New Macs

[bravomail]

That's why I said 'for some'. Apple tend to market their products at 'creatives' and generally speaking, media creation applications like lots of RAM. Perhaps this is why the 16" MacBook Pro remains on Intel?

Full disclosure - I have hated Apple since being forced to provide desktop support for Mac Classics and their stupid 1 button mice in the early 90's. Having said that, I've also supported NeXTcubes running on trading floors which I regard quite highly, so Jobs wasn't all bad

no. Macs were a breakthrough til 1995 when MS finally caught up. Classic has no reason to exist, except for price, slow CPU, black-n-white graphics. M1 seems interesting. I know the history. I was there when PowerPC came, RISC is always faster and more efficient than CISC. Thank God for ARM and their RISC architecture!

 

[pierre]

EDITED after 1 week of experiments (12-Dec-2020).

I got my imac mini with a M1 yesterday. So far this is going mostly well:

HW

• thunderbolt2-3 is working well, all HW are working (dock, ssd, ssd m2 etc)
• RME UFX+ is working like a charm (installing the kext required some googling)
• I decided to install Home on an external M2 from another Mac and this didn't work super well (some googling required too)
• The 2 UBS ports are noisy : attached your audio interface to Thunderbold and issues goes away. I have a RME UFX+ which is working well either on Thunderbolt 3->2 or on USB attached to a docking station. If I attached the RME to 1 of the 2 USB ports I have various noise issue.
• Having 2 USB and 2 Thunderbolt only is not a a nice move from Apple: I end up with 1 USB hub and 1 docking station to attach my various components.

SW

• RME Totalmix is working
• GLM 4 is working too (i was surprised)
• Roon is working well
• Reaper is working (ARM version in beta but so far no glitch)
  • ARM version only support AU plugin
  • Non ARM version works better (AU+VST) but is slower
  • This is not fully working (I have glitches from time to time etc)
• iLok is working
• Apple apps are working as you would expect
• Logic is working great (40 tracks, 100 plugins ...) -- you need to tweak the config for Logic to use all cores.
  • Do update, the last one this week fixed most of my issues
• XCode is working (C++ stuff, ...)
• Plugins
  • iZotope all working
  • Waves working
  • Penteo working
• I am compiling the brew ecosytem natively for arm: emacs did compile I am safe
• Resolve 17.1.beta3 is working extremely well but it is struggling with a 4K movie, 60 plugins, ... not enough ram

Not working so far:

• Google backup&sync (or not that well)
• brew ecosystem
  • currently compiling the native version (full mess)
• some python stuff, this week 3.9.1 is available which is the first supported version
• lots of plugins are not working yet
  • Sonarworks (https://support.sonarworks.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011752560-Beta-software-releases)

Noise:

• I manage to get the fan to kick in, it is not audible at 1m. Clearly less noisy than hiss from the Genelec.

Performance:

• CPU cannot do what my 9900K is doing but that still really good for a small desktop.
• iZotope Insight alone eat 25% of the GPU performance, Roon take another 15% : likely this will be better when we have native apps

Conclusion:
- So far pretty good for a new architecture. Rosetta (the software that automatically transform code from X86 to ARM is magic).
- If you want a stable machine, please wait a few months or stick with Intel for now.

 

[Berwhale]

Thank God for ARM and their RISC architecture!

I know, I used one of the first ones in my later years at high school in... Acorn Archimedes - Wikipedia

I was fortunate enough to attend a Technical High School that had been teaching computing since the late 60's (at that time they had to send boxes of punched cards up to Imperial College in London to run their code). When I went there, we had two classrooms full of BBC Micros and another BBC Micro in each of the other classrooms. These were all connected by an Econet network and a 'server' with an 80186 co-pro and 20MB Winchester Disk. We also had a Research Machines 380Z - Wikipedia and a broken PDP-8 rusting out the back of the Engineering block - I believe the PDP-8 was a cast off from Imperial, so @Frank Dernie may have been familar with it, I just remember finding the ferrite core memory fascinating

 

[Frank Dernie]

I know, I used one of the first ones in my later years at high school in... Acorn Archimedes - Wikipedia

I was fortunate enough to attend a Technical High School that had been teaching computing since the late 60's (at that time they had to send boxes of punched cards up to Imperial College in London to run their code). When I went there, we had two classrooms full of BBC Micros and another BBC Micro in each of the other classrooms. These were all connected by an Econet network and a 'server' with an 80186 co-pro and 20MB Winchester Disk. We also had a Research Machines 380Z - Wikipedia and a broken PDP-8 rusting out the back of the Engineering block - I believe the PDP-8 was a cast off from Imperial, so @Frank Dernie may have been familar with it, I just remember finding the ferrite core memory fascinating

I had to stand in a queue for my turn to run my programme on the CDC6600 (iirc) one of the 2 computers (!) at IC, this would be from 1970.
I have never used a PDP computer but had, since I was he only person using it, to be system manager on a VAX system for CEA and CAD from 1985 at Williams.
It is funny to look back on the resistance to using computers as engineers tools back then, I was a messianic supporter, mainly as an analysis tool, but imagine designing stuff on a drawing board now and, even more difficult, getting it made from a paper drawing!

Imagine building a ferrite core memory! And 5 mb hard drives the size of a washing machine and it and the computer needing a 3-phase power supply and air conditioning to keep it all cool enough.
Ah the good old days.

I have to say the thing that made me most angry about Brexit, and there are plenty, was that the crash in the value of sterling which ensued allowed a foreign company to buy ARM making the UK's most innovative tech company foreign and our incompetent government doing nothing to stop it. Talk about shooting ourselves in the foot.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I worked with PDP-8's way back when. One had a Qualcomm tape drive on it. And yes the Winchester HD cased in a cabinet the size of a washing machine. The VAX was a much more capable machine.

My boss hated the PDP-8 because they put it in his office, because it was the only place they could apply extra air conditioning to keep it running. So his office had this in it, which was noisy, the AC to keep it happy which was noisy and his office was always too cool for comfort. End the end these were sold for $1500 to a local natural gas company that used them for several more years to run payroll. My outfit had the proper Burroughs big iron mainframes running COBOL for payroll.

 

[Berwhale]

It is funny to look back on the resistance to using computers as engineers tools back then

The first IBM PC I ever laid my hands on was in my fathers office at the Greater London Council. He used it to calculate wind deflection on steel frame buildings using CADS analysis software which I've discovered is still going strong after 40 years... About us - CADS UK

My father wasn't a big fan of computers at the time and he still isn't today. However, he was very keen on the mainframe based CAD system they ran because of the huge amount of time and effort it saved over drawing and re-drawing by hand.

 

[maverickronin]

My outfit had the proper Burroughs big iron mainframes running COBOL for payroll.

I'm a lot younger than you guys, but I remember a story or two from my dad who used work on those.

 

[anmpr1]

My outfit had the proper Burroughs big iron mainframes running COBOL for payroll.

In the late '70s to mid '80s (that seems about right, I'm trying to remember) my father in law's company had a B-80 and then B-800 for payroll and inventory. Large desktop format with a huge dot matrix printer. Single hard drive with a platter as large as an LP. When it was working it was so loud that you couldn't stand close to it.

With the purchase, Burroughs sent three of us to San Francisco for training. At that time San Fran was still more or less a 'clean' city. The hippies had left, and drug addicts weren't defecating on the streets like now.

Our company 'personal computers' consisted of a Tandy TRS-80, and later a model 2000. The latter was very sophisticated for the time, but not compatible with anything else, so it quickly became an expensive dead-end. It ran a version of MS-DOS, and I believe dBase was loaded on it, along with some kind of word processor. I think we also had Lotus 123. And a game. Solitaire card game or something. A real work killer! Nothing was networked.

 

[Frank Dernie]

The first IBM PC I ever laid my hands on was

For me it was an Olivetti which Nigel Mansell won for pole position in the South African GP in 1985 iirc.
It ran MS-DOS which was crap compared to what I was used to and for an 8-bit processor about 5x more expensive than it was worth and 50x slower than the process control computer I was using at the time to run our wind tunnel.
It was the thing that made me realise good marketing gave more success than good engineering and made (even more of) a cynic out of me

 

[anmpr1]

It ran MS-DOS which was crap compared to what I was used to and for an 8-bit processor about 5x more expensive than it was worth

Memories. Speaking of 'worth' the Tandy 2000 was several thousand dollars new. I wound up selling it at a garage sale for twenty dollars. Might have been twenty five. And I was lucky to get that!

 

[bunnyfuzz]

I had to stand in a queue for my turn to run my programme on the CDC6600 (iirc) one of the 2 computers (!) at IC, this would be from 1970.
I have never used a PDP computer but had, since I was he only person using it, to be system manager on a VAX system for CEA and CAD from 1985 at Williams.
It is funny to look back on the resistance to using computers as engineers tools back then, I was a messianic supporter, mainly as an analysis tool, but imagine designing stuff on a drawing board now and, even more difficult, getting it made from a paper drawing!

Imagine building a ferrite core memory! And 5 mb hard drives the size of a washing machine and it and the computer needing a 3-phase power supply and air conditioning to keep it all cool enough.
Ah the good old days.

I have to say the thing that made me most angry about Brexit, and there are plenty, was that the crash in the value of sterling which ensued allowed a foreign company to buy ARM making the UK's most innovative tech company foreign and our incompetent government doing nothing to stop it. Talk about shooting ourselves in the foot.

Seeking independence from unelected bureaucrats is "shooting yourself in the foot"?

 

[Alexanderc]

I’ve been using a “late 2013” retina MacBook Pro (step up processor and 8gb ram) since early 2014. Mostly word processing and internet with occasional video editing. Not a single problem and very rarely the beach ball, even when I have a dozen tabs open in Safari and a half dozen other programs maximized in the background. I haven’t noticed that it’s slowing down at all. Only the battery has taken a hit—I can’t quite get through a 2-hour Zoom meeting on a full charge.

I have to think, though, that Big Sur will be the last OS update I can get, so I decided to jump on a MacBook Air with 16gb ram. It should be here in a week or so. If I can get the same almost 7 years out of it that I got out of my last one, I’ll consider it money well spent (even though it cut into my budget for a new amp and speakers).

 

[ahofer]

I hadn't upgraded a PC for ages, but I jumped on this and bought a new MacBook Pro M1. It is awesome. Battery lasts for days, starts up fast, ergonomics very Apple. I use it with a 38" ultra wide for work, unplug it and bring it into the living room for other stuff. Virtually everything seems to work a bit better - wifi, sleep/wake, screen switching, Remote Desktop to my office Windows machine. And it never gets hot.

This is *not* good for intel - ARM is making inroads in the server arena as well. Sold my stock a couple of months ago.

 

[Alexanderc]

Does Apple own this technology, or could other chip makers move to ARM (or ARM-like) chips?

 

[ahofer]

Amazon has them, AMD has the Seattle design, and Google makes them. Since both high end web servers and all your mobile devices are already running ARM, PCs were the odd-man out. Dell and HP have a problem, inasmuch as Apple is the primary ARM chipmaker with a product for this segment. x86 still rules server farms, but if they become popular in laptops, that will also fall. These chips use FAR less power.

And Ryzen is a better x86 product than Intel's....

 

[pierre]

Does Apple own this technology, or could other chip makers move to ARM (or ARM-like) chips?

ARM is licensing its technology. Most smartphone processor are ARM based. What is proprietary is how you implement the chip and how you build it. Usually one company do the design and another does the build.
ARM processors are everywhere from small one in Raspberry to GPU or servers. Here is an 80 cores example https://amperecomputing.com/altra/

 

[Alexanderc]

ARM is licensing its technology. Most smartphone processor are ARM based. What is proprietary is how you implement the chip and how you build it. Usually one company do the design and another does the build.
ARM processors are everywhere from small one in Raspberry to GPU or servers. Here is an 80 cores example https://amperecomputing.com/altra/

Thanks!

 

[blueone]

ARM is licensing its technology. Most smartphone processor are ARM based. What is proprietary is how you implement the chip and how you build it. Usually one company do the design and another does the build.
ARM processors are everywhere from small one in Raspberry to GPU or servers. Here is an 80 cores example https://amperecomputing.com/altra/

This is not completely correct. ARM has many types of licenses, and Apple is one of about, I think, 15 companies that have "Architecture Licenses", which essentially let them design their own CPUs and cores with the ARM instruction set and interfaces. This is what Apple has done with the M1; the Apple M1 cores are unique to their products. The same is true for the A14 cores. If you have an Architecture License it means you have a full-fledged CPU design team. If you just license ARM's off-the-shelf IP cores, you just have an ASIC or SoC design team.

Sidebar: Ampere CPUs are descended from the Applied Micro technology which Ampere acquired. Applied Micro had an ARM Architecture License, but I don't know if they've produced a unique core. The Ampere website says the cores are based on the ARM Neoverse N1 platform, which probably means they haven't gone down the route Apple did. I do like how Ampere's cores are single-threaded, which is better for secure public cloud computing (though Intel and AMD do allow multi-threading to be disabled).

 

[Alexanderc]

I guess my question is, if ARM chips in desktops and laptops are the future, who will be making those chips? Will Intel and AMD switch over? Will other companies step in to provide CPUs? Will we see windows machines with chips made by Apple? Etc.

 

[ahofer]

The Surface Pro X from Microsoft runs on an ARM chip, although, predictably, they haven't made it nearly as seamless a transition as Apple has. I think just getting Rosetta (a software layer for backwards compatibility) working smoothly was a major gating issue for Apple.

I would guess it is coming, if only for efficiency reasons. But not overnight.