I don't know. I didn't modify that particular quote. I just wrote below it.
Anyway, fixed. Sorry if any trouble.
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I'm having to give up on Apple Silicon and macos
- Thread starter Danfango
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I don't know. I didn't modify that particular quote. I just wrote below it.
Anyway, fixed. Sorry if any trouble.
...but as you say, Apple could make it work, and the ability to upgrade the (socketed) internal storage & re-configure the firmware is something that you'd expect on any non-Apple system. The Mac Pro has a very similar SSD setup (the controller is in the T2 chip, the modules are just Flash) yet those SSDs are upgradeable.
It seems implausible that there are actually physically different mainboards for different SSD sizes (that, permuted with the different GPU and RAM options, would be an unnecessary logistical problem for Apple - plus, if so, they'd probably have saved a buck by omitting the second SSD socket in the 512GB Studio) and that it only takes a firmware tweak, which Apple must be able to do as part of the machine assembly. We can't know for sure but it seems more likely than not that Apple have deliberately disabled that facility in the "public" version of configurator.
The small mercy is that the SSDs are socketed at all and can at least be replaced like-for-like. Having soldered-in Flash - given that it is a perishable component - makes me really reluctant to buy a Mini or MacBook.
The hardware belongs to you. You never "own" the operating system on any computer. Needing internet isn't an issue in the USA because most people have internet in their house and even if you don't there are places that have free public internet.
I'm a bit confused here. I've never killed a hard drive or SSD in 3 years. I've had hard drives last over a decade. I'm not saying SSD failure isn't possible after 3 years but highly unlikely unless you're doing something unusual. Maybe if you're writing teribites per day then it might be an issue. I suspect if you're doing something like that it's profitable enough to buy a new Mac. I don't have a Mac Studio by the way. I have a MacBook Air.
I think 3-4 years is very reasonable to expect out of a Mac. I would say 5-6 years. Of course it's going to be slower than newer models but it'll still work like it did when it was new. Yes people in the USA have more money than some countries but it's not considered "rich" to afford a Mac. Here the average used car costs about 30,000 USD so even spending 4,000 for a Mac seems cheap.
Did I say otherwise? I did not. I said, in so many words, that on a discussion board I would like to have discussions with the people who are posting, not with youtube talking heads.
You can't even follow which youtuber I was complaining about!
It's not about discrediting, it's about this: you linked 30 minutes of video without so much as bothering to summarize what you felt was the important takeaway from the videos. It's rude to do that in a discussion forum based on people typing their thoughts down and interacting with each other.
I am impressed with M1 processors. The Intels always run warm, while the M1s are ice cold and have great battery life. But I also find it hard to move away from Intel.
In my specific circumstance, I have need for iTunes. The built in apps (TV, Music, Books) are poor substitutes for managing your iOS device content. The TV app ignores your metadata and inserts it's own. The Books app takes Audible audiobooks and not only recopies them to a new location with weird names, but the ability to use the iTunes Remote iOS app doesn't work with it (I use it to remotely play audiobooks from my MacBook when I fall to sleep).
With Intel apps, you can use Retroactive to install a full working copy of 12.9.5 iTunes. You can't on M1s. I can run full x64 Windows Pro on Intel, either as a VM, ir as a full bootable OS if I want. ARM Windows runs x86 poorly and there is no Boot Camp for M1s.
While I am pleased with the progression of Apple Silicon based support for apps (90+ percent of what I use has been converted - unlike Windows for ARM's almost non existent conversion), my own use cases make it hard for me to switch to M1. Which sucks, because it seem like M1s are getting some unique new features and the writing is on the wall for Intel support.
In my specific circumstance, I have need for iTunes. The built in apps (TV, Music, Books) are poor substitutes for managing your iOS device content. The TV app ignores your metadata and inserts it's own. The Books app takes Audible audiobooks and not only recopies them to a new location with weird names, but the ability to use the iTunes Remote iOS app doesn't work with it (I use it to remotely play audiobooks from my MacBook when I fall to sleep).
With Intel apps, you can use Retroactive to install a full working copy of 12.9.5 iTunes. You can't on M1s. I can run full x64 Windows Pro on Intel, either as a VM, ir as a full bootable OS if I want. ARM Windows runs x86 poorly and there is no Boot Camp for M1s.
While I am pleased with the progression of Apple Silicon based support for apps (90+ percent of what I use has been converted - unlike Windows for ARM's almost non existent conversion), my own use cases make it hard for me to switch to M1. Which sucks, because it seem like M1s are getting some unique new features and the writing is on the wall for Intel support.
No it isn’t, video is a part of interaction. I posted it in case anyone (not just you) was interested in what they said so they don't have to go searching YouTube for it, I would think that is a considerate thing to do. Especially given that what they see may be different than my take on something. I do value critical thinking and a rational difference of opinion.
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Ok so the scandalous performance regression of the Mac Mini Pro M2 SSDs brought me back to this thing for reconsideration. I did a quick Kepner-Tregoe decision analysis spreadsheet versus a couple of options on the table and came out with some interesting conclusions.
Firstly I compared the objective risk of owning a laptop versus a desktop. I rarely if ever use the MBP I have as a laptop. It's a desktop machine. That means the battery life and damage risk are existential problems with owning one. I figured I'd hit the Mac Mini Pro. By the time I'd configured it I'd reached £2299 for the configuration I'd need to last a few years. This BURNED so I got the grumps and had a look at the Lenovo Neo 50s I bought a few months back that kicked off this thread. It has been sitting in the cupboard since virtually unused. I'd thrown 16Gb of RAM in it and a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro SSD. This makes it comparable to the M1 MacBook Pro on the storage bandwidth front.
So 4 days in now, I am over the hill. Further findings.
Cost. well Apple's £2299 vs the £369 I paid for the Lenovo Neo 50s, the £92 for the 1TB SSD and the £22 for the RAM says it all. It's a no brainer. Sorry Apple you're too expensive.
At point 1 I complained about Windows 11. I did what I was guilty of when I switched to macOS which is not treating the OS for what it is and making it conform to what I wanted rather than meeting in the middle. With fresh thought in mind it is quite usable and not too problematic. Be pragmatic when reviewing things. That's all I can say. It's easier to drive from the keyboard than macOS is and the MS O365 apps are much better on windows, perhaps unsurprisingly.
At point 2 I complained about power. Yes this is terrible but over 5 years I'm still not going to use anywhere near as much cash as I would be using on a Mac Mini even if I have to pay the electricity bill. In fact I priced up a fairly hefty i7-13700 workstation with 1TB disk and 32Gb RAM and it still came in under any Mac at that price including the energy used in the UK which is quite expensive!
At point 3 I complained about Microsoft's cloud stuff being garbage. OneDrive isn't perfect I will agree but I had made two mistakes. Firstly I had folder redirection set up wrong (referring to point 1 I broke it) which caused some trouble. Doing it by the book solved that problem and the OneNote corruption issue. Secondly the cost is much lower. Office 365 family + 1TB storage which works across 6 people and 5 devices each is £7.99 a month. Sorry Apple can't even touch that with iCloud and Numbers/Pages etc. It just can't get there.
Point 4 I complained about my Iiyama XUB2792UHSU against the studio display. I spent some time on this and got it very close to the studio display in colour accuracy. The 150% scaling issues were resolved in the end by switching from an HDMI cable to a DisplayPort cable. Apparently there are problems with EDID after sleep which caused the issue with HDMI. I never liked HDMI anyway. At 2-3 feet away you can't tell the difference between a Studio Display and this monitor other than the Studio display has a glossy glass front whereas my Iiyama has a big ass chunk missing out of the polarizer (doh!) from when I moved house. The Iiyama has no webcam (I don't use one) and the speakers are absolute garbage (meh I use headphones anyway). Price differential is £369 vs £1499. Whaaaaaat
Point 5. Competition with built in apps. Still somewhat true. Apple have a real decent suite of apps. I am still preferring outlook, microsoft todo though. I will see what time does to the rest of their products. Maps I am using OSmaps on the PC which is a specialist tool anyway. Photos is not replaceable yet. I am using Lightroom on the PC however which may fit this gap if I want to carry on paying Adobe (debatable).
Point 6. Custom domains. I don't really need one. It's a status thing. I forward my domain to outlook.com. Problem solved!
Point 7. Replacement for apple photos and music. The latter is available for windows now albeit in a very beta state so that's going away soon. Photos is as yet not replaceable. Since the last post I've pretty much adopted Photoshop and Lightroom and they are cross platform and entire comparable.
After some arguing with Microsoft Edge, it is a superior browser to Safari as well. It allows things like uBlock Origin which makes it entirely usable compared to block list systems like AdGuard.
So I retract my former comment. There's some serious competition now. If microsoft manage to get their **** together in the next year or two, it's a no brainer.
Screenshot attached as evidence
Firstly I compared the objective risk of owning a laptop versus a desktop. I rarely if ever use the MBP I have as a laptop. It's a desktop machine. That means the battery life and damage risk are existential problems with owning one. I figured I'd hit the Mac Mini Pro. By the time I'd configured it I'd reached £2299 for the configuration I'd need to last a few years. This BURNED so I got the grumps and had a look at the Lenovo Neo 50s I bought a few months back that kicked off this thread. It has been sitting in the cupboard since virtually unused. I'd thrown 16Gb of RAM in it and a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro SSD. This makes it comparable to the M1 MacBook Pro on the storage bandwidth front.
So 4 days in now, I am over the hill. Further findings.
Cost. well Apple's £2299 vs the £369 I paid for the Lenovo Neo 50s, the £92 for the 1TB SSD and the £22 for the RAM says it all. It's a no brainer. Sorry Apple you're too expensive.
At point 1 I complained about Windows 11. I did what I was guilty of when I switched to macOS which is not treating the OS for what it is and making it conform to what I wanted rather than meeting in the middle. With fresh thought in mind it is quite usable and not too problematic. Be pragmatic when reviewing things. That's all I can say. It's easier to drive from the keyboard than macOS is and the MS O365 apps are much better on windows, perhaps unsurprisingly.
At point 2 I complained about power. Yes this is terrible but over 5 years I'm still not going to use anywhere near as much cash as I would be using on a Mac Mini even if I have to pay the electricity bill. In fact I priced up a fairly hefty i7-13700 workstation with 1TB disk and 32Gb RAM and it still came in under any Mac at that price including the energy used in the UK which is quite expensive!
At point 3 I complained about Microsoft's cloud stuff being garbage. OneDrive isn't perfect I will agree but I had made two mistakes. Firstly I had folder redirection set up wrong (referring to point 1 I broke it) which caused some trouble. Doing it by the book solved that problem and the OneNote corruption issue. Secondly the cost is much lower. Office 365 family + 1TB storage which works across 6 people and 5 devices each is £7.99 a month. Sorry Apple can't even touch that with iCloud and Numbers/Pages etc. It just can't get there.
Point 4 I complained about my Iiyama XUB2792UHSU against the studio display. I spent some time on this and got it very close to the studio display in colour accuracy. The 150% scaling issues were resolved in the end by switching from an HDMI cable to a DisplayPort cable. Apparently there are problems with EDID after sleep which caused the issue with HDMI. I never liked HDMI anyway. At 2-3 feet away you can't tell the difference between a Studio Display and this monitor other than the Studio display has a glossy glass front whereas my Iiyama has a big ass chunk missing out of the polarizer (doh!) from when I moved house. The Iiyama has no webcam (I don't use one) and the speakers are absolute garbage (meh I use headphones anyway). Price differential is £369 vs £1499. Whaaaaaat
Point 5. Competition with built in apps. Still somewhat true. Apple have a real decent suite of apps. I am still preferring outlook, microsoft todo though. I will see what time does to the rest of their products. Maps I am using OSmaps on the PC which is a specialist tool anyway. Photos is not replaceable yet. I am using Lightroom on the PC however which may fit this gap if I want to carry on paying Adobe (debatable).
Point 6. Custom domains. I don't really need one. It's a status thing. I forward my domain to outlook.com. Problem solved!
Point 7. Replacement for apple photos and music. The latter is available for windows now albeit in a very beta state so that's going away soon. Photos is as yet not replaceable. Since the last post I've pretty much adopted Photoshop and Lightroom and they are cross platform and entire comparable.
After some arguing with Microsoft Edge, it is a superior browser to Safari as well. It allows things like uBlock Origin which makes it entirely usable compared to block list systems like AdGuard.
So I retract my former comment. There's some serious competition now. If microsoft manage to get their **** together in the next year or two, it's a no brainer.
Screenshot attached as evidence
Attachments
Do you need 32 GB RAM? [I understand if you do--I have 128 GB, after all
.] Because if you could settle for 24 GB, the M2 with 1 TB SSD/24 GB RAM would be £1499 including VAT, and it would have a more powerful CPU (see first pair of screenshots), and a substantially more powerful GPU, than your Lenovo 50s (which you said has an i5-12400). Also, how did you get £2299 for the M2 Pro Mini with 32 GB/1TB? I just configured it on Apple's UK website, and it's £1999 including VAT
Finally, how did you get a price of only £369 for the Lenovo Neo 50s with 16 GB RAM (IIRC you got it with 16 GB and added an additional 16 GB) and minimum (256 GB) SSD? I just configured it on Lenovo USA's website, and it's $1,734 = £1394 => £1671 including 20% VAT. And that's not including how much extra you'd need to pay for a US product in the UK.
Do you need 32 GB RAM? [I understand if you do--I have 128 GB, after all
Also, how did you get £2299 for the M2 Pro Mini with 32 GB/1TB? I just configured it on Apple's UK website, and it's £1999 including VAT
Finally, how did you get a price of only £369 for the Lenovo Neo 50s with 16 GB RAM (IIRC you got it with 16 GB and added an additional 16 GB) and minimum (256 GB) SSD? I just configured it on Lenovo USA's website, and it's $1,734 = £1394 => £1671 including 20% VAT. And that's not including how much extra you'd need to pay for a US product in the UK.
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Yes I need 32Gb. I've got a whole Kubernetes stack running on top of WSL2 / docker with about 50 containers in it and then Visual Studio Code on top of that and Lens etc. I was clocking up £55 a month for the privilege of doing that in Amazon AWS with the Mac as a remote admin / IDE / terminal only.
As for the M2 Pro config it's the 12 core one. I could probably lose that and hit £1999 if I wanted but that's still bananas pricing.
Trick with Lenovo is buy early and don't buy from them directly. I bought a Neo 50s from eBuyer BNIB as prerelease for that price with an 8Gb RAM provision and 256Gb SSD. I bought 32Gb of RAM (sorry typo before!) for £82 from CCLonline.com (Corsair LPX PC3200 2x 16Gb kit) and the SSD from Amazon for £92. The processor is a 12400. This is the best way to buy Lenovo stuff. I've done this for years. I used to buy BNIB previous gen ThinkPads off ebay with 3y NBD on site service for < £600.
Anyway, the Neo 50s came with Windows 11 Pro, keyboard, mouse as well although I discarded the mouse for my current Logitech MX Master 3 and bought a Cherry Stream TKL keyboard for £30.
As for comparative performance, it's not that far off in reality. Using my single threaded compilation workloads the PC is exactly the same to the second as my M1 Pro MBP. Obviously it'll handle x86-64 container workloads considerably better! I don't need GPU compute.
Anyway so if I throw this on the table as a comparison which is my next upgrade cycle next month:
- Intel i7 13700
- 32Gb RAM
- Decent quality Asus Prime board with B760 chipset
- 1TB Samsung 980 Pro SSD
- Decent Be Quiet! case
- 650W Be Quiet! power supply
- Win 11 Pro license (from my MSDN sub)
I can come in under £1000 easily.
The 13700 absolutely destroys single thread and multi-thread performance of every mac on the market for less money and leaves enough space in the box to stick an RTX 3060 or something if you want some GPU and pay for the electricity bill for the lifetime of the unit. Also you can stick more RAM, SSD and upgrade the CPU in it if you want to. As our container estate grows I can throw another two 16Gb sticks in there one afternoon and just carry on.
I can't see the logic around paying up for an M2 now.
Sure, but you know that even the 10-core M2 Pro Mini is significantly more powerful than the i5-12400 you were comparing it to, so if you're going to complain vociferously about Apple's pricing (which you are of course entitled to do), let's make the complaint accurate and not compare it to a model that's even more over-spec'd than the 10-core.
It's clear the pricing problem is two-fold:
(a) Even the base M2 Mini is powerful enough for you (it's more powerful than the PC you chose), but Apple's AS Macs are so RAM-limited that you're forced to upgrade to an unnecessarily fancy SKU just for the RAM.
(b) You were able to take advantage of an early-buyer window to score a huge discount on the PC.
Thus you're comparing an extremely discounted PC to an over-spec'd Mac. No way the Mac isn't going to get destroyed when it comes to pricing.
"Absolutely destroys" is applicable to the 5-fold pricing difference we were discussing above, but it's patently silly to use that phrase here. The 13700's GB SC score is 2110 vs. 2060 for the M2 Max. That's a difference of <3%! There's a larger difference for MC (19000/15400 = 23%). But even that's smaller than the percentage by which the 10-core M2 Pro beats your Lenovo in MC: 11863/8057 = 47%; and I didn't hear you use the phrase "absolutely destroys" there.
So I'm happy to discuss this with you, but let's please avoid the inaccurate descriptions when it comes to describing relative performance.
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Lets throw less hyperbole in then.
I'm not comparing the 12400 vs the M2. I'm comparing the following:
- Current ownership: 12400 vs M1 Pro
- Future ownership: 13700k vs M2 Max (note I am looking at the K variant)
That suggests that the average overestimation of my workload performance based on geekbench single core is around 10%.
Applying that to the proposed single core performance on the same benchmark which is 2016 for the M2 Max vs 2125 for the 13700k then we should extrapolate that as they are both roughly the same microarchitecture then the workload estimation of the M2 Max is probably 10% too high to make a ratiometric comparison so we will derate the M2 Max to 0.9 x 2016 = 1814. This is for the sake of comparing only these two CPUs for this workload, not a generic benchmark. So for the single core, the 13700k is 17% faster.
So lets throw some pricing on the table.
So a 13700k build...
Now we can't even get an M2 Max based desktop yet so it's difficult to compare but I assume the pricing will be around the same as the M1 Max based Studio plus whatever inflation increase happens this cycle.
Configured:
So that's well over twice the cost for less performance for me.
And I can't upgrade it with more RAM, throw another CPU in it, upgrade the storage or stick another NVMe stick in it, can't stick a GPU in it if I want it.
The M2 Pro is an even worse story than the M2 Max.
This surprises me. Code compilation is one of the domains where Apple Silicon usually punches way above its weight. Which tests did you use to establish that and what results did you get with the 12400?
I've got a (private) Go codebase here of around 156kloc which is compiling on Go 1.19.5. I've compiled it on macOS / M1 Pro and WSL2 Ubuntu (virtualized!) on Windows 11 Pro. I wrapped both in a shell loop to compile 10 times, ran it wrapped in "time" and divided the total execution time by 10 to taken an average. The difference is less than 2% averaged over that time. I haven't tried it on native Windows 11 Pro yet.
The same is true of another project which is C++ compiled with clang on the same Ubuntu build vs clang that ships with macOS command line dev tools. I think the mac is around 3% faster there.
I was surprised. I originally switched to M1 because my M1 Mac mini was faster than my Ryzen 3700X for compile workloads. Looks like it turned around again.
Edit: energy cost average increment for the 13700K over 2 years expected lifespan (before I upgrade it) is £206 more than the Mac. Still in budget...
It is surprising indeed. I have tested my M1 on multiple codebases (C++, Swift, Rust, R) and it performs very well. Are you cross-compiling to the same target?
Compiling native to the same platform. It's a good point. I'll try cross compile and compare. It might be more effort to compile ARM code.
Don't have time to do that today though. Will post after weekend if I get a min.
You might want to substitute an SN850X for the 980 Pro. Supposedly they fixed the problem with a firmware update, but...
Puget Abandons Samsung 990 Pro SSDs Over Reliability Concerns
Puget is switching primarily to Sabrent SSDs in its systems.
Samsung Issues Fix for Dying 980 Pro SSDs
Download the firmware fix ASAP if your 980 Pro is affected
Thanks for the heads up on that one. My daughter has one in her PC already so will get that sorted immediately!You might want to substitute an SN850X for the 980 Pro. Supposedly they fixed the problem with a firmware update, but...
Puget Abandons Samsung 990 Pro SSDs Over Reliability Concerns
Puget is switching primarily to Sabrent SSDs in its systems.www.tomshardware.com
Samsung Issues Fix for Dying 980 Pro SSDs
Download the firmware fix ASAP if your 980 Pro is affectedwww.tomshardware.com
Docker recently released Docker Desktop 4.16.2 with an experimental feature that works really well for my x86 applications. It allows your containers to use Rosetta and QEMU for emulation and is much faster than just QEMU. I am using it for linux x86 compiled apps like NodeJs, RabbitMq, Mongo, and redis among others. Performance on an M1 Max with 64 gig of ram is really pretty good. This article explains the update to Docker and what you need to change.
Interesting. Will have a play with that. Thanks for the link. Not sure how it’ll cope with one of our larger chunks of gunk.
I may end up with a hybrid approach here looking at the whole situation. The PC will likely be reprovisioned as a minikube host on Ubuntu and I’ll still use the mac as a terminal.
As a side note I have sold my iPad Pro because it turns out it's mostly an ornament. The MBP and the iPhone do 95% of the work and the rest does not justify the cost. I will miss it for digital art but I hit cultpens.com and bought some toys to play with on paper for a change. Display is also faster than 120Hz
I work for a company that is x86 and Windows but for me, my iPad Pro is in someways more functional for my day job than my Mac. All I can use my Mac for is as a terminal to remote log into my Windows PC via Citrix (I use a 2020 27" iMac for this purpose). I can use Citrix on my iPad too but I often don't need to as thanks to Office365 I can access my corporate email using Outlook for iOS, my Teams chat using Teams for iOS and most of the corporate intranet using the Edge browser. I also have access to Word, Excel and PowerPoint and, more importantly, my OneNote note books.
And Teams for iOS is much better than Teams on Windows in my experience.
Office 365 is a joke compared to the full PC version. It's no big deal if you only need Office for light usage, but chances are if it is your case, Google Docs will also work for you.
Google Docs will not work for me because my employer does not use it. And I am referring to the iOS versions of Office 365, not the web apps.
Is it incompatible with any particular feature of Office 365? Can you export to DOCX?