips started blowing the doors off of benchmarks, people have been clamoring for a mac with a higher tdp A series chip. Now that the M1 is out, we can see why.
Apple's MO with every _smaller_ supplier has been:
1. Set up office down the road 2. Poach top engineers 3. Come up with some excuse to cancel use of supplier and integrate in house.
The media and fanboys are remarkably complicit, coming up with excuses for apple's behaviour and giving very favourable coverage.
In this case, intel are too big for this trick to work and apple already have loads of ARM talent so it makes perfect sense to transition.
I wouldn't rule out apple trying on the whole 'we don't need a license' thing any more with Nvidia but it's probably unlikely given their size.
I worked at imagination technologies who was bankrupted by Apple doing this technique and whose GPUs are still used by them so I saw this and people's remarkable lack of attention on the incredibly consistent pattern of control first hand.
While all of this is obviously true, I actually think it's great that intel and AMD are receiving some serious ISA competition and it will net benefit non-apple consumers too long run.
Congrats to apple for pretty impressive technical work but I do wish more would see apple for the ruthless control freaks they are.
At the end of the day I think rather mundanely it's really more about money than anything else.
I can't tell you 100% that it's not an entirely new GPU that was somehow completely reinvented from scratch but I can tell you I think that's highly unlikely.
Imagination couldn't protect their IP because they couldn't afford the lengthily court case that would ensue.
Note by the way Apple have quietly started licensing IP from IMG again, long after striking ~75% off the stock price and resulting in them being acquired by a private equity firm...
I guess taking your biggest (ex)customer to court isn't something that any company would do lightly especially when that company has the deepest pockets in the world and you're not in the best financial position yourself.
It's a shame that more light can't be shed in the press - if Apple cares about one thing it's their brand.
Apple have repeatedly done this same process to a number of suppliers. There was a good website that listed all of the offices apple opened near suppliers before cutting them off, but it went offline :(
IMG should have been much more careful but instead went all-in splashing the cash they got from apple and acting like it was forever. Pretty dumb.
Apple can rely on the media giving them positive coverage. At the time I was amazed at even how much benefit of the doubt even the BBC gave them (US company bankrupting a UK one you'd think they'd back the UK one eh?)
I was also amused to be 'inside' a story discussed on HN, and unsurprised at how far off many were. Tons of apple rationalisation syndrome as usual and lots of 'how dare IMG be so arrogant' etc.
The reality is Apple are extremely ruthless and have been trying to take control of everything for quite some time now.
But the M1 MacBook Air is perhaps the first Apple product that really caught my attention. A fan-less (without overheating issues) ultrabook with crazy batter life outperforming every comparable offering out there for $1,000. Pretty much the best deal on the market, unless you have specific issues with it. Which in my case is the keyboard. And general dislike of the ecosystem, but I already see it as completely locked down, this one being more so doesn't change anything for me. If it had a trackpoint and a few more keys I would get it despite hating the platform.
+1.
> Pretty much the best deal on the market, unless you have specific issues with it.
For example, if you try Linux or BSD, and you'll find none of the peripherals works, and the community reverse engineering efforts will take years before getting basic functionality, and even then, the battery will only last for 2 hours and nobody besides Apple knows how exactly the power management mechanism works, thus PM will forever be broken. I learned my lesson the hard way on Windows tablets.
There was a time when "non-x86" is automatically developer/hacking-friendly (ancient examples are SPARC, MIPS, and those ARM Chromebooks were probably the last examples...), now the landscape has changed. I always want to use a non-x86 machine as my desktop, but perhaps it's time to abandon this idea.
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/181867-amds-project-sk...
BTW, In my dream, I hope there exists an ATX compatible motherboard and a standard specification for its CPU-board, so that you can fit an ARM machine inside an existing computer chassis, and allowing you to upgrade the chips by simply swapping CPU boards. On paper it looks possible, but in practice there are some potential problems (based on my limited electronics knowledge): signal integrity (PCI-E should be solvable, but DDR3 is extremely problematic) and heatsink. However, a compromise to put DRAM on the CPU board (soldered or socketed) should be fine, and heatsink is hopefully solvable if the CPU is power efficient. The HoneyComb LX2K workstation [0] is essentially designed based on this idea, it has a CPU board on top of a Mini-ITX board, and it doesn't need heatsink.
Still, without many high-performance ARM CPUs for selection, it's essentially only a big Raspberry Pi...
[0] https://www.solid-run.com/nxp-lx2160a-family/honeycomb-works...
Mac software is usually easy to install. In PC there is all sorts of authentication and verification. Digging up a long license key for the OS is not a thing on Mac.
Sorry Apple, this is a bridge too far. I'm out.
Apple's marketing is brilliant. It really gets the kind of people who think they are too smart to be marketed to AND the normies, all in one message.
Maybe adding to the mystique helped some sales from curious people; it would help explain why benchmarks have been kept quiet and vague for the most part, even though they are very impressive.
I’ve witnessed single core performance on this device that I have not seen before and likely would need overclocking to hit if it can be done. For some workloads, it’s truly something.
Even thinking about it, I do expect some of this move was about performance, especially performance per watt. I doubt any other mobile processor is holding a candle at the moment. The control grabs, I think, might be secondary.
And to be clear, the presentation claimed "this is a fast mobile processor that's very efficient". Both claims have been very soundly proven. So I'm not sure why they would attempt the deception you seem to be implying. There was simply no need.
The M1 release is fascinating because never have I seen such a frantic effort to dismiss something in the face of overwhelming evidence that it's a pretty great thing. Eh.
Here’s a labeled graph from Anandtech, scroll down to “Apple vs Intel Top Performance”
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...
Apple’s unlabeled graph wasn’t a lie. Early reviewers confirm that the performance from a fanless, body-temperature laptop with 15+ hours of battery life is downright mind blowing. There is nothing else like it on the market.
Marketing only gets you so far. This product speaks for itself.
Note that a laptop chip also isn't a gaming product, for obvious reasons.
Also if Apple's opening statement for M1 is that its industry-leading, then they should let these reviewers substantiate it, because that's what they usually review.
The GTX 1050 Ti is still a current, sold product [2], selling for $150 or so USD [3], and consumes about 75-100W in your PC.
We can no true Scotsman this, but that GPU performance is a literal magnitude+ greater than what the majority of users have in their computers (and I am including full desktops in this discussion). The overwhelming majority of users are not paying $500-$1000 for a GPU (now add the 700W+ PSU, and what in effect becomes a space heater), which is the current going rate for the mythical gaming market.
Is it intended for enthusiast gamers who have giant $1000 graphics cards sucking 300W? No, of course not. There is no surprise that Apple didn't send it to a guy who targets that crowd. But for the vast majority of people that chip would represent a pretty significant upgrade over what they currently have.
[1] - Even in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, demonstrated purely given that it was running under Rosetta 2, it did quite decent.
[2] - Current products from EVGA, Gigabyte, ASUS and others feature the GTX 1050 Ti, making it a current product.
[3] - Which is a range, and above, that similar cards sell for. If you can time travel you may be able to get an equal performance level for less, but I lack time travel abilities.
That's very misleading. The card was released more than 4 years ago and has a MSRP of $139[1]. It's neither a current or expensive product.
The $250 price is almost certainty because it's "rare", not because it's actually worth that much. See for instance, i7-6700k being sold for $279[2] when you can get a similar performing current gen i3 for $115[3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_proces...
[2] https://www.newegg.com/intel-core-i7-6th-gen-core-i7-6700k/p...
[3] https://www.newegg.com/intel-core-i3-10100-core-i3-10th-gen/...
Also its TDP is 90W - not exactly power sipping, but also not 300W.
The M1's GPU may be efficient (thanks mostly to TSMC's 5nm process it's built in), but in terms of raw power it's just not there.
Worrying about the App Store taking over on the Mac is misguided. The Mac has never forced the App Store on anyone and the Mac App Store doesn’t even seem to be particularly popular.
“Emulation” (it’s not emulation) is apparently this big problem, except that early M1 Macs show faster Rosetta performance with still-better battery life in many cases.
And yes, Rosetta won’t be around forever, but we have been here before. It wasn’t a problem going from PowerPC to Intel either. If the authors at Android authority ever used a Mac they’d already know this. Anecdotal, but I can’t think of a single pre-Intel program that was lost to the Intel transition that I was using at the time. All the developers checked the box and recompiled, and the dinosaurs like Adobe eventually trudged along.
For those of us who actually used Macs back in the PowerPC days and earlier, there was no such thing as Hackintosh or Boot Camp. The fact that those are going away is essentially inconsequential, especially now that the Mac platform is vastly more popular than it was in 2006.
Why would I want to run Windows on my Mac? It’s been a shitty experience anyway, because even in Intel-land the hardware has been heavily macOS optimized including things like fan and power control. The trackpad driver on Windows was always worse, for example. And again why would you want to run Windows when you spent all this money to not run Windows? It doesn’t make sense especially since so many programs (e.g. 1Password) have their best versions on Mac.
Apple Silicon is about performance and efficiency.
A friendly, open-hardware Apple would have moved to their own chips too, though they'd have documented their GPU, and a walled-garden Apple without a competitive laptop chip would have locked the system down anyway, as, in fact, they were doing on Intel.
Well said. But is it even possible to separate them anymore? What if they are practically both sides of the same coin? Apple uses its platform control to finance the development of Apple Silicon, which in turn strengthens its platform control. In an alternative universe, will the open-hardware friendly Apple even have the resources to develop a top-performance Apple Silicon (as seen in this universe) to begin with?
I'm afraid that x86 vs ARM has become a "pick your poison" game, unless a serious competitor to Apple Silicon emerges... Well, if someone can show me that Linux or BSD runs perfectly on Mac w/ Apple Silicon with working periphrases and not-too-bad power management before the end of 2022, I may change my mind and buy one...
And it comes right after the same sentence is uttered in the article... and is followed by "unless".
All in all, pretty weird form of journalism.
Classic Mac OS support (both 68k and PPC): OS X 10.0 was released March 2001, dropped with 10.5 released October 2007. So about 6 years, 8 months.
PowerPC Mac OS X app support: First Intel Mac January 2006, support dropped with 10.7 in July 2011, so 5 years 5 months.
32 bit iOS app support: iPhone 5S with 64 bit CPU released October 2013, 32 bit app support removed in iOS 11, September 2017, so 3 years 11 months.
32 bit Intel app support (and Carbon framework): Mac OS 10.5 was first to allow 64 bit GUI apps[1], in October 2007, 32 bit support dropped in 10.15, released October 2019, so 12 years.
I'd probably count this nearer to the first three than the kinda drawn out 32 bit to 64 bit Intel transition, so perhaps about 4 years?
[1] There was limited 64 bit support before in 10.4.
I see Intel support continuing for closer to 10 years.
Citation needed. I remember 32 bit being deprecated just 12 months before its support removal and there were no signs earlier. I just had to recompile my apps to x64, but some 3rd party tools I use never got an update and my 2013 Macbook will stay on Mojave forever.
So I expect them to drop support in 1.5 years
Running something from outside the AppStore should be an option. It could be a switch or toggle you could turn on with a warning.
So much for "Hacker" news.
This is the real point about control - not about forcing anyone to use the App store which may or may not happen but could have happened with Intel CPUs too - and its about building more capable machines. The speed is in part as a result of that control.
And I don't think anyone is being duped.
Apple's Silicon is a great success AFAICT, when Intel has just stagnated for years now. I love Apple innovations like that, and I think Apple Silicon is in principal orthogonal to the lock-in aspect so far, apart from the fact that there won't be alternative O/S on Apple Silicon due to lack of drivers; now of course, Apple could soon extend the ARM ISA in proprietary ways.
However, as much as Apple produces shiny consumer laptops (despite their naming, I don't consider MBPs as "professional" devices due to lack of options), I'm probably staying away from Mac OS, because professionally I need to run (mostly) F/OSS apps such as compilers, databases, middlewares, VMs/containers, and backend tool chains. I also believe their notarization thing will kill F/OSS on Mac OS which makes it useless for me. And Apple has to take the piss here, as F/OSS is what Mac OS (Mac OS X) is built on, and what made it even remotely acceptable in 2002/3. If you're a developer of non-Mac OS, non-iOS apps, expect Mac OS to stop being an option even more so than it is already.
Counterpoint is the 10s of thousands of "professionals" (like me, senior software engineer at a Company You Know) who use them....
Edit: and there's nothing "Pro" about the lack of perspective for both S/W development and music production on Mac OS
* https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-hackintosh-syste...
x86 is not an open ISA. For all practical purposes nobody besides intel and AMD can make x86 chips.
Pretty much anybody can ask ARM to get a license to make ARM chip.
Sure Macs have special chips in addition but that is true for their intel offerings as well. You have never been able to just plop an AMD chip into a Mac so it is not like that choice ever meant anything to consumers.
The ARM ISA versus x86 ISA is probably the least complicated part of this equation. At least on x86 there were widely used graphics components that were leveraged. What exactly do we know about the built-in GPU on the M1?
(there's technically nothing preventing you of running macOS arm64 on non-Apple hardware in a VM)
It's because if the GPU is reverse engineered enough, you can simulate an Apple GPU on another machine _and_ run other OSes with a proper GPU stack on those macs.
Now I don’t know anything about GPU stacks, but I could imagine that one change essentially requiring a rewrite of the entire stack if certain assumptions were baked into the old one.
The new model would seem to allow the developer to allocate a buffer full of stuff and rapidly alternate between CPU and GPU instructions on that buffer, without copying. If so, that’s a pretty huge win for performance.
Most vendors of graphics hardware keep their interface secret, but not all. The problem is that the set of hardware that isn't secret won't overlap much with what people have or want to run, which is pretty central to what makes Hackintoshes attractive.
While they often had superior hardware compared to competitors, they had so much influence in the market that they could maintain market dominance even when the hardware wasn't superior.
Hopefully, the GPU and such will be reverse engineered, that's a lot of one-time effort that might take a year or more the first time but will be easier for future gens.
* you don't need to hack the SEP for anything here (consider it as a glorified TPM), and the AP is can be unlocked officially.
Apple’s recent announcement of a web authentication API includes if your system is booted in fully secure mode^ an attestation that the OS is in secure mode, crypto-signed by the secure kernel whose own signature is by Apple.
This provides something that no desktop/laptop today can provide: certainty that the user isn’t tampering with the operating system to try and cheat. The entire stack, from hardware to UI, is signed and verified to have integrity, and modifying any component of the stack will result in the “secure” attestation being withheld. So instead of having to deal with insane anti-cheating spyware and kernel extensions and system monitoring, testing software and multiplayer game modes can simply require you to be in secure mode to login.
This is available today, immediately, if anyone were to implement it. Of course no one has yet, because no one is thinking of the iOS and macOS platforms as tamperproof computing for the Internet world, and so Apple’s quiet announcement of this in a technical API footnote has gone unnoticed.
Apple will probably always let you shut off anti-tampering on macOS with reboots and terminal commands, and then you can tamper to your heart’s content, but they will never allow your system to attest that it’s in tamperproof mode to third-parties, and that crypto signature can’t be spoofed since the Secure Enclave is involved in generating it.
This ‘tamperproof’ market opportunity is worth billions of dollars, and Apple made it there first. I can’t wait to see what happens when all the industries that suffer undetectable tampering today realize this.
^ Multiplayer FPS developers have had little incentive to develop for Metal prior to now, but Apple Silicon has the capability to easily unseat 5950X/GTX3090 as peak PC gaming performance for a tiny fraction of the cost and heat. Someday the Apple TV will get an Apple Silicon chip that can run FPS games using Metal at 4K/60/HDR, which should noticeably alter that cost-benefit equation.
^ I believe this is signed-sealed OS partition, SIP enabled, kernel extensions disabled; though I may have missed one or two bits.
(Games can also trivially enable HDCP to defend against that sort of attack in the majority of cases where it’s even possible to construct it at all, setting aside the chances of successfully asking a neural net to decode a game’s video signal and cheat effectively — and since the entire stack is attested secure, cheaters can’t use hacked video drivers that spoof HDCP, either.)
Sure, it gives them more control, but they already had the ability to exercise platform control on x86. They could have disabled Boot Camp etc on the T2 chip Macs if they wanted to, it's not about the CPU.
Even if everything the article claims is true, the open-source / libre software and hardware communities had at least 20 years to come up with a better model. So far, they have failed.
Is it such a crime for a corporation to try and prioritize their users' identities safety and produce a variant that tries to compromise between monopoly and convenience?
I fully recognize the possible dystopian futures here, mind you, and I am as distrustful towards corporations as most techies. But after being a commercial programmer for 19 years, I can't seem to find other agents who did better than Microsoft and Apple in this area. We all know the memes about them and I'll concede that 90% of them are true.
But could somebody -- or something -- else do better? So far the answer seems to be "no", and that's the reality we are living in. What does it say about us if we are denying it?
And don't get me wrong. Give me the same (or little less) performance on a 100% libre hardware and software and I'll switch tomorrow, even if a mere 13" laptop with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD costs $5000. I will, I kid you not. But there doesn't seem to be any choices that come close to Apple's laptop ergonomics, quality of screens, and (mostly) integrated and polished experience. And don't get me started with "if you do this bucket list of 37 tasks then Brand+Model laptop is very close to a MacBook". Truth is, there is nothing like a MacBook. I wish there was, but especially with release of the M1, there really isn't.
</rant>
Apple's System-on-a-Chip provides additional value-add (e.g. unified memory). Vertical integration of silicon does expand Apple’s walled garden but I’m not convinced this is the driving force.
Both AMD and Intel support unified memory on their igp (and AMD at least is working on dGP unified memory).
Product development is about control in some form.
If Apple have genuinely just make a decades leap in performance then you just look at the trade offs.
I'm not sure why I'm still typing, the article is such child-like faux insightfulness.
“Review the following security options:
Full Security: Ensures that only your current OS, or signed operating system software currently trusted by Apple, can run. This mode requires a network connection at software installation time.
Reduced Security: Allows any version of signed operating system software ever trusted by Apple to run.”
⇒ it appears ‘other’ still requires OSes signed by Apple, but it allows you to run an OS even if Apple has no longer trusts it. Or am I misreading that?
So, there might be Apple-signed Linuxes, but I wouldn’t hold my breadth for that.
Eh, I read reduced mode as basically how secure boot works on hardware with Microsoft-only keys in which MS signs a shim and it automatically blesses desendants (technically the OEM is not restricted to put other keys on the key database, but aside from business computers it seems that most machines have only Microsoft and OEM keys). Of course, Microsoft has a stronger incentive to sign these (or else they will be accused of antitrust violations), so Apple might not do that.
Note: depending on the specific motherboard it could be:
- Windows Command-line (some Surfaces)
- a simple switch on the BIOS configuration (usually on desktop motherboards which are sold as a part)
- set first a password to the setup and then switching it off (notably some Acer laptops)
- removing a screw physically, setting a setup password and switching it off (some Acer laptops probably copied from ChromeOS SKUs)
- Setting secure boot to custom and then clearing the key database (usually business computers)
- (Technically incorrect) setting it to BIOS/CSM mode
- Shout to heavens because that OEM has somehow hard-baked secure boot on the system and does not have CSM options (company shall remain unnamed but the name ends in L)
The new M series? Probably Apple themselves will allow booting other OSes, but I would not count on any official support in getting stuff running.
I’m assuming that people buy Macs for the software platform from Apple.
I have a few Macs, and I never had any intention to install Linux on it.
But admittedly I only used my Macs as a toy. I eventually gave up on it, since it didn’t do what I needed it to do.
(Of course, unless they engage in some unfair competition, but I think the price difference will be so big it won't matter)
I’d also add difficulties with coordinating releases.
It will still be difficult, but should become easier.
They got 20 hour battery life just by switching to Apple Silicon, they aren’t going to hobble Mac apps with any significant restrictions to try to eek out a few hours more.
"I like my polluting car, if you don't, don't buy one"
"I like my t-shirt that has been manufactured with slave labour, if you don't, don't buy one"
Can we stop with this naive "Let me buy one, if you don't like it don't buy it" ?
This puts your immediate personal comfort over the common future of computing, technology, freedom, privacy, economy and more.
Someone polluting the air impacts your life, someone choosing a different computer does not.
Is someone in a third world country building goods for first world consumers “slave labor” or improving their standard of living by “pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps”. Methinks an accurate discussion is far more nuanced than you really want to have.
More importantly, Apple is a huge player that shapes the structure of the industry towards a vision that lacks any kind of freedom for its users. An end game where its users are just consumers, void of any freedom to do what they want with their hardware. This is not a bright future Apple is painting: Some sort of Utopia that we can take part of by giving up freedom, by accepting Apple's rules 100% or leaving their territory.
I can understand that what Apple does appeals to many users. I still recommend Apple devices to my retired parents and to friends who do not want to fiddle with their hardware. But that folks here on HN are defending Apple's practices is way beyond me.
If you don't like slavery, just don't buy slaves. Nothing wrong with that, right? YoU hAvE oPtIonS aS a CoNsuMer.
It still is.
Go research Apple's relationship with Foxconn.
I’ve never seen anyone wait in massive lines for days just for the chance at slavery.
Step 1. Design the enclosure/thermals for a much lower TDP ARM chip, causing the Intel chips to thermal throttle and run hot as possible burning your lap and roasting your palms for years
Step 2. Introduce the new powerful ARM chip which now runs much cooler and faster in the same enclosure
Step 3. Profit!
Worked on me, I just ordered mine
iMac Pro has shown that they can do better with same enclosure, I wonder if they could have done something with MacBooks too. They would probably have to sacrifice a few millimetres of thinness but I think the decreased noise and throttling would be more noticeable.
That said, I don't believe there was any master plan behind this. They just originally prioritised thinness and battery size over everything else. With M1 they can have their cake and eat it too.
Edit: Also they could have ditched Intel for AMD a generation or two ago and also improve on performance per watt.
Yes. That's the biggest benefit, and another reason I'm buying it (on top of great performance for my NLE apps). I want the Mac to be it's own platform, and be under Apple's control and vision. If it's also made foul-proof and air-tight, so much the better.
I don't want another lowest common denominator OS converging on the same point.
If I didn't want platform control I'd buy some OEM device...
That doesn't mean I approve of any and every restriction. But I'm ok with a "walled garden" -- better than an open garden full of junkies and garbage. Some of the best Japanese gardens and so on I've seen had walls around them...
Of course an open garden that's beautifully maintained, respected by those in it, etc, would be even better, but that's hardly the case in real life, so that's where curation and walls come in.
To me this brings me to the Amiga and Atari and Acorn and other alternative platforms of my youth. I don't want everything to be amd64 and Windows or the nth Linux distro.
In any case, Apple doesn't force anyone's hand, if anything they make it more difficult to buy their stuff (more expensive, targeting the expensive end of the market, only 10% market share at best, different OS and now different CPU than the rest of the market, etc).
Walled garden is a rich metaphor. You can contrast a walled garden to a community garden as you did. That's about controlling who comes in.
Anyway.. the "garden" part has is rich too. What's the contrast to garden? Wilderness? I think what makes a garden is being artificial. The gardner makes the garden. Everything in the garden is natural and the garden itself is inevitably an ecosystem. But, if the gardner abandons it, the garden will quickly evolve into something else. In that sense, the garden is an moderately unstable state being maintained by a gardner.
Besides biodiversity, that's my way of quantifying wildness. What will happen if people leave? How different will it be? I think that's why we associate forest so strongly with wilderness. The forest will remain a forest. The amount of tension between what a garden is now and what nature would like it to be.
The only thing keeping you there is your own desire to retain the things that are...inside the garden. The Apple software. The services. The user experience.
The one thing I can see being upset about is losing access to the software you've purchased. But switching to Apple (or even Linux) from Windows/Android means giving up exactly the same things. That's not about a "walled garden": it's just a consequence of the fact that software has to be written, or at least compiled, for a particular platform, and significant extra effort has to be expended to make it functional across platforms.
Most apps I use are cross platform (Adobe CS, Cubase, Resolve), others are web based (Gmail, Basecamp, etc), my music is on Spotify, videos on Netflix and Prime, and my peripherals all work.
>Because you can't just leave Apples ecosystem unless willing to switch devices+ecosystem of course.
Well, I buy new laptop every 4-5 years or so. So if I want to move, I can always do so. If in a rush, I can always sell the old laptop in the first or second year too - with the added benefit that Macs keep their resale value better.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
seems particularly apt, here.
Rhetorically: how much do you care about privacy as an issue? Because this is the trade you're making, and you should do it with your eyes open.
I personally don't think the trade-off is worth it, but I also really really hope I'm wrong.
My biggest cause for concern is the long history of the USG collaborating with megacorporations to control people. It's super scary as we reach the point with technology where every person can be identified fully, and is essentially "always on". You can argue that you can unplug, but the cost of that option is so high when society is dependent on it that it rapidly becomes impractical.
On the other hand, I'm a European, could not care less for Ben Franklin (or the Founding Fathers for that matter), and don't consider them some great sages of the centuries. Nor is their word gospel.
I say that because I see such supposed "deep" quotes all the time, as if a simplistic proverb-like statement settles a complex real world situation...
Not to mention that the quote is used out of context [1].
Safety is always temporary -- there are no long term guarantees in history. And we all give up all kinds of essential liberties for safety - that's part of living in a society. We pay taxes, we allow ourselves to be taken to prison if we break one of 1000000 laws, etc.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou....
I read your link but I don't understand the point that the Brookings institution is trying to make about the context of the quote. I'm open minded, but miss the point they are making; perhaps because it's a transcribed interview.
Nevertheless: quotes are nice because they distill an idea down to an elemental form. They might be wise or they might be dumb, but the simple idea expressed in the phrase (regardless of who uttered it, or what they meant at the time) seems wise to me as we consider the tradeoffs between a walled garden vis-a-vis privacy.
What these things do make more difficult is community maintained software, which is what made the platforms you feel nostalgic about so nice.
There's also a serious cost to the walled gardens. These things eliminate community maintained software which results in everything on your computer being controlled by a profit (often marketing) driven corporation. These always eventually die (taking your data with them) or abuse their special position of power.
It reduces it to the point of being a non-problem.
>People get code Apple doesn't approve of onto their platforms all the time.
Only if they put it there themselves. 99.99% of those "Apple viruses" one hears are just trojans.
And if you stick to the Mac App Store and trusted sources (Adobe, MS, etc), you get close to zero malware, with the ocassional "missed it at Mac App store review" exception that gets stomped on soon.
I think this is enough:
https://www.pandasecurity.com/en/mediacenter/mobile-security....
Similarly, if you wish to publish apps widely, you can do so with unsigned ones, but users won't ever figure out how to run those.[1] If you want your app to be widely used, you must ID yourself to Apple, who can deny/censor at will (or under state (or Hollywood) compulsion).
It builds a world in which it is impossible to easily build or distribute tools that the state really doesn't want distributed or used, because Apple is too large to deny them their demands.
I think the phrase used is "turnkey tyranny".
Anonymous publishing is essential to the preservation of a free society.
Imagine if there were one company who could remotely disable printing presses, or televisions/radios.
For those of you who aren't yet worried about this possibility of state compulsion, I ask you this: Dubya is to Trump as Trump is to x? It's not a matter of if these remote censorship tools built by Apple will be used to abuse human rights en masse, but instead a matter of when. Apple is already compromising their crypto due to requests (not compulsion) from the federal police—today.
Now, it is worth giving consideration to the possibility that Macs will become so much better than the competition that they could become like iPhones, and develop more of a stranglehold over people's lives.
As it stands now, and in the immediate future, I don't see this as a valid concern. There are just too many good alternatives, if your concerns are limited to the above.
(now, I wish open hardware became way more prevalent -- not PC open, but open source with libre firmware. I'm concerned that window is permanently closing, as the market is consolidating on very literal monopolies with highly restricted firmware. Almost every company I'm aware of is now using Synopsys IP for their DDR4 PHY trainer -- a CPU which has direct access to memory, and writable, signed, encrypted firmware...)
We've already seen total vendor control there. There's nothing to suggest that those same vendors won't do the exact same things on all of their platforms. Already it's basically impossible to distribute unsigned mac apps.
For those kind of problems, I agree. But I think they should be solved in the political and legal level, not some technical fix.
If you can't trust the government, if the government wants increasingly more data, the government should be curbed by protests, voting, and so on. The apps not talking to the vendor is just a band-aid. They can still get your moves from your phone, your searches from Google, and so on.
And, in any case, Tor is not a substitute for democracy.
>It builds a world in which it is impossible to easily build or distribute tools that the state really doesn't want distributed or used, because Apple is too large to deny them their demands.
We shouldn't allow the state to have a say on this, like we shouldn't allow censorship.
(Of course, many tech people, are all ok for censorship, as long as it happens to the right, that is bad, guys, e.g. those peddling "fake news" -- with the state or the Zuck guaranteeing for them what are "real news", like the WMDs and other establishment truths).
And what if you can't discuss protests or protest organization on any of the apps you are allowed to install on your device, as Apple has made the case already in Hong Kong?
This all starts with the tools. Without tools, we cannot even begin to effect change: to organize protests, to communicate with other organizers without surveillance and interference (Poitras can probably testify to this), to reach potential voters.
In Apple's jurisdiction, there are essentially zero options on the ballot for candidates that wish to roll back US state/military surveillance. Voting is not a useful or practical tool in this fight.
Private communications tools (as well as arms) must remain out of the instantaneous reach of the state. Once those are compromised, there will be no way to effect practical change or resistance.
If Signal's iOS publishing certificate were revoked tomorrow and Apple temporarily stopped signing self-builds, we'd be there right now with iOS phones.
We've already lost this freedom on mobile. We need to fight to preserve it on desktop/laptop.
This is a big false dichotomy.
It's difficult to find an aspect of modern society that is not influenced by a complex combination of social, ethical and legal norms plus science, technology, economy, education and so on.