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Just purchased my first Mac after using Linux for most of my adult life. How big of a concern is this? I am seeing mixed reports when looking around - should I

Just purchased my first Mac after using Linux for most of my adult life. How big of a concern is this? I am seeing mixed reports when looking around - should I be questioning my purchase if I was expecting my M1 Air to last a few years?

sk0g 5y ago
From what I could understand, it's related to how much of your workflow runs over the RAM capacity, at which point the memory gets shuffled off to the SSD, and loaded back when it's needed. I got the 8GB RAM version, and been mainly using it for Unity + JetBrains Rider, both demanding around 4-6GB by themselves. Doesn't help neither of them are ARM native, I'd imagine. So I'm in big trouble :)
- tomislavpet 5y ago
  A suggestion until ARM native Rider is available. We have a few 8GB M1s that are used for .net development using Rider and we're using the DataGrip swap hack proposed here and it's working great (was unusable without it): https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/RIDER-54092 https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/RIDER-54092
  - sk0g 5y ago
    Huh that's a funny hack, will give it a try, cheers! I wonder if the GoLand/ PyCharm JBR folders will work, since I already have those and they are both ARM native. It's definitely the UI performance that kills me, have no issues with the other editors on the laptop otherwise. Running Unity in parallel likely doesn't help either, though.
tdy_err 5y ago
only anecdotal at this time, and it’s been awhile now. Specifically, a video editor posted a blog about how their laptop failed which required an out of pocket board replacement. Someone speculated in comments here that the drive may have reached lifecycle but it wasn’t confirmed or examined by an expert in a write up or anything. Not sure specifically what hardware but no reason to believe it would be a proprietary drive any different than other laptops’. IMO skeptical of PEBKAC or clickbait. Nothing in the post was informative or illuminating. > last a few years It will and to be insured instead of just confident one can opt for that $200 warranty extension
bangonkeyboard 5y ago
As you said, mixed reports (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26244093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26244093) and not much followup since then. The most common worst-case numbers from that thread, if sustained, would indicate a 4-5 year maximum lifetime. If this actually turns out to be a widespread problem and Apple doesn't address it in a timely update you may see a class-action lawsuit and/or Apple warranty repair service in a few years.
- jusssi 5y ago
  Wouldn't 4 to 5 years of full-day usage be just fine for worst case life expectancy for a laptop? I've had one that gave up on 3 years, a couple months after warranty ended (that seemed to be quite common for that brand at the time).
  - bangonkeyboard 5y ago
    There's one post that I just noticed in there reporting 10% usage after 60 days, let's assume that one's an outlier.
  - can16358p 5y ago
    MacBooks can easily exceed 10+ years rock solid. (Only battery may need a replacement)
    - simondotau 5y ago
      Obviously that depends on a number of factors, including whether you purchase early or late in the generational cycle, whether you spring for the extra memory, total hours of runtime, exposure to rough handling / mechanical stress, and of course blind luck.
    - bipson 5y ago
      Not anymore. Now Apple will drop MacOS support for their computers way earlier. I tried to update my barely used MacBook from 2012/2013 somewhere last year and learned that it was dropped quite some time ago - so if I would have kept it on the newest release (there were serious bugs, I was hesitant), I think it would have got around 8 years max, if memory serves me right. No security updates at all anymore, not possible to download older release than the newest. I did not expect that. And I had to upgrade SSD and RAM 2 and 4 years after buying, it became unusable for work (granted, it was not spec'ed out originally).
marcan_42 5y ago
The latest information I have suggests it's fixed in macOS 11.4.
- supermatt 5y ago
  Do you have a link for info on this? If this is a real issue (which I still have my doubts about), Apple can’t just sweep it under the rug, after all.
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    It's a real issue affecting a small minority of users; I have one who has already gone through 20% of their SSD lifetime writes. Here's one of the worse ones back in February: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1361847686417190918?s=19 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1361847686417190918?s=19 11.4 is in beta so not many people are using it, but at least one of the folks with the issue is running it and said it improved things. Apple were definitely made aware of it, hence why it being fixed in 11.4 makes sense, though there is no official statement that I'm aware of. I was never able to reproduce it myself; we never found a specific trigger, but some people have the issue consistently and others (most) don't. I only managed to trigger thrashing with very blatant memory pressure (i.e. allocating most of the system capacity and continuously reading it to keep it hot), which obviously isn't what these users were doing. People have looked at the OSX swapper code, and there were some hints that the algorithm it uses to decide to swap may have had some bugs; if 11.4 fixes it then I'm sure we'll find out once the XNU source drops and we diff it. Nobody has actually tried to root cause this outside of apple (i.e. using debug XNU builds on an affected workload/user). Also, we never confirmed that this was an M1 exclusive issue. There's some evidence that this is a Big Sur regression that affected all Macs, it's just that the effects aren't obvious on Intel ones because the age of the SSD makes it hard to draw conclusions unless you're actively watching lifetime writes over the course of weeks. On M1s, since the machines are young, the problem is obvious with a single data point.
    - supermatt 5y ago
      I still don't see how this can be classed as a bug by anyone other than apple. You have a single case of 10% lifetime usage (plus a 20% one you mention), along with thousands of reports of people with 2-5% - which you also stated was too high - based on your insistence of using TBW (which can vary by up to 10000x depending on the tech) instead of percentage used (supplied by the manufacturer). I had an out of memory alert on my machine earlier because i opened a typescript file in VLC. It was using 26GB of memory (and climbing) when i noticed it and killed it. I have an 8GB RAM machine. The machine remained fully responsive throughout. That simply wasnt possible before. Its definitely swapping a lot, for sure, but don't you think that there is a possibility that this is by design, sacrificing disk writes (i am 50TBW and still ONLY 2% "used" on a 256GB drive since launch) to make app switching more responsive? I guess we will see when you are able to diff the source, and you can shut me up once and for all :)
jacquesm 5y ago
With a maximum memory size of 8G it's a bit anemic so you likely wouldn't get that much life out of it anyway, hope you got the 16G version. Apple is pretty good at the planned obsolescence game, so getting the larger memory would at least help stave that off for a bit. I'm skipping these for now, I run Linux on all my machines and it typically takes a while for the wrinkles to be ironed out, and x86 has much better support than M1. I do think it is time that we became less fixated on x86 and more CPU architectures is better. Another reason for the skip is that the last two Apple products I've owned (both MacBook Airs) have not lived up to expectation, the one had a keyboard that went bad after only two years with nothing but perfectly normal use, the other has a battery that didn't even go through 50 full charge / discharge cycles and that only holds 5 minutes worth of charge. Both of these issues developed out of warranty.
- IAmEveryone 5y ago
  It’s 16G and I just retired my 2012 MacBook Pro because I really wanted to try the M1. It was still going strong after almost a decade of use and got €300 as a trade-in. If that’s Apple‘s idea of planned obsolescence, I support their plan.
  - Raineer 5y ago
    Surely you can't have that right - no one is allowed to be happy with an Apple product! Lurk moar /s
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Good for you :)
  - eduo 5y ago
    Same here. The home iMac Core Duo from early 2008 was finally decommissioned last year, after 12 years (had an SSD change only). Up until that moment it had been the "go to" computer in the home and 24/7 running a Plex server, Sonarr and Transmission. My 2012 MBA is used daily and heavily by my mother and graphic designer sister. My 2015 MBA replaced that iMac and now I'm trying to find an excuse to replace my current 2019 MBA because M1s are reaaally attractive. Essentially I've convinced myself Apple is anouncing laptops later in the year that look like the newest iMacs, just so I wait.
rraihansaputra 5y ago
A YouTuber investigated (but no shell commands AFAIK, observing through Activity Monitor), but seems like Rosetta 2 apps might also contribute to the high disk usage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyMCoQmsv-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyMCoQmsv-I
- astrange 5y ago
  Activity Monitor is not a reliable way to inspect memory usage, it's optimized for speed of calculation. Use 'footprint' and 'zprint' or Xcode/Instruments instead.
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    Activity Monitor measures memory footprint.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      Activity Monitor is almost just as useless as Task Manager in terms of reporting memory footprint. Not only will Apple's API constantly hide resources from native apps (like how Safari conveniently hides it's rendering processes), but MacOS's memory model is completely at odds with their measurement techniques. Either way, you're better off using top to measure your system's footprint, if anything.
      - saagarjha 5y ago
        Apple's APIs don't hide anything, programs on macOS just spawn subprocesses for reasons that mostly have to do with security. top(1) is not a very good way to measure footprint, footprint(1) is (and Activity Monitor uses the same APIs internally for its "Memory" column).
    - astrange 5y ago
      The way it does it is inaccurate and there’s more columns than that.
cerved 5y ago
AFAIK SSDs are generally replaceable, even in MacBooks. If you can replace it, I wouldn't worry too much
- dannyw 5y ago
  They're not replaceable in macbooks anymore.
  - nix23 5y ago
    Well he meant replaceable with a soldering iron ;)

sk0g 5y ago

From what I could understand, it's related to how much of your workflow runs over the RAM capacity, at which point the memory gets shuffled off to the SSD, and loaded back when it's needed. I got the 8GB RAM version, and been mainly using it for Unity + JetBrains Rider, both demanding around 4-6GB by themselves. Doesn't help neither of them are ARM native, I'd imagine. So I'm in big trouble :)

tomislavpet 5y ago
A suggestion until ARM native Rider is available. We have a few 8GB M1s that are used for .net development using Rider and we're using the DataGrip swap hack proposed here and it's working great (was unusable without it): https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/RIDER-54092 https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/RIDER-54092
- sk0g 5y ago
  Huh that's a funny hack, will give it a try, cheers! I wonder if the GoLand/ PyCharm JBR folders will work, since I already have those and they are both ARM native. It's definitely the UI performance that kills me, have no issues with the other editors on the laptop otherwise. Running Unity in parallel likely doesn't help either, though.

tdy_err 5y ago

only anecdotal at this time, and it’s been awhile now. Specifically, a video editor posted a blog about how their laptop failed which required an out of pocket board replacement. Someone speculated in comments here that the drive may have reached lifecycle but it wasn’t confirmed or examined by an expert in a write up or anything. Not sure specifically what hardware but no reason to believe it would be a proprietary drive any different than other laptops’. IMO skeptical of PEBKAC or clickbait. Nothing in the post was informative or illuminating. > last a few years It will and to be insured instead of just confident one can opt for that $200 warranty extension

bangonkeyboard 5y ago

As you said, mixed reports (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26244093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26244093) and not much followup since then. The most common worst-case numbers from that thread, if sustained, would indicate a 4-5 year maximum lifetime. If this actually turns out to be a widespread problem and Apple doesn't address it in a timely update you may see a class-action lawsuit and/or Apple warranty repair service in a few years.

jusssi 5y ago
Wouldn't 4 to 5 years of full-day usage be just fine for worst case life expectancy for a laptop? I've had one that gave up on 3 years, a couple months after warranty ended (that seemed to be quite common for that brand at the time).
- bangonkeyboard 5y ago
  There's one post that I just noticed in there reporting 10% usage after 60 days, let's assume that one's an outlier.
- can16358p 5y ago
  MacBooks can easily exceed 10+ years rock solid. (Only battery may need a replacement)
  - simondotau 5y ago
    Obviously that depends on a number of factors, including whether you purchase early or late in the generational cycle, whether you spring for the extra memory, total hours of runtime, exposure to rough handling / mechanical stress, and of course blind luck.
  - bipson 5y ago
    Not anymore. Now Apple will drop MacOS support for their computers way earlier. I tried to update my barely used MacBook from 2012/2013 somewhere last year and learned that it was dropped quite some time ago - so if I would have kept it on the newest release (there were serious bugs, I was hesitant), I think it would have got around 8 years max, if memory serves me right. No security updates at all anymore, not possible to download older release than the newest. I did not expect that. And I had to upgrade SSD and RAM 2 and 4 years after buying, it became unusable for work (granted, it was not spec'ed out originally).

marcan_42 5y ago

The latest information I have suggests it's fixed in macOS 11.4.

supermatt 5y ago
Do you have a link for info on this? If this is a real issue (which I still have my doubts about), Apple can’t just sweep it under the rug, after all.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  It's a real issue affecting a small minority of users; I have one who has already gone through 20% of their SSD lifetime writes. Here's one of the worse ones back in February: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1361847686417190918?s=19 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1361847686417190918?s=19 11.4 is in beta so not many people are using it, but at least one of the folks with the issue is running it and said it improved things. Apple were definitely made aware of it, hence why it being fixed in 11.4 makes sense, though there is no official statement that I'm aware of. I was never able to reproduce it myself; we never found a specific trigger, but some people have the issue consistently and others (most) don't. I only managed to trigger thrashing with very blatant memory pressure (i.e. allocating most of the system capacity and continuously reading it to keep it hot), which obviously isn't what these users were doing. People have looked at the OSX swapper code, and there were some hints that the algorithm it uses to decide to swap may have had some bugs; if 11.4 fixes it then I'm sure we'll find out once the XNU source drops and we diff it. Nobody has actually tried to root cause this outside of apple (i.e. using debug XNU builds on an affected workload/user). Also, we never confirmed that this was an M1 exclusive issue. There's some evidence that this is a Big Sur regression that affected all Macs, it's just that the effects aren't obvious on Intel ones because the age of the SSD makes it hard to draw conclusions unless you're actively watching lifetime writes over the course of weeks. On M1s, since the machines are young, the problem is obvious with a single data point.
  - supermatt 5y ago
    I still don't see how this can be classed as a bug by anyone other than apple. You have a single case of 10% lifetime usage (plus a 20% one you mention), along with thousands of reports of people with 2-5% - which you also stated was too high - based on your insistence of using TBW (which can vary by up to 10000x depending on the tech) instead of percentage used (supplied by the manufacturer). I had an out of memory alert on my machine earlier because i opened a typescript file in VLC. It was using 26GB of memory (and climbing) when i noticed it and killed it. I have an 8GB RAM machine. The machine remained fully responsive throughout. That simply wasnt possible before. Its definitely swapping a lot, for sure, but don't you think that there is a possibility that this is by design, sacrificing disk writes (i am 50TBW and still ONLY 2% "used" on a 256GB drive since launch) to make app switching more responsive? I guess we will see when you are able to diff the source, and you can shut me up once and for all :)

jacquesm 5y ago

With a maximum memory size of 8G it's a bit anemic so you likely wouldn't get that much life out of it anyway, hope you got the 16G version. Apple is pretty good at the planned obsolescence game, so getting the larger memory would at least help stave that off for a bit. I'm skipping these for now, I run Linux on all my machines and it typically takes a while for the wrinkles to be ironed out, and x86 has much better support than M1. I do think it is time that we became less fixated on x86 and more CPU architectures is better. Another reason for the skip is that the last two Apple products I've owned (both MacBook Airs) have not lived up to expectation, the one had a keyboard that went bad after only two years with nothing but perfectly normal use, the other has a battery that didn't even go through 50 full charge / discharge cycles and that only holds 5 minutes worth of charge. Both of these issues developed out of warranty.

IAmEveryone 5y ago
It’s 16G and I just retired my 2012 MacBook Pro because I really wanted to try the M1. It was still going strong after almost a decade of use and got €300 as a trade-in. If that’s Apple‘s idea of planned obsolescence, I support their plan.
- Raineer 5y ago
  Surely you can't have that right - no one is allowed to be happy with an Apple product! Lurk moar /s
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Good for you :)
- eduo 5y ago
  Same here. The home iMac Core Duo from early 2008 was finally decommissioned last year, after 12 years (had an SSD change only). Up until that moment it had been the "go to" computer in the home and 24/7 running a Plex server, Sonarr and Transmission. My 2012 MBA is used daily and heavily by my mother and graphic designer sister. My 2015 MBA replaced that iMac and now I'm trying to find an excuse to replace my current 2019 MBA because M1s are reaaally attractive. Essentially I've convinced myself Apple is anouncing laptops later in the year that look like the newest iMacs, just so I wait.

rraihansaputra 5y ago

A YouTuber investigated (but no shell commands AFAIK, observing through Activity Monitor), but seems like Rosetta 2 apps might also contribute to the high disk usage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyMCoQmsv-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyMCoQmsv-I

astrange 5y ago
Activity Monitor is not a reliable way to inspect memory usage, it's optimized for speed of calculation. Use 'footprint' and 'zprint' or Xcode/Instruments instead.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  Activity Monitor measures memory footprint.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Activity Monitor is almost just as useless as Task Manager in terms of reporting memory footprint. Not only will Apple's API constantly hide resources from native apps (like how Safari conveniently hides it's rendering processes), but MacOS's memory model is completely at odds with their measurement techniques. Either way, you're better off using top to measure your system's footprint, if anything.
    - saagarjha 5y ago
      Apple's APIs don't hide anything, programs on macOS just spawn subprocesses for reasons that mostly have to do with security. top(1) is not a very good way to measure footprint, footprint(1) is (and Activity Monitor uses the same APIs internally for its "Memory" column).
  - astrange 5y ago
    The way it does it is inaccurate and there’s more columns than that.

cerved 5y ago

AFAIK SSDs are generally replaceable, even in MacBooks. If you can replace it, I wouldn't worry too much

dannyw 5y ago
They're not replaceable in macbooks anymore.
- nix23 5y ago
  Well he meant replaceable with a soldering iron ;)