What’s ugliest about M1 Macs and needs improvement | Hacker News Reader

What’s ugliest about M1 Macs and needs improvement

eclecticlight.co

46 pointsingve77 comments

It's important to remember that the only M1 Macs currently available are consumer and base model products—yes, even though one of them has "Pro" in its name. Few if any of these limitations matter to the target audience of these machines, and will likely be resolved when mid/high tier Apple Silicon products are released.

Yes, I know that someone will make a compelling case for why they need to plug three monitors into their MacBook Air, but just know that you're in the minority. In fact if you plug anything into your laptop other than a power supply or USB storage, you're probably in the minority.

You can bank on M1X supporting at least 32GB of RAM, more external displays, and more external ports.

Agreed. The only interesting remarks are software-related changes, as its practically a given that they won't replace the 16" MacBook Pro with something with only 2 TB ports and 16GB of RAM, when the current model goes up to 64GB.

I'd be interested to see them reduce the impact of software updates. Maybe something we might see in later versions of macOS 12.

Would it be reasonable to expect that current-model M1 Macs, which can't support multiple monitors, will be able to do so in the future with say an OS + Firmware update?

Or is there something in the M1 SoC that prevents this?

I'm asking out of technical interest, I don't own an M1 machine.

No, these are hardware limitations.

It's a limitation of the M1 SOC. Either it's a limitation of the GPU or perhaps whichever bit of circuitry is required to translate screen buffers into HDMI or DisplayPort signals.

I imagine that if/when Apple/AMD ever releases drivers for external PCI Express GPUs, it could be possible to attach a third or fourth display by way of a thunderbolt-attached external GPU enclosure. I'm unaware of any impediment to this aside from driver availability.

But never, ever buy anything on the basis that future software updates might "fix" anything that frustrates you.

I am that minority. Are you saying that M1 doesn't support multiple monitors at the moment ? That's a shame because I don't like to work without multiple monitors unless I am travelling or not in my office.

One external monitor only at the moment. Two on the mini, which ends up with the same result.

M1 supports output to exactly two monitors; of these, the laptop internal display counts as one of them.

That means, that you can connect two external displays to Mac Mini and one external display to all other M1 macs.

You can use a/several displaylink adapters - it also supports 5120x1440p ultrawides at 120hz for anybody using a single ultra wide.

I've been incredibly happy with mine

> In fact if you plug anything into your laptop other than a power supply or USB storage, you're probably in the minority.

My anecdotal evidence is that USB mice, and phones for tethering and/or charging are both way more common than usb storage in these days of cloud services.

Apple has succesfully brainwashed you into the correct pigeonholed user-category of their choice.

What if I am a "pro" user and want low end commodity hardware that can boot off via USB?

> What if I am a "pro" user and want low end

Then, like a pro, you can recognize that the labels exist for product differentiation not customer differentiation and ignore them as needed. Or buy a different computer from another manufacturer that better suits your desires. I don't see a reason to be angry at Apple for not marketing directly to you. Like, it's not Apple's fault that almost every other laptop out there has a worse keyboard (lol except for that one time) and worse trackpad and worse screen and worse processor and worse battery life and worse integration.

I just wish they had released M1 and M1X simultaneously so that those of us needing to switch larger models for various reasons weren't stuck in this dead zone between clearly worse in every way but one and clearly better in every way except the one that we need.

Yesterday, I gifted a friend a Logitech Mx Master 3 Bluetooth mouse to use with his new iMac M1. To our surprise it did not connect and was unable to until we plugged in the USB dongle that comes with the mouse. The dongle is not needed on Windows or Intel based Macs. Something is rotten with Bluetooth on the M1

My lid-closed panic issue would magically disappear when I turned off Bluetooth (I used Apple’s own Magic Trackpad and keyboard as part of my desktop setup).

Odd, I have an MX master 2S and 3 and both work fine with my M1 MBA (without dongle)

I've found Bluetooth with non-Apple devices fairly poor with macbooks since at least 2013, especially with mice.

Same problem here with my Mac Mini M1. I had a Microsoft 3600 Bluetooth mouse which would jump and lose reception for a second or two, despite Airpods working perfectly fine.

I was happy when I could solve it by downgrading to a Microsoft 3500 mouse with a custom 2.4 Ghz USB dongle (no bluetooth).

In 20 years of buying Laptops PCs and Macs there hasn't been a computer that didn't have its issues (except for the 2012 Macbook pro), so I decided I'll be happy with my new setup despite this issue.

> except for the 2012 Macbook pro

Funny you mention that machine because that's still my daily driver! Honestly that's probably been the best laptop I've ever owned, actually the best machine I've ever owned! Sadly, it can't upgrade to Big Sur so I know it's days are numbered. I'm anxious to see what becomes available with the M1X hardware. I'm hoping I can get another year because then I'll be able to get 3rd-gen hardware and that's when Apple usually knocks it out of the park.

The maker could not ruin this laptop. Sadly, I spilled a glass of water 20 cm away from it, and didn't notice that a small amount reached the laptop.

I'm now waiting for the 16'' Mac Book pro!

Good luck!

That's weird. I have the same mouse and it works perfectöy fine on the Mac Mini M1.

Poorly shielded USB 3 devices and cables can cause radio interference that interferes with Bluetooth.

>Some USB 3 devices generate radio interference in the 2.4GHz frequency, and this can have an adverse effect on both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as they operate on this frequency.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/usb-3-and-usb-c-devices-can-ca...

Fun article to read and insightful to see a different perspective as to mine. For what it's worth, here's mine:

> Memory

This is an issue with many computers, it's quite hard to find 32GB laptop. Definitely not impossible, but I expected to see a lot more.

> External displays

You can add a 6K display, I'm not seeing the issue here for many people unless you're a trader at a hedge fund.

> Bootable external disks

Agreed

> Improving macOS updates

No clue

> Kernel panics

No clue, but I did have weird connectivity issues with my magic trackpad on the Mac Mini M1.

> More ports

> The current Intel Mac mini features four Thunderbolt 3 ports, and it’s five years since Apple first offered an Intel MacBook Pro with four Thunderbolt 3 ports. As the M1 is Apple’s first in-house chip supporting Thunderbolt, it’s perhaps only fair that it’s limited to two ports, but that isn’t sufficient for many users, who end up having to use third-party docks, or one of the new Thunderbolt 4 hubs. It’s imperative that any successor to the M1 can support four Thunderbolt 3/4 ports.

Yes, that'd be nice but IMO you're buying a Mac M1. Any tech savvy consumer would know 2 things: (1) it's early and (2) don't expect things to be cheap. I've been able to work around it and it's fine.

> Choice of macOS version in 1 True Recovery

Seems tricky, I don't know to what extent older OS versions are suitable for the M1.

> You can add a 6K display, I'm not seeing the issue here for many people unless you're a trader at a hedge fund

My issue with Macs and monitors is the near total lack of high DPI monitors that are optimal for how macOS does UI scaling. At >= 27" you're stuck with either:

- A 4K monitor with non-integer scaling

- LG's 5K monitor which is pricey, is known to have quality and reliability issues, and I believe is no longer in production

- The Pro Display XDR, which costs 5 grand

I'm still using an old 2560x1440 Thunderbolt Display in the hopes that Apple eventually releases a Retina sequel that doesn't cost more than my car.

> This is an issue with many computers, it's quite hard to find 32GB laptop. Definitely not impossible, but I expected to see a lot more.

It’s not that big of an issue, although there often are tradeoffs (aka thinner profiles often don’t support 32GB RAM).

> You can add a 6K display, I'm not seeing the issue here for many people unless you're a trader at a hedge fund.

6k displays are expensive (to start with it’s not a standard resolution so pretty much the only model is Apple’s $5000 display, but more standard 5K displays are basically the price of the computer), getting more smaller display is often cheaper, and more importantly you might have those already, having to buy new displays while the existing ones are suitable to your needs is neither economical nor ecological.

No upgrade what so ever. You need to purchase all the cpu and storage you will need for the the lifetime of the machine in advance making it very overpriced.

You would even be in a better situation if Apple just included all the max hw and limited it via software so you could upgrade at a later point. Not that this IMO would be an improvement in general and not something I want to see happen on desktops.

Intel failed in their half arsed attempt: https://techreport.com/news/19664/intel-upgrade-card-unlocks...

But Apple could succeed.

If there's a "reinvention of the trash can" it will likely come in the form of a new high end Mac Mini. My prediction is that the real Apple Silicon Mac Pro will be pretty much exactly the same as the current Intel Mac Pro. The big questions in my mind are:

1. Can they match the number of PCI-E lanes?

2. How will they scale up the CPU and GPU to satisfy extreme workloads? Will we see gargantuan Apple Silicon chips or will it be a multi-chip solution?

3. Will Apple compromise RAM performance in order to give us DIMM slots, or will there be some clever trick to combine ultra-fast soldered RAM with regular-fast slotted RAM?

4. Will AMD GPUs be available for acceleration? Will they be available for 3D rendering and driving a monitor?

5. What will become of the Afterburner card? Will it be abandoned, will it be the key to how Apple makes the Mac Pro a performance powerhouse?

Surely that kind of lock would be reverse engineered almost immediately and then people are just getting full fat Macbooks for a fraction of the price?

Basically like the time when we could still upgrade and max out the memory for a fraction of Apple's overpriced offerings :)

Overpriced? Are we looking at the same machines? I was under the impression that the M1 Air obliterated every x86 laptop at the same form factor and price point.

They are very overpriced in the country I live in at least. Here's the price for a Mac Mini M1 with 16GB RAM and 1TB storage.

US: $1,299.

My country: $1840.

I don't experience this as an issue as much. Take the Macbook Air, launched in 2008 at $1800 for the entry-level model.

Personal income has risen (nominal terms) by 65% since then [0].

As a portion of our income the entry level macbook of 2008 would be the equivalent of $2970. Instead, it's $999. The resale value seems excellent. The battery life of 20 hours, means the battery life will be acceptable for many years to come. The thing is ridiculously fast compared to today's everyday needs and will likely continue to be so for many years.

In short, as a consumer product this thing is absolutely excellent value and should have an extensive lifetime. Not having the ability to upgrade isn't as big an issue as it used to be.

For pro devices, there's a different calculus, because by definition professional usage tends to try to approach the limits of the hardware and so the ability to upgrade every few years is useful. Still, here too the value proposition is quite strong allowing for good resale value upon a full-replacement upgrade. And as pro users tend to use their computer for professional use, losing a bit of money on necessary full-replacement upgrades isn't as big a deal either. The monthly cost of a $3k macbook pro that gets sold & fully replaced every 4 years, is something like $40. If that powers most of your productivity that earns you a $60k a year salary (let alone 300k a year), shaving off $5 or $10 a month because of upgrade options isn't really a big deal. And I don't really see anyone else providing laptop upgrades + this value/performance ratio as the M1...

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PI

Just as the number of people using external monitors is likely small, I suspect the number of people who ever upgrade any hardware in their laptop is small.

Like I have previously said. The apple ecosystem is a fashion accessory and not a professional computing device. Nothing "pro" about it anymore. Pick a color not a feature.

I presume my statement holds for laptops of any manufacturer

Eventually my 1TB/16GB Air gave me a kernal panic almost every time I closed the lid ~overnight. It took a clean restore from scratch to fix (restoring MacOS then restoring from a backup didn’t solve it!). It was a pain but it’s so fast and rock solid while working (and the keyboard feels so good) that I just put up with it. My 2018 15” 32GB has collected dust since January. I think the 14” that runs two monitors will be the sweet spot. After you get used to the responsiveness and lack of fan noise, there’s no going back. FWIW, I needed 32GB badly on my last upgrade and haven’t run into any issues with 16GB on this one. Apps written for Apple Silicon are no joke.

There used to be a time when my 16-inch MacBook Pro would randomly either crash the desktop environment, or outright kernel panic, whenever it was sleep with the lid closed for an undetermined amount of time. While I don't think I've had that issue ever since upgrading to Big Sur, that might not necessarily be an ARM-only issue.

I had a similar issue, whereby mine would consistently choke after I let the battery run out, let it sit for a while, then plugged it back in before opening the lid. Apple replaced it under warranty once I isolated the problem.

My MBP I freshly installed 2 months ago crashes every 2-3 days if I leave it running 24/7. But the M1 I also have seems stable for weeks

I have a history of not giving a damn about what my computer is like. My philosophy has always been that computers should be sort of low end and when they fail throw them out and get a new one because it doesn't matter, data is backed up.

having a slightly crappy computer allows you to also be sure that your stuff when it works, it will work for everyone.

Operating systems and computers are commodities is how I thought.

I recently bought an M1 because I was tempted to find out if it was as good as hyped, and I have to admit I love this. I'm just sad I didn't splurge on the big one. Damn it.

Most computing resources are woefully underused.

Which is why computer parts marketing is so damn effective.

For my personal use, I subscripe to the: “Eeh, good enough” philosophy. I like the mac platform and the M1 Macbook Air is “good enough”. Sure, a USB-A port would have been nice, or I could get a USB-C monitor, but the monitor I have is also good enough.

For work I’d want need more ports and more RAM.

How long the M1 will still be good enough is going to be interesting. I don’t want to generate unneeded electronic waste. My previous Macbook Pro lasted 7 years and would have been fine for a few more years, had OS upgrades been availble, along with a replacement screen.

There's no reason to think that an M1 Mac won't have similar longevity to the Intel-based Macs that came before it. Apple has taken a mature chassis design, inserted a mature computer architecture, running a mature operating system. There's just a few (likely resolvable) teething problems at points of intersection where these mature parts haven't previously been combined into one product.

It's not like a first or second generation iPad or iPhone which, with the benefit of hindsight, really were more like a Minimum Viable Product. Faint echos of the 128k Macintosh, even. Catastrophically underdone hardware made viable by intense optimisation work.

It’s really the CPU that concerns me. As Apple learn more about designing desktop CPUs they may add features or find mistakes that could give the M1 an unusual sort life span.

Given how astonishingly robust these first gen products have been over the past nine months, it's hard to imagine anything like that. And such concerns would be limited to parts unique to the desktop CPUs, such as the PCI Express lanes. The rest of the SOC is extremely mature.

Remember, the M1 is a derivative of the A14 which, along with its predecessors, has been running a fork of macOS for many years.

What work are people doing on an MBA or MBP 13" that needs more than 16GB of physical RAM? Last I saw the swap is extremely performant so you'd really need to be pushing that limit.

You don't want to wear out the SSD with constant swapping though. Especially because it can't be replaced so it'll have to last the entire life of the computer.

SSD lifetime concerns with the M1 are largely FUD (and based on initial reports with bad stats). The SSDs should last for the lifetime of the device even with heavy write usage.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/04/apple-resolves-m1...

I know about the bad stats.

But what's the lifetime of the device? That tends to differ a LOT.

For example I still use my Mac Mini 2011 today. After I stopped using it as desktop it became an ESXi server (because ESXi automatically permits Mac guests if you run on Mac hardware). I've already burned through two good SSDs (Crucial MX).

Non-replaceable SSDs in macbooks predate the M1. The interesting claim (which now appears either to have been entirely erroneous, or based on a bug that has now been fixed) was that the M1 Macs hit the SSDs harder than their predecessors.

If you are just talking about general SSD lifetime issues, then we already have over 5 years of user experience to go on (https://uk.pcmag.com/mac-laptops/86074/15-inch-macbook-pro-u...). And I believe that SSD reliability and lifetime has increased since 2016.

Yesterday Firefox was reporting 66GB RAM usage on my MBP with 16MB RAM. I also have a Linux VM that must be permanently running

Firefox became unresponsive until it decided to shrink its caches, which it did over about 5 minutes down to 10GB usage.

It clearly didn't need 66GB, most of it swap space. Usually it's not that much, and is more likely reach 20-30GB.

Firefox on Mac seems to grow and grow and grow usage, then when it becomes unresponsive it shrinks usage until it's responsive again. Several times a minute when scrolling sometimes, a long pause. It shrinks down to 10GB or less consistently. (My guess is a bug in the internal heuristics governing how much it decides to cache, being confused by MacOS memory compression and/or the fast swap.)

Perhaps I'd have a better browsing experience with 64GB RAM than 16GB. And less SSD wear. Perhaps less battery consumption, depending on whether SSD I/O for swap consumes more or less than powering extra DRAM.

TBH external displays have always been a problem on MacBooks, at least for me. Starting at issues with sleep/wake, random interruptions to not supporting any daisy-chaining.

In extension I had issues with all external peripherals from Apple that I tried. USB Apple Keyboards that stopped working unless you plugged them in with the extension cable (wtf?!), to the atrocity that is the magic mouse, to AirPod Pros getting super confused with multiple devices in proximity.

More USB/Thunderbolt ports and more spacing between them on laptops. I cannot plug my Yubikey into them without unplugging other devices. More RAM!

This is generally a side effect of USB cables and devices which are not spec-compliant. We see the same issue with electrical plugs and wall warts.

AFAIK, some Yubikeys are not USB size compliant so that they may fit an NFC antenna in that can do sufficient power gathering.

The ugliest thing about M1 Macs: the user not having complete control over them and the data stored on them.

That’s Apple, not M1.

Even in the intel based ones you have only a very limited set of customization points. You can’t write your own microcode, for example.

That's ok, as long as Intel can't update it in any way. As such, that microcode might just as well be part of the hardware for all the user knows/cares.

For the users who insist on a Mac we only give out Intel ones at work now because of how many issues we've had with the M1 models - quite a few have bricked themselves not allowing for the disk to be wiped or the OS to be installed which require plugging into another Mac and "reviving" it by putting it into DFU mode to fix.

Apple Support are, as usual, completely useless and tell us to take the computer to a store - we only found this out by reading a random blog post somebody did.

All very valid complaints. The external bootable disk support and the huge size of each minor update (this applies to Intel Macs too) are very annoying. Each update takes a long time to complete, and full recovery of a system is also a time consuming (and potential a data traffic cap busting) activity.

Is anyone else as absolutely amazed as I am that Apple managed to change the CPU instruction set to a completely new architecture and users barely notice?

I have a new M1 Macbook Air and I love it. Stuff just works, and users who know absolutely nothing about what an x86 or an ARM architecture is don't need to care about it.

I'm just amazed by this.

> Is anyone else as absolutely amazed as I am that Apple managed to change the CPU instruction set to a completely new architecture and users barely notice?

They’ve done this twice now. Also, x86 apps running on Rosetta 2 feel faster than native x86 on my recent Intel Macbook.

Thrice now, if you include the 68000 to PPC transition that occurred prior to Mac OS X. That's a total of four CPU architectures.

  1. 68000    —> PowerPC [0]
  a. Mac OS 9 —> Mac OS X [1]
  2. PowerPC  —> Intel [2]
  3. Intel    —> Apple Silicon [2]

Or refactoring that into timespans:

  1. 68000: 1984 to 1994 (10 years)
  2. PowerPC: 1994 to 2006 (12 years)
  3. Intel: 2006 to 2021 (15 years)

Interesting tidbits: Mac OS X has been around longer than MacOS was prior to X. And the Mac has been on Intel longer than any other instruction set. For someone who has used Macintosh computers since 1985, it feels strange saying that.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_68k_emulator

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macOS_components#Class...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software)

This is what I am curious about and it might take away some of the amazement. We know from the PPC to Intel transition, Steve Jobs mentioned that they 'always' had a port of their OS to intel. So I am wondering if the same and is true here and maybe for more architectures? Makes sense. Have an internal version that can run on different architectures so if a decision is made to switch the hardware, most of the heavy lifting is done.

My bet is, they've had an internal MacOS port on Arm for sometime.

Edit: To add. From what I've read, the M1 chip is fairly similar in many respects to the Arm chips in their phones. I am assuming there is some shared infrastructure there and simplified the process.

I'd love to see a write up about this from Apple engineers, but I know that probably won't happen.

You even can't run two external monitors?

Currently M1 Macs only support two displays, hacks aside. Upcoming models targeted at power users will almost certainly support three or four.

With the important caveat that the internal display always counts towards that two-display limit, regardless whether it's actually in use. So you can only add one external monitor to any M1 Mac that isn't the monitorless M1 Mac Mini.

Apples ethics.

The ugliest thing about the Apple M1 is its SoC that is a closed system. Due to this you cannot install and run any other OS on it - the system is deliberately crippled this way so that Apple has more control over your hardware and your personal data. Apple's end goal is to completely close their desktop / laptop lines like they did with their iPhones / iPads - they are just doing so very slowly because they know power users (who are influencers in their social circle when it comes buying computers) will abandon them in droves, and drive the sales of the nascent M1 models, if they made the change suddenly ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog ).

Apple fanbois / Naysayers here frequently argue that Apple will never do this as it will "alienate" its power users. The sad reality is that Apple doesn't cares about them anymore. Apple no longer wants to sell an open computing device as it has perfected a business model with selling commodity closed computing devices. Apple developers also have already shown how willing they are to submit to Apple's dictates and act like bonded labours by foolishly giving them an annual fees and a share of their profit for the "privilege" of developing on Apple platforms. So Apple has no fear they will abandon them as long as it can keep them ignorant and invested in the Apple eco system. It is just waiting for the right moment do so - there are still a lot of Apple Intel desktops / laptops, and Apple is closely monitoring them to see if they drink Apple's koolaid and migrate to the M1.

Unless Apple open's up it SoC ARM systems to system developers, stick with Intel and AMD PC's. (Even a Raspberry Pi is better as it can run more OSes than the M1!)

The demise of Intel and AMD are also greatly exaggerated, and just clever FUD marketing by Apple - the latest AMD Ryzen processor even today offers a better computing performance than Apple's processor. And the better benchmarks of the M1 are not just because of the hardware but also because of the optimised software running on it (and kudos to Apple for that).

Yes, ARM processors do consume lower power - but desktop users don't care about that aspect much (thugh it would be desirable), and both AMD and Intel processors have improved on that aspect over the decades - some of today's Intel / AMD laptops too offer upto 10+ hours of battery life.

(For those of you who want to reply that you do not care about not being able to run other OSes and like Apple's closed ecosystem, please don't waste your time - this post is obviously not meant for you, but for people who want choices and are concerned about their computing freedom and consumer rights).

The article is about hardware and I agree re ports and displays especially.

Software for devs is also difficult:

The biggest problem I ran into as a dev trying to use a new m1 is docker. It needs firewalls disabled and things. I just don’t want to go there.

Java was something that started working well quite quickly, though.

Smaller irritants that remain include the hassle of trying to get ssh credentials to stick, trying to turn off start-on-power and that safari cant add specific cross-site cookie exceptions (which means I have to keep logging into various work sites that use a third party 2fa).

The m1 is fast. Really fast. It is also silent. Silence is absolutely the best thing about it. It makes you realize how horrid every other computer is.

I've taken to using nativefier to build Electron apps for all my work-specific sites. That way each site has its own cache and cookies sandbox, and I don't have to mix work sites with general browsing under the same security policy. Plus, putting the nativefier apps in ~/Applications automatically adds them to Launchpad, which I've set always to show in the control strip on the touchbar: when I want to launch a worksite, it's just a matter of reaching up past the delete key, hitting the touchbar, and typing the first letters of the nativefier app name for that site.

SK Hynix, Micron and Samsung approves of this.

BYW you may find it faster to press command space for the same result without moving your hand off the home row.

I've assigned that to switching keyboards, which I do hundreds of tines a day.

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