Windows is faster, better and more usable on my 16" MBP than macOS Big Sur...

[pshufd]

The Mac mini has always been like this. Worst Mac to buy IMO.

My solution to using the Mac mini:

1) I don't use Bluetooth
2) I had the monitor wake problem on one of my monitors. I just changed a setting on the monitor and that fixed it.
3) I've had no problems with the HDMI port

It's nice to read about the problems that others have with the product before purchase so that I expect them and can try to figure out fixes and workarounds.

It's a nice system but it's not perfect but pretty good to kick the tires. I can't run my production on it but I can run all of my office stuff - it handles that nicely. It will take a beefier version to replace my Windows desktop.

 

[Kung gu]

I still won't get an ARM MacBook as Intel and AMD are mature platforms. As much as M1 is powerful and efficient I still think alder lake will catch up and soon Intel will be in the lead.

x86 Windows is MUCH better than x86 macOS and x86 is where gaming and productivity still wins and will be for a long time. ARM needs a good 10 more years before its ready to compete with x86 platforms.

 

[pshufd]

I still won't get an ARM MacBook as Intel and AMD are mature platforms. As much as M1 is powerful and efficient I still think alder lake will catch up and soon Intel will be in the lead.

x86 Windows is MUCH better than x86 macOS and x86 is where gaming and productivity still wins and will be for a long time. ARM needs a good 10 more years before its ready to compete with x86 platforms.

An Alder Lake benchmark hit Geekbench 5 and it's pretty disappointing. It scored 1,287 / 8,950 for 8HP + 6EE cores. My guess is that it ran the single-core on one of the efficiency cores. I think that work needs to be done in the operating systems to select the right type of cores to use. The multicore of 8,950 is very disappointing but it implies the high performance cores in 12th gen to be the same or close to 11th gen. It's possible that most of the work of 12th gen is big-little and 14nm -> 10nm.

I think that 11th gen mobile and AMD's H series has resulted in very good improvements to x86 laptops and customers can often be satiated with performance improvements. It doesn't come close to the performance/watt of the M1 but software compatibility and upgradeability of x86 laptops in adding RAM or storage can make up for the great battery life of the M1.

What will be more interesting to me with 12th gen is what they do on the desktop. With 10nm process, will they be able to bring back the 10 core i9 or even a 12 core model? I'm not that interested in big-little because even tenth gen non-K Intel processes run on low power for me. The Intel CPUs are efficient and cool if you keep the clock speeds low and you can do this in multicore workloads with lots of cores. 13th gen is still going to be 10nm and that's ceding a lot of time to Apple Silicon. I would upgrade motherboard and CPU for the right system. At the moment, the Ryzen 5900 or 5950X are the leading candidates. Intel could be in the running with a ten core Gen 12.

Intel and AMD were quite lucky to bring out their 2021 mobile offerings when they did as previous generation chips made the M1 look really good by comparison.

 

[grmlin]

The equivalent of WSL is built in to macOS, actually macOS is built on top of a Unix/Linux system.
You can run all your favourite Linux commands in the command-line environment such as ls, rsync, dd and the like. In fact some commercial programs like Carbon Copy Cloner are simply clever wrappers around rsync.
If you want to go a bit further you can install Brew from brew.sh and run programs like wget and even graphical Linux programs like gnome-latex.

I know. I developed on Macs for over a decade ?

It’s not raw Linux and much slower, that was what I’m talking about. WSL pretty much provides a real Linux command line (and GUI if you need to) without a noticeable performance impact. Other than a Mac, where you of course have a native terminal, but with worse performance. Especially using software like docker which runs circles around a Mac on Linux because of the virtualization on hardware used for it

 

[LeeW]

Every MacBook I've even owned has beachball'd... I find it VERY odd that you claim you've never seen it...

I am using the M1 MM daily, never seen the beach ball to the best of my knowledge. And it has never been present much if at all in previous devices either. Having said that I do tend to go for a higher than base spec. Those that do have the beach ball recurring issue that I know of are using base model 8GB devices.

 

[Steve Adams]

I am going to disagree...

I have an M1 Air (getting sold to it's new owner tonight) and a Latitude 9420 with an i5. With the M1 chip in the Air, I've had the dreaded beachball several times when trying to open a simple app or file. My Windows 10 machine just scoots right through almost everything..

The M1 is faster for many things (power usage) but I would not say the M1 is snappy or that it opens apps and files instantly.

Blasphemy. That's unpossible.

 

[Steve Adams]

I am using the M1 MM daily, never seen the beach ball to the best of my knowledge. And it has never been present much if at all in previous devices either. Having said that I do tend to go for a higher than base spec. Those that do have the beach ball recurring issue that I know of are using base model 8GB devices.

But Lee, according to all the Youtuber's, and even Apple's own marketing team, the 8gb models are so powerful if you started ten at the same time, they could reverse the earth's rotation. ?

 

[Steve Adams]

True, but not that often actually. My M1 barely stalls, and if it does its mostly software related as far I can tell. Software, after all, didn‘t change that much, at least in user land.

Edit: this is interesting:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1326238434235568128

Quote:

“fun fact: retaining and releasing an NSObject takes ~30 nanoseconds on current gen Intel, and ~6.5 nanoseconds on an M1“

„…and ~14 nanoseconds on an M1 emulating an Intel“

Fun fact: current Gen intel's are 3 generations behind in apple. They are running 9th gen processors are they not?

 

[pshufd]

Fun fact: current Gen intel's are 3 generations behind in apple. They are running 9th gen processors are they not?

iMacs are tenth gen. Minis are from 2018 so maybe even 8th gen. MacBooks may be ninth.

 

[Steve Adams]

iMacs are tenth gen. Minis are from 2018 so maybe even 8th gen. MacBooks may be ninth.

Ok, So really comparing the M1 to those processors are pointless since there are much newer, faster chips out in the wild now. That's like comparing a 1984 ferrari 308 to a 296. Pointless. Apples to apples comparisons are much better and real world usage too, not benchmarks. The same thing goes for comparing supercars. One has 150 more hp but on a track, the lower HP is faster.

 

[LeeW]

But Lee, according to all the Youtuber's, and even Apple's own marketing team, the 8gb models are so powerful if you started ten at the same time, they could reverse the earth's rotation. ?

It's a fight I have given up on. If the user is your average web browser, media watcher then 8GB is fine. The minute you start installing all your favourite apps and other software an 8GB machine will start swapping sooner than later. Makes no difference how fast your storage is, the device will start to slow and the beach ball will appear at times, possibly often.

Honestly, I have had not one single issue with the new M1, using it daily, using it now, but I know many have issues and when those issues relate to performance it is always on an 8GB machine. I got a screenshot from someone that showed their device swapping 14GB. And the exact answer I got back when I said lack of ram was 'Apple said the 8GB was fine'. Memory pressure was even red..


And I mentioned previously if you look at the YouTube reviewers that lauded the 8GB entry-level M1 machines as all they needed, most have since upgraded. Some had the sense to openly admit that 8GB, once you start loading up a relatively small amount of apps/software put pressure on it that appeared excessive.

 

[grmlin]

8GB of RAM in 2021 is nonsense, no matter if it runs Windows or MacOS. For me personally it has to be 32GB at minimum, 64GB is better, just to be safe in the coming years. It would be 32GB for personal use without software development.

 

[Steve Adams]

8GB of RAM in 2021 is nonsense, no matter if it runs Windows or MacOS. For me personally it has to be 32GB at minimum, 64GB is better, just to be safe in the coming years. It would be 32GB for personal use without software development.

Agreed. My wife's dell has 4gb on board ram. But she only will ever be doing some basic surfing, word processing and cricut app work. Nothing intensive. It works fine for her. My notebook has 64gb of ram and my workstation has 128gb. I need that for my purposes. Don't get me started on drives either. Ha ha ha. That's a whole other ball of wax.

 

[pshufd]

Ok, So really comparing the M1 to those processors are pointless since there are much newer, faster chips out in the wild now. That's like comparing a 1984 ferrari 308 to a 296. Pointless. Apples to apples comparisons are much better and real world usage too, not benchmarks. The same thing goes for comparing supercars. One has 150 more hp but on a track, the lower HP is faster.

It's only Apples to Apples comparison if you're talking about the Operating System. It was a valid comparison on notebooks at WWDC 2020 and at launch in November 2020 because Apple did have a significant performance advantage in mobile. But that changed with AMD Zen3 H mobile processors and Intel 11th Gen Mobile processors in 2021.

 

[pshufd]

Ok, So really comparing the M1 to those processors are pointless since there are much newer, faster chips out in the wild now. That's like comparing a 1984 ferrari 308 to a 296. Pointless. Apples to apples comparisons are much better and real world usage too, not benchmarks. The same thing goes for comparing supercars. One has 150 more hp but on a track, the lower HP is faster.

Just verifying that Mini is 8th gen, MacBook Pro 13 is 10th gen, MacBook Pro 16 is 9th gen, iMac 27 is 10th gen, Mac Pro is 2nd generation Xeon scalable Cascade Lake released in April 2019. I'd call it 9th gen to categorize it with their consumer models but wouldn't object if someone made an argument against it. There have been leaks indicating Apple will update the Mac Pro CPUs.

I looked this all up just now.

 

[Steve Adams]

Just verifying that Mini is 8th gen, MacBook Pro 13 is 10th gen, MacBook Pro 16 is 9th gen, iMac 27 is 10th gen, Mac Pro is 2nd generation Xeon scalable Cascade Lake released in April 2019. I'd call it 9th gen to categorize it with their consumer models but wouldn't object if someone made an argument against it. There have been leaks indicating Apple will update the Mac Pro CPUs.

I looked this all up just now.

I would say mac Pro moving forward will have a new Msupremebeing chip installed in it.

 

[LeeW]

I don't think my MM usage is that significant and I use it for coding and front-end web development. Yet no way would I rely on 8GB, hence I got 16GB. For more intense tasks I have my PC with 32GB.

This is it right now.

I am running a LEMP stack, coding tools/software, very few apps running on this machine, it is purely for development, nothing heavy in terms of RAM usage. Currently 8.38GB on App Memory, only got a single browser window open.

If this was an 8GB machine with a general users installing all the usual crap incl apps it would be swapping in the GB's

 

[Madhatter32]

Ok, So really comparing the M1 to those processors are pointless since there are much newer, faster chips out in the wild now. That's like comparing a 1984 ferrari 308 to a 296. Pointless. Apples to apples comparisons are much better and real world usage too, not benchmarks. The same thing goes for comparing supercars. One has 150 more hp but on a track, the lower HP is faster.

I think you will see Intel and Microsoft moving to ARM chips over the next 5 years. It's a superior technology for most consumers. I think most in the industry recognize that x/86 is not the way of the future.

 

[Steve Adams]

I think you will see Intel and Microsoft moving to ARM chips over the next 5 years. It's a superior technology for most consumers. I think most in the industry recognize that x/86 is not the way of the future.

Where have I heard this before? hmmmmmm lemme see. Power PC comes to mind. Lets just say, that yes, for low power systems needing efficiency, yes Arm is great. For power, I think X86 will be just fine. AMD and Intel both have some new things coming out soon that will sort of work just fine. As for most of the industry comment, Apple is not most of the industry. They are the only ones fully integrating to ARM. Every other PC platform is running faster on X86 based chips now.

 

[pshufd]

Where have I heard this before? hmmmmmm lemme see. Power PC comes to mind. Lets just say, that yes, for low power systems needing efficiency, yes Arm is great. For power, I think X86 will be just fine. AMD and Intel both have some new things coming out soon that will sort of work just fine. As for most of the industry comment, Apple is not most of the industry. They are the only ones fully integrating to ARM. Every other PC platform is running faster on X86 based chips now.

IBM didn't really work on PowerPC which was why Apple was so annoyed. PowerPC was a RISC architecture that looked more like ARM than x86 but the thermals were really awful compared to Intel and that's saying a lot. I still have my PowerMac G5 in the basement and it last booted up in 2019. One of the big problems with x86 compared to Apple Silicon is VLIW and I think that Intel and AMD will be forced to go to ARM or RISC in the intermediate future.

Intel did own XScale, which is an ARM architecture, and sold it to Marvell back in 2006. They also had their Itanium project which turned into a train-wreck. It was their RISC approach that AMD sidelined with x86-64.

 

[Steve Adams]

IBM didn't really work on PowerPC which was why Apple was so annoyed. PowerPC was a RISC architecture that looked more like ARM than x86 but the thermals were really awful compared to Intel and that's saying a lot. I still have my PowerMac G5 in the basement and it last booted up in 2019. One of the big problems with x86 compared to Apple Silicon is VLIW and I think that Intel and AMD will be forced to go to ARM or RISC in the intermediate future.

Intel did own XScale, which is an ARM architecture, and sold it to Marvell back in 2006. They also had their Itanium project which turned into a train-wreck. It was their RISC approach that AMD sidelined with x86-64.

Im just stating history repeats itself. Back when PPC came out, Apple users were claiming then pc is dead, this one is dead, that one is dead. My intel based systems are still working fine.

 

[Madhatter32]

Where have I heard this before? hmmmmmm lemme see. Power PC comes to mind. Lets just say, that yes, for low power systems needing efficiency, yes Arm is great. For power, I think X86 will be just fine. AMD and Intel both have some new things coming out soon that will sort of work just fine. As for most of the industry comment, Apple is not most of the industry. They are the only ones fully integrating to ARM. Every other PC platform is running faster on X86 based chips now.

Look forward not backwards. It's kind of like the phrase "past performance is no guarantee of future results." I do not think that looking at the history of the Power PC is indicative of anything going forward. Intel is now in a mad dash to develop an ARM chip. It knows it need to do this to save its business. Microsoft too sees the writing on the wall. The industry is shifting whether you like it or not.

 

[LeeW]

Where have I heard this before? hmmmmmm lemme see. Power PC comes to mind. Lets just say, that yes, for low power systems needing efficiency, yes Arm is great. For power, I think X86 will be just fine.

Indeed, but times really have changed. Ok not so much that times have changed, but usage in particular really has.

I am seeing less and less relying on or even wanting a desktop device. Probably more a generational thing now. I would still rather have a desktop device. Or at least a laptop that plugged into a good-sized monitor and so on.

The younger generation uses their phones for most things, a tablet perhaps. a PC type device is for core work and for most these days ARM is going to work for the masses. It will perform the majority of tasks just fine. for others, there will always be an X86 until there is no need for one. ultimately, yes, I think we will now see far wider adoption of ARM.

 

[grmlin]

Indeed, but times really have changed. Ok not so much that times have changed, but usage in particular really has.

I am seeing less and less relying on or even wanting a desktop device. Probably more a generational thing now. I would still rather have a desktop device. Or at least a laptop that plugged into a good-sized monitor and so on.

The younger generation uses their phones for most things, a tablet perhaps. a PC type device is for core work and for most these days ARM is going to work for the masses. It will perform the majority of tasks just fine. for others, there will always be an X86 until there is no need for one. ultimately, yes, I think we will now see far wider adoption of ARM.

We didn't yet see what Apple does with it's chip in a real desktop computer. I find it hard to believe that they put all the work into the Mac Pro just to let it die now that they transition to ARM.

I don't even think that X86 is bad or anything, AMD does great stuff and really pushed Intel. Intel just fell asleep in the early 2010s and only recently woke up. Both the Intel chips I had in my 2019 MBP 15" and now P53 aren't that different to the one in the MBP from 2014. A little bit faster, sure, but definitely not worth waiting for 6 years.

 

[drdudj]

around and around it goes! I don't understand people who rag on a certain system, be it the MacBook Air M1, or the Big Sur OS, or any other system that doesn't provide what you as a consumer specifically need. most intelligent users will spend time researching systems before they buy, via reviews, word of mouth, or hands on demo time. if you are a power user why would you buy an entry level computer with minimum ram and storage and then complain about it's performance? if the latest windows system does all that you need it to do, that's great.