mrgordon

Because I needed to relocate near family and I can work remotely anyway

With COVID it ended up that I got stuck here

As a tech worker who lives in Miami and works remotely, Miami’s tech scene is a joke. I live right near Mana and the other posters are right to say he’s just patting himself on the back here

I agree not in all cases.

What if you are barely using that GPU though? Wouldn’t most the GPU RAM just be wasted while you did CPU intensive tasks?

Likewise in your example you might be using the GPU more so less RAM could now be allocated to the CPU to improve GPU performance by more efficiently using the available RAM

Then why comment at all? There was no argument, I was literally trying to reason how it could not be better and you chose to be rude instead of providing a single technical detail

Well the storage is also integrated and most tasks use at least CPU + storage so those will benefit too. Not to mention if you don't use your GPU much then the memory can now be dynamically allocated to the CPU instead of remaining with the GPU. Intel has integrated graphics cards that share system RAM but that RAM is slower than traditional graphics RAM so they have terrible performance.

If you assert that without discussing any of the points that I brought up then its not very useful. Why wouldn't sharing memory for certain large objects instead of copying them not make memory usage more efficient for many tasks?

Care to elaborate...?

Sure but Intel doesn't support it right so it wasn't in use for MacBooks as far as I understand. I'm not saying Apple invented the concept but they implemented it in their laptops for the first time so you logically wouldn't need as much RAM for many use cases where you can share memory that you couldn't share before.

I think the reviewer is mostly right though. The M1 uses unified memory where the CPU, GPU, the neural processor, and other components can access the same data without copying it.

"All of the technologies in the SoC can access the same data without copying it between multiple pools of memory. This dramatically improves performance and power efficiency. Video apps are snappier. Games are richer and more detailed. Image processing is lightning fast. And your entire system is more responsive."

I think the reviewer is mostly right though. The M1 uses unified memory where the CPU, GPU, the neural processor, and other components can access the same data without copying it.

"All of the technologies in the SoC can access the same data without copying it between multiple pools of memory. This dramatically improves performance and power efficiency. Video apps are snappier. Games are richer and more detailed. Image processing is lightning fast. And your entire system is more responsive."

Of course if you need 12 GB of data in memory than sharing 8 GB won't be enough but for most current uses of 16 GB its possible that 8 GB could feel as responsive between the shared memory and the faster access speeds (due to faster components and smaller distances)

I agree I think she will start a new company to regain control of her own work.

Who let the troll in?

You said: People don't go "I really want a walled garden".

So you admit after all this my exact point in the first place. Almost nobody is deciding based on this because there are thousands of other things that are either more important, easier to understand, more talked about in marketing and reviews, or simply because they've never even heard that some are walled gardens and some aren't. Clearly someone who has never had a smartphone before wouldn't choose based on specifics of the App Store when they're probably trying to figure out how to make a phone call.

You contradicted yourself. You said anyone without access to self driving will be out-competed but that doesn’t mean it’s necessary for them. It’s extremely necessary for them. I’d much rather take a driverless Waymo than a ride with a random Uber driver that might be driving distractedly, might get lost, etc. Not to mention the robotaxi should be cheaper at scale as they can operate 24 hours a day.

I agree for Lyft but Uber pretty aggressively pushed the vision as necessary for their future when they were burning so much cash on ATG.

Can’t believe people downvoted you for making a clear point

“Apple's non-standard behavior is still more valuable to consumers overall than their less successful standard competitors even if it is horrible to a minority.”

You must realize this doesn’t follow at all right? Almost no one is even aware if their laptop has proprietary screws or not when they’re purchasing one. It’s not listed as a feature on laptop comparison sites or in reviews. People choose Apple for many reasons but it’s not because they prefer non standard screws.

You’re confusing people choosing to buy a product with them endorsing a specific feature of that product that clearly goes against their own interest for no benefit.

What phone do you use?

You care very strongly about the walled garden so much so that you’ll ignore thousands of other compromises compared to other devices that you may not like. That’s rare, but you’re on Hacker News so of course you aren’t like normal people when choosing a phone. You can’t assume most people will do what you do when they haven’t even heard of the walled garden issue so it literally could not be on their list of considerations.

I’m guessing I could say you don’t care about privacy or usability or something else based on your phone choice. But you’d say no I care about not having a wallet garden and thats why I chose it. Well in the same way most people didn’t choose to have a walled garden. They went to the store and bought one of the most popular phones and regardless of brand all their apps came from an App Store so they didn't even know the difference when they were deciding between other compromises like price, availability, network, battery life, ease of use, etc.

In fact, most these people never had an App Store before their iPhone so it seemed like an extra thing no one else had instead of a locked down Apple monopoly. Hindsight is 20/20.

None of these people would be upset if you put in a power user setting to allow third party apps. They wouldn’t even know it was there. So don’t say they “chose” that they didn’t want it. You can’t say people chose to ban something they don’t even know exists.

You still somehow don’t get it so I’ll explain it very, very simply.

My iPhone has THOUSANDS of features. Battery life, interoperability with other devices, reliability, familiarity, particular apps that I’ve purchased already, and hundreds of other reasons all contribute to why I like one smartphone brand over another.

And yes access to third party apps is one of those thousands of contributing factors but ultimately I’m not going to buy a phone that has a crappy battery and doesn’t work with any of my other devices just so I can download a couple extra cool apps without the App Store. Besides I can jailbreak this iPhone (at a privacy risk since I have to flash the whole firmware) and run sideloaded apps if I want to but it’s usually not necessary.

So you keep equating making a choice based on thousands of variables with a large scale consumer endorsement of one particular variable which is not at all scientific or logical.

For the average consumer, the fact that they have $200 in iOS apps they’ve already purchased over the last decade and their entire family is on Macs and iPhones that have generally been reliable is enough reason to stay with another iPhone. They’re not thinking about walled gardens when they’ve probably never even realized the distinction.

I've bought tons of iPhones. You can imply that I want a walled garden. But I don't and I've never met anyone who claimed they did.

Its an Apple marketing point. Its not why people buy iPhones.

You're assuming that. Apple may position it as a feature but I've never heard one person say they want that. You're making a big jump simply because they buy the phone. Look you could make it so most software goes through the store but no one wants their own program to need to get approved to go on their own device. Clearly.

Nobody wants a phone that doesn't allow them to add a third party app. They tolerate it due to lack of choice because the device still provides exceptional utility.

Why is it so hard to understand?

I like my iPhone. I worked at Apple. I still recognize its limitations. I'm not going to go without a phone to make a point to a $2 trillion company.

Lol I never whined about not getting a mythical Linux phone. I don't even want one particularly.

My point was that your claim to "just not buy it" doesn't work when its an essential item in modern society like food, water, housing, or a computer.

Its easy to sit here from your armchair and say "well if dumb consumers hadn't bought smartphones like this then we wouldn't have them so they shouldn't complain." But you, of course, have a smartphone from one of these manufacturers because like everyone else you realized you basically need one these days if you work or travel. We created rules that favor tech mega corps and now they dominate the industry.

So your "solution" isn't really a solution. You say people should have made some amazingly insightful decision to boycott all smartphones fifteen years ago but since they didn't we are stuck with the brands we have and its the consumers' fault...

No. You said "just don't buy it" if you don't like it. But I need a smartphone. So I'm going to buy one. My point is if they all have different drawbacks (this one is better for "openness", that one is better for privacy, this one is better for security) then saying people should just not buy Apple to protest one decision isn't helpful. Because by doing that I would probably end up needing to buy an Android phone which means I would give up other things like privacy. And then if I mention that you'll say we should have just not bought Google phones.

Well yeah. But yeah they control the market. So you buy the least evil product you can that is fairly priced and works with all your other stuff.

Or just blame the consumer cause they didn't choose the mythical Linux phone with great battery life and no spyware.

I didn't say people should be forced to make something.

I was responding to the other person's argument that you can simply not buy products like Apple's to show you don't like their lack of openness. My point was that all of the available products have different drawbacks so its not so simple as "don't buy Apple" when there are only a few options left from monopolies and they all have similar issues.

<3

I think Thom would approve.

You're ignoring that there often simply aren't that many viable choices. And the company that offers something you care about a lot may also do something you hate a lot.

For example:

iOS: Better for privacy than Android but less open to sideloaded apps

Android: Sends tons of data to Google about all kinds of things. Furthermore Google bricked one of my old Android phones by disabling the DNS for the authentication server so I could no longer sign into the phone. (It was too old to support Cyanogen).

Samsung: The last Samsung S-series smartphone in my house had apps pre-loaded on it including Blockbuster (it wasn't that many years ago) that could not be removed without loading new firmware or something. I guess Tizen is open source so theres that? But then again Samsung is one of the most cruel companies on Earth with a long track record of polluting, worker abuse, and blatantly copying others products and inside deals with the government to look the other way.

Microsoft: Abandoned the entire space. Was basically a copycat product with a UI based on squares anyway.

Essential Phone: Dead on arrival

Palm: Got left behind. Missed the whole app store wave

Blackberry: Wasn't really designed for non-business users with all kinds of upcharges for Blackberry data services. Missed the whole app store wave. Pivoted into automotive software after they couldn't keep up

So sure its easy to critique Apple for this or Google for that but ultimately what are the other options that can realistically compete with the above megacorps?

Fair enough, not too surprising Microsoft can offer a limited version for free. The Microsoft free version is much more limited than you imply though. The "meetings of up to 100 attendees" are for 60 minutes maximum versus the Slack ones which have no cap. Not to mention many people use Slack + an external video chat app so they wouldn't care.

I definitely prefer Slack. Here are a few reasons off the top of my head.

1. Many users have issues where the unmute button is unresponsive. Typically the workaround is to turn off incoming video feeds which isn't exactly ideal. This is a major turnoff.

2. Difficult to stay involved in multiple channels as described by another comment. I find it tedious to find what's happened if I've been away for a while.

3. Slack has bots that do various helpful things including leaving channels you don't use, asking you for your daily standup feedback if you don't have an in person meeting, referencing external content, etc. I assume Teams must have something similar but I've never seen them used which likely indicates its a lot easier to do with Slack.

4. Nicer UI as you allude to yourself

5. Slack works with several video chat options including their own (based on AWS tools I believe?) and Zoom. I actually prefer Slack video chat over Zoom or Teams for pair programming as its so easy to annotate the screen without clicking into a bunch of menus or being the meeting owner or something. You literally just start drawing on the screen and your coworkers see it

6. Excellent mobile app which is quite important for a chat client

7. Ability to run a small chatroom for free which AFAIK Microsoft doesn't offer (its included with other Microsoft products that were paid for usually)

8. Not tied in to only Microsoft products

At $50 per share it works out to a $35 billion valuation although I expect a pop by final pricing