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Comment by gary_0 | Hacker News Reader

I find articles like this really vexing because this isn't a general-purpose CPU, it's just a chip meant to run the software that Apple allows on the App Store. Most of the software I use day-to-day can't run on it by design.

It's kind of depressing that the most advanced mobile CPU technology (that can only be fabbed by a single company in a far-away country) is monopolized by a company that heavily restricts the software you can run on it, and will never sell it to me with documentation and let me plug it onto my own motherboard--which is ironically how Apple first started, by buying and making full use of the MOS 6502. But the days of the garage hacker getting their hands on cutting-edge parts are long gone.

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Just because you can't run whatever software you like on it, does not make it non-general purpose CPU.

True. But it does make it functionally a non-general purpose CPU. I suppose you can load your own programs if you have a dev account or jailbreak right?

Yes. And a dev account is like $100/year.

It’s bad that they can gatekeep like this, I agree. I should just be able to put whatever on the hardware I buy.

But the expense in practical terms, immediate pragmatic terms, is negligible compared to what it unlocks.

I disagree. $100/yr to put what might be a very simple little toy application is not worth it. Sure, that toy might inspire more, and it could even lead to a promising career, but it’s a stretch to argue it was worth it when it could just as easily never be utilized.

The promise of general purpose computing and open source as well is that it empowers all kinds of users.

Oh how badly I want to tweak little things about my iPhone, but can’t because the software is locked down.

Compared to the cost and power of any of the hardware and software we are talking about it is insignificant.

If you want to do toy programming on a budget there are a million arduino-like things out there.

I recently saw calculations on the price of say, just iOS alone. It being equivalent to multiple Manhattan projects. Regardless of how accurate that estimate is, the general point remains.

Do I think Apple should make developing for non-distribution on the iPhone free? Yes. Do I think there is an argument that is almost a moral obligation? Possibly.

But what you get for like 30 cents a day with a developer account is mind boggling. I mean, that was the initial point wasn’t it? These are insanely capable and meticulously engineered pieces of technology.

Edit: I can even argue it is an ethical obligation that Apple should allow all users to install non App Store apps if they explicitly so choose. And I have argued that in the past.

But I separate this from the evaluation of the value proposition offered by an Apple Developer account.

What you are missing is that basically everyone needs a phone, not everyone needs an arduino. There is a fundamental difference between even 30¢ and free. Make developing free and suddenly you’ll have more developers.

Now it’s a whole other discussion of if that’s a good thing or not. But I personally like to believe that everyone should be able to develop as a hobbyist. The commercialization of software is often at odd with it’s users. Not so much when people are doing things for themselves and for fun.

Just my 2¢

You don’t need a dev account, but unfortunately do need a mac.

The limitation is that you will have to revalidate weekly (which can be automated).

Unless it’s changed again you don’t need a dev account to deploy apps to iOS - but it is somewhat limited. You can have at most 3, the signing lasts for just a week and IIRC the entitlements you can use are limited as well?

My definition of "general purpose" is that that you can "run whatever software you like on it". If you can't run whatever on it, that restricts the CPU to a "specific purpose", no?

if I write a bit of software and target ARM64 and it cannot run on x86.

Does that mean that x86 has a specific purpose now and is no longer a general purpose CPU?

That's not the same thing. An instruction set is an inherent aspect of a CPU; you can't have a CPU without one. Also, you can emulate or translate instruction sets between general-purpose CPUs, or in most cases just recompile the higher-level source code. The underlying logic will be executed regardless.

Oh so you’re saying the iPhone cpu is a general purpose cpu then. Just need to translate the instructions. Ok.

> […] An instruction set is an inherent aspect of a CPU; you can't have a CPU without one.

Oh, yes, you can.

The following examples of

– Transport triggered architecture

– Dataflow architecture

– Optical and quantum computing

represent viable, general purpose (not general availability), albeit experimental, CPU's without instruction sets. That is, none of them have anything similar to «movq $1, %r0» or «add.w %r2, %r0, %r1».

FPGA's are another and a more conventional example of a general purpose (even if specialised) CPU without an instruction set.

Tada, there is ish, so you can run whatever on an iphone emulated by an x86 layer! That is, you have a general purpose CPU.

Sure, apple suck at sideloading, hopefully the EU ruling will make it a possibility, but then say that instead.

> Tada, you can but only after jailbreaking and replacing your actual hardware with a virtual one.

That sounds like these "technically, a taco is a sandwich" discussions. Maybe, but was that actually the question?

ISH does not need a jailbreak. you just download it from the App Store.

An ARM64 emulator will run that software on x86.

Cant I write whatever code I want and run it on the A chips through MacOS?

I’m glad someone else feels this way. I absolutely hate those YouTube videos talking about the “4K 30min total render” bs. Show me a M-chip MacBook that doesn’t balk when running Docker, or chug when opening a fat codebase in WebStorm.

Sure the chips are fast when they run the stuff Apple designed for it, but they don’t seem any faster to me in my work. I will give them efficiency though. I love not having to carry the charge brick everywhere I go.

I have a 14” M2 which has been up 52 days with docker running in the background, and Rider and Clion. And it runs better than my DELL XPS 15 which heats the room.

I mean, the M1 chip in my Macbook Pro runs absolute circles around the Intel one that I had in the previous generation, and they were released within a year of each other, so... I honestly do not know what you're talking about.

That's not a high bar. I'm still stuck on the 2019 MacBook Pro for work, and it is significantly slower and hotter than my ThinkPad with Linux that I use for hobby programming.

Whenever I open IntelliJ on it I can feel the temperature of the room increase. The Intel Macs were terrible for many years.

Cannot wait for my Intel MBP to be refreshed into an M2 at work. Running Docker turns it into a jet engine. Like having a white noise machine with an unpleasant tone that also generates a ton of heat.

Moreso than the noise, the touchbar at the back can become too hot to touch and the plastic strip around the screen, where MacBook Pro is printed, is bubbling and peeling away with the heat.

I love how apple considers my skin part of the cooling solution. If it wasn't for legal limits, they would absolutely just burn people, sell a laptop cooling mat for $100, and tell people they are using laptops wrong.

I went from a Core i9 to an M1 Max and it's been a world of difference. Performance is great, it runs my dual 4K screens with scaling (3008x1692, virtual resolution 6016x3384) without a sweat, and the battery lasts forever.

Wtf, you do realize software is so wide-reaching (even just on “limited ios”), you can’t meaningfully optimize for that at the goddamn CPU level. Like what, this is not some embedded chip in a happy meal toy that plays a single dumb game alone - there is crypto, graphics, everything necessary for an OS.

Docker sucks because it is a linux-ism, not any other reason. And I think most people would disagree with your notion, it really does run circles around basically every other laptop.

Personal anecdote- Neither my M1 Air (personal) or M2 Pro (work) have any trouble with docker and jetbrains. Fans don't even turn on on the M2.

Both have apple silicon builds now, but it and a lot of other software built for Intel ran at similar performance or better (compared to Intel MacBook / Thinkpad).

I understand why people hate apple, but I've never heard anyone say this (what op said) who has had similar setups. It works a hell of a lot better than my X1 Carbon did.

> or chug when opening a fat codebase in WebStorm.

It'd be worth checking that you're not using an Intel version of WebStorm. I've personally found IntelliJ (largely the same thing as WebStorm) on the M1 to be _extremely_ fast, certainly leaps and bounds ahead of the old Intel Macs. That's the native version, though; via Rosetta it is absolutely painful (the JVM is close to a worst-case for Rosetta).

The security policy of the OS and the performance characteristics of the SoC are two different things.

It’s depressing right now maybe, but at least it probably means we’ll have this level of performance inexpensively in some years. The tech is still getting better quickly.

> But the days of the garage hacker getting their hands on cutting-edge parts are long gone.

In the context of CPUs i'm with you (still tinkering with things like 6502s).

On the other hand, i just deployed Llama2 70B (with the help of [0]) on my home PC and it was fascinating, when it wrote it's first response.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37492986

If you collect vintage compact Macs, you can literally see the hardware transition from the original Macintosh designed like any other random 68k project within the reach of homebrewer with a PAL programmer, to highly compact gate arrays and “if you don’t have the ability to design and obtain custom silicon, good luck”. VLSI giveth and VLSI taketh.

It’s a preview of what will probably be the basis of the M3 series of Macs that will allow you to run any software you want

Not ideal, but you can basically run whatever you want on it, you just have to revalidate its licence each 7 days (for which you might need a mac).

Also, even without that there is ish which can run most x86 software.

This is the same family as the MacBook line use. Once yields improve on N3 next year you’ll be able to get even a MacBook Air that will have this same chip but with more cores.

For practical purposes, it will be largely the same chip as the M3, which will be used in general purpose computers.

Perhaps we should then view NSO Group as liberators, freeing software from the tyranny of evil corporations. /s

> this isn't a general-purpose CPU

Apple uses the same CPU/GPU core designs for handheld, tablet, laptop, and desktop.

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