Pleading guilty to one count of intentional damage to a protected computer, Singla faces a maximum prison term of 10 years, though he may not ever see the inside of a cell.
The court was recommended to instead sentence Singla to 57 months of house detention due to his suffering an “extraordinary” rare and incurable form of cancer. Any delay to his surgery, should the cancer recur, may render his condition inoperable, according to the plea agreement.
The decision to recommend the alternative to incarceration was also influenced by a “dangerous” vascular condition, from which Singla also suffers.
Ironic that the guy found guilty of disrupting other people’s access to healthcare may avoid prison because he needs ready access to healthcare.
I still hate that they killed the mid-range model. Your option is the lower end MacBook Air with no fan, or the higher-end MacBook Pro. There is no in between.
I absolutely love the snappiness of the m1 chip in my current 2020 MBP, and how much more efficient ARM is compared to x86, but it seems really hard to justify going an extra 300$ in the future.
I really just wish they would bring back the original MacBook (with no suffixes at the end)
I kind of want to go for the framework laptop, but I still do like ARM and given I want to do more stuff around machine learning in the future, which is already kind of difficult to run large language models with only 8 gigabytes of RAM, it at least kind of runs with ARM. On my basement PC, It will barely do anything
There are some external GPUs that can be USB-attached. Dunno about for the Mac. Latency hit, but probably not as significant for current LLM use than games, as you don’t have a lot of data being pushed over the bus once the model is up.
My 16GB XPS running Linux almost fills up entirely when running several docker containers, IDEA, Firefox, Teams, Postman and a few other, smaller apps, but it fits still, and I can work with it (tho I can’t wait to get my 32GB framework laptop)
Now gimme a 8GB MBP and I’ll show you that I wouldn’t get shit done on that configuration. And at 1600 it’s just crazy.
It sucks that better alternatives like slack went from the big player to a small player only because of Microsofts power over businesses. If teams would win because it was actually a better product I’d be fine with that. But teams is just a pile of shit we are forced to use.
True by the letter but not really by practice. PC is synonymous with a computer running Windows, or Linux at a push. I don’t know whether that’s because of Microsoft’s early market dominance or because Apple enjoys marketing itself as a totally different entity, or some combination of the two. But yeah, usage determines meaning more than what the individual words mean in a more literal sense.
Originally “PC” was IBMPC or PC Compatible (as in compatible with IBM without using their trademark). An IBMPC could have run DOS, Windows or even OS/2
It’s funny to me becouse these days with all the remote software reinstallation and asking why you want to close one drive and things, windows isn’t exactly very personal either
You can install your own software on a personal computer, there is a freedom of choice. Apple tells you what you can install on a Mac. archive.ph/ks4uO
Will this make Apple Silicon Macs a fully open platform?
No, Apple still controls the boot process and, for example, the firmware that runs on the Secure Enclave Processor. However, no modern device is “fully open” - no usable computer exists today with completely open software and hardware (as much as some companies want to market themselves as such). What ends up changing is where you draw the line between closed parts and open parts. The line on Apple Silicon Macs is when the alternate kernel image is booted, while SEP firmware remains closed - which is quite similar to the line on standard PCs, where the UEFI firmware boots the OS loader, while the ME/PSP firmware remains closed. In fact, mainstream x86 platforms are arguably more intrusive because the proprietary UEFI firmware is allowed to steal the main CPU from the OS at any time via SMM interrupts, which is not the case on Apple Silicon Macs. This has real performance/stability implications; it’s not just a philosophical issue.
And wouldn’t it be a lot cheaper to just build your own PC rather than pay the premium for the apple logo?
It’s not virtualization. It’s actually booted and runs on bare metal, same as the way Windows runs on a normal Windows computer: a proprietary closed UEFI firmware handles the boot process but boots an OS from the “hard drive” portion of non-volatile storage (usually an SSD on Windows machines). Whether you run Linux or Windows, that boot process starts the same.
Asahi Linux is configured so that Apple’s firmware loads a Linux bootloader instead of booting MacOS.
And wouldn’t it be a lot cheaper to just build your own PC rather than pay the premium for the apple logo?
Apple’s base configurations are generally cheaper than similarly specced competitors, because their CPU/GPUs are so much cheaper than similar Intel/AMD/Nvidia chips. The expense comes from exorbitant prices for additional memory or storage, and the fact that they simply refuse to use cheaper display tech even in their cheapest laptops. The entry level laptop has a 13 inch 2560x1600 screen, which compares favorably to the highest end displays available on Thinkpads and Dells.
If you’re already going to buy a laptop with a high quality HiDPI display, and are looking for high performance from your CPU/GPU, it takes a decent amount of storage/memory for a Macbook to overtake a similarly specced competitor in price.
It’s not virtualization. It’s actually booted and runs on bare metal, same as the way Windows runs on a normal Windows computer: a proprietary closed UEFI firmware handles the boot process but boots an OS from the “hard drive” portion of non-volatile storage (usually an SSD on Windows machines). Whether you run Linux or Windows, that boot process starts the same.
Except the boot process on a non apple PC is open software. You can create custom a bios revision. The firmware on an apple computer is not open source. AFAIK you cannot create a custom bios on an apple computer.
Apple’s base configurations are generally cheaper than similarly specced competitors, because their CPU/GPUs are so much cheaper than similar Intel/AMD/Nvidia chips.
No idea what you mean by this. You cannot buy Apple’s hardware due the restrictions Apple places on any purchases. Any hardware you can buy from Apple has a premium.
If you’re already going to buy a laptop with a high quality HiDPI display, and are looking for high performance from your CPU/GPU, it takes a decent amount of storage/memory for a Macbook to overtake a similarly specced competitor in price.
I think you mean that Apple uses its own memory more effectively then a windows PC does. Yes it does, but memory is not that expensive to make. To increase the storage space from 256GB to 512 is £200. I can buy a 2TB drive for that. More importantly, it can be replaced when it wears out. Apple give you a replacement price that means you need a new computer.
Apple computers are designed to make repairs expensive. They may have pseudo adopted the right to repair, but let us see how that goes before believing the hype.
Except the boot process on a non apple PC is open software.
For the most part, it isn’t. The typical laptop you buy from the major manufacturers (Lenovo, HP, Dell) have closed-source firmware. They all end up supporting the open UEFI standard, but the implementation is usually closed source. Having the ability to flash new firmware that is mostly open source but with closed source binary blobs (like coreboot) or fully open source (like libreboot) gets closer to the hardware at startup, but still sits on proprietary implementations.
There’s some movement to open source more and more of this process, but it’s not quite there yet. AMD has the OpenSIL project and has publicly committed to open sourcing a functional firmware for those chips by 2026.
Asahi uses the open source m1n1 bootloader to load a U-boot to load desktop Linux bootloaders like GRUB (which generally expect UEFI compatibility), as described here:
The SecureROM inside the M1 SoC starts up on cold boot, and loads iBoot1 from NOR flash
iBoot1 reads the boot configuration in the internal SSD, validates the system boot policy, and chooses an “OS” to boot – for us, Asahi Linux / m1n1 will look like an OS partition to iBoot1.
iBoot2, which is the “OS loader” and needs to reside in the OS partition being booted to, loads firmware for internal devices, sets up the Apple Device Tree, and boots a Mach-O kernel (or in our case, m1n1).
m1n1 parses the ADT, sets up more devices and makes things Linux-like, sets up an FDT (Flattened Device Tree, the binary devicetree format), then boots U-Boot.
U-Boot, which will have drivers for the internal SSD, reads its configuration and the next stage, and provides UEFI services – including forwarding the devicetree from m1n1.
GRUB, booting as a standard UEFI application from a disk partition, works like GRUB on any PC. This is what allows distributions to manage kernels the way we are used to, with grub-mkconfig and /etc/default/grub and friends.
Finally, the Linux kernel is booted, with the devicetree that was passed all the way from m1n1 providing it with the information it needs to work.
If you compare the role of iBoot (proprietary Apple code) to the closed source firmware in the typical Dell/HP/Acer/Asus/Lenovo booting Linux, you’ll see that it’s basically just line drawing at a slightly later stage, where closed-source code hands off to open-source code. No matter how you slice it, it’s not virtualization, unless you want to take the position that most laptops can only run virtualized OSes.
I think you mean that Apple uses its own memory more effectively then a windows PC does.
No, I mean that when you spec out a base model Macbook Air at $1,199 and compare to similarly specced Windows laptops, whose CPUs/GPUs can deliver comparable performance on benchmarks, and a similar quality display built into the laptop, the Macbook Air is usually cheaper. The Windows laptops tend to become cheaper when you’re comparing Apple to non-Apple at higher memory and storage (roughly 16GB/1TB), but the base model Macbooks do compare favorably on price.
The typical laptop you buy from the major manufacturers (Lenovo, HP, Dell) have closed-source firmware.
FTFY: The typical laptop MOST buy from the major manufacturers (Lenovo, HP, Dell) have closed-source firmware. Though, I totally agree there are some PC suppliers with shitty practises. Where we disagree is that is if the firmware is fixed by the hardware manufacturer, then you have control over everything on the system. It is only when you have control of the base functionality of the system that you can say you are in charge. This may be too literal for you, but I just see that as a trust level you have in the manufacturer not to abuse that control.
17 inch screen (2560X1440) over the 15.3 inch (2880X1864)
16gb memory - 8GB upgrade to 16gb=+£200
1TB SSD over 256GB (upgrade to 1Tb=+£400)
8 full core/16t CPU (AMD5900hx) over an 8 core non hyperx cpu, 4 cores are cheaper variants.
All of the PC components can be upgraded at the cost of the part + labour. Everything on the Apple will cost the same price as a new computer to replace. Mainly because it is all soldered onto the board to make it harder to replace.
This is a £1400 laptop from scan V’s £1500 macbook air currently.
Ah, I see where some of the disconnect is. I’m comparing U.S. prices, where identical Apple hardware is significantly cheaper (that 15" Macbook Air starts at $1300 in the U.S., or £1058).
And I can’t help but notice you’ve chosen a laptop with a worse screen (larger panel with lower resolution). Like I said, once you actually start looking at High DPI screens on laptops you’ll find that Apple’s prices are actually pretty cheap. 15 inch laptops with at least 2600 pixels of horizontal resolution generally start at higher prices. It’s fair to say you don’t need that kind of screen resolution, but the price for a device with those specs is going to be higher.
The CPU benchmarks on that laptop’s CPU are also slightly behind the 15" Macbook Air, too, even held back by not having fans for managing thermals.
There’s a huge market for new computers that have lower prices and lower performance than Apple’s cheapest models. That doesn’t mean that Apple’s cheapest models are a bad price for what they are, as Dell and Lenovo have plenty of models that are roughly around Apple’s price range, unless and until you start adding memory and storage. Thus, the backwards engineered pricing formula is that it’s a pretty low price for the CPU/GPU, and a very high price for the Storage/Memory.
All of the PC components can be upgraded at the cost of the part + labour.
Well, that’s becoming less common. Lots of motherboards are now relying on soldered RAM, and a few have started relying on soldered SSDs, too.
I can’t help but notice you’ve chosen a laptop with a worse screen (larger panel with lower resolution).
I would choose a larger screen over that marginal difference in dpi every day of the week. People game on TV screens all the time with lower resolution because it is better.
The CPU benchmarks on that laptop’s CPU are also slightly behind the 15" Macbook Air, too, even held back by not having fans for managing thermals.
You cannot compare an app that runs on two different OS. That is just plain silly. Cinebench only tests one feature of a system. That is the CPU to render a graphic. Apple is built around displaying graphics. A PC is a lot more versatile. There is more to a system than one component. Let’s see you run some raytracing benchmarks on that system.
Well, that’s becoming less common. Lots of motherboards are now relying on soldered RAM
I wouldn’t buy one. You will always find some idiotic willing victim. In the future though ram is moving to the CPU as a package, but that will be done for speed gains. Until then only a bloody fool would buy into this.
An apple system has one major benefit over a PC system - battery life. Other than that I would not recommend one, even then I would give stern warnings over repair costs.
I would choose a larger screen over that marginal difference in dpi every day of the week.
Yes, but you’re not addressing my point that the price for the hardware isn’t actually bad, and that people who complain would often just prefer to buy hardware with lower specs for a lower price.
The simple fact is that if you were to try to build a MacBook killer and try to compete on Apple’s own turf by matching specs, you’d find that the entry level Apple devices are basically the same price as other laptops you could configure with similar specs, because Apple’s baseline/entry level has a pretty powerful CPU/GPU and high resolution displays. So the appropriate response is not that they overcharge for what they give, but that they make choices that are more expensive for the consumer, which is a subtle difference that I’ve been trying to explain throughout this thread.
You cannot compare an app that runs on two different OS.
Why not? Half of the software I use is available on both Linux and MacOS, and frankly a substantial amount of what most people do is in browser anyway. If the software runs better on one device over another, that’s a real world difference that can be measured. If you’d prefer to use Passmark or whatever other benchmark you’d like you use, you’ll still see be able to compare specific CPUs.
you’re not addressing my point that the price for the hardware isn’t actually bad,
I disagree. It is not only that the hardware is cheaper and a lower spec with the exception of the CPU, the design is geared around making upgrades and repairs near impossible or unfeasible. Software has much more support on a Windows OS. Video editing has been bread and butter for many years now, but Windows has caught up due to improvements in hardware and software. In my mind this negates the case for buying a Mac currently, but I can easily see it was a good buy in the past.
The outlier is Macs are good in battery life. Therefore there is a niche market that is an exceptionally good return on your investment.
Why not? Half of the software I use is available on both Linux and MacOS, and frankly a substantial amount of what most people do is in browser anyway. If the software runs better on one device over another, that’s a real world difference that can be measured. If you’d prefer to use Passmark or whatever other benchmark you’d like you use, you’ll still see be able to compare specific CPUs.
Because you cannot use Cinebench unless you are comparing the same system setup. Comparing two OSs is just stupid and cherry picking. Apple has a very trimmed down OS compared to the complexity of Windows. Apple OS dumps the need for legacy code with a closed system designed for specific hardware. Windows still caters for code written for DX CPUs under x86 architecture. This as well as the many other reasons why not. I noticed you ignored my offer of comparing back to back raytracing result, and now fail to even mention it.
You are obviously enamoured by the Apple model, I am not. There really is nothing that you could say that would convince me otherwise. I will wish you good day, and hope you agree to disagree.
I doubt it’s the last time. also while “PC” means personal computer, it was a very specific brand name by IBM, not a general purpose term. their computers (and clones later) became synonymous with x86-windows machines.
Even apple themselves have always distanced themselves from the term (I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC…).
I switched back to Apple recently, but used to sell them.
1 week before Bootcamp was released, I was selling Apple gear, and I showed a sales manager who was visiting how we got Windows running on the new Intel Mac Mini, and explained how this was great, because it was a great transition technology
In front of customers, as I was explaining, he basically called me an idiot, and said “why would anyone want to run windows on a mac”.
A week or so later, bootcamp was released, and he was back… He was now using the arguments I made a week early as a template for bragging about bootcamp to us and explaining the benefits. No apologies for any of the previous discussion.
They make decent products otherwise, and management doesn’t even need to act like wankers or be deceptive either
I only now using Apple again because Microsoft has finally pushed me over the edge with windows (literally, when they started hijacking my chrome tabs EVERY bootup, and opening Edge automatically), and the fact my Xbox Series X wouldn’t even play remote on Windows (their own OS)
Absolutely agree. Unfortunately, Apple attracts the kind of idiots too who think they know what they’re talking about too. When I was selling them, I had a customer tell another that Macs can’t get viruses as I was talking to them.
I used a lot of Linux in the past too (everything from playing unreal tournament on Gentoo in 3DFX days to Ubuntu more recently), and unfortunately, in the past Linux tended to also attract the upstuck crowd too.
But, slowly, the LInux culture does seem to be changing. But, we still regularly see people argue about things like SystemD vs Init Scripts (and anyone who has ever written a Init script knows exactly what a pile of crap they are to write) and Pulseaudio vs AlSA/OSS/ESOUND/ETC (whereas, any old school user also remembers the pain of sound servers conflicting with each other). Linux does finally appear to be on the right path to improving things, improve interoperability and the general common sense crowd finally seems to be drowning others out (and new technologies like Wayland or Pipewire are no longer getting heavy blowback). It may also be because Linux developers these days tend to be a lot better at communicating the benefits (Compiz was another case where the benefits were well communicated).
There’s a lot of things honestly Apple should be fixing
Why did you decide to go back to Apple instead of giving Linux a try? It’s free so it literally would have cost nothing to try, and you could keep your other OS(s).
It’s pushy to ask why someone made a large purchase when there’s a free alternative they might not have tried that they may or may not like better? Unlike buying an Apple product, it takes little effort and no cost to just boot up Linux and give it a shot. Some people won’t like it and that’s fine. It’d be pushy to say you will like it better, which is not what I said.
I used to use Linux exclusively (I was actually the top poster on a few major Linux news sites, and my linux project once got published in LinuxWorld Magazine).
Whilst it has certainly gotten better, I still feel some parts of linux need refining. Also, one thing both Microsoft and Apple do have is available integration of mobile apps… I thought Apple could do both via Parallels (android in windows, iPhone in MacOS), but turns out Android in Windows on parallels won’t work.
For the type of development i do, windows and macos are still the best options unfortunately too. If Linux had more seamless mobile app integration, I probably would have highly considered it to be honest
By mobile app integration, do you mean a connection between your mobile phone and your computer? KDE Connect is pretty good from my experience. It has more features than the Windows alternative at least (and I think there’s even a Windows version oddly enough).
If you mean running a mobile app in the system, I have no experience with that.
Running mobile apps on computer. It’s really the one use case Apple does extremely well, and it’s a pity because Linux could actually do it well if distros sorted themselves out
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