I feel like i'm alone to dislike M1/what is it good for (Merged Mega Thread)

[Unregistered 4U]

I've spent nearly a month updating docker images for Arm support instead of developing, and some simply won't ever work on my machine. (I'm aware I'm talking about a developer specific tool, but just sharing my experience)

Updating docker images IS developing, though. Based on some places where I’ve worked, I wouldn’t be surprised if they hire someone and give them the ARM one just to see if they’ll update the docker images (that need to be updated) or whine for an Intel system. What you’re doing is going to help the company for years to come as Intel is a dead end street for macOS. If they ever have to make cuts, they won’t cut one of the few people they have that actually work well on the Macs that are the future of Apple

Those other developers? They are the ones that are shocked, SHOCKED I TELL YOU, that Apple doesn’t ship Python anymore for Macs (even though it’s been clear for YEARS that’s what was gonna happen).

 

[ct2k7]

Updating docker images IS developing, though. Based on some places where I’ve worked, I wouldn’t be surprised if they hire someone and give them the ARM one just to see if they’ll update the docker images (that need to be updated) or whine for an Intel system. What you’re doing is going to help the company for years to come as Intel is a dead in street for macOS. If they ever have to make cuts, they won’t cut one of the few people they have that actually work well on the Macs that are the future of Apple

Those other developers? They are the ones that are shocked, SHOCKED I TELL YOU, that Apple doesn’t ship Python anymore for Macs (even though it’s been clear for YEARS that’s what was gonna happen).

Until servers switch to ARM, there’ll always need to test the thing on an x86 system.

 

[RumorConsumer]

Upgrades are a second class benefit in comparison to what they've offered us on this platform.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Until servers switch to ARM, there’ll always need to test the thing on an x86 system.

Depends on the developer. Someone developing local native iOS apps won’t need to test anything on x86. Anyone that only has budget for one machine and needs to test on x86, fortunately has a myriad number of options, most without Apple logos on them.

 

[ratspg]

You are not alone disliking the M1. The M1 is the future of computing, not just for Apple. Apple just was able to see where things were heading with SoC's and are taking any early lead. Intel releasing its Arc line, AMD working on some things as well, as well as NVIDIA. Each will have their own platform, its just the progression of where computing is going. The benefit that we have as Apple product users is in-house hardware AND software. That's a pretty big feat, and something Apple has been going for, for quite a long time. So yes I understand it can be seen as a dislike for you, and for many, but it's just the progression of computing.

 

[ct2k7]

Depends on the developer. Someone developing local native iOS apps won’t need to test anything on x86. Anyone that only has budget for one machine and needs to test on x86, fortunately has a myriad number of options, most without Apple logos on them.

Yes, I meant in that developer’s case where they are presumably shipping to x86 based systems.

There’s a Mac Pro out there

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Yes, I meant in that developer’s case where they are presumably shipping to x86 based systems.

There’s a Mac Pro out there

Yeah, I was going to say all, but, yeah, there’s a few left.

It’s beyond me why a company shipping x86 solutions would be buying Apple Silicon Macs, though. Maybe they’ve got a sweet deal from a grandfathered contract? I suppose the developer can always toss the code off to a separate test bed, but wouldn’t that be less efficient than just having an x86 machine to code on?

 

[tny]

I've spent nearly a month updating docker images for Arm support instead of developing, and some simply won't ever work on my machine. (I'm aware I'm talking about a developer specific tool, but just sharing my experience)

I also can't run any of the companies VM's for windows testing since you can't virtualize x64 on these machines. But apparently my company can no longer get any more intel macs

Why aren't you running the VMs / containers on a server, or better yet using AWS/GCP/Azure?

 

[ct2k7]

Yeah, I was going to say all, but, yeah, there’s a few left.

It’s beyond me why a company shipping x86 solutions would be buying Apple Silicon Macs, though. Maybe they’ve got a sweet deal from a grandfathered contract? I suppose the developer can always toss the code off to a separate test bed, but wouldn’t that be less efficient than just having an x86 machine to code on?

Developers all want macs, few want Linux or Windows.

I worked in a big bank, and all of their servers are hosted in x86, but developers are getting Mx Macs: as they’re finding out, there are some strange bugs which randomly appear sometimes which can’t replicated because of these architectural differences.

 

[medee88]

Why aren't you running the VMs / containers on a server, or better yet using AWS/GCP/Azure?

The production/other environments are hosted on AWS and GCP, but doesn't seem like they give us any authorization to spin up our own for local development. Lots of security requirements and they only want us doing development on our local machines that they control.

That's a great idea though! Maybe I'll try and see if that's possible/jump through hoops to get it going. It's just a bit weird how they started handing these out without having something like that in place, but such is life sometimes/

 

[ct2k7]

The production/other environments are hosted on AWS and GCP, but doesn't seem like they give us any authorization to spin up our own for local development. Lots of security requirements and they only want us doing development on our local machines that they control.

That's a great idea though! Maybe I'll try and see if that's possible/jump through hoops to get it going. It's just a bit weird how they started handing these out without having something like that in place, but such is life sometimes/

We actually tried to move development to GCP at a law tech I’m working with, resulting in weekly cluster rebuilds and purging. Not exactly ideal but if we are pushing ephemeral development environments.. that fits that bill.

Yep, the cloud isn’t cheap when you need constant loads.

 

[tny]

We actually tried to move development to GCP at a law tech I’m working with, resulting in weekly cluster rebuilds and purging. Not exactly ideal but if we are pushing ephemeral development environments.. that fits that bill.

Yep, the cloud isn’t cheap when you need constant loads.

If you're tearing down constantly and rebuilding, check to see if reserved instances will help with the billing (you can tear down a reserved instance -- terminate -- in AWS and spin up a new one; but not sure if they bill for one instance if you're tearing down / rebuilding multiple times an hour).

AWS nano instances are pretty cheap. But you have to be willing to trust that developers won't misuse resources and will clean up after themselves.

 

[tny]

The production/other environments are hosted on AWS and GCP, but doesn't seem like they give us any authorization to spin up our own for local development. Lots of security requirements and they only want us doing development on our local machines that they control.

That's a great idea though! Maybe I'll try and see if that's possible/jump through hoops to get it going. It's just a bit weird how they started handing these out without having something like that in place, but such is life sometimes/

Just one instance with docker running on it might be enough.

 

[Paradoxally]

anyone who plays windows games on their macbook pro

No one who is serious about gaming will do so on a Macbook Pro.

They either have a console, a gaming PC, or both.

 

[nathan_reilly]

I'm buying Mac since 15 years😂
I just share my feelings about Apple policy with Macs

yeah but did you need to buy a *new* Mac to weigh in? I certainly don't think I do! haha. Put that puppy on eBay and get back to work!

 

[Fomalhaut]

As an internal drive? Yes you sure can estimate. I have been operating at 50% capacity of 1TB for the last 5 years so I have 2TB now. I only keep the operating system and programs on the internal drive. All work and data is external.

So you're saying that you have a policy of keeping under 50% usage and are now at 25% (with your new 2TB drive)?

That seems to be a pretty low utilisation. Are you expecting to use a lot more internal storage or is there evidence that low utilisation improves performance? I expect a disk (of any type) will start to slow down a bit as it fills up (say above 80%). Perhaps you are referring to SSD write amplification, such as shown on this curve:

This is from: https://www.anandtech.com/show/6489/playing-with-op

However the same article does go on to say that SSD controllers will handle this without issue up to about 10-20% remaining space - which gels with my 80% guess.

 

[Fomalhaut]

The M1 is an awesome computer, but its only HALF of a computer. No Boot Camp (whatever I dont care whose fault it is, apple, microsoft) really cripples a Mac. I hope this gets corrected in the future. Parallels and Crossover are poor solutions.

I've no idea whether this is an urban myth, but I recall reading somewhere than only about 2% of Mac users installed Boot Camp.

I really don't think Apple is that bothered by losing those losers, and in any case, the situation with software compatibility on Macs is better now than it was 10-15 years ago when Intel Macs were introduced.

I used to use Bootcamp but in the end found local VMs worked almost as well and were a lot less hassle. I now don't even bother with those and use cloud instances for the same development work - which removes all the messing around creating and maintaining VMs.

 

[aevan]

1/ It's not a reason to justify that Apple Policy. It's too bad.

True, but your thread doesn't say "I really dislike Macs", it says "I really dislike M1 Macs". If you had classic Intel Macs, you had these same issues, so not sure how that is an "M1 thing".

Anyway, Macs have their target audience and you don't seem to be it. The lack of upgradeability is not "policy", it's a consequence of design decisions. In fact, compared to Intel Macs, now we actually have more justification for it than ever before. There was a way to make RAM upgradeable on Intel Macs, but to achieve M1 performance, the integrated RAM is the only way to do it - making it a justified trade-off. If you care about upgradeability, then that's perfectly fine - but there absolutely is a reason to justify Apple's decisions.

It seems to me you're looking for a different product - a Windows PC. That's fine.

 

[Fomalhaut]

If you're tearing down constantly and rebuilding, check to see if reserved instances will help with the billing (you can tear down a reserved instance -- terminate -- in AWS and spin up a new one; but not sure if they bill for one instance if you're tearing down / rebuilding multiple times an hour).

AWS nano instances are pretty cheap. But you have to be willing to trust that developers won't misuse resources and will clean up after themselves.

AWS EC2 is billed per second these days, so you can build on a true "on demand" fashion without incurring charges for more than you use.

If you need 24x7x365 access then Reserved Instance or Savings Plans will save you some cash, but probably ad-hoc dev environments can use Spot Instances to save even more:

Amazon EC2 – Secure and resizable compute capacity – AWS

There are three ways to pay for Amazon EC2 instances: On-Demand, Savings Plans, and Amazon EC2 Spot Instances. Learn more about each.

aws.amazon.com

 

[aevan]

The M1 is an awesome computer, but its only HALF of a computer. No Boot Camp (whatever I dont care whose fault it is, apple, microsoft) really cripples a Mac. I hope this gets corrected in the future. Parallels and Crossover are poor solutions.

By that logic (Macs supposedly being "crippled" without the ability to run Windows), every PC out there is crippled too, because they can't run macOS.

 

[Fomalhaut]

You can't forget about cooling something like the more advanced M1's -- the mini doesn't have near the cooling capacity of the studio.

Hmmm...I'm not convinced about that for the M1 Pro at least. The Mini has a lot of spare space, and I would expect the M1 Pro would be quite happy inside it with maybe minor modifications to the cooling system. The M1 Max...probably needs much more cooling, but considering these things are stuffed into the 14" MBP, I think it would be technically possible to provide adequate cooling in the M1 Mini.

Bear in mind that the 6-core Intel i7-8700B in the Mac Mini has a TDP of 65W. The M1 Pro is estimated to have a TDP of 30-35W for entire SoC package. Even if this is wildly optimistic and it's actually double this, the cooling system in the Mini looks able to handle a 65W TDP CPU plus RAM and other controllers that are included on the Apple Silicon SoC.

That said, I don't think Apple will ever put a Max SoC into the current Mini because it clearly overlaps and competes with the Studio. I'm also not confident that a Pro will find its way into the Mini, not for technical reasons, but because Apple wants to upsell to the Studio.

Regarding the Mac Studio's beast of a cooling system - it's not clear to me whether this is being used to it full capacity. Recent tests comparing the Studio with M1 Max to the even the 14" MBP with M1 Max show there is almost zero performance improvement due to better thermal control for many long-running tasks. It seems a bit lacklustre in my opinion - I had hoped to see the Mac Studio pull ahead significantly. Maybe it needs a firmware update and some more intensive testing?

 

[kaioshade]

I think it's a more complicated answer than just they cannot be upgraded.

You can upgrade a desktop PC within the short period that hardware is supported. After that it just doesn't make sense. Most Windows laptops aren't upgradable except the SSD and RAM and many don't even support that.

CPU... Most of the time not worth it. With Intel CPU's and how they love to change sockets it's likely you will a new motherboard for a new CPU.

GPU... Maybe worth it if you must stay current but if you're running a CPU more than a few generations old then it doesn't really make sense especially with the inflated prices. On a laptop this was never a realistic thing. Some brands attempted to use it as a selling point but no real upgrade path ever existed.

RAM can be upgraded providing it's the same type. If you configured it right from the start it shouldn't be needed but it's one area that can make sense. Unfortunately I don't think it's possible to get the performance Apple is getting with removable RAM. At least not with the current DDR5 but who knows what will come out in the future.

Hard drive. I'm guessing you mean SSD. I will say that's the one component that makes sense to upgrade! I wish it was easier on Apple computers but I think it would mean a speed hit.


Basically if you have a 5+ year old desktop PC it's just not worth spending money other than maybe an SSD to upgrade. Everything about it is soon to become almost unusable for it's original purpose. Sure you can browse the web on it but you can do the same on a Chromebook. This is why the whole it's upgradable or spending a fortune when buying new to make it "future proof" is such a bad idea...

My opinion is people should buy something that suits their wants and needs. The market will supply what people will buy. If upgradable is a factor in what people look for when shopping for a PC then it's going to be something manufacturers pay attention to. I don't think it is outside of a few tech nerds. I guarantee if I ask my friends if their computers are upgradable the only ones that will even have a clue are the gaming nerds I know. My non nerdy friends would say IDK when it breaks I'll get a new one. To them it's a tool to get a job done rather than a hobby to tinker with.

My prediction is computers are going to get much smaller and have less components. Maybe they will keep a little bit of the current Lego system to build a PC just to satisfy that market but I don't think it's going to be the norm. This trend has been going on since the PC came out and I don't see it changing directions.

I actually agree with you completely. There are a lot of factors to desktop PC upgrading. My comment was more referring to the zero sum statement that PCs just aren't capable of being upgraded.

Personally I find myself doing less upgrading as I get older. I loved to tinker, and mess around with my machine. These days, while I still own a good gaming PC, I build once, and when I am ready for an "upgrade" I start from scratch, and donate the old build to someone. I usually keep my machines around 3 years or so.

 

[Fomalhaut]

I used to use Parallels because I needed some Windows apps whilst using MacOS, but I've even stopped that.

My M1 MacBook Air feels 100% complete for me and not even remotely "crippled".

I'd be interested in knowing the numbers of people who were activity using Boot Camp over virtualization.

Same here...I used Bootcamp in the late 2000s but moved onto (VMWare Fusion) VMs for most things because dividing my partition sizes and rebooting was such as hassle, but for the last 5 years at least I've moved all my VM work onto cloud instances, which has saved me a lot of time and effort (for moderate cost).

I would also be really interested in knowing what percentage of Mac users use either Bootcamp or virtualisation with Windows or Linux. I suspect it is not a lot. I imagine it depends on whether you have to test software for Windows/Linux with a native environment, but most of what I use are platform independent languages or web-apps so there really isn't any need to test on other platforms.

I can see that VMs are useful for running back-end services such as DBs or other enterprise apps that you need to connect to, but how many of these are also supported by Windows-on-ARM? Unless your deployment target is also Windows-on-ARM / ARM Linux, you will probably be better off testing with a certified version of the target OS on a different machine or cloud instance.

 

[Ethosik]

So you're saying that you have a policy of keeping under 50% usage and are now at 25% (with your new 2TB drive)?

That seems to be a pretty low utilisation. Are you expecting to use a lot more internal storage or is there evidence that low utilisation improves performance? I expect a disk (of any type) will start to slow down a bit as it fills up (say above 80%). Perhaps you are referring to SSD write amplification, such as shown on this curve:

This is from: https://www.anandtech.com/show/6489/playing-with-op

However the same article does go on to say that SSD controllers will handle this without issue up to about 10-20% remaining space - which gels with my 80% guess.

I have spikes sometimes that fill it up to about 80%, then I clear out space. So yes, for a 5 year anticipation I chose the 2TB drive.

 

[TiggrToo]

Same here...I used Bootcamp in the late 2000s but moved onto (VMWare Fusion) VMs for most things because dividing my partition sizes and rebooting was such as hassle, but for the last 5 years at least I've moved all my VM work onto cloud instances, which has saved me a lot of time and effort (for moderate cost).

I would also be really interested in knowing what percentage of Mac users use either Bootcamp or virtualisation with Windows or Linux. I suspect it is not a lot. I imagine it depends on whether you have to test software for Windows/Linux with a native environment, but most of what I use are platform independent languages or web-apps so there really isn't any need to test on other platforms.

I can see that VMs are useful for running back-end services such as DBs or other enterprise apps that you need to connect to, but how many of these are also supported by Windows-on-ARM? Unless your deployment target is also Windows-on-ARM / ARM Linux, you will probably be better off testing with a certified version of the target OS on a different machine or cloud instance.

My virtualization needs are now being met by Docker. So far I've only hit 2 images that I need that don't have Arm versions so it's getting closer for me.