SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

Quote from: Matty on December 12, 2020, 04:05:30
then why do we not only keep falling for it but be proud of ourselves for falling for it?

Maybe it's down to the what sociologist call the 'Magpie Effect'.

Interesting.

The magpie effect (desire to accumulate shiny objects) - is that a real thing or merely an excuse sociologists have made up to *almost* pathologise human greed into illness?

more an urban description:

QuoteAn overwhelming urge to purchase an item of no practical value and/or out of once price range purely based on its appearance.
Usually the item in question is either glittery or catching the light causing the victim to become entranced by said item.

unfortunately (where the M1 is concerned), it doesn't really work as the product is 'that' good and will only get better. Rumour has it that the 'pro' release next year will be 8 or 16 high performance cores!

Mini review time - personal opinion :

I've had the Mac mini M1 ( 8gb / 512gb ssd ) for just over a week now and I have to say Apple have really upped their game. For a first outing with a new architecture they've done a sterling job for such early days. MacOS runs very smoothly and very stable ( not one crash yet ).

They are fast and in real terms I'd have the basic CPU performance around an Intel i7 ( ignoring the speedy hardware encoders from benchmarks ). The GPU is a vast increase in performance over the absolute shite Intel UHD 630 which was in the Mac mini 2018. GPU wise I'd gauge it about 20% below a Radeon Pro 580.

What surprised me the most is the phenomenal job they've done with Rosetta 2 to allow x86 apps. To be honest in most scenarios you wouldn't even know it's an x86 app run via emulation / conversion. However, when you do get native ARM apps you can tell the difference from their x86 counterparts, for example Chrome is a smoother and snappier experience over it's native version.

The M1 also runs super quiet and super cool. I ran a 4000x4000 iray render in Daz3D and it remained cool to the touch and whisper quiet. The same test on my intel Mac mini results in the fan kicking in and feeling toasty warm to the touch.

Side note : Daz3D doesn't work with Big Sur but using Crossover the Windows version runs extremely well.

The downside to all this is that I do need to use some Windows apps, mainly Visual Studio and as things stand it's looking like x86 Windows virtualisation isn't going to happen. Parallels have just released a beta version for the M1 but it's all ARM virtualisation and they state it can't do x86. Also there is no eGPU support which I think is just down to ARM drivers.

It's certainly going to be interesting to see how this all pans out over the next few years before they ditch intel completely.

@Qube
Think Qemu + some patches might of interest for you (x86 on m1).


bye
Ron

Quote from: Derron on December 19, 2020, 08:43:00
@Qube
Think Qemu + some patches might of interest for you (x86 on m1).

I've looked into that and apparently it's very slow. Not really an issue though as my main Mac is Intel based. The M1 is very impressive and no doubt I'll grab a beefed up custom one at some point in the future. I'll still need x86 for writing Windows apps so I'll either RDP into an Intel Mac or end up with a silent mini PC.

Can't you use parallels on the M1 Mac mini then?

I once had a Macbook Air which was awesome and survived the last years using MacOS on VMWare but I think it's the time to get a new Air... They're kind of affordable for what they can achieve and I'm tired of pimping my VMWare system to publish iOS games...

The new Mobile AMD cpu's were said to be 20 something percent faster in single core. They should be at that computer event this month. Maybe available in the summer. I stil prefer the Windows system. Apple would need to be emulating every windows game/app before it becomes interesting for me.

Quote from: Pakz on January 02, 2021, 11:37:38
The new Mobile AMD cpu's were said to be 20 something percent faster in single core. They should be at that computer event this month. Maybe available in the summer. I stil prefer the Windows system. Apple would need to be emulating every windows game/app before it becomes interesting for me.

Well I prefer Windows as well. But having a Ryzen now it makes it somehow impossible to continue with my VMWare approach. And for iOS game publishing this must be done with a Mac.

Quote
And for iOS game publishing this must be done with a Mac.

Not so, [technically yes, but], dunno if you seen my little posts about B4x's Hosted Mac Service:-

https://www.b4x.com/b4i.html

I have never tried the game creation features of B4x if I'm honest, but they do exist within its cross platform library:-

https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/igameview-library-for-games.70747/

But it seems to be a go'er, depending on what you want.

But certainly down the line I will be looking at it further when my little app thingy me bob is due a runout on iOs!

Dabz

Thanks Dabz: Yeah heard about that but ... but ... I need a reason to buy a Mac! 

Quote from: Xaron on January 02, 2021, 16:16:27
Thanks Dabz: Yeah heard about that but ... but ... I need a reason to buy a Mac! 

They're brilliant. I wouldn't be without mine.

Good enough?

Quote from: Xerra on December 20, 2020, 10:12:33
Can't you use parallels on the M1 Mac mini then?

There is a beta of Parallels which is for the M1 but it only does ARM virtualisation and can not use older x86 VM's or create new x86 VM's.

Microsoft do an ARM version of Windows which note also has x86 emulation. Apparently it's a bit slow.

From a personal point of view I need access to a lot of Windows features and apps for programming work and I highly doubt everything I'd need would work 100% flawlessly, for example SQL Server, Exchange,  Visual Studio .Net etc etc. So for me, as things stand right now, I couldn't use the M1 for everything I need.

Having said that, I do use the M1 Mac mini as my main computer ( great machines ) and I can RDP into a Windows VM on Intel Mac mini networked via Thunderbolt 3 ( not USB 3 )

My guess is that either full x86 emulation will land eventually or the x86 emulation in Windows ARM becomes better and better + of course Microsoft has to release it for users to purchase.