Apple M1, a revolution in the making?

[k-hawinkler]

Here is another progress report. Details can be found here:

Re-installing Big Sur in M1 Mac mini from Recovery Partition?

I am considering following this guidance https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/01/03/how-to-boot-an-apple-silicon-mac-from-an-external-drive to install / re-install Big Sur from the Recovery partition but onto the internal drive and not onto an external TB3 SSD. The latter I have already...

forums.macrumors.com

Summarizing, I migrated 10 years of crude, collected on my “trashcan” to the new M1 Mac mini using a Time Maschine (TM) backup. I used the free app EtreCheck (the Pro version is $18 and can be bought from within the app, well worth it) to weed out all 32-bit apps, as they don’t work on macOS Big Sur. I also used EtreCheck to eliminate all Adobe and Microsoft apps from my new computer, as well as most unsigned system extensions. I kept updated versions of CCC, ClamXav, and SwitchResX.

To shut the M1 down requires to issue the Shut Down command twice in a row, as it will boot back up after the first attempt.

Also the M1 would not wake up the LG monitor gone to sleep until I hooked up the monitor to the M1 with both the Thunderbolt and HDMI cables, using HDMI to drive the monitor. Thunderbolt is still required to connect the 2 USB ports in the back of the monitor.

Capture One Pro 20 works fine in emulation on the M1, using Apple’s Rosetta 2 automatically.
I took the following image with my Fuji GFX 50S and processed it in Capture One Pro 20 on the M1 Mac mini.

The image shows a corner of the Los Alamos Betty Ehart Senior Center , where the COVID-19 vaccination last Saturday took place. The images of that event I posted here

FUJIFILM GFX 50S, 50R, 100, etc. ... Peculiarities

Mirador White Rock 5 Within about 2 weeks this intersection was transformed from this into this And a Raven already moved in! :grin: :grin: :grin:

www.getdpi.com

were also processed with C1P 20 on the M1 Mac mini.

So, as far as photography is concerned, I am pretty much operational on the M1 now!
BTW, on the M1 I am currently running Big Sur 11.2.

 

[Knorp]

So, as far as photography is concerned, I am pretty much operational on the M1 now!
BTW, on the M1 I am currently running Big Sur 11.2.

Well K-H, now that you've finally finished your M1-project, what about taking up that A1-project ...

 

[scho]

Thank you K-H for your comprehensive notes that were helpful as I struggled with getting the new Mini M1 up and running. First glitch was establishing an internet connection. WIFI connection was OK, but no internet at first. After putzing around with DHCP and DNS settings I finally got past that hurdle. Hopefully smoother sailing going forward. Subjectively the M1 does seem to be faster than my old 2014 Mini and no more beachball episodes in Lightroom (that I managed to get running after establishing internet connection so I could download rosetta).

 

[k-hawinkler]

Thank you K-H for your comprehensive notes that were helpful as I struggled with getting the new Mini M1 up and running. First glitch was establishing an internet connection. WIFI connection was OK, but no internet at first. After putzing around with DHCP and DNS settings I finally got past that hurdle. Hopefully smoother sailing going forward. Subjectively the M1 does seem to be faster than my old 2014 Mini and no more beachball episodes in Lightroom (that I managed to get running after establishing internet connection so I could download rosetta).

Thanks and congratulations to your setup.
Printing works on my Wi-Fi connected HP printer as well.
I assume the printing software came with migrating my old stuff.

 

[k-hawinkler]

Well K-H, now that you've finally finished your M1-project, what about taking up that A1-project ...

Well Bart, the A1 is certainly A1!
A worthy successor to my A9.

 

[Jorgen Udvang]

In response to Jorgen's memory question, the answer seems to be for right now, the current M1 systems have tremendous memory bandwidth and an incredibly fast internal SSD, so they can afford to swap a lot. But of course 8 or 16 GB of unified memory is nevertheless still limiting for extremely large images or data sets. So future Apple silicon machines will have to and will offer more memory, no doubt.

We were apparently right, but there seem to be consequences:

Apple M1 Macs appear to be chewing through their SSDs

The same SSDs that are soldered-in and almost impossible to replace.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[k-hawinkler]

We were apparently right, but there seem to be consequences:

Apple M1 Macs appear to be chewing through their SSDs

The same SSDs that are soldered-in and almost impossible to replace.

www.pcgamer.com

Thanks Jorgen. Yup, a few folks on macrumors are also debating the issue.
I have about 1/4 of my 2TB internal SSD in use and don’t expect that to grow much.
Almost all my images (99.9% or more) are an external media, including multiple backups.
Also I have an external bootable complete backup of my internal SSD.
So should be in pretty good shape considering.

BTW AFAIK after so many writes to SSD a particular storage location cannot be written to any longer, but it can still be read. So eventually an SSD runs out of writeable storage locations. But one would not necessarily lose data.

A conventional practice seems to be not to fill up an SSD more than about 70% or 80% so that it lasts.
It will be interesting to see which components will generally fail first in the M1 Macs and how long does that take for particular usage patterns. Hopefully they last longer than one intends to use them. I am sure this is an issue that will get lots of debate.

 

[Jorgen Udvang]

Those who will be hardest hit by this is probably those who thought they could buy a cheap Mac to edit hi-res video. There have been some very successful demonstrations of 8K editing with the 8GB/256GB version. This is clearly only possible with extensive swap/paging to the SSD, something that will wear it out prematurely.

Apple will probably be able to fix this with software, but I can't imagine a fix that doesn't also restrict performance. It will be interesting to see.

 

[k-hawinkler]

Those who will be hardest hit by this is probably those who thought they could buy a cheap Mac to edit hi-res video. There have been some very successful demonstrations of 8K editing with the 8GB/256GB version. This is clearly only possible with extensive swap/paging to the SSD, something that will wear it out prematurely.

Apple will probably be able to fix this with software, but I can't imagine a fix that doesn't also restrict performance. It will be interesting to see.

Thanks Jorgen, good guess. Here is a search "TBW of Apple M1 SSDs"

TBW of Apple M1 SSDs at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

duckduckgo.com

Here is an informative article

What are TBW (Terabytes Written) and DWPD (Device Writes Per Day)? - Architecting IT

The terms TBW and DWPD are used to describe the endurance of solid state media, typically NAND flash devices. The figures indicate the amount of data that can be reliably written over the lifetime of the device.

www.architecting.it

I would like to know what are these numbers for the SSDs Apple is currently using.
This issue cannot be "surprise" news for Apple's engineers I would think.
Over time I assume these SSD performance numbers will go up, commensurate with intended use. Considering the enormous price tag of Apple builtin memory and storage devices one would hope they can withstand considerable (ab)use.

Well, according to

Concerning Report Claims Apple's New M1 Macs Could Burn Out Their SSDs in Just Two Years

Users have been heaping praise on Apple's new M1 Mac lineup. All three models boast outstanding speed and performance thanks to Apple's new ARM-based

www.idropnews.com

quote:

"Before you panic and sell your M1 Mac, you should be aware that these values may be incorrect. Monitoring tools are known to be inaccurate, and the M1 is a new platform. These tools may not yet be compatible with the M1 hardware, and the results people are seeing may be way off base.

If this does become a legitimate problem, Apple could fix it with an operating system update that manages file-swapping more efficiently. It also could offer a replacement plan if the damage has already been done."

 

[k-hawinkler]

Interesting take on the TBW issue:

Questions raised about M1 Mac SSD longevity, based on incomplete data | AppleInsider

Complaints about the potential lifespan of Apple Silicon Mac storage are causing concern that the current crop of M1 Macs could stop working within a few years — and have been stoked by unanswered questions, unreliable data, and a silent Apple.

appleinsider.com

I am not going to dwell on this issue and worry about it so much,
but instead continue enjoying a really terrific tool, namely my M1 Mac mini 16GB 2TB.

 

[MGrayson]

IMac Pro. Four years old. 130 TBW.

 

[Jorgen Udvang]

Interesting take on the TBW issue:

Questions raised about M1 Mac SSD longevity, based on incomplete data | AppleInsider

Complaints about the potential lifespan of Apple Silicon Mac storage are causing concern that the current crop of M1 Macs could stop working within a few years — and have been stoked by unanswered questions, unreliable data, and a silent Apple.

appleinsider.com

I am not going to dwell on this issue and worry about it so much,
but instead continue enjoying a really terrific tool, namely my M1 Mac mini 16GB 2TB.

I agree, no reason to panic. I might postpone buying one until more reliable data are available, maybe even buy an Intel Mac for my current needs. My plan was in any case to use an external Thunderbolt 3 SSD for most of my photo and video processing, thereby avoiding Apple's rather high SSD prices. That would however make me particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon if using an M1... if it is a problem at all.

 

[k-hawinkler]

IMac Pro. Four years old. 130 TBW.

Many thanks, not bad, not bad at all.
That number seems to imply to me it won’t be the internal storage that’s the first component to possibly fail in your IMac Pro.
BTW what tool did you use to determine the “130 TBW” number? TIA.

 

[MGrayson]

Many thanks, not bad, not bad at all.
That number seems to imply to me it won’t be the internal storage that’s the first component to possibly fail in your IMac Pro.
BTW what tool did you use to determine the “130 TBW” number? TIA.

I just followed what someone on MacRumors said (and everyone agreed). First installed "brew", which is a package installer, I guess. But the point was to load smartmontools. The command

smartctl --all /dev/disk1

(disk0 was not the main SSD)

produced a lot of output. In there was:

Data Units Read: 256,006,247 [131 TB]
Data Units Written: 140,901,402 [72.1 TB]

 

[k-hawinkler]

I just followed what someone on MacRumors said (and everyone agreed). First installed "brew", which is a package installer, I guess. But the point was to load smartmontools. The command

smartctl --all /dev/disk1

(disk0 was not the main SSD)

produced a lot of output. In there was:

Data Units Read: 256,006,247 [131 TB]
Data Units Written: 140,901,402 [72.1 TB]

Many thanks Matt (IIRC what the M inMGrayson stands for. Please correct me if I am wrong)
Yup I am familiar with that MacRumors post. Thanks again.

 

[k-hawinkler]

This is interesting for photographers.

ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written

Hi, I just created an account to comment here (long time lurker). I received a Mac Mini M1 16/256 yesterday and after reading this thread i was anxious to see how bad this problem was (my main machines are Mac Pros with maxed out RAM). I ran quite a lot of tests since opening the box yesterday...

forums.macrumors.com

Quote:
”

• Today at 4:38 AM

Hi,

I just created an account to comment here (long time lurker). I received a Mac Mini M1 16/256 yesterday and after reading this thread i was anxious to see how bad this problem was (my main machines are Mac Pros with maxed out RAM).

I ran quite a lot of tests since opening the box yesterday and i have some - maybe - interesting conclusions.

I'm a photographer so my workflow revolve around Hasselblad Phocus / Capture One / Lightroom+Photoshop / etc.

So far my Mac Mini seems totally unaffected when i work in Capture One (Rosetta / OpenCL), Phocus, Affinity and most of my productivity + browsing software.

However kernel_task start to write a lot of data as soon as i open Lightroom's develop module with hardware acceleration set to full. If i set it to basic or no hardware acceleration it stops right away (need further tests to confirm)

As i'm not affected when running Capture One which uses OpenCL, i wonder if the problem comes from a bad implementation of GPU acceleration + Metal with some software like the Adobe Suite.

My Mini (11.2.2) has icloud and time machine de-activated, no data on the internal drive as everything is on an external TB3 drive. The only software i have installed other than work stuff is Little Snitch.

I will try Resolve tonight and see if it's also affected.
”

He is referring to Lightroom Classic.

 

[scho]

Thanks for this info KH. I noticed some extreme slow down using LR classic and Topaz Sharpen AI yesterday, with both apps eventually freezing up and requiring force quit.

 

[k-hawinkler]

Thanks for this info KH. I noticed some extreme slow down using LR classic and Topaz Sharpen AI yesterday, with both apps eventually freezing up and requiring force quit.

Many thanks Carl, greatly appreciated.
Maybe Apple is only partially to blame for the malaise their M1 computers are in.
Other vendors ‘ apps seem to greatly exacerbate the problem.

The TBW rate my M1 16/2 is currently going at predicts the SSD should last for 212 years.
Assuming Toshiba‘s 3,000 writes per cell for a 2TB Apple SSD.
So the SSD likely won’t be the first component to fail.
Thanks again for your feedback.

PS: Download DriveDx to measure your SSD’s lifetime performance numbers.
The app has a 15 day free trial period and doesn’t cost very much once the trial period ends.

 

[Jorgen Udvang]

There's a rumour that Rosetta will be removed for some regions in 11.3.

 

[Jorgen Udvang]

Many thanks Carl, greatly appreciated.
Maybe Apple is only partially to blame for the malaise their M1 computers are in.
Other vendors ‘ apps seem to greatly exacerbate the problem.

The TBW rate my M1 16/2 is currently going at predicts the SSD should last for 212 years.
Assuming Toshiba‘s 3,000 writes per cell for a 2TB Apple SSD.
So the SSD likely won’t be the first component to fail.
Thanks again for your feedback.

PS: Download DriveDx to measure your SSD’s lifetime performance numbers.
The app has a 15 day free trial period and doesn’t cost very much once the trial period ends.

My gut feeling is that this problem is mostly a result of early reviewers who successfully edited 8K video on 8/256 units, boasting that you could now have a fully fletched video editing monster for $700. With that kind of load, and by using all the features in the typical video editing softwares (colour corrections, stabilising, leveling etc.) that one would typically use minimum 64GB RAM for before the M1 arrived, the number of read/writes to that small SSD becomes extreme, and certainly dozens of times more than typical photo editing, which is more static.

For my own video editing needs, if I need to buy a new computer before more advanced M-models are available, I should probably look at an Intel Mac with more RAM instead, even though it will be nominally slower.