State of Apple Silicon - half of the most popular Mac apps still need Rosetta

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Comments

  • Reply 41 of 54
    danoxdanox Posts: 2,804member

    darkvader said:
    I touched a M1 Mac today for the first time.

    S L O W.

    Completely what I expected, but with all the "no, really, they're fast" hype, I thought maybe I'd be wrong.

    Nope.  They're slow. 

    Buy an Intel Mac while you still can.

    Intel worker can’t handle the truth, similar to Blackberry.
  • Reply 42 of 54
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,858administrator
    DAalseth said:
    So to take a snapshot of how the transition from Intel to ARM is going, AppleInsider drew up a list of 100 major Mac apps.

    You know, it would really be great if you had included the list, or at least had a link to it. You mentioned a few of the apps, but t would be helpful to see the others, you know in case they are important to our own processes. 

    As the article discusses, email William to get the list.
  • Reply 43 of 54
    Keep in mind that not every developer got an M1 the day they came out. We have been developing on the Mac for over 20 years (I recall getting the developer Intel iMac) and we just got our first M1 mini last week. We ordered extra RAM and that was a "special" order.

    You have more than your own code to worry about. All of your dependencies have to be migrated and then you have a lot of testing to do. Since Intel chips are still here, there is no fire and most of us have more to do than spend 100% of our development resources porting stuff... Most of us will get there when we need to.
    dewmeFidonet127asdasd
  • Reply 44 of 54
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,335member
    rcomeau said:
    Keep in mind that not every developer got an M1 the day they came out. We have been developing on the Mac for over 20 years (I recall getting the developer Intel iMac) and we just got our first M1 mini last week. We ordered extra RAM and that was a "special" order.

    You have more than your own code to worry about. All of your dependencies have to be migrated and then you have a lot of testing to do. Since Intel chips are still here, there is no fire and most of us have more to do than spend 100% of our development resources porting stuff... Most of us will get there when we need to.
    Absolutely spot on. I’ve spent nearly 30 years developing software, mostly for Windows in C/C++/C#, COM/DCOM, .Net, but also with some C++ on Linux, Node.js/Javascript on multiple platforms, Java, on Windows, and Basic, and ladder-logic and function block on PLCs. Other than the stuff I get to do at a personal level on a Mac I’ve never really had a choice of what platform to target. My customers ultimately determine the target platform because they typically have a suite of other line of business applications they depend on for their business and like everything to work on their platform of choice, not my platform of choice. It's a pull model, I don’t get to push my personal choices or preferences on customers. I can advise, but they choose. 

    Yes, I’ve always worked with customers and organizations (open and domain specific) to move them along to modern platforms and frameworks, but everything I’ve ever done has been focused on solving specific business problems within specific problem domains. That’s all that really matters. Programming languages, operating systems, hardware platforms, etc., are all just means to an end and tools to help them be successful in their business.
    edited February 2021 muthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 45 of 54
    danoxdanox Posts: 2,804member
    rcomeau said:
    Keep in mind that not every developer got an M1 the day they came out. We have been developing on the Mac for over 20 years (I recall getting the developer Intel iMac) and we just got our first M1 mini last week. We ordered extra RAM and that was a "special" order.

    You have more than your own code to worry about. All of your dependencies have to be migrated and then you have a lot of testing to do. Since Intel chips are still here, there is no fire and most of us have more to do than spend 100% of our development resources porting stuff... Most of us will get there when we need to.
    Quark took a lazy approach at the last transition and it cost them the desktop publishing market, if you are a small to medium sized developer you can’t afford to be behind, Affinity can’t get lazy because Adobe is this time around, what Adobe has released so far are feature poor placeholders.

    On a side note imagine Apple’s Aperture running on the M series CPU’s...... Or Freehand..... oh well.......
    docno42
  • Reply 46 of 54
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    darkvader said:
    I touched a M1 Mac today for the first time.

    S L O W.

    Completely what I expected, but with all the "no, really, they're fast" hype, I thought maybe I'd be wrong.

    Nope.  They're slow. 

    Buy an Intel Mac while you still can.

    I have one, they are lightning fast.  And battery life is amazing. Also you contradicted yourself in one sentence there. 
    edited February 2021 docno42
  • Reply 47 of 54
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,844member
    darkvader said:
    I touched a M1 Mac today for the first time.

    S L O W.

    Completely what I expected, but with all the "no, really, they're fast" hype, I thought maybe I'd be wrong.

    Nope.  They're slow. 

    Buy an Intel Mac while you still can.
    You're on drugs. Really. Too many links and tech sites prove the opposite.

    Troll Score (tm): 1 of 10.
    edited February 2021 asdasd
  • Reply 48 of 54
    danox said:
    rcomeau said:
    Keep in mind that not every developer got an M1 the day they came out. We have been developing on the Mac for over 20 years (I recall getting the developer Intel iMac) and we just got our first M1 mini last week. We ordered extra RAM and that was a "special" order.

    You have more than your own code to worry about. All of your dependencies have to be migrated and then you have a lot of testing to do. Since Intel chips are still here, there is no fire and most of us have more to do than spend 100% of our development resources porting stuff... Most of us will get there when we need to.
    Quark took a lazy approach at the last transition and it cost them the desktop publishing market, if you are a small to medium sized developer you can’t afford to be behind, Affinity can’t get lazy because Adobe is this time around, what Adobe has released so far are feature poor placeholders.

    On a side note imagine Apple’s Aperture running on the M series CPU’s...... Or Freehand..... oh well.......
    Good point and if you don't put any resources (or too little), you can miss the boat, no argument. My point was that it has only been a short while and this can require a big effort for may applications, particularly those that have lots of dependencies. We make scientific software and use VTK, ITK and a host of other open source libraries (many we help maintain) and some of these may need updating as well. The move to M1 is more than just the chipset, but lots of supporting libraries are changing or even being deprecated. It will be more complicated for big apps to move overnight.
  • Reply 49 of 54
    rcfa said:
    Apple Silicon support isn’t important because an
    app “needs the extra power”, it’s important because emulation requires system resources, and thus steals away memory and resources from other apps.

    Unless you’re one of few people who run a single app at a time in full-screen kiosk mode, Rosetta 2, as elegant as it is, needs to be seen as a stop gap measure for legacy apps: not more, not less.
    Apps are ALWAYS supposed to run natively (unless you’re doing research in CPU emulation, or something similarly esoteric). There’s no need to justify the need with the app otherwise being too slow: software layers should always be reduced to a minimum, even if only to reduce attack vectors and potential sources of bugs.

    Yeah. And I think it would be more interesting talk to developer their apps does not work at all or work badly on M1 or Big Sur id they are going to update apps.. For many apps Rosetta is fine, just drain more resources.

  • Reply 50 of 54
    docno42docno42 Posts: 3,755member
    Yawn - Discord runs fine.  Other than a few games not running, there is zero way to detect an M1 Mac is any different from an Intel Mac.  It's utterly seamless.  I just re-downloaded my apps and it worked.  I'm sure if I used migration assistant to pull my config over from my old MacBook Air the only difference I would have noticed is the improved hardware (ah, finally a Retina display on a Mac for me!) and the increased speed.  

    While native M1 support will indeed be nice, especially for compute intensive apps like Photoshop - it's certainly not a deal killer or even noticeable today.  And that, quite frankly, is utterly bonkers when you consider what is going on under the hood.  Indeed I'm surprised at what *does* work that I didn't expect to, or didn't expect to work that well.  Again, more in the games section with Crossover or the Parallels beta.  Indeed, I ended up returning the MacBook Air because 16GB was going to be enough.  I'm confident with a 32GB (or larger - perish the though) M1 MacBook Pro I will no longer need a dedicated Windows gaming box for the games I like.  And if I was into twitchy first person shooters I'd just get a console.  
  • Reply 51 of 54
    docno42docno42 Posts: 3,755member
    rcfa said:
    Apple Silicon support isn’t important because an
    app “needs the extra power”, it’s important because emulation requires system resources, and thus steals away memory and resources from other apps.

    No, not really.  Rosetta is utterly transparent - I didn't even notice the much talked about delay on first launch.  Probably because it was still a faster launch than I got with my 2015 MacBook Air.  

    It's utterly transparent *today*.  And it's only going to get faster from here as developers inevitably start to offer M1 versions.  But even if they don't, for most software it will be impossible to for most people to tell the apps aren't native.  It's that seamless and the M1 is that much faster that the overhead is NOT apparent.  At all.  

    I could take friends or families Mac's, clone them onto a new M1 Mac with Migration assistant and I doubt none of them would likely bring up the CPU inside the thing.  I would hear plenty about the vast hardware upgrades (screen, keyboard, speakers, battery life, overall system speed increase) but I guarantee you for all but the geekiest of the geeky they wouldn't know or care that the CPU architecture is completely different.

    It's an utter home run.  Yes there will be edge cases - but they are the rarest of the rare.  Other than myself out of a circle of 20 or so friends/family Mac users theres maybe one other person where the M1 might pose issues to their workflow.  Everyone else?  Utterly transparent *today*.  It's simply amazing.  
  • Reply 52 of 54
    docno42docno42 Posts: 3,755member
    I'm reached 20GB of swap memory and nothing is hot, noisy or battery draining. My 2020 Intel MBP 13" would be struggling and skipping a beat by now, instead of being buttery smooth. It's amazing how smooth everything is. Yeah, I'm not editing 4K o 8K raw video but the M1 MBP is Apple's LOW END machine. It's a game changer.
    Yes - I'm always amused at the negative people - who have never used an M1 Mac.  If they had, they more than likely wouldn't be negative :)
  • Reply 53 of 54
    docno42docno42 Posts: 3,755member
    darkvader said:
    I touched a M1 Mac today for the first time.


    You no doubt touched something.  It wasn't an M1 Mac though!
    muthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 54 of 54
    docno42docno42 Posts: 3,755member
    rcomeau said:
    Good point and if you don't put any resources (or too little), you can miss the boat, no argument. My point was that it has only been a short while and this can require a big effort for may applications, particularly those that have lots of dependencies. We make scientific software and use VTK, ITK and a host of other open source libraries (many we help maintain) and some of these may need updating as well. The move to M1 is more than just the chipset, but lots of supporting libraries are changing or even being deprecated. It will be more complicated for big apps to move overnight.
    If you are updating library dependencies - now's a good time to prioritize ones with metal support ;)
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