First results from the 4.11.0 survey

[Graf Zahl]

That I find a bit weird. I would have expected Microsoft to use a more modern instruction set that matches their hardware requirements.

[Blzut3]

I know right? For all the time they spent strongly encouraging people to stay within the min spec of Windows 11, they could have just turned on all the ISA extensions and got that for free and at least there'd be some technical reason for them.

Surprisingly even Apple seems to not do this as there's apparently hacks to get Sonoma running all the way down to Core 2 hardware. And apparently you can go pretty far back and get decent results from what I've seen of people playing with it. You'd think they'd be compiling the whole OS for the x86_64h (Haswell) architecture they already define.

[Professor Hastig]

there's apparently hacks to get Sonoma running all the way down to Core 2 hardware.

Not directly related to the issue, but do I read things on that linked page correctly, that Apple is already throwing users of 6 year old high end hardware under the bus?
I'll never understand why Apple users let them get away with this...

[dpJudas]

For Apple it makes sense they don't do it as they have a vested interest in making Intel's CPUs look as poor as possible compared to the M1. By letting the M1 macs use the very latest ISA and keeping Intel restricted to 20 year old instructions they gain an additional speed advantage for their charts.

Of course it could also be explained by plain laziness. Changing a global setting like this in the build system can be risky if you don't really care about your job. It could result in additional work!

[Phredreeke]

Rosetta 2 does not support x86-64 apps requiring AVX instructions either.

[Blzut3]

For Apple it makes sense they don't do it as they have a vested interest in making Intel's CPUs look as poor as possible compared to the M1. By letting the M1 macs use the very latest ISA and keeping Intel restricted to 20 year old instructions they gain an additional speed advantage for their charts.

Of course it could also be explained by plain laziness. Changing a global setting like this in the build system can be risky if you don't really care about your job. It could result in additional work!

It's more likely the latter. I know with Apple everyone wants to jump straight to malice, but don't forget that they do build their toolchain to target Penryn by default so it's actually only 16 year old instructions. As I mentioned there is an x86_64h architecture which can be used in universal binaries. Don't remember what all they have optimized off the top of my head but I'm pretty sure stuff like the standard math library contains Haswell optimizations when run on a new enough CPU (so where it matters most, 10 years). The reality is most software doesn't get massive magic speedups from the newer instructions just being enabled. Besides between Intel re-releasing Skylake for 4 years and Apple building machines with inadequate cooling for Intel's hardware it's not like they need any help in making their CPUs look good. For the power levels they need for their design goals they are actually that good.

As Phredreeke mentioned, Rosetta 2 not supporting AVX is probably also a good reason as it was only with Ventura (macOS 13) that they officially only supported Haswell or newer x86 CPUs (the trash can was a sticking point), and Rosetta 2 already existed. Granted I'm sure they could add AVX support if they really wanted, but given that with current trends we're looking at Apple going ARM only in macOS 15 or 16 I can easily see how spending time on that would be deemed not worth it.

[yum13241]

And let's not forget how Apple straight up just stops supporting features they advertised, like the T1 security chip. T1 spyware if you ask me.

Oh, and removing support for your keyboard, and just being fucking annoying.

[Graf Zahl]

It's more likely the latter. I know with Apple everyone wants to jump straight to malice,

Apple has always been about customer abuse of some kind, so are you surprised? I have had to deal with their shit for 5 years on my last job and that was enough to convince me to never ever buy their product.
Anyway, pulling the support plug on 6 year old systems that cost 1000's of $$$ is a bit much even for Apple. They very obviously want to get rid of their Intel powered Legacy systems ASAP.

[Rachael]

They're going back to what they did in the 90's which nearly bankrupted them.

The difference is, this time they don't have to care about the Mac platform anymore, so they won't be bankrupted, they are instead being floated by their iOS offerings, so if Mac fails it's no dust off their backs.

Anyway, pulling the support plug on 6 year old systems that cost 1000's of $$$ is a bit much even for Apple. They very obviously want to get rid of their Intel powered Legacy systems ASAP.

Honestly that is Apple's M.O. for a very long time now. If you dare ever drop your iPhone and it lands in a puddle, what would be a $100 repair to get your data back they instead insist that you buy a brand new device and your data is gone, sayonara. Hope you backed it up, har har har. Don't even think about taking it to an independent repair shop, no no no you are a bad person. They have absolutely no concern about e-waste.

[Graf Zahl]

If Mac fails, they need to provide a development toolchain that works on other platforms. It's not that easy.

There's also no guarantee that an eventual failure of macOS won't affect iOS. I actually see neither happen, there's far too many people that rather deal with the devil than with Microsoft.

[yum13241]

They very obviously want to get rid of their Intel powered Legacy systems ASAP.

Because they HATE standards.

If Mac fails, they need to provide a development toolchain that works on other platforms. It's not that easy.

No, they can just make iMac Pro Plus Max 17 5G and call it a day. Oh, EFI is not supported, only AEFI is. You can only launch Apple-certified firmware executables, and you cannot install anything outside the iMac App Store 2.0. In the case of any inferior models, you can only boot to safe mode. Also, only Apple-certified peripherals
and parts are allowed, otherwise you get bootlooped, you bozo. Oh, you have to pay a subscription to use the OS, and 10 dollars every time you press the power button, otherwise your system will wipe the hard drive, ANVRAM, and the AEFI. The only thing left is one entry in the ANVRAM is "USER_DIDNT_PAY". Oh, it's called the ANVRAM because it's non-standard Apple shit.

Fuck error messages. We want our systems to work, and if they don't (impossible) then they just pay us $1,000,000,000 USD, no matter where you live.

Obviously fake.

FUCK YOU NVIDIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Man's based.

[dpJudas]

The reality is most software doesn't get massive magic speedups from the newer instructions just being enabled.

In general you're right of course, but keep in mind that it only takes a title or two where the auto-vectorizer managed to improve a critical inner loop for it to give a processor a lead in the charts for those. Fanboys of the various platforms are in particular good at finding such cases and display them as the conclusive evidence of just how much better their "team" is.

[Graf Zahl]

Let idiots be idiots. BTW, I still do not believe any benchmark that ranks Apple's CPUs with highest high end Intel models, that'd be pure magic to pull off on a limited power budget.

No, they can just make iMac Pro Plus Max 17 5G and call it a day. Oh, EFI is not supported, only AEFI is. You can only launch Apple-certified firmware executables, and you cannot install anything outside the iMac App Store 2.0. In the case of any inferior models, you can only boot to safe mode. Also, only Apple-certified peripherals
and parts are allowed, otherwise you get bootlooped, you bozo. Oh, you have to pay a subscription to use the OS, and 10 dollars every time you press the power button, otherwise your system will wipe the hard drive, ANVRAM, and the AEFI. The only thing left is one entry in the ANVRAM is "USER_DIDNT_PAY". Oh, it's called the ANVRAM because it's non-standard Apple shit.

I know you don't mean this seriously, but Apple *CANNOT* do that. Mac is not a mobile platform, it mainly gets used by power users. These users have no need for a locked down platform at all, what they value is the POSIX compatible underlying system. Should Apple restrict access to that their game will be over for sure.

[Rachael]

While that is certainly true - what yum13241 said is definitely something Apple has wet dreams about if recent history is any indication.

It'd be a suicidal business model for sure, but I have no doubt they wish they could pull it off.

[Phredreeke]

Unlike iOS devices, Apple lets you install a non-Apple OS on ARM Macs. I don't think for a second that's because they're big fans of open source but rather because it reduces the incentive for jailbreaking MacOS (remember how the PS3 was unhacked for years until Sony in their wisdom decided to disable OtherOS and suddenly jailbreaks started popping up?)