Because this thread isn't about x86 news; it's about a laptop. And Apple makes laptops, which have the M1 chip in them. It's completely fair to discuss them, especially because one of the selling points of TFA is that it supports coreboot.
Honestly? Efficiency & battery life without sacrificing speed/performance.
If you need great battery life (or simply don't want to have to worry about charging your laptop frequently), it's hard to swallow ~4-10h battery life of a typical X86 laptop when MBA/MBP are consistently achieving 10-16+ with real-world use.
...not to mention the other perks MacBooks hold over their competitors, e.g. fit/finish, display quality, speakers, etc.
>They serve completely different markets.
Do they, though? With so many things being web-based these days, it's not very hard for most people (without specific needs) to switch to an M1 as their primary device without experiencing problems.
Really? I have a 2019 MBP and it doesn't last more than 3 hrs on 100% charge. The only usage is for the web development. And this is my third MBP (the old ones are dead because their magic boards became dead after the expiry of 1yr warranty + 2yr AppleCare plan).
The battery drains pretty quickly if I attach it to an external monitor.
Also, the evil `kernel_task` process eats up all CPU cores (for minutes and the machine remains unusable in the meantime) that drains the battery within an hour if I don't keep my table fan pointed at it (probably because Apple doesn't give a sh*t about the products they sell in India and their performance at 30-45 deg celsius temperature which is normal in Indian subcontinents).
I never get more than a couple hours on my MBP, 2.5-3 tops.
You state this as if they are 2 different things. Sadly, more and more shittily designed sites are using more and more resources. Whether that's just a poorly written bit of JS or a maliciously written bit of JS, web browsing is becoming more compute intensive.
Especially due to the better branch prediction, the M1 simply does quite a bit more web browsing with fewer VPU cycles used, thus less power consumption.
It still gets a battery life of “oh I showed up to an all-day working session with a friend with 50% battery life and forgot my charger and I don’t have any anxiety about that” battery life.
I think the least it’s ever gotten was around 10 hours. I’m still getting 14+ after a couple years of abusing the battery charge levels.
The iPhone 13 Pro Max is also the first phone I truly never worry about battery life since a late-stage flip phone in 2007. (Or the Samsung S5 Active which had a replaceable battery, I just carried a couple extra around in my pocket).
I wasn't just asking because of the potential wear on the battery from abuse, but M1 laptops did not exist 2 years ago. Although the intel macbooks still had great battery life for their size. People who put their device through it's paces and wonder why the battery is draining so fast are a special breed that's for sure.
Why do people insist you need to buy a Ferrari when your work or lifestyle requires an F-150?
Therefore, back to my original question, why do M1 fans need go off topic on every X86 article and spray the same things over and over again: "but muh' Geekbench score", "muh' excellent battery life", "muh' no fan noise" and insist you're wrong for choosing to go X86 even though you don't have a choice because of the architecture.
We know the pros, Ok? But some of us still need X86 machine like the one in the article, regardless if those are machines not for you. And if they're not for you, that's fine, but why always bang on with the M1 trope everywhere?
On top of the software I can't run on M1, I can't stand, from an ergonomic perspective, MacOS's rigid opinionated workflow and Apple's stance on upgradability, repairability and general environmental unfriendliness, plus their pricing on RAM and NAND storage wich have two to four times the markups I can gen get on the free market for the Framework (RAM and Storage are more important to me than screaming M1 performance) but that's besides the point, my main point is that I can't run my software and tools on the M1, so I don't understand why everyone on HN wants to crucify you for using X86 instead of M1.
>so I don't understand why everyone on HN wants to crucify you for using X86 instead of M1.
No one's "crucifying" anyone, nor "insisting you're wrong for choosing X86".
People are just (rightly) impressed & excited by M1's efficiency/performance/battery life - for many that's a highly desirable set of traits in a laptop, so it's easy to recommend. Sorry this seems to offend you.
Need? I'm not judging for what one does in their own time, but need? Is that really true, or are we pushing this term just a bit for dramatic purposes? Like, are you getting paid for running this games? Are the use of these games part of your actual J O B? If so, then yes, I'll agree need is accurate.
The cheapest M1 laptop is actually really affordable, almost the same price as this laptop's cheapest configuration. This is probably the exact product I would be looking for if I were trying to avoid buying from Apple. I couldn't find anything on cooling/fans, so IDK if this will be another standard Intel jet engine and lap burner.
What do you mean? The root post complains about M1 and thus it was brought up. It's not like an Apple bro army parachuted in and started comparing x86 to the M1
Computer enthusiasts have heard for ages that X86 is bloated, and that alternate instruction sets are better if only the tooling good catch up. Now that Apple is pushing ARM across the line, and ARM servers are becoming popular - folks want to see the linux ARM machine.
The SSD is also a misnomer. The influencers couldn’t put a normal SSD in a mac and make it boot. But they don’t understand that there is integration with the crypto at hardware level. And there’s no reason to suspect that apple won’t provide SSD replacements on the open market as part of their self repair program.
This is the power of crappy influencer bloggers. Distributing misinformation which everyone parrots verbatim. They are a cancer on the planet and so are the followers.
Realistically these are absolutely trivial issues in the scale of things blown way out of proportion by people looking for problems rather than actually using the hardware.
No, Linus put the SSD from another Mac Studio into the second slot of a Mac Studio and it wouldn't boot, and it wouldn't even run recovery to format everything and do a factory reset. So Apple is obviously firmware locking the Mac Studios to their factory configuration despite only genuine Apple hardware being used in the upgrade.
Again Linus doesn’t know what he’s doing. Another influencer confirming my point.
This is not a PC. That’s where the assumption goes wrong.
He showed you CAN replace the SSD modules but only with identic size ones, but you CAN'T upgrade to bigger ones as that triggers the firmware lock.
Watch the video he posted he tried what you mentioned.
There isn't a single other SSD controller on the market that knows how to work with arbitrary quantities of NAND flash chips because it's an unnecessary engineering challenge, I don't know why anybody thinks it's remotely reasonable to expect Apple's to be different.
Also there’s some holes in the back you can upgrade your storage with…
That is troubling for me and I believe is not a super ethical practice!
Edit: Fix grammar mistake
It also affects how he presents the facts and directs the videos.
I say this while loving Framework and hoping that their approach puts pressure on likes of Apple for openness. No sympathy for Apple here.
I think this is mixed messaging to be honest.
Everything comes off if you yank on it hard enough. Even the fingers on your hand. That's not how great UX or environmentally friendly repairability works though.
>I think this is mixed messaging to be honest.
Regardless what it is, it's Apple's fault here. They claim it's officially not user replaceable. Good luck with a warranty claim if you yank on it and break something, as Apple's position is clear: You're not supposed to remove it yourself.
And how about Apple's famous "we care about our CO2 emissions so much, we removed the iPhone charger to save the environment", if now you're saying you should make CO2 emissions and drive your monitor to the Apple store to replace a friggin power cord that can be done at home on any other monitor on the planet.
It's infuriating.
I don't get all those accusations that are constantly recirculated on tech forums. A non-removable power cord has a big advantage: it's hard to lose it. I've never damaged a power cord before (or heard of someone who had) so is it really that damning you should go to a repair shop for something like that? Also, Apple never advertised removable SSD modules. I don't care what they put in that box as long as it works as advertised.
How could you possibly loose a monitor power cord? It's not a portable device that you travel with. But in a home or office setting I can certainly see the cord getting crimped under the weight of the feet of desks or chairs.
>so is it really that damning you should go to a repair shop for something like that?
Yes, going with your equipment to an Apple Store enquires down time and extra costs that wouldn't be a problem if you could swap the cable yourself in two minutes.
Heck, they already do that with the excellent removable mag-safe power cable on the Studio display. Come on! Seriously. They proved they can do it but choose not to because fck the consumers and the environment.
>Also, Apple never advertised removable SSD modules. I don't care what they put in that box as long as it works as advertised.*
That's the problem. It's not about you, it's about the environment and the e-waste that these company's products generate because while they could be more user upgradable and repairable like the old Macs were that people still upgrade and use today, Apple now spends resources to make sure their new products are not upgradable or repairable, in order to have you buy more of their stuff instead of keep using their old products for longer.
This is an interesting bit about how the same company can "design" so many different ways to do the same thing. I wouldn't expect them to have a dedicated team to design power cords/sockets. So teams designing different products at the same time will probably have slightly varying designs. Then I go back to that's what VPs are for to see what's going on within each design team and see how good ideas from one can be shared in the other teams.
In other words, how can something as cool and useful as Magsafe be on one thing and not obviously mandated to be used on all the things?
> I can certainly see the cord getting crimped by furniture and damaged under the weight of the feet of desks or chair legs. And yet I've never seen such a damaged chord.
> it's about the environment and the e-waste that these company's products generate because while they could be more user upgradable and repairable like the old Macs were the people still upgrade and use No one in their right mind would want to be dependent on hardware running toward the end of the bell curve for anything 'mission critical'. Also, why do you think those SSD modules are removable? Probably saves you quite a lot when one dies since you don't have to replace the logic board.
It's also useful in some setups to use power cords with right-angled connectors, because they make cable management easier.
Also, moving to another country is easier with standard sockets: just get a couple of new power cables from any random hardware store and you're good to go!
Lose??? The power cord for a big monitor???
The mental gymnastics are amazing! Good old Stevie J., now turned zombie, still projecting the distortion field.
But yes, it is a bit strange to write it down as an “advantage”.
Well they're already in legal trouble for abusing their iOS market dominance with the new EU proposed legislation, they know the tides are turning against big tech, so they didn't lock down the MacBooks preemptively to brace themselves for what's coming, not because Apple has somehow now become a FOSS supporter.
Before you applaud Apple for being too libre and think the company has changed direction, keep in mind this is the same company that ships recently launched monitors without user replaceable power cords and locks out in firmware the possibility to upgrade the SSDs on the very expensive Mac Studio despite teardowns showing that it's phisically possible by end users.
Also, as a curiosity, why is every thread related to a X86 news, need to bring in the Apple M1 fan army and bang their drums? They serve completely different markets. For those consumers or companies that need to run X86 windows/Linux binaries that have no Mac ports, M1 based hardware is off the table from the start. And the device from this topic is designed to cater to that market, not to compete with M1.