Beyond the M1 hype and why the fairy dust needs to settle.

[throAU]

It's not just the M1. Nvidia are also taking on intel in the datacenter with their new machine learning ARM based machines. Talk of 10x performance (take with bucket of salt, etc. but even if they get 1/3 that, it's still going to hurt that).

Intel is going to hurt a lot for the next few years.

 

[jeanlain]

To address the "XYZ CPU crushes the M1 in multicore cinebench", it's useful to extrapolate from single-thread power consumption, which is rarely published. But take a look:

Intel's latest is at 43.2 Watts. Most tested CPUs are at >30W during a single-thread cinebench run.
The M1 SoC is at 3.8W.
To be fair, M1 CPU utilisation seems a bit lower than it should during cinebench, hence why the M1 does not perform as well in this test compared to, say, Geekbench. So let's say 5W at most.
Also, those desktop CPUs have more cores, which still consume a bit of power when idle.
But you get the idea, the M1 core is about 5X more power efficient than each of these CPU cores, which perform worse, or barely better.
When the M1X comes out, these desktop CPUs won't have multicore scores to save them.

 

[jeanlain]

Apple Silicon Macs are going to be much more performant, and Metal will give you even more access to the hardware (now that Apple does not have to support third-party GPUs anymore going forward, they can really go crazy and potentially offer the devs console-level control). They absolutely will want you to code for their hardware, using approaches that their hardware does best, and what's better way to do it than promise that all hardware will have unified capabilities.

All this looks great on paper, but in practice, at least when it comes to gaming, developers will just port their DirectX code with automatic translation tools + some tweaks, or worse, just use moltenVK.
Each time I watch a WWDC video explaining the benefits of Metal TBDR-specific features I ask myself "but WHO will use these?" . I'm not even sue that Unity implements anything of the sort.
Remember when Marksatt said that UE4 was geared toward last-gen APIs and that there was little he could to make it faster on Metal because that would require some architectural changes?

 

[quarkysg]

All this looks great on paper, but in practice, at least when it comes to gaming, developers will just port their DirectX code with automatic translation tools + some tweaks, or worse, just use moltenVK.
Each time I watch a WWDC video explaining the benefits of Metal TBDR-specific features I ask myself "but WHO will use these?" . I'm not even sue that Unity implements anything of the sort.
Remember when Marksatt said that UE4 was geared toward last-gen APIs and that there was little he could to make it faster on Metal because that would require some architectural changes?

Hopefully demands from Mac users could drive the desire for developers to improve their code support for Apple SoCs. With the first generation Apple Silicon Macs already performant enough for gaming, and with teens and young adults likely the demographics using such Macs, the demand for gaming will likely increase.

I think we can see this push from Apple with the recent Apple Arcade releases.

 

[leman]

All this looks great on paper, but in practice, at least when it comes to gaming, developers will just port their DirectX code with automatic translation tools + some tweaks, or worse, just use moltenVK.
Each time I watch a WWDC video explaining the benefits of Metal TBDR-specific features I ask myself "but WHO will use these?" . I'm not even sue that Unity implements anything of the sort.
Remember when Marksatt said that UE4 was geared toward last-gen APIs and that there was little he could to make it faster on Metal because that would require some architectural changes?

My thoughts on the matter are very similar to what @quarkysg wrote above. As more Macs with decent GPUs are released, there will be more interest in gaming, creating more demand for high-quality optimized games. It will obviously take some time, but I am optimistic. Especially once Apple delivers real-time RT...

 

[jdb8167]

My thoughts on the matter are very similar to what @quarkysg wrote above. As more Macs with decent GPUs are released, there will be more interest in gaming, creating more demand for high-quality optimized games. It will obviously take some time, but I am optimistic. Especially once Apple delivers real-time RT...

I think Fantasian is the first Apple "production" that is getting actual praise. I'm not much of a gamer but I can't recall Apple being involved with many games that people want to play. The fact that Fantasian is on Apple Arcade is very interesting.

 

[leman]

I think Fantasian is the first Apple "production" that is getting actual praise. I'm not much of a gamer but I can't recall Apple being involved with many games that people want to play. The fact that Fantasian is on Apple Arcade is very interesting.

I can't say I am too interested in Apple Arcade, the focus of that service is not really my taste in gaming. But you have things like Baldur's Gates 3 coming to native Apple Silicon (most likely with optimizations) and the fact that a modern game like Metro Exodus (using an emulated Vulkan layer!) can run on a MacBook Air with acceptable frame rates is nothing short of absolutely impressive. It might take a couple of years, but the perception of "Macs can't game" will change.

 

[jdb8167]

I can't say I am too interested in Apple Arcade, the focus of that service is not really my taste in gaming. But you have things like Baldur's Gates 3 coming to native Apple Silicon (most likely with optimizations) and the fact that a modern game like Metro Exodus can run on a MacBook Air with acceptable frame rates is nothing short of absolutely impressive. It might take a couple of years, but the perception of "Macs can't game" will change.

I just downloaded Fantasian. Apparently I forgot to cancel my free 3 month Apple Arcade subscription when I bought the M1 MacBook Air. So I have another month.

It is very pretty but I'm not much of a gamer. I'll have to try and figure out the controls and see if it is fun.

 

[theluggage]

This isn't fairy dust--it's an actual watershed moment in computing. You can rage against it if you want to--doesn't change anything.

Well, it’s a watershed moment for 13” ultra-portables. We have seen some comparisons with Intel/AMD CPUs and more powerful GPUs that are superficially dumb because they pit larger, power-hungry PCs against the tiny, ultra-low-power M1 machines - but to be fair, at the time of writing, the M1 is all that Apple are offering. There are feature limitations of the M1 Macs - limited, unexpandable RAM (unavoidable with LPDDR RAM), limited external display support, limited ports (without dongles) - that are an acceptable trade-off for ultra-portability, but won’t cut the mustard for more demanding applications, even if the CPU and GPU are potentially fast enough.

The performance is certainly incredible for the size and power but Apple now have to show that they can carry over those advantages to more powerful machines. There are quite a few questions over how that will work: some of the M1s efficiency certainly comes from having the GPU integrated into the chip and the RAM integrated into the package... and, sorry, but there is no defence for anything bigger than a tablet to rely on a non-replaceable SSD: it’s a perishable component - even if it has a reasonable life expectancy in “typical” use, it can easily be destroyed by a software fault - and, as I understand it, the M1 can’t function without it.

It will be interesting to see how Apple plan to deal with that while supporting far more RAM and GPUs that can beat modern discrete/desktop cards... but they do need to get a wiggle on and release their 16” MBP and 5k iMac replacements, and maybe give a hint of where they plan to go with the Mac Pro.

 

[jeanlain]

My thoughts on the matter are very similar to what @quarkysg wrote above. As more Macs with decent GPUs are released, there will be more interest in gaming, creating more demand for high-quality optimized games. It will obviously take some time, but I am optimistic. Especially once Apple delivers real-time RT...

I think this is too optimistic. At best, we will have more PC/console ports using API translation tools, but I don't think anyone will re-architect a renderer for Metal and TBDR.

 

[leman]

I think this is too optimistic. At best, we will have more PC/console ports using API translation tools, but I don't think anyone will re-architect a renderer for Metal and TBDR.

I understand what you mean (and I agree with your concerns). Fortunately though, the situation is not as bleak as it might seem. The truth is, there are multiple layers of optimization in making games run better on Apple GPUs, and the basic ones are trivial to implement and they don't even require you to use Metal. The first step is to make sure that you are not wasting memory bandwidth needlessly by marking which data can stay on chip. Vulkan (and recently also DX12) has solid support for this via render passes and transient resources — and this is fully supported in engines like Unity. This is fairly simple to use and will really give you considerable improvements on any TBDR hardware, especially those that use deferred renderers. I suppose similar is also true for features like programmable blending, although I am not 100% sure whether Vulkan/DX12 expose that one.

So even if the game does not use Metal, it can still get a lot of benefits from using the API correctly. Of course, if you are using Metal, you might be able to get even more performance, but as you have already mentioned, this usually requires a much bigger investment.

 

[leman]

Well, it’s a watershed moment for 13” ultra-portables. We have seen some comparisons with Intel/AMD CPUs and more powerful GPUs that are superficially dumb because they pit larger, power-hungry PCs against the tiny, ultra-low-power M1 machines - but to be fair, at the time of writing, the M1 is all that Apple are offering. There are feature limitations of the M1 Macs - limited, unexpandable RAM (unavoidable with LPDDR RAM), limited external display support, limited ports (without dongles) - that are an acceptable trade-off for ultra-portability, but won’t cut the mustard for more demanding applications, even if the CPU and GPU are potentially fast enough.

The performance is certainly incredible for the size and power but Apple now have to show that they can carry over those advantages to more powerful machines. There are quite a few questions over how that will work: some of the M1s efficiency certainly comes from having the GPU integrated into the chip and the RAM integrated into the package... and, sorry, but there is no defence for anything bigger than a tablet to rely on a non-replaceable SSD: it’s a perishable component - even if it has a reasonable life expectancy in “typical” use, it can easily be destroyed by a software fault - and, as I understand it, the M1 can’t function without it.

It will be interesting to see how Apple plan to deal with that while supporting far more RAM and GPUs that can beat modern discrete/desktop cards... but they do need to get a wiggle on and release their 16” MBP and 5k iMac replacements, and maybe give a hint of where they plan to go with the Mac Pro.

Well, the classical model of (CPU+RAM) + (GPU + RAM) just doesn't do it anymore if you want to get the most of the hardware. Pro-level hardware is moving to unified memory and interconnected CPU/GPU/ML accelerator clusters. Just look at NVIDIA's Grace (which using using LPDDR5 for a datacenter system!), Intel's Xe-HPC etc...

I am fairly sure that some of the larger Apple Silicon system will look similar to Grace, with separate larger dies and fast fabric interconnect. In fact, the new Mac Pro appeared to be designed for housing a system like that: imagine an MPX board with CPU, GPU, RAM + everything else dies and a large heatsink — ideal for Mac Pro-style cooling system.

 

[quarkysg]

I think this is too optimistic. At best, we will have more PC/console ports using API translation tools, but I don't think anyone will re-architect a renderer for Metal and TBDR.

IMHO, the lure of profits overcomes all barriers. We’re now at a stage where it’s no longer a technical limitation, but rather a limitation of potential revenue. If the developer feels that it’s worth their effort, they will do it.

 

[JMacHack]

IMHO, the lure of profits overcomes all barriers. We’re now at a stage where it’s no longer a technical limitation, but rather a limitation of potential revenue. If the developer feels that it’s worth their effort, they will do it.

I’m sure we’ll continue to see ports of games to Mac, but I highly doubt they’ll be optimized in any sense. Current games aren’t even optimized on PCs, a lot even released with terrible bugs. Profit comes from the fact that gamers will buy anything they release regardless of quality. Modern games are just vehicles for lootboxes anyway.

On top of that, another limiting factor is anti-piracy systems, many of which are windows only.

 

[theluggage]

I am fairly sure that some of the larger Apple Silicon system will look similar to Grace, with separate larger dies and fast fabric interconnect. In fact, the new Mac Pro appeared to be designed for housing a system like that: imagine an MPX board with CPU, GPU, RAM + everything else dies and a large heatsink — ideal for Mac Pro-style cooling system.

Absolutely - I've suggested that myself in other threads. It makes practical sense, too: Apple could develop a massive 64-or-whatever core Apple Silicon chip to directly replace the higher-spec Xeon-Ws (Amazon and others have already gone there) but they probably don't shift enough top-end Mac Pros to make it economical. Or they could use basically the same chip that ends up in the higher-end MBPs and iMacs (which should shift in reasonable volumes) to build a multi-SoC Mac Pro system. Optimising software might be a problem - but I think Apple already see the Mac Pro as something of an "appliance" for running FCPx, Logic and a few key third-party applications.

Still, my money is on the Mac Pro being the last machine to go Apple Silicon, and they've already given up on pricing it competitively - the current urgency is for them to transition the MBP 16" and 5k iMac to something affordable and not too radical. I don't think that having to add a whole second SoC to an iMac/MBP for each additional 16GB of RAM and each external display would be palatable in the MBP/iMac sector. I'd start to worry if the iMac/MBP16 don't turn up by WWDC.

 

[pmccumber]

A few things to consider when comparing Apple to Windows systems:

1) A long time ago I worked for AMD. I did numerous trips to Japan, Korea, Taiwan. The thing to remember is the difference between an enterprise class laptop vs a consumer class laptop. Everything Apple makes is enterprise class. Compare Apple laptops in terms of price to Latitude or XPS if you must.

2) This notion of Windows doing WAY more is utterly misinformed. You will not find any software professional running Windows unless they are developing in and for Windows ecosystem. That CMD window is the biggest crime against humanity in my 40 years of software development. Open a terminal on MacOS and you have the entire world of software tools at your disposal (vi, cc, python, perl, ...) and more importantly, downloadable packages for everything. We would have Flying Cars by now if Microsoft hadn’t shoved their ecosystem down our throats for 4 decades. And don’t give me WSL; great, they have a VM that supports a Linux port. It’s a great addition but it’s a VM. The OS is still crap.

3) Why do we put up with having to move and pay for all these stupid Windows OSes? Just a stream of them. NT, XP, Windows 7, Vista, Windows 8, Windows 10, ... Don’t underestimate the value of buying a Mac and having the thing be upgradeable for a decade. Not to mention, every Windows box I’ve ever worked on becomes a Registry infested nightmare; the OS is needy. After a couple years the Windows system folders looks like an episode of “Hoarders”. I have visions of refugees clinging to a Vietnamese Junk sailing in the South Chinese Sea. For some reason, a 9 yo Mac with a Passmark CPU score of 623 runs just fine. Btw, the same is true of Linux; every old Windows PC I have is a Linux system and they run smooth as silk long after they were unusable with Windows.

4) The M1 is monumentally groundbreaking. It’s performance compares with CPUs that consume 300%, if not more, power. Out of the gate, an enterprise laptop for under $1000 can get 1/2 week on battery. Additionally, like Windows itself, x86 architecture is a bloated cow that has had crap slapped on to it since the Carter administration. The biggest reason the M1 destroys it per watt in unprecedented ways is the fact that the reorder buffer is actually doable. This is real innovation. The x86 clan isn’t going to step up and just implement a deeper and wider reorder buffer, THEY CAN’T. Somebody (Apple) saw a better world and had deep enough pockets to make it happen. It’s like Windows; Windows keeps support for EVERYTHING. The OS supports 32 and 64 bit and has vestigial penis’ laying all over the architecture. Apple tells vendors “Get your sh*t together because 32 bit apps are going away”. And Voila! It happens.

5) Those features, touch screen and gaming, I guess. I know there is a market for gaming but I can promise that as the world realizes this groundbreaking step (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, nVidia are already moving toward similar architecture -> Apple genuinely innovated) more will develop software for these targets. I’ve had touchscreen on work machines for 4 years and cannot see a scintilla of value. I guess if it’s detachable, but, I’m open to the notion I am just missing the glory of taking one’s hands of the keypad and poking the screen.

I’ve liked MacOS for a very long time because of the underlying OS and the quality of the package. But IMO, what Apple has started with the M1 is the biggest revolution in a very long time. It’s not only not “overhyped”, it’s not hyped nearly enough.

 

[cmaier]

A few things to consider when comparing Apple to Windows systems:

1) A long time ago I worked for AMD. I did numerous trips to Japan, Korea, Taiwan. The thing to remember is the difference between an enterprise class laptop vs a consumer class laptop. Everything Apple makes is enterprise class. Compare Apple laptops in terms of price to Latitude or XPS if you must.

2) This notion of Windows doing WAY more is utterly misinformed. You will not find any software professional running Windows unless they are developing in and for Windows ecosystem. That CMD window is the biggest crime against humanity in my 40 years of software development. Open a terminal on MacOS and you have the entire world of software tools at your disposal (vi, cc, python, perl, ...) and more importantly, downloadable packages for everything. We would have Flying Cars by now if Microsoft hadn’t shoved their ecosystem down our throats for 4 decades. And don’t give me WSL; great, they have a VM that supports a Linux port. It’s a great addition but it’s a VM. The OS is still crap.

3) Why do we put up with having to move and pay for all these stupid Windows OSes? Just a stream of them. NT, XP, Windows 7, Vista, Windows 8, Windows 10, ... Don’t underestimate the value of buying a Mac and having the thing be upgradeable for a decade. Not to mention, every Windows box I’ve ever worked on becomes a Registry infested nightmare; the OS is needy. After a couple years the Windows system folders looks like an episode of “Hoarders”. I have visions of refugees clinging to a Vietnamese Junk sailing in the South Chinese Sea. For some reason, a 9 yo Mac with a Passmark CPU score of 623 runs just fine. Btw, the same is true of Linux; every old Windows PC I have is a Linux system and they run smooth as silk long after they were unusable with Windows.

4) The M1 is monumentally groundbreaking. It’s performance compares with CPUs that consume 300%, if not more, power. Out of the gate, an enterprise laptop for under $1000 can get 1/2 week on battery. Additionally, like Windows itself, x86 architecture is a bloated cow that has had crap slapped on to it since the Carter administration. The biggest reason the M1 destroys it per watt in unprecedented ways is the fact that the reorder buffer is actually doable. This is real innovation. The x86 clan isn’t going to step up and just implement a deeper and wider reorder buffer, THEY CAN’T. Somebody (Apple) saw a better world and had deep enough pockets to make it happen. It’s like Windows; Windows keeps support for EVERYTHING. The OS supports 32 and 64 bit and has vestigial penis’ laying all over the architecture. Apple tells vendors “Get your sh*t together because 32 bit apps are going away”. And Voila! It happens.

5) Those features, touch screen and gaming, I guess. I know there is a market for gaming but I can promise that as the world realizes this groundbreaking step (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, nVidia are already moving toward similar architecture -> Apple genuinely innovated) more will develop software for these targets. I’ve had touchscreen on work machines for 4 years and cannot see a scintilla of value. I guess if it’s detachable, but, I’m open to the notion I am just missing the glory of taking one’s hands of the keypad and poking the screen.

I’ve liked MacOS for a very long time because of the underlying OS and the quality of the package. But IMO, what Apple has started with the M1 is the biggest revolution in a very long time. It’s not only not “overhyped”, it’s not hyped nearly enough.

Which division of AMD did you work for? And how long ago? (CMD alum here)

 

[spiderman0616]

A few things to consider when comparing Apple to Windows systems:

1) A long time ago I worked for AMD. I did numerous trips to Japan, Korea, Taiwan. The thing to remember is the difference between an enterprise class laptop vs a consumer class laptop. Everything Apple makes is enterprise class. Compare Apple laptops in terms of price to Latitude or XPS if you must.

2) This notion of Windows doing WAY more is utterly misinformed. You will not find any software professional running Windows unless they are developing in and for Windows ecosystem. That CMD window is the biggest crime against humanity in my 40 years of software development. Open a terminal on MacOS and you have the entire world of software tools at your disposal (vi, cc, python, perl, ...) and more importantly, downloadable packages for everything. We would have Flying Cars by now if Microsoft hadn’t shoved their ecosystem down our throats for 4 decades. And don’t give me WSL; great, they have a VM that supports a Linux port. It’s a great addition but it’s a VM. The OS is still crap.

3) Why do we put up with having to move and pay for all these stupid Windows OSes? Just a stream of them. NT, XP, Windows 7, Vista, Windows 8, Windows 10, ... Don’t underestimate the value of buying a Mac and having the thing be upgradeable for a decade. Not to mention, every Windows box I’ve ever worked on becomes a Registry infested nightmare; the OS is needy. After a couple years the Windows system folders looks like an episode of “Hoarders”. I have visions of refugees clinging to a Vietnamese Junk sailing in the South Chinese Sea. For some reason, a 9 yo Mac with a Passmark CPU score of 623 runs just fine. Btw, the same is true of Linux; every old Windows PC I have is a Linux system and they run smooth as silk long after they were unusable with Windows.

4) The M1 is monumentally groundbreaking. It’s performance compares with CPUs that consume 300%, if not more, power. Out of the gate, an enterprise laptop for under $1000 can get 1/2 week on battery. Additionally, like Windows itself, x86 architecture is a bloated cow that has had crap slapped on to it since the Carter administration. The biggest reason the M1 destroys it per watt in unprecedented ways is the fact that the reorder buffer is actually doable. This is real innovation. The x86 clan isn’t going to step up and just implement a deeper and wider reorder buffer, THEY CAN’T. Somebody (Apple) saw a better world and had deep enough pockets to make it happen. It’s like Windows; Windows keeps support for EVERYTHING. The OS supports 32 and 64 bit and has vestigial penis’ laying all over the architecture. Apple tells vendors “Get your sh*t together because 32 bit apps are going away”. And Voila! It happens.

5) Those features, touch screen and gaming, I guess. I know there is a market for gaming but I can promise that as the world realizes this groundbreaking step (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, nVidia are already moving toward similar architecture -> Apple genuinely innovated) more will develop software for these targets. I’ve had touchscreen on work machines for 4 years and cannot see a scintilla of value. I guess if it’s detachable, but, I’m open to the notion I am just missing the glory of taking one’s hands of the keypad and poking the screen.

I’ve liked MacOS for a very long time because of the underlying OS and the quality of the package. But IMO, what Apple has started with the M1 is the biggest revolution in a very long time. It’s not only not “overhyped”, it’s not hyped nearly enough.

1) I didn't see the part you deleted, but it sounds like you did the right thing--thanks for doing that without causing a bunch of drama.

2) As far as the rest of it, you are speaking my language 100%, especially when it comes to the rat's nest of legacy code that Windows has become. You can easily demonstrate this even to someone who knows nothing about coding by just going a few clicks deep in the Control Panel. Eventually you'll hit old interfaces from Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, etc.

The main reason I finally gave up on Windows was that I was tired of having to re-pave and start over about once a year just to keep my state of the art gaming rig running the way it was designed to run. PC gamers install and uninstall a lot of software from a lot of different places and it makes an absolute mess of system files, the registry, etc. I use a computer all day for work--if I'm going to spend my free time on another computer, I don't want to spend any of that time fixing it or trying to sort out driver issues. I want to fire it up, work on my projects, play my games, whatever, and then put it away and not think about it anymore until tomorrow.

I have been using Macs exclusively since about 2012 for my personal needs, and am now at the point at work where I'm authorized for my every-5-year upgrades on my work machine to be a MacBook Pro (or whatever Mac model I want aside from probably the Pro). I have never once had to reformat and reinstall macOS on any of my personal machines. I have never once had to have IT fix anything macOS related on my work machines. I have never once felt like the system is slowing down due to my workflow, even on the old 2014 MacBook Air that I had all the way up until late 2019 and used it almost exclusively as a desktop in clamshell mode hooked up to dual monitors.

My 10 year old son was saving up for his own computer so he could learn to code, and I encouraged him to get the M1 Mac mini. So pretty soon, I'll get to see a real stress test on macOS. But I have a feeling it's going to hold up just fine.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

I’m sure we’ll continue to see ports of games to Mac, but I highly doubt they’ll be optimized in any sense. Current games aren’t even optimized on PCs, a lot even released with terrible bugs. Profit comes from the fact that gamers will buy anything they release regardless of quality. Modern games are just vehicles for lootboxes anyway.

On top of that, another limiting factor is anti-piracy systems, many of which are windows only.

If the perceived performance delta between Apple Silicon and Intel/AMD holds, we may not even need optimized games. The game will be able to execute any required translation layer on top of a highly optimized 64-bit system. Most games regarded as AAA are essentially just graphically impressive FPS’s anyway. There’s likely more than a few efficient ways to get those to run on multiple platforms.

Just thinking about this… the days of HIGHLY optimized games anywhere are likely gone. The end days of the Genesis where developers were wringing out every last bit of performance? If we see that again, it’ll be home brew if that’s allowed.

 

[crazy dave]

2) And don’t give me WSL; great, they have a VM that supports a Linux port. It’s a great addition but it’s a VM.

Slight addendum, WSL2 has near bare metal performance on the CPU (not sure about WSL) and on the GPU (definitely different from WSL). And is otherwise a lot better than WSL. I just watched a GTC presentation from Nvidia where they demonstrated Linux CUDA performance through WSL2 was the same as on a Linux box. That doesn’t really change the rest of your post, it’s still a VM, but thought I’d mention that it’s a bit better than a typical VM!

 

[pmccumber]

Which division of AMD did you work for? And how long ago? (CMD alum here)

I worked in Colorado in the embedded group from 2003-2007. Back then, the AMD64 was groundbreaking and even with a process disadvantage AMD was running circles around Intel and the Pentium 4. But, as soon as Core came out, AMD was doomed. I’m happy AMD has found it’s legs. I’m also happy Apple is moving us forward. This is the way markets are supposed to work. With Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and nVidia all developing their own CPUs, along with a healthy AMD and Apple, we are going to see some exciting things moving forward.

 

[theluggage]

The thing to remember is the difference between an enterprise class laptop vs a consumer class laptop. Everything Apple makes is enterprise class. Compare Apple laptops in terms of price to Latitude or XPS if you must.

While is true Macs are premium, ultra-thin, ultra-portable, all-in-one or small-form-factor systems - so, yes, its silly to compare them with something like a Dell Latitude - that has nothing to do with being "enterprise class" (whatever that means). A lot of "enterprises" will be using Latitudes by the boatload. It is absolutely fair to compare Macs with other thin, premium ultra-slim systems like the Dell XPS, Microsoft Surface Laptop, Thinkpad etc. As for "power users", even the MBP 16 takes a price/performance hit because of it is ultra-thin (for its class) design.

You will not find any software professional running Windows unless they are developing in and for Windows ecosystem. That CMD window is the biggest crime against humanity in my 40 years of software development.

Firstly, a huge proportion of "software professionals" are developing for/supporting Windows, Android or Chromebook. Hate to burst your bubble but - Windows is still the predominant PC operating system by a huge margin. MacOS software is a tiny backwater in comparison - iOS development - is probably a stronger reason to buy a Mac, and that's a smaller market (in terms of numbers) than Android, but maybe deeper-pocketed.

The CMD window? Yeah, it sucks, but PowerShell has been around for years, or there's Cygwin if you're already familiar with a *nix-style shell and want all the Unix tools.

As for Windows doing "way" more, again, I'm sorry, but there are still swathes of specialist software only available for Windows (hence the popularity of Parallels/BootCamp/etc. on Mac and the anxious wait for a way to run Windows on M1).

True, MacOS is really great for web and other *nix-targeted development - because it is Unix but it also runs unavoidable industry-standard tools like Office and Adobe CS natively. Install brew/macports whatever and you have all the usual Unix/Linux/Open Source suspects. Great. Except... pretty soon you realise that while you *can* install everything you need for your target environment on MacOS, it makes a lot more sense to have a separate VM or container for each project, which keeps everything nicely sandboxed, avoids version or config file conflicts, and lets you exactly match your development environment to the target. At that point, the advantage of MacOS over Windows starts to dwindle - because Windows is perfectly capable of doing VMs and containers (the Pro version comes with a full hypervisor, plus there's now the Windows Linux subsystem...)

Why do we put up with having to move and pay for all these stupid Windows OSes? Just a stream of them. NT, XP, Windows 7, Vista, Windows 8, Windows 10, ...

Windows hasn't had a paid upgrade since Windows 10 came out in 2015 - and if you paid money for the Windows 7/8 to 10 upgrade then you were careless (last I looked was around Xmas 2019 when I upgraded a 10-year-old Sony from 7 to 10 - no warez involved: the official "free" upgrade from Microsoft was still available, even though it had supposedly expired, MS hadn't bothered to take it down).

Meanwhile Apple insists on a major, compatibility-breaking MacOS upgrade every. flaming. year. and while it is free (although you might need to pay for a third-party app upgrade or three - if the upgrades show up!), it can still be a major hassle, and Apple regularly drop support for 6+ year-old models. I do agree that Windows 10 is absolutely flipping stupid about the way it handles automatic updates, though.

The M1 is monumentally groundbreaking. It’s performance compares with CPUs that consume 300%, if not more, power. Out of the gate, an enterprise laptop for under $1000 can get 1/2 week on battery.

Which is really great if you need long battery life. Where I live we have this thing called "mains electricity" which, just using a little box and wire, can run a computer all day, or recharge your laptop while you have a sleep and a shower.

The M1 is spectacular - for ultra portable laptops - and for some people the battery life will be hugely useful - but the current M1 Macs are not credible replacements for the 16" MBP or 5k iMac/iMac Pro and while we all hope that Apple will shortly blow us away with M1X/M2 machines as of today those don't exist.

Personally, I'm waiting for a credible Mac headless desktop machine (that doesn't involve paying $6000 for $2000 worth of computing power) and I suspect that I may have to wait a long time. Even with M1, the sort of power you can get from desktop AMD systems (Intel seem to be a lame duck at the moment) is still impressive c.f. the higher-end Macs.

I'm not saying that Windows is "better" (whatever than means) than Mac - but it is dangerous to become complacent and pretend that Windows isn't a serious alternative (strangely, 90% of the worlds computer users manage to get their daily work done on it). Sorry, but the days when MacOS was overwhelmingly superior to Windows (when it was still a kludgey graphical shell around DOS) are long gone. These days, it is swings and roundabouts.

 

[pmccumber]

While is true Macs are premium, ultra-thin, ultra-portable, all-in-one or small-form-factor systems - so, yes, its silly to compare them with something like a Dell Latitude - that has nothing to do with being "enterprise class" (whatever that means). A lot of "enterprises" will be using Latitudes by the boatload. It is absolutely fair to compare Macs with other thin, premium ultra-slim systems like the Dell XPS, Microsoft Surface Laptop, Thinkpad etc. As for "power users", even the MBP 16 takes a price/performance hit because of it is ultra-thin (for its class) design.


Firstly, a huge proportion of "software professionals" are developing for/supporting Windows, Android or Chromebook. Hate to burst your bubble but - Windows is still the predominant PC operating system by a huge margin. MacOS software is a tiny backwater in comparison - iOS development - is probably a stronger reason to buy a Mac, and that's a smaller market (in terms of numbers) than Android, but maybe deeper-pocketed.

The CMD window? Yeah, it sucks, but PowerShell has been around for years, or there's Cygwin if you're already familiar with a *nix-style shell and want all the Unix tools.

As for Windows doing "way" more, again, I'm sorry, but there are still swathes of specialist software only available for Windows (hence the popularity of Parallels/BootCamp/etc. on Mac and the anxious wait for a way to run Windows on M1).

True, MacOS is really great for web and other *nix-targeted development - because it is Unix but it also runs unavoidable industry-standard tools like Office and Adobe CS natively. Install brew/macports whatever and you have all the usual Unix/Linux/Open Source suspects. Great. Except... pretty soon you realise that while you *can* install everything you need for your target environment on MacOS, it makes a lot more sense to have a separate VM or container for each project, which keeps everything nicely sandboxed, avoids version or config file conflicts, and lets you exactly match your development environment to the target. At that point, the advantage of MacOS over Windows starts to dwindle - because Windows is perfectly capable of doing VMs and containers (the Pro version comes with a full hypervisor, plus there's now the Windows Linux subsystem...)



Windows hasn't had a paid upgrade since Windows 10 came out in 2015 - and if you paid money for the Windows 7/8 to 10 upgrade then you were careless (last I looked was around Xmas 2019 when I upgraded a 10-year-old Sony from 7 to 10 - no warez involved: the official "free" upgrade from Microsoft was still available, even though it had supposedly expired, MS hadn't bothered to take it down).

Meanwhile Apple insists on a major, compatibility-breaking MacOS upgrade every. flaming. year. and while it is free (although you might need to pay for a third-party app upgrade or three - if the upgrades show up!), it can still be a major hassle, and Apple regularly drop support for 6+ year-old models. I do agree that Windows 10 is absolutely flipping stupid about the way it handles automatic updates, though.

Which is really great if you need long battery life. Where I live we have this thing called "mains electricity" which, just using a little box and wire, can run a computer all day, or recharge your laptop while you have a sleep and a shower.

The M1 is spectacular - for ultra portable laptops - and for some people the battery life will be hugely useful - but the current M1 Macs are not credible replacements for the 16" MBP or 5k iMac/iMac Pro and while we all hope that Apple will shortly blow us away with M1X/M2 machines as of today those don't exist.

Personally, I'm waiting for a credible Mac headless desktop machine (that doesn't involve paying $6000 for $2000 worth of computing power) and I suspect that I may have to wait a long time. Even with M1, the sort of power you can get from desktop AMD systems (Intel seem to be a lame duck at the moment) is still impressive c.f. the higher-end Macs.

I'm not saying that Windows is "better" (whatever than means) than Mac - but it is dangerous to become complacent and pretend that Windows isn't a serious alternative (strangely, 90% of the worlds computer users manage to get their daily work done on it). Sorry, but the days when MacOS was overwhelmingly superior to Windows (when it was still a kludgey graphical shell around DOS) are long gone. These days, it is swings and roundabouts.

So I got my second Masters in 2018 and I can tell you in the 3 years at The University of Colorado, I saw 100s of grad students and not a single one used Windows. None of our assignments could even be done on Windows. I’m currently working on a space program on a Windows machine. But I VNC in to a Linux box. I spent 10+ years working on laser based signal processing and all of our development was on Linux based systems.

I like an awful lot about what you say and agree with it. But Windows is ONLY useable when you have an IDE that allows you to completely encapsulate your development. Android, sure, set up your Eclipse environment. Let’s ignore for a moment that Android is Linux. Cygwin? C’mon, you know better. Just because you can grep or find doesn’t mean that it’s a real development environment that you can deploy as many compilers, cross compilers, versions of Python, etc. as you wish.

Powershell almost angers me even more (thanks a lot ). The fact that they were THAT stubborn to ignore decades of proven, effective shells and deploy that thing. Don’t we all know how to use all of the standard, powerful, shell commands available since BSD Unix? That’s not advancing, that’s refusing to cede any territory.

But your points about the OS update and Windows 10 are valid (honestly was hoping people didn’t catch me on that ... seriously). I’ve dreaded upgrading because all my ports and/or bottles are going to be outdated. And it’s a half day at best and more than once I’ve been piddling around googling trying to resolve some issue. BUT, I sure as heck don’t have to worry about standard software packages being outdated on a Windows box because there are absolutely none.

And your point about containers is true. Absolutely. But that’s a workaround and we’re talking about the operating systems environments and what they offer sw developers themselves.

Please admit, for open software development, the universe that there is, by and large Windows is not usable or at least greatly diminished from MacOS/Linux/Unix. So yes, saying Windows is way more capable is dramatically overstated.

 

[pmccumber]

While is true Macs are premium, ultra-thin, ultra-portable, all-in-one or small-form-factor systems - so, yes, its silly to compare them with something like a Dell Latitude - that has nothing to do with being "enterprise class" (whatever that means). A lot of "enterprises" will be using Latitudes by the boatload. It is absolutely fair to compare Macs with other thin, premium ultra-slim systems like the Dell XPS, Microsoft Surface Laptop, Thinkpad etc. As for "power users", even the MBP 16 takes a price/performance hit because of it is ultra-thin (for its class) design.


Firstly, a huge proportion of "software professionals" are developing for/supporting Windows, Android or Chromebook. Hate to burst your bubble but - Windows is still the predominant PC operating system by a huge margin. MacOS software is a tiny backwater in comparison - iOS development - is probably a stronger reason to buy a Mac, and that's a smaller market (in terms of numbers) than Android, but maybe deeper-pocketed.

The CMD window? Yeah, it sucks, but PowerShell has been around for years, or there's Cygwin if you're already familiar with a *nix-style shell and want all the Unix tools.

As for Windows doing "way" more, again, I'm sorry, but there are still swathes of specialist software only available for Windows (hence the popularity of Parallels/BootCamp/etc. on Mac and the anxious wait for a way to run Windows on M1).

True, MacOS is really great for web and other *nix-targeted development - because it is Unix but it also runs unavoidable industry-standard tools like Office and Adobe CS natively. Install brew/macports whatever and you have all the usual Unix/Linux/Open Source suspects. Great. Except... pretty soon you realise that while you *can* install everything you need for your target environment on MacOS, it makes a lot more sense to have a separate VM or container for each project, which keeps everything nicely sandboxed, avoids version or config file conflicts, and lets you exactly match your development environment to the target. At that point, the advantage of MacOS over Windows starts to dwindle - because Windows is perfectly capable of doing VMs and containers (the Pro version comes with a full hypervisor, plus there's now the Windows Linux subsystem...)



Windows hasn't had a paid upgrade since Windows 10 came out in 2015 - and if you paid money for the Windows 7/8 to 10 upgrade then you were careless (last I looked was around Xmas 2019 when I upgraded a 10-year-old Sony from 7 to 10 - no warez involved: the official "free" upgrade from Microsoft was still available, even though it had supposedly expired, MS hadn't bothered to take it down).

Meanwhile Apple insists on a major, compatibility-breaking MacOS upgrade every. flaming. year. and while it is free (although you might need to pay for a third-party app upgrade or three - if the upgrades show up!), it can still be a major hassle, and Apple regularly drop support for 6+ year-old models. I do agree that Windows 10 is absolutely flipping stupid about the way it handles automatic updates, though.


Which is really great if you need long battery life. Where I live we have this thing called "mains electricity" which, just using a little box and wire, can run a computer all day, or recharge your laptop while you have a sleep and a shower.

The M1 is spectacular - for ultra portable laptops - and for some people the battery life will be hugely useful - but the current M1 Macs are not credible replacements for the 16" MBP or 5k iMac/iMac Pro and while we all hope that Apple will shortly blow us away with M1X/M2 machines as of today those don't exist.

Personally, I'm waiting for a credible Mac headless desktop machine (that doesn't involve paying $6000 for $2000 worth of computing power) and I suspect that I may have to wait a long time. Even with M1, the sort of power you can get from desktop AMD systems (Intel seem to be a lame duck at the moment) is still impressive c.f. the higher-end Macs.

I'm not saying that Windows is "better" (whatever than means) than Mac - but it is dangerous to become complacent and pretend that Windows isn't a serious alternative (strangely, 90% of the worlds computer users manage to get their daily work done on it). Sorry, but the days when MacOS was overwhelmingly superior to Windows (when it was still a kludgey graphical shell around DOS) are long gone. These days, it is swings and roundabouts.

One other thing, “Enterprise” class is an actual thing. For a long time you couldn’t get a Latitude for example unless you were a business. Inspiron were the “Consumer” class.

Enterprise laptops, like Latitudes and Thinkpads were definitely Enterprise class, had much better thermal, mechanical, and internal components. More robust power supplies, connectors, hinges.

Enterprise laptops were sold with much longer warranties. A Dell Enterprise laptop or a Thinkpad came with 12 month vs 90 day warranties and offered 1 day replacement often times.

Plus, even things like drivers were tested to a much higher degree.

So the thin and light thing has nothing to do with Enterprise vs Consumer. The OP cited a raft of options and my point was, compare the Enterprise class offerings from HP, Dell, and Lenovo with Apple laptops. The consumer crap at Best Buy has CPU/memory specs but the quality of the systems are not comparable.

 

[m1maverick]

2) This notion of Windows doing WAY more is utterly misinformed. You will not find any software professional running Windows unless they are developing in and for Windows ecosystem. That CMD window is the biggest crime against humanity in my 40 years of software development. Open a terminal on MacOS and you have the entire world of software tools at your disposal (vi, cc, python, perl, ...) and more importantly, downloadable packages for everything. We would have Flying Cars by now if Microsoft hadn’t shoved their ecosystem down our throats for 4 decades. And don’t give me WSL; great, they have a VM that supports a Linux port. It’s a great addition but it’s a VM. The OS is still crap.

This statement suggests your Windows knowledge is quite dated and therefore it's my opinion you're not qualified to be commenting on Windows.