Now im no apple shill. So much so that I quietly laugh on the inside whenever I see someone flexing their overpriced, overdesigned, overmarketed apple bs. But..... From what we can tell from early reviewers, the new M1 based apple hardware blows every conventional pc out of the water, especially when it comes to power per watt. Even non-native apps seem to run about as fast through rosetta as they did on last gen macs, which is insane if you ever ran x86 code on ARM or vice versa. And they are only getting better with new hardware iterations and the arrival of more arm native software. At the same time they are locked down as fuck; i don't expect we'll see someone being able to run linux on them anytime soon.

In all honesty - and it brings me no joy to say this - i think apple just won the personal computing game. Especially if they start releasing some lower priced hardware next year. I don't see MS keeping up, and expect them to be limited to office environments. What's your 2 cents? will we see another ARM windows push? Will windows just give up? how will this change computing in the long run?

  • sysgen [none/use name,they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    No, they didn't. They are more or less on par with Zen 3 on 7nm, probably a bit slower than Zen 3 on 5nm. x86 is still alive and well.

    It's just that Intel is wayyyy behind and they're comparing this to Intel.

    • comi [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      The thing is they are doing it at 3 ghz (allegedly) instead of 4.5 in single core, so arm will probably win flat out if it scales to those frequencies.

      • sysgen [none/use name,they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Well yeah, but they aren't keeping it at 3ghz for fun, it's because if they went beyond 3ghz they would use more energy and generate more heat with their process.

        If you want your processor to be able to boost a core to higher frequencies, you really need to design it that way, both for heat but also for timing issues.

        • comi [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Yeah, I mean to my mind this is the question, can it ramp to 4.2-4 ghz with higher voltages to say 40 w, or the underlying timing or sync will go to shit. If it can, than it would outperform zen3 cores, no?

          If it is feasible, than they have roughly 30 % headroom to explore, if it can’t - well at least tdp is interesting.

          • sysgen [none/use name,they/them]
            ·
            edit-2
            4 years ago

            Not really, it's slower multicore than a 15W Zen 2 chip at 28W, and going from 3ghz to 4ghz would likely take it to 50+W where it would just get completely murdered by Zen 2, let alone Zen 3.

            As it is, it's trading blows with Zen 2 at 7nm in single core at similar wattages, behind in multi-core, so it really doesn't stand a chance against Zen 3, even at a 25% higher clock speed and twice the power.

            And that's with Zen having so much more I/O.

  • dolphinhuffer [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I don’t see MS keeping up

    MS hasn't 'kept up' for years and it's not important that they do so. Windows' installed base means it's going to be around forever. Just look at how long Solaris held on. And that had what, like five customers by the end?? Snow Leopard was probably the best commercial operating system ever made. Lion OTOH was basically the devil, because it incorporated a bunch of new hardware chips to make sure the software ON THE HARDWARE YOU PURCHASED isn't anything Apple wouldn't like. People made all kinds of wild predictions about Apple moving to Intel 10+ years ago, but not much changed : Apple was and will continue to be a great choice for people willing to overpay for artificially limited options.

    • snuffles [he/him,any]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      had to look it up, english is not my native language. damn that would have been perfect....

    • snuffles [he/him,any]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      here is an article about benchmarking the new M1 devices. The tables show that the performance gap between apple and intel chips does shrink when comparing single to mulitcore benchmarks, but not by much. Certainly less than I would have expected from my experience using ARM based computers (yes I know cinnabench is a bad benchmark, but it's all we've got at this point).

      I was quick to dismiss their claims after their promo event, which was just so much hot air, but now i'm not so sure. Over time I'm almost certain that arm (or rather RISC) will become the default, mainly because of its power efficiency. The only limit was scalability. This is the first time we see workstation grade ARM PCs .

      Oh and from what i've heard photoshop runs as well on the new macs with rosetta as it did on last years intel based macs. And they are working on a virtualization layer for Linux, and specifically docker, so they are clearly trying to reach devs as well. I really think that apple has the potential to take over. assuming their launch doesn't flop

  • Galli [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    There are already Linux distros targeting ARM and linux ARM based laptops for sale. If Microsoft drops the ball then it will give laptop manufacturers with limited linux support, such as hp and lenovo, the impetus to fully embrace it in order to compete with Apple. Microsoft is already more committed to Azure than windows so it's not completely impossible they give up but we can only hope.

    • snuffles [he/him,any]
      hexagon
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      4 years ago

      actually, my main laptop is an arm based pinebook. While I do love it and it has some definitive upsides like its battery life, it is by no means performant. I also use a couple raspberry pis. I would really love to see a high powered arm laptop targeting linux, and apples push in this direction probably increases the likelyhood that that will happen. But dont expect that at least for the next 5 years or so. Pine are really the only option right now and they have no new upgraded laptop in the pipeline

  • Koa_lala [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I will never get roped into the apple eco system. fuck that. anything is better than that.

  • Blottergrass [he/him]
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    edit-2
    4 years ago

    I'd rather fight a different fight with a different big bad with different flaws and corruptions than continue the slow downward malaise that is the Windows experience. oops, security update caused a registry error, time to reinstall the OS again.

    • snuffles [he/him,any]
      hexagon
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      4 years ago

      yeah, windows is trash but at least you can install linux on a windows machine

  • StalinistApologist [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I just set up my new Mac Mini a few minutes ago and it feels snappy. I ran the x86 Signal app without issue. I got the 16GB model and I'm going to use an external SSD, total cost around $1100. Cancel me