Mac Utility Homebrew Finally Gets Native Apple Silicon and M1 Support (arstechnica.com) 43
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Homebrew now supports Apple Silicon natively, albeit not with every package. The volunteer Homebrew team made the announcement on the Homebrew blog alongside today's release. While the native support is not yet comprehensive, it bridges the gap significantly, and users can still run Terminal via Rosetta 2 to do what they can't yet while running natively on Apple Silicon. The Homebrew blog post says "we welcome your help" in providing bottles for all packages moving forward.
Here's the full bullet point on Apple Silicon in the Homebrew 3.0.0 release notes: "Apple Silicon is now officially supported for installations in /opt/homebrew. formulae.brew.sh formula pages indicate for which platforms bottles (binary packages) are provided and therefore whether they are supported by Homebrew. Homebrew doesn't (yet) provide bottles for all packages on Apple Silicon that we do on Intel x86_64 but we welcome your help in doing so. Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon still provides support for Intel x86_64 in /usr/local."
Here's the full bullet point on Apple Silicon in the Homebrew 3.0.0 release notes: "Apple Silicon is now officially supported for installations in /opt/homebrew. formulae.brew.sh formula pages indicate for which platforms bottles (binary packages) are provided and therefore whether they are supported by Homebrew. Homebrew doesn't (yet) provide bottles for all packages on Apple Silicon that we do on Intel x86_64 but we welcome your help in doing so. Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon still provides support for Intel x86_64 in /usr/local."
Finally? (Score:1)
#firstworldproblems
Re:Finally? (Score:5, Informative)
First world problems include: A web site for bored nerds promptly discusses new releases of software, where that software has a purpose that would mystify an awful lot of normal computer users but that those nerds grok.
I personally am glad that this is a solidly technical article, instead of yet another purely political story.
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macOS has to allow custom code (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead, now that Apple has full control of the underlying architecture, I get the feeling any hardware or software investments one makes will become irrelevant much quicker than ever before. With proper PCs, there's not very much stopping me from adding even legacy PCI devices to my machine and mostly having them work as expected. Likewise for old paid applications, where on Windows, one can use Application Compatibility Toolkit to make things work; while on Linux one can chroot together a legacy environment or change up library paths to accommodate old binaries. Even ignoring Apple Silicon, Apple's Intel lineup saw an unnecessary end to proper NVIDIA GPU support in Mojave, the end of 32-bit application support in Catalina and the end of proper support for USB, serial and networking kernel modules in Big Sur. It's also not like you can go pay money for extended OS updates support either, Apple only supports the latest major OS version and the two previous releases and they release a new major release every year.
What one has to ask themselves is: Will Apple be afraid to break YOUR stuff next year? I think the answer is pretty obvious.
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On intel macs, you can run a virtual machine to run legacy 32bit apps.
On any mac, you can emulate old hardware with qemu or similar tools, even letting you run m68k macos and vintage apps.
At some point backwards compatibility has to be cut off, as its just wasted resources and security risks for the vast majority of users who don't have any need for legacy apps.
Not being nuts == Troll? (Score:2)
It's humor, moderatrolls! Laugh!
And it's true too! Stop treating Apple like a religion, you losers!
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Re:Finally? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Finally? (Score:1)
Check my reply above. It applies to you too.
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OK I did. Underwhelming.
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I suspect OP was attempting to point out that the M1 is still pretty darn new, and considering that even people who ordered system within a few weeks of them becoming available (especially if they opted for a non-standard config) have only recently received their systems, it seems a bit early to be using "Finally" in the announcement.
I am glad to see this and hope to be get around to having an M1 system myself to put it to use soon.
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I am glad to see this and hope to be get around to having an M1 system myself to put it to use soon.
My employer bought one for me. I am not seeing the blazing speed jump some of the fanboys babble about, but it does seem at least as fast as an Intel Mac when running x86 software - which is impressive. Ansible is slow, but then it always has been...
I don't think I'll buy one myself, though, until / unless it becomes possible to install an x86 virtual machine. I assume Parallels and VMware are working on it, but right now it's not an option. I can install some Windows software in Crossover, but not all of i
Re:Finally? (Score:4, Informative)
The blazing speed jump is the M1 in the low end Macs meeting or beating performance of the higher end Intel Macs. My M1 Mac mini ($800) meets or beats the performance of my i9 16" MBP in most CPU-bound tasks. The only place the MBP wins, and by small margins, are tasks that benefit from lots of threads/processes in flight.
The M1 Macs handily beat their Intel based predecessors in CPU and GPU. The mini and Air beat the previous models by pretty ridiculous margins. If you went from a high end Intel Mac to an M1 you're not going to notice much difference but from a low end Intel Mac to an M1 is huge.
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It also depends what you're doing, if a lot of your apps are running under rosetta then the emulation overhead will eat into the performance benefits too. Once you're running native apps the performance gap is bigger.
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Most apps aren't performance sensitive, so any difference is irrelevant. You must be running (a) apps that ARE performance sensitive, (b) that have native versions, and ( c ) do NOT require a lot of memory. What apps will those be? Have you considered that perhaps the theoretical advantages of M1 simply don't matter compared to their lack of native support and capability (yet)?
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"The M1 Macs handily beat their Intel based predecessors in CPU and GPU. The mini and Air beat the previous models by pretty ridiculous margins."
Not when your application is an x86 VM. Stopwatch measurements on synthetic benchmarks are only interesting to people with an agenda.
I wonder why Apple has so many M1 machines on sale? Could it be that buyers don't consider a machine that does less an upgrade? Could it be that no one buys the lie that 8GB is more memory on an M1 than it is on Intel? People aren'
Re: Finally? (Score:2)
Isnâ(TM)t that a bit unlikely? Those companies make virtualisation software, but youâ(TM)re looking for an emulator. Have you tried something like QEMU?
Built-in x86_64 support on Apple Silicon has a limited lifespan anyway. Maybe theyâ(TM)ll remove Rosetta 2 in three years.
Personally I wish Microsoft would put images of Windows for ARM on MSDN as that would allow me to continue my cross platform work using an Apple device.
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Isn't that a bit unlikely? Those companies make virtualisation software, but you're looking for an emulator.
I expect they'll follow the money, and I think there's a market there - but we'll see.
I totally agree with you on the desire for ARM Windows to be made more available.
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FWIW VMware has already said they're working on this. From a blog post [vmware.com]:
"Our colleagues over on the Fusion team have said “While we’re not quite ready to announce our timeline, we’re happy to say that we are committed to delivering VMware virtual machines on Apple Silicon!” So, stay tuned to the VMware Fusion Blog and Twitter account for the latest."
Re: Finally? (Score:2)
Does this say anything about running x86 operating systems on Apple Silicon?
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I would expect that they will (via an emulation layer). There is likely enough demand for this to work - likely the largest set of users of VM Ware Fusion are those running x86 Windows VMs. But of course I wouldn't buy an M1-based Mac until it is certain. I know I am waiting.
I hope that Apple provides access to the technology to run x86 on ARM (i.e. via an API or a library) so that a VM can run x86 code as fast as the M1 does (at least for 64-bit processes... 32-bit is almost certainly not part of Apple's c
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Codeweavers figured out how to get 32-bit Windows applications working on top of 64-bit-only Catalina, although it took them a while (and they apparently got some help from Apple). Their Crossover software does seem to run well on top of Rosetta2. So it seems like there should be ways to handle Windows at least.
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Does this say anything about running x86 operating systems on Apple Silicon?
In the larger context of VMware’s blog post, it seemed apparent to me. But, again, time will tell.
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I am mostly excited about running my daily workload without kicking off the fans on my laptop, and what sounds like a nice bump in battery life.
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My initial impression of the battery life on my M1 Air is good - although I suspect people aren't going to come anywhere near the 17 hour mark Apple mentions - unless all they're doing is iPad-like tasks.
But does it play Doom? (Score:2)
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There are videos of people playing Doom on Apple Silicon macs. Including Chocolate Doom. Which can be installed through Homebrew.
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Homebrew is a framework which makes it easier to install various FOSS software packages onto a Mac. It fills the same niche as Fink and MacPorts, if you've ever heard of those. I think it's aimed more at noobs. It seems to rely (or at least used to) on a few jenky tricks I didn't like, such as making /usr/local/bin/ writable to users even without sudo.
FWIW I don't bother with these frameworks anymore. There are only a few packages I care about so I just compile them directly. Some of them (like git) actuall
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Mod parent +5 informative. I've been using Macs since they switched to Intel and I had no idea WTF "homebrew" was supposed to be.
Stop naming applications and services with words that already mean something!
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Mod parent +5 informative. I've been using Macs since they switched to Intel and I had no idea WTF "homebrew" was supposed to be.
Stop naming applications and services with words that already mean something!
Looks like I was modded offtopic for pointing out that even nerds have no idea wtf this is about.
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Homebrew is a framework which makes it easier to install various FOSS software packages onto a Mac. It fills the same niche as Fink and MacPorts, if you've ever heard of those.
No. I have not. I do remember when this wasn't a Mac site though.
"bottle" (Score:2)
These custom names for packages get confusing ... and silly...
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besides, serious homebrewers use kegs, not bottles . . . I have almost two dozen . . .
hawk
Wait... no Terminal? (Score:2)
Did I read that correctly? Apple killed of Terminal? WTH, Apple?
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Hmm... (Score:2)
Can't Homebrew already compile a package when a bottle isn't available? At least mine does that with Intel binaries when the bottle download is blocked by say a corporate proxy / firewall, etc. So what if you have to recompile open source binaries, I bet most of them would work with no effort.