Apple Silicon is an inconvenient truth
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
For the sake of argument, let’s assume Apple’s latest laptops have thoroughly wiped the floor against PCs.
If that’s the case, Apple’s computers are in a completely different class. You now have ARM machines that run macOS and x86 machines that run any other operating system.
Thus, if you’re looking for an x86 machine, you’re not buying an Apple product.
This isn’t some inconvenient truth. If you include macs in a PC review… there isn’t any point. You’d be comparing apples with oranges.
Yes. I wrote this entire comment to make that joke. :)
I would rather say people are in the market for something to write their thesis on, write some code or do creative work. MacBooks and Windows/Intel laptops can do this both. There is no apples to oranges comparison.
The separation of MacBooks and Windows/Intel laptops based on a chipset or OS is completely arbitrary and opinionated.
There's a reasonable line to draw between consumer and professional needs, but this isn't it. The average person probably won't notice the difference when they're web browsing or futzing in Photoshop, but they're definitely going to notice when none of their Steam games install and the program their boss sent them won't run.
The average laptop customer obviously isn't going to look for a specific ISA. However, they're definitely going to notice when those old Flash games won't boot, their code from 2 years ago doesn't compile or their Photoshop plugins break when switching Macs. That's the Apple Silicon problem.
But when deciding, the decision between an XPS, X1, and Surface, is different from the decision between a Surface, Mac, and Chromebook.
They all have superficially overlapping facilities, they can all display web pages, they can all "run apps", but in fact they are 3 entirely distinct platforms, and you have to know which platform you want, or which platform will serve your needs, as an entirely seperate and distinct question before thequestion of different pieces of hardware within that platform.
Those different platforms, are literally exactly different classes.
For various reasons, I am firmly in the x86 camp. On the other hand, there is a very good reason to compare apples to oranges: for a good number of people a fruit is a fruit, but the flavour still matters.
Then there are the oddballs who used to install oranges into apples to get the best of both worlds. (Historical tid-bit, Orange Micro used to make PC compatibility cards for Macintosh computers.)
s/home/server
Whoa, it's like we're in 2008 again!
Not necessarily. You can run Linux on Apple Silicon today. Asahi is far from complete, missing lots of drivers and with other sharp corners, but it's been a better experience than I've had with most x86 laptops I've tried. What works works, the machine is stable, fast (even for some graphical applications despite the lack of GPU drivers!) and the battery life is great.
Apparently you can run some form of BSD on it as well but I have no idea how far the support is.
> Thus, if you’re looking for an x86 machine, you’re not buying an Apple product.
Perhaps, but I don't think a lot of people out there actually care about the underlying architecture unless they're developing architecture-specific stuff.
And if the argument is "well if you don't have high-performance needs and you're just <pejorative about what people use computers for> then why does it matter" the answer is because the battery life is incredible and the thing is unbelievably snappy and responsive.
The PR around apple products is hilarious.
For me though, the primary thing I look for is whether or not I can do with it what I want. More specifically, whether the company that made it is actively trying to prevent me from doing that.
I care about that stuff most of all. I realize I am one of a very few people though. :)
Is that what reviewers are comparing?
Which are from retailers not manufacturers...
What's the issue there?
I found it pretty ridiculous that at Apple's most recent event they announced a product (the M2) that not only wasn't available for purchase, but that couldn't even be pre-ordered.
Some of the benchmarks only ran in Intel mode which puts Apple at an unfair disadvantage and might bias the results. Other benchmarks weren't designed for machines like the M1 Max and leave it well below 100% utilization even when natively compiled. A completely new cross platform benchmark is needed to do a proper comparison.
There are still some benchmarks on Ars comparing both architectures when applicable e.g when Intel launched the new CPUs and claimed they were faster than the M1 Ars ran the comparison to test that claim.
'Cause if they're only likely to give better results later on, that just supports TFA's thesis even more...
Showing a flawed misleading comparison for every laptop that comes out is redundant and misleading regardless of the direction.
Really? I bet you can buy a laptop for 1/10th the price that can do 90% of the same software dev tasks. The only thing the 14" does better is iOS development, which you don't have a choice of machines for anyways. I love a lot of things about the 14" Macbook Pro, but defending it's value proposition is something I can't really understand. It's a $2,000 laptop running the same OS as a $900 laptop, running the same git binary that you execute on a $35 Raspberry Pi. I don't see it.
I suppose you're right if you do absolutely everything on the command line, but in terms of the GUI and GUI applications, there's a world of difference, and once you factor in the Apple ecosystem (so contacts and notes are automatically synched between my phone and my Macs, etc) and the speed and polish of programs like Safari and Numbers, the value proposition becomes quite different. Us Mac users could use our Mac systems as generic Unix/Linux boxes, but few of us actually do.
Visual Studio Code and Jetbrains IDE work the same in Windows/Linux as in Macs. So I don't see the advantage of Mac here.
See Xcode or Nova for examples of real Mac IDEs/editors.
But note that my post was not just talking about development tools. I get work done on my Macs, but I also handle finances, play games, study, write documents, and shitpost on HN. All of those things (with the exception of the "play games" part sometimes) I find more pleasant to do in the familiar environment of a Mac.
I personally don't get all the hate for Xcode, but whatever. To each their own I guess.
Slow and bloated?
I think the only GUI i use is my browser, so Mac is a hard pass for me (also, while apple us keyboard is fine, the French one is utter shit)
Personally, I would rather sell my machine just before the warranty runs out(about 3 years) and buy a new one.
For a Mac, I'm pretty comfortable using the machine outside of its warranty period compared to a PC.
Apple stuff in my experience breaks either in the first few months, or at least 5 years out of warranty (except for the thin keyboards, but I avoided those defective designs).
And I've got her father's 2011 Mac Mini sitting in our TV cabinet running a Plex instance (plus a few other things, like a local internal-only web server). It needs a little fan sitting on top of it to keep it cool enough, but those cost about $10.
Doing it in less time, or without needing to have a wall socket, etc matters, and has value.
Of course in terms of value proposition there's a question: that's why we're asking why it's not on the review sites being compared to other laptops. Otherwise we're stuck with "it benchmarks faster and lasts longer on battery" anecdata.
Yeah, you can theoretically do the same thing, it's just that some things suddenly become feasible if you choose one over the other.
I've thrown around the idea of dropping big money ($4.8k the way I specced it) on a Mac Studio with an M1 Max. Up until now the idea was silly considering I have a perfectly good Macbook Pro from work without any spyware that I get for free. But dammit this M1 loaner might have pushed me over the edge.
Why did you get the Mac Studio?
My personal machine is an XPS 13” on ubuntu, which is old now, and feels old (slow).
But it’s the touchpad, screen, keyboard and battery that make it so hard to swap between.
1) The Apple Silicon machines are very, very good, in many cases better than their Intel competition.
2) Many tech sites aren't treating them as comparable, and are still treating Windows laptops as the "default", "real" laptops.
Sounds like green throw was addressing point #1, while you're looking at point #2?
If you are a PC gamer by definition a Mac will not work for you.
For those of us with high end needs and can run on Macs (devs, etc) then of course the perf comparison is valid.
But everyone is not us (devs, etc)
This is a strange article. I think many review sites have split the reviews into best iPhone/best android and best Mac/best windows laptop as there is simply no point in trying to convert people from their religion.
To my original point, the one area Apple can’t (won’t) compete is on price. Not everyone needs an expensive super thin laptop. Some people can spend $500 and get exactly what they need in a laptop.
Apple's products mostly make sense within it's ecosystem. If you're not already there, there are a lot of hurdles and useless things.
As a lifelong Windows and Linux user (with a couple of years of iMac usage at school), i now have a work provided MacBook Pro. Almost every other week i discover something new about it that annoys me - be it Pages automatically saving in its own shitty proprietary format instead of the original, the impossibility to have separate scroll order between mouse and touchpad, that while it sleeps Bluetooth is still on thus tricking various devices to connect to it, that i have to run a keylogger to add custom shortcuts and remap some keys, that fullscreen apps go to a separate workspace so I can't switch between their windows, etc. etc. And there are extra annoyances due to the architecture change, like having to re/cross compile stuff manually (for my specific use case). And it can't run games.
As others said, it's apples to oranges. "Casual" users can usually barely handle the OS they know and use, what makes anyone think they can switch to a different one with different logic?
Especially in the cloud role that I currently occupy, it seems like MacOS hits that nice balance for most corporations of providing a powerful Unix userspace while being somewhat easy to use and very secure (especially compared to the default posture of most Linux desktop machines).
That being said, I can understand being annoyed with aspects of MacOS. I have a work issued Intel Mac and Dell XPS that I have running Arch and I much prefer my Linux machine. But I think that if MacOS wasn't an option most places wouldn't even have a Unix/Unix-like option for their employees' workstations.
They probably have signed some juicy sponsorships with the Intel PCs and none from Apple
Their links says it all
To me personally, it's clear that Apple made every Intel/AMD laptop companies out of business, they are stuck since 2 decades ago
Apple with ARM and specialy their care with performance/watt and focus on energy efficiency changed the game
The main page would only be cool projects and interesting tech news, instead of flame wars by confused people who think Apple and the rest of FAANG are a football teams. There's literally no downside.
And i don't think flagging is the answer, leaving a comment to educate the readers is better than trying to censor things
And let‘s see what an actual Mac Pro performs like.
Also weight: over 7lbs, and it doesn't even look like that counts the power brick necessary to use the full performance of that machine. It's not a laptop by any reasonable definition; it's a luggable. It's desktop parts squeezed into a form factor that resembles a laptop until you put it next to a real human for scale.
I think later this year we might see slightly smaller HX form factors with Legion 7i and others coming soon. I never really understood why extra 3-4 lbs is such a big deal, I do carry a lot of gear every day though (and squat fairly heavy), so it might be a question of habit. :-)
I'm having a very hard time taking you seriously here. Do you really have trouble understanding why most people would prefer not to carry the weight of two laptops when they could carry the weight of one laptop instead?
And yeah, I get it that in this crowd, there are many people that that need x86. But for the vast majority of consumers, all they need is a machine that can surf the web and open up spreadsheets.
Okay, so why should they buy a $1,200 base model Macbook Air instead of a $200 Lenovo Chromebook? Better yet, why didn't Apple just let the iPad replace the Air if "all they need" is web browsing and office clients?
1. Take out the “vast majority of consumers”, and there’s still a large enough market for both devices.
2. “All they need” and “all they want” are two different things.
3. Apple is in a business to make money, and people are willing to pay.
If anything someone who is going to be using a laptop a lot but has modest actual computing needs is the perfect candidate for a laptop that prioritizes build quality.
Look, Apple isn't the only game in town when it comes to nice laptops, the Surface Book is really nice, but when you're comparing "computers I actually want to use for any extended period of time" $1200 isn't all that expensive.
And that's the point. $1200 IS expensive to some people who are only using it for basic computing tasks.
Some people do know what they are getting. They don't care about all the QoL improvements in more expensive laptops as long as they can afford it.
Well, they are. Remember apple's "what's a computer?" ads last year? And the higher end ipads cost more than the lowest priced macs.
They make different products for different use cases. Personally I do development on an macbook air, which is already so light I sometimes have to check my bag to make sure I haven't forgotten it.
Windows people, how much faster would a non-Windows machine have to be before you'd start to consider using something other than Windows? I know if the question were flipped and given to me as a Mac user, the answer would have to be something like "fast enough that the muscle memory and system knowledge I've gained from three decades of Mac use could be overcome by sheer system speed of the Windows machine," and that would have to be pretty damned fast. Given that it's pretty irrelevant to me to compare the two.
There are some old games I enjoy playing with friend and they simply don't run on a Mac, for example. So it doesn't matter how fast the Mac is, I can't alt-tab over to the game then alt-tab back to my terminal and do something real quick, I need an entirely separate Apple machine if I want the terminal to be "fast."
Speed is just not that useful to me, I want a general-purpose computer and it's fine if some features perform at 1/5th the speed, the computer is mostly idle anyway and while instant is obviously better versatility is the primary virtue I'm looking for.
Until Macs run games, it's a pointless comparison. If Steam did for Macs what they did for Linux, then we'd have something interesting to talk about. But a PC without games is about as attractive as... a Ferrari, I guess. If somebody handed me a free 200K$ sports car, I'd just sell it. It's useless for my lifestyle. A PC that can't play games is equally useless to me.
But like I said, I've still got other games to play. I've long ago made peace with the idea that I just can't play every game I want to play at any time on my Mac, and that's fine. Others will have a different opinion and that's fine too.
If a review is looking at hardware, and MacBooks are out there, shouldn’t they be included for the benefit of people who are actually trying to understand their purchase options?
Sit a person who's only ever used Windows their whole life in front of a Mac and ask them to find and launch a certain application. Once they realize there's no Start button they'll probably be completely lost.
But, it sounds like you and I land on two different sides of this. Your point seems to be that other OS machines shouldn’t be included because of that significant entry barrier, and my point is that if the review is being presented as a comparison of the best hardware options, then it’s not accurate to eliminate MacOS machines on the basis of software. I’d sooner see reviews either (a) compare exclusively same-OS machines and say so, or (b) disclaim that users might face that bigger entry barrier, but show the comparison and leave the decision of whether learning a new OS would be worth it to the reader
I mean when certain things on PC were actually better, did Gruber ever mentions it as an inconvenient truth?
Those rare reviews included MacBook when it could run Bootcamp ( Windows ). From a comparative point of view at least that make sense. Buyer aren't looking for Hardware differences, if nerds want to pinpoint that with GB5 they would have known.
And it is not like these site completely ignore Apple products either. They are just done in a separate article.
...Why would he? There are hundreds of tech publications and bloggers who will cheerfully talk about why Windows computers are better than Macs, and have been basically since the release of Windows 1.0.
He's calling this "an inconvenient truth" because he's seeing a trend among supposedly cross-platform reviews that say the Apple Silicon-based computers are faster than any of the Intel computers being reviewed......and then just say "but the Intel one is the best!" without justifying that with any explanation about how obviously anyone who's looking to do real work needs a Windows computer or something.
"They're going head to head with Apple's MacBook Pros—at the event announcing the systems, Microsoft even made this comparison explicitly."
Edit: Here's various tech outfits directly comparing Apple MacBooks to traditional PCs for "best laptop:
The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/21250695/best-laptops
CNET: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/best-laptop/
PCMAG: https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-laptops
Engadget: https://www.engadget.com/best-laptops-120008636.html
Yes, old enough to remember that and expanding Performa macs for more performance.
If there was a laptop that could replace my T460s with 20 hours of battery life, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, an x86 laptop with 4 hours of battery life is always going to be more productive than an ARM Macbook/Raspberry Pi for my purposes. I don't think that's denial, it's just the transactional cost of Apple continuing to cut people out of their ecosystem. That's a perfectly fine decision for them to make, but if you can't argue that Apple Silicon will work for everybody, you're defending a moot point. They could make a laptop with 100 hours of battery life, but if it can't run my Docker containers for work, then it can't replace what I have already.
Basically everything I've tried has worked on my Apple Silicon Mac, including x86_64 Docker containers using Docker Desktop. I'm sure there are applications that don't work, but I've yet to run into one first hand and I'm a software dev.
In retrospect we probably should have forced all devs to switch to M1 at once and upgraded everyone’s laptop, but we saw all these posts about how everything works on M1 and that just wasn’t the case at all in our experience.
Our software at work didn't work out of the box on M1, but fixing it was fairly trivial and mostly involved upgrading library versions (although we use Node not Python which admittedly tends to be better at portability). But someone completely new to the codebase definitely isn't the person to be fixing these issues.
I don't understand; Docker Desktop for Apple Silicon runs x86 containers out of the box
And it's not guaranteed to work anyway. We had some processes which I guess were compiled to use instructions that qemu wasn't emulating, so they would crash with illegal instruction errors.
Another annoyance is that your package repo may not actually publish arm versions of packages you use. This is usually the case for older stuff, e.g. MySQL 5.x was not released for arm and won't compile without backports. So, to fix the performance issues with emulation you may need to build some things yourself. Not a big deal, but also not an out of the box experience.
Most Docker use cases tend to be server related and most hiccups running those on ARM have been solved by now (partly due to pushes for AWS Graviton cost savings and performance increases too, not just Apple).
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-silicon/abou...
If your software runs on x86 Mac, it should run on Apple Silicon.
As for cutting people out: every piece of software, including x86 I have tried has worked without a hitch. If your problem is that you need an x86 VM, then yeah you're kind hosed unless maybe intel&amd decided release their ISA royalty free?
Alternatively, you could just not write awful architecture dependent software, like all those developers happily using ARM laptops without a problem are mysteriously capable of.
I'm really happy the M1/M2 exists, and I have access to an M1 MBP, but I'd still rather have a nice Linux laptop. Especially for containers.
Edit: One severe (to me) incompatibility I ran into with the M1 MBP is that it would not run my dual monitors (dell, displayport) through either of the TB3 docks (belkin, caldigit) I had available. I ended up replacing the monitors. Worked fine with the x86 MBP.
Regarding Docker on Mac I totally agree. It's not worth it. At my workplace we simply run everything natively. We have to use Macs because we do iOS dev, but if we didn't then I'd definitely be tempted to get a linux laptop. May stick Asahi on my machine once the GPU support is ready.
It can absolutely be done, though. It's just not necessarily as simple as "install the ARM one".
I wish this world was friendlier to the RISC ISAs of the world, but CISC supremacy is still real, and can hurt you.
More seriously, it wouldn't surprise me that there is a fair bit of software out there that is written with assembly or x86 intrinsics which isn't worth the time porting, especially if you're not going to deploy on ARM.
This makes me reasonably angry, because I use dual 4K displays.
CalDigit support told me that it happened on the M1 Pro systems if the make/model of the monitors was identical, but I don't think that's true, because I replaced two identical monitors with two newer identical monitors and both of those work through a CalDigit TS3+.
This creates an inherent conflict of interest that has to shape their reviews in some form or another. The problem is that there's no transparency at all. They're talking with company reps before a product launches and signing embargo agreements to not release content early. I'm not saying that every piece of review content is low quality shill clickbait BS, but the reviewer has a relationship with a company and there's no way that doesn't influence their work given that early access is important for staying relevant in the space.
We’re not all being forced to watch cable tv and read the same two local newspapers anymore.
Some people like lowest common denominator McDonalds-type corporate content. I don’t see that changing in the future (ie, some future where these people are better informed).
But maybe I’m just cynical.
This[0] is a great video that dives into how tablet manufacturers manipulate artists into shilling for their products. This kind of behavior is much more commonplace among tech review culture than people want to acknowledge (i.e. companies signing off on review videos before their posted, giving out free samples in exchange for positive reviews, etc.)
Ultimately, the goal of advertising now is to generate advertising content that doesn't look like advertising. Review videos are an incredible vehicle to accomplish this.
Maybe there will be a cultural reckoning once customers get wise to it like they have with other sorts of spin. Maybe the zoomer generation who grew up on TikTok will learn to spot bullshit influencer bait a mile away. Kinda like the 90s kids backlash against TV.
I don't see it -- an ipad pro costs about the same amount or more than a macbook air. Seems like they could easily get a similar margin on either device.
> I want MacOS on the iPad so badly and I know I'm not the only one.
I've never understood this. I'd be curious if you could give me some perspective. I do know a lot of people would like it, so it's likely I'm just not seeing what they do.
I do like some convergence between the two platforms (similar functionality / "pick up either device and continue where you left off" on a lot of apps from messaging to 3P apps like OmniFocus) but I often switch from the ipad to the mac because of the power of the keyboard and the interface metaphors.
Microsoft has tried to jam the two together without (in IMHO) success as they have different affordances. Keyboard on an ipad is meh -- my macbook air is lighter than an ipad + magic keyboard.
I use my ipad a lot, both standalone for reading and as a pen accessory for my mac (Apple needs to do more work on this use case). I see lots of good, remaining opportunities for overlap but wouldn't want the OS of one on the hardware of the either.
The iPad Pro is fine hardware, but as a developer I find being restricted to the App Store for my applications very off-putting, and I personally believe this goes against what personal computing stands for; I'm willing to put up with these restrictions for phones, but not for tablets. macOS on an M1 iPad Pro, however, would be a game-changer.
Some people don't want 2 websites to maintain or just want to keep their publishing overhead to what they're used to.
So there's just no real point in comparing Apple and Wintel machines side by side.
The article seems like a conspiracy theory.
Geekbench is a terrible proxy for ANY workload, those subtests all run within the space of a few seconds -- they aren't meant to actually represent performance in sustained workloads.
Additionally, the smashing together of results from a wide range of incomparable applications, including unfair weighting that skews for memory, makes the cumulative scores largely worthless.
Finding other relevant benchmarks for comparison is difficult, especially given the locked down nature of MacOS.
Fuck this guy. Wish I can flag this multiple times into the oblivion. I don't like Macs because they are locked down both on software and hardware. It's not a "personal" computer. Literally have to dance around Apple's limitation all the time if you want to use something not approved by the high and almighty.
If you want to live a walled garden so be it. But don't call people "Fox News cultists and climate change deniers" just because they want to use something else.
The biggests wins of the m2 are still power efficiency and neural engine for video rendering.
[1]https://www.notebookcheck.net/M2-vs-R7-6800U_14521_14088.247...
On the other hand you also have apple users that only care about comparing macbooks with other macbook. So it kinda goes both ways.
I would rather think that people who are OS agnostic and just care about their programs working to the best are a minority.
It's nice! It reminds of days long past when I actually gave a fuck. :-)
if you look hard enough there are benchmarks comparing apple to windows/linux for video editing, blender, compiling code, etc. the take away for the past couple years is that Apple is head and shoulders over anybody else in performance/watt
This post seems to be as limited in its grasps of tech ology as it is in politics.
This guy is hilarious.
That said, if I needed a super fast machine to do graphics or video, I'd look seriously at the new chips. I don't need such a machine.
For "computer enthusiasts", all they care about is games. If macOS could play the full Steam catalog, they would all flock to the Mac.