[mootzville]

I don't understand why you'd want a Mac unless you intended to run it's provided OS.

With Linux you can get the same hardware for half the price from other manufacturers.

EDIT: By 'same hardware' I mean 'hardware with comparable / equivalent performance'

[alimbada]

Except there's no current hardware that has comparable / equivalent performance to Apple Silicon chips. The tightly integrated SoC allows for optimisations that x86 chips can't even get close to in certain workloads like video editing. That's not to say that M1 can do it all, but for the workloads it excels at (and it excels at the majority) it is absolutely the best choice for those that need it.

Even discounting the performance benefits of Apple Silicon, the reliability and longevity of Apple products in and of itself is reason enough for me to purchase them. I'm still using an early 2011 Macbook Pro as my personal laptop but I no longer get macOS upgrades; it's stuck on 10.13 and has been for some time so I'll be installing Linux on it at some point in the near future.

And I say all this as someone who once hated Apple for their price premiums. I still find their prices hard to swallow even though I have the means now compared to back then. But their prices are easier to justify for me once you take all of the above into account.

[webmobdev]

The only real attraction of the M1 Apple Silicon is the power saving it offers, especially on laptops where it means longer battery life. Other performance metrics are just temporary gains that AMD / Intel will match up with future CPUs. (Intel and AMD themselves used to compete similarly, with each bettering the other over the years, and it will be no different with Apple Silicons too).

Everybody understands that with soldered RAM, SSD and a closed SoC the M1 Apple Silicon Macs are just one step away from being a completely closed system like the iPhone / iPad platform - all that Apple has to do is lock the boot-loader of the Mac, like on iPhones / iPads, and tighten SIP to prevent installation outside of its App Store. When (not if) they do this, the users will be effectively trapped into the Apple ecosystem, with them beholden to Apple's mercy on how effectively and how long they can use their system (planned obsolescence).

This is why many with common sense have ignored the new Apple M1 systems, and continue to stick with the more open systems relying on AMD / Intel. Constant hyping of "Linux on M1" is meant to counter the perception of the closed-box macOS mono-culture, and give us the false hope that the M1 macs are just like any other Intel / AMD computer. Where as the reality is that unless Apple releases hardware documentation for it, all non-macOS operating systems on the M1 will always offer sub-par performance.

[marcan_42]

> Apple Silicon Macs are just one step away from being a completely closed system like the iPhone / iPad platform

Apple Silicon Macs are based on the iPhone / iPad platform. Apple chose to spend a significant amount of developer time adding the ability for users to securely load their own kernels, which is part of the new BootPolicy system that iDevices do not have, and a documented feature with multiple official tools to support it. There is a blog writen by Apple's head of XNU development detailing how to use it. If Apple wanted to lock these machines down they would've just not done any of that.

As for soldered RAM, you would need 8 RAM sticks in individual channels to match the M1 Max's memory bandwidth, at a much higher power consumption. Modular RAM is no longer viable for low-power, high-performance laptops. Modular, low power, high performance: pick two. It's just the way the physics works. Carrying a 512-bit bus across a connector isn't free, it has a significant power/performance cost due to increased capacitance and decreased signal integrity.

(Soldered SSDs, sure, that's a valid concern, but it has nothing to do with the OS.)

> Where as the reality is that unless Apple releases hardware documentation for it, all non-macOS operating systems on the M1 will always offer sub-par performance.

Funny enough, we already have better VM performance than macOS thanks to supporting the M1's vGIC (which macOS does not use yet), and we've also figured out how to work around a USB death issue that affects macOS, and I'm already putting making simultaneous DisplayPort 1.4 + USB3 work if at all possible on my TODO list, because I just found out macOS can't do it.

No documentation doesn't mean we can't beat Apple at their own game.

[mst]

> Modular RAM is no longer viable for low-power, high-performance laptops.

The fact that this is true makes me grumpy for all the obvious reasons, but even at my rather less informed level of understanding it's still obviously true.

My "solution" here is basically to enjoy the better batter life while grumbling quietly to myself ;)

[webmobdev]

Whatever you said doesn't at all change my assertion that the M1 is now just one step away from becoming a closed system - With the M1, Apple can now easily lock the bootloaders of M1 Macs any time and make it a completely closed platform like the iPhones / iPads. And it is evident that Apple has been planning this for years:

1. The first few Intel Mac Minis allowed you some level of customisation of both the hardware (change RAM or HDD / SSD) and software (install other full featured OS).

2. Then came the Mac Minis with soldered RAM and SSD. You could no longer customise the hardware. Software was still customisable and you could still install other OSes. (Recall that Apple even offered free drivers for another OS, i.e. Windows).

3. The current generation of M1 Mini now doesn't allow you to customise both the hardware (everything is soldered) and the software. Technically you can install other OSes, but the reality is that currently only crippled versions of Linux and xBSD is available and practically the only full-featured OS available for it is macOS.

These are clear indicators of how Apple has been working slowly to lockdown the Mac platform like their ios platforms. (The strategy to keep you in denial - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog - has been working great for them). The reason for this is simple - BigTech are increasingly moving towards selling everything as a service. Services are more profitable because it means they create recurring income (even after the device is sold) which means more profits. and Apple's successful business model for this, that earns them billions of dollars, is the closed-platform model that is evident on iPhones / iPads.

> Modular RAM is no longer viable for low-power, high-performance laptops.

That is deliberately misleading and ignorant. Low Power DDR chips (that are soldered) were invented for mobile phones where every watt drawn matters. On laptops they offer only negligible power savings that doesn't really matter - yes, the power saving is negligible on a laptop as the difference in power used in modular RAM vs LPDDR is between 1 to 0.5 volt. That matters on phones because they have small batteries (5 - 15 Watt-hour), but that power saving is negligible on a laptop as it has bigger batteries (40 - 95 Watt-hour).

It's as good as meaningless when you consider what you lose - soldered ram can't be upgraded and is hard to repair. The loss of this big benefit - repairability - hugely trumps the minor power savings. Apple, and others, know this very well - for them, the real attraction to using soldered RAM is that it allows for planned obsolescence.

In fact, reasonable alternative ram chips like DDR3L (low voltage) and DDR3U (ultra low voltage) that offer lower power on modular RAM that were specifically created for servers and laptops, have been deliberately ignored by computer manufacturers, in favour of soldered LPDDR, and that is why the memory industry too is forced to do more R&D on them.

[marcan_42]

> the M1 is now just one step away from becoming a closed system

Just like almost every other computer. Any manufacturer can do this at will with new systems or a firmware update. You are making a strawman argument. The question is whether they will, and the answer is they seem to have no intention to do so given how much time they spent not doing it. Soldering things down has nothing to do with locking down firmware.

> install other full featured OS

All current M1 machines allow you to install any full featured OS. Apple just isn't writing the drivers for us. There is nothing locked down when you run your own OS. I know because I also run macOS kernels under my hypervisor that way and everything works exactly as it does when booting in Apple-signed mode.

Your claim seems to boil down to "Apple changed their hardware in a way that Linux doesn't support". Well, duh. That's what we're fixing. Nothing about that means they're locking anything down.

> That is deliberately misleading and ignorant.

You didn't even bother to read my comment. The M1 Max has a 512-bit RAM bus. That is equal to 8 RAM sticks (DIMMs are 64 bits). Do you want a laptop with 8 RAM sticks?

Each one of those 4 RAM chips on the M1 Max has 8 RAM dies internally, each handling 16 bits as independent channels, for a total of 128 bits per chip. Typical DDR RAM chips as used in DIMMs are 8 bits each (which is why you get 8 per DIMM to make 64 bits). You would need 64 such chips to reach the same bus width (and thus similar bandwidth).

You just can't make that modular short of putting your RAM on a thousand-pin LGA package like CPUs themselves, and that'd still increase power consumption (and significantly increase physical size, which again makes the power consumption problem worse as it makes your interconnect longer). It just can't work with DIMMs and with standard non-LP DDR technology.

> On laptops they offer only negligible power savings that doesn't really matter.

Yeah, until you make a laptop that is actually power efficient like this one, and then suddenly it does. These things draw milliwatts when idle and have aggressive RAM power saving that puts channels into low power modes after mere microseconds (I know because I've been investigating the memory controller power management config and benchmarking memory accesses). That's part of how they get amazing battery life. You can't do that with regular DDR RAM. These things will run for a week with light usage, and they can do that because they are based on extremely efficient mobile architectures. Your phone lasts a day; make the battery larger without increasing idle power usage and that's how you get a week.

> the difference power used in modular RAM vs LPDDR is between 1 to 0.5 volt.

It is evident you have little hardware engineering experience if you think power is measured in volts. That's not how it works.

I would advise you to spend some time reading up on high-speed digital interfaces and learn about concepts such as ohm's law, IR loss, capacitance, impedance, eye diagrams, and insertion loss. LPDDR RAM is much lower power than regular RAM precisely because it can optimize for very short interconnects, which is why you won't find DIMMs of it. It's not just about the voltage.

[webmobdev]

Your whole tactic during this debate is to just throw lot of technical jargons to try and confuse the reader and to evade the actual fact - all the hardware changes Apple has made has also been done to create a closed system to support the software services.

All the techno-babble spouted by you, to make yourself appear more knowledgeable, and the cheap potshot on me (also an engineer), desperately tries to hide the fact that high performing modular RAM architecture already exist without all the modifications Apple has made to their hardware with the aim to deliberately create an un-repairable and closed system.

I have clearly pointed out how Apple has been converting the macOS into a closed system, on both the hardware and software front, over the years. This is an undisputable fact as the only thing that now distinguishes the M1 Macs and the iPhone / iPad platform is the bootloader.

And looking at Apple's business model, it is only logical that Apple will soon be locking the bootloader of the Macs too, once it reaches a critical level of acceptance (and we are far off from that, for now).

The M1 is undoubtedly a great piece of hardware - but it has been deliberately designed with built-in planned obsolescence. That's good for Apple's profit margin. But not for us consumers.

[dagw]

With Linux you can get the same hardware for half the price from other manufacturers.

That might have been true before, but today no one else is selling ARM laptops that can match the M1 Pro in performance and efficiency.

[danlugo92]

No one else is selling laptops period that can match the M1 Pro in performance and efficiency. Much less the M1 Max.

[mootzville]

Agreed, but who will better take advantage of the CPI's architecture to utilize those gains, the same people making the hardware and native OS, or a Linux distro? Just because a CPU can do something does not mean every OS / kernel is going to use it.

What I was getting at is if you want Linux, you can get a good Lenovo or Dell for about $1000-1200 that would seem / feel compararble to a $2000 macbook.

[saagarjha]

Some people just want Linux. Running it on Apple silicon (that is, aarch64) is exactly what they want–performance wise, it'll run circles around anything else in that price race.

[messe]

> EDIT: By 'same hardware' I mean 'hardware with comparable / equivalent performance

Where are you finding laptops with comparable displays at half the price?

[diffeomorphism]

What do you want to compare about the display?

- Resolution? There the macbooks are behind both in aspect ratio (worse than 3:2) and in pixels (4k or 4k+ vs...)

- Contrast? Not OLED, so worse.

- Refresh rate? Good enough, but far from top of the line.

- Gamut? That is a point. But also available e.g. asus

- Brightness? Outdoor viewable screens have been as bright as that or brighter since windows XP days, but fairly specialized. I guess I prefer contrast (OLED), but yeah, difficult to find outside a macbook.

- Touch, wacom pen? Oh, none.

It is a really great quality screen, but not "the best".

[ArgyleSound]

He suggested that you can't find a similar or better quality display for $1000, not that it's the best display that exists.

At that price point you can find something that, at best, meets three of the criteria you've listed while heavily compromising on the rest.

[messe]

> It is a really great quality screen, but not "the best".

I never said it was the best. The previous poster said that you can find comparable hardware at half the price. At lower price points than MacBooks/Dell XPS/Microsoft Surface, I've usually found the screen quality to be the hardest to match.

[qudat]

link us with better alternatives please

[diffeomorphism]

Asus for example (oled, $600)

Or huawei (ips, 3:2, touchscreen, $700 or so)

Or having pen and touch at all.

[the_lucifer]

So, you just mentioned two different brands for features that a single laptop display has.

[diffeomorphism]

No, I mentioned features that the single laptop does not have at all, which you can get elsewhere and for much cheaper even.

[capableweb]

Prefacing this with that I'm not normally a Apple fan and use Linux on Intel and AMD CPUs as my daily driver.

Apple does do incredible hardware, but their software is really crappy, from UX to reliability and being general useful. Since the M1 appeared, I've been looking at purchasing it only for the hardware, but then run something like Arch Linux on it, as that software experience is really hard to beat.

So in short, the combination of Apple hardware but Open Source/Linux software makes a lot of sense and is a pleasure to work with. The hardware Apple been producing lately been kind of shit though, so it's not until now it starts being interesting again.

[josephg]

Yeah I’ve been an apple fan for years. As of a couple of days ago my work desk has a M1 MacBook pro and a ryzen x5800 running Linux Mint. The CPUs are remarkably similar - same core count, and only slightly different single core performance. So the only main difference is software.

I expected the MacBook to blow Linux out of the water - after all, their hardware and software integration is excellent. The trackpad drivers and consistent UI is fantastic. But watching CPU usage on both machines, Linux mint stays lean and quiet while the MacBook has all sorts of weird processes popping up to do who knows what.

On macos the “WindowServer” process sometimes just pegs an entire core until I reboot. My usb-c Ethernet dongle doesn’t do hardware offload, so cpu usage goes way up when I use it. Firefox uses way more CPU on macos than it does on Linux. And there’s random processes all the time reporting things to apple or other garbage like that. I’ve been googling process names all day trying to figure out what all this crap does. Spotify alone uses 10% of a core on macos sometimes, even when it’s not even playing music.

It was a pain to get Linux working how I want it to. But now that it’s mostly[1] set up, it feels snappier and more reliable than macos. When I don’t touch the computer, it settles at 0% CPU; just like it should. I suppose that’s what the desktop looks like without the last decade of macos features that nobody really cares about.

I’m really surprised how close the competition feels between my two machines; though I miss Snow Leopard.

[1] Keyboard shortcuts on are all over the place in Linux though. And I can’t even set keyboard shortcuts up how I’d like because intellij can’t use the meta key as a modifier. And the Linux trackpad drivers are nowhere near as well tuned as they are in macos. In linux the trackpad is way too sensitive. I’m sure there’s a way to fix it hiding in a config file somewhere.

[kaladin-jasnah]

Maybe because the M1 is a powerful, low-power-consumption CPU and it is very hard to get powerful aarch64 CPUs outside of this? Not everyone likes macOS.