But with m1 and it’s derivatives, the user can’t dial in his/her own frequency values. For example the m1 chip is limited to 3.2 GHz max, a user with water cooling, for example can’t dial in a 1 or 2 core turbo ratio to 4 GHz, 3-6 cores at 3.6 GHz, and all 8 P-cores at 3.2 GHz.
When you grok that Apple is out-pacing Intel's flagships in raw compute at a fraction of the clocks (power), then it's natural to be impressed. But the real significance is that Apple knows that raw performance is not an end to itself: it's the design balance that matters.
This is why Alder Lake laptop benchmarks are not making waves. Alder Lake bragging rights in mobile are like being excited that Trump could win another election after his whole pitch has been that elections are untrustworthy: Both scenes make winning oxymoronic.
The significance is that Apple knows that power is now as important to total system value as compute; that compute is no longer scarce, contrary to SW developers heroic efforts to waste as much compute as they can.
Apple is sensibly using its vertical integration to make its devices effective at key tasks in the desktop broadcasting revolution. They've studied the problem since Final Cut Pro and know what parts of the system matter add moved ahead refining and tuning these into a useful module — in the vernacular of the Framework laptop — for creative production of the TikTok social economy.
Wintel PC is founded on now untenable idea of a recurring schedule of charges to users to waste their time in exchange for "the latest thing", where "latest" has lately reached the ultimate summit of waste with Windows 11. You truly haven't seen time wasted by a system until you've installed Win 11 Insider Preview: that shite is endlessly rearranging itself with zero visible upside. It forwards looking and backwards looking at the same time; everything is incredibly better while nothing has to change. It's the worlds first fully self-justifying OS with a raison d'etre of upgrading itself to ensure that you can keep doing things the same old way.
I'll bring up the Framework laptop to amplify my points. Those nerds are laboring under the confusion that customers prefer to not understand their needs and will happily and endlessly piecemeal their kit as a substitute for understanding their needs. Framework offers incremental modularity that's not really useful for most people when the average Apple device can exceed 99% of its users comprehension of any device's limits. Moreover, Framework can offer no meaningful system advance without a new architecture, and a new architecture by definition involved replacing all the modules! Moreover, the Framework is full of edges which allow unreliability to creep in electromechanically and by dint of traditional bugaboos of incompatibility. I have been eagerly awaiting the announcement of the Framework Mark II.
The Framework should become the apex hackkintosh kit because it serves the purpose of endless futzing among users whose time is free. I do not feel I am being harsh. Free time is life's greatest treasure. But if you really have it, why are you justifying systems value propositions by incremental adjustments to your RAM modules? My reason is curiosity and I feel chagrined that I am wasting time by proving to myself that this is a waste of time.
There's a fact the hackkintosher must face that is if time is money, these are the most insanely expensive builds on the market. How will the Framework affect this value proposition?
Whatever is great about hackintosh — and I think it is great — has nothing to do with ordinary ideas of cost and value. The industry is producing entirely new runs of systems with performance advances in every subsystem at a rate faster than I can comprehend my year-old build.
Joe Armstrong of Erlang fame said the best west to optimize code is not at all. Just wait 20 years and the HW will run it a thousand times faster.
I think Apple has developed very sane ideas about modularity which involve finding the essential compute requirements for a notion of work, unitizing the device at a price-point to make it fit, sturdy and reliable, securing the core SW, walling the garden against the worst grifters, and representing a decent, albeit corporate, respect for privacy, support, etc. I think the iPhone Self Repair Kit is a work of genius!
Linux will remain a ridiculous herd of cats. But that's not bad. Windows and Mac are a crazy cat palace in the clouds, like the Star Trek episode where nepotistic white overlords ponder the meaning of their privilege from their terraces in the sky as mutants toil in their mines far below supporting the city. In the episode, the Federation is summoned to boldly calm a slave uprising that occurs due to a new-found sense of liberty affecting the miners. Capt Kirk investigates and gets infected. He starts to relate to the slaves, which threatens his command. McCoy discovers the sense of liberty comes from an invisible gas, and invents a filter mask and gives it to kirk. Once the liberty gas is removed from the air, the slaves become return to docility, happy with their lot. Kirk having sown some oats returns to his comfortable command, and the overlords are secure in their floating city. I imagine Elon Musk and Neuralink in the roles of Capt Kirk and Dr McCoy.
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