About the next ARM-based macbook....
#21
What's wrong with the ayufan 20.04 build with the 5.7 kernel? If you run the BSP uboot, you get deep sleep. Sound is still an issue, but it seems to be one of the modules in the kernel not properly re-initializing the hardware after deep sleep. Toss the right wifi firmware in and set your region properly, that solves most of the wifi problems.

I agree it's not ideal out of the box quite yet, but it's getting there. You kind of knew what you were buying with the hardware, though. Pine's pretty clear that they do the hardware, the community does the software. Dive on in and fix the bugs you find!
#22
Quote:Fundamentally, Windows for ARM won't run on much Microsoft doesn't deliberately support. It's far harder to get it working on random hardware, because while most x86 PCs look generally alike from the perspective of an operating system, the same isn't true of ARM. I won't call it a total mess now that we have device tree support in the kernel, but... compared to x86, it's really quite tricky.
if ARM processors on the market suggested benefits for using them by PC manufacturers (these CPUs cannot be apple ones Big Grin), then nothing would prevent them from making ARM PCs happen. ARM based platforms aren't inherently "messier", than x86, it's a matter of providing what unifies them - ACPI/UEFI on the FW side. of course, it's not harder on ARM, than doing this for x86. and on the OS support side - again, the same, just write Windows drivers. the benefits of having ARM based laptops/motherboards could be 1) cheaper 2) more power efficient (there are people that value this. thankfully) and 3) less dependency (questionable but who knows). if this hasn't happenned yet, that means ARM CPU are yet too power efficient, Big Grin meaning they are weak for running desktop bloat applications (like chrome and co) and PC vendors realize, that an average user wouldn't tolerate this lag. but ARM is moving towards upping their CPUs computational power, still remaining good at efficiency in power consumption. So, I believe at some point ARM laptops and PCs would be much common. and they mostly will run Windows. this is interesting, unlike apple arm cpu nobody can buy and make a product with.
in short, not lack of unification is a preventer for ARM to get some PC share, but being incapable (yet) to suggest something interesting and attractive to the end user. this is cannot be being ARM per se. Big Grin nor gnu/religion (remember, it's about normal people Big Grin). it should be something like "wow, it's so much cheaper, but almost as fast as my intel/amd laptop". or "I have my PC quiet now, it doesn't produce noise drawing me crazy for so many years, because this guy is fanless! but still does its job well without overheating!"
ANT - my hobby OS for x86 and ARM.
#23
(06-25-2020, 09:05 AM)walterego Wrote:
(06-25-2020, 03:24 AM)jiyong Wrote: I fail to see why MacOS would be the ultimate Operative System goal.
Apple is a company known for vendor lock-in.
Linux is about interoperability.
Two very different worlds.
I say that because as of now, most linux distros suck or barely work. Manjaro is ok, but it still has a few issues.
FWIW, I'm replying to this post on a Pinebook Pro running Manjaro XFCE while Calibre is converting a few ebooks to different formats, and listening to my FLAC library using Audacious. Converting books on my i5 Asus machine running Fedora makes the system unresponsive.  In comparison this little $200 Pinebook Pro is a joy. Linux works pretty well IMO. I also use MacOS at work, and it's by no means problem free.
#24
Personally I hate Apple stuff, except for my old iPod Nano which has nice sound quality and integrates with my car.
Apple were quite clever to put a serial interface on the dock connector.

However I have to have some sort of Apple capability because I have customers with Macs and I have to support them.

I started by borrowing a friends Macbook years ago.
Then I converted a Dell D630 to run OSX and that is still what I develop on.
I use freepascal + fpgui and currently Mac customers have to use xquartz X server.
Then someone discarded a Macbook Pro 17 inch because the GPU unsoldered itself.  I paid £180 to get a new GPU soldered on and that has served me well.
I am currently developing a native cocoa interface to fpgui on that.

The macbook pro despite having an i7, 8 gig RAM and a GPU is apparently not good enough for Mojave or Catalina which I think is extremely disingenuous of Apple.

So how does this link to the Pinebook Pro?

I am hoping that if I can get native support working in freepascal/fpgui and also everything in my software working on Arm 64 bit Linux then maybe if I then recompile my Arm code to Cocoa then it might just work on the new ARM Macs even if I don't have one.

There is no guarantee that xquartz will supported on the ARM Macs but if Apple at least maintain the Cocoa API and don't change it too much then maybe I'll be in luck.

What would be really cool if someone could do it would be to implement an open source Cocoa server that could be run on Linux or Windows so that folks could run Mac OS software on a non mac and also developers like me could test their software without having a Mac.

There is something called cocotron but I haven't looked into it yet.
#25
The ARM revolution is already happening.
The first Chromebooks with ARM were too slow.
I think the Samsung Chromebook Plus with ARM RK3399 is usable.
You can even connect it to a 4K screen.

Microsoft launched Surface Pro X with SQ1 (based on Qualcomm 8cx?).
Once W10 ARM gets accepted by the people, Qualcomm is ready with the 8cx.
Rumours are that AMD will revive the ARM based K12.
Amazon has the Graviton 2.
Ampere announced the 80 core Altra.
Soon Linus will have to eat his words that x86 has won.
#26
I have a bunch of Windows laptops, which for the most part are totally reliable.
They have a major upgrade every year or so which has often caused me problems though. For example one of the updates killed my second hard drive which was in a media bay caddy thing on my Dell D630. Microsoft never fixed that one.
There was also the issue that when Windows 10 first came out it was ok on a mechanical HD but now it's unusable without an SSD drive.

I have a Macbook pro 17 which needed a new GPU to be soldered on, and also it when Mojave came out offered to upgrade itself and then couldn't run Mojave, so this caused me to have to totally reinstall, upgrade to High Sierra and then ignore the Mojave offer.
So, despite it having an i7, 8G RAM, a GPU and an SSD it won't run Mojave or Catalina.

So overall the Macbook has been the biggest pain in the arse and having a GPU desolder itself is not something I can fix myself and now it won't even run the current version.

Next I have a bunch of Dell and Lenovo laptops, and a desktop mostly running Debian and the PBP running Manjaro.
I think that these are actually the most reliable. They basically "just work".

Just to be clear I still most use Windows 10, because I like it. The mouse seems the smoothest and the fonts nicest in Windows. It just seems to look and feel right, right out of the box, and most of my customers are on Windows 10 too.

But if I had to say that one "sucked", it would be my Macbook Pro 17. I don't even like the OS much. Coming from Windows I just find it too weird. Linux and Windows seem much more similar (for example mouse with only one button, horrible).
#27
My impression was that Apple was moving to ARM for the new Macbook Pro so that they can further entangle their proprietary OS to their proprietary hardware, to the point that you will not be able to run anything but MacOS on a Macbook Pro and their OS will not run on anything but their own proprietary architecture, which is going to be disappointing for all the Macbook fans who prefer to run Ubuntu on their Macbook.
#28
Apple dropped Intel because Intel lost too much ground (2022 before Intel gets to where AMD is with manufacturing) switching to lower nm production (lower nm means faster CPUs using less power) and their own ARM CPUs were proving to be pretty good in iPads (faster than Intel X86). Overall, it just made sense to Apple to completely move over to their own ARM CPUs.

MacOS for X86 can be gotten to run on non-Apple X86 hardware only time will tell if it's the same for MacOS/ARM. It makes sense to Hackintosh because Apple laptops and computers are overpriced, still remain overpriced on the second-hand market compared with like-for-like hardware.

Apple's deal with their hardware is not so much to tie their OS to it but to prevent repair by 3rd parties.

This is visible with components in iPhones being coded to the phone (3rd parties cannot replace buttons) and T2. Instead of a simple repair, it forces customers to take their Apple phones or computers to the Apple store or approved repair centre where they often get convinced through upselling (repairs are so often prohibitively expensive compared to buying new) to replace the phone or computer.
#29
(08-21-2020, 12:36 AM)lot378 Wrote: <SNIP>
Apple's deal with their hardware is not so much to tie their OS to it but to prevent repair by 3rd parties.

This is visible with components in iPhones being coded to the phone (3rd parties cannot replace buttons) and T2.  Instead of a simple repair, it forces customers to take their Apple phones or computers to the Apple store or approved repair centre where they often get convinced through upselling (repairs are so often prohibitively expensive compared to buying new) to replace the phone or computer.

Not just upselling, even too "lazy" to do a proper analysis.

Genius Bar exposed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2_SZ4tfLns
Apple refusing a relative simple repair: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-NU7yOSElE
Apple refusing iPhone data recovery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8n13l-idWg
#30
Will it be possible to create some kind of layer to run applications for ARM mac on a pinbook? In that case, we could get a huge amount of new software. I am sure that most mac software will be migrated to the ARM. At the moment, I'm most interested in the Geforce Now app.


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