Is software going to ruin the advantage the M1 chip has?

[Christoffee]

We all agree that the M1 chip is amazing. But, objectively speaking, the 7th gen i5 on my work PC should be plenty good enough to run Office and one bespoke piece of software which is, ultimately, a front end to a SQL database. Office and this software run like dogs.

With the M1 giving all this processing headroom will Apple with macOS and other developers just get lazy and in a few years we will end up exactly where we were a year ago, with tremendously powerful machines that are just a bit laggy and sluggish?

 

[leman]

That’s an interesting question! Indeed, the software around the 2000-mark had the tendency to become very inefficient, most of which had to to with the popularity of programming techniques (OOP and MVC) that were overused and misused. I think Windows was hit the worst (Microsoft own software being the worst offender) but OS X was definitely affected too, simply because if the sheer complexity of its APIs.

Still, I believe that the trend has been reversing for some time. These days, functional and declarative patters are in fashion, with some reactivity sprinkled in the mix. Modern technologies used by Apple such as Swift and SwiftUI are more efficient and designed to deliver more predictable performance. There are more advanced APIs than ever, meaning that the devs have less need to develop their own solutions (which they will probably botch). And finally, let’s not forget that Apple Silucon is designed to accelerate common coding patterns on Apple platforms.

So I choose to be optimistic

 

[quarkysg]

I would think that compiler advancement helps too, as compiler nowadays are probably much more advance in terms of code optimisation compared to compilers from 10 years ago.

 

[gogogo2]

Apple policy made software hard difficult, Apple abandon 32bit app , that’s stupid move, lot of old apps abandoned, macOS is more like iOS, that isn’t right direction,

 

[leman]

I would think that compiler advancement helps too, as compiler nowadays are probably much more advance in terms of code optimisation compared to compilers from 10 years ago.

Compilers certainly got much better, but no compiler can save you if you are trashing your cache with fragmented allocations and linked lists or using stack unwinding to return a value (yes, people do it). Besides, the question is: what are you optimizing for? Swift is probably the only mainstream language I know that is deliberately optimized for amortized user-facing performance on a shared system — it attempts to reduce pressure on the I-cache by type-erasing generics and optimizing for code size. Basically, your app might run slower, but it will steal less system resources from the rest of the system, meaning the the overall experience is better. Also, Apple's Grand Central Dispatch is a way to do "sane" shared concurrency — you can take advantage of multiple cores without stealing resources from other applications.

In contrast, most "system programming languages" (C++, Rust) monomorphise everything, resulting in huge, greedy apps that run fast but trash the system. The ecosystem of these languages also generally assumes that it's the only important ap running on the system, so they will try to grab everything they can (looking at you Rust async runtimes).

 

[Cookie18]

It likely depends on how long Intel machines continue to be supported. So long as they are the baseline developers will need to factor them in and Apple Silicon will continue to feel snappy and ahead of the curve. Once Intel Macs are largely dropped from support we could see that kind of usage creep start to happen. A big problem with Intel was that they stuck to minor boosts for basically a decade. If Apple can keep up with the improvements we have come to expect they should always be outpacing what is necessary.

 

[leman]

Apple policy made software hard difficult, Apple abandon 32bit app , that’s stupid move, lot of old apps abandoned, macOS is more like iOS, that isn’t right direction,

Apple policy made software good, it's 2021, no excuse to use technologies that have ben obsoleted 20 years ago. Talking about old software, most of things I wrote as a kid over 15 years ago build and run on 64-bit architectures without any modifications, just don't be a coding monkey and design proper software.

 

[Superhai]

Developers are generally lazy, but I would say dogs run quite well!

Anyway better processors give the opportunity for more advanced features, and that will make software more sluggish if you compare side by side.

There are also an ever increasing reliance on third party frameworks and libraries which also sometimes inflates size, even without bringing actual benefit to the app. Especially with the wish to stay multi platform.

I think it is inevitable. But it will make room for apps that are light weight if one of the flagships becomes too slow

 

[theSeb]

Apple policy made software hard difficult, Apple abandon 32bit app , that’s stupid move, lot of old apps abandoned, macOS is more like iOS, that isn’t right direction,

No, they haven't.

 

[guzhogi]

Apple policy made software hard difficult, Apple abandon 32bit app , that’s stupid move, lot of old apps abandoned

While you have a valid point, to be fair, developers knew for years that Apple would drop 32-bit support. As long as Apple gives the proper tools & supports to update their apps, if developers don't want to update their apps, that's their problem.

 

[Toutou]

We all agree that the M1 chip is amazing. But, objectively speaking, the 7th gen i5 on my work PC should be plenty good enough to run Office and one bespoke piece of software which is, ultimately, a front end to a SQL database. Office and this software run like dogs.

With the M1 giving all this processing headroom will Apple with macOS and other developers just get lazy and in a few years we will end up exactly where we were a year ago, with tremendously powerful machines that are just a bit laggy and sluggish?

It's not really that developers get lazy, it's mostly that software gets more complicated (i.e. the underlying stack of technology). There are security measures that weren't present in operating systems 20 years ago, there's functionality and expectations that didn't exist back then, e.g. all kinds of virtual memory shenanigans used for better process + kernel isolation, HiDPI screens, multi-monitor setups with different scaling on each screen, web-technology based app frameworks, push notifications, encrypted drives that are transparent to the os, containers, running OSes on Type 1 hypervisors.

Today's OSes are the most secure and convenient (with exceptions) they've ever been, but also the most complicated and yes, resource hungry.

 

[Krevnik]

Still, I believe that the trend has been reversing for some time. These days, functional and declarative patters are in fashion, with some reactivity sprinkled in the mix. Modern technologies used by Apple such as Swift and SwiftUI are more efficient and designed to deliver more predictable performance. There are more advanced APIs than ever, meaning that the devs have less need to develop their own solutions (which they will probably botch). And finally, let’s not forget that Apple Silucon is designed to accelerate common coding patterns on Apple platforms.

So I choose to be optimistic

I wish I could as optimistic about this trend reversing, but I’ve been watching a big swath of services and developers looking at “be on every platform” and creating apps on top of Electron, React Native and Flutter. So JavaScript has become more and more pervasive these days outside the realm of the browser.

While platform owners like Google and Apple are looking at how to allow devs to make better apps on the platform itself (Microsoft seems somewhat out to lunch here since .NET and UWP is floundering as a platform outside certain use cases, it seems). We’re spending more and more resources running a single interpreted language on our systems. An interpreted language that has few of the advantages you bring up in the thread, and is itself a single-threaded language with asynchronous abilities akin to pre-OS X Macs.

 

[FNH15]

Apple policy made software hard difficult, Apple abandon 32bit app , that’s stupid move, lot of old apps abandoned, macOS is more like iOS, that isn’t right direction,

Developers had more than a decade to update their apps. As of OS X 10.7, developers should’ve seen the writing on the wall.
If extreme legacy support is what you desire, than Windows is for you. If you want a platform which actually advances over time, then that’s macOS...

Here’s the timeline, taken from ArsTechnica:

The end of 32-bit apps (and other removals)​

Mac hardware and macOS made the jump from 32 bits to 64 bits a long time ago, but Catalina will be the very first version of macOS that is totally unable to run 32-bit software. For (what I hope will be) the last time, let's review the Mac's entire 64-bit timeline from start to finish:

• June 2003: The PowerPC G5 CPU is the first 64-bit-capable chip to show up in a Mac, and with Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, it can theoretically address up to 8GB of RAM.
• April 2005: Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger allows for 64-bit processes under the hood—they can be spun off from another process or run via the Terminal.
• June 2005: Apple announces that it will begin using Intel processors, which are still primarily 32-bit. Whoops!
• August 2006: Apple launches the Intel Mac Pro with a 64-bit Woodcrest CPU; mainstream 64-bit Core 2 Duo Macs follow shortly afterward.
• October 2007: Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard launches with actual support for regular 64-bit apps; Universal Binaries can run on 32-bit and 64-bit Intel and PowerPC machines, covering four architectures within a single app. Unlike Windows, Apple never ships separate 32- and 64-bit versions of Mac OS X.
• August 2009: Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard still runs on 32-bit chips, but for the first time everything from the apps to the OS kernel supports 64-bit operation. Snow Leopard's 64-bit capabilities are a major component of Apple's marketing push, which infamously includes "no new features." However, most systems still default to loading the 32-bit kernel.
• July 2011: Mac OS X 10.7 Lion drops support for 32-bit Intel CPUs (Snow Leopard had already ended all support for PowerPC systems). Older Macs continue to default to the 32-bit kernel and 32-bit drivers, but new Macs introduced in this era typically default to the 64-bit kernel.
• July 2012: OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion boots into the 64-bit kernel by default on all systems that support it, including a few that previously defaulted to the 32-bit kernel. In the process, a few 64-bit systems with 32-bit graphics drivers and 32-bit EFIs are dropped from the support list.
• June 2017: Apple announces macOS 10.13 High Sierra and says it's the last release that will run 32-bit apps "without compromise."
• January 2018: All new apps submitted to the Mac App Store need to be 64-bit only.
• April 2018: High Sierra's 10.13.4 update begins warning users about "not optimized" (read: 32-bit) apps the first time they're launched.
• June 2018: All new apps and updates to existing apps submitted to the Mac App Store need to be 64-bit only. Apple announces macOS Mojave, which will be the last version of the OS to run 32-bit code.
• September 2018: Apple releases Mojave. 32-bit software continues to run but with more frequent and aggressive nag messages than High Sierra.
• June 2019: Apple announces macOS Catalina, which makes good on Apple's promise to drop 32-bit software support.
• October 2019: Catalina is released. 32-bit apps no longer run on the latest version of macOS.

 

[Joelist]

I’m not sure why the OP mentions Office - on my base model M1 MBA it flies like a rocket. Just be sure you’re running the Universal version.

 

[gogogo2]

Lots of open source app there isn’t a developers maintain , most Mac apps compiled 10 years ago can not run in latest macOS,
Most 15 years ago windows app still run in win10,

 

[AttoA]

Lots of open source app there isn’t a developers maintain , most Mac apps compiled 10 years ago can not run in latest macOS,
Most 15 years ago windows app still run in win10,

What arcane software are you using that is unmaintained and last updated 10 years ago? In most cases, if I found myself in that position, I would start looking for an alternative.

 

[ArPe]

Apple policy made software hard difficult, Apple abandon 32bit app , that’s stupid move, lot of old apps abandoned, macOS is more like iOS, that isn’t right direction,

LMAO

stop it

32 bit apps can’t even use more than a few gig ram. They don’t need to exist anymore.

 

[gogogo2]

A lot of open source 32bit apps are better than today paid apps.

 

[Ethosik]

LMAO

stop it

32 bit apps can’t even use more than a few gig ram. They don’t need to exist anymore.

This. I have 128GB of RAM on my Windows PC and I keep getting out of memory errors on SQL Server Management Studio because it’s a 32 bit process.

 

[kevcube]

A lot of open source 32bit apps are better than today paid apps.

name one? if it's open source, just recompile for 64bit.

 

[kevcube]

This. I have 128GB of RAM on my Windows PC and I keep getting out of memory errors on SQL Server Management Studio because it’s a 32 bit process.

are you running a super-outdated release? Don't forget to pay M$ thousands of dollars to renew your license

 

[AxiomaticRubric]

Apple policy made software hard difficult, Apple abandon 32bit app , that’s stupid move, lot of old apps abandoned, macOS is more like iOS, that isn’t right direction,

If you really need 32-bit OS X software, eBay is filled with older Macs that run just fine. You can still download and install many older apps from the App Store and other sources.

 

[Joelist]

Dumb thread.....

So far M1 is a screamer even when running Rosetta 2 interpreted software. It has nothing to worry about, and the big programs that matter are rapidly releasing their Universal recompiles (Office, Adobe).

 

[RumorConsumer]

I just hope they fix SMB

 

[Apple_Robert]

I think we will continue seeing Silicon supported apps that are much better than what we have seen with Intel.