zimmie

JamesBrickley said:

The old Apple Xserves had iLO Lights-Out management.  But none of the modern Macs have the necessary BMC chips and remote management functionality of PC servers.  It would be nice to have that.

They actually do have an equivalent to a BMC, though Apple calls it an SMC. Also, all Macs with built in 10g network interfaces except the iMac Pro support lights out management over the 10g interface. This includes the Mac mini if you spend the $100 to get the 10g interface. Would be nice if they had a more standard way of interacting with it (Redfish!), but it's enough to manage the hardware after initial setup. It's also hard to mess up in a way which could leave the system open to attackers.

maltz said:

darkvader said:

maltz said:

At some point you have to ask if a row of Mac Minis are the right tools for the job...  probably a point well before this.  lol

Oh, it isn't.  But since Apple killed the Xserve, it's the only tool we've got.  VERY stupid move on Apple's part.

Honest question:  Why is ANY Mac the right tool for the job?  I'm not sure what server application is better handled by macOS than by Linux these days.

There are certain services which only run on macOS. Most notably, Xcode Server, which allows you to run build and test bots to do work submitted by developer workstations. UI testing in Xcode involves a piece of software operating the system like a blind person would. It moves the cursor around, actually clicks on things, and so on. When running a suite of UI tests, the system running the tests is unavailable for any other UI work, so people really like being able to push that work to a remote server.

Apple also provides a content caching service which runs on macOS and caches software updates, stuff from the store, and so on.

On a purely subjective note, I cannot stand Linux, and I'm of the opinion that any application would be better handled by macOS than by Linux. With the widespread adoption of systemd, pretty much every distribution is wildly unreliable. I would never run anything I care about on it. I'd go with a proper UNIX (BSD, illumos, etc.), then a UNIXy RTOS (Pike|QNX|seL4|VxWorks), then Windows then not running the service at all, then Linux if I had no other option.

mayfly said:

zimmie said:

mayfly said:

"Apple said at WWDC that the battery is not casually removable from the headset. There is a USB-C port on the battery for charging and directly powering the Apple Vision Pro."

Just my uninformed opinion, but I think Apple missed an opportunity by attaching the battery this way. Better to put two USB-C ports on the headset, so users could just swap battery packs without it powering down. Weight gain would be marginal, and it would be easy to add a latch to prevent accidental detachment. Unless it's possible to attach a backup battery to the USB port on the battery. At this time, there's been no mention of that from Apple.

USB power delivery is extremely janky. It isn’t suitable for anything without a built-in battery. Devices can abruptly lose their internal state for any number of reasons. The only possible safe response to this failure is to drop to the lowest supported voltage and current, which definitely isn’t enough to keep the Vision Pro running. It also flatly does not support seamless handoff between two power sources.

They could have done it with a sizable internal battery and USB power delivery, but then all this upcoming legislation mandating easily replaceable batteries would bite them. They would probably also need to change away from glass for the outer face to hit their target weight. Apple uses plastics for AirPods, the Magic Mouse, and all of their keycaps, but they haven’t done plastic in front of a display in a long time.

I have two Leviton USB-C outlets with power delivery in my house. There is none of this "jank" of which you speak, and they charge every USB-C device we own (2 iPads, an M1 MacBook Air, and an M2 MacBook Pro), and fast. Yes, there is a port on the VP battery, and I mentioned it may be possible to attach a second battery or charger to it, but that would violate every page of the Apple Design Book. I'd guess the real reason there's no USB port on the VP is that Apple doesn't want anyone attaching any third party hardware to it. And there's plenty of historical precedent to back that up!

They absolutely do have the jankiness I mentioned, you just don't notice it. iPads and MacBooks can tolerate the sudden drops to 5v@100mA because their internal batteries provide enough power to keep going. It only takes half a second or so to renegotiate the higher delivery, so even 1% charge is enough.

Without an internal battery, Vision Pro would just suddenly lose power. While that would be bad for any device, it is absolutely not tolerable for something covering your entire visual field. Further, the battery would need to be able to provide fairly high current. A capacitor bank could be used, but would take up a lot of volume, increasing the lever effect of the weight of other components (like the exterior glass) which have to be pushed further our from your face.

Part of the reason USB-PD is so bad is that it's built on USB 2, which is a nightmare of a protocol. Talk to anybody who has ever had to implement USB 2 at an electrical level. They will absolutely agree that USB-PD can't ever be remotely reliable enough for a battery-to-load connection.

mayfly said:

"Apple said at WWDC that the battery is not casually removable from the headset. There is a USB-C port on the battery for charging and directly powering the Apple Vision Pro."

Just my uninformed opinion, but I think Apple missed an opportunity by attaching the battery this way. Better to put two USB-C ports on the headset, so users could just swap battery packs without it powering down. Weight gain would be marginal, and it would be easy to add a latch to prevent accidental detachment. Unless it's possible to attach a backup battery to the USB port on the battery. At this time, there's been no mention of that from Apple.

USB power delivery is extremely janky. It isn’t suitable for anything without a built-in battery. Devices can abruptly lose their internal state for any number of reasons. The only possible safe response to this failure is to drop to the lowest supported voltage and current, which definitely isn’t enough to keep the Vision Pro running. It also flatly does not support seamless handoff between two power sources.

They could have done it with a sizable internal battery and USB power delivery, but then all this upcoming legislation mandating easily replaceable batteries would bite them. They would probably also need to change away from glass for the outer face to hit their target weight. Apple uses plastics for AirPods, the Magic Mouse, and all of their keycaps, but they haven’t done plastic in front of a display in a long time.

hmlongco said:

Misses the other major benefit of SOC integrated memory. In a traditional system if I want to move an image from memory to a graphics card that image data has to be copied from the CPU's RAM to the RAM on the GPU, byte by byte. Similarly, if I want the GPU to perform some action on that image and return it then the result needs to be copied once more from the GPU back to the CPU.

In Apple's SOC design, you do little more than hand the address of the data in RAM to the GPU, which then can perform the operation in place. You get tremendous gains in throughput when you don't have to copy data back and forth.

This is the main reason why the RAM is soldered. The article's mention of interrupts and related information is technically correct, but irrelevant: Apple's design still has a memory controller and still behaves very similarly to designs with outboard memory controllers (northbridge) or integrated memory controllers (current AMD and Intel processors).

The memory controller has exclusive access to the RAM. Everything else goes through the memory controller to request the contents of an address range. Apple's data sharing is possible because the CPU cores and GPU cores (and Neural Engine cores, etc.) all go through the same memory controller. The performance figures (such as 400 GB/s of memory throughput) are because Apple uses multiple DDR5 channels. Each channel gets 50 GB/s. The base M2 has two. The M2 Pro has four. The M2 Max has eight. The M2 Ultra has 16. Each of these channels could lead to a slot if Apple wanted. Yes, there would be a barely-measurable amount of latency added by the longer traces. They would also consume a barely-measurable amount of extra power. Those are insignificant next to the two main reasons Apple doesn't offer slots, though:

1. Slots take up a lot more physical space than RAM chips soldered directly to the SoC package
2. If you give users slots, they will put RAM in them with different capacities and performance characteristics

For the first one, four memory channels on the M2 Pro would mean four DIMM/SO-DIMM slots. That's not huge, but it's also not nothing. The M2 Max is more significant. Eight DIMM/SO-DIMM slots take up a lot of space. That many sticks of RAM would more than double the size of the MacBook Pro's logic board. 16 DIMM or SO-DIMM slots would roughly double the size of the Mac Studio.

For the second point, with soldered RAM, Apple can guarantee that each channel has the same amount of RAM and each channel's RAM performs the same. This removes a HUGE amount of situational logic to deal with seven sticks at 50 GB/s and one stick at 44.8 GB/s, or five slots populated with 8 GB each and three empty slots. The system can be designed to just assume certain things because Apple can guarantee at a manufacturing level that those assumptions will never be violated.

greginprague said:

zimmie said:

I was really looking forward to this one, but the strike is more important, without a doubt. Oh well. We can always hope they pick it up again in a few years.

Streaming services were already a thing in 2008 when they had the last writers strike and new contract. Can you please give a synopsis for those of us not in the industry with what writers think needs to change and why?

Ahead of the vote on whether to strike, WGA leadership shared internally a list of the demands and what the AMPTP (Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers, representing the studios) had responded to each. Adam Conover posted the list on Twitter. Basically, the WGA's demands are about fixing flaws in the old contract which the studios have been exploiting (see: Hollywood accounting), and improving the sustainability of writing for video as a profession.

One of the really big ones is a demand that "AI" can't be used to write or rewrite, and that contractually-covered scripts can't be used to train such systems. The AMPTP rejected this one and countered with an offer for "annual meetings to discuss advancements in technology", which is just insulting.

The WGA demanded base pay increases roughly in line with inflation, the AMPTP countered with base pay increases lower than inflation (still, any increase is better than none). The WGA demanded minimum employment terms (minimum duration, minimum number of writers for shows based on episode count, etc.) and guarantees for things like rewrite pay (executive producers tend to demand a lot of free rewrites) and health insurance, which the AMPTP mostly rejected and refused to even counter.

In 2008 the studios successfully argued that streaming was new and unproven (à la Spotify), and they didn't know if they would be able to afford to pay residuals. Now that everyone sees how wildly profitable streaming media is, the WGA demanded increases in streaming residuals. The AMPTP countered with much lower increases. The WGA also demanded more information about view counts for streaming episodes and features (movies) to make sure the residuals were accurate, which the AMPTP rejected and refused to counter.

I'm 100% in favor of the writers. Studios get up to some deeply unethical nonsense to avoid paying most of the people involved in making a show.