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New Macs

q3cpma

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I thought Apple was the computer company which respected user data.
You do realize that Apple was part of PRISM, right?

EDIT: whoops, already in the article. Well, welcome to the proprietary software world, I guess.
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blueone

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I guess so, but Apple seem to compare their chip to workstation stuff.

Yeah, CPU-wise, but they didn't invest in that Intel Xeon thing as a hobby. Last week I saw a message from a friend bitching about his orders for fully loaded $13K iMac Pros (18 core, Vega 64X, 256GB, 4TB) being back-ordered from Apple until January. I didn't believe it until I looked myself. Sure enough, Apple is talking January delivery dates. For any other company that would be a great business. For Apple, just some sprinkles on the icing, I'd guess. :)
 

ElNino

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I don't think the article in that link is completely accurate; the author is confusing the notarization check, which only happens the very first time you launch an app, with the OCSP checks that were in the news yesterday. The OCSP requests don't contain an application hash; they're used the verify that the app developer's certificate is still valid. However, if an app developer only has one app, then yes, it basically does function as a type of per-app telemetry.

It is a shame that such powerful computers are so locked down though.
 

digititus

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The joy of locked down corporate software silo bling. No thanks ;) I was a huge Apple fanboi many years ago. Wouldn't touch them with a shi*ty stick these days.
 

Vasr

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https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/

I thought Apple was the computer company which respected user data. This article says Mac OS phones home with the launch of every Apple app and even your IP address is recorded.

I am no fan of tech surveillance but the above is a bad take. There are valid reasons to have network connected devices attached to servers (telemetry, license checks, update checks, subscription checks, recalled app checks, etc). All of them will have IP address in the communication protocol that can be logged just like when you visit this site. Much of the convenience of network-connected modern appliances would be severely limited without such communication. The danger is people like Google (for example) monetizing that information for means other than "improving the service" as their business model and how much identifying data is sent in such contacts.

Your IP is recorded when you visit this site and there is plenty of tracking cookies from within the javascript on this site. It is what is done with it ("respect user data") that is relevant than whether such contacts and tracking happens at all. Or like me, you could use VPN everywhere and private browsing windows all the time for solving some of those issues.

While not perfect, Europe did a pretty good job in explicitly clamping down on privacy abuses with GDPR. US with its regulatory capture by vested interests has done very little in this regard and this is why it enables ISPs and carriers to log and monetize so much of your use that you wouldn't expect.

Apple has pretty strict rules on what apps on their system can do (and this is an advantage of a locked system). So does Google, except when it applies to their apps and devices because it is part of their business model.
 

Old Listener

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Apple's announcements are not good news for Intel and Microsoft. Intel has been stalled for some time. Microsoft doesn't have its A team on Windows development and it has no record of success in migrating Windows to a new CPU architecture.

I haven't had a Mac since the late 80s but a Mac might make sense for my personal PC and my travel laptop in a couple of years.
 

GeorgeWalk

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Apple's announcements are not good news for Intel and Microsoft. Intel has been stalled for some time. Microsoft doesn't have its A team on Windows development and it has no record of success in migrating Windows to a new CPU architecture.

I haven't had a Mac since the late 80s but a Mac might make sense for my personal PC and my travel laptop in a couple of years.

I was always a PC/WIN/INTEL person until about 10 years ago. I got tired of having to constantly be the IT maintenance guy on my wife's Windows laptop. There always seemed to be some driver issues, patch issue, or upgrade issue almost weekly to keep the thing running. It seemed like I would have to get her a new laptop every two years or so because the OS consumed more and more resources with every update.

I got frustrated with this and I got her a MacBook Air. It has worked for her smoothly ever since. The Windows laptops seemed to need weekly tweaks or adjustments to stay running. The MBA just runs. No playing with drivers, OS tweaks, or config tweaks.

I have a 2012 MacBooks Pro now that I am upgrading to get the MBP M1. The MBP has been reliable and stable for me. I do embedded development and it does what I need without any fussing.
 

Habu

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q3cpma

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Vasr

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M1 vs x86 will have the same battle as all-in-one vs separates in audio for a while.

While M1 may have a core performance advantage, the SoC design will have some limitations on scaling up as a system (it is already hitting process and thermal limits), so it is difficult to project the trajectory after starting on a higher initial point. Except perhaps in the mobile chip category including laptops where the x86 will be similarly limited and does not have an advantage over ARM cores in power efficiency.

The current amount of memory, the built-in graphics capability and the number of cores on the chip can be overcome by separate increasingly powerful graphics cards, higher and faster memory and beefy power supplies for workstation like mixed-loads. Don't know what the results will be if and when Intel gets to a 5nm process.

But for now, this will be like the all-in-one vs separates in audios. Separates give you a lot of flexibility in power and expansion and ability to design extreme systems that cannot be matched by all-in-ones but the all-in-ones offer convenience and plug-and-play simplicity for average needs.

Also have to wait for comprehensive benchmarks outside of Apple to see where the strengths and weaknesses are, especially in multiple application types.
 

Wes

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Enjoy replacing all your software!
 

Mashcky

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Enjoy replacing all your software!
Can you explain where this comes from? I don't believe many people will need to replace software by switching to an M1 MacBook, as the Rosetta 2 translation layer is fast enough to run x86 software without issues. Rosetta 2 bill buy developers two years to get it together and recompile applications for the M1 chips.

Some other thoughts after catching up on this thread:
  • Rosetta 2 is a translation layer, not an emulator. The former has much better performance in this circumstance. Many benchmarks demonstrate that the performance gains of M1 over Intel MacBooks actually dwarf the performance losses of running software through Rosetta 2...
  • I take the point of same commentators that the graphics performance still isn't good enough and there should be more RAM, but remember, these are the lower-end notebooks (for Apple) in spite of the existence of a 13" "pro" model. All reviews I've seen have mentioned this as an issue without presenting a use case where their maxed out an M1 computer's RAM... Besides, we're still waiting on a larger pro, as well as iMac and Mac Pro desktop within the next year or two to see what Apple does to compete with dedicated graphics performance. At that point I think this type of criticism will be fair game.
  • If you're in the market for non-intensive, general purpose premium computing this year and you don't hate Apple, all the new releases look pretty damn appealing.
  • As someone mentioned, yes, the RAM is on the chip which puts it closer to the processor. I don't see this as good or bad (good for speed, bad for flexibility) I just see it as Apple becoming even more Apple, and is that so surprising?
 

RayDunzl

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My favorite "what have we done to ourselves?" illustration:

1605737486201.png
 

blueone

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The more I read about the M1 the more impressed I get. Sitting here typing on a 2018 Mac Mini with an Intel i7 CPU and 16GB of memory, the reality is that nothing I do short of an OS upgrade really stresses even the obsolete i7. But like finding a DAC with 10db better SNAID than the one I have, I oddly feel compelled to upgrade, silliness I'm fighting off.
 

tmtomh

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There are some legitimate questions being raised here about what the truly full performance picture of M1 will be once multiple sets of really comprehensive sets of measurements are done. However, there's also a good deal of lazy FUD in the thread too. It's early days, but already many reviews have been posted online and so far only one Intel app apparently won't download and run on an M1 Mac: Pixelmator Pro. And that's from one review so it's not yet certain if it's an individual glitch or if that app really won't run on any M1 Mac.

Beyond that, of course apps that have not yet been updated won't run optimized on the M1 - which affects both speed and power/battery usage. But even before they get updated, there've already been both benchmarks and real-world timed tests showing that the new M1 machines - including the MacBook Air with no fan and only 7 GPU cores - perform as well or better running translated Intel apps than existing low and mid-range Intel Macs do. And the M1 machines do this while offering 30-100% longer battery life.

Yes of course, GPU-intensive tasks in Intel-only apps running through Rosetta translation on an M1 Mac are not going to be as fast as those same tasks running on a higher-end Intel Mac with dedicated graphics. But remember, Apple put the M1 in their lowest-end Macs - it's not intended or claimed to beat the graphics performance of higher-end machines with dedicated GPUs. The jury on that won't be in until Apple releases the M1 Plus or M1X or M2 or M1 with outboard GPU support or whatever that they have planned for their midrange and higher-end machines.

Given the multiple benchmarks and timed tests on both optimized apps and Intel-only apps, conducted by multiple reviewers, who have posted the exact benchmark numbers and test timings, we can already say that the M1 setup kicks the crap out of the equivalent Intel Mac models and the Intel Mac models one and two steps up in the model line.
 
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Vasr

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I realize that passions run high (for or against) when Apple is concerned but in the objective spirit of this forum, it would be better if people actually posted source links with data than paraphrasing into "Many people say..."

FUD and hype are two faces of the same coin.
 

Blumlein 88

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I realize that passions run high (for or against) when Apple is concerned but in the objective spirit of this forum, it would be better if people actually posted source links with data than paraphrasing into "Many people say..."

FUD and hype are two faces of the same coin.
Anandtech and ars technica have some good info from hands on testing. The M1 looks very impressive.
 
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