[Eric_WVGG]

25.1% Mac growth. For professionals and enthusiasts, you either just got your M1, you’re saving for one, or waiting on the Pro Desktops.

I’m curious to see if there’s any change to the replacement rate of Macs. It seems normal for people to use the same laptop for four or more years — a far sight longer than the two-year life expectancy of laptops twenty years ago, but about half of the replacement rate of smartphones.

There's one benefit of these DIY designs that seems under-reported: Apple can now develop stuff like the "neural engine". Chips that aren't just faster or more efficient than Intel offerings, but also do different things.

I think there's almost no chance that I'll be upgrading to an M2 Pro next year or the following, but there's every possibility that the M3 Pro won't just be a faster Apple Silicon chip. If future Macbooks are more than just "the same thing but faster," dorks like me will be retiring our computers a lot faster.

[zamalek]

> you either just got your M1

Yeah, and hold off for now. I'm the guy making sure that new onboards don't get blocked by M1 (as you can't but Intel anymore). Segfaults in docker/qemu (amd64 and arm64) are numerous: I can't build our otherwise boring (and recent) docker images locally - it has to go to a Linux ARM server. What truly bends my mind is that I am getting framerate/audio/input hitching on the desktop when one of the broken containers pegs 3 of the cores at 100% (and it's not just my machine).

It's a circus, wait for M2 or M3 unless your workload is influencing, blogging, and checking email.

[BugsJustFindMe]

It's weird seeing someone imply that work is either Docker or blogging. Feels a bit too on the nose HN parody to be real.

[Eric_WVGG]

“Influencing, blogging, email” wtf?

I mostly do React/web dev and some dabbling with SwiftUI. I spent most of 2021 doing that on an M1 Air and it was a joy.

((The only kink I’ve run into was trying to deploy a serverless app; Docker did indeed make that a nonstarter. So I just accomplished it the old fashioned way (a dippy little VM running in a cloud server). Not a deal-breaker.))

Most of my friends are graphic designers who use Adobe apps (nearly all ported to ARM). The only reason most of them haven’t upgraded is because they want 27” iMacs.

What on earth do you think most people do with computers?

[dwaltrip]

That quote is a textbook example of how to ruin a comment with some unnecessary and inaccurate flamebait.

[joshspankit]

As someone who’s been around for a minute, I’m jadedly amused that your argument is that M2 or M3 will fix these things.

What they will do is be faster and more widely adopted. Docker (and everyone else) will do the heavy lifting to fix those, including any that are specifically Apple bugs.

[zamalek]

Assuming that the average person in this thread "enjoys Apple products," holding back on the M1 is a reasonable piece of advice. If you're not an Apple fan, then now is definitely not the time to dip your toes in.

This experience has done nothing but prove my previously unsubstantiated beliefs. I am pushing for Linux laptops at work.

[broknbottle]

The Docker Desktop app for macOS being a pile of crap has nothing to do with Apple silicon. It's always been like that..

[easton]

Have you played with Rancher Desktop at all? They just hit 1.0.0 and it’s a replacement for docker desktop on macOS/Windows. Beware, it says kubernetes all over their site but it provides the docker cli and works pretty much the same way.

https://rancherdesktop.io/

[zamalek]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm also planning on giving Lima a whirl, but that's tricky for the same reason I'm stuck with Apple (finance, MDM, the Apple privacy/encryption dominance).

[drodgers]

Yeah, don't rely on docker's quemu x86 emulation - it doesn't work.

Everything else has been an absolute breeze though (and so fast!).

[_ph_]

Yeah, 27" iMac owner here, desperately waiting for an upgrade. If Apple had been a bit more open about the road map, I might have bought an air around the release date to bridge the time till the iMac update. Wouldn't say no to a (smaller) Mac Pro with an external display (if Apple offered that) either.

[michaelmarion]

This. I want an M1 Max in a Mac mini, and especially an Apple-branded display or three that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

[tonyedgecombe]

>and especially an Apple-branded display or three that doesn't cost an arm and a leg

I think you are going to be out of luck there.

[olliej]

I'm hoping for a pro desktop with something more advanced than the current M1s - e.g not just an M1 with more cores. I want a Nvidia/amd class gpu, etc.

[peregren]

Does your hope have any foundation in reality?

[GeekyBear]

The same guy who called the chips in the recent two MacBook Pro models made a prediction for the Mac Pro at the same time.

>Gurman claims that Apple has developed two SoCs for the new Mac Pro, codenamed 'Jade 2C-Die' and 'Jade 4C-Die'. These SoCs would have 20 or 40 CPUs cores, which would be significantly more than anything Apple has planned for its MacBook range. Both have performance and power-saving clusters though, split 16/4 and 32/6. Gurman also expects 'Jade 2C-Die' and 'Jade 4C-Die' to feature 64 or 128 GPU cores, a huge uplift on the GPUs found in the current Mac Pro.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-is-reputedly-developing-...

[gjsman-1000]

Absolutely. Rumors that have been correct so far (and correctly predicted the M1 Pro and M1 Max 16 and 32 GPU core configurations) say that Apple is planning a 2 and 4 M1 Max multi-die design in the future. The M1 Max already has a die-to-die interconnect bus that is unused. Also, according to reverse engineer Hector Martin, the interrupt controller on the M1 Max theoretically allows for up to 8 M1 Max dies (though whether Apple is planning such an insane layout is unknown and unlikely.)

If the (very likely) 2-die version is released, that'll be 64 Apple GPU cores. If the (likely) 4-die version is released, that'll be 128 Apple GPU cores. Coupled alongside that would be up to 32 Performance cores and 8 efficiency cores. That should be good competition for anything NVIDIA and Intel Xeon.

[justsomehnguy]

> That should be good competition for ... Intel Xeon.

Poor Xeons with meager TBs of RAM.

[smoldesu]

Even if you managed to strap 4 M1 Max together, you'd only have enough memory lanes to drive 256gb of RAM.

[olliej]

No, that’s why I said that I hope … :)

[Ntrails]

> It seems normal for people to use the same laptop for four or more years — a far sight longer than the two-year life expectancy of laptops twenty years ago, but about half of the replacement rate of smartphones.

Are people really still replacing their phones every two years? Mine always last for 4+