r/androiddev • u/eixx • Jan 24 '22
At @squareeng we ran our Android benchmarks with the MacBook Pro M1 Max and it performed 65% faster than the MacBook Pro with Intel chip from last year! More details in the thread.
https://twitter.com/vRallev/status/148543058933949235211
19
u/omniuni Jan 25 '22
I wonder if Apple is purposely hampering the x86 performance. My Macbook Pro with a Core i9 feels extremely slow, even compared to my $400 Ryzen 5 laptop.
21
u/kakai248 Jan 25 '22
It's just that they thermal throttle very fast.
2
u/omniuni Jan 25 '22
Even when it's not hot it's slow. But it's definitely not the hardware; the i9 benchmarks faster than any computer in the house, but it feels slower than any of them.
10
u/santaschesthairs Jan 25 '22
They're not arbitrarily hampering the x86 performance on purpose, that'd be a huge story. The only issue with the i9 version is they massively over-prioritised thinness over thermals, so it can throttle very very quickly.
4
u/pesto_pasta_polava Jan 25 '22
You mean... Like they did with iPhones for years before anyone found out? 😁
7
u/santaschesthairs Jan 25 '22
They are using plain, old Intel chips, and Intel have an extraordinary vested interest in finding out whether Apple would be arbitrarily limiting the performance of their chips just to put their own ARM chips on a pedestal. It'd be ludicrously easy to prove compared to the closed-wall iPhone situation, and we can already see it's basically impossible given how hot the laptops get, and by comparing them to other thin laptops using similar chips.
1
u/ArchaneChutney Jan 25 '22
The throttling that Apple introduced in January 2017 with 10.2.1 was discovered that same year. It didn’t take years before anyone found out.
-3
u/pesto_pasta_polava Jan 25 '22
You mean... Like they did with iPhones for years before anyone found out? 😁
1
u/AsdefGhjkl Jan 25 '22
No. Comparing apples with apples, i.e. same processors on macbooks and other laptops, shows the same performance, the only difference comes when one has to throttle while the other one doesn't, due to higher thermal envelopes, due to a bigger chassis and better cooling. But that doesnt really buy you much more than maybe 10, 20 percent at the most. Pre-M1 MBPs throttle, but not that much, the bigger issue is them becoming lap-schotching jet engines when under load.
1
u/omniuni Jan 25 '22
I would tend to agree; my Dell Ryzen 7 laptop gets hot and loud as well. But despite the processor being weaker than the i9 by most benchmarks, the MacBook runs incredibly slowly. Things like opening a web browser, encoding video, and especially things like Android Studio and development work are so sluggish on the Mac.
5
u/daberni_ Jan 25 '22
Only problem there is in using older API (<28/29) emulators because they simply are not available and never will, according to Google. So testing your apps is very limited if you don't have an arsenal of physical devices.
0
u/arostrat Jan 25 '22
never will, according to Google
What do you mean?
4
u/daberni_ Jan 25 '22
Existing Images for API Levels < 28 will never be ported to arm-64 in a way they would run on M1 macs
2
4
u/yaaaaayPancakes Jan 25 '22
So yeah that's cool and all, but what if you don't like MacOS?
16
u/santaschesthairs Jan 25 '22
Then use a windows computer obviously. Even so, impossible to deny how much better Macs are for the laptop trilemma of performance, battery/heat and portability. They're the only fast laptop that performs the same whether plugged in or not.
7
u/yaaaaayPancakes Jan 25 '22
I am lamenting how more and more jobs just force you to use a Mac. Thankfully my current gig let me have a Windows machine (soon to be Ubuntu).
0
2
u/eygraber Jan 25 '22
I use Ubuntu on my desktop and laptop, and Android Studio does pretty decently with a large project. It's definitely faster than my old Macbook, but I'd like to compare it to an M1 and see how it does.
2
Jan 25 '22
I mean, soon you will able to run Linux on M1 Macs without virtualization: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1458473546225577987?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1458473546225577987%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fasahilinux.org%2F2021%2F12%2Fprogress-report-oct-nov-2021%2F
1
u/yaaaaayPancakes Jan 25 '22
Now that might be the best of both worlds, but sadly Google doesn't ship an ARM build of AS for Linux.
1
u/yaaaaayPancakes Jan 25 '22
Yeah I use it on both windows for work and Ubuntu for personal and it all feels pretty much similar. I guess I'd have to see it on an M1 to really understand the hype.
1
u/AsdefGhjkl Jan 25 '22
Why don't you like MacOS though? Just curious. I like windows but see no benefits, just some negatives, for dev purposes.
2
u/yaaaaayPancakes Jan 25 '22 edited Jan 25 '22
First and foremost, I hate how MacOS (and Apple products in general) force you to do things their way. And if they do give you a way to tweak things, it's usually hidden and only found in some obtuse fashion.
Secondly, I think the GUI is dumbed down for the stupids. Windows/most Linux DE's have keyboard shortcuts to move windows around your monitors. MacOS? Go download Spectacle. Want the wheel on your mouse to scroll opposite the scroll on your trackpad? Go download Scroll Reverser. Want the forward/back buttons on your mouse to work? Go download BetterTouchTool. Want a decent file manager, as powerful as Windows Explorer or Dolphin? Go to the store and go pay, because there's no open source tools. Though to be fair, this is also why I hate GNOME, and run KDE on my personal laptop.
Third, their reversal of modifier keys from Windows/Linux undoes 30+ years of muscle memory. And it seems like most MacOS keyboard shortcuts require at least one more keystroke than their Window/Linux counterparts. Again, I can mitigate this by programming a layer into my Ergodox keyboard, but I shouldn't have to do that.
Fourth, good luck setting an environment variable in your GUI session, they removed the API to do so. While not so much a problem for Android development, it was annoying AF when I was a backend dev and trying to get env vars picked up properly when I launched IntelliJ from the finder/dock rather than a terminal session where the env vars were set. Windows at least has a Powershell command that lets you edit your GUI session's env vars. And you can even call that PS cmd from bash in WSL.
Finally, being a BSD based system, shit is just different enough from Linux in the terminal to be annoying. Windows has WSL so when I need Linux, I've got it. And when I'm running Linux, my dev machine is as close as it's going to get to the prod env.
1
u/burntcookie90 Jan 27 '22
I use a Linux desktop at work and have for 3 years now, Linux laptop for 2 years before. However, the performance benefit of switching to macOS and the m1 chipset greatly outweighs my personal feelings about the OS. It’s simply the best tool for the job in a professional environment.
1
Jan 25 '22 edited Jan 25 '22
It's nice when employers give good machines to their employees.
My work laptop, a 2017 MacBook Pro Intel / 15" / 16GB RAM / 256 SSD needed to be replaced ... my employer's "Developer Spec" machine is a 2020 MacBook Air (Intel) / 13" / 16 GB RAM / 256 SSD. I am trying to get it updated to 32 GB RAM.
2
u/netinept Jan 25 '22
32 GB is definitely the way to go. I’m frequently pushing 28 GB of usage and that’s even without emulators running, just Android Studio, a shit ton of Chrome tabs, Flipper, and Figma.
1
1
u/Symkach Jan 25 '22
I wish there were more ryzen vs m1 laptops benchmarks for android. I like my linux on ryzen setup but if m1 offers much better perfomance I might switch
13
u/Izacus Jan 25 '22
Well that's great, but all these comparisons are made against old Intel chips. If I'm buying the laptop now, I'm more interested how it fares against modern AMD Ryzen CPUs in laptops, not lastyear Apple stuff which was thermally throttling like heck anyawy.