This could all change, but until it does articles like this feel a lot like FUD. Additionally, completely dismissing the M1 as a 'marginal improvement' shows a level of anti-Apple that is clearly clouding the authors judgement.
> They are what makes the mac popular with developers
Developers believe that they're Apple's priority when it comes to hardware, especially the Mac, in large part due to the perfect intersect that was the MBP for many years. That tide already turned in 2016 with the new keyboard, followed by the touch bar. Like the joke that the 'S' in IoT stands for security (the joke being there is no S, and there is no security), there is no 'D' for developer in MBP. Apple have been consistently clear that 'professional developers' are not the primary target of their 'Pro' lineup across the board.
Someone else made a comment on this forum that got my attention recently, that we're all so used to being courted as customers by (mostly free) services that we've forgotten that we're not always the target customer. Similarly, developers are only welcome in Apple's ecosystem if they play by Apple's rules. Like we've seen with the App Store, Apple will frequently alter the terms of the deal. All you can do is pray they do not alter them any further.
None of this should diminish the extraordinary results that can be delivered by the M1. That is amazing.
As someone who uses an MBP for development for 8-10 hours a day for work and another one for 4-6 hours a day for school, I'm pretty happy with them for development purposes
So does any company that paid attention in marketing & sales 101. An established hardware company has to sell what it has, and shouldn’t try to sell what it doesn’t have (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect is the classical example of why not to sell what you don’t have (yet))
(if you don’t have anything to sell yet, selling what you don’t have is fine. See Kickstarter and early Tesla)
I think the reason people think Apple is special at this is that Steve Jobs was very good at selling what he had and downplaying what he didn’t have.
Similar story with Apple Sign In (though no judge order there).
1. I'm paraphrasing
zfs
java (and also ruby, python) as 'first class' Cocoa languages
GC'ed ObjC runtime
[Ancient history but kinda huge!] just about the entire post-System 7 technology stack and roadmap was tossed.
Of course Apple did a 180 soon after and introduced the iOS SDK.
Not so sure if that was flipping the script when they were ready or that Apple had hoped to not have to open the OS but bent to the developer outcry (or saw that there might be some merit for growing the platform in opening it up).
How is that so? The initial promise with "web apps only" was that they would add the necessary APIs for people to develop web-apps that could do almost anything.
Nowadays Apple (intentionally or not) is crippling the entire web-app ecosystem by not supporting the APIs that everyone else does (no notifications, non-standard manifest, etc.).
Other examples of Apple reversing course would be "No stylus on iDevices", no use of intel chips, no switch back to scissor-type keyboards.
Word of mouth is the best form of advertising. If you're most vocal work of mouth folks turn than this would be bad for sales.
I'm just genuinely confused as to why people seem to think that [a] Apple is planning to switch to a locked down ecosystem on their notebooks and [b] Apple has been somehow limited in doing this until they had their own "silicon".
Is there somewhere I can find some evidence that it isn't a marginal improvement?
Apple timed the release perfectly to create the impression that it was more, because its obvious competition will be Zen 3 laptops, which are right around the corner but not actually out yet. So then you get benchmarks comparing it to 14nm Intel processors based on 5-year-old technology, and 10nm Intel processors with half as many cores as the M1 because Intel's 10nm yields are so bad they can't make high core count processors, and Zen 2 laptops when the Zen 3 ones it will actually be competing with in a couple months are expected to be 20% faster. And Zen 3 desktops, which the M1 loses to badly on multi-threaded tests, but is competitive with on single threaded tests -- as expected, since modern mobile processors actually have single-thread performance which is competitive with desktops in general, but manages to amaze anyone who doesn't know that.
Which isn't to say they've done a bad job. Making something which is even competitive with modern x86-64 processors is no small feat. But the fanboys are making it out to be some kind of coup when it does, in practice, appear to be a marginal improvement. And we still don't even have many real-world benchmarks because most of the real-world applications haven't actually been ported yet.
While your story about raw computing performance holds, there are two reasons why apple's M1 release is significant (i.e.: not marginal):
1. This is the first time in decades that we see a serious non-x86 competitor for general purpose consumer-level computing. This is significant in and of itself.
2. Power consumption. These things seem to consume 2/3rds as many watts to offer the same performance levels than their x86 counterparts. This is big in the laptop space.
I feel like this would be a lot more significant if you could buy the chip on its own. When you can only buy it as part of a Mac, you're really not buying the chip, you're buying a Mac with all that entails. Then who makes the chip in your Mac doesn't really change much because you buy it from Apple either way.
> Power consumption. These things seem to consume 2/3rds as many watts to offer the same performance levels than their x86 counterparts. This is big in the laptop space.
But that's much the same issue where you're comparing it to Zen 2 when Zen 3 is expected to be 20% faster at the same power, and close a lot of that gap.
It's also hard to compare this in general, for two reasons. The first is that the M1 is 5nm, so then the question is how much of the efficiency is due to that (and will accrue to AMD next year) and how much, if any, is the design?
And the second is that the M1 is big.LITTLE. The small cores are more power efficient, so when you average them in, the overall result should be more power efficient than entirely big cores. But x86-64 processors with a similar configuration are sparse, so what do you compare to? It will be interesting to see the result when there are some (both Intel and AMD have some planned).
Oh, totally. I'm not buying into apple (again) anytime soon, so the only bad thing about M1's for me is that I just won't have them, no matter how good they are.
> But that's much the same issue where you're comparing it to Zen 2 when Zen 3 is expected to be 20% faster at the same power, and close a lot of that gap.
I expect next-gen AMD laptop processors to close the gap either in performance or in power consumption, but not both. Also, power consumption of a laptop is very much a whole-package deal, and Apple really shines here.
To be clear, I dislike apple for who they are and where are they leading the personal computing industry, so I won't buy from them. Nonetheless, I have to acknowledge that they make some damn fine machines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxSI45eeAts
Not to mention the ergonomic factor of being cooler and quieter.
This review appears to be comparing a dual core Intel i3 to the 4+4 core M1, which are only the same price because Apple doesn't sell any laptops for less than $999 even when they're a dual core Intel i3.
I hope you’re right, but personally, I don’t trust Apple to allow me to do what I wish anymore.
I would hope they didn’t kill off eGPUing Radeon cards, but I haven’t kept track of the new hardware other than M1 being really good.
Apple came in when Intel decided to build a version for standardized cables, and helped Intel develop the spec (and even supplied the name).
But my point remains. Apple knows Thunderbolt as well as Intel does by this time.
Of course there are things that suggest this, such as, that is how iphones and ipads work, and its become increasingly difficult over time to do it on a mac.
In what way was it made "more difficult" than that?
What exactly suggests it is "becoming (even?) more difficult"?
Then they introduced Gatekeeper, but you had the option to disable the Gatekeeper check for all applications.
Then they removed the option to disable the check for all applications. You now only have the options "App Store" and "App Store and identified developers".
They have definitely made the whole thing harder and harder during these past 10 years. Now if you don't want to pay Apple for a developer license, or you're just otherwise ousted by Apple (like Epic Games), you need to teach your users on how they can circumvent Apple's restrictions.
The courts have agreed that the reason their apps are not in the store is of their own doing, which is why they have not granted an injunction.
Whatever the outcome of their case, they are not an example of some general trend of Apple ‘ousting’ developers.
The first time you "RMB -> Open", as you put it, it won't allow you to open the app at all. You have to do it twice, only the second time does the button to actually open the app appear.
Both times the dialog boxes mention "malware". Both times the default button is "move to trash".
Android is not a choice for iOS users, it's not a seamless switch. The solution as I see it is that apple could still very well protect users from "trojans" but have an opt-in for 3p app installation. A button that says "I want to install apps from anywhere, I know the risks".
If I pay for the hardware, as a customer, I should be able to do whatever I want with it. With the iPhone, it feels like I'm renting rather than owning. I worry that's the direction apple is taking Macs in with the M1.
If you want a different ecosystem there are choices available to you. Why exactly are you complaining when it is clear no one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to use Apple products?
We'd like to use the best available software, running on the best available hardware.
Criticizing Apple's software censorship choices is thus the natural logical target. Otherwise, we have to use things like the PinePhone for the next 10-15 years until someone makes something comparable to an iPhone 6 that can run whatever software the owner wants.
First generation of iPhones also sucked versus what Symbian and Windows CE/Pocket PC phones were capable of.
Except for everything related to the Play Store, correct? And that is a critical part of Android at this point. Google is progressively closing Android.
One example is how in newer phones it will be impossible for apps to bypass root detection. I don't know why it should be anyone's business whether I want to run my banking app on a rooted phone or not, but this is the state of modern technology unfortunately...
Is that true though? I though pretty much all of the Google services and vendor-specific skins and OS modifications are just as closed as iOS? Last time I heard vanilla AOSP is pretty much unusable because besides the core OS functions everything is grossly outdated? Is anyone using Android phones without any of the Google services?
Yes I have a couple of phones running LineageOS without GApps. The apps are installed through FDroid or direct from the vendor ( e.g. WhatsApp.apk from their website, which also manages its own updates ).
I mean I've worked with Windows for multiple generations of the operating system, and once the internet became a thing it was just complete shit. I had a side job fixing computers for people, and it was always adware, viruses, etc messing things up.
That was caused by an insecure operating system on the one hand - which can and has been fixed by core operating system mechanics - but a big factor was both freedom and lack of expertise from users. They're easily tempted by e.g. "install this browser bar for dank discounts" without understanding the consequences. They may not even really register what's going on because so much is going on.
99% of users need to be protected from themselves. And developers need to work with that.
Apple has already proven how a closed ecosystem is ultimately beneficial for the consumer - how many security incidents has the iphone had, ever? I can't think of ANY to be honest, outside of the odd scummy app slipping through that is a bit too liberal with user's data. But they have never compromised a user's system. Mobile banking apps became a thing while I was an app developer, and that would never have flown on an unconstrained system. Pretty sure they had a lot more trouble with the Android version as well in that regard.
Tl;dr, 99% of users will never know any better and will not care, they just want to hit install and for things to Just Work.
Windows 10 isn't perfect but it's a much different time than multiple generations ago with Windows 95 / 98, XP or even 7.
Back then you could visit a site and end up needing to format because of a virus, even if you were very much into tech.
Nowadays even if you disable Windows Defender and any active AV tool, it's pretty unlikely you'll get yourself to the point where you need to format due to a virus or some adware.
This is speaking from the perspective of someone who has been using Windows since the mid 1990s.
Maybe those are two things separate, hardware post-purchase support and software user experience, but I can't as a consumer separate those two.
> It is a bit too conspiratorial to think Apple control is all about some dictatorship fetish
So much for "Hacker" News.
I think its funny that most people here wouldent trust a website with no certificate, but for applications the idea seems to be considered abhorrent.
The "ordinary" certificates we use just are meant to prove the website you are talking to is the authorized owner of the domain you mean to be talking to... I'm not sure if there's really an analogy with installing apps, that kind of cert is I think maybe meant to protect against a kind of attack only relevant to network communications, not app installs.
That said, the M1 is one damned good chip. And the Macbooks are hands down the laptops with the best feel and build quality.
It is already exceptionally difficult to distribute apps produced outside of their developer program.
Without Apple providing a HAL FLL for the windows executive and device drivers along with a special bootloader shim (the marketing guys call this package "Bootcamp"), Windows would not work on Intel Macs. Microsoft or some third party would have to reverse engineer the device drivers, and they're definitely not making that investment.
Not to mention more basically that Apple has to sign the NT kernel for it to load on Macs without disabling the equivalent of SecureBoot.
Apple could, obviously, prevent people from installing Windows on Intel Macs if it wanted to.
I don't intend to sound dismissive, but this line of thinking has a name
I consider myself a pragmatic and I think that the only way to actually be sure there is no poison in your food is to literally produce it yourself.
Someone who's not even telling me the recipe is not a trusted source of premium food.
There is also no poison waiting outside of Apple ecosystem.
There is no offloading decision to someone else involved, you simply have the option or you don't, it doesn't mean you have to go full in one way or the other
You don't have to deep dive every app either, it's a straw man IMO
The argument is the same for picking mushrooms in the woods: you don't pick all of them, put them in the same basket, and then test them for venom one by one, you only pick those that you already know as safe, and you're absolutely sure about it.
Nobody in their right mind would do otherwise.
I'm ok with people trusting Apple more than their parents, what I find disturbing is the idea that if I trust my parents to use the same 3 apps that everybody else in the World uses (WhatsApp, FB and Google Maps) and are certified good, I'm putting them in danger.
It is not true.
It's a false premise.
Also the idea that people will go and install every app they see it's false.
They see a warning, they usually stop right there.
My father used to turn off the phone when he saw the red alert of a missing call, thinking of a malfunction.
There's no risk he's gonna install something by chance.
Also, if iOS is on 25% of the devices in Europe, while Android is on 3/4 of them does it mean that 75% of the 700 million European citizens are not pragmatic?
The former helps grandma get her tasks done and lets the power user go the extra mile.
The latter helps grandma get her tasks done, tells the power user he's not worth supporting and blames grandma for it.
It can also be very bad or the very opposite of what Apple does and also be the best around and still let people free to explore all the options available.
There is nothing specific in what Apple does that can be reduced to simply UX.
Maybe ergonomics is more correct to define what Apple tries to do with their human interfaces, but the Apple store or the locked down platform have nothing to do with either UX or ergonomics.
What Apple does is to remove electric plugs from the walls because someone could put a fork inside them and experience an electric shock.
And I am not the one saying it, I was answering to "Apple removed trojan and viruses to help people who don't know better".
That's paternalism.
Second point, though weaker on its own merit, is that the State's primary objective is to improve the commonwealth by acting as proxy to the collective effort, regulating compromise etc which are paternalistic without a doubt.
Private corporations exist for entirely different reasons though this probably wasn't always the case. In our world, corporations can make massive losses, have no working product, or be of such marginal value and yet be valued for billions by speculators in the free market. Its all random and irrational. States cannot operate like that.
The iPhone buyer does not get a say in the development staff or direction at Apple.
My government intends to be "Of the people, for the people, by the people". Imagine if Apple every single year had elections at every level of their company! Vote for your local support representatives. Vote for your local b+m store management. Vote for executive staff. Etc etc.
But until Apple does that, there is literally no fair comparison with paternalism in state and private industry.
Apple has a certain awareness of public opinion and user mood. It isn't obliged to pay attention to either, and of course it also tries to control both through PR efforts.
But if it ignores or irritates its users too much there are financial consequences.
Meanwhile you can be sure forums like HN are monitored for sentiment.
I believe they very much know what their users want and are giving it to them
That's why they are so successful.
And what their users want is a device to support their paternalism.
I've never witnessed so many judgments against elderly or people that are a bit of techno illiterate (a bit is enough) as I have in discussions about Apple.
The baseline is always of two types:
- they are easy to operate, so even my [insert moms, dads, granpas etc here] can use them
- I would never let my [insert moms, dads, granpas etc here] use an open device where they can get viruses that then I have to fix (like fixing something for your family is some kind of punishment, they did it for me repeateadly when I was younger!)
And i think it's a bit naive to think that people supporting the idea that Apple knows better are in good faith and are not doing it because they like the control too and to be "influencers" (with many quotes) in their inner circles.
I would never think that my parents who raised me and made me what I am are incapable of understanding basic safety rules on the Internet once explained to them (safety rules that anyway protect them from something that don't kill people, it simply kills the battery of the device)
> Meanwhile you can be sure forums like HN are monitored for sentiment.
I'm sure they do.
One interesting other thing that we can be sure and I didn't think possible is that there are people monitoring this forums as well with enough karma to downvote, that not only downvote your posts in a discussion, but go back to yout history and downvote older posts as well.
It just happened to me, I had posts from yesterday and two days ago downvoted right now by the same people that downvoted me in this thread.
I don't know if HN can do something about it or not, but for starter disallowing voting on older submissions that users have not shown interest on could help (it should be easy to check which submissions users have opened, when, how many times and for how long to establish if they are genuinely interested in the topic)
When we go to the polls, we are literally making decisions about what you call "paternalism". Who should write our laws? Who should manage our criminal justice system? Who should regulate our industries? These are pretty direct decisions to make.
But when we go to Best Buy or Apple Store to buy an iDevice, almost all consumer are not making a decision about the "paternalistic" decisions of Apple, who they employ, etc. They are buying a shiny object that makes their brain give them the happy juice.
I fear for our society if these two actions become one and the same.
"They are buying a shiny object that makes their brain give them the happy juice."
That doesn't sound unlike many voters of all sorts to me!
I understand that in an ideal market, a business has to react to demand. That in many industries, if you don't do what the customer wants, the customer leaves.
I do not think Apple operates in that world or by those rules.
Apple doesn't care what you think and they don't care if you buy their products.
Ironically, the only way you might get Apple to change isn't with your wallet, it's with your government. EU notching wins against Apple bad practices on behalf of Apple's European customers that their wallets never won them.
It was 6 centuries ago, when it was first invented, it has a much broader meaning now.
Anyway Apple is State and Government in Apple ecosystem
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paternalism/#Intr
> The civil law does not allow the enforcement of certain kinds of contracts, e.g., for gambling debts. It requires minors to have blood transfusions even if their religious beliefs forbid it. Persons may be civilly committed if they are a danger to themselves.
Doctors do not tell their patients the truth about their medical condition. A physician may tell the wife of a man whose car went off a bridge into the water and drowned that he died instantly when in fact he died a rather ghastly death.
A husband may hide the sleeping pills from a depressed wife. A philosophy department may require a student to take logic courses.
A teacher may be less than honest about telling a student that he has little philosophical ability.
All of these rules, policies, and actions may be done for various reasons; may be justified by various considerations. When they are justified solely on the grounds that the person affected would be better off, or would be less harmed, as a result of the rule, policy, etc., and the person in question would prefer not to be treated this way, we have an instance of paternalism.
As the examples indicate the question of paternalism is one that arises in many different areas of our personal and public life
M1 feels like a stepping stone in the same direction on laptops.
Personally it feels wrong to pay for a device someone can lock you out of and then refuse to unlock. It's like paying ransom without getting kidnapped.
You will be happy if apple bricks your M1 laptop if you forgot the password due to any reason. What happened to spirit of HN culture?
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204306
and Apple isn’t changing anything about how M1 Macs are secured over other Macs, and certainly not bricking them for lost passwords.
It is somewhat difficult to lock your own device so that you cannot factory reset it. You wouldn't just have to lose the passcode, you would also need to lose the credentials to your iCloud account as well as your purchase receipt for the phone. Then you become indistinguishable from a thief.
I am okay with Apple's choice on this, as I prefer the security and the theft deterrence. I keep several methods for recovering my iCloud account, and I keep the receipt for my expensive devices.
Does activation lock even apply to Macbooks?
Well this can happen to non tech savvy users like my wife who configured their device once and then just used it for couple of years until the day of the incident.
> I am okay with Apple's choice on this, as I prefer the security and the theft deterrence. I keep several methods for recovering my iCloud account, and I keep the receipt for my expensive devices.
This would mean market for stolen iDevices should not exist?
> Does activation lock even apply to Macbooks?
Not yet but it might once M1 becomes ubiquitous.
I have never managed to go anywhere near that long without being prompted for my iCloud password for one reason or another. And if you did lose the password, you could use password recovery to get it back.
It really seems like a contrived example.
Blaming Apple for “locking you out” when you were the one who locked the door and lost the key is silly.
Sorry but I had to LOL (combined with grey-haired head shaking). I've been a "technologist" for over 25 years. Every time some corporate entity or government body adds similar "security" they trot out this same cliche line. "Oh no no no it's not so we can CONTROL you, is so we can PROTECT you". Yeah, sure buddy.
I don’t think there is anything that suggests Apple is going to stop people from installing Apps outside their App Store. Rather it is about making sure it is easy for regular users to get Apps in a safe manner without malware and Trojan horses.
This isn’t just hype. We know for a fact that this is a much smaller problem on iOS than Android. I am happy that Android exists as a choice for users but let us not pretend there are no trade offs.
It is a bit too conspiratorial to think Apple control is all about some dictatorship fetish. It is a choice Apple makes to improve user experience at the expense of flexibility.