Apple

I’ve been using btop for monitoring system usage and statistics on Linux and MacOS. It’s much better than the built in resource monitors and seems to incur less overhead as well. Being able to use the command line to get insights into what processes are taking up resources is very handy. It works great on Ubuntu right out of the box (or, more accurately, sudo apt install btop). It also works on MacOS with brew install btop but the colors don’t work quite right on my system unless I set it to the TTY theme.

There is some current buzz about Apple copying Tile and various and sundry other predations that have been perpetrated against smaller rivals through the platform power they wield in the App Store. This power is an inevitable byproduct of having a successful platform. Important digital platforms tend to capture much of the value in a market. In some cases, they capture almost all the value. This naturally leads to claims of monopoly by rivals who are subjected to what they consider to be unfair play by the platform owner and calls for legal sanction.

As I’ve written before, I’m interested in the Apple M1. I’m due for a new work computer so maybe I’ll get one sooner than later. It seems that progress is being made (or at least a start is being made) on Linux on the M1. The Registry has an article about the Asahi project. It’s a crowdfunded effort to get Linux working on the M1 by Hector Martin who has quite a history with Linux ports to closed systems.

The recently announced mac1.metal instance type on AWS is interesting. I can imagine it would be very useful for building iOS apps and the like that require a Mac or running site tests with the Safari browser. The aren’t running the new M1 chip, but are on some pretty decent Intel i7 processors, so they should be plenty fast. I don’t suppose you care too much about power consumption if it’s in the cloud.

I’m very curious about the new Apple M1. The specs sound really great and the battery life is impressive. However, I don’t need one now and have other things to spend my money on. I probably have about a year or so with my MacBook. It’s slow but seems to still get the job done for what I do with it. Plus, that should give them the time to get more stuff ported natively to the new chip.