wizard69

About

Banned
Username
wizard69
Joined
Visits
154
Last Active
Roles
member
Points
2,255
Badges
1
Posts
13,377

Reactions

2KLike0Dislike165Informative

  • Supreme Court argument casts doubt on Facebook, Twitter free speech rights

    wizard69wizard69
    zimmie said:
    If Clarance Thomas is against you, you know you've made an actual cogent argument. He is easily the least competent Supreme Court justice in the last century. He has written dissents which only cite other dissents he has written, as opposed to any law or actual precedent.

    Nonsense!    Here in is the problem, you don't like somebodies point of view thus you consider it wrong.    It is exactly what is happening with Facebook, Apple and other organizations that control public forums.
    cornchip

  • Return of the Mac: How Apple Silicon will herald a new era at WWDC 2021

    wizard69wizard69
    danvm said:
    MacQuadra840av said:
    Finally an article that clearly points out the unfortunate limitations of the M1.  Everyone is so blinded in tunnel vision of 3x performance that they are completely missing out on the fact that the M1 is a low-end base model CPU with less features than the models it replaced.  

    It was not long ago that all the commenters were complaining of soldered memory, soldered storage, no upgrades, etc.  All Apple has to do is slap an Apple logo on a pig and the fanatics think it is the best thing in the world.  It wasn't long ago that people were complaining about 16GB RAM in the MacBooks and then they cheered when Apple bumped it up to 32GB and 64GB.  Now suddenly they are all happy that the M1 is capped at 16GB?  Suddenly they are excited that integrated graphics in the M1 are faster than the integrated graphics on the intel Macs, but still much slower than discrete graphics?  WTF?  

    Could you imagine if Apple introduced an iMac with only 16GB of RAM (instead of 128GB), 2TB of storage (instead of 8TB), two USB-C (instead of 4 USB/2 Thunderbolt), and integrated graphics driving a 27+" 5K display?  It would be a joke!  Or a Mac Pro with those specs?  Suddenly people think a 16GB M1 can do anything?  Not when you throw a huge graphics file at it.  Let's not forget about the excessive read/writes that is occurring in the M1 Macs, wearing out the flash storage prematurely.

    Hopefully the next iMacs have specs that meet or exceed the current 2020 models.  There is a big reason why Apple is still selling the Intel models because they have more features than the M1 models.  Notice how fast M1 Macs appeared in the refurb store?  High customer returns triggered that.  Unfortunate that Apple intends to solder everything to the board.  No more replacing bad memory DIMMs or swapping out a bad drive.  Now when that goes bad outside of the warranty, the Mac will end up in the trash because replacing the motherboard is an expensive repair and people will throw it away and buy a new Mac.  I have high hopes for the iMac and MacBook Pro 16", but the M1 was too limiting in features to consider buying.
    IMO, I don't see 16GB of RAM / 2TB SSD an issue for the three models of devices Apple released.  I think the Mac Mini, MBA and entry MBP are focused at people with light needs, like web browsing, office apps, etc.  I don't think these kind of users will have an issue with these specs.

    My M1 Air is with me because it is a better device than an iPad for my mobile needs.   For performance I have a large screen Linux machine in a desktop format.   MacQuadra's comments just strike me as ignorant as everybody knows that every M1 released to date is a low end machine.   This Air is incredibly good and I can't imagine that there is much at all that competes with it.

    Now that doesn't mean the M1 Air is perfect but it isn't like I'm going to complain much as it is an enjoyable machine to use right now.
    watto_cobra

  • Return of the Mac: How Apple Silicon will herald a new era at WWDC 2021

    wizard69wizard69
    MacQuadra840av said:
    lkrupp said:
    xyzzy-xxx said:
    I hope that some of the limits of Apole Silicon will be lifted:

    1. no target disk mode

    2. more / expandable ram

    3. 3rd party graphics hardware 
    If you consider those ‘limits’ then just move on. ASi is a new paradigm where those considerations are moot. If that’s what you want just stay with legacy Intel boxes running Windows.
    You are dead wrong, as always.  Look at all benchmark results and discrete graphics continues to blow away the M1.  Apple is not going to release an iMac, MacBook Pro 16, or Mac Pro with the inferior integrated graphics, even on the M1.  The 16GB RAM limit of the M1 is embarrassing, and it is a big deal.  Large graphics files would choke on it.  Especially embarrassing when the previous Intel models had more features than the M1 models.  But of course you hate Apple as evidenced in all your comments.

    This is garbage, there is nothing embarrassing about M1.   Apple debuted it in its lowest end machines and int hat regard it literally blows away anything in the price range.    The M1 is the best tech Apple had at the time to put into something like the Mac Book Air.   Feel free to offer up another passively cooled, low end laptop, that does better.
    muthuk_vanalingamFidonet127watto_cobra

  • Return of the Mac: How Apple Silicon will herald a new era at WWDC 2021

    wizard69wizard69
    xyzzy-xxx said:
    I hope that some of the limits of Apole Silicon will be lifted:

    1. no target disk mode

    2. more / expandable ram

    3. 3rd party graphics hardware 

    I don't see any of these being addressed in the next hardware release except for maybe discreet graphics.   Apples processors get some of their huge advantage from having in package RAM.   This is similar to high end GPU's and compute chips using HBM in package to increase performance.   I wouldn't doubt if Apple take several avenues to lowering the access times to RAM and cache as improvements here allow for more cores and higher performance with out massive crank ups in processor clock speed.   Basically going out to DIMM for memory access is just too slow these days, unless you go to very wide memory systems.   Since I'm not expecting a Mac Pro class chip I'm not seeing support for DIMMS either.

    Rather what I would like ot see as 3 very important improvements are these:
    1. Full support for high speed M.2 modules.   This must be beyond what the processor will be directly accessing and is expansion support.   Yeah I know Apple doesn't care about storage expansion but we can hope.
    2. Improved I/O ports and more of them.   This would allow for machines more closely optimized for the desktop and working laptops.
    3. Improved integrated GPU's.   Lets face it Apple has a lot of space they ca dedicate to a GPU.   However the problem with all APU graphics performance wise is memory so they will need to address that.   DDR5 might be the path they take but it would be really neat to see HBM type memory in package to actually permit the chip to work well.   In any event better GPU support is closely tied to improved memory systems.
    watto_cobra

  • Arm's new chip architecture will power future devices, possibly including Apple's

    wizard69wizard69
    dk49 said:
    If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence? 

    Long term I suspect what you will see is that Apple will focus a lot of effort on things outside of the ARM cores.    This will specifically be focused on high performance AI hardware.    In other words the ARM cores, at least for mainstream machines, will become a smaller portion of the entire SoC space allocation.
    killroywatto_cobra